If you are pregnant now, you might prefer not to read this section, although women who have experienced losing a baby often express regret that they were not as well prepared for this situation as they were for pregnancy and childbirth. Firstly, it is important to define the term miscarriage, as opposed to stillbirth and neonatal death. Miscarriage occurs in the first six months of the pregnancy. After that, once the foetus has reached twenty-eight weeks it is then called stillbirth rather than miscarriage. This is because at twenty-eight weeks it is possible for the foetus to be able to survive outside the uterus.
Neonatal death is the term used when a baby dies within four weeks of birth.
It may be surprising to learn that in women who know they are pregnant, about one in six ends in miscarriage. Except in a small number of cases, the exact cause of miscarriage will remain unknown. However, miscarriages during the first trimester are sometimes caused by the fertilised egg failing to undergo its first important chromosomal divisions properly. The germ plasm dies, causing your body to expel this matter in the second or third month. Miscarriages occurring after the first trimester are sometimes the result of the foetus' inability to maintain its attachment to the placenta, either because of some hormonal or mechanical reason, or because you have something called an 'incompetent cervix'.