“It’s not something you expect a 15-year-old to be sad about”: Sources of Uncertainty and Strategies of Uncertainty Management among Adolescent Women Who Have Experienced Miscarriage

ABSTRACT

Approximately 10%–25% of adolescent pregnancies end in miscarriage, yet we know little about the experience of miscarriage among women in this age group. To better understand the medical and psychosocial challenges faced by adolescent women who experience a miscarriage, we conducted interviews with 31 college-aged women who had experienced a miscarriage between the ages of 15 and 19. We analyzed interview transcripts using qualitative descriptive analysis and found that adolescent women experience various medical (e.g., insufficient medical knowledge, unknown etiology), personal (e.g., competing identities, lack of autonomy in decision-making), and relational (e.g., emotional invalidation, relational insecurity) sources of uncertainty in miscarriage in ways that are unique to the population of adolescent women. Women in our sample appraised their uncertainty positively and negatively (sometimes simultaneously) and reported using a variety of management strategies to facilitate their desired level of uncertainty, including information seeking, avoidance, health behavior change, and reframing the miscarriage.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to extend their thanks to Anna-Carrie Beck, Kelley Cowden, Christina Harris, Anna Kerr, Robert Shapiro, and Miranda Stewart for their assistance with this project.