Expert: Pat G - 3/5/2010

Question
I took several pregnancy tests that came out positive, I go to my first doct. appointment and they tell me I had a Chemical pregnancy? They explained to me that it is an early miscarriage. But the way they made it sound was that I was never really pregnant. Can you help me with this please??

Answer
Hello, Maria,

Here is a page about chemical pregnancy:

http://www.babyhopes.com/articles/chemical-pregnancy.html

What it sounds like is that it is called a "chemical" pregnancy because the chemicals that give a positive pregnancy test are there, but the pregnancy isn't viable; that is, the baby doesn't survive. Regardless, if you had a chemical pregnancy, you were pregnant for a few days. Most likely, the baby didn't implant, or for some reason was unable to stay attached.

The article says that if a woman has repeated chemical pregnancies, the cause should be investigated. However, there are quite a few failures early in pregnancy. I doubt if anyone has any idea how many there are. I wouldn't assume that we know about most of them, so I would tend to think that the figures they're giving are high. You can't know that there was such a situation if a woman didn't even know she was pregnant!

This is one example of why a woman shouldn't jump to the conclusion that she needs to act if she doesn't want to be pregnant. Letting the situation resolve itself is preferable.

I hope that if you were trying to have a baby, that it will work out better for you next time. Feel free to write back if you have further questions. Take care.