what could it be?

Hey, Crazy Brunette,

At EmpowHER, we are all about women knowing their bodies and being their own best advocates. We know that so many times, a woman is intuitive about something going on in her body before the doctors figure it out!!

Even though this period is different and brown, it still seems that it might be your period. But I think if I were you, I would take one other pregnancy test just to be sure. If it was negative again, I would probably wait another month to see what my next period is like. If I had two in a row that seemed irregular or abnormal to me, I would make an appointment with my gynecologist to see what might be the explanation.

Do you know the exact date of your last menstrual period? I'm trying to get an idea now of just how many days it's been since your last "normal" period.

Hi, Crazy Brunette,

The brown blood that you are bleeding, is it more like spotting or is it the amount of blood you normally would have during a period, just not the right color?

If the condoms broke about two weeks after your last period, you indeed might have been ovulating then and could have gotten pregnant. That's about the middle of your cycle. However, and this is a big however, there are all kinds of things that affect our cycles. Just the stress you've been feeling over this is enough to make you go late, did you know that? Extreme stress can affect our hormones enough to do that.

I'm glad you took the pregnancy tests and that they were negative. Right now I wouldn't worry about the fact that the blood seems to be brown. Brown blood is simply older blood. Have you been having cramps? Have you ever been diagnosed with endometriosis? That tissue can sometimes slough off and appear brown in our period. For some women, they have implantation bleeding, but it tends to be just more like spotting for a day or maybe two.

It's been a couple days since you last wrote. Any new developments?

they broke both in a week, I think two weeks after my last period. after driving myself crazy reading articles online I took one last night and this morning and they were both negative. I am still bleeding brown blood and just have the feelin that the isn't a regular period.

Hi, Crazy Brunette,

Welcome to EmpowHER! Sorry that you're having such stress over this situation.

If you always have your period the last week of the month, then that means you probably usually ovulate right around the 13th-15th of the month. Do you know which dates the condoms broke?

Sperm can live inside the body for up to 3 days, so our fertile period begins about 3 days before we ovulate. Our egg can be fertile for 24-36 hours, so our fertile period doesn't end until about 2 days after we ovulate. That can be a fertility window of about five days. If you had the condom break during about the 12th to 17th days of your cycle, you may have ovulated during that time -- and that's when you might have become pregnant, if you are.

In terms of home pregnancy tests, most of them are accurate about as soon as you miss your period. Did you wait that long to take the test?