CLEVELAND -- Women who are dealing with fertility problems often have to deal with the pain of suffering a miscarriage.

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Dealing With Miscarriage

Sometimes women have to suffer through several miscarriages before they are able to have a baby, if they can have a baby at all.

In a University Hospital's Focus On Fertility report, 5 On Your Side's Alicia Booth looked at the problem of miscarriage and how one local man is working to make a difference.

Neal Rote's professional life is completely devoted to miscarriage, researching why it happens and how to prevent it.

He says it's an issue that is widely misunderstood.

"Because one of the things that most people don't realize is that one out of five pregnancies doesn't make it," said Rote.

Rote has also experienced the pain of miscarriage first-hand. His wife, Janice, miscarried just hours before she was expected to give birth.

"When I got there, and they did the ultrasound, there was no heartbeat, and it was just the most devastating moment of my life," said Janice Rote.

The Rotes say once a couple desperate to get pregnant learns that it's actually happened, there's an undeniable bond.

"And that child has an identity, that child is a person and then all of a sudden, that child's dead," said Janice Rote.

After the miscarriage, Neal Rote returned to his work with more passion than ever, but now incorporating the psychological aspects of miscarriage.

He is encouraging the medical community and others to pay more attention to the grief of miscarriage, and to automatically offer the patient a way to deal with what comes with it.

"Their dislike for their best friend who's pregnant, their inability to go out in public and see a pregnant woman, because that became part of our life," said Neal Rote.

"Don't say you know how I feel, don't say you'll have another baby, because it doesn't always happen that way. Just say how sorry you are and just be there," said Janice Rote.

It was through counseling that Janice Rote learned what was important to her was to be a mother, not just to create a baby.

So, through adoption, she and her husband are the parents of five.

Neal Rote continues his research, working to open a center dedicated solely to recurrent miscarriage, so that the many women who suffer through the loss of a child will have the tools to go on, try again or, as he did, try something else.

Rote says there is medical evidence to suggest that women who get some kind of psychological counseling are more likely to end up having a viable pregnancy when they try again.

To find out more about miscarriage, counseling or infertility in general, call University Hospitals at (800) 800-UHHS.

For more information, visit our Focus on Fertility page.