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Home › Articles › Labor Preparation › Should Labor Be Induced?

Should Labor Be Induced?

Waiting for Mother Nature vs. Picking the Date

By Melinda Copp

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One of the hardest parts of becoming a new parent is the inability to control everything that happens during pregnancy. The most obvious example of this is when the baby is born. Most moms would agree that it would be nice to be able to plan the day when Baby comes into the world. This is usually not an option because babies come when they're ready. However, labor is sometimes induced to make the birth more convenient in one way or another.

Why Induce Labor?
A planned induction is a way to make sure your baby is born when you're ready. And when the induction is planned close to the due date, this isn't usually a problem. But when you induce labor early, you take a risk that your baby won't be mature and healthy.

Women are induced before their due date for several reasons. The medical reasons usually occur when there is some risk, possibly life threatening, to Mom or Baby. For some women, carrying a large baby may be a reason for an early induction.

"My first baby was 8 pounds, 6 ounces and I am 5 foot, 4 inches, 110 pounds," says Alison Rice, a mom from Birmingham, Ala., who was induced about a week early with her second child. "So when my doctor could tell that my second baby was 7 pounds, she decided to induce."

But the non-medical reasons depend on the situation and are usually more a matter of convenience. "I was induced one and a half weeks early with my third child because he was due the second week in January and I wanted the insurance to recognize his birth in the same year and of course for tax purposes," says Roxanne Bullard, a mom from Parma, Idaho.

Another reason a family may decide to induce is to coordinate the birth with the dad's work schedule or military duty. But just because an induction is planned for non-medical reasons doesn't mean it actually works that way. Those last few weeks of a pregnancy can be pretty unpredictable, and your situation can change very quickly.


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