Being Induced
Induction has a bit of a reputation, and most of it comes from other people's stories. If you've just been told you'll probably be induced, or you've been handed a date, it's completely normal to feel a bit thrown. Especially if you'd always pictured labour starting on its own.
Induction is common, and plenty of women have calm, positive induced births. In my experience they nearly always have one thing in common. They understood what was happening and why, and they felt part of the decisions along the way.
First, the reason
Induction gets offered for all sorts of reasons. Going past 41 weeks is the most common. Others include your waters going without labour starting, raised blood pressure, gestational diabetes, concerns about your baby's growth, or your baby moving less.
NICE describes induction as a medical intervention that affects your birth options and your experience, and says it should be clinically justified. Induced labours are more likely to need an epidural or an assisted birth, and they can feel more intense than labour that starts by itself. Sometimes it's clearly the right call. Sometimes there's more room for choice than the way it's offered might suggest.
So the first useful thing is to ask what the specific reason is for you, and what the actual risk is. I teach mums a simple set of questions to use before agreeing to anything in pregnancy or labour. What are the benefits? What are the risks? What are the alternatives? What's your gut saying? And what happens if we wait? You're allowed time to think, and you're allowed to ask for the numbers.
If you decide not to be induced, or to wait a little longer, you can ask for extra monitoring instead. Declining induction doesn't mean declining care.
How it usually works
Not everyone needs every step, and each hospital does things a little differently, so do ask your own unit for their leaflet.
Ripening the cervix. Usually a pessary or gel containing prostaglandin, or a small balloon that sits in the cervix and puts gentle pressure on it. Some hospitals let you go home for this part. It can take a while, sometimes a day or more, and there's often a lot of waiting around.
Breaking your waters. Once your cervix has started to open, a midwife can break your waters with a small hook. For some women this is enough to get things going.
The drip. If contractions don't start or don't build, you'll be offered a drip of synthetic oxytocin. With the drip your baby's heart rate is monitored continuously, and contractions can build more quickly than in labour that starts naturally.
You can ask for time between steps, and you can say no to any of them.
Making it calmer
Induction often starts on a ward before you move to a birth room, and it's easy to feel like you've lost the chance to set things up the way you wanted. You really haven't.
Bring things that make the space yours. Your own pillow, an eye mask, headphones, battery fairy lights, snacks, something to watch. The early part is mostly waiting, so rest when you can and have a wander when you can. And ask whether your birth partner can stay overnight, because some units send partners home.
Once labour's going, the same things that help any labour still help. Dim lights, quiet, your breathing, staying upright and moving. If you're on the drip, ask whether wireless monitoring is available so you can stay off the bed, and ask for a birth ball by the bedside. Your own oxytocin still matters, even with the synthetic kind running.
One mum I worked with had her induction brought forward after some bleeding. By the time the doctor came to check her she was already 5cm, and she turned down the drip when it was offered. Afterwards she told me she'd packed a whole bag of things and in the end only needed her breathing, her music and her partner. (Her partner also nipped out for a kebab at one point, which the midwives thought was hilarious.)
How I help
In private hypnobirthing we go through induction properly, including the questions worth asking, and we plan how you'd like it to go if it comes up. If you've already got a date, we can focus right in on that. Send me a message about private hypnobirthing and tell me where you're up to.
I'm Aimee, and I run Nurture & Wild. I teach private hypnobirthing in your home around Birmingham and Solihull, or live online, and baby classes at Graft in Kings Heath for afterwards.