Saw this on the round up email, and just had to add my bit as I feel like I've got a lot to say about induction having experienced it a year ago!
I went to 40+14 (i.e. 42 weeks) before letting them induce me. It wasn't really a fight - I insisted that I wasn't going to be induced any earlier as I really wanted to go itno labour naturally and the doctors seemed to see that I'd done my research. I still felt like my body wasn't ready though, and in future (if I have another) I would wait longer if need be, with monitoring.
I had 2 sweeps from 40 weeks + tried every natural method going (you name it! I did it!). However, fast long walks seems to be the method that has worked for all my mates (try walking at a pace that you think I pregnant woman shouldn't really be walking at!!)
Induction was not nice for me (am v jealous of those women who say it worked well for them). I found that lack of communication from hospital staff really didn't help. i.e. they didn't tell me that when they put the gel up I would be in constant pain increasing during contractions, they didn't tell me that vaginal exams would be really very painful due to the gel making the cervix more sensitive (and a midwife telling me "if I just relaxed, it would hurt less" didn't help!), they didn't tell me that if I wasn't ready for delivery suite when it got to night time that my male partner wouldn't be allowed to stay on the ward (but a female friend would have)....
So please keep all the above in mind! Particularly the bit about male / female companion on the ward, as in your mind you're in labour (you're in pain after all) but in the hospital's mind you're not, as you're not the dreaded 3 cm yet...
Being on a ward of lots of other women also going into labour is not a very nice experience. You can hear whimpering as people try to deal with contractions etc... it's the early stage of labour when most people would be at home. If you can, remember to keep moving around to augment labour as it can be easy to forget when you're sat on a hospital bed (one nice doctor even suggested we go on a walk around the hospital grounds but come back for monitoring).
It took two lots of gel and 24 hours or so to get to the stage where they broke my waters. This was actually a relief cos contractions felt like they properly started - pain, then a gap (phew!) - I managed about 5 hours au naturel and after only progressing about 1/2cm, before I asked for an epidural and then they put in a syntocin drip which got labour really moving and within a few hours I was fully dilated. I tried to push but with the epidural I found it really hard to know what to do (and I felt like I couldn't do it - in retrospect I think they may have been asking me to push during transition... ) so I ended up with ventouse falling off a few times, and then forceps. I lost quite a bit of blood and properly span out after the birth, don't remember much for the 1st few hours after. Luckily I had already held my baby for a moment before losing it... I ended up having 2 blood transfusions and staying on the ward for 3 days (totalling a good 6 days spent in hospital all together!). my ds was a very healthy, high apgar baby. But clearly didn't want to come out! He got quite battered and bruised with the intervention, and I took him to the children's osteopath centre when he was only a week old, who have been a great help.
I think what made it hard for me too was the fact that I had originally been booked into a midwife-led birth centre where water births are the norm, but after I went past 42 weeks I couldn't go there and resigned myself to the hospital induction.
I really go hope that other people's induction experiences are better, and the only way I think to help this to happen is to tell people about mine, so hopefully thay can pick up on the loopholes in the hospital service and make sure that they aren't as affected by them. I actully complained and went through my notes several months post-birth. The midwife admitted that the indcution process and communication of which, does need to be improved greatly. They are talking about trialling induction where low-risk women can go home for the first stage of labour once a gel pessary has been inserted to ease the distress of labouring on a ward full of women.
Hope this helps! good luck and don't be scared... make sure you can have as much support around you as possible - not just a male partner (if that's your 1st choice) but other female friends and family too...I truly believe that in most cases, a woman needs more than one birth partner to give her the support she needs and deserves xxxx