Why a Blighted Ovum?

Please, don't beat yourself up over this. The egg is protecting what's inside during ovulation and for the first few weeks afterward. I have known quite a few very responsible women who had a blighted ovum pregnancies. It might help for you to do research. Or talk to a therapist, someone who deals with pregnancy loss. They are out there; your doctor can likely refer you to someone who specializes in this. Miscarriage is a traumatic event for some of us. It actually got me into therapy when I was younger, and helped us sort out our own feelings. But please, don't blame yourself.

Thousands of women have gotten pregnant after a night, or nights, or weeks of drinking. Many have drunk alcohol during the early weeks of pregnancy before they knew they were pregnant.

A blighted ovum is usually due to an anomaly with the chromosomes - "just one of those things" and not due to alcohol or anything else the woman did. It's upsetting, it's a loss, it's something you can lament and mourn. But it's not something that you torture yourself over as if you are the perpetrator of such a fluke thing.

Alcohol during pregnancy can cause many problems, but a blighted ovum isn't one of them. Please, please -- talk to your doctor or a counselor who specializes in fertility issues to put your mind at ease. You admit that "they say a miscarriage is not our fault" ...and then you immediately say, "However..." That's not productive or helpful.

You're understandably stressed. I went through years of infertility and procedures and counseling to help. I was in a big fertility center. I never heard anyone say it was my fault. Trying to get pregnant is hard enough for many women - making yourself stressed out and guilty hasn't helped a woman yet.

Many. many people have gotten pregnant while they were drunk, or drank before they knew they were pregnant. Some fertilized eggs are just not viable. It is absolutely nothing that you did. The last person I knew who had a blighted ovum a couple of years ago now has a healthy baby girl.

All the best!

No. That is not how that works, put it right out of your mind. When the two halves of the genetic code spliced together during conception, something did not line up right. It happens quite often. As others have said, many women have this happen and never even know they were technically pregnant. I say technically because that was never, ever going to be a viable pregnancy. You could have been doing nothing but yoga and drinking kale smoothies and it would have ended exactly the same. Do not feel responsible in any way- go ahead and feel sad, grieve, just don't feel responsible.

You did not cause your blighted ovum. Please stop beating yourself up. Many women have spontaneous miscarriages and don't even know that they are pregnant.

You need to just go forward from here and work with the doctor. Try to relax. It will help. Stress isn't good for getting pregnant OR for pregnancy.

This was not your fault.

I am so sorry for your pain.

Before the most recent healthy phase women smoked while pregnant, drank alcohol while pregnant, and ate tuna from the ocean and even on occasion would partake of smoking pot or doing drugs. Babies sometimes don't make it for nothing more than they didn't stick together right and the body recognized this and they didn't make it. Sometimes they became a baby and they were born with disabilities and most of the time they were completely normal.

I don't think you need to blame yourself for this, not in any way. You didn't cause this. The doc can help you understand this better but it's okay, you didn't hurt your baby.