Understanding the normal things that occur at 40-42 Week’s Gestation including 41-Week Postdates Scan (including Dopplers & BPP), CTG (cardiotocogram) fetal traces, Stretch’n’Sweep Vaginal Exams, Induction vs Spontaneous.
Kathy Fray is an award-winning best-selling parenting author, passionate promoter of mothers-to-be accessing empowering maternity education, holistically-minded Midwife, and thought-leader of Integrative Maternity Healthcare information.
Hi everybody. This is Kathy Fray from MotherWise and we're doing another episode today. This webinar or podcast today is particularly talking about when you get to over 40 weeks, and what can you expect to occur over the next couple of weeks, bearing in mind the absolutely normal period of time to have a baby full time is 37-42 weeks.
As soon as we all, when we're pregnant, get to the 40 weeks estimated due date we feel like we're overcooked, and the baby is overdue and the whole thing is taking too long. Of course it's actually not. The average first baby I have read research on is born at 40 weeks and 10 days. I don't know how accurate that is, so it's very very normal to give birth between 40-42 weeks, especially with the first baby. The babies who are just a little bit older often do better, they are more robust and start nursing easier than a younger baby born at 37 weeks.
So what is a normal process? Obviously every hospital, country, and region can have different policies. To give you a real overview, once you get to 40 weeks it certainly gives you permission to try to get your body to go into spontaneous labor because it is great if you can absolutely avoid a post-induction of labor purely because you are post date. And if you are post date I can not at all in good conscience say it's a good thing to be voluntarily agreeing to an induction until you're at least 41 weeks and 6 days. You're not postdate until your 42 weeks, and it's much safer to go into spontaneous labor than being induced before your baby, body, and cervix are ready.
Complications of instrumental deliveries, emergency deliveries, traumatic deliveries, c deliveries, higher hemorrhage rates, etc. Especially by 41 weeks, if your midwife or obstetrician is suggesting that they do a stretch and sweep of your cervix, which is an internal exam where they stretch your cervix and do a sweep the membranes, I'm pro that to be honest. If it's to help you go into labor by doing a stretch and sweep or do an induction, that's a no brainer. It's a very mild intervention that's been used for thousands of years by midwives.
Around 41 weeks it's normal to have a post date ultrasound. Beyond that every 2 or 3 days you would have a CDC and check the baby's heart. That's it. Apart from that it's a sit and wait. I do go into this more in our Essential Basics program, if you'd like to join me there and learn more I'll have the link below.
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