Vaginal Discharge During Pregnancy
Although disturbing and unpleasant, vaginal discharge during pregnancy is a normal manifestation of your body as long as it’s odorless and has a milky consistency, just like before your regular periods. The only difference is that during the gestational period this discharge increases in volume so if you’re attentive enough, you can detect a pregnancy even before experiencing more noticeable symptoms.
The normal vaginal discharge is called leukorrhea and has the role of protecting the egg after being released from the ovary. Old cells from the vaginal walls, cervical secretions and friendly bacterial flora leaving normally inside the vagina compose this mucus which is constantly eliminated during ovulation.
However, in early pregnancy, these secretions fill the cervical canal in order to create a protective barrier for the just-fertilized egg. This slippery mucus plug is eventually expelled as an egg like discharge during pregnancy, yellowish discharge, in a gelatinous glob or tinged with blood.
Although unpleasant for you, vaginal discharge during pregnancy can’t really be avoided or stopped. Still, you can keep your genital area clean by using panty liners to absorb the mucus. Tampons are completely not recommended during pregnancy so avoid using them and keep in mind that douching is not healthy either as it can alter the vaginal flora, increasing the risk of infections.
So all you can do is wear cotton underwear, avoid tight pants, stay away from scented hygiene products, sprays and avoid using colored and scented toilet paper or pads. These preventive measures are absolutely necessary for protecting your baby’s health and keeping vaginal infections away. And speaking of infections, read on to see how you can recognize them based on changes in mucus’ aspect and consistency!
Signs of abnormal vaginal discharge during pregnancy
All the hormonal fluctuations appearing in pregnant women can weaken the immune system, favoring the occurrence of infectious processes. Also, your diet during pregnancy,unhealthy eating habits and sedentariness during the gestational period increase the risk of developing such health issues. The easiest way to recognize them is to pay attention to any change in the aspect of cervical mucus.
Yellowish or green mucus, with bad odor and causing irritation and itching in your genital areas is most probably a sign of infection, responsible for these symptoms being a bacterium called Candida albicans. This condition needs immediate care so once noticing it you should contact your doctor to be prescribed a proper treatment.
If you just had your first baby, you may be surprised to see the increased discharge of vaginal mucus continues for 4-6 weeks. Again, as stressful as it is, this symptom is normal and signals the fact that your uterus gets back to its previous shape.
Lochia is different from the vaginal discharge during pregnancy: it’s red, pink or sometimes brown in color, this aspect coming from the blood and pregnancy tissues that still have to be eliminated from the uterus. 7-8 weeks after birth the cervical mucus becomes yellowish or white, odorless and less abundant, just as it was before pregnancy.
If you’re curious to learn more about the vaginal discharge during pregnancy and see what other manifestations could signal the baby’s presence inside your womb, make sure to read our other interesting articles on the pregnancy month by month symptoms, pregnancy months, pregnancy week by week, baby growth during pregnancy, Weight gain during pregnancy and trimesters of pregnancy