Warning, I'm afraidI am going to go into some fairly graphic and unpleasant medical detail as I don't think this will make sense otherwise.
Hi, this is an extremely specific problem and I'd be surprised if anyone on here has had a similar experience but any support or advice would be very gratefully received, thanks.
So, I'm about twelve weeks pregnant with my first baby. Thank god, everything seems to have been going ok so far, only very mild pregnancy symptoms and my pre-existing medical conditions have remained under control. The one thing I've been suffering from since early in pregnancy is chronic constipation. I've been prone to constipation in the past but the combination of pregnancy hormones, the Cyclogest pessaries I've been taking as well as iron pills seems to have caused a perfect storm that has led to some appalling constipation. My recent bout of constipation left me with an external hemorrhoid. It was extremely itchy and oddly shaped and was particularly uncomfortable when I sat down, annoying but hardly a medical emergency so I just thought I'd let it subside on its own.
The problem arose on Thursday night. I need to mention that I'm completely blind as this is relevant to what happened next. I've long been anxious since, while I would notice heavy bleeding, I could easily be unaware of light spotting on my knickers or toilet paper. Fortunately, my wonderful husband has been good about reporting if he notices any traces of blood in the toilet, bed sheets etc. and, so far, so good and he hadn't seen anything. On Thursday night I came out of the shower and sat on the edge of the bed for a bit, I wasn't wearing any knickers. When I stood up my husband told me that there were a couple of small smears of red blood on the bed sheets. I immediately went into a panic and went straight to the bathroom, wiped my vagina and showed the paper to my husband. He said he could see a tiny drop of blood on the paper but it then occurred to me that I had read that hemorrhoids could bleed so I wiped my bottom and there was definitely more blood coming from there. I've been wearing pads since and been showing them and toilet paper to my husband and he's not noticed any more blood coming from my vagina so I really think it's safe to assume the blood on the sheets came from my hemorrhoid. I wasn't aware that they could bleed when you weren't using the toilet but apparently they can bleed when you are just sitting down, especially if they are itching or irritated which mine was. Since the bleed the hemorrhoid seems to have got smaller and less irritating which supports the view that it was the source of the blood.
I guess what I really wanted to know is if anyone on here has an experience of hemorrhoids bleeding in pregnancy and if anyone has noticed that a very small amount of blood from the bleeding hemorrhoid ever showed up when wiping your vagina since I realise it may be possible for it to spread from it's original source as it isn't far. I spoke to the early pregnancy unit and they think that it's most likely hemorrhoid bleeding if I haven't had any more signs of vaginal bleeding since and also no cramps or other concerning symptoms. I'm probably just over-thinking this but that drop of blood from when I first wiped my vagina following the discovery of the blood on the bed sheets is troubling me. I've got my next scan in just over a week and I need to calm myself down in the meantime as I'm sure I must be driving my husband mad, even though he doesn't complain as he's very patient! Thanks for your help and apologies for TMI!