There are a lot of reasons that women may want to induce labor, as well as a number of proven ways to induce labor at home. “Most women would prefer their labor to start naturally rather than have it jumpstarted at the hospital with drugs,” Mindy Cockeram, author of Cut Your Labor in Half told Mom.com. The reality is that many women prefer the intimacy of being able to start labor at home and may even decide to have a home birth.
For me, it was about being proactive with a child that was already 10 days overdue. My desire to induce at home was because I wanted to get things rolling. I wanted it to make sense that I was packing up and heading to the hospital. It was about having some control over an uncontrollable situation. Keep in mind that labor is labor and does have risks involved. Even inducing labor naturally should only be done with your doctor’s advice.
Natural ways to induce labor
Induce labor yourself: My story
Like many women in Los Angeles, I was told about a salad that would induce labor. Remember: I was 10 days overdue at the point when I started wanting to induce. My sister-in-law told me where to go and to ask the person behind the counter for the “Pregnancy Salad.”
So I forced my husband to take me and order the salad. Apparently Hillary Duff and I have something in common because we both sought the salad and it didn’t work. Frustrated, I told my doctor about the salad adventure. After his chuckle, he told me it wasn’t the salad that would lead to labor, it was a salad containing watercress because it contained natural compounds like Pitocin. He said you couldn’t get the amount of watercress needed just from a salad.
Armed with my new information, I bought two pounds of watercress and ate it like a cow eats grass. I didn’t make a salad or even dress it with tasty salad dressing. That’s how desperate I was. Hours later I started very low-level contractions. Labor had started, but I wasn’t dilating so the hospital sent me home to ride it out at home until I was further along.
What my doctor didn’t tell me until after all was said and done and I had completed 48 hours of agonizing labor, is that when you induce this way you can put yourself in a position for a longer, more painful delivery. And that’s exactly what I had. So heed my warning, using “The Salad” is not the best option out there.
