The First Sign of Trouble

I'm a little hesitant to write this because I don't want any pregnant women finding it and freaking out over every little discharge they have.  But I have to get it off my chest. 

So first and foremost, what I'm about to write may or may not have actually had anything to do with my miscarriage.  Please remember that the information in this post is being written by someone under an enormous amount of stress and trying to make sense of something completely senseless.  I am not a reliable source of medical information in any way, shape, or form.

About a week prior to the loss, I had a new discharge.  It was mucousy and tinged brown.  I googled and found many sites reporting that such a discharge is perfectly normal and that during the second trimester, there would be all sorts of new liquids on my toilet paper and in my underwear. 

I called the docs to report this and they were completely unconcerned.  "Have you had intercourse recently?"  "Yeah, a day or two before"  "That's what it is.  Sometimes intercourse can cause a bit of discharge.  Don't worry about it, it's perfectly fine"

So I didn't worry about it.  The next day it was a bit heavier.  And one wipe included something more congealed than the original mucous I had experienced.  There was logic to that.  If my body was cleaning out husbandly fluids and a hint of blood from friction, it would make sense that after an extra day or two, it would congeal a bit.  And yet, it occurred to me in a non-panicky way, "huh, I wonder if this is what the mucous plug will look like when I pass it"

Over the week, I kept thinking that I should get around to blogging that new little symptom, but I didn't.  Really, at the time, I didn't think anything of it.  Just figured I had more pleasant things to enjoy writing about, I didn't really need to write about a bit of brown snot on on my toilet paper.  I mean I know I write about every gross little detail, but I don't need to write about EVERY GROSS LITTLE DETAIL.

On the other hand, I didn't really want to write about it cuz of a little nagging feeling.  Nothing I was consciously thinking, it was an imperceptible little fear so far back in my mind I didn't even really know it was there, but some sort of fear saying don't acknowledge or relate this discharge to the mucous plug.

Besides, just a few days prior, we were watching my little girls dance on the ultrasound.  We saw the little legs all bent and then kick out straight and one spun around.  We saw the clearly defined spines.  I really loved seeing those little legs working.  Cervix length was right where it was supposed to be.  And just a day or two after, I had every blood test under the sun due to the diabetes.  If anything had been detectable, it would have been detected.  But everything came up perfect.  Those various numbers that you're supposed to be between, my results were dead center.  Perfect. 

But in retrospect, during my time in the hospital when I asked if that had been the mucous plug, I got the sad face and "it might have been."  I've been assured that once that had happened, no amount of intervention could have stopped the miscarriage process.  If I had been in the hospital the moment I saw that mucous, it wouldn't have mattered.  It would have only prolonged my knowledge of the process.  Instead of it all happening over the course of 12 hours, I would have been waiting for the contractions to start for days with the knowledge of what was going to happen.