How likely is loss after first trimester

[LemonDrizz]

Sorry for the blunt title... I know Google and forums etc are not a true representation of the population, but I had always thought once you are past 12 weeks, the chances of miscarrying or finding that the heart has stopped was very unlikely. However, the last few days/week all I seem to see are posts/info about people who had their 20 weeks scan only to find the heart had stopped at 17/18 weeks.

My 20 week scan is early January, and my mum wants to tell family at Christmas (I won't be there, too far to travel) and originally I was fine with it but now I'm thinking I should ask her to wait until 20 weeks because what if she tells everyone and then something has happened. Or is it worth getting a scan done at 16 weeks just to check? Or would it just be a waste of money and chances are everything will be fine if I haven't had any obvious signs/symptoms of a miscarriage?

Hi OP, this might help:

datayze.com/miscarriage-reassurer

It's rarer by far. I spent my pregnancy obsessed with miscarriage and really regret it. It's so hard to get over though. So hard

@Batbatbatty thanks so much for sharing the site, feels like it was made for me and my anxiety!

I've just reached 12 weeks and getting increasingly anxious about second trimester loss. I've done a lot of searching online with estimates ranging from 1-5% change of having a miscarriage, so that's 95-99% chance of being fine. Most estimates seem to be 98% and that's what I keep telling myself.

So, it's very statistically unlikely you'll miscarry; however numerically there is still a lot of people who do miscarry, even if it a small proportion, because lots of people get pregnant.

I'm a little bit nerdy, so I did some calculations even before this post to try and understand why it's uncommon but it seems to happen to a lot of people. In 2020, there were apparently 817, 000 conceptions, about 20% may sadly have an early loss, bringing it to 653, 000. So 2% of that is just over 13 000, who theoretically might have a second trimester loss.

Sadly second trimester happens to a lot of women, but it's a very small proportion of total pregnancies - 640,000 are delivered! So I try to focus on the big numbers and hope and pray I'm in that category!