Melissa Willets
posted in Pregnancy
I am 39 weeks pregnant with my fourth child.
For weeks now, my labor has abruptly started and stopped. Last night, I had contractions that were so painful, they scared me. I feared delivering my baby right in my bed, an experience I’m not looking for. After an hour, however, the very strong waves stopped, and I was left wondering, well, WTF?
I’m beginning to wonder if, in my case, being induced may end up being my best option.
Let me rewind and provide a bit of background on my previous deliveries: My first pregnancy is the only one in which labor progressed in the traditional sense. It had a beginning, a middle, and ended about ten hours later with me holding my baby in my arms.
My second pregnancy was induced at 39 weeks due to medical necessity, since my baby was failing to thrive in utero.
My third pregnancy was a lot like this one; I experienced contractions that started and stopped, week after week. Finally, one night around 37 weeks, I went to the hospital and my doctor decided to go ahead and facilitate my labor so I wouldn’t end up going home and having my baby on the living room floor.
This is exactly what I’m afraid of now. Seriously, I’m scared. I feel like I don’t trust my body. It has faked me out so many times at this point, I don’t know when to believe it’s the real thing, even though this is my fourth full-term pregnancy.
After having such frighteningly painful – and regular might I add – contractions last night, only for them to stop cold an hour later, I keep thinking the next time I feel sensations like this, I’ll just be waiting for them to end.
But what if they don’t? What if I wait too long to call my doctor? What if I don’t make it to the hospital in time to deliver my son? What if something goes wrong?
I can’t help but have all of these doubts and fears after going through the loss of a pregnancy just a year ago. So there’s a big part of me that wants to deliver my baby in a controlled setting, at a predetermined time. And I won’t apologize for feeling that way.
I know inductions of labor are somewhat controversial.
Some people believe any unnatural pregnancy interventions are wrong or even immoral. Many of these people are men, in my experience.
Of course, plenty of pregnant women are against having inductions. They want 100 percent natural pregnancies and deliveries, perhaps even at home, with no medical assistance of any kind. They feel strongly about waiting for their babies to let them know when they’re ready to be born. They believe when the time is right, baby will come.
I totally get this train of thought. All babies are born eventually. So messing with a natural process definitely isn’t required by any stretch of the imagination.
Meanwhile, I know my baby is fully developed and healthy. I don’t believe he will be traumatized by an induction, since I’ve been through two others essentially, and my babies were just fine.
In the end, I recognize that each pregnancy and situation is different. I am confident that scheduling an induction is a good option for me if my baby doesn’t come soon. I guess we’ll see what happens!
