>When to go to labor & delivery?

<< Return

Doctors will most certainly always tell you to call the doctor or go into Labor and Delivery if you feel more than 4-6 Braxton Hicks per hour. We know, however, that this would keep us coming back to the doctor nearly every day! So IU women struggle with two dilemmas: How can I know if my IU is causing pre-term labor and I should go into the hospital to try to get it stopped?  AND, if I do make it to term, how am I supposed to know “this is it” and real labor has started enough for me to go into the hospital to deliver?  Basically, the following list may help the woman with an IU to determine the answer to both of these questions.

Call your doctor or go into Labor and Delivery if you experience any of the following:

• Your water breaks.  If it breaks before 37 weeks gestation you should call or go in immediately.  If it breaks when you are to term, follow the advice of your doctor (stay at home until contractions are more intense, for instance), keeping in mind that most doctors will not allow women to labor longer than 24 hours after the water breaks, for fear of infection.

• Your contractions change/get more intense.  This is a muddy description, we know, but some of our members reported they knew there was no more “holding back” in their labor because their contractions changed in severity or type of pain and/or never let up after several hours when they were used to the contractions mellowing after a certain period of time.

• You have constant intense pain. 

• You have a sense “something is wrong,” such as your baby isn’t moving much, you get a bad headache or suddenly put on a lot of weight.

• If you were on medication and have gone off it recently and the contractions suddenly pick up in intensity and get closer together (many, but not all, IU women who have been on meds report that they give birth within 24 hours of going “cold turkey”)

A final tip would be to read up on the birth stories from other IU women.  Their stories may help you to distinguish how to know when it will be “your time.”

Remember, the person who knows your body the most is YOU!  Don’t be afraid to go into L&D too often. Any good doctor would agree that they would rather have you be too cautious than ignore something important.