Inductions around the holidays

Today we’re talking about inductions around the holidays and how to be mindful of falling into an unnecessary induction.

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Welcome, this is Birth, Baby.

Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.

Ciarra is a Birth Dula, Hypnobirthing Educator, and Pediatric Sleep Consultant.

Samantha is a Birth Dula, Childbirth Educator, and Lactation Counselor.

Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.

Today, we are talking in this bonus episode about inductions around the holidays and how to be mindful of falling into an unnecessary induction.

So Samantha, do inductions really rise before the holidays?

So yes, they do.

When you're looking at like birth statistics, like birth rates per day, kind of average across the United States, December 19th and December 20th are very common birth dates, while December 25th, December 31st and January 1st are all really minimal compared to every other day, which means that inductions are happening at that time.

Those are really common days for induction.

And just from our point of view as doulas, we see this happen all the time.

We see clients who are due sometime around the holidays and they're being offered inductions before the holidays.

Or oftentimes we also see them being pressured into inductions before the holidays.

And there is a difference between being offered an induction and being pressured into an induction.

And we can get into that a little bit as well.

Yeah, and informed consent here is really important because if it's, hey, do you want to be induced before the holidays, here's some induction dates, we have available, and that's honest.

If it's your fluid levels are looking a little wonky or we're just worried that X, Y, Z could happen, those things are a little bit more coercive.

Yeah, the baby's looking big, those sorts of things.

And this is not only true about the winter holidays, or at least the December holidays.

This is true around Thanksgiving.

This is true around the 4th of July is another big one.

So big travel holidays because why?

Well, what are the reasons why?

Convenience, right?

For provider and family.

So you want to go into that a little bit?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, so there's lots of reasons why induction rates rise exactly like you said.

And the first is for convenience for the family.

Not everyone wants to be 40 or 41 weeks pregnant on Christmas and having to think through all of those logistics, especially if you do have other children at home, if this isn't your first pregnancy or if you have family coming in.

Sometimes that idea is just more stressful than just choosing to be induced.

And that's totally fine.

A second reason is staffing around the holidays.

There are less staff available in hospitals because people are on vacation or they're celebrating with their own families.

And so non-emergent inductions are not really being offered during that week of Christmas and New Year's as well as Thanksgiving week.

I call it the skeleton crew.

It's like only the skeleton crew is hanging around on those big holidays.

And you're being really nice and saying for convenience for them.

But this next one is the one that I always go to.

You're nice saying that one first.

Convenience for family.

But really, I often feel that it is convenience for the providers.

It is, it is.

Spontaneous labor during the holidays might mean that your provider needs to come in on a day that they'd rather be home with their own family or they might be out of town.

So inducing before that happens reduces that risk for them.

So what does this mean for us?

What can we do to kind of navigate these things during the holidays?

Yeah, so if you're due around the holidays, you definitely need to be prepared that this conversation is probably going to come up.

That's why we have this timing of this podcast being released around this time, because we do see this every year, around this time.

We start getting questions about this.

And if your provider is pushing it, you should really take the time to think through what your preferences are beforehand.

You can also start talking to them about it once in advance so that you're not side swiped or blindsided by it when it's 36 weeks and your due date is, even if it's like December 21st, just because your due date is before that, anywhere between 37 and 42 weeks of gestation is normal, completely normal.

So 37 weeks in one day is just as normal as 41 in six, although people would argue, and I don't care if they're arguing.

So it is, that is a normal range of gestation.

So if your provider is going out of town the 22nd or is just on call on Christmas and lives close by to the hospital and wants to be able to be home because the majority of their patients have already gone into labor and they're just on call and can run over to the hospital, if somebody goes into labor, then they want to get as many of those out of the way as they can.

And this is an important thing to talk about because they're probably going to want to induce you beforehand or at least by the 22nd so that they're not having a Christmas baby with you.

This can also be true for neat birthdays.

So I was just talking to someone that said that they had their provider said that they had seven babies on 777.

So that's wild.

Why are we having that many babies on that date?

And she even said, might have had something to do with that.

She's like wearing this as a badge of honor, but yuck, we're inducing people just for funsies to have really cool birthdays.

Like there's no evidence medically for that.

No, not at all, and again, this is all part of that informed consent, right?

If you wanna be induced, cool, go for it.

If you don't wanna be induced, then this is where you need to have those conversations and you need to prepare yourself ahead of time.

And I know there's probably a lot of you out there who are kind of like me and you wanna be a people pleaser and you don't want your doctor to have to come in on Christmas morning or New Year's Eve to deliver your baby.

And I am 100% right there with you folks, but this is your birth.

This is a life-changing experience for you and a altering...

This is gonna set the course of your parenting journey.

So starting yourself off on the right foot, which is the foot that you want to be on is really the most important thing here, not how you're making other people feel.

Yeah, and I think that it's also important to think about if you were to be induced, let's say on December 22nd, but you would have spontaneously gone into labor on December 24th, you could have had a much easier birth experience on the 24th when your own hormones were all set into action versus artificially inducing on the 22nd.

And you could potentially have your baby at the same time you would have if you had gone into spontaneous labor, depending on how long your induction would be.

And we're here to tell you, we're doulas.

If we're the ones on call, also along with the doctors, and actually more than the doctors, because usually there's more than two doctors in a practice.

So we're on call more days than a doctor would be, although our responsibility is not as high.

That is convenient for us too.

Sure.

If you get induced before a major holiday, we get to be with our kids.

Halloween, I want to be able to trick or treat with my kids.

Thanksgiving, I want to be able to eat with my family.

Christmas, I want to watch them open presents.

But it is not your job to make our job easier either.

And I'm sitting here as somebody who would actually be, have a more convenient experience if you were to induce, saying it's not a great idea to do that because it can make your experience more difficult.

And that cascade of interventions pushes on into things like breastfeeding.

If you wanted to breastfeed, but now you just went through a 36 hour induction and had a really hard experience, any sort of intervention in the birth process usually requires some sort of intervention to help with something further on like breastfeeding.

So all of these things need to be considered.

You know, if you want a seven, seven birthday for your kiddo, go for it.

But don't do it just because the provider is telling you that they want you to.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, I think that's all we got for you today, folks.

Done did it.

A little mini bonus episode.

Yeah, as always, holler at us if you've got questions or feelings or concerns that you want to talk about more.

And if you would please just take a quick second, this is a short episode.

We didn't take up much of your time today.

If you would please go and rate us and review us on whatever podcast app you listen to us on, that would be so helpful.

It helps other people find our podcast, which is great.

We're not even making money off of this at this point.

We just want this information to get out here so that less people are having unnecessary interventions and are getting to have a better experience.

Thanks guys.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby!

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See you next week.