Medical Questions » Pregnancy Questions » Question No. 798
| Question: | Can you give me information on a blighted ovum? My pregnancy ended earlier this year in grief, although I am now pregnant again and due in seven weeks. I was told that 9 out of 10 miscarriages are caused by a blighted ovum. |
| Answer: | The term ' blighted ovum' is one used by doctors to describe a pregnancy that is not producing a baby and will inevitably end in a miscarriage.
At least 15% of pregnancies end as a miscarriage before the end of the third month, and most of these because of a blighted ovum, so what has happened to you is not at all abnormal.
In a pregnancy, two things are produced—a baby, and the placenta. The placenta acts to take nutrition and oxygen from the mother to the baby in the womb, and remove wastes from the baby to be taken away by the mother.
If in the first few weeks of pregnancy, a baby does not develop, but the placenta does, then the woman has a blighted ovum. Women who do have a miscarriage for this reason should not think that they have lost a baby, but have never had a baby, and just a placenta-like growth that is of no use to the mother, and is discarded by the body in the same way that a normal placenta (' afterbirth' ) would be discarded after the birth of a baby.
I am delighted that you have now achieved a successful pregnancy, and this is the normal pattern, because a blighted ovum in no way prevents you from having a normal pregnancy at a later time.
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