Mothers often ask me what their mucus plug will look like. I tell them that it will be mucus-like and may be pink-tinged with blood. In Doulas’ Guide to Birthing Your Way, we defined the mucus plug as: “An accumulation of mucus within the cervix to further protect the baby from infection. Losing it sometimes means labor is close. You can tell you’ve lost your mucus plug if you see something that looks like mucus with strands of pink, red or brown in it.”
A helpful mother send me a photo of her mucus plug, shown below. Yours may vary in amount or color. Many moms near their due dates look for their mucus plugs and wonder when they will see them. It is also normal to not ever see it. The mucus plug can also grow back (or re-accumulate) if labor doesn’t happen within a few days of losing it. I wish I could say that losing your mucus plug meant birth would happen in 16 hours and 25 minutes, but no such luck. Losing your mucus plug is an early indicator of labor, but it can be misleading. It doesn’t definitively tell you when your labor will begin.
The mucus plug from a full-term mother. Her birth was approximately a week later.
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