38 weeks pregnant on Monday 10/29...no signs of labor?

Question

I'm going to be 38 weeks pregnant on monday 10/29 and have had no signs on labor. The baby has dropped and is head down, as of week 36, but I have no symptons of labor yet. Infact I feel great, I have been sleeping great too. Should I start to induce labor through walking or nipple sitmulation or just let time and nature take its cause???

Answer 1

I'm glad you're doing so well and feeling great, especially this late in the pregnancy. For many women it becomes very uncomfortable, almost painful.

Yes, I would advise patience. Baby will come when ready. Many home induction techniques can be dangerous, if not ineffective (if they worked, hospitals would use them intead of pitocin).

As for the nipple stimulation, for that to work you have to do it continuously for HOURS and even then it will almost always just cause Braxton-Hicks contractions, not real labor.

Answer 2

Thats totally normal you can go for long walks and do what ever you want but the baby will come when its ready just enjoy the peace and quite and the sleep. Because soon all thats about to change dont rush.

Good luck

Answer 3

I thnk you most definately should let nature takes it`s course. As i am sure you have heard, the baby will come when it is ready.

If you are really wanting to induce the labour yourself, at least wait until you have hit 40 weeks.

Answer 4

im going thru the same thing. i am 39.5 wks and just feel big and like my baby is running out of room. was checked for dialation on thurs and not dialated at all. due date is nov 1 and i think ill just let the dr decide to induce or not if i go too far over. good luck!

Answer 5

You're 38 weeks! You have two weeks to go. Why try to force it when it isn't even time yet?

Trying to force your body into labor is never a good idea unless it's done for a valid medical concern, and done under the supervision of your physican or midwife. And not only that, home induction methods generally do not work.

Answer 6

I am 40 weeks and 3 days, to be honest nothing has worked for me i have tried walking, hot baths, sex etc and still no sign of labour.

You can defiantly give them ago and hopefully they do more for you than they did for me, overall i think your baby wil come when she is good and ready. Best of luck :)

Answer 7

oh girl, enjoy resting while you can. when that baby comes, you are going to be so tired.
like for me, i was feeling fine until 2 days before my due date. i was feeling sick (vomiting and migraines). so you'll know when its time
i also say if you want to do some walking is fine, but remember to rest
Good luck!!!!!!!!!

Answer 8

Well you do have up to 4 weeks too go do worry it will happen soon

Answer 9

Nothing will work until the baby is ready, until the baby sends certain hormones to you your uterus will not respond to oxytocin and other labour inducing hormones. Nipple stimulation is particularly ineffective which is why it is perfectly safe to nurse during pregnancy.

You are barely, barely term -and there is no guarantee that those dates are right. If you want to walk, walk. If you want to have sex have sex. But PLEASE do not drive yourself nuts, chances are you will go PAST your due date because due dates are calculated using a completely inaccurate formula. (Actually Naegele's rule works perfectly well if you change one small error in his calculation. His theory was that pregnancy lasts 10 lunar months -unfortunately he thought a lunar month is 28 days when it is in fact 29.5 days. So pregnancy is closer to 295 days than 280 days)

http://www.kellymom.com/nursingtwo/articles/bfpregnancy_safety.html#uterus
The well-protected uterus

The specter of breastfeeding-induced preterm labor appears to spring in large part from an incomplete understanding of the interactions between nipple stimulation, oxytocin, and pregnancy.

The first little-known fact is that during pregnancy less oxytocin is released in response to nipple stimulation than when a woman is not pregnant.5

But the key to understanding breastfeeding during pregnancy is the uterus itself. Contrary to popular belief, the uterus is not at the beck and call of oxytocin during the 38 weeks of the “preterm” period. Even a high dose of synthetic oxytocin (Pitocin) is unlikely to trigger labor until a woman is at term.6

Instead, the uterus must actively prepare in order for labor to commence. You could say that there are two separate states of being for the uterus: the quiescent baby-holder and the active baby-birther. These states make all the difference to how the uterus responds to oxytocin, and so, one can surmise, to breastfeeding. While the baby is growing, the uterus is geared to have a muffled response to oxytocin; at term, the body’s preparations for labor transform the uterus in ways that make it respond intensely to oxytocin.

Many discussions of breastfeeding during pregnancy mention “oxytocin receptor sites,” the uterine cells that detect the presence of oxytocin and cause a contraction. These cells are sparse up until 38 weeks, increasing gradually after that time, and increasing 300-fold after labor has begun.6,7 The relative scarcity of oxytocin receptor sites is one of the main lines of defense for keeping the uterus quiescent throughout the entire preterm period—but it is not the only one.

A closer look at the molecular biology of the pregnant uterus reveals yet more lines of defense. In order for oxytocin receptor sites to respond strongly to oxytocin they need the help of special agents called “gap junction proteins”. The absence of these proteins renders the uterus “down-regulated,” relatively insensitive to oxytocin even when the oxytocin receptor site density is high. And natural oxytocin-blockers, most notably progesterone, stand between oxytocin and its receptor site throughout pregnancy. 8,9,10

With the oxytocin receptor sites (1) sparse, (2) down-regulated, and (3) blocked by progesterone and other anti-oxytocin agents, oxytocin alone cannot trigger labor. The uterus is in baby-holding mode, well protected from untimely labor.4



The length of uncomplicated human gestation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=2342739&dopt=Abstract

By retrospective exclusion of gestations with known obstetric complications, maternal diseases, or unreliable menstrual histories, we found that uncomplicated, spontaneous-labor pregnancy in private-care white mothers is longer than Naegele's rule predicts. For primiparas, the median duration of gestation from assumed ovulation to delivery was 274 days, significantly longer than the predicted 266 days (P = .0003). For multiparas, the median duration of pregnancy was 269 days, also significantly longer than the prediction (P = .019). Moreover, the median length of pregnancy in primiparas proved to be significantly longer than that for multiparas (P = .0032). Thus, this study suggests that when estimating a due date for private-care white patients, one should count back 3 months from the first day of the last menses, then add 15 days for primiparas or 10 days for multiparas, instead of using the common algorithm for Naegele's rule.