Obstetricians recommend keeping babies in the womb up to 39 weeks if possible. Because the lungs of the babies are fully developed in the 39th week, they are ready for birth.
Obstetricians and Gynecologists state that they can answer the question of how many weeks the baby should stay in the womb by checking whether the baby has completed its lung development.
After the 34th week, experts say, especially in the presence of various risk factors for the mother or the baby in the mother's womb, "When we need to answer the question whether the baby is safer inside or outside, we can take fluid from the mother with amniocentesis accompanied by ultrasonography and test whether the baby's lungs have developed."
Lung Development
Emphasizing that in cases where the continuation of the pregnancy may be risky, if the baby's lungs are developed, they decide to deliver, and if the lungs are not developed, they decide to keep the baby in the womb more.
If we divide the mothers who received fluids from the mother after the 34th week of pregnancy and found insufficient lung development of the fetus into two groups:
If we give steroid medicine to the mothers for the development of the lungs of the babies in the first group, but not the other group.
Let's do amniocentesis again a week later. Finally, we see that the babies of mothers given steroids have a much faster lung development.
In pregnancies between 24-34 weeks, in fact, in those with a risk of preterm birth within 5.5 to 8 months, steroid administration is standardized and we know that this practice reduces the risk of death for babies.