Coming to Term: Uncovering the Truth About Miscarriage [Hardcover]

Jon Cohen (Author), Sandra Ann Carson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2005

After his wife lost four pregnancies, Jon Cohen set out to gather the most comprehensive and accurate information on miscarriage – a topic shrouded in myth, hype, and uncertainty. The result of his mission is a uniquely revealing and inspirational book for every woman who has lost at least one pregnancy – and for her partner, family, and close friends.
Approaching the topic from a reporter's perspective, Cohen takes us on a surprising journey into the laboratories and clinics of researchers at the front, weaving together their cutting-edge findings with intimate portraits of a dozen families who have had difficulty bringing a baby to term. Couples who seek medical help for miscarriage often encounter conflicting information about the causes of pregnancy loss and ways to prevent it. Cohen's investigation synthesizes the latest scientific findings and unearths some surprising facts. We learn, for example, that nearly seven out of ten women who have had three or more miscarriages can still carry a child to term without medical intervention. Cohen also scrutinizes the full array of treatments, showing readers how to distinguish promising new options from the useless or even dangerous ones.
Coming to Term is the first book to turn a journalistic spotlight on a subject that has remained largely in the shadows. With an unrelenting eye and the compassion that comes from personal experience, Jon Cohen offers a message that is both enlightening and surprisingly hopeful.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Frustrated by wildly differing explanations for his wife's four lost pregnancies, award-winning science writer Cohen (Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine) set out to understand miscarriage, a subject fraught with misunderstanding, controversy and emotional pain. Writing in an impressively sensitive and balanced tone, Cohen describes the dynamics of human female egg production, the signs of an impaired fetus, the impact of odd numbers of chromosomes, the relevance of a woman's age and the efficacy of a range of medical interventions designed to help women carry a baby to term. Integrated into this highly readable narrative are the moving stories of numerous couples whose hopes for a child have been repeatedly thwarted by miscarriage. Cohen also gets candid scientific opinions from leading researchers in the field and provides intelligently skeptical and illuminating guidance on some of the more controversial treatments, from lymphocyte immune therapy to the use of progesterone to treat luteal phase deficiency. Looking back, he draws cautionary lessons from the popular miscarriage treatment of the 1950s, diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen now known to cause cancer in female offspring. This enlightening and comprehensive study is a must read for any woman battling the emotional roller coaster of miscarriage and for all those interested in an underexplored area of pregnancy and women's health.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

After Cohen and his wife suffered multiple miscarriages, he decided to research miscarriage, a topic about which little is commonly known. He found that the medical community offers surprisingly scanty information about what causes what is also called spontaneous abortion. He spoke with more than 100 women, interviewed dozens of medical and scientific experts, and pored over pages of data. What he learned, as presented in this sensitively written, reader-friendly book, is both frustrating and encouraging. Despite hundreds of so-called miracle treatments and tricks, for which hopeful couples pay dearly, experts confess that no one can say with any certainty what causes and, more important, what might prevent most miscarriages. Hence, Cohen cautions against accepting the unsubstantiated claims of well-meaning practitioners. On the other hand, statistics show, he says, that the odds of a woman who has suffered several miscarriages carrying a fetus to term inexplicably increase with each miscarriage. A valuable resource. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; None edition (January 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618277242
• ISBN-13: 978-0618277247
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #854,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 78 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading January 3, 2005

By Dulcinea del Toboso

Format:Hardcover

This is by far the best book available on miscarriage. I found it invaluable for these reasons:

1) It provides detailed information about why/how miscarriage occurs which I have never read elsewhere despite (unfortunately) countless hours spent researching the subject. Cohen (who is a science writer) interviewed experts in genetics and recurrent miscarriage and scoured files and viewed slides collected in miscarriage studies. This book presents far more information than a typical book on pregnancy loss provides, and Cohen does a commendable job of making some really complex biology accessible to the average reader.

2) The book explains why there is so much controversy surrounding miscarriage treatments. In short, to prove a treatment really works, doctors need to design a trial that shows the treatment is more effective than doing nothing at all. But women miscarry for many different reasons and a treatment that might help a woman who miscarries due to hormonal problems obviously won't help one who has a structural problem with her uterus, for example. One scientist quoted says miscarriage is a "malfunction," not a sickness, so a study of miscarriage treatments is more difficult to design than a study of say, diabetes treatments, where patients are much more alike. There's also, Cohen says, little financial incentive for the pharmaceutical companies to do them, but that's another issue. The result is VERY FEW treatments are actually proven to work--they might or they might not, nobody has much data to show.

3) The book explains why doctors are so apt to tell you "just try again." This is the good news promised on the cover: Even women who have had 4 miscarriages in a row are likely to carry a baby to term with NO intervention whatsoever. The book includes anecdotes of women, including Cohen's wife, who miscarry again and again and then have a healthy baby, both with and without medical intervention, along with the science to explain how and why this can happen.

4) Cohen debunks the link between most environmental factors and miscarriage and raises serious questions about certain immunological treatments (if not the goodwill) of famous miscarriage doctor Alan Beer.

What I found a little frustrating about this book is that Cohen adopts--somewhat--the "it's best to do nothing" attitude shared by many MDs. Apparently there is science to support this up to 4 miscarriages but for those of us in the 5+ group, what's the answer?

However, it's not Cohen's fault that they're aren't lots of proven treatments, and his reservations stem from genuine concern for women's health (the DES chapter is a cautionary tale on the dangers of overconfidence).

Cohen approaches the topic with a sensitivity born of personal experience and the professionalism you would expect from a science writer. The book will help you become a more informed patient and give you hope grounded in fact.

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable information unavailable elsewhere February 7, 2005

By K. G Havemann VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

For anyone who has experienced a miscarriage (or, even worse, miscarriages), this is a must-read book. From Cohen's extremely detailed but easily understandable descriptions of how eggs and sperm are created and how they meet to create a human being to the debunking of common myths (still held by most doctors), you won't be able to stop reading.

One's first surprise is how humans ever manage to reproduce at all when approximately seven out of every ten conceptions fail. The next surprise is that early home pregnancy tests can be as much a curse as an announcement of happy news. By now knowing just days after conception that they are pregnant, most women will likely "experience" early miscarriages that would have gone unnoticed or been regarded as simply late periods a mere ten years ago. More of these women will believe they have a problem conceiving when what they are really experiencing is the body's very normal method of maintaining only those fertilized eggs most likely to develop into healthy babies.

Cohen describes extremely intriguing cellular studies of conceptions from the first moments of fertilization to weeks after implantation to demonstrate what really happens when sperm meets egg and the many things that can go wrong. Almost all of the early failures are due to either problems with implantation (often hormonal or a matter of bad timing) or chromosomal defects that occur at the very first stages of cell division, which are infinitely more common than anyone knew before. Even more surprising is the finding that it's not the age of the woman's eggs that causes the development of more babies with chromosomal defects (most commonly Down's Syndrome caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21) but rather how close the woman is to menopause (something she probably wouldn't even know without a uterine biopsy). In other words, and most beneficial to women looking for answers, it's not the woman's fault. A miscarriage is not caused by that glass of wine she had at the office party or the 5k race she ran last weekend or the shocking news that a loved one suddenly died.

In addition, the author explains, through many double-blind scientific studies, that many, if not all, of the "treatments" physicians offer for recurrent miscarriages are useless except as "something to do". The only "treatment" shown to have real, repeatedly verifiable, effects is a warm and nurturing relationship between the woman and her healthcare givers throughout her pregnancy. The good news is that even for women who have experienced up to 8 or more miscarriages, almost all will eventually bring a healthy pregnancy to term.

And, finally, Cohen acknowledges that, for most women who experience even one miscarriage among several successful births, losing a pregnancy, even it's just a week or two after conception, is an emotionally sad event that can be vividly remembered one's entire life.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good read. Well researched. Compassionate. March 1, 2005

By Erica Kim

Format:Hardcover

I browsed a few books on miscarriage after my first. Not very helpful books. Had a second miscarriage, and just a few weeks ago, a third. I have no children (yet!).

After reading reviews of this book, I thought that it would be worth a read. And it was. I had little or no hope that I'd ever carry a child to term. I wanted to move on to adoption, while my husband wants to continue trying to conceive, through in vitro fertilization.

Well, this book has given me hope again. I learned that it's not just "a miracle" when a woman with repeat miscarriages has a healthy kid.

It's a well-written and compassionately written book. It helps so much when people have experienced this unbearable pain of miscarriage write these types of books.