Preterm Labor scare. Reassurance in case this happens to you.

FTM here. 1st pregnancy. 28w+4d today. I’ve been feeling a lot of lower pelvic pressure and discomfort the past few days and my 28week US and prenatal appt are tomorrow, so I was going to ask them about it. Anyway, my husband got up this AM and I slightly sat up to read the clock (it was 7am), when all of a sudden I felt a big gush of water down there. I felt the outside of my underwear wondering if it was just my imagination and sure enough it was SOAKED. I immediately panicked thinking “did my water just seriously break this early??” especially since I had been having all of that pelvic discomfort recently. I ran to the bathroom and turned on the light, and there was a huge dark brown water spot in my underwear (sorry TMI). No mucous or thickness, just tons of dark brown water. I haven’t had any spotting or bleeding through this whole pregnancy, no scares or complications yet, not high risk.

My husband and I quickly got ready and went to the hospital to be checked out. Of course, I google searched and all I could find were things about pulling away of the placenta, amniotic fluid leakage, signs of early labor, etc. Basically I was preparing myself for the possibility of having to get a c-section or being told I was likely going to go into labor early within the next few weeks. The emergency department triage immediately sent me up to the Mother/Birthing center to be checked out. The midwife strapped on a belly monitor, and they did a vaginal exam and swabs. This is what they found:

On the vaginal exam she said I had a bunch of old blood in front of the cervix. After they swabbed it away she could see that my cervix was completely closed (thank goodness), but that I had 2 little holes about the size of a pin head just in front of the cervix that were “slowly leaking/oozing”. She described it similar to if you get a carpet burn and the burn will slowly leak fluid and blood. The cells around the cervix are very delicate and this can happen which can cause brown spotting, but she said it’s nothing to be concerned about. During pregnancy you also get watery discharge and it will increase until birth (Im not an idiot, I know what normal pregnancy discharge is and have experienced this at a steady and increasing rate). But they think that somehow the watery discharge got held up/backed up (maybe how I was sleeping) and when I went to sit up it all gushed out carrying with it the dried blood that was sitting around the cervix. Mimicking water breaking or amniotic fluid leakage. Basically it was the perfect storm for a weird fluke occurrence.

Just in case, they tested the discharge for amniotic fluid and it came back negative. The belly monitor showed baby was perfectly fine and no contractions were seen. So everything is essentially normal in their opinion (phew!)

I know it’s a long story, but I’m only sharing this in case something like this happens to you. Bc holy hell, it can be scary. And to also reassure you that, if something abnormal or scary occurs, absolutely go and get it checked out. But try not to panic, don’t jump to conclusions, there could be a normal explanation for it and everything can be ok.

Wishing all of you mommas a wonderful and healthy rest of your pregnancies with a beautiful healthy baby at the end of the road! ❤️ We got this!!