Pregnancy Loss: Deciphering all of the acronyms!

Before God encouraged me to work with sweet moms and their families surrounding pregnancy loss, I was a teacher. A kindergarten teacher to be exact. My days were filled with ABCs, 123s, crayons, endless amounts of glue sticks, and tons of acronyms! Any teacher, or student teacher, will tell you the number of acronyms used in the education profession is ridiculous. At times, you felt like you needed to carry a book around with you just to make sure you were deciphering the acronyms correctly.

Once I left education, I thought the days of speaking in acronyms were over. Boy was I WRONG! I walked right into another field where decoding two, three, and four letter “words” is quite common. After years of researching resources surrounding miscarriage, stillbirth, early infant loss, and fertility, I still find myself needing to Google the meanings of different acronyms.

Therefore, I have compiled some of the most common acronyms and their meanings to help ease your mind and to have everything conveniently located in one list. This list by no means is complete but will hopefully give you a good place to start. Feel free to list more in the comments section if you have more you would like to include

EPL: Early Pregnancy Loss

EP: Ectopic Pregnancy

MEND: Mommies Enduring Neonatal Death

PALS: Pregnancy After Loss Support

BO: Blighted Ovum

CP: Chemical Pregnancy

D&C: Dilation and Curretage

D&A: Dilation and Aspiration

EDD: Estimated Due Date

EBL: Estimated Blood Loss

GA: Gestational Age

hCG: Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (Pregnancy hormone)