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Situations
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- I am
pregnant and worried.
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- Try not to be worried. There is very
little you can do to cause or prevent a miscarriage. You will do the
best you can, eat the right foods, exercise when you feel up to it,
and get rest.
There are number of things that may
worry you:
Bleeding and/or cramping. In early
pregnancy, there are many NORMAL causes of bleeding and cramping.
Bleeding:
Small amounts of brown blood (which means it's old) are expected
when the egg implants in the uterus (7-10 days after ovulation)
and sometimes at the point when you would have expected your
period. You may also bleed slightly after having sex, but this is
probably NOT from the baby. Your cervix is soft and filled with
blood, so it may bleed a little from sex. This is not considered
by many doctors to be a problem, but if it alarms you, call.
When
bleeding is a problem: If it is heavy enough to make you
change pads, bright red, or comes with cramping too, call your
doctor right away.
Cramping:
You are going to feel a lot of random cramping down there the
whole pregnancy. Most of the time it is caused by the round
ligaments expanding to accommodate your growing baby and uterus.
If it goes away after a few pains or after you sit down and rest a
bit, then you are probably all right.
When
cramping is a problem: If it continues or gets worse or if
you start bleeding too, call your doctor immediately.
You should always call your doctor
when you are worried, however; because it is better to call for
something that does not turn out to be a problem than to stay up half
the night worrying about it.
The following topics may also be helpful as you get through this
pregnancy.
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- I am
waiting on a miscarriage.
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- I understand where you are. You are
frantic with grief and fear. You wonder if there wasn't some sort of
mistake, that your baby is really okay and the doctors just couldn't
see the heartbeat or the blood test was handled wrong.
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- This is natural to feel. You can always
get a second opinion, but it would be almost impossible to misdiagnose
a fetal death or inevitable miscarriage. The following sections have
information that may help you.
- I miscarried
recently.
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- Not everyone is going to understand how you
feel. To outsiders, it was "just a miscarriage." To you it was
your baby, with all the hopes and dreams that come with babies. It does
not matter whether you had a positive pregnancy test yesterday or if you
were full-term -- this was YOUR CHILD. You were the mother (or father) and
you deserve the time and freedom to grieve this loss.
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- If you find your friends and family are not
as supportive as you need, please visit one of the miscarriage web sites.
Particularly at INCIID, there are a wonderful group of women who will hold
you up no matter what. When I was panicking because I had all this pain in
my legs and the doctor didn't answer my page, it was the INCIID ladies who
wrote me within 10 minutes, telling me what I was feeling was normal. When
I dreaded going to my follow-up visit and face a waiting room of pregnant
women, the INCIID women told me what to do and encouraged me. I can't tell
you how much they helped me. To go there right now, click
here.
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- Feel free to e-mail me if you need someone to
talk to. One thing I did to help my husband understand how I was feeling was
to read the book "Empty Cradle, Broken Heart" by Deborah Davis to
him out loud whenever we were in the car.
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- There are a number of additional subjects
about miscarriage on this site that will talk about the issues you are
facing now, from bleeding and pain to handling your grief and people who say
thoughtless things.
I miscarried a
long time ago.
- Losing a baby is something you never forget
about. When I went back to work after my miscarriage, many people, men and
women, told me stories about miscarriages from as far back as 40 years ago.
And they still remembered every detail and most of them still had mementos
such as baby outfits that were never worn or hospital ID bracelets.
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- It may be even harder for you now, knowing
that medical technology has changed and the baby you lost might have been
saved if only he or she was born now.
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- Remember, it is never too late to memorialize
your baby. Plant a tree, have an engraved plate mounted somewhere, donate
money in your baby's name. And yes, you can still name your baby, even
decades after the fact. Don't let anyone discourage you.
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- Best of all, help other women who are dealing
with a current miscarriage. Get on one of the miscarriage bulletin boards
and answer questions. You have a lot of experience and can tell them what
they can expect over time. To go to one of the boards,
click
here.
Take care of yourself. Grief may get easier,
but it never truly ends.
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