Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month: Understanding Miscarriage and Recurrent Pregnancy Loss

If you are reading this in October, you may be marking a loss of your own, or quietly carrying one that few people around you know about. October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, a time set aside to remember the babies families never got to bring home and to talk more openly about how often loss happens. We wrote this for anyone who has been through a miscarriage, a stillbirth, or the death of an infant, and especially for those who have lost more than one pregnancy and are wondering what comes next. It covers how common loss is, what the 2026 ASRM guidance changed about recurrent loss, and what the research shows about miscarriage with donor eggs for anyone who has begun to consider that path. If what you need right now is support, the resources are further down, and you are welcome to go straight to them.

What is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month?

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month is the October observance recognizing miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, and the death of an infant. Congress designated it in 1988 through Senate Joint Resolution 314, and President Reagan signed the proclamation that October.⁶ In 2006 the House passed Concurrent Resolution 222 supporting October 15 as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day,⁷ which is now the focal point of the month in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

The observance exists because pregnancy loss is common and yet so rarely spoken about. Many people only learn after their own loss how many friends, sisters, and coworkers went through the same thing, and a month of remembrance makes it a little easier to say a baby's name out loud and to feel less alone in the grief.

How common is pregnancy loss?

If you have lost a pregnancy, you are far from alone, even if it has felt that way. Early pregnancy loss occurs in about 10% of clinically recognized pregnancies, according to ACOG.⁴ That figure only counts pregnancies confirmed by ultrasound or by a positive test followed by clinical confirmation, so the true rate including very early losses is higher. In a Norwegian register study of 421,201 pregnancies, the overall risk of miscarriage was 12.8%.⁸

The CDC also reports that in 2021, stillbirth occurred among non-Hispanic Black women about twice as often as among non-Hispanic White and Asian or Pacific Islander women, a gap the agency links to access to quality care, pre-existing health conditions, and other factors.¹⁰ A 2025 JAMA study of 2.7 million pregnancies put the rate higher than the official figure, at about 1 in 150 births and about 1 in 95 in areas with a higher share of Black families, and found that about 28% of the stillbirths it identified happened with no known clinical risk factor.¹⁹

How does miscarriage risk change with age?

Miscarriage risk is lowest in the late twenties and climbs after 30, because egg quality and the share of chromosomally normal eggs decline with age. The clearest population-level picture comes from the Magnus study, which tracked every registered pregnancy in Norway from 2009 to 2013.⁸

The study reports risk by single year of age, which is why the middle of the table is described instead of pinned to one number. The curve stays flat through the twenties and climbs faster from the mid-thirties on.

A previous loss also raises the odds of another one, independent of age. Compared with someone who has never miscarried, the odds were about 1.5 times higher after one miscarriage, 2.2 times higher after two consecutive miscarriages, and 4 times higher after three or more in a row.⁸ That pattern is part of why a workup after the second loss is now standard.

What causes miscarriage?

Most first-trimester miscarriages happen because of a chromosomal error in the embryo, and nothing the patient did or failed to do caused it. That can be hard to believe when you have replayed every meal, workout, and stressful day in your mind, but ASRM's 2026 guidance puts embryonic aneuploidy behind about 50% to 60% of first-trimester losses.⁵

What is recurrent pregnancy loss?

Recurrent pregnancy loss is the spontaneous loss of two or more pregnancies, excluding confirmed molar and ectopic pregnancies. ASRM published that definition in its 2026 committee opinion, which replaced guidance last issued in 2012, and two details in it matter for patients.⁵

First, the losses do not need to be consecutive. Someone who miscarried, then carried a pregnancy to term, then miscarried again still meets the definition and can ask for an evaluation. Second, pregnancies confirmed only by a blood or urine hCG test count, so a chemical pregnancy is no longer waved off as something that does not qualify.⁵

What testing does ASRM recommend after recurrent loss?

ASRM's 2026 guidance narrowed the workup considerably, moving toward targeted testing based on your history and away from broad panels that rarely change treatment.⁵ If you were evaluated before mid-2026, some of what you were tested for is no longer recommended, and some of what is now recommended first may not have been done.

The change to inherited thrombophilia testing surprises patients most, since clotting panels and blood thinners were a routine part of the recurrent loss workup for years. Antiphospholipid syndrome is still tested for and still treated. Inherited clotting mutations such as Factor V Leiden are no longer part of the routine workup.⁵

Does PGT-A prevent miscarriage?

Not for most patients with recurrent loss. ASRM's 2026 opinion states that preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy has not been shown to significantly reduce miscarriage or improve live birth rates compared with expectant management in this population. For women over 40 with a miscarriage confirmed to be aneuploid, ASRM considers it reasonable to discuss PGT-A through shared decision-making, and when a parent carries a structural chromosome rearrangement, ASRM considers testing for it (PGT-SR) a reasonable option, though the supporting data are limited.⁵

This reverses what was standard advice a few years ago, including in the earlier version of this post. PGT-A sorts the embryos you already have. It does not create chromosomally normal ones, so when very few of a patient's eggs are producing normal embryos in the first place, testing them more thoroughly does not solve the underlying problem.

Is miscarriage more common with donor eggs?

Miscarriage is not more common with donor eggs in the studies that compare like with like. Rates match those seen with a patient's own eggs once embryo chromosomes are accounted for, and for women over 40 transferring untested embryos they are typically lower, because miscarriage risk follows the age of the egg more closely than the age of the woman carrying the pregnancy. US national data from 2018 to 2020 put donor egg miscarriage at 14.3% to 18.5% of clinical pregnancies, depending on whether the eggs and embryos were fresh or frozen.¹

Why donor eggs lower the risk for women over 40

For a woman in her forties using her own eggs, a large share of embryos carry a chromosomal error, and those embryos are the ones most likely to end in miscarriage. In the Norwegian data, miscarriage risk for pregnancies conceived at 45 or older was 53.6%.⁸ Eggs from a donor in her twenties produce chromosomally normal embryos far more often, so the pregnancy carries the lower miscarriage risk that goes with the donor's age. Donor Nexus egg donors are 19 to 30, and fresh cycles in our program averaged 7.2 chromosomally normal embryos where PGT-A was performed (2012 to 2025 data).

The euploid transfer studies explain where that advantage comes from. Once the embryo is known to be chromosomally normal, whose egg it came from barely changes the miscarriage rate.^2,3 What donor eggs change is how likely you are to have a normal embryo to transfer at all, which is exactly the step that becomes hard after 40. For many women who have lost pregnancies in their forties, this is the first encouraging news in a long time, because it means a future pregnancy no longer has to depend on eggs that have been so hard on them, and the miscarriage risk follows the donor's age far more closely than their own.

Does the recipient's age change the risk?

Recipient age matters far less than egg age for most of the range. In a study of 15,013 euploid transfers, miscarriage with donor eggs ranged from 12.7% to 16.4% across the age groups studied, and in none of them was it significantly different from own-egg transfers.³ At the far end of the range the picture shifts: a 2026 study of 2,760 donor egg transfers found that recipients aged 49 and older had about twice the odds of miscarriage of recipients aged 35 to 40, along with lower live birth rates, which the authors attribute in part to uterine aging.¹²

Are frozen donor eggs linked to more miscarriages?

The national data show a small difference between frozen and fresh donor eggs. In the US analysis, miscarriage was 16.6% with frozen donor eggs and 14.3% with fresh donor eggs when the embryo was transferred fresh, a statistically significant gap. When the embryo was frozen before transfer, which is how most donor egg cycles run today, the rates were 18.5% and 16.5% and the difference was not significant.¹ Live birth per recipient cycle start in SART's 2023 national report was 38.5% with fresh donor eggs and 37.9% with frozen.¹³ Our fresh versus frozen donor eggs guide covers the cost, timeline, and logistics side of that choice.

What donor eggs do not lower

Donor egg pregnancies carry a higher risk of high blood pressure disorders, and anyone considering this path should hear that alongside the miscarriage data. A meta-analysis of 19 studies and 86,515 pregnancies found the odds of preeclampsia were about 2.5 times higher with donor eggs than with other IVF pregnancies,¹⁴ and a second meta-analysis found higher rates of preeclampsia, preterm birth, and low birth weight in singleton donor egg pregnancies.¹⁵ If you conceive with donor eggs, make sure your obstetric team knows, so blood pressure can be monitored closely through the pregnancy.

When do donor eggs make sense after recurrent loss?

Donor eggs make sense when the losses trace back to egg quality instead of to the uterus. ASRM lists donor gametes as a treatment option, with limited evidence, when a genetic cause has been identified or when advanced maternal age is combined with diminished ovarian reserve.⁵ For women over 40 whose own eggs are producing few chromosomally normal embryos, that is the situation the research above describes.

The evidence specific to recurrent loss is small. An early case series of eight couples with recurrent loss who used donor eggs reported a miscarriage rate of 11.1% per cycle,¹⁶ and a study presented at ESHRE in 2023 found that women 35 and younger with recurrent loss did not have higher live birth rates with donor eggs than with their own (25.6% and 26.4%).¹⁷ For younger patients, egg quality is less likely to be the driver, and the workup matters more.

Donor eggs are not the answer for everyone with recurrent loss. If your workup points to a uterine septum, a thyroid problem, or antiphospholipid syndrome, treating that comes first. Egg quality is one cause among several, and the evaluation is what tells you which one you are dealing with. If you have already been through failed cycles with your own eggs, our post on what happens after IVF fails walks through the next decisions.

What are the success rates with donor eggs?

In SART's final 2023 National Summary Report, live birth per recipient cycle start using donor eggs was 38.5% with fresh eggs and 37.9% with frozen, a difference small enough that the confidence intervals overlap.¹³ Because the eggs come from young donors, results depend far less on the recipient's age than own-egg IVF does.

Our own program outcomes, including the frozen egg bank figures above, are published on our Donor Nexus success rates page. For the full numbers by program and recipient age, see our donor egg IVF success rates guide and donor egg success rates after 40. If you are wondering whether a child conceived with donor eggs would feel connected to you biologically, the research on epigenetics and donor eggs explains how pregnancy shapes a baby without your DNA, and Victoria Niño's post on grieving genetics as a mom via donor eggs speaks to the feelings that can come with letting go of a genetic connection. Her account of her pregnancy with donor eggs and her frozen donor egg success story show what this path can look like on the other side of loss.

How to observe Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

The central observance is the International Wave of Light on October 15. Participants light a candle at 7:00 p.m. in their own time zone, so that a continuous wave of light moves across the world as the evening reaches each time zone.¹⁸ Buildings and monuments are lit in many cities on the same night.

In the United States, Chasing the Rainbows organizes much of what happens around October 15. Through its Every Baby Loss Matters campaign, which asks families to honor their babies out loud, the organization lists more than 140 landmarks, bridges, and buildings lit in pink and blue during the first half of October,²⁰ and billboards carrying the same message go up nationwide from October 15 to 28. The nonprofit also runs a Baby Loss Awareness Week challenge and holds its annual gala in York, Pennsylvania on October 17. If you share a photo of a candle or a lit landmark, the campaign hashtag is #HonorOutLoud.

• Light a candle at 7:00 p.m. on October 15 and share a photo if you want to, or keep it private if you do not.
• Say the baby's name if a friend or family member had a loss. Most bereaved parents would sooner hear the name than have the subject avoided.
• Skip the reassurances. "At least you know you can get pregnant" and "everything happens for a reason" land badly, while "I'm sorry. I'm here." does not.
• Mark the dates. Due dates and anniversaries are often harder than the day itself, and they are the days people most often feel forgotten.

Where to find support

Grief after a pregnancy or infant loss does not follow a timeline, and you deserve support for as long as you need it. Free bereavement support is available from several national organizations, and most of it runs online, so you can join from home in any state. These are the groups we point families to most often:

• Chasing the Rainbows supports families through infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss with daily virtual support groups, a peer mentor program, trauma therapy, and funeral assistance.
• Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support runs peer support groups and a national helpline at 1-800-821-6819, with Spanish-language support through Share Español: Esperanza.
• Star Legacy Foundation funds stillbirth research and runs support groups, including groups for parents who are pregnant again after a loss.
• MISS Foundation runs volunteer-led grief support groups for parents after the death of a child at any age, stillbirth included.
• Return to Zero: HOPE took over the online pregnancy-after-loss groups when Pregnancy After Loss Support closed at the end of 2025, and they are open to anyone expecting again after a miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss.
• Postpartum Support International pairs loss and grief support with perinatal mental health care, which matters when grief and postpartum symptoms overlap.
• RESOLVE: The National Infertility and Family Building Association runs peer-led groups covering infertility, loss, and pregnancy after infertility.

Our guide to pregnancy and infant loss support compares five organizations side by side, covering what each one charges and which of them support partners and siblings. If the grief is tangled up with years of trying to conceive, our post on infertility grief covers ways to cope that other patients have found helpful.

If you're exploring donor eggs, our guides to using donor eggs, how our egg donor agency works and our frozen donor egg bank walk through each path, and you can create an account to search the egg donor database whenever you're ready.

Frequently asked questions

Is miscarriage more common with donor eggs?

Not in studies that compare like with like. US national data put donor egg miscarriage at 14.3% to 18.5% of clinical pregnancies, and when a chromosomally normal embryo is transferred, miscarriage rates with donor eggs and with a patient's own eggs are statistically similar. Risk does rise for recipients aged 49 and older.^1,3,12

Do donor eggs lower the risk of miscarriage?

For patients whose losses are driven by egg quality, usually yes, because eggs from a donor in her twenties produce chromosomally normal embryos far more often than eggs from a woman in her forties. Once a euploid embryo is transferred, miscarriage rates are similar whether the egg came from a donor or from the patient, so the benefit comes from having more normal embryos to work with.²

How many miscarriages before I should see a specialist?

Two. ASRM's 2026 definition of recurrent pregnancy loss is two or more spontaneous losses, and the losses do not have to be consecutive, so you do not need to wait for a third before asking for a workup.⁵

Does a chemical pregnancy count as a miscarriage?

Yes, under the 2026 ASRM definition. Pregnancies confirmed by a blood or urine hCG test count toward the two-loss threshold, which is a change from how these losses were often handled before.⁵

Was my miscarriage caused by something I did?

Almost certainly not. About 50% to 60% of first-trimester losses are caused by a chromosomal error in the embryo, and most of those errors arise as the egg matures, long before anyone could know about the pregnancy.⁵

Will PGT-A stop me from miscarrying again?

Probably not on its own. ASRM found no significant reduction in miscarriage or improvement in live birth from PGT-A compared with expectant management in patients with recurrent loss, though it may be reasonable to discuss if you are over 40 with a confirmed aneuploid loss.⁵

How long should I wait before trying again?

That is a question for your physician, and the answer depends on how the loss was managed and what your workup shows. For patients over 40, time itself is a factor to raise in that conversation.

Where can I find a pregnancy loss support group?

Chasing the Rainbows, Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support, and Star Legacy Foundation all run virtual support groups you can join from anywhere in the US, and the MISS Foundation has volunteer-led groups in many communities. If you would rather talk to someone first, Share's national helpline at 1-800-821-6819 is a good place to start, and Return to Zero: HOPE runs groups for parents who are expecting again after a loss.

Can you still miscarry with donor eggs?

Yes, and if it happens to you, it is every bit as heartbreaking as any other loss. The odds are better than many women in their forties face with their own eggs, because eggs from a donor in her twenties produce fewer embryos with the chromosomal errors behind most early losses, and miscarriage rates in donor cycles stay fairly steady as the recipient gets older. A national analysis of 48,679 donor egg cycles found miscarriage in 14.3% of clinical pregnancies when fresh donor eggs were used with a fresh embryo transfer, and in 18.5% when frozen donor eggs were used with a frozen embryo transfer.¹ For comparison, March of Dimes estimates that 10% to 20% of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage.²¹

Does my age still affect miscarriage risk if the eggs are not mine?

Your age matters much less than it would with your own eggs. The age of the egg carries the chromosomal part of the risk, which is why donor egg outcomes hold fairly steady for recipients well into their forties,³ with risk starting to rise for recipients aged 49 and older.¹² The rest of the picture depends on your own health, since the shape of the uterus, thyroid function, blood sugar control, antiphospholipid syndrome, and blood pressure can all affect whether a pregnancy continues, and those are the things your clinic will check and treat before scheduling a transfer.

Because donor eggs come from a screened donor in her twenties or early thirties, fewer embryos carry the chromosomal errors behind most early losses, so miscarriage rates in donor cycles stay much steadier as the recipient gets older, with a more modest rise appearing mainly in the mid-forties and beyond.¹¹

Why would a miscarriage happen when the embryo came from a young donor?

Eggs from a young donor lower the chance of a chromosomal problem, though they cannot remove it entirely, and some losses in donor cycles trace back to something other than the embryo. A uterine septum, polyps or fibroids, scarring in the uterine lining, untreated thyroid disease, poorly controlled diabetes, and antiphospholipid syndrome can all play a part, and testing the pregnancy tissue, when that is possible, helps show whether the embryo itself was the cause.⁵ A loss after donor eggs can feel especially unfair after everything it took to get there, and one loss does not mean the next transfer will end the same way, especially once those factors have been evaluated and treated.

Donor Nexus is here to help

Nobody plans on needing an egg donor, and coming to this path after a loss can bring grief and hope at the same time, which is a lot for anyone to hold. If you have had losses and you are starting to wonder whether donor eggs could be your next step, our team would be glad to talk it through with you, at whatever pace feels right. We can walk you through how a fresh cycle and our frozen egg bank work, what our frozen egg cohorts contain, and what the timeline looks like, and you can explore our donor egg programs whenever you feel ready. Registering lets you browse donor profiles privately while you decide, and you can contact our team with questions at any point.

Sources

1. Braun CB, DeSantis CE, Lee JC, Kissin DM, Kawwass JF. Trends and outcomes of fresh and frozen donor oocyte cycles in the United States. Fertility and Sterility. 2024;122(5):844-855. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2024.07.004.
2. Cozzolino M, Capalbo A, Garcia-Velasco JA, et al. In vitro fertilization and perinatal outcomes of patients with advanced maternal age after single frozen euploid embryo transfer: a propensity score-matched analysis of autologous and donor cycles. Fertility and Sterility. 2024;122(4):678-686. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2024.05.170.
3. Lindner P, Flannagan K, Li HJ, et al. Live birth outcomes after euploid transfer: autologous vs. donor oocyte embryos in patients aged >35 years. F&S Reports. 2025;6(4):462-469. doi:10.1016/j.xfre.2025.08.006.
4. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. ACOG Practice Bulletin No. 200: Early pregnancy loss. Obstetrics and Gynecology. 2018;132(5):e197-e207. acog.org.
5. Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Recurrent pregnancy loss: a committee opinion. Fertility and Sterility. 2026;125(6):1023-1041. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2026.03.001. asrm.org.
6. Reagan R. Proclamation 5890: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, 1988. October 25, 1988.
7. U.S. House of Representatives. H.Con.Res. 222, 109th Congress. Passed September 28, 2006.
8. Magnus MC, Wilcox AJ, Morken NH, Weinberg CR, Håberg SE. Role of maternal age and pregnancy history in risk of miscarriage: prospective register based study. BMJ. 2019;364:l869. doi:10.1136/bmj.l869.
9. Recurrent pregnancy loss. StatPearls. National Library of Medicine; updated 2023. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554460.
10. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Stillbirth data and statistics.
11. Chan YY, Jayaprakasan K, Zamora J, Thornton JG, Raine-Fenning N, Coomarasamy A. The prevalence of congenital uterine anomalies in unselected and high-risk populations: a systematic review. Human Reproduction Update. 2011;17(6):761-771. doi:10.1093/humupd/dmr028.
12. Crestani B, Massaro MG, Parisi A, et al. Recipient age and reproductive outcomes in donor oocyte cycles: exploring the potential contribution of uterine aging. Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics. 2026. doi:10.1007/s10815-026-03971-6.
13. Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. Final National Summary Report for 2023.
14. Masoudian P, Nasr A, de Nanassy J, Fung-Kee-Fung K, Bainbridge SA, El Demellawy D. Oocyte donation pregnancies and the risk of preeclampsia or gestational hypertension: a systematic review and metaanalysis. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 2016;214(3):328-339. doi:10.1016/j.ajog.2015.11.020.
15. Storgaard M, Loft A, Bergh C, et al. Obstetric and neonatal complications in pregnancies conceived after oocyte donation: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BJOG. 2017;124(4):561-572. doi:10.1111/1471-0528.14257.
16. Remohí J, Gallardo E, Levy M, et al. Oocyte donation in women with recurrent pregnancy loss. Human Reproduction. 1996;11(9):2048-2051. PubMed 8921088.
17. Miguel-Escalada I, et al. O-146: Oocyte donation does not increase live birth rates in young women suffering from recurrent pregnancy loss. Human Reproduction. 2023;38(Suppl 1). Conference abstract. doi:10.1093/humrep/dead093.173.
18. October 15th Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Origination of the International Wave of Light.
19. Sullivan HK, Sinaiko AD, Fox K, Armstrong JC, Clapp MA, Cohen JL. Stillbirths in the United States. JAMA. 2025. doi:10.1001/jama.2025.17392.
20. Chasing the Rainbows. Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Wave of Light 2026. chasingtherainbows.org.
21. March of Dimes. Miscarriage. marchofdimes.org.

Related reading

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