by Iris Forester

Created on: November 29, 2008

Maya waited patiently to talk to me after one session of the childbirth class I was teaching, and she clearly had an urgent question on her mind. Maya was only 22, the youngest one in the class I held for single mothers, but she was a clever, thoughtful young woman nonetheless.

"I was wondering about having my labor induced," she began. "My mother is going to come and be with me when I have the baby, and she lives four hours away. If I don't have know when I'm going into labor, she might not make it in time, and I'll be in the hospital all alone!"

Maya's concerns were not unusual. It seemed that in every class, I heard reasons from my students for wanting to have labor induced: "I don't want to use up half my maternity leave waiting around just to have the baby!" "I live an hour from the hospital, and I'm afraid of getting caught in traffic!" "I really want my own doctor, so I don't want to go into labor on one of his days off!"

"Talk it over with your obstetrician," I told Maya. "See what he has to say." I knew Maya's doctor, and I knew he almost always refused to do elective inductions, so I had faith that he would help her see a different side of the issue. "We'll discuss induction in class next week."

The following week, Maya showed up in class with a printed page of information that her doctor now gives out to all his patients. She announced to me that not only would she never consider an elective induction, but she wanted to tell everyone what she had learned from her doctor.

For the benefit of the class, I asked Maya to step up in front and tell us about what was on her page of information. Here are the main points which Maya presented to her classmates:

Between 20% and 30% of labors are induced now. In 1989, only about 8% of labors were induced.

The main reason for this increase is the fact that more women are having "elective" inductions, which means that they (and their doctors) want to be able to schedule the birth at a convenient time.

While inducing labor is sometimes medically necessary, it carries very real risks to mother and child. It only makes sense to take these risks if there are clear medical reasons for doing so.

Labors that are induced are known to be more painful. The drug pitocin, which is used to induce labor, produces contractions which are harder and longer than natural ones. Because of this, women using pitocin need significantly more pain medication of every kind, and unmedicated childbirth becomes almost impossible. Furthermore, if pain

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