What Causes Fetal Heartbeat To Stop Suddenly?
No words describe how it feels to hear your baby's heartbeat at the first ultrasound. But what if an ultrasound or baby Doppler scan failed to reveal a fetal heartbeat? Is it possible that the fetal heartbeat stopped unexpectedly? Regrettably, yes.
First, do not become alarmed if you use a baby Doppler and cannot detect the fetus's heartbeat. Unexpected fetal heartbeat stops are more often than you may imagine.
Many women who receive positive pregnancy test results and begin taking prenatal vitamins and folic acid that gynecologists have suggested have the regrettable experience of discovering there is no baby heartbeat during the first ultrasound. But why does it happen? In this article, let us understand why this situation occurs in most pregnancies.
What is Missed Miscarriage?
A missed miscarriage or a silent miscarriage occurs when the infant has died in the uterus. At the same time, the mother displays or encounters some clear indications of miscarriage, like vaginal bleeding, cramps, or vaginal discharge.
Sometimes, in the first trimester, usually about 6 to 10 weeks, the embryo quits growing, and the heartbeat stops. A missed miscarriage is generally noticed during a regular ultrasound scan when the physician can not see a heartbeat or when the fetus is too little for the gestational age.
Approximately 1-5% of all gestations end in a missed miscarriage. It is an immense shock due to the lack of typical signs of miscarriage, such as bleeding and ache. According to an analysis, nearly three percent of recorded pregnancies finish in a missed miscarriage.
Why Are You Not Able to Sense Something Wrong Even After Your Baby Dies in the Womb?
The body might be unable to identify the pregnancy loss even after the baby's heartbeat quits. As a result, the placenta will keep producing and releasing pregnancy hormones. You are unaware of the loss even though all pregnancy symptoms are present.
Therefore, during the first trimester’s earlier weeks, an expectant mother will persist in encountering all pregnancy symptoms like nausea, sickness, exhaustion, etc. Along with the sense of pregnancy, the incubation test might also display positive.
Also, the initial few weeks of the second trimester are too early to encounter the infant kicks. Thus, due to the lack of bleeding or ache, no amazement expecting females likely to think all is well.
Thus, other than noticing the lack of fetal heartbeat in a scan, there is no path mother should learn she had a missed miscarriage.
How the Scanning of the Missed Miscarriage Peeks?
The scanned image typically depicts a pregnant sac with an embryo or fetus if you had a missed miscarriage. The fetus, however, won't have a heartbeat and is smaller than it ought to be.
Moreover, some scans display an empty pregnancy sac or no transparent sac. It happens when the embryo has not been made or stopped growing at a very early step.
When the embryo stops developing, it will be more usually reabsorbed by the body, so the scan demonstrates the empty sac.
How is Missed Miscarriage Detected?
Typically, a missed miscarriage is identified by the doctor during the regular prenatal appointment. The fetal heartbeat may not always be able to be found if the prenatal examination is done sooner than 8 or 9 weeks.
In that situation, the doctor will assess the blood's hCG level. During the first few weeks of pregnancy, its level should typically double every two to three days. The doctor can interpret it as a missed miscarriage signal if the level has not risen sufficiently and the ultrasound misses a heartbeat.
They generally schedule a follow-up scan in a week to notice if they could discover the heartbeat. If they can’t, it will be a missed miscarriage. Now the physician reports either that the pregnancy sac is vacant or that the embryo has no heartbeat.
On the other side, they may confirm missed miscarriage without additional tests if the ultrasound is done after the 20th week and no heartbeat is seen.
What Induces Fetal Heartbeat To Stop?
Causes for fetal heartbeat stopping abruptly are not always noticed. As already said, it might be nature’s way of abandoning the unfitted ones. Some other reasons that might bring about the fetal heartbeat to stop unexpectedly are:
- Chromosomal irregularity can obtain from fetal abnormality. An anomalous fetus fails to grow, and its heartbeat ultimately stops as the pregnancy advances.
- The blood clotting disease of the mother forms clots in the placenta or umbilical cord veins. It stops the nutrients, blood, and oxygen in the fetus, getting about the fetal heartbeat to stop.
- Wrenching of cord around the neck or tangled umbilical cord, the hyper coiled umbilical cord might also be the reason for the fetal heartbeat to quit after the 20 weeks of pregnancy.
- Lower level of Progesterone hormone can prevent the fetus’s growth and drive the fetus's heartbeat to stop.
- Infections of the mom, such as rubella, TORCH, toxoplasmosis, cytomegalovirus, parvovirus, etc., can lead to stopping the fetal heartbeat. Though multiple infections might not potentially damage the mother, they may adversely impact the embryo during the early pregnancy.
Symptoms of Fetal Heartbeat Stopping?
You will start to experience pregnancy symptoms, including exhaustion, morning sickness, breast soreness, and nausea, as soon as your pregnancy test results are positive.
But ultimately, the strength of these symptoms starts to fade once the embryonic heartbeat stops. Additionally, several ladies mentioned having brownish discharge.
However, as these symptoms can be modest, the mothers often fail to discover something is incorrect until the first ultrasound scan.
What Can You Do When Fetal Heartbeat Stops Suddenly?
Your ultrasound technician will need to confirm with a second scan if she has doubts about a missed miscarriage. In a week, this will be arranged. This time, a vaginal scan will be used, which will detect the fetus's heartbeat if it is there.
Once the condition is verified, the doctor will discuss options with the female and her family and tell a treatment she feels is most useful for her.
The medical professional will also allow her time to process the diagnosis and consider her options. These options ought to be available to all women. The three possibilities are:
- Pregnancy Management - This choice represents a "wait and see" mindset. If a missed miscarriage is left untreated, the uterus will typically push the fetal tissue out on its own. It indicates that the woman will naturally miscarry.
- Medical Administration: This is a non-invasive procedure for the fulfillment of a miscarriage. Here, the physician recommends taking misoprostol, which helps trigger a miscarriage to expel the excess fetal tissue.
3. Surgical Administration: Sometimes, if both methods fail or the missed miscarriage occurs after 20 weeks of gestation, the fetus will be too large to get miscarried. In this case, surgical processes would likely be required to remove the fetal tissue from the womb.
Wrapping Up
Due to the lack of warning, symptoms often come as a shock when there is no fetal heartbeat. Though, there is no reason to feel guilty about why the baby's heartbeat quit during pregnancy. You are not to blame; there is nothing you can do to stop it from happening. Neither drugs nor safety measures could have stopped it.
Nature decided to abort the pregnancy rather than produce an abnormal baby. There is no way to stop these early abortions. Even if we could, we should never try it and let nature handle things independently.
If you want more information on pregnancy, miscarriage, sex life, and period-related difficulties, contact Antenate to speak with our gynecologist and fertility professional, Dr. Shesha Sinha.
