Raspberry Leaf in Pregnancy

My friend Beverly is getting ready to have her 5th baby. She's been having lots of contractions, but not a lot of progress, which is incredibly frustrating. I've been eagerly following along, because it's always really interesting and fascinating when it's not your own impending birth, LOL. One thing I recommended to her last night was drinking several cups of really strong raspberry leaf tea, because that is supposed to tone your uterus and help it dilate efficiently.

All this talk of dilating and tea reminded me that I had wanted to post something about what I did differently this pregnancy, in case I forgot sometime. I usually start drinking a cup of raspberry leaf a day in the third trimester, and by the time I'm close to delivery I try to drink 2 cups a day. When I was pregnant with Nathan, I read an article in a natural health book that recommended raspberry leaf tea. It gave a long anecdotal story about a lady who drank the tea during her first pregnancy and had a fairly normal delivery, but not pain-free by any means. Then she read an old book that talked about what the midwife would have actually recommended, which was to drink a really strong cup of the tea ( 1 pint of water and 1 ounce of tea, steeped for 30 minutes) when you are in labor. This was supposed to really make labor pretty painless, and the lady telling the story had apparently had a really easy delivery. I never really made the tea that strong until we moved here, but I really can't complain about my labors (although I wouldn't have labeled them "painless", LOL), and I never needed any pain medicine. I did make it really strong like that once we moved here, but then I was basically induced 2 times, so I drank it before going in and starting the whole process, but I didn't know if that was the same. Anyhow, I was convinced enough of a good effect, even if it was just psychosomatic, to keep drinking the stuff fairly faithfully throughout the third trimester of all my pregnancies.

With the last 2 pregnancies, I've also added a cup of alfalfa tea daily, since that is supposed to prevent post-partum hemorrhage. You may recall that is what my doctor with Grace was totally paranoid about, so that's when I started drinking it. (Nathan wants me to point out that alfalfa tea tastes and smells like you are drinking grass water.) For someone like me, who really doesn't like hot beverages at all, drinking 2-3 cups of tea a day was quite torturous. Almost as bad as the gestational dibetes diet. Well, maybe not, but pretty close . . . Add in to that the tiny bladder capacity of an almost full-term lady, and I was pretty miserable as I floated through the day.

Well, after we got back from Ohio in January, I went to the health food store to buy some more raspberry leaf and alfalfa teas, since I was pretty much out. I was determined to drink all the tea, even though I wasn't sure when I would do that to make it fit into my complicated gestational diabetes eating regimen. The health food store was out, but they assured me they would be getting more in soon. So we all trooped back in a week later only to find out the tea was still out. I was getting frustrated with all this delay. I was already 35 weeks along, and I was ready to start drinking this stuff and making sure my uterus was nice and toned! Then I remembered that I had an internet connection . . . I went home and found a lovely herb web site where, lo and behold, you can actually buy raspberry leaf capsules for cheaper than the tea! How wonderful! All the great effects, with none of the bladder-sloshing! So I bought a bottle of pills, plus a box of the tea, because I was still thinking I would make the really strong pint to drink when I went into labor.

It was so easy to take the pills instead of drink the tea! I found alfalfa capsules at Walmart, so I started taking those as well. What a dream! I definitely took way more raspberry leaf extract this pregnancy than ever before. I started out by taking 2 pills a day, but by the last 2 weeks, I was taking 4 raspberry pills a day, plus 2 alfalfa ones.

So how did it work out for me? Well, I didn't think I was even in labor because the contractions weren't that long or that strong. Even once I realized I was in transition and we were on the way to the hospital, I still wasn't breathing through contractions. I did make my tea, but that was when I realized that I was probably not going to last until it had steeped the full 30 minutes. After about 20 minutes of steeping, right before we got in the van, I drank a few sips of it, felt like I was going to throw up if I drank another sip, and threw the rest down the drain. I was uncomfortable, but the contractions just didn't hurt that badly, even those last few ones right before pushing (as I was walking from the parking garage, through the pedestrian walkway, over to the elevator, and up to the 5th floor, LOL). So my conclusion, which is arguably the result of a very small sample size, LOL, is that taking a lot more of the raspberry leaf extract is definitely a good thing as far as relatively painfree labors go. I will be taking the pills again, should I have another baby.

And I hardly had any post-partum bleeding either. My uterus clamped down right away, and I stopped bleeding fairly quickly in the weeks to follow (except when I over-did it!). Of course, that was helped by a quick labor instead of many hours of steadily-increasing pitocin, like I had with Grace, so I can't say confidently that the alfalfa had that much to do with it! But I was very pleased with the result of my herb pills, and I would definitely recommend them to others who are in thier third trimesters.