A Hard Look at “Natural” Induction Techniques
So you’ve read my thoughts on letting your baby choose it’s birthday instead of manipulating labor. You’ve relaxed and enjoyed life but now you’re a few days past week 41 and you know the rules don’t allow Texas midwives to attend a birth of a woman past 42 weeks and zero days without seeing an OB for permission to stay pregnant. So what can you do to avoid transferring to the hospital for your birth?
Relax as much as you can. Stress hormones are the kryptonite to labor hormones. As best as you can, allow yourself only a few minutes a day to freak out. Then come back to trusting your body and the process. There are some tricks that work and many that don’t. The fastest way to find out what doesn’t work is to ask on facebook for tips. When I see these posts I just want to pull my hair out. Please don’t ask facebook for midwifery advice-ask your midwife!
Here’s what you’ll see and why it doesn’t work:
-Walking If walking worked, we’d have women on bedrest their whole pregnancies. Think of the science-if babies start labor with their signals, pray tell how does you moving your legs to walk briskly do anything at all? It doesn’t if you don’t have any contractions! What it will do is wear you out before labor has even started. How many times I’ve seen a mom walk and walk all day in order to bring on labor. She goes into labor that night (which she would have anyway) and got one hour of sleep, sore legs and she’s zapped of energy and can’t endure labor without paid medication. This is an unwise choice if you have no contractions. If you have sporadic contractions, it might intensify them. However, most of the time if you have sporadic contractions, rest is your priority since if labor is starting in earnest, you’ll need endurance. Don’t waste it on long walks.
-Bouncing on a birth/yoga ball. This doesn’t work any more than walking does to initiate contractions. It is excellent for your body, your posture, and in helping baby get/stay in a good position but does nothing to start labor.
-Red Raspberry Leaf Tea-this is a great uterine tonic and highly recommended but just for general uterine tone. It doesn’t nothing to bring on labor.
-Eating Spicy Foods-we think it’s a hormonal signal baby’s body throws out. Spice doesn’t affect baby’s hormones.
-Riding down a bumpy road-nope not this either.
-Sex-Maybe! The prostaglandins in semen and the contractions from mom’s orgasm may help. It’s best not to get your hopes up.
-Nipple stimulation-Maybe! The oxytocin released by using your breast pump or having your partner/you stimulate your nipples may push you over the labor brink. The risk here is that some moms might over do it and no one is monitoring how baby’s tolerating the contractions. For this reason, I recommend only 15 mins of stimulation in any one hour period.
-Castor oil-maybe but eeww. When castor oil works, its often because it stimulated the bowels which are close enough to the uterus that the uterus decides to contract. If you’re bowels are that stimulated, you likely have a lot of diarrhea which means in labor you may be dehydrated. You also have very loose stools and that’s not fun in labor. Worst case scenario: you have a newborn, a sore bottom from birth and a sore bottom from wiping, while feeling extra weak from dehydration. It doesn’t affect everyone this way but do you want to risk it?
You ask, So I’m 41 weeks, what do we do now?”
Hopefully, you’d decided to just wait on your body and your baby. You’re living life and resting well for the big day (ahem, night. It’s almost always night).
In the middle of your 41st week, I’ll send you for a Biophysical Profile ultrasound to check on baby or a non-stress test-which is putting the fetal monitors on you to see how baby reacts to your random contractions. Both of these check on baby and reassure us that all is well.
As we get closer to the 42nd week, it’s time to consider our options.
-Wait for labor to start on it’s own. Some moms really don’t want to manipulate the process. Usually labor will start by 42 weeks. If not, we will discuss transfer of care options (yes, that means we can’t be your care provider after 42.0 weeks without an OB’s permission, which can be tricky to get but not impossible).
-Start to gently coax baby out with some of our favorite herbal tinctures, most suited to your situation. These aren’t ideal for everyone so please don’t just buy anything suggested on facebook or online without talking to us first.
-Try the breast pump/nipple stimulation
-Chiropractic adjustment (these work best when chiropractic care has been done throughout the pregnancy).
-Acupuncture
-A unique combination of the above options, plus sex.
-“Midwife’s brew”
The options I present to you will be unique to your situation. As your midwife, I want you to lead your care but I ask you to lead it in partnership with me. Together as a team we can brainstorm the best approach(es) to try and discuss timing. Starting these tricks first thing in the morning is much smarter than trying them at night. Don’t lose sight of the stamina you need in labor that you may not have if you ended up awake all night with contractions (that may not even lead to labor). Please talk to me before to try to get labor started, you may not know that your team has someone else in your favorite birth suite or that one of us has an appointment we can’t miss the next day, causing your birth play out differently than you’d hoped.