Am I Having a Miscarriage?
QUESTION
Dear Midwife,
A bunch of us over at the October board are having bleeding problems yet have healthy heart beats for our babies. So many women say they know of women who've had periods during their pregnancies and bled consisently and had healthy babies yet we are not hearing this from our doctors!
Can you advise us? Mine is heavier when my teens are on thier cycles but I've had this black ooze since the conception. Before I concieved, when I wasn't on the pill, I would have the same ooze a few times a month for a couple of days.
TeaNCrumpets
ANSWER
I think I speak for all providers when I say we *hate* bleeding during pregnancy. But it happens. Often, we have no clue why. If we do know, it's often cervicitis (a cervical infection), minor trauma from intercourse because there are so many extra blood vessels on the cervix during pregnancy, a polyp (kind of like a skin tag with lots of blood vessels), or a small bleed behind the placenta. We take all bleeds of any magnitude beyond "pink on the toilet paper" seriously just in case. But often, it turns out to be nothing serious.
My own personal favorite such story concerns a lovely first-time mom at 10 weeks who came in bleeding heavily. A speculum exam was not reassuring, there was even a clot. I gave her "the speech" about how some of these things are out of our control, etc. etc, but said the only real way to tell at her gestation what was going on was to do an ultrasound. She came back proudly later that afternoon with a picture of her healthy *twins!* Isabel and Lydia delivered vaginally at about 40 weeks and are now three and a half. Guess she showed me!
-- Cynthia, CNM
Cynthia Flynn
Cynthia Flynn, CNM. PhD, is the General Director of the Family Health and Birth Center which provides prenatal, birth, postnatal, gynecological and primary health care to underserved women and their families in Washington, D.C. Recently Cynthia served as Associate Professor of Nursing at Seattle University. There she not only taught, but remained in full scope clinical midwifery practice at Valley Medical Center where she cared for pregnant and birthing women, and practices well-woman gynecology, family planning, and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
Cynthia founded Columbia Women's Clinic and Birth Center, where she took care of pregnant women and infants up to two weeks of age and attended both birth center and hospital births. Before Cynthia earned her CNM, she worked as a registered nurse in labor and delivery and postpartum and is a certified Doula and Doula trainer.
