Meconium stained water
Broken waters but no contractions
Signs of infection with broken waters
Meconium stained water may mean your baby's heart rate needs to be monitored more closely with an
electronic fetal monitor (CTG machine). These monitors are strapped to your pregnant belly and wired to a machine which produces a continuous graph readout of your baby's heart rate and any contraction patterns (if you are having contractions).
Image 3-17 shows a woman being monitored externally with a CTG machine.
If the fluid is only lightly
meconium stained, you may only need a baseline reading for approximately twenty minutes or so. This may be repeated every hour or two while you are in labour, depending on the hospital policy and your caregiver's preferences. If the waters are heavily stained, your baby's heart rate may need to be monitored continuously until the birth.
If you are booked into a birth centre to have your baby, or planning a homebirth, very thick meconium stained fluid often means needing to transfer to the hospital delivery suite so your baby can be monitored. You may wish to read more about this in
monitoring during labour.
Broken waters but no contractions. If your waters break and there are no contractions, what happens next usually depends on the hospital policy and your caregiver's preferences. Some caregivers (and hospitals) require you to go straight to the hospital. They may also prefer that you be
induced within 12 to 48 hours if the labour does not start.
If you are staying in hospital while waiting for labour to start, this can put enormous pressure on you 'to perform'. Being anxious may make it difficult for a woman's body to get into labour naturally (adrenalin is released when feeling anxious which can suppress contractions).
Many caregivers and hospitals are becoming increasingly flexible with the way they manage pregnant women with broken waters.