The big news today is that the Duchess Kate has pushed out a new heir to the British throne. Well done, Kate. You spent your pregnancy skinny and attractively dressed, and now you've given birth before me. You, Kim Kardashian, my friend A-, and another lady whose pregnancy I've observed from the shadows of Facebook. All of you have babies. I have performance anxiety, is-my-baby-okay anxiety and swollen feet.
So far actual medical intervention is unnecessary. Thus the mature thing to do would be to relax, wait and enjoy what everyone keeps telling me are the last moments I will ever have to myself ever again for the rest of my life ever until we are all dead.
Instead, I'm proactively implementing a boatload of tricks based on superstition and magical thinking.
There is a lot of advice out there about how to get things going. In fact, from the moment you are pregnant the Internet tells you that if you so much as sneeze too lustily your baby might detach and fall onto the floor. I therefore avoided large quantities of raspberry leaf tea, rosemary, ginger (the list goes on) for the last nine months. In retrospect, that was stupid.
It may not be scientific, but since we're talking about home remedies, I think my anecdotal evidence is at least as valuable as your double-blind study.
It is therefore with great confidence that I can now reveal this list of Things That Do Not Induce Labor.
1. Sex. People give all kinds of reasons why sex supposedly helps get the ball rolling, ranging from the prostaglandin in semen to all the bouncing to the oxytocin to the belief that orgasms might turn into contractions. It makes so much sense, right? Unfortunately, according to my careful research, this is all nonsense. Total bollocks.
Sex causes pregnancy (I think, although I may need more data points). It does not end pregnancy. In fact, there is even real science to back up the fact that it doesn't end pregnancy. Sorrow.
2. Rosemary. I avoided rosemary tea for the last few months because I had some vague idea that this fine herb, when consumed in big quantities, induces labor. Yesterday I ate a branch of rosemary the size of one those pine boughs that you usually use to decorate your Christmas mantelpiece. Nothing.
3. Ginger. See above. Also see above for pretty much every herbal tea except, like, lemon and mint.
4. Magic birth tea made out of cinnamon, cloves, ginger and verbena. I'm on my fourth liter of the stuff, although at this point it's mostly because the bitter flavor is starting to grow on me. Nary a cramp, though.
5. Tampons dripped with evening primrose and clove oil. This one's great because the tip was accompanied by a warning to not try this right before I go to bed because "you don't want to have to get right back up an hour later!" I sort of felt like anything this counterintuitive and inconvenient would have to work, but sadly, no.
6. Walking uphill and downhill. This one, along with "lifting things," is kind of like saying that life causes you to go into labor, which I suppose will always eventually be true.
7. Eating spicy food. Last night we spent 50 euros on order-in Indian food. Nope.
8. Trying to induce labor. I think I'm just going to have to give up and go with the flow. Unless medical intervention is necessary (and knock on wood it won't be!), this baby will come when it comes, right? Anyway, my midwife says being really relaxed induces labor....
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