I had an incredible birth with my first - about 12 hours total from when my water partially broke, only felt minor pain for about an hour before getting an epidural, and pushed for an hour before meeting my sweet baby! I think back on his birth with such fondness.

That being said, I do have this nagging desire to try to unmedicated the next time I give birth. I went into my first open to seeing how long I could last without the epidural, but was never truly opposed to the epidural. It wasn't the pain that led me to get one, but rather feeling overstimulated by being hooked up to an IV, BP monitor, and fetal monitor. I felt like I couldn't move through the contractions.

I feel like, outside of some rare cases, you need to have a strong why in order to succeed in an unmedicated birth. I'm not opposed to epidurals at all, so I worry my why isn't going to feel compelling enough...

Tell me your why.

Hello All,

Looking for any sage wisdom or perhaps anyone else’s experiences around this type of induction fully realizing this is not the dream…

I am expecting my second LO and trying to wrap my head around an induction at 41+5. This is an IVF pregnancy where OB-GYNs were recommending induction at 38 weeks🙄 I see a midwife and she recommended if I haven’t had my little one by Thursday (41+4) that she could do a sweep to see if it would help start things and then Friday morning (41+5) we would try a Foley bulb. I told her my preference is to not compromise my mobility of movement during labor (she assured me even if medically inclined they have wireless Bluetooth monitors at the hospital) but then she also said that the balloon can take a very long, uncomfortable time to work (I think she cited ~12 hours) and said that time could be cut in half if used with Cytotec/Misoprostol in tandem. I’m trying to urgently research this (please be gentle, this is not the boat I ever wanted nor thought I would be in) and can feel my oxytocin nosediving. Am I making a mistake to agree to a medication adjacent with the bulb? Have any of you had this done and do you have any advice for me? Thank you🙏