Making Sense of Pregnancy: What Experts Want you To Know About Your Body
Have you been surprised by what we do and don't know about pregnancy and birth today? If you are pregnant, or have been in the past, this show helps you understand what's happening (or has happened) to our bodies--both the short term and long term effects of this transformation. We explore the boundaries of our scientific grasp on the wildly complex processes of pregnancy and birth.
After my complicated pregnancies, I went looking for answers and have interviewed hundreds of experts about women's health in this transition.
Every Tuesday you'll hear:
- Scientists at the cutting edge who are trying to uncover how pregnancy and birth work and what happens when they don't work
- Information you could use to better understand your own body in pregnancy
- .A better sense of the limits of your responsibility for what's happening inside your body
- Listen to hear what you won't find on a blogpost or a book off the shelf.
Making Sense of Pregnancy: What Experts Want you To Know About Your Body
Why your Miscarriage Wasn't Your Fault: Conversation with Dr. Harvey Kliman, Part 1
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Miscarriage is a well-known secret that you may not be aware of until it happens to you or to a close friend, but it's incredibly common.
Studies suggest something like 15 to 20% of recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage or stillbirth, with the vast majority of miscarriages happening in the first trimester, about 80%, and most stillbirths occurring in the third trimester.
Scientists have compared human pregnancy to the pregnancy rates of other mammals and found that the way we "do pregnancy" is incredibly inefficient. This 15 to 20% number I just mentioned reflects errors in pregnancy that we can measure. But researchers who estimate conception rates suggest that an even more common outcome for an embryo is that it fails to implant entirely, leaving no sign of a missed pregnancy.
Given that this is a biological reality, how we appreciate our own experience of pregnancy and loss depends importantly on if and how we understand the loss.
Today's guest has made a major advance in how pathologists categorize pregnancy loss by recognizing a hallmark of chromosomal abnormality that shows up in pathologies and often isn't well-identified, giving couple's who've experienced a loss a way to better understand that loss.