How do you know if your placenta is failing?

[atvh]

I’m 38 weeks gone and am having major anxiety towards the end of my pregnancy. I’ve been reading about how placentas can start to fail towards the end of pregnancy, leading to reduced oxygen for the baby.

How do you know if your placenta is failing and would an ultrasound pick it up? I had one yesterday and the consultant said everything looked fine, although I don’t know if he was specifically checking for that.

Does anyone know?

It’s normally that the baby stops growing according to expected centiles. If everything was as it should be on the scan then it really is just your anxiety talking. I assume the baby is still moving as nornal?

Yes, the baby is moving - I’ve felt some movements this morning. The baby has also had a recent growth spurt according to my scans and size is in the higher percentiles.

Are you an older mum? With my last DC I was 40 (2 weeks away from 41) and it was agreed from the early stages of the pregnancy to be induced at 39 weeks as there was a slightly increased risk of the placenta degrading at the end of the pregnancy.

I never showed any sign of it. It was a text book pregnancy. But my anxiety was high due to countless miscarriages so we erred on the side of caution. My son was born the morning after my sweep and everything was perfect.

Yes, I’m an older mum - almost 40 years old. I’m also due to be induced at 39 weeks and only have five more days to go. These last few days of pregnancy have really heightened my anxiety for some reason. I can’t help feeling that something is going to go wrong, even though I had an ultrasound only yesterday.

I wish I could be hooked up permanently to an ultrasound until the induction begins!

My placenta started to fail at about 34 weeks. It was picked up at a 36 week scan because my baby had not grown between the two scans. However on the ultrasound they were also checking the blood flow from the placenta which was ok. I was induced at 37 weeks and gave birth to a small but absolutely perfect and healthy baby.

Given how close you are to the end I would say you will be absolutely fine. Even when they noticed my placenta was starting to fail they were still happy to let me go another 10 days before inducing me.

The key thing right now is to keep an eye on movements.

They can do Doppler scans to monitor the blood flow through the cord of the placenta, however, as baby has been growing well it sounds like the placenta is doing a good job. My DC stopped growing for a period and I had to have these scans, but they could tell the placenta and cord were working efficiently, so I wasn’t induced.

I hope the next few days pass quickly for you

OP I understand totally but you only have five says to go. The movements should stay consistent. If they start really ramping up or slowing down then contact the hospital again and hopefully you can go in to be monitored.

My bump stopped getting bigger and they picked up my placenta failing on growth scan, had probably been failing for a couple of weeks, baby had dropped from 85th to 3rd centiles. I then had two days of steroids and they sectioned him out. Small but perfect! Apart from some other reasons it doesn't just fail all of a sudden so if you've had an ultrasound, babes nicely on the centiles and you only have 5 days to go I think you can be really reassured. Congratulations on your imminent arrival.

Thank you everyone - your replies have really helped