Pre-Labor and Managing a Pregnancy in its Latest Stages

Here’s the next installment from our mother-to-be who will be delivering soon at The BirthPlace at Sinai.

My due date has now come and gone. All this week, I’ve been having a great deal of false labor, which gets my hopes up, but it always goes away. The contractions are more uncomfortable than painful, and sometimes they’re not even uncomfortable. What’s encouraging is that these bouts of false labor have become more of a regular occurrence, which means that my body is preparing for the real thing.

Some medical experts prefer the term “pre-labor” to “false labor.” While it’s true that my contractions periodically cease and don’t result in the immanent delivery of my baby, these contractions are serving the purpose of ripening my cervix, helping it get thinner, softer and opened up. It could even be that because of all the pre-labor I’ve been having, my true labor will be much shorter than it would have been without these early contractions.

Because my due date has passed, my doctor had me schedule an appointment for a modified biophysical profile, which involves a non-stress test and a check of the amniotic fluid index. When I go in on Monday to the Institute of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, they will check the baby’s heart rate to make sure it goes up while she moves. If it doesn’t, it could mean that the placenta is starting to die, so further testing would be needed to see if I’d need to be induced.

They will also check to ensure that the baby is surrounded by enough amniotic fluid. From what I understand, after 36 weeks gestation, the amniotic fluid starts to decrease and does so even more after a baby reaches full term at about 40 weeks. Too little fluid could cause problems such as a compressed umbilical cord, which could deprive the baby of oxygen. Routinely monitoring the amniotic fluid level after 40 weeks (or during a high risk pregnancy), can help doctors take action if needed.

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