While doctors know more about recurrent miscarriages than they ever have, the amount that they don't know about the process is vast. It's not for lack of trying, mind you. Human beings are just very, very complicated. Still, steps have been taken.

The New York Times' Jane Brody recently rounded up all of that is known about recurrent miscarriages, sifting through the evidence to tease fact from fiction. Some tidbits: Blood thinners seem to work -- unless they don't. A chromosomal abnormality is to blame -- unless it isn't.

What is unequivocally pinned down is that it is a minor miracle that any woman ever gets and stays pregnant in the first place. Yet anecdotal evidence would prove that's not true either.

Perhaps the take-away is that life is capricious and random -- but that might be too existential for the paper of record to print, yes? 

Illo credit: Andy Martin for the NYT