Phone call from midwife saying my urine sample was contaminated with skin cells ?

[Loudloopy]

I got a phone call from my midwife today (I'm 11 weeks pregnant) saying my urine sample was contaminated with skin cells, she said it's nothing to worry about but I'm panicking.
What does this mean
😭😭😭

Did u pee in a sample container or in something else?

Did you accidentally touch the container against your skin as you were peeing?

There is absolutely nothing to panic about. She’s not insinuating that your urine actually contained skin cells.

Did the midwife actually say “skin cells”? I’ve never known that to be found from a basic urine dip test.

I'd say it just means the sample was contaminated by skin from your fingers for example. Did you brush the container out with your fingers first or something?

Really nothing to worry about. It's your own skin cells. Usually happens when you don't take the sample properly!

For a midstream sample, you normally pee a little into toilet then catch the middle bit then the rest into the toilet. If you didn't do this or you touched the pot onto your skin or genitals, that's how it gets contaminated! Don't panic! There's nothing wrong with you or baby!

It's very common for urine samples to be contaminated with the patient's genital epithelial (skin cells), especially pregnant women.

The best way to get a urine sample is to pee a bit into the loo (this first bit is likely to be contaminated by cells and/or bacteria from the vulva), then catch the next bit of urine in the sample pot (this is the 'mid stream urine'), then finish in the loo.

The mid stream urine is less likely to be contaminated, so any cells and bacteria in it are probably from within the bladder, not the vulva.

Your previous test is not valid. You just need to provide another sample, don't panic!

The midwife won't have detected skin cells with the dip test haworthia, the sample would have been sent to the labs and the biomedical scientists would have looked down their microscope (or used a cell counting instrument).

Well, I figured a more detailed test would be needed to detect skin cells MissWilmottsGhost, but I’ve never had anything other than a urine dip test during two pregnancies. Unless of course the OP was suffering from a UTI?

Bladders are constantly shedding their lining. So it’s normal to have low levels of epithelial cells. Higher levels could be due to it not being a mid stream sample or could indicate a UTi.