If by chance you get to the hospital and your water hasn't broken yet, many women are asked at one point or another if they'd like to have it broken.
You'll probably shrug and have them do whatever they'd like unless you know why.
If you labor without that sack of water surrounding your little one, things will go much more quickly. You baby's head is able to sit more thoroughly upon your cervix; that pressure is what gets it to open up.
But it will also be significantly more painful. Your body will need to stretch out much more quickly to accomadate that little person, and it will do so without that super soft cushion of amniotic fluid.
So if you get asked, "Would you like us to break your water?" You have to decide if you'd rather ease your way through that last leg of the marathon, or if you'd like body-busting sprint to the finish. How ready are you to be done with it all?
Oh man! My water broke right at the beginning (before I was even feeling many contractions at all) and it was a LONG road to the end. I was in labor for 11 hours after it broke (which felt like an eternity, since like you said, it becomes more painful after its broken.) So I don't know what I would do in the future. I can't imagine that it would've been more drawn out than it was.
ReplyDeleteDani ... eleven hours is FAST for your first! Your body's never done it before, so your first rodeo is destined to take forever. If I start counting how long labor was from when the contractions started to really bother me, I labored with him for 34 hours. With Belen, it was 9. My water broke at the very end with both of them. But I didn't have any drugs, so I can't say that it was easy, but I would imagine it was easier to handle than it would've been with my water breaking first.
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