Miscarriage at 7 Weeks Pregnant: 3 Top Signs To Watch Out For

Question: What are the main signs to expect during a miscarriage at 7 weeks?

If you’ve gotten pregnant and are now about seven weeks into your pregnancy, the chances of a miscarriage are lower than in the very early weeks, especially after a normal heartbeat is seen on scan. But miscarriage can still happen, so it is normal to feel worried.PubMed+1

Overall, about 1 in 5 known pregnancies end in miscarriage, most of them in the first trimester (before 12–13 weeks).ACOG+1 The risk is highest in the first few weeks and then slowly drops as the pregnancy progresses.

If you’ve passed through your 4th, 5th and 6th weeks of pregnancy, your baby is increasing in size and growing bigger.

Don’t forget, if you are seven weeks pregnant, you are already about three weeks past your missed period.

At seven weeks, your baby is about 1 cm in length (still tiny), though he/she is beginning to grow fast and develop arms and legs.

At seven weeks, it’s okay if you are concerned about any spotting or cramping. Light spotting can sometimes happen in normal pregnancy, but bleeding, strong pain or passing clots can also be early signs of miscarriage and should always be checked. If you notice these, booking an appointment with your doctor or early pregnancy clinic should be your next step so that problems like ectopic pregnancy or heavy bleeding are not missed. National guidance such as the NICE guideline on ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage advises urgent assessment for women with pain or bleeding in early pregnancy.NICE+1

Most women will have had a blood or urine test by seven weeks of pregnancy to confirm if they are pregnant or not.

Symptoms of pregnancy you may experience at 7 weeks are

• Increase in your body weight

• Getting weak quickly

• Vomiting or nausea that may worsen in the morning (though it’s possible to still feel like throwing up in the later part of the day)

• Food craving

• Food aversion

• You are now seeing too much vaginal discharge than normal

• Your breast begins to hurt with pain or breast lump increases in size

• You notice stretch marks on your breast

Any of these symptoms at seven weeks make pregnancy more likely, but they do not fully guarantee that your pregnancy is healthy or viable. If at seven weeks you are yet to test, you should use a strip ASAP if you get these symptoms.

However, if you begin to notice you are having fewer symptoms of pregnancy or noticeable fading of previously felt symptoms, it’s possible you are having a miscarriage. Sometimes symptoms also naturally come and go in early pregnancy, so disappearing symptoms alone are not enough to diagnose miscarriage, but they should be discussed with your doctor, especially if you also have bleeding or pain.CMAJ+1

After your baby is attached to the endometrium, your body spontaneously starts producing human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) that helps tell if you are pregnant or not.

If this hormone starts to fall on repeated blood tests in early pregnancy, especially together with bleeding or cramps, then your doctor will suspect that there is a problem with the pregnancy.ACOG+1

Remember, it is possible you can have a miscarriage without bleeding (missed miscarriage or blighted ovum). You should find time to tell your doctor of your disappearing symptoms so that an ultrasound scan can be arranged to check your baby.RCOG

Having said that, the commonest way to tell if you are having a miscarriage is bleeding from your vagina, often with clots and cramps that get worse over hours.

If you are now noticing so much blood coming from your vagina with abdominal cramps, dizziness or feeling like you might faint, it means you must see a doctor or go to the emergency room right away.

This article explains causes and signs of miscarriage at 7 weeks pregnant you should expect.

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What symptoms to expect during a miscarriage?

1. You are bleeding too much from your vagina

Don’t get me wrong, a miscarriage may start with light spotting, and there are many other causes of spotting in early pregnancy too. But if you notice so much vaginal bleeding with dark or bright red blood and clots coming out of your vagina, especially soaking a pad every hour or passing large clots, it’s likely a miscarriage or another serious problem such as ectopic pregnancy, and you need urgent review.CMAJ+1

Bleeding, if not controlled early, can cause dizziness, fainting attack and body weakness.

During your prenatal checkup (if you’ve already confirmed pregnancy), your blood sample is collected, and your blood group, Rhesus factor, and other tests will be carried out.

If you are Rhesus negative and your partner is Rhesus positive, there is a possibility that you can become sensitized if your baby’s blood mixes with yours. This may lead to your body creating antibodies that can affect future pregnancies, so many guidelines advise an injection called anti-D after some types of bleeding or miscarriage in pregnancy.NICE+1

Therefore, you should talk to your doctor as soon as you experience bleeding in pregnancy.

During your clinic visit, an urgent pregnancy ultrasound scan will usually be carried out, sometimes together with serial monitoring of your hCG level.

At 7 weeks, hCG levels can be quite high, but there is a very wide normal range and the exact number on its own does not prove that the pregnancy is healthy or unhealthy. What matters more is whether your levels are rising appropriately over time and what the scan shows.ACOG+1

Though it’s possible you could have a lower than expected hCG level, if your hCG hormone is no longer rising over days to weeks, it often signifies something’s wrong and your doctor will explain your options.

Your doctor may advise you to rest and avoid very strenuous activity while you are bleeding, but gentle daily activity is usually safe unless you are very unwell. There is no evidence that normal exercise or everyday work causes miscarriage.nhs.uk+

If bleeding becomes so severe, you may need treatment to remove retained fetal parts, either by medication or by a procedure such as suction curettage (D & C). These options are described in detail in patient information from ACOG on early pregnancy loss and Cleveland Clinic. ACOG+1

2. You feel excruciating abdominal pain

An early symptom of a miscarriage may just be vaginal spotting or bleeding. However, as pregnancy progresses and the miscarriage becomes more complete, you will begin to notice stronger cramps or pain in your abdomen and lower back.

If you start having belly pain and vaginal bleeding (too much to be controlled by your pad), it’s likely you have a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy and need urgent medical help.

On the other hand, having mild cramps and spotting at seven weeks is not unusual and may not be due to a miscarriage.

Having yourself examined vaginally by your doctor, sexual intercourse and trauma to your cervix may cause women to have pain and light bleeding while pregnant.RCOG+1

Severe one-sided pain, shoulder-tip pain, or pain with feeling very faint can be a sign of ectopic pregnancy and is an emergency.

3. You are no longer sure of your pregnancy signs

During early pregnancy, you should start having symptoms like heavy breast, body weakness, nausea and sometimes feeling unwell.

If you begin to spot with cramps, you should worry even more if your pregnancy symptoms start to disappear.

On their own, changing symptoms do not always mean miscarriage, because many women feel better as hormone levels settle. But if disappearing pregnancy symptoms are combined with bleeding, passage of tissue or strong pain, your doctor will want to check for miscarriage with a scan and blood tests.CMAJ+1

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What Causes Miscarriage at 7 weeks?

While it’s not uncommon for pregnant women to hurt themselves for being the cause of a miscarriage, a large number of miscarriages at seven weeks of pregnancy occur as a result of abnormal development outside of your control.

After the union of the sperm and the ovum, genetic information is exchanged. If something goes wrong, either because of an extra chromosome or missing chromosome, it may prevent the baby from developing normally and the pregnancy can end in miscarriage. This is the commonest cause of early miscarriage.RCOG+

This is a natural way your body will get rid of a pregnancy that could not grow properly, and it is not caused by ordinary daily activities.

Other important risk factors for miscarriage are increasing age, being very underweight or overweight, heavy smoking, heavy alcohol use, some untreated infections, and poorly controlled medical conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure.RCOG+1

Normal exercise, sex, working, travelling, or worrying do not cause miscarriage. Very heavy physical work or contact sports might be restricted in some high-risk pregnancies, but routine movement is safe for most women unless your doctor advises otherwise.nhs.uk

Also, women who are being treated for diabetes or hypertension may have a higher risk of miscarriage if these conditions are not well controlled, so it is important to take your medicines as prescribed and attend your antenatal visits.

For more on causes and myths, you can read patient-friendly pages from the NHS on miscarriage, Tommy’s (UK miscarriage charity) on early miscarriage, and RCOG patient information on early miscarriage. nhs.uk+2Tommy’s+2

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What are miscarriage rates at 7 weeks pregnant?

If you are seven weeks pregnant, you should know you are less likely to have a miscarriage compared to the preceding weeks, especially if an ultrasound has already shown a heartbeat.

According to research in women with no worrying symptoms, once a normal heartbeat is seen at around 7 weeks, the average risk of miscarriage falls to about 4 in 100 pregnancies (around 4%).PubMed+1 Different studies give slightly different numbers, but they all show that the risk goes down as each week passes.

Having prenatal care, taking your pregnancy vitamins as prescribed, having lots of rest, avoiding smoking and drugs, and eating healthy will help keep you and your baby safe.

However, if you are unlucky and now have a miscarriage, you should know it’s not the end of the world.

Most women will blame themselves, but you shouldn’t. If your baby is not properly formed, your body protects you naturally by having a miscarriage, and most guidelines clearly state that early miscarriage is rarely caused by anything you did or did not do.RCOG

If you think you are ready for the next pregnancy, talk with your doctor. In many cases you can try again once the bleeding has stopped and you feel physically and emotionally ready, although some couples prefer to wait for one normal period. Recent research suggests that conceiving within a few months after an early loss is usually safe for most women.Reproductive Health Access Project+1

Most of the time, the next pregnancy goes on without complications, and many women who have had one miscarriage will have a healthy baby next time.

Good luck.