My baby daughter (heh) is currently in hospital after rupturing her membranes at 36 weeks. The traditional practice is to induce labour if it hasn’t occured spontaneously after 24hrs or so, but the hospital has asked her to be part of an international study where she is bunged on antibiotics and her vitals monitored in an attempt to bring her closer to term before she gives birth.
Basically, it’s an attempt to quantify the benefits of giving birth earlier/later vs the disadvantages of lower birthweight/gestational development/and possible infection etc. It’s always good to help advance medical practices, and I harangued the research Dr mercilessly, but I’d still like to hear Doper experiences.
Have you had a delay between ‘breaking your waters’ and the onset of labour? How long were you allowed to go? Have you or your baby suffered any consequences of the decisions you made? You get my drift, yes?
My membranes ruptured prematurely at 33 weeks and 4 days.
I didn’t spontaneously go into labour. The medical protocol where I live is to wait 24 hours then induce labour if it hasn’t started. My experience didn’t go that way.
I was admitted into the hospital at around 11:00 p.m. on Sunday. They gave me steroids (to mature the baby’s lungs) and started me on IV antibiotics to ward off infection. The plan was to induce me late Monday night/early Tuesday morning. However, the induction had to be delayed because there were no labour and delivery rooms available for me and/ or no NICU beds available for my daughter. I was finally induced late Wednesday late and my daughter was born early Thursday morning.
Although it was extremely stressful lying in a hospital bed waiting to be induced (especially since the nurses and doctors seemed to be getting increasingly anxious at the possibility of infection), it all turned out fine. My daughter was small at 34 weeks (4 pounds plus a hair), but she had no other health issues. It was probably for the best that I had to wait a few days, as her lungs had the opportunity to mature a bit before she was born. It might be different for your daughter, though. 36 weeks is nearly full term (37 weeks is considered full term), and I suspect the risk of infection might outweigh the benefits of a few extra days in utero. I’m not a doctor, though.
I had a bit of a longish wait. However, my membranes didn’t rupture so much as spring a slow leak, so no one is really sure exactly when that happened. It was probably just shy of four days before the kiddo was born. His only problem was the ton of meconium he aspirated. But your daughter is probably looking at a longer wait if she’s just 36 weeks. Good luck, and congratulations!