Your cervix is not a crystal ball đź”®
Checking its dilation is really for your provider, not for you.
Cervical checks are to help your provider decide if things are “taking too long”, and when they should speed up your labor with Pitocin,offer that epidural for the 40th time, or tell you it’s time for a c-section.
Checking the dilation of a woman’s cervix tells you nothing about when their baby will be born - it only tells you how dilated their cervix is at that exact moment.
You could be not dilated at all one minute, and have your baby an hour later. Or you could progress from 1 to 5 centimeters in an hour, and then your labor could “stall”. No two births are the same.
Cervical checks can’t predict the future, but here’s what they CAN DO…
✔️Introduce bacteria into your body, increasing your likelihood of infection
✔️Make you feel inadequate
✔️Decrease your confidence in your body
✔️Increase the likelihood that your provider will suggest interventions
✔️Increase the likelihood that you will agree to interventions because you’re feeling pressured
✔️Increase the likelihood that you will push before your body is ready, based on an outsider’s estimation of what your body should be doing
Did you allow cervical checks during labor?