How to Induce Labor at Home - Quick Tips

By Julie Ingham

So it is 5 days past your due date and yet the baby is still resting inside your belly. Overdue pregnancies can bring about much frustration as well as discomfort. You may be wondering how to induce labor at home. Or perhaps you are going with an all natural home birth and want to help get things going.

One way to encourage your little one's arrival is by walking or climbing stairs. The idea here is that the pressure of the baby's head against your cervix will stimulate labor. Even if this first effort is not successful, it may help your baby get into a better position when delivery time does come.

Another good option is a massage. Not only will it be relaxing for your body and frame of mind when labor does start, it may also hurry the process along. Just be certain that any massage is performed by a practitioner who is licensed and knows what he or she is doing. One who has experience working on pregnant women is best.

It got you into this mess in the first place so you may want to try it again: having sex. During sex, oxytocin is produced. This hormone causes the uterus to contract and therefore may help set labor in motion. Further, a man's semen contains prostaglandins, which will soften the uterus.

If sex does not sound very appealing or you are just too uncomfortable for it at this stage, nipple stimulation will have the same effect of producing oxytocin which may promote labor. This method will probably take a little longer than sex would.

Most women will go into labor sometime after the 37th week. It is not until after the 42nd week that you really need to be concerned. But once you do decide to induce, be sure to have your midwife or whoever is to be with you monitor you the entire time. Keeping an alert eye on the moments leading up to labor could make all the difference in your new baby's health as well as your own.

When you have decided to take matters into your own hands then try out acupressure. I'm sure it's the method you midwife will recommend you using as it the safest one for both you and your baby.

Research has been conducted and is showing that over eighty percent of pregnant women who use acupressure to induce labor experience a normal labor with less complications than other women that do not use the techniques. Did you know that it can also shorten the amount of time one is in labor?

Want to learn how to use acupressure? It's easy and anyone can learn it. Check out these easy to learn acupressure techniques: http://www.squidoo.com/acupressure-to-inducelabor

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