While it is well known that a miscarriage can cause very severe trauma for a woman, it is generally believed that trauma can be overcome after a subsequent successful pregnancy ending in a healthy baby’s birth.
However recent research shows that the trauma of a miscarriage can persist beyond a successful birth as well.
A woman who has suffered a miscarriage (the likelihood of a miscarriage occurring is 1 in every 5 pregnancies incidentally) is more likely to feel anxious and stressed in subsequent pregnancy, and this anxiety is likely to be experienced even after the birth of a child.
Researchers found that this anxiety relating to a previous miscarriage can persist for as long as three weeks after the birth of a child.
This study can have significant implications and may help women with lingering feelings of trauma, in whose case it may be erroneously assumed that they have got over their feelings of loss.
This can help in assessing more realistically, the possibility of a woman experiencing prenatal or postnatal depression and so on; previous pregnancy loss can now be taken into account when assessing this risk.
