At the end of pregnancy, your body and mind are on alert. The slightest strange sensation (well, we mean weirder than feeling another human being wriggling around in your entrails…) attracts our attention and we ask ourselves over and over again: is it (FINALLY!?) for today?
Very early in the pregnancy, doctors set a due date based on the last day of the period (a relatively uncertain fact for many women). And quite naturally, we focus on THIS day which will become one of the most important of our life. An unforgettable day! Yes but… science (just like us) sometimes seems to forget that this baby is a little person with a sense of humor and a sense of timing of its own and that, despite all the scientific calculations, weight prognoses, height measurements, size of the shins, etc., it will show up when it wants to, period. Day or evening, week, weekend or holiday (yes, some people really have no mercy), before or after the famous and long-awaited D-day, one thing is sure, you will do according to him and not the opposite. However, some signs – sometimes discreet – can put you in the ear.
There are clear signs such as the charming breakage of the water bag which very often happens in public (“Why is the lady peeing herself?”) and at a totally incongruous moment (“Can you prepare the bill quickly enough please and then, we’ll take the rest of the menu to go instead!) Because coming to the end of a pregnancy is not sporty enough, Mother Nature adds a little joke to end our personal Aaron Man in style. But other signs of childbirth are less known but still invite you to prepare yourself gently but surely for the very soon arrival of mini you.
It’s a matter of days
Your full term, you’ve reached the 37th week of pregnancy, so baby can show up at any time. Some people make a dramatic and unexpected entrance before this time, so stay on your guard. What are the warning signs?
– Very tired. That’s the theory, because we wonder what percentage of women wriggle like a roach with a 9-month-old belly, especially those who give birth in the summer when the mercury exceeds 30°C.
The mucous plug, which has the delicious appearance of a mass of bloody mucus, is located in the cervix. It is an additional protection for the baby because, as its name suggests, it serves as a plug with the outside world. The closer the delivery gets, the more the cervix changes, which can lead to the detachment and evacuation of the mucous plug. The delivery can then occur in the hours, days to come because it is a true sign of the future, even if, for some, it will still be necessary to wait two to three weeks.
“I lost my mucus plug four days before my delivery. I had already been off work for two weeks because I had a growing cervix and regular contractions. I simply went to the bathroom to urinate and when I wiped myself, I noticed a few fine traces of blood on the paper. PANIC ON BOARD! I look in the bottom of the bowl and I see a mass of mucus with blood. Euuuuuuh?! What? I use the two neurons I have left and I come to the conclusion that I am not giving birth or having a miscarriage, that this thing at the bottom of the toilet is neither my baby, nor a piece of him. I calm down. I realize that I don’t feel any pain, nothing in particular, no stronger contractions. I google (Aaaah the poetry of internet searches during pregnancy!) “mucus with blood 9 months pregnant” and I discover what a mucus plug is!
Yes, it is. Now I’m enjoying my postpartum with body fit postpartum shapewear available to me.
