Nutritional diet to induce labor

There is no safe and scientific "nutritional diet to induce labor" program. Any attempt to terminate pregnancy on your own through diet has a very high risk of massive bleeding, infection, lifelong infertility and even death, and is a high-risk behavior that does not comply with medical standards. Termination of pregnancy must go to a regular medical institution and be performed by qualified medical staff.

Most of the people who search for this word have encountered difficulties: either they have an unexpected pregnancy and are afraid of being known by others, or they have a natural fear of surgery, or they are temporarily short of money and always want to find a "quiet, without side effects" way to solve the problem. It is precisely because of this mentality that a bunch of so-called "natural labor induction recipes" appear on the Internet: drinking saffron boiled water for three consecutive days, eating ice crab every meal, purslane dumplings and barley porridge. They are all very popular, saying that they are all ordinary ingredients, "supplementing nutrients and solving the problem at the same time", and even saving the step of going to the hospital.

When I was helping in the obstetrics and gynecology emergency department last year, I picked up a 19-year-old girl at two in the morning. She was wearing a high school uniform, and her trousers were soaked with blood. When she was helped in by two classmates, she could not walk steadily. When I asked, I found out that I was almost 3 months pregnant. I didn't dare to tell my parents. I searched for home remedies and ate boiled eggs with saffron for two days in a row. I also ate two kilograms of iceberg hawthorn just taken out of the refrigerator. I started having stomachache in the afternoon. I endured it for 8 hours and the bleeding became more and more serious before I dared to go to the hospital. During the examination, there was already a 2cm residue in the uterine cavity, and the contractions were completely irregular. An urgent uterine evacuation was performed that night, and she was hospitalized for a week due to post-operative infection. In the end, her parents rushed over to sign the contract. When the girl woke up, she cried until she was convulsed. She said that she had known she was going to suffer such a serious crime, and that she would have gone to a regular hospital in the first place.

As for the relationship between diet and induction of labor, the understanding in different fields is actually quite clear, and there is no fuzzy gray area. In traditional medicine, foods with blood-activating and smooth properties are indeed listed as taboos during pregnancy, such as saffron, musk, and purslane. Ingesting large amounts may indeed stimulate uterine contractions and increase the risk of miscarriage. However, these are essentially precautions for pregnancy protection and cannot be used to actively induce labor. I specifically asked a colleague from the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and she turned over the medical records and told me that even in ancient times, the dosage of these medicinal materials was strictly controlled, and the success rate was less than 30%. The rest would either cause massive bleeding or residue, which could kill two people. Nowadays, regular traditional Chinese medicine hospitals will never recommend using diet to induce labor, saying that it is not a cure, but a harm.

The attitude of Western medicine is more direct. The director of the obstetrics department always told us during the ward rounds that most of the uterine contractions stimulated by diet are ineffective contractions. At most, they will cause redness and threatened abortion. It is impossible to completely expel the placenta and fetal membranes from the body. As long as there is a little tissue left in the uterine cavity, the infection may lead to pelvic inflammatory disease or fallopian tube blockage, which will make it impossible to conceive in this life, or it may lead to massive bleeding and coagulation disorders, and there are many cases of uterine incision and death.

To be honest, I can especially understand the mood of those who want to find a "diet to induce labor" method. They always feel that eating something into the stomach is much gentler than taking medicine or surgery, and there is no harm in it even if it is useless. But it’s really not like this. Last year, I met a 28-year-old mother of two children. She didn’t want her employer to know about her unexpected pregnancy. She heard from the old man in her hometown that drinking turtle soup + barley water would lead to “natural abortion”. She drank it for three days, and finally she was rolling in pain and was sent to the hospital. She had placental abruption, her blood pressure dropped to 60/30, and she had to lose 1200cc of blood to save her. After that, she couldn’t get pregnant again. I still remember the way she slapped herself when she woke up.

Don’t believe the personal statements on the Internet that “I drank hawthorn water for three days and it really fell out.” Either the quality of the embryo itself was poor and the fetus stopped, or there were serious complications, and the pregnancy was forcibly “dropped” without a follow-up examination. In the end, a lot of gynecological problems were left behind, which you will regret when you want to have a child.

If you really need to terminate your pregnancy, don’t panic. Abortion and induction surgeries in regular hospitals are now very standardized. They can be done in outpatient clinics within 10 weeks. Hospitalization for older gestational weeks only takes three to five days. Doctors have regulations to protect patients’ privacy and will not ask unnecessary questions. The cost is mostly within the range that ordinary people can afford. It is much more cost-effective and safer than eating random things and spending tens of thousands of yuan on rescue. In addition, I would like to remind you that induction of labor over 14 weeks of gestation must comply with relevant national policy requirements and provide corresponding certification materials. Do not go to an unqualified clinic just to save trouble. The risk is higher than blindly taking folk prescriptions on your own.

To put it bluntly, "nutritional diet to induce labor" is a complete pseudo-scientific concept. In essence, it exploits the fear of people with unexpected pregnancies to cut leeks and even kill them. If you really encounter difficulties, don't gamble the rest of your life. Going to a regular hospital is the most responsible choice for you.