Monday, May 28, 2007

Where would I be without something to panic about?

I dashed to the loo before an out of town meeting on Friday morning when I discovered the tiniest bit, ever, of light beige mucus in my knickers. This was after a tiring day and a fairly sleepless night, and at the start of a long journey via the city where Mr. Spouse works to my mother's for the weekend. We had promised ourselves a weekend of R&R but I think there was too much of the second R and not enough of the first as I had a larger, but very light beige, bit each morning, once after, erm, straining, and again this morning when it was gloopier and a bit browner. Apart from the first bit whatever there is seems to be mixed with, erm, how to say this, externally introduced mucus. Logically I know that

a) it is brown, in fact most of it is beige, so there is not a lot of blood and whatever is producing it has stopped bleeding

b) apart from the first day, it was all post-activity and perhaps now is the time to lay off

c) it is very very common to have even some red blood and for it not to be a bad sign

d) it could actually be something external to my cervix

e) all the other symptoms are the same, including the nausea (which, though not worse, seems to be more frequent), and although I have a few cramps if I look at each one objectively it is no worse than any I've had so far this pregnancy. I am also a little confused about the cramping as I've had a couple of wicked bouts of indigestion (sorry, mother, it's not your cooking, I just don't seem to be able to do meat at the moment), and bowel cramps can be easy to confuse with other pelvic cramps.

I'm 9w3d today. You will understand where I'm coming from when I tell you that at exactly 10w in my first pregnancy I had something similar (though quite a bit heavier) and although they pronounced my cervix closed, a scan showed only an empty sac. I know it won't be exactly that way this time, but I've always thought that was actually the first warning of a full bleed, and that it was just taking my body some time (in that case, about 4 weeks) to decide to bleed properly.

I tried to ring the Early Pregnancy Unit at the women's hospital as soon as we got home from my mum's this afternoon but, being a bank holiday today, they were closed and I got the emergency number. I imagine that about 25% of their emergencies, statistically, are miscarriages or threatened miscarriages, though, so they should know what they are talking about. She repeated point a) above, told me to take it easy - "no heavy shopping or hoovering" were her words. I'm taking that to mean I shouldn't have gone to the outlet village yesterday, and that confining myself to home for the next 24h, at least, would not be a bad idea. If I have any red blood, I am to go to A&E locally, but like the other hospital, I can't see them being able to scan me before tomorrow, and in fact, probably not even then given their usual timetable. I have my next scan on Friday, but I will also ring the EPU tomorrow and see whether they think an earlier scan would be possible.

2 comments:

Thalia said...

Absolutely call them, nothng wrong with getting an extra scan, and its important they know what's happening. You know all the right things so I won't re-tell it to you. hang in there.

Anonymous said...

Seconding Thalia. Also, no hoovering. Thinking soothing thoughts for you.