Getting Real with Kira Hazledine
There are a million articles about how to induce labor naturally, and I’ve already touched on the stupid ways you can harm yourself and your baby in the last trimester by trying to mess with nature. The sad, sad reality for women beyond 40 weeks pregnant is that baby will come when baby is ready. Or when the doctor forces the baby out through induction or C-section. Exciting times.
I get it, I really do. The desperation to go into labor when you’ve already been pregnant for 40 long weeks is so real. I even like being pregnant, and at 40 plus weeks (I’ve gone over with both children) I am super ready to be done. So I do what every expectant mother does and I google.
I do google with discrimination though, and I look beyond the anecdotes. There will always be the mom who swears that pineapples or scrubbing floors put her into labor, but there is no scientific evidence. These women would have likely gone into labor that day regardless, or whatever sex they had gently tipped them over the edge they were already standing on.
And then there’s women like me who are so far away from the finish line that no amount of natural induction techniques is going to do shit. There’s no being helped along when your unborn baby needs to be dragged from their comfy home, also known as your tired uterus.
Sex is not proven to induce labor. Bouncing on balls can relieve pain and help a baby descend, but it will not induce labor. Spicy food and bumpy roads will not induce labor. Evening primrose oil and red raspberry leaf tea will not induce labor.
If your baby is not ready to make their great escape, it’s just not going to happen. Sorry about your luck.
With my first child I did stress on it a bit and tried almost everything I could think of. I even had two membrane sweeps that did absolutely nothing to my body. It was only until my cervix was softened with medical interventions that my firstborn decided to make her appearance. With my second, I couldn’t even get a membrane sweep because my cervix was so high, and honestly, I didn’t try to hurry him along. I just couldn’t be bothered. I scheduled the induction and I went on with my day, because he was going to come, or he wasn’t.
And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
