Bleeding
One woman in five has some bleeding in the first 16 weeks of pregnancy. In half of those cases the pregnancy ends in a miscarriage. A miscarriage is a spontaneous ending of a pregnancy up to 16 weeks. In everyday Dutch the word 'abortus' means a deliberate termination, which is properly called abortus provocatus — which is why the word is used with some care when talking to parents who have lost a pregnancy they wanted.
Miscarriages are usually caused by a chromosomal abnormality in the embryo that arose at conception. Such an abnormality is rarely hereditary and has no bearing on later pregnancies. Miscarriages are therefore not the result of physical effort such as cycling, nor of having sex, and they are not caused by an internal scan.
If you are bleeding, there is no point doing a pregnancy test to see whether you are having a miscarriage. The test can still show positive up to a month after the pregnancy has been lost, because the pregnancy hormone hCG is still present in the blood. A scan can often detect a miscarriage, though before 7 weeks a scan is usually of little use. Do note: a scan during bleeding is always a snapshot and says nothing about how the pregnancy will go on.
If you bleed early in pregnancy, do get in touch on 06 39 45 68 14.