As joyful as I was about this third chance at becoming a mother, I was also terrified. I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle another loss. When Addie arrived full-term and healthy, I thought I'd finally heave a sigh of relief. But it took several more weeks for me to accept that she'd made it, safe and sound, and almost a full year passed before I stopped worrying that she could die at any moment. Ronnie Polaneczky, a freelance magazine writer and a columnist at The Philadelphia Daily News, is working on a book about breast-cancer survivors.
Most losses are due to abnormalities in the fetus.
Other reasons include anatomic problems in the woman, such as an abnormally shaped uterus, a hormonal imbalance, or an infection of the genital tract. Even if you're aware that miscarriages are common, this knowledge may do little to assuage the grief, depression, sense of failure, and anxiety about subsequent pregnancies that can be triggered afterward. Whether it was a first pregnancy or a third, a miscarriage often means never again taking for granted that a pregnancy will lead to a baby. That sense of lost innocence has spiked sharply with the introduction of home pregnancy tests. Because they allow you to discover whether you're pregnant at a very early stage, they also make you aware of an early miscarriage.