discharge vs. water breaking?

ilovelife

I know I have a few more weeks until I belong over here, but I just had one quick nasty little question. How can you tell the difference bw your water breaking and just discharge? Earlier today, I had wet undies, wet enough where I needed to change them, but it smelled like regular discharge and the baby has been moving a lot, so I'm really not worried.

TIA!

KSEDmini

If your water has broken, you will feel the fluid run down your leg. It won't just sit in your underware like discharge does.

mkanderson85

My mom told me that there is no way that I would not be able to distinguish between the two.  She said that when your water breaks, it feels like a wet gush of fluid rather than just some discharge.

ilovelife

ok thanks so much! I think I'm just scared bc my dr. told me on Wednesday that in reality, my water could break at any time.

ctgrl

If your water broke it would comtinue "leaking" to the point that it would wet your underwear and pants/skirt.  Plus if you laid down or sat down for a while then stood up you may get a small gush.

sacey21

i was told to put on a pad and lay down for a 1/2 hour. if there was a small gush (from the fluid collecting while laying down) then it was more than likely my water breaking. If there was nothing much there, then discharge.

It cannot hurt to ask your doctor if you are worried, but if it hasn't continued to wet your underwear I wouldn't be too worried!

G/L 

04TerpBride

I had trouble figuring this out with my first.  As the MP starts coming out, it can be accompannied by a ton of watery discharge, to the point of needing to change your liner and underwear like you said.  First time this happened I went to the hospital for a check because I thought my water was leaking.  If it was leaking you would keep noticing the wetness.  MP will just come and go in terms of noticing it down there.

CoastieWife08

Take off everything from the waist down.  If after walking around, sitting and standing up, you have fluid dripping down your legs, it's probably fluid.

Ginnovan

With my first, I was sitting on the toilet and I could actually hear/feel my water pop! I stood up and the water just ran down my legs. The carpet was soaked! You will def know the difference.  :-)

dmerk

Sorry, I'm just lurking over here but I thought that I would chime in.  My water broke at 25 weeks and some change and I had no idea that it had broken.  I had some bleeding but the only way that they (the doctors) and I knew my water had broken was with an ultrasound.  Sometimes you can spring a leak and it's not necessarily a big gush.  It sounds like you have discharge though!

ColieJ

dmerk:

Sorry, I'm just lurking over here but I thought that I would chime in.  My water broke at 25 weeks and some change and I had no idea that it had broken.  I had some bleeding but the only way that they (the doctors) and I knew my water had broken was with an ultrasound.  Sometimes you can spring a leak and it's not necessarily a big gush.  It sounds like you have discharge though!

this! While most people will gush as others described, that isn't always the case as you can leak from a small tear instead of it actually breaking!