To Induce or Not to Induce

As you may have read below, I've been very impatient for the birth of our first child. Under other circumstances, I might not be but the premature labor pains my wife endured earlier this week got me very excited about our impending arrival. So she and I have been talking, on and off, about the benefits and drawbacks of medically inducing labor.

Benefits: the baby is born on our schedule, we can plan in advance when we can expect to bring the baby home and have the apartment ready in time, and my wife can finally stop carrying 35 extra pounds around.

Drawbacks: we're not thrilled with the idea of tinkering with her body's natural rhythms, labor could prove more painful since the cervix hasn't finished preparing itself for dilation, and as of right now, there's no medical reason for it.

I did a little research and found a very good resource at the Mayo Clinic that discusses the effects of and reasons for inducing labor. From the website:

Your health care provider may recommend inducing labor for various reasons — primarily when there's concern for your health or your baby's health. For example:

• You're one to two weeks beyond your due date, and labor hasn't started naturally.
• Your water has broken, but you're not having contractions.
• There's an infection in your uterus.
• Your baby has stopped growing at the expected pace.
• There's not enough amniotic fluid surrounding the baby.
• Your placenta has begun to deteriorate or separate from the wall of your uterus.
• You have a medical condition that may put you or your baby at risk, such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

Rarely, inducing labor is a matter of practicality. If you live far from the hospital or you have a history of rapid deliveries, a scheduled induction may be best.

There's an important caveat, however. If you've had a prior C-section, you may not be a candidate for labor induction. After a prior C-section, inducing labor increases the risk of uterine rupture. This rare but serious complication — in which the uterus tears open along the scar line from a prior C-section — can cause life-threatening blood loss, infection and brain damage for the baby.

There are, however, several folks methods - like castor oil and spicy foods, which I mentioned in a previous post - that supposedly work. We've largely ignored them, although I never say no to spicy food. Instead, my sweetie has continued to do light exercise and the contractions, although still not very strong, have increased somewhat in intensity and duration.

Since none of the medical reasons apply to us, and since we're taking as naturalistic an approach to her labor as we can, it seems that induction isn't in the cards for now. Once we hit Due Date Plus 10, then we can talk about it.

In the meantime, she and I are sitting out the hours, enjoying our final few days of peace and quiet before our new arrival. I know that someday we're going to look back nostalgically on these last days. Right now, though, that's pretty hard to imagine.