My friend is 30wks preggo.. She had to go the hospital the other night with bad contractions.. Well they think she has bacteria in her urinary tract... Can that cause premature contractions?? They checked her and she was 20-30% effaced and 1cm dilated.. That is bad right???????

Please help me understand.. Msg me privately if needed

Do you want the thread moved to the OB/Gyn forum???

UTI's can cause preemie labor...they may put her on bedrest and antibiotics.

Gwen.. You can... :) That will be fine..

Can she make it to term still and NOT be on bed rest..... She is in her final semester of nursing school with me and is Due on Dec 21st and our pinning is the 12th, but Im scared she won't make it..

Is this her first? Not uncommon to efface and dialte like that in a subsequent pg.

The UTI can cause contractions, but I would think if she wasn't contracting and was only that dialed and efffaced she wouldn't need bedrest.

Yeah, I think this needs to go to OB/GYN.

Moved.

This does not spell doom for her. Like said above, a UTI can EASILY cause pre-term labor and uterine irritiblity. In the future, she can avoid this by doing a few simple things.

First, she needs to up her water intake, if she can. It's not too much to drink 2 liters a day, or more if there are no medical reasons why not. Tell her to CUT CAFFEINE...not only a diuretic, it can also lead to irribility, especially in the muscles lining her bladder. She can try consuming yogurt (with active cultures), acidophilus milk, or supplements. These aid by keeping "good" bacteria counts UP and pathogenic ones DOWN. '

Chances are, she has been told not to have sex, but---- If she is having sex, she needs to empty her bladder ASAP afterward. This is another way to keep bacteria counts low. She needs to be emptying her bladder OFTEN anyhow....at least every 2 hours. Having an overfull bladder can also cause uterine contractions to occur. I would really recommend avoiding sex if she is a preterm labor patient, cause the prostaglandins in sperm can actually initiate labor. If she is not sure, she should avoid it and call her provider.

Her cervical thinning and dilation don't necessarily spell trouble. I see women FAR more dilated who go over term. Often, especially with first babies, this happens. The biggest predictor of whether she is in trouble is if her CERVIX CHANGES while she contracts. Tell her to keep a count of contractions. ANY MORE THAN 4-6 an hour, she needs to lay down and drink a liter of water and rest. If they persist or get worse, she needs to be on the phone w/her doctor or midwife about it.

I hope all goes ok for this gal. Any more questions feel free to ask. Best wishes!

Thanks... She was at clinicals yesterday and is doing better. Her midwife said the Rocephin should take care of any infection and she should be fine...

So hopefully so.... :) Thanks for all your info

Here is some related research that may be of interest.

Urinary tract infections 'protect' against stillbirth

10:28 14 November 02

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

Urinary tract infections in pregnant women reduce the risk of an unexplained stillbirth, rather than increasing it. This surprising discovery might even lead to ways of preventing some inexplicable stillbirths.

Stillbirths due to unknown causes claim more babies than cot deaths (sudden infant death syndrome), yet very little is known about them. Obesity, smoking, poor education and older age in the mother are known risk factors.

So when Frederik Frøen and his colleagues at the University of Oslo in Norway looked at 241 stillbirths and 582 controls, they expected women in poor health or with complications during pregnancy would be at the greatest risk.

But instead they found that women whose urinary tracts were infected by bacteria during pregnancy were 70 per cent less likely to have an unexplained stillbirth. "That was really quite surprising," says Frøen. "If anything, it was the opposite of what we were expecting. It's against everything that you can find in any textbook."

But not everyone is convinced. "It is a little simplistic to say that urinary tract infection is protective," says Ruth Fretts, an expert on unexplained stillbirths at the Harvard Medical School.

Fetal protection

The researchers are not suggesting that this beneficial effect outweighs the other consequences of urinary tract infections, which can restrict fetal growth.

What it does suggest, says Frøen, is that the antibodies a mother produces in response to the urinary infection might be protecting the fetus from infection with the same bacteria, which can reaching the uterus through the lady parts.

Both kinds of infection can be caused by a mother's gut bacteria. So some unexplained stillbirths might be due to low-level bacterial infection in the fetus, undetectable at autopsy.

Other evidence also supports the infection theory. Intrauterine infections have been implicated in fetal brain damage, and could play a role in cot deaths as well.

In 1999, David Drucker of the University of Manchester found that injecting blood from infants who had died of SIDS into chick embryos killed them, suggesting that the blood carried a toxin. But the same blood did not kill the chicks when mixed with antibodies against the suspected toxin.

It is still only a hypothesis, however, says Frøen. "Of course, we cannot suggest that high-risk mothers should be given [antibodies] to protect the fetus based on this study alone." But he and his colleague have now started looking for bacterial toxins in the amniotic fluid of unexplained stillbirths, as well as for ways to neutralise them.

Anil Ananthaswamy

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993051

THAT is very interesting! I'd like to see what they turn up with after lengthy research, but it sort of follows the whole cocaine-makes-the-lungs stronger line of thought.

(Though, as a caveat to any of you reading this and getting bright ideas who are NOT nurses and do NOT know lickety-squat about fetal development, it turns your babies into jittery, hypertonic, screaming little animals and ruins their neuro system! Don't do drugs. Peace out.)

SBEyes said all I would have said....

Bladder infections and dehydration are the two most COMMON causes of preterm labor. 1 cm and 20-30% is like nothing at all. I wouldn't be worried about that. Tell her to drink lots of water every day, until her uring is as clear as water. Then she'll probably be keeping herself hydrated enough.