Ladies, please help. Implantation bleeding?

It’s really hard to say. More than 75% of pregnancies result in early termination, usually before the person realizes she was pregnant.

My guess is you are “miscarrying” or there is an off chance you might have an ectopic pregnancy. I think if it was a healthy pregnancy your pregnancy test would have been positive. If you don’t get a full blown period in a few days I would go to the doctor. Most of the time when a woman is late she is “pregnant” (there is a such thing as a little bit pregnant) unless there is a history of very irregular cycles for other physical reasons.

I’ve always heard that home pregnancy tests are very accurate, but are more likely to give a false negative than a false positive. I’d wait another couple of days, and if you don’t have your period, take another test. If at all possible, at least call your doctor’s office on Monday to ask what they would suggest.

I had some implantation bleeding with my first pregnancy, and it sounded like you describe. However, if you actually are pregnant, you could experience some slight bleeding from sexual activity. It’s nothing to worry about, just a side effect from the changes to your body during pregnancy. For the same reason, pregnant women may be more likely to have a nosebleed.

Or, your cycle could just be off and you could be about to get your period. I always feel a bit sick off and on before I start. I know someone who feels like she is getting the flu before she gets her period.

I think if you were going to have a miscarriage, you’d have a lot more bleeding and it would be red, not brown. You might also have cramps, and it would be heavier with clots TMI, sorry. Or, it might just seem like a regular period. Everyone is different, so it’s hard to be sure without a visit to the doctor.

Thank you for your help! I will call my doctor on Monday, in the mean time I’ll update this thread if I have any new information.

If I do have an “early termination” will there be a way to know?

something to think about, blood clots tend to do that to.

I wouldn’t buy another test merely because I’m cheap. :) But if you’d rather take another one, it can’t hurt, right? If you can handle not knowing till you get back from your trip, try not to stress about it too much in the meantime (perhaps don’t smoke or drink just in case?) and make an appointment for as soon as you get back so you’ll know for sure what’s up as soon as possible. If you do get what looks like a period, I don’t think there’d be any real way to know if it’s just that you were late or if it’s an early termination. If you’re extremely regular normally, I’d guess that you’re pregnant.

I’m not sure, but I think blood tests are more sensitive to hormones than are urine tests.

they are amost the same but blood tests can show up early (1day after) unlike the urine (take up to 3weeks after missing the period).

After my first child, while I was still nursing, I thought I was having the first period; it was light. Turned out that it was, in fact, implantation bleeding.
@JLeslie wouldn’t the test still be positive? The body wouldn’t ‘know’ at this point if it was ectopic…?

I think the urine tests are positive at around 20 HCG. I think by the time your period is missed it would be more likely around 80 or so. The blood test would measure the exact HCG. @angels21 is wrong it would never take three weeks after a period for a healthy pregnancy to show in the urine.

If you WANT to be pregnant you might want to get another test, and if it is positive go to the doctor right away and get an HCG and progesterone.

It is so early in the pregnancy, if it is a pregnancy, that if you have a normal miscarriage you will just have what seems like a regular period, maybe slightly heavier.

By the way ectopics usually have little or no cramping and red blood with irritation on one side eventually. It does not sound like an ectopic, but as you know that is a medical emergency eventually so if there can be a pregnancy and things are very out of the ordinary for you, don’t ignore it. @ccrow yes you would get a positive if the pregnancy was growing inside of the tube, but my ectopic my first blood test was so low that they told me, your not pregnant, rather not stay pregnant, there was obvious conception, but it was being chalked up to a chemical pregnancy. I actually was a day late, and I am always right when I am pregnant, I always know. Anyway, it would have never have shown on a urine test a few days after my missed period, the HCG was so low, but it wound up that I developed bleeding with no cramping, not a typical period and my HCG got as high as 1500.

around where i live the ones you can get here are really bad and it takes a long time before you get a right test reading, i think its all in how much money your willing to spend to how fast of a read you will like to have. :)

Oh, one last thing. Although what your describe does sound like implantation bleeding, your timing is off. Implantation would happen around 3–5 days or so after conception I think. So, it should happen before your missed period. But, many pregnancies have weird bleeding. Magrags would be a fantastic person to ask.

The only thing I have to add, which will only confuse things more, is that both my urine and blood tests were negative at first. I was definitely pregnant at the time, according to later tests.

@Supacase Some labs don’t post a positive blood test unless it is >20. So it can be negative and you can be pregnant. Maybe that is what happened?

Two of my girlfriends with children had negative pregnancy tests at first. One of them took TEN tests over two weeks before one came up positive, which is why I felt skeptical about the tests I took.

Another question: if I were pregnant but it was not a viable pregnancy and early termination was inevitable, would the HCG levels be lower / harder to detect?

@JLeslie, the timing of the potential implantation bleeding was something I wondered about. I thought it would have to implant in order to produce the hormone that would fend off my period. So now I am just confused and anxious.

I’ve never experienced implantation bleeding, and I’ve been pregnant quite a few times. I was under the impression it happened closer to when the sperm met the egg..so mid cycle, or right when you’d get your period? Not sure.

I will say, the best pregnancy test have the pink lines..NOT the blue ones. Blue ones are not as strong, higher rates of evap lines (false positives). Get a First Response, and then a blood test on Monday at your doctors.

Edited by me.

@casheroo maybe you meant false negatives? False positives are very rare.

@fluther_alias The HCG levels go higher and higher until they start to go lower. It can happen at any time. In a normal pregnancy they double every 2–3 days approx. So, if you level was 60 on day 1 after a missed period, it would be about 120 two days later. So in the beginning of a normal pregnancy the numbers rise to detectable levels fairly quickly. But if the pregnancy is bad it might only go up 10 points, or level off, or go down. I miscarried once two weeks after a missed period, I had been doubling fine and then I started to bleed and my number stagnated, then we knew I was going to miscarry. You could get up to the hundreds or in the thousands, and never know it if you did not get to the doctor or take a test until the miscarriage was already in full swing. But, I tend to the think the beginning days can be tricky as @Supacase and I have pointed out. I think even doctors get surprised, thinking there was not a viable pregnancy and then a week later being surprised that it was.

Not sure I answered your question? Is it that you want to know if you were pregnant, even if you wind up not pregnant? If you wind up miscarrying and don’t get a blood test sometime soon you would never know. Are your breasts sore at all? I get that symptom right away, but it is more obvious to me because I do not get any breast tenderness with my cycle.

If you have never been late before, and are under the age of 35, and you had sex 15 to 13 days BEFORE your expected period, you probably are “pregnant” I think. Women tend to know.

I just googled implantation bleeding, and now don’t think I ever had it. I had some light spotting when I was about 10 weeks pregnant. Way too late to be implantation bleeding. I think my doctor said it had something to do with the placenta attaching? This was more than 11 years ago, forgive my faulty memory!

Here is a link http://www.americanpregnancy.org/duringpregnancy/hcglevels.html you might be interested in. It does say that sometimes preganncy can be as low as 5 HCG even three weeks from a missed period, but I would think that is extremely rare in a healthy pregnancy.

@JLeslie No, I meant false positives…although they aren’t real since they are evap lines. They happen quickly with the blue lined tests.

@casheroo I have never heard of that. I am not disagreeing with you, just never heard of it. So you mean it appears and then dissapears quickly?

@JLeslie No, it’s sort of like the test knows there’s supposed to be a line there and semi shows it. When you google evaporation line you get TONS of pictures. Of course I see First Response in those pictures lol. But, the first image result is the test I’ve had issues with…the line is usually weird so you know it’s not a true positive.

Well, late tonight I started experiencing stronger cramping than with a normal period, and thick, clotty bleeding. Most signs point to early miscarriage, but I would really like to know for certain.

We weren’t planning a pregnancy, but I would like to know if I could have done something different to avoid miscarriage :(

@fluther_alias Unless you’ve done something drastic to your body, there’s absolutely nothing different you could have done. You may not even have been pregnant. I don’t know how old you are, but I know that in the past couple of years my periods have changed and sometimes I have a “strange” one, but my doctor says everything is fine. I’m 35 by the way.

I would still urge you to check with your doctor. There could be other reasons for the change in your cycle, but even if your doctor believes you are having an early miscarriage it in absolutely no way would be your fault.

Listen to @MissAusten it is not your fault even if it is a miscarriage. They estimate 1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriage, it is extremely common. I think wait to see if your next couple of cycles are normal, if they are whacky also then maybe see a doctor to do some hormone tests. One thing I feel compelled to say…if you are not in the right place in your life to have a baby, don’t let this experience, and your curiousity lead you to take some risks that you might get pregnant when it is not a good time. Not preventing means you are trying. Some people think not preventing means you are leaving it up to fate, but this is nonsense. If you have unprotected sex during ovulation you are likely to get pregnant within a few months.

@JLeslie: thanks for your concern and advice. Just to clarify, my husband and I normally use protection, we just had an accident last month. We are in a stable financial situation and definitely want children in the future. We just planned to have a couple more years alone together. So, I am nervous about the possibility of miscarrying (again?) in the future.

@fluther_alias Nah, don’t worry. If you were pregnant you had a chemical pregnancy, it happens all of the time. If you are in your thirties I would get a move on though. Not because of this event, but just because I tell everyone who is in a stable, happy marriage who wants to have kids not to wait long, you never know what will happen in the future that might affect your fertility.