Inducing Birth | My Mills Baby

I haven’t deliberately delayed writing this post, I was just pretty frustrated that my 36th week carrying this huge sack of baby and water was so painfully uneventful. This, despite me spending several hours embarrassing myself on a birthing ball, watching television with my hand down my bra, and conducting painful massages on bits of my body that I wouldn’t even expect Craig to touch. I even went against last week’s promise that I would never put myself through another bite of pineapple scoffing 3 LARGE fresh ones from Tesco in 2 days. Birthing Ball Labour A Belated 36 Weeks Post & an X Rated #GetBabyOut

Most of this week’s endeavours have been physical. I’m pretty sure my treatment of Craig could have earned me a segment on some crappy Channel 5 programme - maybe The Bad Wives Club, or Abused Husbands. When I’m not demanding he whip me up strange concoctions of food in the kitchen, I’m dragging him upstairs in the most unromantic way possible.

I’m not stupid. I realise that most of my experiments will come to nothing. I know full well that most of these tricks were either disproved some 100 years ago, or would need to be eaten / performed on a much grander scale than it would be possible (or even safe) for one person to achieve in one day. But still, I had hoped that Mini Madam would have at least given me a few little signs she was listening to her mummy.

The slightest change in her position or bit of pressure on my bladder and I’m ringing Craig and screaming that she’s gearing up and he had better come home from work (did I mention he’s often 100 miles away?). I seem to have reworked the morality tale The Boy that Cried Wolf for a modern day audience. When my water’s do finally break or I do get a contraction I can already see him rolling his eyes and deliberately taking the scenic route on the way home.

In truth, nothing has happened this week.

Nothing at all.

She’s still kicking away. I’m still producing pathetic amounts of wee every 10 minutes. I’m still crying at adverts with ‘sad’ music. I’m still exhausted after a single hour of parenting Dexter in the morning. None of this is new, and none of it is exciting.

I’m now thinking she’s planning on saying hello on April Fool’s Day as some form of punishment at having been evicted from the little den she’s made inside of me.

So keeping it brief - here’s the results of Operation #GetBabyOut this week. WARNING: This is not suitable reading for the faint-hearted… or for anyone really. GetBabyOut1 A Belated 36 Weeks Post & an X Rated #GetBabyOut

Sex

Don’t bother ladies. Seriously, you’re beyond the stage that you can derive any pleasure from a quick fumble now, and unfortunately the chances are this is also the case for your other half. 99.9% of Kama Sutra positions are now impossible or would have the unwanted side effect of turning off your partner for life. Spooning is your only safe option and you’ll probably find yourself inspecting the chaos on your bedside table rather than any meaningful attempt to participate in the activity at hand.

There is the merest smidgen of science that supports the fact that sex can help bring on labour. Semen may help to ripen, or soften, the neck of your uterus (cervix) ready for it to dilate when labour starts. Semen contains a high number of prostaglandins, which are chemicals that can help to relax tissues (high concentrates of this are used in induction pessaries given to overdue women in hospital - not sperm obviously, but prostaglandins).

Sounds good right? Well no. You’d need few pints of sperm to match the concentration found in just this one active ingredient in a pessary. Given the average man manages a tablespoon per session, even holing him up in a room with a naughty magazine wouldn’t be enough to get a sufficient quantity.

Tweaking your nipples

I can probably manage a quick 30 seconds before I begin to feel prudish / stupid / desperate. The sensation goes from ticklish to sore quickly, and I’d be lying if I said the thought of expelling a sudden burst of milk doesn’t put the fear of God in me. In truth, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to view my breasts as Objets de Désir ever again. They serve one basic function and that is is to feed my child. It has even got to the stage where I find myself physically cringing when I go for a night out and see women forcibly spilling out of their underwear.

Nipple Stimulation A Belated 36 Weeks Post & an X Rated #GetBabyOut

Unfortunately for me, there is some scientific justification for using nipple stimulation to evoke labour. The act of tweaking releases the hormone oxytocin which can help your labour progress. This hormone controls the contractions of your uterus (womb) during labour and can be administered by midwives (in synthetic form) to induce you. According to an uncited source BabyCentre claim (and I’m not suggesting this should become any sane woman’s pregnancy reference) in a study, 37% of women who had tried nipple stimulation went into labour within 72 hours.

This is certainly appealing but you’d need to stimulate your breasts for an hour, three times a day which is easier said than done when you have a curious two-year-old hanging off your arm from 8am - 8pm. Will it scar him? I’m saying yes, even if I’m just making excuses so as not to try it.

So that’s it from me. I’m now well into my 37th week so will report back soon.

My final guest post this week is bought to you by Colette from We’re Going on an Adventure. She blogs all about life with her husband Dave, and two gorgeous children Ben & Chloe. I’m eternally grateful for this post as it’s a very honest account of how it feels to have birth planning go awry. As we’re both currently pregnant (even though she’s streaks ahead of me with baby number 3 due in November) and both have C-sections booked, this post is very close to me right now. This is the reality of birthing when there are mitigating factors - it’s emotional, refreshingly honest, and a bit of a departure from her usual funny style. I love her for letting me host it and wish her every success with the birth of baby 3. I’ll be glued to her blog to find out how it goes (and gush over those precious newborn pictures!) and I hope you will be too.

I’m one of those people who likes a good list, I like to be organised and I like to know what’s happening. For some reason I didn’t feel quite the same about birth and knew that I needed to be relaxed about it and go with the flow a bit more. I knew what I didn’t want (home or water births really held no appeal) and I knew what I did want – natural labour, minimum drugs (of course) but I also knew that I had little control over that and that as long as baby came out healthy nothing else really mattered. I never bothered to write a birth plan as I just saw that as setting myself up to be disappointed. I spoke at length to my husband about how I wanted things to go and what his role was to be and that was as far as the planning went. Just as well really because what I ended up with was pethidine, an epidural and eventually an emergency C-section. Much as I was disappointed to have had the C-section I knew it was the right thing for me and Ben at the time, I didn’t have a choice in the matter and that made it easier to accept.

Second time round and I really wanted to attempt the VBACs. Again I didn’t bother with the birth plan just discussed with my consultant and husband that I didn’t want another C-section. I really wanted to give birth naturally etc etc. When the time came and I ended up being induced early I had to just take it as it came – which in the end wasn’t very well. Two days of attempting to induce via balloon catheter (hideous thing) and pessary ended up in another emergency C-section (whilst it was classed as an emergency because it wasn’t planned, I must stress there was nothing particularly urgent about it). Because the decision was taken the night before that I would be having the C-section I was able make it clear how I wanted things to go – for example that this time I wanted my baby delivering onto my chest rather than whisked away and brought back to Dave. I really wanted Dave in there while I was having the spinal as that was the one bit I found really frightening – but they wouldn’t allow it. My second C-section, whilst not what I wanted, was definitely a better experience. I was however left with this nagging feeling that maybe I could have given birth naturally if I’d fought harder, if I’d made them wait – but then at the same time I was being induced for good reason so who was I to argue.

So now to the imminent arrival of number 3. I was always told that if I had anymore children it would automatically be by C-section. I pretty much accepted that but over the last few months I’ve been told more than once that actually that’s not always the case now and that if I wanted to try and give birth naturally they would support me in that – however this was always tempered with the information that a) they wouldn’t allow me to be induced and b) they wouldn’t allow me to go over due (or in fact probably reach my due date). So effectively for me to give birth naturally baby needs to decide to come early and then who’s to say I wouldn’t end up with a C-section anyway and a whole heap of disappointment in another “failed” attempt. In the end I’ve pretty much accepted that I will be having a planned section (I refuse to call it elective as that suggests a choice and really I don’t have one). My section is booked, I know the date Beak will be here and that feels really strange. If for any reason this baby decides it would rather make its entrance slightly early I will go with that, I will let labour progress under the watchful eyes of the professionals and see what happens but I know in all likelihood that this baby is coming out of “the sunroof”.

I feel cheated that I’ve never been able to experience a natural birth but I appreciate that with Ben I was at least able to experience labour, I know what it feels like to have my waters break in the middle of the night and to suffer the contractions for hours on end. I won’t ever get to feel the elation of having pushed my own baby out but really, in the scheme of things what does it matter? I have two happy, healthy children who don’t care a jot how they came into the world. I think I’m probably more nervous about this section than I have been in the past but that’s because I know its coming – I’ve never had chance to worry about it before!

I would be really interested to know if you made a birth plan, whether it was helpful and indeed whether you were actually able to stick to it or not?

To find out more about Collette and her family (and indeed follow her latest pregnancy!) beyond her blog, you can connect with her on the following social media accounts:

Twitter –@Lollinski

Facebook - We’re Going on an Adventure

Pinterest – Collette - We’re Going on an Adventure