miscarriage? this is a long post, but please read

[playmate0925]

okay i have a problem, and it's really confusing me. see, me and my boyfriend are sexually active, but we're normally really careful. in december, my period was late, but it came a week or two later. i was previously put on birth control (ortho tri cyclen, to relieve menstrual cramps) but couldn't start taking it until i got my period (so i started taking it when i finally got my period in december) before then, i was seriously thinking i was pregnant because i had several pregnancy symptoms (but i obviously wasn't showing because i couldn't have been more than a month along)

anyway, i was extremely relieved when i got my period.

now here's the confusing part...my period in january was strange. the first day or two were light but i had REALLY bad cramping, and they didn't feel quite like normal menstrual cramps. also it looked more like normal blood and not menstrual blood. then one day there was this...blob thingy, i dunno. it looked like some type of cell tissue, and it was bright red (i'm guessing that's because it was bloody) and there were these little brown things (not blood...definitely not blood) in it. i know this is really gross, but i had to get a q-tip and examine it because, well it worried me. a little more of that stuff passed before my period was over.

i don't know what happened. i keep thinking that maybe i had a miscarriage...and that the tissue (which really did look like a little sac) was the...well you know what i thought it was.

but i figured i couldn't possibly have a miscarriage if i had my period the month before, so i tried to dismiss the whole event.

well now i've noticed some slight bleeding after sex. this sparked my confusion and i once again wondered if it was the result of a miscarriage (because the cervix is sensitive for a while after that and can bleed when it's bumped against)

i'm really sorry this post is so long, but i have to figure out what happened. if it somehow WAS a miscarriage (even though i still can't figure out how that would have happened...yet i can't dismiss the thought), then i don't know if it was a complete one or incomplete...and if it was incomplete, then i would need to go have a d&c done to remove the rest. but i don't know how i would go about doing that, because i'm only 17 and there's no way i could tell my mom. she would be so incredibly disappointed in me, and i really don't want that.

any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated. if you can think of anything else that might have caused either the tissue thing, or the bleeding after sex, please let me know.

thank you in advance.

[The Morrigan]

It's possible it was just shedding tissue, the lining from the uterus - but it's also possible it was an early miscarriage. Pills can also change your period a bit from what you're used to, but if you're bleeding after sex - go see a doc. Even if it wasn't a miscarriage, there's other things that can cause infections of various kinds, and it's always better to be safe than sorry. Get checked out and make sure everything's ok, both for your health and your peace of mind.