I have at max 8 days till baby girl is set to be here. Jan 4th is the start of my induction. FTM. Last check was yesterday 37w4d and I was about 1.5cm and 50% effaced. I've dealt with the usual pregnancy constipation lol. It has gotten a little better. Should I start taking stool softeners now? I've tried dulcolax earlier in the pregnancy and it didn't seem to help. I drink plenty of water. I hear you can get diarrhea leading up to birth? I don't plan on getting the epidural.
Eek what an exciting time you’re almost ready to meet your little!!!! I
I personally have taken Colace everyday pregnant or not since I was 15 years old LOL. A stool softener is not a laxative it won’t make you poop it will just soften as long as you drink a lot of water. If you need help with constipation try all bran cereal it has so much fiber and works better than anything else to help to poop. There’s not much room in there now because baby is much bigger and smushing all of your organs so constipation can get really bad the last few weeks. It won’t hurt to start a stool softener now, they’ll give it to you after you deliver in the hospital anyways.
In labor I did vomit and have diarrhea simultaneously while I labored at home for about 30 minutes it was quite the adventure BUT I felt so much better after and cleaned out. Met baby about 3 hours later.
I opted for epidural but labor progressed quicker than I thought so it was too late. I’m due with my second in end of March and will be going unmedicated you can totally do it if that’s what you want! Nothing wrong with changing your mind. You’ll need to do some birth prep to do without - meditation, breathing, have birth partner learn counter pressure to help distract from contractions.
ALSO your dilation doesn’t matter as it can change rapidly! Don’t get discouraged or stress yourself out with numbers from early cervical checks! I went from a 6 to a 10 in 2 hours and delivered after 4 total hours in labor as a FTM.
Wishing you an amazing birth experience!!!!!
Do you happen to have specific breathing resources that you can recommend?
Bridget teylors built to birth on YouTube! She has a ton of videos for breathing exercises and meditations you don’t need to buy the program all of the videos are on her channel you just have to look. Mainly just practicing slow controlled breaths in through the nose for a count of 4-8sec, hold for a few sec, and then exhale through your MOUTH as long as you can to get the breath out. You can look up Hypnobirthing breathing exercises as well these helped me! I read Hypnobirthing the mongan method, and calm birth school a few weeks before giving birth and they really helped me prepare!
Thank you SO much for this information! Starting to look these up now!
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Sounds like where I was. After the induction I took the senna or whatever they were giving me in the hospital and it wasn’t doing much and I had the worst constipation I’ve ever dealt with a couple days postpartum. I’ve since switched to miralax and it’s working so much better. But yes it might be a good idea to take some now.