There are quite a few different medical ways to induce labour.
Some women will need more than one of the methods, which include pessaries, breaking your waters and a syntocinon drip, to get their labour started. Even then it could still take a couple of days for your baby to be born.Pessaries to induce LabourPessaries containing prostaglandins/prostaglandin gel can be placed into the vagina to ripen the cervix. Your baby’s heartbeat will be monitored for some of the time to make sure that he is not adversely affected by the induction. Once your labour is under way, you can normally ask for the monitor to be taken off for you to move around and get comfortable. Some women need more than one lot of pessaries to get their labour going.Breaking the WatersAround about half of women who are induced with pessaries go into labour. For some however, pessaries don’t work and they then need to have their waters broken (usually called a 'sweep') and a Syntocinon drip to induce their labour. If the cervix/neck of your womb is slightly open because you have had some contractions, even just mild ones which you may not have even felt, it is possible for the medical staff to 'sweep your membranes' to burst the bag of waters where they bulge down in front of your baby’s head. Breaking the waters in this way can cause you to have very fast and strong contractions and so may stimulate the onset of labour.Syntocinon Drip for InductionThis is a drip which contains a synthetic form of oxytocin. Oxytocin is the hormone which makes your womb contract. The drip is inserted in your arm and gradually delivers an increasing amount of oxytocin. The principle is to copy the build-up of oxytocin that would have occurred naturally had labour started on its own. Lots of women say that Syntocinon causes the contractions to become very strong very quickly without much build-up and this can be hard to cope with. If you are prepared for this to happen then it can be easier.
October 2011 | 
How Can I Start My Labour Off?
