On a list of what scares me the most in life, two things would top the list: confined spaces and, perhaps unsurprisingly, childbirth.
My early 20s have been enveloped by a desire to see studies, drugs, things that will ease the pain of childbirth for me later. (Or the invention of a way to have children without it… but that’s probably for another time.)
Luckily, researchers in the US seem to have my back: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania has found a way to induce labour without it prolonging the time a woman is in childbirth.
In the US, nearly one-quarter of women who deliver are forced to have their labour induced. In Australia, as recently as 2013, that number was a little higher at about 28 per cent.
This Glorious Mess interview Milli Hill from the Positive Birth Movement. Post continues after audio.
Without a doubt, it’s one of the most common medical procedures in the world.
Despite this, labour induction is costly and, according the University of Pennsylvania, has no widely accepted “best practice”.
Researchers now believe they have found a way to reduce the time an induced woman is in labour by up to four hours.
In the study, the research team enrolled nearly 500 women who needed labor induction at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, randomly assigning them to one of four different treatments that obstetricians commonly use to induce labour.
As a result, researchers found the combination of the use of one drug, misoprostol, and a method called the Foley catheter method had the lowest average time between treatment and delivery.
