(Warning: body fluids mentioned. This is a blog about birth!)
After waking up with only 3 hours of sleep, I made myself some nightly cereal with blueberries and sat up downstairs to watch a little TV. As I do many times a day, I needed to go to the bathroom. When wiping, I saw for the first time in five term pregnancies what my mucus plug looked like.
It was clear with a jelly look but tinged with pink! I was giddy! Yes! Progress!!
Losing even a little of the mucus plug means the cervix is doing something! Effacing or dilating or both! With no exams, I don't know what my dilation or effacement is because I never found out. It's only useful information if you plan to induce. Otherwise, it serves no good purpose. It can only falsely excite a woman who finds out she's dilated leading her to believe she might go into labor very soon which doesn't always happen. And the opposite is true too. If she finds out she's not dilated, she may get discouraged and think labor is far away when in reality what causes cervical change is contractions and labor can take her from zero to ten centimeters in 24 hours time! Cervical exam results of dilation or effacement cannot predict when labor will start.
I'm excited that my on and off sometimes painful BHCs are actually already changing my cervix. That let's me have hope that if I continue to be patient and await spontaneous labor, it will come when my body and my baby are ready.
