Internal Exam and Mucous Plug

[Mizelenius]

(1) Can an internal exam make you lose your mucous plug?
(2) If so, since it didn't happen naturally, does it "work" the same way . . .in that labor will (according to the statistics) start within 2 weeks?

Yeah, ha, ha, I'm trying to answer the elusive question of WHEN. I don't even care if it's soon, I just wanna know WHEN. :LOL

I'm not even sure if it WAS my mucous plug . . .had the exam in the afternoon yesterday and out came a big clot in the evening. Today (more than 24 hours ago) I still have some blood-tinged mucous.

[stafl]

I don't know about the internal exam causing it.

With DD1 I started losing bits of my mucous plug a long time, like at least a month, before my water broke (can't say when she would have been born if it weren't for the failed induction and cesarean). With DD2 I lost my plug in one huge glob, and she was born the next evening, about 36 hours later. I have always been told that blood in it is a sign that you're dilating, though.

sorry, it's still a guessing game!
But you are getting close.

[wasabi]

I've actually never heard a statistic about labor starting within two weeks of losing it. I've always heard that it means little to nothing about when labor will start since it's even possible to lose your plug and have it reform. I have known women who lost their plug and went into labor more or less immediately and those who had the baby six weeks later. I only know for sure that I lost my plug with my first baby. It was this massive yucky looking thing that stretched almost to my knee when I stood up in the bathtub. It had a thin cord of blood and looked like something that had been in me for 9 months. Sorry if TMI! I was in labor the next night irrc. Never lost it with #2 that I noticed. With number three a few days before I went into labor I had increased CM with a bloody tinge that may or may not have been a plug. I try not to analyze my CM too much right now but it's hard to resist. :LOL I have heard that yes you can lose it or part of it after a rough cervical check but in that case in particular I really wouldn't count on it meaning anything. Hang in there!

[Mizelenius]

Wasabi, I used the word "statistic" improperly . . .it's really just what I read in Sears' book :LOL about women going into labor within the next day or up to two weeks later after losing the plug! (That's all I was going by!)

Anyway, thank you to you and stafl for the responses. Before the exam (when I assumed I wasn't dialated, which it turns out I am) I just couldn't imagine going into labor anytime soon. Once I found out things were happening, I started wondering WHEN (but still didn't want it soon). Now I'm back to , so I feel much better about just waiting and not wondering!