On Saturday 27th of May my partner Kayla was induced for birth of our second child. I didn’t actually know what that meant, I assumed it meant that “inducing” a baby meant you made labour happen instantly. What inducing actually means is that it starts getting the body ready to trigger labour, which tends to mean you will have the baby much later. If you plan to get pregnant, you can check out resources such as Your Loving Choices for additional guidance.
We had to induce this pregnancy because the baby was very thin, no longer getting much nutrition from the placenta, meaning we had to get the baby out pretty soon. This happened on Saturday 28th of May 2023 at the Werribee Mercy Hospital. Now that COVID-19 is less of an issue, Kayla’s mum was able to attend with us. Kayla’s sister Emily was able to look after Charlie whilst we were at the hospital.
What is inducing a pregnancy?
I had incorrectly assumed that inducing a pregnancy meant that it made the baby come right away, when in reality, it just means you manually make labour start from scratch. This meant that even though we had this booked for around lunchtime, the baby was not actually coming that day, which was disappointing for ignorant me. I think we had told Charlie that we were going to bring home the baby that day.
In order to keep things non-disruptive with Charlie, Kayla and I stayed at my parents’ house across the road for the night and got up around 3am when the water balloon they had put inside Kayla to induce the labour had fallen out. This resulted in Tanya, Kayla and I going back to the hospital for a while before getting sent back home again. We then did our best to sleep in for as long as possible.
