I’m sorry to hear that hurt so much!
It’s my opinion that the cervix is a particularly unforgiving piece of tissue. I think it really doesn’t like to be passed up by anything unless it is personally giving permission to do so. Lots of folks think the cervix is kind of donut shaped, but it is really longer and more tubular than a donut (smaller, too).
As the owner of an incompetant cervix (and isn’t it rude to talk about someone’s cervix like that!) I’ve come to the conclusion that jacking around with the cervix can cause lots of problems later on. Apparanty, I had a one baby cervix, but managed to get two kids out of it (but just barely).
Used to be you had to have a repeated second trimester loss of pregnancy before someone thought ‘hey, mebbe i should take a second look at the cervix.’ I truly believe this. Because so many first pregnancies are lost (some think as high as 50%), the first loss was not looked at as too unusual. When a second pregnancy was lost, it took until the third one to catch the cervix in the act. Man, that’s three pregnancies!
Lots of fertility patients seem to wind up in the hospital during pregnancy with cervical (and other) problems (dilated or funneled cervix, cerclages in place, etc). I know that it is understood that fertility patients have trouble getting pregnant, but they really have trouble staying pregnant at much higher rates that the regular population and the cervix in frequently a problem for them. Perhaps the various testing the patients undergo has disrupted the cervix. I don’t think that is talked about enough.
Also, if one has undergone any cervical proceedures (leep, cone, , anything involving the endometrium and I’m suspicious of IUI’s, too), I think the Doc’s should really keep an eye on that cervix.
I used to do IUI’s (intrauterine inseminations) (hey, does that make me a mother and a father?) (Just Joking!) for a fertility Doc. She taught me how to do it. She used to grab the cervix with a, well, cervix grabber to you lay folk (teneculum). It looked horrible and applying my ‘unforgiving bit of tissue’ philosophy, I just couldn’t use the grabber. I used a ‘North South West East’ technique where I moved the speculum to various places to try to straighten the cervical canal so as to pass the catheter containing the sperm without insulting the cervix. Really, I thought, if one is attempting to get pregnant, would it not be better to at least try to not piss off the cervix?
Well, that’s my cervix rant. Thankyouverymuch.