Bleeding

I woke up yesterday morning to find that I was bleeding. At first the blood was brownish, and even though I know that sometimes happens in a perfectly healthy pregnancy I decided that I was going to stay home from work. Luckily I already had an appointment to see my OB for a pap smear later in the day. I wasn’t bleeding like I had my period, just when I wiped, but there was quite a bit of blood. Around 8:00 am the brownish color turned to bright red. That really had me worried, so I decided the best way to get through the next few hours was to just sleep.

Howie went to Dr. Google for some answers. He called to tell me that he found many sites that said it was normal. I told him that when I had my miscarriage they told me that light pink spotting was normal too, but it ended up being a miscarriage. Before I left to go to my OB I checked for blood and it looked like the bleeding had stopped. So I relaxed about it a bit and decided, maybe this was normal.

It was weird being at my OB’s office again. All the patients are pregnant and the staff wouldn’t know your name if they didn’t have your records in front of them. I wish that REs delivered babies too. Anyway, I told my OB, Dr. P, about the bleeding when she came in. She didn’t seem too concerned at first because I am taking Prometrium and one of the side effects is bleeding or spotting. Then she went in for the swab. Dr. P told me that as soon as she touched my cervix it started to bleed, and not just a little bit of blood, it was a lot of blood. She went on to say that she believes that it’s only external and that during pregnancy it’s normal for a woman’s cervix to become very sensitive and bleed. She said she was trying to clean it up a bit so that I wouldn’t get scared from seeing all of the blood. I was thinking that if a light brush up against my cervix would make it bleed that there wouldn’t really be a way to clean it up, that she was only going to cause more bleeding if she kept fussing with it. She kept talking about how much blood there was, but not to be worried, but holy shit, that’s a lot of blood! She had this worried look on her face and at one point she even held one of the blood drenched swabs to show me how much bright red blood was coming out of me. Yes, seeing all that blood really made me feel confident that things were perfectly fine! After going through a few dozen swabs she lubed up her hand and shoved it inside of me, I’m not sure what for. I wasn’t really focused on what she was doing as much as I was focused on how uncomfortable it was to have her hand up in there like that. She then pulled her hand out and threw away her blood covered glove. She said that she looked forward to seeing me for my first prenatal appointment on Thursday, handed me a pad and said congratulations.

Umm, so I don’t know what to think right now. She told me that it was all ok and that I shouldn’t worry, but the expression on her face and all the blood told me to worry. It seems totally reasonable to me that the bleeding is from my sensitive cervix and that it’s not from my baby, but is my cervix bleeding too much? She looked worried about something but she wasn’t saying anything, so what does that mean? I felt like she was just telling me things were fine to keep me calm, not because things were really fine. I guess I’ll ask her more questions at my appointment tomorrow. I’m curious to see what my first prenatal appointment at my OB’s office will include. Do I have another ultrasound? Or do they just weigh me and give me a pile of information about what to expect when you’re pregnant?