I successfully used nipple stim to get labor going with my last baby. We AROM’d at 4PM, we were inducing due to a hx of pre-eclampsia and rising BP’s. I had some piddling contractions for the next hour. I sent my husband to get some dinner, sat on the birth ball with my head on a pillow on the bed, put my ipod on and started some nipple stimulation. I had a good contraction within 5 minutes and followed up with a few more over the next 10. I stopped after 15 minutes and by that point my body kicked into gear and I was in active labor and had my baby 2 1/2 hours later.

All of my 9 babies except one were born within a few days of my due date, which I usually was computing from a known date of conception due to fertility charting. (For purposes of trying to avoid conception; I was blessed with never having to do anything to encourage it!)

I had a C section with my first born in 1973, and VBACs for all the rest. The fourth and later were born at home.

With my sixth, I was, I thought, 11 days overdue. My doctor told me that they really didn’t like you to be more than two weeks overdue; he might stretch that a bit with non stress tests and blood tests for placental functioning(something called estradiol? ) , but not more than a few days. He said that it wasn’t really considered safe to use pitocin on a mother who had had a C section.

So I felt that I was faced with, produce this baby or have another C section. I had read about cohosh in some birthing book or other, and I got some ‘black cohosh tea’ from the health food store. I started drinking it on Friday afternoon, which happened to be Good Friday. I made it to church for Good Friday, although I was already having mild contractions. I kept drinking the tea whenever the contractions slowed down. There was no question of my going to church for the Easter vigil on Saturday night. I was very tired, still having a labor that kept slowing down until I drank more of that awful tea which tasted like dirt. As we got into the small hours of Sunday morning, towards 3 am, I sat on the edge of my bed discouraged, and thought, if another day dawns on this labor I’m going to have to go to the hospital. Contractions had suddenly stopped again. I stood up, I think feeling as if I had to go to the bathroom, and suddenly realized I was pushing. I grabbed a blanket, put it under me, squatted down, and my baby was born. I was totally astonished.

She didn’t look postmature at all, in fact she was the earliest looking of any of my babies. The doctor who came afterwards to examine me agreed with me that she looked early, not late. All I can think is that I got pregnant and lost the pregnancy very early, or for some reason thought I was pregnant, and so stopped charting, and that I was a whole month off on my dates. Sonograms weren’t very common in those days, only if something wrong was suspected. All my babies were large, most ten pounds or more. This one was 9, not really small, but smaller than my usual. Covered with vernix, which my babies usually were not.

So if I was really two weeks early rather than two weeks late, cohosh managed to make me deliver even though I wasn’t really ready to. Believe me, I never would have done this without the threat of C section hanging over my head. I hadn’t reached that “I can’t stand to be pregnant one more day” place at all.

But this would make me think that cohosh is effective. I used to read more about it , and much less lately. Has someone found out something negative about it?

Just curious,
Susan Peterson

PSI also had a friend whose 8th baby I was helping her have. She had a long long prodromal labor. One capsule of cohosh threw her into active labor in 20 minutes. Another indication of its effectiveness to me.

Olivia