Hello, everyone, welcome back to parently. Today we're talking about an interesting topic, your mucus plug. The one of the things that we hear frequently as obstetrical care providers as I lost my mucus plug. Now, before you call your healthcare provider, I would encourage you to go find your mucus plug. And then when you call them, you can say, Doctor, I lost my mucus plug, but I found it. Now, I know you're thinking, I'm crazy when I say that, and I am at that point, I don't encourage you to find it.

So what to do when you lose your mucus plug, is that a concern? So first of all, it's, it's important to understand that the mucus plug is there for protection of your baby mucus, just like snot from your nose is implanted or grows in the cervix. during your pregnancy, and it's there for one singular purpose, it prevents or decreases the chance that the bacteria that live in the vagina and the rectum, don't migrate up into the uterus. And in fact, your baby, we know that bacteria that implants itself onto the membranes around the baby called your bag of waters can weaken your bag of waters. And that can cause you to rupture your membranes early, which would potentially increase the chance that you would deliver early. So that mucus plug is extremely important.

Toward the end of your pregnancy. Usually, it's after you're 37 or 38. Week, that mucus plug will come out come into the vagina, and you may notice it on your underwear. If that happens, that's a normal finding. Now, nothing to be alarmed about. Nothing to be concerned about.

But the question everybody has is is my labor go To start now that my mucus plug has been passed, the answer is no. There's no correlation between when I lose my mucus plug, and if I go into labor. So if you if you lose your mucus plug today, maybe you'll go into labor tomorrow, maybe not. Maybe you'll go into labor in several days, maybe not. Maybe you'll go into labor and a week or two, maybe not. So although it's a preparatory type phase and late pregnancy, there's no correlation between labor onset and loss of mucus plug.

I hope this was helpful.