“My pregnancies were all long. My twins were born by induction at 40 weeks and the next baby was born by induction at 42 weeks. By child number 4 I decided on a homebirth – which meant that I would need to go into labour naturally. Finally at 43 weeks and 4 days that happened. It isn’t recommended to go that long, however he was fine, although his skin peeled off everywhere. Baby number 5 was 42 weeks and 3 days, also born at home. I tried acupuncture, I drank gallons of raspberry leaf tea, I had so much sex I was sick of it. I believe that some women naturally have longer pregnancies and some have shorter. The women who spontaneously labour have their babies at 37 weeks fall into the ‘normal’ category and the unlucky women who go longer than 40 weeks unfortunately get landed with all the interventions. Choosing to wait for labour to occur naturally was very hard work as there was a tremendous amount of pressure to agree to an induction, however I believed that my body must eventually labour spontaneously. I did agree to regular monitoring in the last week to check that the baby was OK.”
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