When it all goes wrong (Birth Induction)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Birth Induction
Date:	13/08/02 (1764 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: only if there is real danger

Disadvantages: not reliable, can take a long time, traumatic.

Induction is the practise of evicting your baby before it is ready to come out. There are reasons for doing this - medical conditions in the mother, such as pre-eclampsia can make it risky to continue, as can very big babies and those who have gone more than a couple of weeks over their due dates. However, it isn't a fool proof system, all sorts of things can go wrong, there are risks and there are a great many things you might not be told before you start.

Induction methods vary from hospital to hospital, but its generally something like this.

If you aren't showing any signs of being ready, you will be given prostin - a synthetic hormone which should soften the cervix, cause contractions and possibly labour and start you dilating. (If you are ready, they may irritate your cervix into action or just break your waters.)In many women it has no effect. In many women, you get a whole load of painful contractions but no labour. It can cause the uterus to go into overdrive and keep contracting, putting huge stress on the mother and harming the baby, which requires immediate casearean.

If you go into labour, all well and good. If not, you can have up to five doses over four days or so. The prostin is given via a device like a tampon applicator. If you get going and dilate a bit, they can break your waters, which normally (but not always) causes labour, and can be supplimented by hormone drips which should (but don't always) get things under way.

Reasons for it not working - if your body isn't ready, and won't get started even with encouragement, nothing will happen. If your cervix won't open at all, or is posterior, then they cannot break your waters to get things going. There is nothing that can be done expect more doses of prostin or an op.

As you can tell, you can have a great deal of intervention and still not go into labour, and if they go far enough either you will be so worn out that you can't
continue and they have to cut you open, or risks to baby from the interventions will be such that they have to do the same.

Things you might not be told before you start: Make sure they go over the risks with you, and make sure there is a medical need for this intervention - some medical staff are very pro intervention and might be over keen to 'get you started'. Once you start, the odds are they won't let you leave the hospital until, one way or another, you have had the baby. The odds are that once you start, if you can't get labour under way, your body will be pushed until you have to have an op. There are real dangers to both you and the baby of following this route, it is hard work, it is traumatic, it can take days, it isn't reliable, it can cause problems.

As for me, I've just had 5 days in ante natal while they tried an failed to induce me (fractionally over due dates with slight risk of pre-eclampsia) I have been let out because I have a considerate consultant (sadly absent last week when this mess started.) He's written it off as a failed effort, and as I had managed to be well enough not to need intervention, he's sent me home.

Technically, you can of course leave at any time, but if you try to, you will find the hospital using all sorts of unpleasant emotional blackmail and threats of refusing you intervention at a later date - there isn't much support for people who don't want to be interfered with.

Things I got instead of a baby: massive sleep deprivation. Hours of contracting and pain. Mental and physical exhaustion. Malnutrition and weight loss - invalid rations will not keep you going through hours of contractions, take food with you! Emotional distress (easy to feel that you are doing something wrong if you can't manage to go into labour.)Itchy skin from an allergic reaction to detergent used on bedlinnen. Bruising to the soft tissues around my abdomen.

On the
whole, not a good expereince, and I know I've been lucky because I had the physical and mental reserves to cope with it (just) and have been let out without an op. I should never have agreed in the first place, but was alarmed into it, and was not given anything like all of the relevant information at the outset. My advice is, unless there is a clear and present danger to you and baby, resist this sort of intervention, it isn't reliable and it can cause a good deal more harm than good.

Summary: