Grace* still remembers the day she passed out some bloody tissue in the toilet while on a cruise vacation. She was in the sixth or seventh week of her pregnancy.
“My husband and I leaned over the toilet bowl trying to see if it was a baby. We were very scared. We eventually decided that there was no way we could figure it out and flushed it away,” she recalled.
The incident happened after Grace had experienced three consecutive pregnancy losses over a period of two years. All three miscarriages took place during the first trimester of Grace’s pregnancy and were usually accompanied by spotting and cramps – so she and her husband was understandably anxious.
Fortunately, it turned out to be a false alarm and Grace delivered a healthy baby girl. However, she described the period preceding her successful birth as “an extremely dark time”.
She also told CNA Women that a year after rejoicing at the birth of her daughter, she was devastated by yet another miscarriage.
WHAT IS RECURRENT PREGNANCY LOSS?
“In our local culture, it is not common for people to talk about miscarriages. However, miscarriages are more common than most people think. Five per cent of couples will experience two miscarriages. And 1 to 2 per cent will have three or more miscarriages,” said Dr Liu Shuling, senior consultant at the Department of Reproductive Medicine, at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
Some medical experts define recurrent pregnancy loss as the loss of two or more pregnancies, while others define it as the loss of three or more. This is regardless of whether or not they occurred in a consecutive manner.
This content was originally published here.
