Inductions fail, not women.

How many times have you heard a woman say ‘I just don’t go into labour’, or ‘I just can’t dilate, but nor did my sister’, or perhaps, ‘Thank goodness I was in hospital, when they broke my waters, baby arrived so quickly...she would have been born in the taxi if we hadn’t gone there early’ ?

I hear it fairly often.
I do wish that I didn’t.

During Maternal Mental Health Week I just want to pass over a small nugget of information to all of you who might encounter Induction of Labour and whose experience with it was not positive.

Inductions fail, not women.
Inductions fail, not women (just repeating for the folks in the back row).

Your body is complex. Perfectly designed but complex.

Labour is a delicate dance between both your baby’s needs and your own. An intertwining of hormones creating the journey of labour into birth. It is complex. It is clever and it is beautiful.

Induction of labour, whether hugely necessary or not is a blunt instrument. It does not take into account individuality. It does not engage with emotion. It does not care for preparedness or history.

As Mary Cronk cleverly stated: Imagine that labour, with all its different factors, like hormones and muscles and so on, is like a synchronised swimming team. It all works really beautifully together. But induction of labour? That is like throwing one of the swimmers in the pool and hoping the rest jump in!

Inducing labour is a complex process that may work for some and may not work for others. But because this forcing of labour didn’t work for you or your baby does not reflect on you but the process itself.

You were never faulty. Your hopes and dreams for your birth were never ‘too much’. The very process failed you.

Of course I am not saying that IOL is wrong for everyone, or to take away that choice. But if your post-dates induced labour did not progress well, if you were faced with a cascade of interventions, YOU did not fail. The process failed you.