Due Date

Beyond Miscarriage

Bet you weren't expecting a link to that article, were you? Well, today is the day I was supposed to be born 26 years ago (and, oddly enough, also the day the family dog was born 11 years ago) and, anyhow, this article is a great example of exactly what journalism should do: Tell people something they don't know that can make the lives of individuals and the processes of institutions better. You can't tell me this isn't useful info to any woman who has suffered through a miscarriage:

A close reading of the scientific literature and interviews with the world's leading miscarriage researchers have convinced me there is hardly anything a woman can do to cause her own miscarriage.

Studies have yet to find solid evidence that smoking, quaffing a few glasses of ale, cranking up your engines with a grande Frappuccino, living near a chemical dump, drinking tap water, working at a computer terminal, flying on an airplane or even snorting cocaine causes miscarriage.

That's not to say that pregnant women should blithely smoke, drink, do drugs or hang out at chemical factories. All of those environmental factors can harm babies, they just don't seem to lead to losses. That should give comfort to any woman who has blamed herself for a miscarriage.

It's not that you weren't careful enough, or didn't sleep enough, or ate the wrong food--it's just nature's way. The author, whose own wife suffered four miscarriages before bearing a second and third child to term in her forties, points out that studies of miscarried fetuses have turned up an interesting fact: a lot of them have "chromosomal abnormalities" that leave them with almost no chance of surviving. It's a grim reality, certainly--but it also confirms what people often say anyway, that while a miscarried pregnancy simply wasn't meant to be, that's no reason not to try again.

Not that there aren't plenty of reasons not to try again--an overpopulated planet, the rising cost of raising a family, a dangerous world, Senator Ted Stevens--but at least those determined to have a family can know, thanks to Jon Cohen's fine article and willingness to share his own experience, that if they want to have a family, a miscarriage shouldn't stop them.