My cousin thought she was pregnant, then thought she was having a miscarriage. She had had trouble with her birth control or something. They told her it was a chemical pregnancy. What is this?
2006-09-28 03:13:10 · 4 answers · asked by april_hwth 4 in Pregnancy & Parenting ➔ Pregnancy
A chemical pregnancy is another name for a very early miscarriage.
When implantation occurs, but the pregnancy fails to develop properly, it is called a chemical pregnancy. That's because you were technically pregnant (you produced the chemical HCG), but a normal pregnancy did not result. You see it as a regular period, or a period that is a few days late.
Chemical pregnancies occur very frequently. That is probably what happens in most of the months that you are trying but don't get pregnant. These are not considered miscarriages (though they are technically very early miscarriages), and have no effect on your ability to get pregnant in the future.
It can take up to a year to get pregnant. That's not because there were no sperm to fertilize the egg. If you are actively trying, there usually is sperm available. The egg is there, too. However, many things can go wrong.
Human reproduction appears to be a very wasteful process. Every woman is born with millions of eggs and each man produces trillions of sperm during a lifetime. Most are never even used. Even when the conditions are right for pregnancy (a sperm meets an egg) many things can and do go wrong. The egg could be abnormal, the sperm could be abnormal or the combination could be abnormal. In any of these cases, the fertilized egg could fail to grow.
Or it is possible for the egg to grow, but then when it gets to the uterus, it doesn't implant. Or it implants, but stops growing and is washed out with a menstrual cycle. Or it starts growing and you miss your period, but then it stops growing. In that case, you would get your period a few days late.
Even after a pregnancy is fully established, there is still a 20% chance of miscarriage.
2006-09-28 03:18:21 · answer #1 · answered by KMAB 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A chemical pregnancy is a miscarriage that happens within a week or so of the due menstrual period. I have read that as many as 8 out of 10 women have either experienced one or will experience one in their lifetime. A lot of times, these early miscarriages are overlooked as a heavy menstrual bleeding and or a period that lasts a little longer than usual. The reason I am writing about this in the Trying To Conceive section is that chemical pregnancies are fairly common and many times a woman on this journey will discover that she has indeed experienced an early miscarriage.
I have had to chemical pregnancy's
2006-09-28 03:16:52 · answer #2 · answered by momie_2bee 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
it's when the egg makes its way down to the uterus and tries to implant but doesn't successfully do so and comes out with a late period, but still having a positive pregnancy test. Been there, done that.
2006-09-28 03:18:24 · answer #3 · answered by jevic 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I think it has to do with the body's hormones making the body THINK it's preggo, but it's really not.
2006-09-28 03:15:35 · answer #4 · answered by Jessie P 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋