Advise on medication- nifedipine!

[Watermelonbaby1]

I will be 38 weeks pregnant on Sunday and have been in and out of hospital because of high blood pressure, protein in urine, migraine etc so they think I may have preeclampsia. They have let me stay at home and given me nifedipine to take twice a day. This has really helped all my symptoms and have felt a lot better this last week. However I’m now reading that nifedipine is also given to people to prevent preterm labour and stop contractions so does this mean that I won’t go into labour naturally?? Anyone been given this medication for high blood pressure and still gone into labour? I will have to take these tablets until I have had my baby but can not stand the thought of going over my due date as I am having regular scans due to bigger baby so already feel like I am 40 weeks pregnant! Please help

No it doesn’t. I took it for the other reason and still had a baby 48 hours later. My understanding is that it’s given in premature labour to reduce contractions once they’ve already started in order to try and buy time so that they can get the 2 doses of steroids into you. It doesn’t actually stop premature labour, but may slow it down, but if the baby is coming it’s going to come anyway. This was all explained to me when I was in early labour, so hope I’ve got this right.

Thanks for your reply, that is a big relief!
They didn’t really explain much to me so had no idea the tablet was given for other reasons as well as blood pressure.
I’m hoping baby will come sooner as he’s on the bigger side according to my scans.