Does the swab detect hind waters?

[Blondie3766]

Hi, so I am 40+3 pregnant and woke up yesterday at 3am with my pyjama shorts feeling a little wet, nothing major though. I went back to bed and when I woke up in the morning they were even more wet but still not soaking. I woke up and put on a clean pair of underwear which I noticed became considerably damp as I went on so I then changed again and put a pad on. The pad didn’t feel very wet but did feel a bit damp and I know that the whole point of the pad is to absorb fluid anyway so I decided to call my midwife team just to ask their advice.

They told me to come in and after 3 hours of waiting, they performed what was similar to a pregnant test where they gave me a swab and tested for the fluid.

However, it came back negative which was disappointing considering I’m overdue. With this information though I went home and thought nothing more of it, I have been having a bit of back pain but i think this is due to baby’s positioning originally being back to back (however midwife told me she is starting to turn) and I have been having quite a bit of pelvic pressure and Braxton hicks but no clear signs of labour yet.

However, when I woke up this morning my pyjama shorts felt considerably more wet than yesterday morning, so I’ve put on a pad to see how it goes. Could the test be wrong?, does the swab detect hind waters leaking as well as fore waters? I just feel like that it’s too much fluid to be discharge and I’m sure it’s not wee. But I don’t want to go back to the hospital and wait another 3 hours just to be sent home again.

Thanks for reading.

Amniotic fluid is amniotic fluid, there's no difference in the composition of it, so yes the swab detects any amniotic fluid.

Update, after a couple days of continuous leaking I went back to the hospital and was checked again and after using a different type of test I was told my waters had actually broken and ended up having to be induced in order to avoid infection, I was told that the swab test was probably unable to detect it at the time as it was more of a trickle than a gush, but a bit of advice - trust your instincts if you think your waters have broken go in and get checked and get a second opinion if need be, because some times the test aren’t always accurate, don’t leave it too long to find out.