In order to protect future pregnancies from a miscarriage, you might have heard that you should wait a certain amount of time to help ensure a better pregnancy outcome. The truth is that it appears that you do not need to wait to become pregnant again after a miscarriage. One study even suggests that you may have a better pregnancy outcome if you get pregnant again within a six month period following a miscarriage.
Is there ever a time to wait?
There are no benefits in waiting to try again, with only a few small exceptions that your doctor or midwife would explain to you:
- Infection
If you have an infection, or it was the suspected cause of your miscarriage, you should be infection free before attempting to get pregnant after a miscarriage. - Two or More Miscarriages
Your practitioner may want you to do some testing to see if a cause can be found as to why you are having miscarriages. This may take a couple of months. - You are not emotionally ready to move on.
We all grieve differently. If you do not feel emotionally up to a new pregnancy or ready to move, then you should respect that feeling and wait until you are ready to conceive again. - Your partner is not ready.
It takes two to tango as they say and if your partner needs time, then your partner needs time.
Trying for Pregnancy After Miscarriage
Once your period returns it can be easier to get pregnant, but many women have gotten pregnant before the ever have another period. So if this concerns you, you may want to use birth control, like a condom, until that point.
The only real difficulty getting pregnant prior to your period's return poses is getting an accurate date on the pregnancy. This can be easily rectified with an early ultrasound to figure out when you would be due.
Source
Effect of interpregnancy interval on outcomes of pregnancy after miscarriage: retrospective analysis of hospital episode statistics in Scotland. Love, ER, Bhattacharya, S, Smith, NC, Bhattacharya, S. 5 August 2010, doi:10.1136/bmj.c3967
