Never Be Cross or Cruel, Never Give Us Castor Oil

Or gruel. Love us as a son and daughter, and never smell of barley water...

As a side note, as a small girl watching my beloved Mary Poppins, I always thought that line, which is accompanied by cheeky young Michael's grimace, was "never give us castor oil or glue." It's much funnier that way, in my opinion.

So, one of the fun things about being 10 months pregnant (oh, was it only 9...hey wait, 41 WEEKS? No, that's actually more like 10) is that people call you more, text you more, e-mail you more, check your blog more. I'm not trying to brag, I'm just saying. Reading my blog stats is way more interesting than usual these days. People I know, people I don't know, people from home, people from work, people from school, it's all very fun to taunt you with my still-pregnant state.

But really the point of this post is to see what you think about castor oil! and other at-home methods of induction--inducement?--(I think I've heard them all) and to share with you my experience with it, or non-experience rather.

Story: I was all raring to go (or is it rearing?) with the castor oil method a couple of nights ago, in fact so much so that I drove Matt around making him go in to stores and look for some. I would have done it myself but honestly, with some of the comments I get just innocently buying groceries at this point, I don't think I could handle whatever comments I'd get buying castor oil. So I made Matt do it, and even he got the punch line, "Hope everything comes out okay!" from the sensitive check-out lady as he left CVS that wintry eve. Being someone who spent about five years of her young life slurping mineral oil from a KCRW mug every night before bed (these were the same years I was watching Mary Poppins, okay, really, I promise, I'm over it), I can appreciate jokes like that.

And then I got home and started to get nervous about it. Castor oil...could this possibly wreak some unwanted havoc on my unprepared body? Clearly the baby's not ready to come, should I be mixing things up in there without medical supervision? So I did what any inanely pregnant woman does and that is start looking "castor oil" up in books and on the Internet. Maybe you know already, but I'd like to remind you that doing any sort of at-home medical research is a recipe for disaster on your psyche.

Although in Matt's research he found all sorts of good stuff like studies where 57% of women went into successful, spontaneous labor within 24 hours and how castor oil has been used for centuries for pretty much everything short of painting your house or pouring on your cereal, I just kept finding message boards where people talked about how their guts exploded or their friends died just from a half a tablespoon of castor oil. Or how labor set in but it was the worst day of their lives. Etc.

And in all of my books, everyone except HypnoBirthing warned against castor oil. Then again if HypnoBirthing had their way I'd be spending this Saturday morning visualizing strawberry-colored mist and blue satin ribbons instead of blogging. Anyway so the short of it is I got real nervous and decided to wait and ask my doctor his opinion, even though I was pretty sure which way he'd lean (no) and I knew Matt was disappointed because he was excited for this little at-home experiment in induction (even though he consoled himself with the prospect of putting the castor oil on some wounds, or using it for future digestive-tract episodes).

So yesterday I asked my doctor, who is a lovely man reminiscent of Mr. Rogers, and he adamantly advised me against the use of the castor oil. I actually fairly enjoyed seeing him get all fired up, since generally my visits with him mostly involve him talking about how magnificent I am and look at that fabulous belly. "That's like...prairie medicine," he ranted (as much as you can picture Mr. Rogers ranting) with a little bit of a gleam in his eye. "We can't control it. If you want to be induced, I say be induced," he sputtered (as much as you can picture Mr. Rogers sputtering). "Or maybe go jump three times and stand by the campfire." I know, that sounds rude but it was totally funny, especially as I said if you know the man who probably has a calendar of kittens and puppies on his wall at home. He admitted that he's had patients use it ("secretly") and that the world didn't end, but I can understand his trepidation.

He reminded me of the other popular "natural" inducing methods, which I won't go into too much detail about for Hannah's sake, anyway they include raspberry-leaf tea as a gentler alternative to ingest, "gentler" meaning to me "probably won't do much." (I know, because I've tried it, and it's yucky, but I drink it anyway. It supports the female system!)

In my inexperienced opinion, I would think that castor oil and Pitocin probably stand about equal chances of working just fine or tearing my body and soul to shreds with mind-blowing contractions. But at least, in the doc's view, with the latter I'm at the hospital--less chance for a lawsuit or my uterus blowing up. I told Matt maybe at my next appointment I'll bring a bottle of castor oil and a spoon and sup it right there on the table, just to be funny. "But doctor, I'm here aren't I! You're observing me!"

So this 8 a.m. ramble is really just a chance to tell you how much fun it is to be me right now (I am totally not kidding) and to assure you that I haven't gone into labor...yet. But Mr. Rogers has officially declared me "ripe" (which his partner, the one who predicted a December baby, has been saying for weeks now) and thinks I'll go on my own in the next week; maybe it's all mental but it's nice to hear a doctor say that, since I know if he really had his way I'd settle for a "gentle" intravenous Pitocin drip during business hours. But he's humoring me, and life is good when I'm not surrounded by every pillow in Virginia with the darkness outside taunting me--did I mention I have another cold?--and I'll take that for now.