I've had a bit of cause for concern this week. I lost what I'm pretty sure was my mucus plug on Thursday (that was 35 weeks, 1 day). This next paragraph may be TMI, so I'm forewarning you.
The mucus plug was basically a long string of, well, mucus. It was about 6 inches long and stretchy, and it would have taken a lot of stretching to get it to break. Since then, I have been having a bit of mucus-like drainage every day that's very slippery when I wipe. Then last night, when I woke up around 1:00 am and had to go to the bathroom, the drainage was tinted brownish red. I'm 35 weeks, 6 days today, by the way.
Well, that freaked me out. The mucus plug I could deal with, and kind of deny that it was a big deal. But the hint of blood scared me. I was up most of the remainder of the night worrying about it. When I got up in the morning, I told my husband about it, and he talked me into calling my doctor. At 5:00 am. I was surprised that the answering service actually had my doctor on the phone for me within about a minute.
I apologized for waking her up, and I explained the situation. She told me that this is all normal, and that by tomorrow I'll be past the point where a delivery would be considered preterm. She said I should not be concerned unless I start having contractions that can be timed, period-level bleeding, or my water breaks.
So that calmed me down a lot. But I'm still anxious, though for a different reason. My 1-year anniversary at work is on May 8th. If I need to go on maternity leave before that time, they aren't legally obligated to hold my job for me or to continue my health insurance. Both are super important, and both were things I took into consideration before trying to get pregnant. I thought I had allowed plenty of time.
I don't even have the nursery ready! We're still moving stuff around. And I don't have the car seat in the car. I did just pack my hospital bag tonight. And I'll get the car seat done tomorrow night. And hopefully I'll get the nursery at least functional this weekend, if not pretty. And then it would be really great if this is just a total false alarm and I don't have to worry about anything until June. Yeah. At this point, I'm trying to just put it in God's hands and relax. After all, worrying definitely won't help the situation.
