Convincing your Baby to Come Into the World (Inducing Labor Naturally)

Good afternoon all!

Hope everyone had a great week thus far. The heat wave finally broke and the temperatures are absolutely gorgeous right now! I am heavily considering taking Valentina on a long walk on the Hudson Valley Rail Trail point by our house. It's really perfect for it!

I just got done chatting with a girlfriend of mine who is almost a week overdue with her first baby, a baby boy who seems very content with being in the womb! It made me think of when I was super pregnant and wanting my baby out of my belly! My daughter was actually due May 26th but I didn't start going into labor until May 28th and after 22 drug-free hours of labor, I gave birth on May 29th! The week before my due date, however, was such a crazy whirlwind! I spent most of it looking into ways to naturally induce labor.

My last picture being pregnant (5/28). I had just been admitted to the hospital and was walking around to try to help progress it along. Even though it was only 2 months ago, it's really hard to remember being that big!

My mother's Dodge Durango takes bumps really hard, so I tried to take a ride in that car whenever I could the week before I was due. I had sciatica problems when I was pregnant though, (from a common but widely unknown condition called Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction) so going over bumps too hard was often more pain then it was worth. Oh well!

I then tried to walk as much as I could. I look back fondly now at me walking around Shop Rite (a northeast grocery store chain) with my father trying my best to get "crampy"! My dad and I are coupon fanatics, and he had one in particular he got that needed manager approval. This took a while, and the cashier looked at me and asked if I was okay, since I was shuffling around a lot. I said to her, "I've been pretty crampy for the last 15 minutes and my due date is tomorrow so I'm not sure if I'm in labor or not!" Well, I didn't officially go into labor for 3 more days, but it did help push the transaction through a little quicker :).

Then I tried the old wives' tale of eating spicy food. I was a huge fan of spicy food before my pregnancy, but my tastes had become hyper sensitive to it throughout my pregnancy so I hadn't indulged in it too much. The Hubs and I went to a local Indian restaurant called Cinnamon Indian Bistro and enjoyed what was to be our last "official" date. I had Calamari that was to die for (it was cooked so tender with Indian spices, I still daydream about it!) and then I had Navarthan Korma for dinner. It's a vegetable sweet curry made with coconut milk and cashews, among other things. It's always been a favorite of mine in all of the indian restaurants I've eaten in. Our waitress, who also happened to be the co-owner of the place, told me that she had received many "thank you" notes from pregnant women who went into labor after eating their food! I ate here the Friday before I went into labor and labor began early Tuesday, so who knows! Maybe it did have something to do with it :)

Great - now I'm hungry!

Picture courtesy of cookingandme.com

At the advice of and under the guidance of my midwives, I began a regimen of 3 Evening Primrose Oil capsules daily and a small pitcher's worth of Red Raspberry Leaf tea a day.  I started this a week before my actual due date, and from my Monday visit to my Friday visit that week, I had dilated from 1cm to 2cm and had progressed from ~25% effaced to ~50% effaced. I'm not sure if it had any effect, and there's no way to tell. But I have heard a lot of mamas use these techniques before too, so who knows!

Whether it was one of these methods or a combination of them all, I did end up going into labor naturally on my own. As I mentioned earlier, my 22 hour labor was entirely drug-free as well, but that's a post for another time :).

For now, I want to know - did you go into labor naturally? Did you try any of these methods to try to induce labor naturally or did you try something else I didn't mention? Let me know! I'll pass on your advice to my overdue friend :)

~Tia