Trying to avoid induction

[Teeganselina]

Hi all, I’m 35 weeks pregnant with my first and have GD currently diet controlled, they want to induce me at 39 weeks which I’d really like to avoid if possible as just feel as though it’s a long tiring process for my body, any experiences welcome!

my midwife have advised they will allow me to have stretch and sweeps from 37 weeks to bring on that way and my question is do you think this is likely to work being my first pregnancy, baby has been head down since 30 weeks.

are there any other tips I can try to bring on naturally along side stretch and sweeps?

thanks

@Teeganselina In my day it was eat a spicy curry! Is that allowed for you?

In my opinion stretches and sweeps are an unnatural way to induce childbirth. The baby is the one that begins the start of labour when they are ready. Also remember when your midwife says ‘we will ALLOW this’ it is not your midwife’s decision, it is YOURS! By all means follow their advice if you want to, but if you don’t, then don’t feel pressure to go along with things, thinking you have no choice. As a starting point I would recommend joining some Facebook groups on natural childbirth. There is a wealth of information in them.

I agree and I would 100% be all up for letting baby come when she’s ready if they didn’t want to induce me because of GD, I would just prefer to have the stretch and sweeps as opposed to methods of induction

I had inductions and all was well.
Sex is the only thing that got me started ( my waters broke) but I had no useful contractions without petocin (sp?)

Also to add, you are fully within your rights to just decline induction. Ask them to explain the risks associated for you and baby with and without induction, so you can decide what is right for you.

@Whoops75 Thanks for that! Can I ask how long your labour was and is petocin the hormone drip or the pessary? :)

I was told that eating 7-9 dates per day from 36/37 weeks onwards can help your body prepare for labour. I did this during my second pregnancy and my son was born at 39+1 after I had a sweep that morning (first sweep).

OP has gestational diabetes, she should NOT be eating 7-9 dates!!

What kind of induction are they going to do, @Teeganselina? My trust did the balloon catheter, which is a more "natural" way than anything hormonal or chemical. It worked, but I ended up with an emcs due to baby going footling breech randomly.

@Rubbleonthedouble2, thanks for sharing! They haven’t specified they have said it could left up to me in the first instance on my preferred method but she did mention most people who have the balloon or pessary go on the need the hormone drip anyways my concern is just that getting to the stage of pushing will take too long and my body will be too tired to Finnish ( this happened to my sister in law) they ended up offering her a c section as she had been in labour for 3 days but not ready to push and she was just too tired.

Not all inductions are awful! There's plenty of threads about successful induction births.

No one can give you a guaranteed method to induce birth naturally so echo PP's suggestion about asking the risks of being induced vs waiting for natural labour. You could end up with a 3-day labour following natural onset!

I had 2 induced births and do regret not asking more questions in advance about induction methods each time, so I suggest ask lots of questions about methods, time lapsed after starting induction before moving to next method, how long they'll leave you in active labour or failing to progress before moving to assisted or c-section. Ask if methods used will vary depending if you're already dilated when you arrive, staff/bed availability.

For first I had hormone pessary for about 18 hours, spent on antenatal ward, that was enough to start labour and baby arrived quickly with no further interventions.

I drank lots of raspberry red leaf tea in last few weeks, no idea if that made any difference.

Why would anyone on MN know better than the OPs medical team! Being induced is not the end of the world and it’s important that medical advice is followed. The op doesn’t necessarily know best and no one is induced for the fun of it.

Nobody knows the OP better than the OP herself, pregnant women are not unthinking objects. Some women want natural births, some want every intervention going, and the point is that choice is offered, and not being told ‘we need to do this’ and ‘we don’t recommend that’ - the choice ultimately is the woman’s.

I don’t know what country you’re in, but here in the UK the NHS has recently produced new guidelines for maternity services, due to poor outcomes, so I think it’s prudent to be aware that the experts don’t always know best. What makes you think 200-300 years of modern medicine knows better than hundreds and thousands of years of evolutionary design?

I had GD twice and was induced twice. The first was long and boring and the second took about an hour!

My friend had a son who was stillborn the day before his due date due to undiagnosed GD, which I know is slightly different, but I wouldn’t dick around with this honestly.

Raspberry leaf tea.
Sex.
Lots of vacumming.

• not all at the same time.

@crumpetswithcheeze She’s not an expert in GD!!! That’s abundantly clear. So what she might like or want is not medical opinion. People like you need to butt out. Choice is not always offered when a certain route is safest and best for baby. All this rubbish about women knowing more than medical experts needs to stop and it’s a cause of baby deaths.

Have you tried acupuncture? I used someone who was trained in doing acupuncture in pregnancy and DS duly appeared less that 48 hours later. Could have just been a complete coincidence of course, but I wanted to avoid being induced and was willing to give it a shot.

If you don't know already, you need to ask what the specific risks are for you personally (ie not just generic risks for all women with GD, regardless of age, weight, other medical conditions etc). When you are armed with information about your actual personal risks, you will feel better able to make a choice.

In terms of trying to bring on labour without induction, I believe the only two things with any science behind them are penetrative sex (semen needs to reach cervix) and nipple tweaking/expressing colostrum. You should only start the latter from 37 weeks.

There are plenty of other things people say worked for them, but have no evidence base. I suggest trying any and all which are appealing to you! Things like:

• spicy curry
• doing harder exercise than you've been accustomed to doing, pushing it a bit until you are puffing (fast walking will probably be enough at that stage)!
• relaxing thoroughly in the evenings - baths, massage, early nights etc
• acupuncture
• raspberry leaf tea

Are you calling another poster a Nazi 🤨

Hello OP, I had to have an induction with dc1 as she was very late. I don’t know why my body decided not to go into labour but I tried spicy food, fresh pineapple, brisk long walks, raspberry leaf tea and TWO sweeps. Nada.

DC2 was also induced for other reasons and this time the induction was much easier.

I would advise, plan for the possibility of an induction - it’s not as bad as you think. My top tip is to take a good pair of noise cancelling headphones and have a playlist of music that will drown out the sound of the other women in the induction ward. I had one lady who was in real distress, it spooked me out! Much better to get in the zone, do some nice breathing and hypnobirthing mantras. I listened to a soundtrack of rainfall and Amazon rainforest birds for about four hours whilst dozing and walking through the early contractions. It was very chilled out and rather nice!

Hi had my third baby in February this year. My first GD pregnancy though. I was also diet controlled.

We had sex at 34 weeks and I ended up in triage with contractions. They thought I was in labour but luckily contractions stopped after 12 hours. After this I had weeks of these false contractions. By 38 weeks I was so fed up and begging to be induced but their policy was to only induce at 40 weeks for diet controlled GD.

It just so happens that at 39 weeks my blood pressure spiked so I had to be induced. The pessary made me contract too fast so they took it out. But I was 3cm so they could break my waters. I had the epidural first too. 4 hours after breaking my waters, I was 10cm and no hormone drip needed.

Um obviously not, you sound ridiculous

Thanks, I’ll run my thoughts by you next time, before having them.

🙄🙄🙄