Morning sickness and miscarriage

KittyMu82

Has anyone read this article?

https://www.whattoexpect.com/forums/hot-topics-1/archives/morning-sickness-may-signal-healthier-pregnancy.html

I haven't seen the actual research but just from reading the article I'm somewhat surprised by the correlations they are reporting since, prior to this article, I had thought the lack of morning sickness didn't mean anything.

They say something stupid at the end about it being a correlational study rather than one that can identify causation - no kidding - but the correlational relationship they report, if accurate, is just as concerning. 

Any thoughts or links to research that contradicts this?

KittyMu82

Hmm. I suppose one thing you'd have to check for if you could see the actual published paper is whether they controlled for early miscarriages (i.e., those that happen before morning sickness is likely to show). You'd hope they would do so but you never know ... researchers can be very dodgy.

All it says in the article is that the stats are based on women who miscarried before 20 weeks but it doesn't say if they culled women who miscarried before, say, 8 weeks.

baloneydisc

I had horrible morning sickness with my first pregnancy, which ended in a missed m/c at 9w. My morning sickness lasted until 2w after the m/c was complete. Unfortunately I don't think this (or any other symptom) really means anything.

Neesey

I had two early losses at about 7 weeks and 10 weeks. One I had horrible morning sickness and the other, with higher hcg levels, I felt fine.

MaineMama

I was pregnant last summer, and had TERRIBLE ms. Our daughter died at 15 weeks from unknown causes. I continued to have "ms" for a month after her delivery.

PrimRoseMama

elainelbuck said:

I had horrible morning sickness with my first pregnancy, which ended in a missed m/c at 9w. My morning sickness lasted until 2w after the m/c was complete. Unfortunately I don't think this (or any other symptom) really means anything.

I had a similar experience with my first miscarriage. You can be sick as a dog & still miscarry. It means nothing.

KittyMu82

Just no - what an asinine, fear mongering article/ "study".  Imho all I see is a manipulation of numbers to get a result that they can write about.  Symptoms (or lack thereof) =/= the health of the pregnancy.  

The researcher even mentions: 
"Not all pregnant women who go on to have successful pregnancies experience nausea and vomiting early on or at all," she said by e-mail. "In addition, pregnancy symptoms can vary from one pregnancy to the next, even for the same woman."

I hope so. I might have a look to see if I can find the original paper in one of my psych/med databases once my exams are finished so I can see what it is that they actually did.

I agree that the article makes it clear that not everyone who has no morning sickness miscarries and not everyone who has morning sickness is safe from miscarriage - that would be a crazy assertion and not one that they make here. It's just the correlations I find upsetting. Anything from 3 to 20+ times as likely to miscarry is not nice.

I'm still free of morning sickness and I'm 32 .. Anyway I'm not too worried about it since what will be will simply be - but I was very surprised by it and I want to see if they did the research properly. I hope they didn't. 

wintersong139

I agree with the pp. Most miscarriages happen very early, before most women even show symptoms. Therefore just by correlation those women would experience less morning sickness.

Erze

The thing with academia is you can make a study basically say whatever the heck you want it to. Especially if it is NSF funded. I wouldn't pay attention to this. I think I'll spend part of the day looking for articles that contradict this one.