Bloody Hell

CAVEAT: This might be too much information for some of ya'll. The point of this blog is to honestly document what goes on during my pregnancy, as I'm sure that I'll forget a lot of this stuff if it's not written down. But the thing about being pregnant and trying to write about the experience is that you can't really avoid talking about boobs, blood, sex, poop, and all of the totally normal, natural things that have become inappropriate to discuss in polite society. I talk about them a lot. And this is a post that involves blood and sex. FYI.

I'm bleeding again. So I went to the doctor today, a week before my next appointment was scheduled. Here's what happened.

At the end of last week, Husband and I were doing what married people do. And then all of a sudden there was all of this red blood. So we stopped and I did some research to see if this was a problem. I mean, when you're pregnant, any time you see blood coming from your lady parts it's scary.

I read that pregnant ladies will often have a sensitive cervix and blood during intercourse isn't a big deal. I also read that you can have some brown, leftover blood for a couple of days afterward.

Okay. Cool.

Well, it's been about 5 days since the aforementioned incident. And I'm still bleeding brown blood. In fact, there was more blood today than any of the previous days. And the baby wasn't kicking this morning after breakfast, as it usually does. So I casually said to myself, "I'll just call my nurse and talk to her and she'll say it's no big deal and I'll feel better and that will be that." I called and left a message. And two and a half hours later no one had called me back. Meanwhile, I've worked it all up in my head and totally freaked myself out and I was desperate to talk to someone at my OBGYN's office.

I called again and was put through to a different nurse, not my regular one. She said that I should be seen today, in case my cervix was thinning. Yikes! I'm not even sure that I know what that means, but it wasn't exactly the reassurance that everything is totally normal that I was expecting to hear.

Husband and I went in to my OBGYN's office and met with a midwife. She was supercool. I apologized that my feet were probably smelly and that I didn't shave my legs, but explained that I didn't think I'd be coming in today and that if I had known I would have been more prepared. She laughed. In reality, I wanted to say, "I feel embarrassed that my lady parts are all gross, and by the way I haven't shaved my bikini line since I was in here a month ago," but I think that she got my meaning when I told her that I'd have worn different shoes, given the opportunity.

First, we listened to the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler thingy. The baby kept wiggling away from her and she had to chase it up and down my belly. Then the baby started kicking the device. I wasn't surprised by the kicks, since Baby kicks at my waistband all of the time, but the midwife thought it was pretty funny. She said, "You DO have an active baby!"

After the heartbeat, she gave me an internal exam. She said that she saw the brown blood and took a sample so that she could look at it under a microscope. (Eeeew!) She felt my cervix and said that it's nice and thick and it isn't opening when she pushes on it. She said that all of this was a good sign. The midwife left with my "sample" to make sure that she didn't see any signs of infection or whatever.

SO. The midwife came back and told us that sometimes a lady's body just hangs on to the blood for a while, and that it could possibly leak out of her body at a later time. She thinks that the brown blood was just leftover from the day we last (*ahem*) disturbed my cervix, and that it just took 5 days for the majority of it to leak out. She said that I should be on "pelvic rest" for the next 5 days, by which time the brown blood will probably be gone.

(PELVIC REST? Really? I mean, I know what she was getting at, but "pelvic rest"? ...I wonder if Elvis ever had to go on pelvic rest...)

I'm so relieved that everything was okay. And that I don't have to shave my bikini line any time soon.