low platelets during pregnancy.

[saraha7x]

Im almost 35 weeks pregnant with my first child. The last few blood tests that I've had have shown that my platelets are going down. They were 128 last week. Do most woman that have low platelets go on to have a normal birth? Am i likely to be induced early if they keep going down, will they try and avoid a c section as much as possible?

[Hellochicken]

I can only tell you my experience, I had gestational thrombocytopenia, which is relatively common (I think 5% pregnancies).

With 2, 3 and 4th pregnancy I got low platelets in 3rd trimester.
I was made to have them checked every week/2 weeks from when it was picked up until labour, every time they gradually creeped down but never went below 90. Which was the cut off they gave me for an epidural.
I am not sure why they kept checking them as they checked again when I went into labour.
There was no mention of C-section. I think the only relevance is that if you have a C-section you cant have a spinal it would have to be a general anaesthetic.
After the delivery I got them checked a few months later and they were back to normal.
They let me go overdue all 3 times. I was induced twice.

[Hellochicken]

I was only induced because I was 12 days over and that was hospital policy.

As long as there is no underlying cause, other than pregnancy. If the cause is something like preeclampsia or problems with liver then it would be completely different.

[PorridgeAgainAbney]

I had low platelets - it went down to 48. However I had a couple of other issues that meant we had to go for c-section: one was that my son was in breech position and they couldn't risk trying to turn him because of the chance of bleeding; secondly I was an older than average first timer so they didn't want me to give birth naturally to breech baby.
They said that planning a c-section is effectively lower risk because they plan for all eventualities and actually having it under general was preferable to local if the count is below 50 (don't know why though). Luckily on the morning of the op my count went up to 54 so I was awake throughout and ended up with minimal blood loss.

Do you have any other factors that they will take into consideration?

[PorridgeAgainAbney]

Oh and I was booked for 39 weeks but I think that was because they didn't want me to go into labour and potentially be atmore risk if there wasn't time to operate.

[saraha7x]

I have been low risk up until this point. So far my baby has been head down the whole time. I am an o- blood group, but i cant see that making much difference. Im 31, so i guess that might class me as an older first time mum