Hey there Joel's girl,

I had an IU with my previous two pregnancies, I had my baby 7 weeks ago.

With my second pregnancy, I went into preterm labour at 23 weeks due to a domestic violence situation. They stopped labour, but after this I developed IU. I had regular and strong BH contractions most of the time, I had a 18 month old at the time as well and I had no help, my husband at the time refused to help with anything housework or child related, so doing things obviously made it much worse. At 29 weeks the pain started and I was sent to a major city hospital 2 hours away and they were going to keep me there until I was 36 weeks. I had to discharge myself though as my husband was unsupportive of this and was giving my young son a very hard time at home and the stress of being there was way worse than being at home and taking the risk, if that makes sense. It really was an awful time.

Anyway, despite not resting, having IU and living in a somewhat violent and extremely emotionally abusive situation, I carried my daughter till 42 weeks. I actually think because I felt so threatened, that I went overdue for that reason, I didn't feel safe bringing a baby into the world at that time.

With my most recent pregnancy with a new partner, I also had IU. At 22 weeks I got contractions 3 minutes apart for 4 hours, I left going into hospital for a couple of days when it was apparent that it wasn't going to settle down. they diagnosed IU. I had left work (lawn mowing for a living) at this stage so I just had to be careful about lifing things and doing most housework and have my feet up a lot.

I had BHs really through the whole pregnancy, very often they were regular and I also developed PIH then PE starting at 31 weeks, as well as having this IU. I desperately needed to get to 37 weeks so I was extremely careful till then. I didn't stay bedridden but I didn't do anything strenuous ie lifing, vacuuming, washing, etc. No exercise either.

When my mum got here at 37 weeks and I knew my baby was large, I stopped being careful as it didn't matter too much from then on when I went into labour. Over this time I dilated 3cm without being in labour. This was good because I had developed definate PE over the last week with protein showing up in big numbers and BP went quite high. I went into labour on my due date in the end and gave birth the next day.

So this too was a good outcome for IU. I reckon by far the worst thing that affected me was stress, it definately caused the contrax to get much worse and go regular. Much more so than activity, so if I could give you any advice, it would be to avoid stress as much as possible.

GTG, baby is crying for me, but good luck and big hugs to you, it's frustrating and hard to deal with, but in the long run, most of us go full term. It apparently heightens the risk of PTL only slightly (according to OBs at the hospital).

Take care hun