A miscarriage, also known as early pregnancy loss, is the term used to describe a pregnancy that ends before 24 weeks.

Early miscarriage refers to a loss occurring before 12 weeks, and late miscarriage is one between 12-24 weeks.

A large percentage of miscarriages are early miscarriages. In late miscarriages, there is the likelihood you would have to still deliver the baby and placenta.

In the moments leading up to and following late-term pregnancy loss, you may find yourself experiencing emotions and having to make decisions you never imagined.

In such an incredibly difficult and unfair time, it’s important to have people to advocate on your behalf and help you understand all of your options.

Depending on your situation, you may be able to lean on your medical providers to guide you through some of these decisions, but it helps to understand exactly what you may be faced with and to surround yourself with extra support at a time when it may feel incredibly difficult to make these decisions alone.

It moves to the season of post partum, your hormones need time to regulate while pregnancy symptoms start to ease in the days and weeks to follow.

Depending on your situation, you may still bleed for the next 4-6 weeks. Your healthcare provider may request for you to get checked within the same week to ensure all the tissue has passed, and it is advisable to follow up in 6 weeks to ensure your body is recovering well.

From 16 weeks onwards your breasts may already start producing colostrum- a thick yellow fluid that is packed with antibodies. You can request for a pill (Cabergoline) to stop the production, or you can choose to relieve the breast soreness by hand expression and/or using a breast pump. Using cabbage creams and/or cabbage itself will help stop the production. Drinkng peppermint tea will also help.

This is probably the hardest part, but please know in this unimaginable time, there are options. You can choose to do what is best for you and your family.

Hospitals will give you the option to keep the fetus or for them to keep them.

You can opt to have religious rites with a funeral home and cremate or bury baby.

We say this with the most love.

It is not your fault.

There are many unexplainable reasons to why a loss happens, sometimes there simply are no answers. Scientifically, there are some options to potentially get answers.

Hospitals will offer the options to run three types of tests:
1. Bloodwork from mums: to potentially understand if there were reasons why this could have happened
2. Post mortem on baby: to understand if there were complications from tissues taken from baby that could have caused this
3. Post mortem on placenta: to understand what could have happened with the placenta that might have contributed to this

As with all tests, the good question to ask would be- “Would knowing the results give me more peace?”