How long can I safely delay being induced?

[emilygrace]

I am now 40 + 11 with my second baby. I don?t want to be induced for two reasons:

I know my best chance of a normal delivery is to go into spontaneous labour

I was induced last time (40+13) and it was a terrible experience. I had a bad reaction to the prostin gel, ended up with an instrumental delivery, lots of stitches and baby and I were both traumatised.

The date of 40+11 is based on my LMP but I know it?s not accurate. I was still breast feeding and had only one cycle in years and it was 33 days. The fact that I am about 5-6 days behind was confirmed by a dating scan at about 10 weeks. But the hospital policy is not to change the EDD unless it?s more than one week different to that given by the LMP.

So, can I use this to ask the consultant to delay the induction until the actual date of 40+10? ( Hospital policy is to induce at between 10 and 13 days overdue.) I feel this would give me a better chance of going into spontaneous labour. Naturally I don?t want to do anything that would put the baby at risk, but from what I have read there is no significant increase in the risk until over 42 weeks.

I have tried everything to bring on labour! Baby is OA and her head has been engaged for 4 weeks! I have had two membrane sweeps and my cervix is very soft but only 1-2cm. BTW my first baby was actually born at 40+17, but was not post mature. Being post dates was the only reason I was induced ? there was plenty fluid, placenta doing well and I was well.

Right..... well I think what they would do is break your waters for what it's worth (before the synto drip)!
How did they sort out your bad reaction last time ? Clearly you didn't have a section!

Emilygrace - I was induced using prostin, so I know my situation was different to yours. With DD, they actually broke my waters when I was about 6cm dilated. I was doing just fine, but for other medical reasons, they wanted to stick pretty rigidly to their protocol (it was 12 hours since the 1st prostin) and I foolishly didn't step in and refuse to consent to the ARM.

What I would say about having your waters broken before they are ready to go, is that (as Ponto says) it can make the rest of the labour quite fast. I have a friend who was induced 4 times when she was post-dates, using ARM only, and she says the same thing about it.

If I was doing it again, I'd actually be quite keen on having an epidural in place before the ARM as I found the rest of my labour rather overwhelming. Certainly for me, things happened too fast for any pain relief other than gas & air to be an option.

If they break your waters and nothing happens, does having the epidural in place influence what they might suggest trying next? Would it affect the timing of when they would set up the syntocinon drip?

To answer Mrsdarcy's last question - no it would not.