Miscarriage is one of the leading causes of depression to woman who is eager to have a baby. When a woman has miscarriage, the feeling of guilt and loneliness is at times very difficult to recover. But even the word miscarriage it self is a very judgemental word.
If we look at the word ‘mis’ it means a negative word, miscarry, negligence and carelessness. Literally, miscarriage means to carry the wrong way, though unintentionally, the baby indeed was not able to hold back in order to survive. The truth is, it is neither fault of the mother. There is some thing wrong in the positioning of the fetus that leads to miscarriage.
The number one cases of miscarriage happen during the first trimester of pregnancy. Generally the cause of miscarriage is genetic problem. The following are observed why miscarriage happens.
• Abnormalities in Chromosomes. The chromosomes are tiny thread like structures which is located in the nucleus. This nucleus lives in cells. The normal chromosomes are 46 in all and these are arranged in 23 pairs. There should be one pair per chromosomes. One from the mother and one from the father. Each chromosomes from mother and father contains thousands of genes which are responsible for hereditary and growth of the blastocyst to embryo. During cell division, which is the most critical part before forming an embryo when there is an uneven cell division, the developing embryo may not be able to survive. A woman who carries an embryo with abnormal chromosomes is most likely not possible of carrying it all throughout the stage of pregnancy, thus inevitable abortion happens.
• Hereditary chromosomes rearrangements. This is a very rare kind of chromosomes abnormalities. Little may it cause miscarriage but this is handed down from generation to generation. It is very hard to detect this kind of chromosome abnormalities, because when you count the parents chromosomes all are complete. There are 46 chromosomes and each paired in 23. Each 23 paired chromosomes are again paired by twos, one from the mother and one from the mother. But the problem is that, this pairing are rearrange. Like for example in a pair of chromosomes xy, it was re interchanged to yy and xx or yx.
• Genetic mutation. In genetic mutation, the genes which should be divided into two suddenly alter from two genes to several genes on the chromosomes. This type of gene abnormalities has a greater chance of survival, but the consequence is that, when the baby survives, birth defect follows. It could be either physical or mental defects or both.
• Wrong implantation of a fertilized egg. The fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. The most common site of wrong implantation is the fallopian tube. When the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, miscarriage follows since our fallopian tube is not capable of carrying out the entire pregnancy just like in ectopic pregnancy.
• Natural Killer Cells. Our body contains cells that fight against foreign bodies. The embryo contains foreign genetic chromosomes from their father. Naturally our body (pregnant woman) should distinguished this as not foreign at all, but there are times that our fighting cells recognized it as intruder or foreign body, thus instead of protecting it, our fighting cells attack to get rid of it and miscarriage happens.