Going Into Labor: Water Breaking

Video Transcript

"Another sign that a woman is in labor or about to be in labor is when their water breaks. This is also called ruptured membranes. So about 80-85% of women when their water breaks if they're not in labor already they're going to be in labor within 24 hours. It is possible to have your water break, and not have any signs of labor yet. Every caregiver is different in how they feel about this, but it's best to stay home as long as possible. The things that you have to remember though, is that the concern is infection and low amniotic fluid. So if you're at home as long as your environment is clean, you want to not take baths, you can definitely take showers though. And you don't want to insert anything into the vagina, because that can then introduce bacteria. When you use the bathroom you want to make sure that you're wiping from front to back, and you want to try to keep yourself as clean as possible. The other concern is that there would be low amniotic fluid, our body though keeps making amniotic fluid until you actually give birth. And so the babies head is also blocking the opening, so it's not that all the amniotic fluid has drained out of there, there's still probably quite a bit in there. You just want to make sure you're keeping yourself hydrated and drinking water, and the baby can go for quite a long time without having a ton of amniotic fluid. So you want to look at what the amniotic fluid looks like. Amniotic fluid should be clear, and it should be odorless. If it is mushy looking, if it looks kind of like pea soup, if it's greenish or yellowish, that means that the baby has had their first bowel movement while they were in utero, and that's called passing merconium. If that happens you definitely want to let your caregiver know, because this is a little bit of a concern. What can happen is that the baby then can inhale the merconium, it can get into their lungs and they can have problems breathing. So most likely what will happen is when you give birth, there would be somebody there from the neonatal intensive care unit, if you're in the hospital, that's going to actually suction the merconium out. And make sure that the baby didn't breath any of that in. You want to try to get as little vaginal exams as possible, once your water has broken, because you do not want to introduce bacteria. So fill free at the hospital where ever you're giving birth, to ask for as little vaginal exams as you can get. Most women though, their water is going to break when they're in labor. Seventy-five percent of women's water breaks when they're in active labor. Which means when they're probably around 8-9 centimeters. So most women's water is going to break when they're at the place that they're going to give birth. So there's really not a big concern that your water's just going to break in the middle of the grocery store, or break when you're at home. It's probably going to break where ever you give birth. So one of the things is going to happen when you go into labor is that your water might break before you're actually start having contractions."