Induction - what is going on?

It’s September 2025 as I write. The induction rate across the UK is rapidly approaching the 50% mark. This means that nearly half of pregnancies are being brought to a premature end.

Babies are being forced out of their ‘ovens’ where they are gently cooking.

Why on earth would that be?

Surely advances in health care and general well being get better year on year, not worse. Surely, with all the monitoring women are exposed to during pregnancy, we would know if there was anything unusual going on.

Why do we not trust the birth process anymore?

My first baby was induced. At 42 weeks I was told that “twice as many babies die in utero after 42 weeks”. This was a terrifying statement for a first time mum to hear as you can imagine. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t ask what those figures actually were. I was young, naive, and I trusted the doctors and midwives.

So I allowed ‘them’ to book me in at the hospital. I gathered a few possessions, some clary sage and a couple of books. I thought the whole thing would only take a few hours.

Oh, how wrong I was…

I desperately wanted to labour on the Midwife Led Unit (MLU) at the hospital and that’s where it all began. Pessaries up ma vag, a hospital gown slung across my shoulders, a few midwives’ gloved fingers stuck up inside me and I thought things would happen. Wrong.

Absolutely nothing happened.

More pessaries, more fingers, less dignity and I was beginning to feel very despondent. I had read about the effect of Synotocinon. I knew that it acted fast and could bring contractions on very fast. I was scared. And, with hindsight, I know that my baby was not in any way ready to enter the world. What I didn’t know is that Synotocinon is marked up with the warning that it “can cause foetal distress”.

After 24 hours of this pantomime, I was told that I needed the drip. I was deflated. Going on the drip meant that I would have to go downstairs to the Labour Ward. Gone was the soft lighting, the gentle music, the pretty pictures on the walls, the beds that looked inviting not terrifying.

I was strapped in - monitors around my belly, cannula in the back of my hand, bells and whistles all around.

I was blessed to be married to a man whose parents were both doctors. He had no qualms about being assertive with the midwives - “make sure you raise the hormone level slowly” he warned them. He was over 6’ tall, an imposing figure of a man, and they did as they were told.

The contractions started now. I knew that staying upright was important. It’s actually one of the most obvious things in the world to me. A friend of mine who doesn’t have children recently stated the bleedin’ obvious - “you wouldn’t lie down to have a poo, would you?”. No, you wouldn’t and yet women up and down the country are prompted to just “hop on the bed” and the bed takes centre stage in most birthing rooms.

I did stay upright. Of course my tethering to the CTG machine meant that I couldn’t move very far. I circled my hips when a contraction came. I’ve practised yoga since I was 17 and had done pregnancy yoga so I had some pretty good wiggle room in my ‘good child-bearing’ hips. Every half hour or so, a midwife would come in and crank up the levels of the fake oxytocin. I wasn’t feeling loved up. I was feeling controlled.

My ex husband was great. He massaged the tiny point at the bottom of my spine with every contraction. I took the odd inhale of gas and air.

It’s 26 years ago so I don’t remember all the details but I do remember this. As my "‘bum thing’ (my baby’s head I later realised) began to happen, the midwife handed me a sanitary towel. I had no knickers on and a baby was emerging from between my legs but she seemed intent on keeping the room clean and tidy. Bizarre. I don’t know to this day what that was all about ?!?

I remember a huge contraction, and me desperately swiping the hand with the cannula in it towards the sanitary towel, imagining that I had to keep the darned thing in place. Hilariously, all that happened was that I pulled the cannula out of the back of my hand and blood spurted all around the labour room. Maybe that was a blessing. I’m not sure she ever got me hooked back up and very soon after, I abandoned the sanitary towel, mounted the bed on all fours (still chained to the CTG machine) and birthed my baby.

I was lucky.

I had my husband to protect me from the effects of the Synotocinon, The drug was raised gradually. I didn’t tear. But I did shake. Oh boy, did I shake? After she was born. I felt hypothermic. I couldn’t believe what I had just achieved. Of course (it was 1999) the cord was cut almost immediately. My baby was carried naked over to the scales where she screamed her head off before she was dried and wrapped up so I couldn’t feel her precious skin against mine.

I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know what to ask for. I didn’t know I could have declined that induction. I didn’t know I could have insisted that my body and that of my unborn child knew best. If I could have my time again …

Some people might be asking ‘well why would you want it to be any different?’ Your baby was delivered safely. You didn’t tear, You were both happy and healthy.

Well yes, I was happy and no, I didn’t tear, but I know now that I could have been happier. I could have felt so much more empowered. I could have waited for nature to take its course. And maybe, just maybe, my baby would have been spared the debilitating Attention Deficit Condition she has lived with all her life.

Friends of mine were jealous. My baby slept and slept. She fed, puked and slept some more. I adore my daughter, of course I do, but I watch her struggle and I wonder what might have come to pass if she had been left to ‘cook’ properly. Where do these EDDs even come from?

Fewer than 5% of babies actually do arrive on their EDD. I heard a fabulous midwife the other day give the perfect response to the question ‘when is your baby due?’ - She suggests ‘on its birthday’ and reminds us that you will forget the EDD. We need to stop focusing on this elusive date and relax into our babies’ timetables.

You can hear Melanie the Midwife and her co host discussing how EDDs are calculated in this episode of her fantastic podcast, The Great Birth Rebellion. Turns out the calculation method was arrived at by a German physician (male - obviously) in the 1800s. That’s 200 years ago!

It assumes that all women have a 28 day cycle (some days can be added and subtracted for the outliers amongst us); we all ovulate exactly 14 days into our cycle; and that we all had sex and conceived on the same day of our cycle. So let’s bin the idea of the EDD and, as the hosts discuss, consider a due period, due season, or due month.

I wish I hadn’t been induced. The chances of a baby dying in the uterus are tiny. The same episode of the Great Birth Rebellion drills down into the numbers to reveal the following:

The still birth rate doubles from 6 in 10,000 pregnancies at week 39 (i.e. 0.06%) to 10.8 in 10,000 after 41 weeks (0.1%).

Looked at another way, babies are 99.94% likely to LIVE in ‘week 39’ (and let’s remember that those weeks are fairly arbitrarily calculated) compared with 99.9% after 41 weeks. Doesn’t that put a different spin on things? If I had been presented those sorts of stats and the fact that over 40% of inductions end in C-sections, I am pretty sure I would have declined the intervention.

And why do so many inductions end in sections? Well it seems likely that, without the slow, gentle build up of contractions associated with physiological birth, women suddenly find themselves in excruciating pain, so they cry for an epidural (and all that that involves). I will return to the epidural in a later blog.

In the meantime, I encourage you to take a listen to this rather brilliant episode of The Midwives Cauldron.

In it, Dr Sarah Buckley digs into the hormones of child birth, with a particular focus on Oxytocin. I was fascinated to hear that, while Synotocinon (the fake version) has exactly the same molecular make up as naturally occurring Oxytocin, the latter is produced in the brain and it is this fact which sets the two apart. When the Oxytocin is in the brain, it has the effect of soothing the brain as well as causing the uterus to contract. It takes the body into the parasympathetic nervous system which makes us feel safe.

My favourite quote from this episode (and there are many !) is

“A woman need to feel private, safe and unobserved” [in order for labour to progress easefully].

How much privacy, safety and feeling unobserved do you think a woman who is being induced experiences?

If you are pregnant and are approaching the 40 week mark, if the medics are starting to suggest pessaries and induction, I really encourage you to stop, tune in, go to the home page of this website and take a few minutes to do the meditation to Connect With Your Unborn Child. You will find it at the bottom of the home page. It’s free to download or you can listen to it on the website as often as you need to.

You and your baby will never again be as connected as you are right now. Your baby will leave the protection of your womb. I believe mums and their babies are telepathic, especially when the baby is still inside its mother.

What is your baby telling you?

Does he or she want to stay inside you?

How can the professionals who see the two of you for minutes at a time have any better information about what is going on inside you than you do?

These are questions for you to consider. Our culture currently disempowers women. We give up our bodily autonomy to the medics but no one knows your body like you do. You just need to give yourself a few moments a day to listen to it.

Pregnancy and birth are mechanised at this moment in herstory. Women are expected to move along a neat line towards birth. These neat lines come from averages. Are you average? Or are you unique, spectacular and bringing your very own unique and spectacular being into the world?

By the way, and just to be clear, I know there are times when induction is necessary - extreme pre-eclampsia for example. And I am not suggesting that you ignore the medics completely. I do, however, encourage you to ask more questions if induction is mentioned.

Think BRAIN (or BRIAN) if you prefer:

What are the BENEFITS of this course of action?

What are the RISKS of it?

What are the ALTERNATIVES?

What is your INTUITION telling you?

And what happens if we do NOTHING?…