I seem to be obsessed with labour at the moment so here's another silly question.......
What purpose do internals serve?
We've all heard about people who have gone into labour a day after being told that thier cervix is still not dilating.
In labour a cervix can take hours to go from 4cm to 5cm and then suddenly jump to 9 cms really quickly.
Internals aren't very pleasant.

So..... why do they do them?
What sistuations are they nessescary in and when are they just a waste of time. I'm sure that care providers aren't trying to cop a feel unessescarily so why do they do them so often ie if they can't indicate when labour will begin why do so many check the cervix at 40 weeks?

any thoughts.... insights.....