Have you been offered induction because of your due date?

How’s this for a shitty intro?

Depending on where you are in county, country, UK or in the world, you will get differing advice & guidance on being offered induction?

Sound like a fairy tale? It’s not though, hospital trusts follow their own policies, based on NICE guidelines. However, even within a trust different midwives will discuss & offer induction at different times.

Induction can be anything from advice about “natural methods” including eating dates, stretch & sweeps or induction at a particular time in order to “attend a birth unit” instead of labour ward.

If you are ever told you must be induced to prevent an aging placenta from any gestation, please share this research.

Dr Sara Wickham [In Your Own Time, 2021] delves into the history of pregnancies being given a sell by date, going waaaay back to 1902 & a Scottish obstetrician called Ballantyne who documented (his opinion) that some babies were born with a “wasting” condition????
(red flag) who were initially slimmer than others but perked up after a few feeds.

Then a German obstetrician Runge, went one step further several decades later, by suggesting it was due to a failing in the passing of nutrients from mother to baby thus the seed of doubt about the placenta had been planted. This is where the shit show starts in terms of “evidence”.

Dr Sophie Messager has written a whole blog on #TheMythOfTheAgingPlacenta & rightly highlights these findings from a Cochrane review [Risk of Stillbirth & Infant Death Stratified by Gestational Age] the increased chance of stillbirth at term (the main reason for induction policy) is very small, rising from about 0.1% (1:1000) @ 40-41wks, to about 0.3% (3 :1000) @ 42wks about 0.5% (5:1000) @ 43wks. This paper reported that induction before 42wks reduced the chance of perinatal death from 0.3% to 0.03%.

The amount of research within maternity services that is based on poor evidence is staggering, that teamed with that fact is can take up 20 years for solid, gold standard, myth busting evidence to be implemented in our hospitals [AIMS UK] means you can be walking into a cascade of unnecessary intervention for no reason.

Your placenta & baby are not a pumpkin.