Artificially breaking waters in labour

[digggers]

Is it good practise for a midwife to artificially rupture a mither's waters in childbirth? Under what circumstances might this be necessary?

Thank everyone, I appreciate your stories.

Second time lucky, can you tell me more? Your situation sounds very like the situation I'm thinking about. How far dilated were you? Were you at home or in hosp?

I was 3cm and in hospital. I actually posted on your 'natural birth' thread recently (that was yours wasn't it) about how, to an extent, I blame the care I received for how my labour turned out.

Contractions on Saturday night. Immediately very painful. All in my back. Literally could not sit or lie down during them without being in agony. This was a complete pain as I could barely rest, even though they were only every 10/15 minutes. Soon, I couldn't even sit on the birth ball. Only standing up made the contractions manageable.

Stayed at home all day Sunday. 3 hours sleep on Saturday, none at all Sunday.

Finally went to hospital Monday morning. 3cm. Gutted.

No progress by midday. Wanted to break my waters. I said no.

2pm. Allowed them. Worst decision I could have made. Hardly any contractions for two hours. Wanted to put me on synotcin. Said no. Gave in two hours later. Horrific epidural (couldn't get it in, fountains of blood. I couldn't see. DH mighty quesy!). Had to crank up the drip and, because of the agony of being on my back, I had to keep the eipidural topped up to the absolute max (and still ended up with gas and air too at the end).

Finally, and unsurprisingly, DD became distressed and I had forceps.

They are never coming near me with that fecking crochet hook ever again!

Does that help at all?

I was having a VBAC and my midwife was going off duty so thought she would break my waters because they were busy and she thought it would speed things up. At the time I had only been in labour 2 hours and was 7cm dilated.
It happened without me really understanding what was going on (gas and air) but contractions then got v intense and it took another 2 hours before I was ready to push at which point my blood pressure disapeared into my boots and they lost both my pulse and DS's. Quick forceps delivery and my last memory of my midwife was her complaining that it was such a shame as she usually had such nice delivery's.
DS and I were both fine. I know the BP thing was probably unrelated to ARM but I did feel the whole process was very 'managed' and not really about me and DS, more about managing labour ward.
I've chatted it over with my MW and she said if you are progressing well it's not good practise to rupture membranes.
Sorry, it's a bit of a sore subject for me!
jx

This is all very interesting I am prob facing induction before 40 weeks becuase of concerns over large baby DS was 9lb 12oz. First birth was induced too with one pessary got to 3 cms within 3 hours which I thought was good progress but then the doc comes in and says hes going to break my waters. I of course was completely unaware and naive thought this was just what happens. I went from coping fine with contractions to being in complete agony contract every 2 mins liasting 1 min no let up. Had to have epi then becuase MW wanted to slow things down, it only partially worked and I ended up being in labour for another 12 hours before evntual forceps because he was so big and nobody realised becuase I am quite neat. Really don't want to go through smililar this time but after reading this realise maybe the ARM rather than the pessary which caused the sudden painful contractions, ???