I suppose this is for the ladies and the M.D.'s.
How common is moderate bleeding with no cramping during the first trimester? What could be causing it?
Also, how common is it for a woman to have been unaware of a pregnancy and drink moderately during the first few weeks until she knows?
Thanks guys. (Yes, I’m freaking out here. Yes, I’ve been to the ER and they don’t seem too worried, but still.)
How far along are you in your first trimester? When you went to the ER, did they do an ultrasound or a blood test? When I miscarried, they did two things to determine if I was actually miscarrying. First, they took blood tests a couple of days apart from each other, to see if the pregnancy hormone was increasing as it should. Then they did an ultrasound to look for the heartbeat.
I have heard that some amount of bleeding can be perfectly normal, so try not to worry about it too much…but it may be a good idea to see your doctor to try to determine what’s going on.
In terms of the alcohol…I’m sure the scenario you describe happens all the time! What do you consider “moderate” drinking? If it really is just a drink here and there, I doubt you have much to worry about with that.
As long as you aren’t cramping, the bleeding should be okay. Some women just work that way (I’ve read/heard stories of women who had what seemed to be regular periods throughout), there’s also implantation bleeding which as I understand isn’t all that uncommon during the first but. I’d make an appointment with your ob/gyn and ask though, just to check you over and answer any questions. If you really feel something is wrong though, insist the people at the ER check you over.
As for the drinking when not knowing… I’d say it’s fairly common. I did it, and I worried about it the whole rest of my pregnancy (he’s fine btw). My doctor reassured me that unless you are drinking every day there won’t be problems.
Congratulations 
Ex-EMT checks in
You might want to make a call/visit to your OB. Something to remember about ER is they see ALOT of miscarriages. Even if you were miscarrying 1st trimester there is pretty much nothing that can be done to stop it or fix the problem. If you came in 28 weeks pregnant and bleeding you would see a totally different response.
First step: breathe.
(That’s the first step for anything in life, really.)
It’s very common for women, especially heavyset women, to bleed periodically throughout pregnancy. Women store estrogen in their fat, and when there’s enough estrogen present for long enough, you have what’s called estrogen break through bleeding, and your body doesn’t much care if you’re pregnant or not. Fat women, having more fat, also have more estrogen stored and are thus more prone to bleeding between periods and while pregnant.
I bled every two weeks during pregnancy, and I was around 180 lbs when I got pregnant. The intermittent bleeding was darkish, brownish, and less than a normal period, but definitely more than what I would comfortably call spotting. Of course I worried every time, and every time it turned out to be nothing.
When I DID finally bleed for bad (so to speak), it was very different - bright red, (spoilered for the squeamish):lots of clots, and big chunks of firm tissue - some the size of my palm - that I could see little tubes in - those were blood vessels from the placenta. It was bright blood, it was copious, and it was just totally different. At that point I was at 23 weeks and 6 days, and they did a c-section to get her out before I lost her.
A very early miscarriage will expel what looks a bit like a grape - that’s the tiny embryotic sac, and a later one bigger chunks of placenta and fetal tissue, not just blood.
As **drachillix **says, there’s nothing that can be done for a very early miscarriage, other than to relax and lay down. Unfortunately, 25% or more of pregnancies do end in miscarriage, most even before the woman knows she’s pregnant.
As for the drinking: until you skip a period, or two weeks (on average) from conception, you pretty much have a get-out-of-jail free card, because the fertilized egg is still free-floating. It’s not hooked up to your system, getting things like food, oxygen, alcohol and drugs out of your system - it’s living off of stored energy in the original egg cell. So even heavy drinking or hard drug use before you miss a period is usually not anything to freak out about. There are rare exceptions - a medication used to treat male pattern baldness being one of them - but alcohol is usually okay. Do let your doctor know, of course, but chances are good that your drinking didn’t affect the fetus at all.
Thank you so much guys, especially WhyNot! I am so worried about the drinking thing. I’ve actually recently cut down my alcohol consumption dramatically to about a glass and a half of wine once or twice a week, but about three weeks ago I drank quite a bit, enough that I couldn’t drive home, and I was really worried about that.
I’m probably around 5 weeks pregnant, so hopefully everything is ok then.
The ER doc last night pressed around and didn’t find anything odd, and I had no pain when he pressed. He and the nurses didn’t seem worried, so I’m trying not to. I am scheduled for an ultrasound at the same hospital tomorrow afternoon where I’m assuming they’ll check for problems and see how far along I actually am.
Thanks so much guys!
It will be fine. This pretty much happened to me. I was about 7-8 weeks along when I confirmed I was pregnant (stressful time, I was also sick otherwise, took me a bit to realize it wasn’t just life and overwork and then to convince my former doctor that I didn’t have the illness of the week) about a month or so before then I went to a party and drank a lot… more than I usually do actually. I had a mother of a hangover the next day (and had gotten sick the night before), I can count on one hand the times that has happened.
Heh. I went to a party when I was (unknowingly) about 3 weeks pregnant with my oldest. Not only did I drink to excess, I smoked pot! :eek:
After I found out I was pregnant, I went through the next 7 months saying “Oh my God! I’m pregnant and I used drugs!!!” She was a very healthy baby (she’s almost 20 and a mess, now, but that has nothing to do with the pot!)
I’m sure you’re fine, but like everyone else said, see a doctor ASAP, if for no other reason than to ease your mind.
WhyNot said it best, but you might also enjoy reading The Kid: Dan Savage (alternative weekly paper editor and sex columnist) and his boyfriend adopted a baby born to a homeless mom who drank (relatively moderate amounts of) beer throughout her pregnancy. He worried about the alcohol thing, too, so did some research; he found that in fact, most or all of the fetal alcohol syndrome studies involve long-term heavy drinking. He concluded that doctors and health pros let us all get so hysterical about pregnancy and mild drinking because so many people have so much trouble drawing a line between “just one or two” and “way too much” - IOW, a white lie.
And his kid is still fine.
Absolutely, I agree with him. Americans in general are bad at moderation, and doctors (and their insurers) are terrified of lawsuits, so the best answer, for them, is to advise no drinking at all. In reality, most of the FAS studies involve things on the order of a fifth of Jack Daniels a day, every day. Is it theoretically possible that there’s some magic moment at which even a glass of wine might cause some protein not to fold right? Well, I guess. But it’s not been anywhere near proven, and women have been drinking small amounts during pregnancy forever and having normal babies.
Heck, I had a friend (not at the time - this was during a hiatus on our friendship, for obvious reasons) who was living in a crack house doing large amounts of literally every drug under the sun from PCP to heroin to crack to LSD to large amounts of alcohol while pregnant. She was so out of it all the time that she didn’t notice she was pregnant until her 6th month. She quit everything cold turkey with no detox, except for cigarettes, which her doctor told her to keep smoking once he heard her history. She even had a heroin relapse while nursing when the baby was about 4 months old. Kid’s fine - 11 now. I’m not recommending we all become smack addicts while pregnant, mind! But it does put things into perspective while we’re agonizing over eating a bit of bree or having a glass and a half of wine a week.
And to look at the other perspective - there are plenty of mothers who do everything by the book and miscarry or have kids with birth defects anyway. It’s not as if you can do everything “right” and be “good” and are ensured a healthy baby. That’s thinking that’s veering into superstition, IMHO. You do the best you can and put your trust in your body (and/or your god, The Universe, Spirit, whatever) that what you get is what you’ll learn from best.
WhyNot, it is my understanding that implantation usually occurs 7-10 days after conception. So wouldn’t the embryo be attached a little sooner than you would miss your period? (I don’t say this to worry the OP, just asking to clarify.)
I know many women (including myself) who drank before they knew they were pregnant. No one I know has a child with fetal alcohol problems. I know anecdotes are not data, blah blah blah, studies have not been done establishing how much alcohol is safe, etc.
I had early bleeding in my first pregnancy, around 6 weeks along. I remember the Dr.s told me, if there is only spotting and no cramping things are probably ok. Brownish / pink spotting can be caused by implantation, irritation to the cervix (sex can cause this) or hormone changes. Your Dr. will be able to tell you more, but if the bleeding stops on its own and there is no cramping you are probably ok.
See, these are the things (accidental drinking and bleeding) women of child bearing age should know! Hahahah. Oh boy, I can’t tell you how much better I feel about this, thank you so much! I was almost at the point of thinking I had caused a miscarriage because I drank a few weeks ago. Horrible.
Yes. The “about two weeks” is what my doctor told me* based on the level of development of the placenta - while the blastocyte implants by day 10, it takes a day or two to “set up shop”, so to speak and start exchanging stuff with Mom’s blood stream.
Here’s some more information, for fertility/pregnancy/embryology geeks like me!
*I had been taking Provera to regulate my periods, and of course my period didn’t come, and I was all freaked out because Provera can cause limb deformities.
I see. I had read about the 5-10 weeks gestation window of highest malformation susceptibility before, so it seems that even after implantation, most women would at least suspect they are pregnant (a week late or more) before the riskiest time begins. Plus morning sickness during that exact time conveniently prevents a lot of women from wanting to have that extra drink anyway.
Neither an MD or a woman, but a dad here.
Mrs Sapo bled through most of her first and third trimester. Mostly spotting but also some bigger stains. Sapito was born just fine. Ditto for Sapita (only the first tri for her).
If the doctors say don’t worry, well, don’t.
As for drinking, our moms and grandmoms drank happily throughout their entire pregnancies, and here we are. I am not pretending to knock down the teaching of all doctors nowadays or giving you a green light to get wasted every day, just saying that it is not something to lose sleep over.
My OB-GYN explained the bleeding I experienced for the first 9 weeks (beginning with very scary bright red gushing and slo-o-o-o-o-owly tapering away to nothing) as decidual bleeding, which can occur until the lining of the uterus is “covered” by the placenta and developing fetus.
I just got back a couple of hours ago from the product of that pregnancy’s 6th-grade orchestra concert!
First trimester bleeding is apparently very common - with my second baby, I didn’t even know I was pregnant until I was over 4 months gone. My periods seemed normal to me.
I was pregnant both times on New Year’s Eve and didn’t know it - I had quite a few drinks. I had no problems with either of them. They are 11 and 7 now…
Please don’t freak out - chances are you (and the bubs) will be fine!