Are you nearing the end of your pregnancy and ready to get that baby OUT? Are you in labor yet?
Are you looking for ways to naturally induce labor?
I feel you.
I went past my due date and was becoming so anxious to just get him out and here with me already.
While there is no way to actually induce labor (baby will come when baby is ready); there are a few things that you can do to help PREP your body for labor. Below are a few of the methods that I tried. Thanks to these methods, my labor was easy and lasted only 7 hours long (water broke at about 9pm and baby was born by 416am).
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Table of Contents
1. Red Raspberry Leaf Tea
I started drinking red raspberry leaf tea routinely at around 34 weeks pregnant. I did not want to start drinking it too soon as I believed at the time that it might make me go into labor. However, drinking this tea will not INDUCE labor, just PREP your body for it.
That being said, it can bring about Braxton Hicks and maybe even real contractions; it did not for me. While this did not induce my labor, I fully believe it helped my labor be fast and easy.
Red raspberry leaves may help tone and tighten your pelvic muscles such as your uterine walls, thus helping the delivery of your baby be faster and easier. It can also help with postpartum recovery by minimizing bleeding and shrinking the uterus back down to its original size.
How to drink it: I bought the Traditional Medicinals Organic Raspberry Tea bags. At about 34 weeks, I started drinking one tea bag every night with a little coffee creamer. Once I got to about 37 weeks, I started steeping 2 tea bags per night.
2. Exercise Ball
It is recommended to start using an exercise ball towards the end of pregnancy to both help baby get into an optimal position for giving birth as well as to help move baby down and assist with cervical dilation. Youtube has a lot of great videos for what types of things to do while sitting on the exercise ball.
I sat on the ball with my heels planted into the ground and my legs wide apart. Perform gentle bouncing mixed with figure eights to help open up the hips. I did this every night for as long as I could tolerate from about 36 weeks on. This definitely helped to open up my hips and prepare my birthing canal for labor.
3. Curb Walking
Walking in general is great for helping to prepare your body for labor. I went on a 10-30 minute walk every evening with my husband and our dog throughout pregnancy. Towards the end of pregnancy, I started walking with one foot up on the curb and the other foot on the road to help encourage my baby to move further down into my pelvis. I’m not sure if this helped with anything at all, but I’d like to think that it did.
4. Kegel Exercises
I started doing kegel exercises in the second trimester. This will help strengthen the pelvic floor muscles. By doing so, you will have better control when you get to the pushing stage of labor and you will have better bladder control too! My pushing stage was super short and I attribute a lot of that to doing kegels beforehand.
5. Eat Dates
Dates have been shown to help soften the cervix, thus helping to shorten labor. Some people recommend against eating dates early on in pregnancy because they believe they may start early contractions. Personally, I ate the good & gather date bars from target throughout my entire pregnancy with no issues. To really induce labor, I believe someone would have to eat a lot of whole dates at once, which I did not do.
6. Stimulate Nipples
Stimulating your nipples in the third trimester may just induce contractions! By stimulating your nipples, you are causing the release of a hormone called oxytocin into the body. This hormone initiates contractions and thus can kickstart your labor! People stimulate their nipples through massage, help from their SO, or even by using their breast pumps!
7. Have Sex
Intercourse is a well-known way to help initiate labor. Semen contains a high concentration of prostaglandins that may jumpstart your contractions. This, paired with your uterus contracting from orgasm along with nipple stimulation may play a part in preparing your body for labor.
8. Membrane Sweep
This last method of prepping your body for labor is a membrane sweep. This is where your doctor will be manually loosening your amniotic sac from your uterus with their fingers during an internal exam. You need to already be at least 1cm dilated in order for your OBGYN to perform this. It may be a little painful and can cause some bleeding afterwards too. I personally had 2 membrane sweeps performed and the second sweep is what put me into labor. My first sweep was done at 39 weeks. My second sweep was done at 40 weeks +3 days. I got my second sweep done in the morning and at 9pm that night is when my water broke (no contractions or any signs of labor prior to my water breaking). By 416am my son was born!
While I believe that all of the above methods will help to prepare your body for labor, the only one that actually caused me to go into labor was my second membrane sweep. This caused my water to break later that day and voila! My son was born. I do fully believe that all of these methods combined helped to properly prepare my cervix for giving birth. They allowed my labor and pushing stage to be short and sweet! I had a great labor and delivery experience and will be doing all of the above for future pregnancies! Good luck and I hope your labor and delivery experience is as good as mine was.
Please leave a comment below to share your personal stories with any of the methods mentioned above, or if you tried other things to naturally induce your labor.
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