Tag: Labour

birth, choices, Information, Labour

Induction of Labour

Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

Taking the Mystery out of Induction of Labour

What is induction of labour?

Induction of labour is any process that exerts external influence to try and start the body’s process of labour and birth.

Getting things started yourself

This may include anything you try to do yourself such as having sex or eating curry and anything you have done by a holistic practitioner such as a chiropractor, acupuncturist or reflexologist to help your body do what you want it to do.

Medical Induction

It also includes the ‘stretch and sweep’ or ‘membrane sweep’ procedure which involves your care provider inserting their (gloved) finger into your cervix and separating the membranes holding your waters away from the cervix with a circular sweeping motion. This is sometimes presented as if it’s separate from the medical induction of labour but it is as part of the induction of labour process as it is an intervention with the object of starting labour off.

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birth, choices, Information, Labour

Help Your Body Birth

Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

Informed Birth Planning

Having information about the options that may interest you is an important part of planing your birth. One of the things that you may want to know something about is how your body works to go into and through labour and birth. This knowledge can help you work with it and your baby to feel positive and confident in your birthing decisions and experiences.

This article is mainly about listening to your body in physiological labour conditions but the skill of listening to your body can be useful through all of pregnancy and beyond regardless of what kind of birth you’re planning. There’s no one type of positive birth. You can have a positive home water birth, a positive planned c-section birth, a positive hospital labour ward active birth, a positive birth with an epidural, any kind of birth that feels like the right choice for you.

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birth, choices, Information, Labour

Confident Birthing Choices

Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

When we first wrote this blog post it was the start of the corona virus pandemic. That was a time when lots of things changed very fast and we often didn’t know from week to week what would be on offer in terms of healthcare for labour and birth. Since then we’ve been told that everything has returned to normal. But in our experience, we’ve not returned to the way things used to be, there’s still a lot more uncertainty and last minute changes than used to be usual. From what we can work out this is mainly due to staffing levels in maternity services. It’s generally not an issue for anyone planning to birth in the labour ward. However, those planning a home birth or to birth in the stand alone birthing centres are still being warned there is always the possibility they will be asked to come into the labour ward (or sometimes to the alongside birthing centre) on the day. For anyone having an induction of labour this can also affect how long they will need to wait between being advised to have their labour induced and when they are invited into the hospital to start that process as well as how long that process may take.

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