I was reading an article today about recurrent miscarriages. In this article one of the experts is quoted as saying,

Dr. Stephanie Rhone says, "we find a cause for about 60-percent of our couples that we see. About 40-percent of our couples have unexplained recurrent loss, either because of bad luck, random losses or because there's something underlying. We haven't been able to discover yet or don't know how to test for."

The wording of "bad luck" got me thinking. Did I miscarry because I am unlucky? Is there really an element of luck in conceiving and carrying a baby to term? Was this phrasing insensitive?

I'm going to answer these questions on my own, without any extra research to see if there have been any luck and conception studies. Given the amount of info on the net, I'm sure that I could turn something up that might fit the bill.

I've always thought of myself as an extremely blessed person, but is this the same as lucky? How do you measure luck? The one time that I was in Vegas didn't result in wealth, but we did have a good time and came home with about the same amount of money that we went with. I have one friend who always gets the great parking spaces. I love having her in the car with me while shopping because her luck seems to rub off.

Does luck play in the conception and miscarriage question? If you equate luck with random timing then, I think that it does. But this coincides with conception, what about miscarriage? In this case, I'd say that luck does not have a role. Women that I would consider "lucky" in my life have had horrible times with miscarriages and live births.

As far as the phrasing by Dr. Rhone, I actually took a small bit of comfort in it. There were times during my infertility that I described myself as unlucky. It was better than actually saying out loud that I felt barren, damaged or humiliated. Since there was no testing to do, I could easily fall back on "unlucky" as my reason why I didn't have a baby.