Baby's Coming -- But When?

When a pregnant Plains Indian woman was near term and showed no sign of going into labor, tribe members would tie her to a rock in an open field and stage a mock "attack," pulling up their horses only at the very last minute, in hopes of inducing labor. The Pilgrims, for their part, would stand women whose babies were late against a pole, strap them to it, and pound the pole up and down against the ground -- apparently hoping to shake the baby loose.

There are almost as many pieces of "folk wisdom" about how a woman can get labor started as there are pregnant women. Are any of these old tales true? It depends on whom you ask. Even doctors and other medical professionals disagree about some of the classic labor-inducing strategies.

Props to Prostaglandin

Prostaglandins are hormones that help in inducing labor. If you're well beyond your due date and your doctor induces labor, he will probably use a prostaglandin gel to help "ripen" the cervix. So if you're trying to persuade your baby to make her debut with a home remedy, "The endgame here is stimulation of the prostaglandins," says Pat Alagia, MD, vice chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., who shared the tales of historic labor-induction practices.

So how do you stimulate those prostaglandins naturally? The same way you made the baby in the first place. "Sex is a for sure. Semen has prostaglandins in it, and orgasm releases oxytocin, which causes uterine contractions," says Cindy Siegel, CNM, a nurse midwife with Ob-Gyn Associates in Providence, Rhode Island, who delivers babies at the highly ranked Women and Infants' Hospital.

Alagia agrees. "Ejaculate contains prostaglandins, and that's what you want," he says. "I can't tell you the number of patients who've called me and said 'I went into labor at 10:27. Want to know what we were doing?' I tell them, 'No, but I have an idea!'"

Not everyone agrees. "It's theoretically possible that prostaglandins in the seminal fluid could cause some contractions, but I don't think that there's any proof that that will induce real labor," says Brian Gleason, MD, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "There's really nothing you can do on your own," for inducing labor, he says.

In any case, if you have a normal, healthy pregnancy and don't have any risk factors, such as placenta previa, you can keep having sex throughout the nine months. "When women are full-term, the dads are nervous. They don't want to hurt them. I've had mothers bring their partners in so I can tell them face to face that it's OK," Siegel says. "Of course you have to be very careful and gentle, and only have sex in positions that are comfortable for the woman." Often that can be lying on the side, which doesn't allow a lot of penetration and provides support for the stomach.