Miscarriage Risk After a Previous Loss: Factors & Chances

Question
I am a 31-year-old female mother of one.  I had my first child 6 years ago.  Prior to getting pregnant with my child, I miscarried the 1st pregnancy @ 7 weeks.  I am nervous that I had one miscarriage and one full term.  My "baby's father" is 42 years of age and I have read that once the father is over the age of 40, miscarriage is 60% likely.  I would like to know what are the chances of a miscarriage this time around.  According to my calendar I will be 7 weeks tomorrow.  I had my last period on 9/29/07. I am nervous about having another miscarriage.

Answer
Dear Elicia,

In a recent study, researchers compared 1506 women who reported miscarriages in a previous pregnancy before 20 weeks of gestation and 12,359 women whose prior pregnancies ended in live births. Paternal age ranged from 15 to 72 (mean age, 32.9). In an analysis adjusted for maternal age and other potential confounding variables, the odds ratio for miscarriage in pregnancies conceived from fathers aged 40 or older was 1.6 compared with pregnancies from fathers aged 25 to 29. In contrast, the adjusted odds ratio was 0.59 for miscarriage in pregnancies from fathers younger than 25. As expected, maternal age strongly affected the risk for miscarriage, with the adjusted odds ratio increasing from 0.41 in women younger than 20 to 8.3 in those 35 or older compared with women aged 20 to 24.

These results should not be viewed as surprising, given that abnormalities in sperm increase with age; however, they do provide confirmatory data from a large sample. And again, you do have to take into consideration many other factors, especially general health and lifestyle of mother and father. If the father is generally healthy and does not live an unhealthy lifestyle, you should be fine.

You should try to relax about this pregnancy. Eat well, take those prenatal vitamins, drink plenty of healthy fluids, get some moderate, low impact exercise, and try to stay as stress-free as possible. Those are the things you CAN control. Anything else you cannot.

I hope this has helped you and answered your question. I wish you well.

Brenda