All the Rabbits Died!

Recently I picked up the book Coming to Term: Uncovering the Truth About Miscarriage by Jon Cohen. Sometimes I haunt the Baby Center discussion boards for other moms to connect with and this book was recommended more than once. It's a good book--it's realistic, comprehensive, and very well-written. Plus, I like this Cohen Guy.* ;)

 Cohen is no stranger to miscarriage: "With each successive miscarriage, Shannon and I became increasingly frustrated with the mumbo jumbo we kept hearing from the specialists about what had happened, what we should do, and how we should view our prospects for having more children. Not only did different doctors give us wildly different explanations, but when I pressed for scientific studies that we could consult no one had anything to offer, and some had the audacity to shift into all-wise-M.D. mode, counseling us to accept the losses and try again. We wanted facts, and one day it dawned on me that I make my living ferreting out scientific facts." And so he wrote a book.

A tangential tidbit I learned from Cohen's research: early pregnancy tests involved injecting a woman's urine into lady rabbits; if the rabbit developed a mass in its ovaries, then the woman was pregnant. All the rabbits died.

!

Anyway.

Cohen sifts through the many possibilities for causes of miscarriage, plus the various treatments tried for each. These various 'causes' include old eggs, chromosomal abnormalities (in which early miscarriage is actually a good, normal thing), auto-immune diseases, hormonal imbalances, a few nasty environmental toxins (mercury, BPA, and nitrates), uterine abnormalities, and stress. Peppered throughout the book are personal stories of sadness and triumph.

A few hopeful sound bytes:

"Already, many clinicians recognize that, in healthy mothers, miscarriage is as common as birth...miscarriage...often represents a sign of hope."

"...in study after study, women who have had up to four miscarriages and become pregnant again typically carry to term."

"Deciding to do nothing, in an informed way, often constitutes the most prudent way to do something. Women and men who want babies, especially those who have tried and failed, would benefit if they recognized how their intense desires can lead them to take unnecessary risks....Most women who miscarry, even three or four times, will carry to term if they become pregnant again."

Particularly thought-provoking (for me) is the overall conclusion that most environmental toxins probably aren't to blame for recurrent miscarriage: "Can you use miscarriage as an index of environmental exposure?...It's very, very tough to figure out whether environmental effects are real" and "Miscarriages...rarely occur because of what a woman eats or drinks, where she lives and works, or what air she breathes. More than half of all miscarriages have abnormal chromosomes, mainly because the mother's eggs do not properly execute meiosis."

Cohen gives a good reminder to us all not to put too much stock in current reproductive trends or miracle infertility treatments: "Science is provisional. What appears real today may, based on new evidence, seem naive tomorrow."


*One of my favorite artists, Frida Kahlo, was mentioned in Coming To Term. Cohen kept one of Kahlo's most famous paintings, documenting one of her miscarriages, in his desk while he worked on this book. You can see why:

Henry Ford Hospital, 1932