Decoding this Early Sign of Pre – Cora

How common is implantation bleeding?

As many as one in four pregnant women may experience implantation bleeding. In its run down of pregnancy symptoms, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development cites research that shows 25 percent of pregnant women experience some spotting that is lighter in color than normal menstrual blood and which occurs about six to 12 days after conception. You can’t say for certain that each instance of early bleeding is caused by implantation, but it is a common explanation.

As many as one in four pregnant women may experience implantation bleeding.

Typically, this type of early bleeding is not something to worry about. I spoke to Dr. Emily Harville and Dr. Allen Wilcox, co-authors of a paper on vaginal bleeding in very early pregnancy. In their study, nine percent of women with clinical pregnancies reported bleeding in the first eight weeks of pregnancy. And about 85 percent of these pregnancies continued to a live birth. “These data suggest that a few days of bleeding in early pregnancy is not a rare event, and furthermore that such bleeding has little relevance to the ultimate success of the pregnancy,” they concluded.

As far as the exact timing of this pregnancy symptom, the study found that bleeding tended to occur around the time when women would expect their periods, although rarely on the day of implantation. Dr. Harville, who researches reproductive questions at Tulane University, told me: “We had very specific information on when implantation was occurring, and ‘implantation bleeding’ did not usually occur on the actual day of implantation.” This finding suggests that there may be a delay between implantation and when the bleeding appears, which makes sense since the blood would have to travel through your body. It could also indicate that other causes can explain bleeding in very early pregnancy.