And what if you don’t dilate?
It depends on the situation.
It matters who tells you this, when they say it, and what stage you were in.
Did everything start with an induction?
Or maybe, at the very first sign of labor, you rushed straight to the hospital?
Or perhaps you arrived too quickly during active labor?
The truth is simple: the cervix has its own rhythm, and it is directly influenced by the conditions around you.
There is no universal recipe, no “right” pace and no “wrong” one.
The best thing you can do is shorten the amount of time spent in the hospital so no one even gets the chance to tell you that you’re “not dilating.”
How?
By spending most of your labor at home.
Let’s break it down step by step.
Did your labor start with an induction?
When labor is forced to start through an induction, most of the time the body simply isn’t ready. And when the body isn’t ready, no induction method really works.
You don’t dilate.
It’s not the right moment for your body, and it gives you very clear signals: “Not yet!”
If the doctors don’t respect this, they usually push for a cesarean because they feel they’ve “waited long enough.”
But the most normal and logical thing would be to send you home and allow labor to start naturally, on its own, when the time is right for your body and your baby.
Did you rush to the hospital at the very first sign of labor?
Maybe you got scared, or maybe your partner pressured you—usually out of lack of knowledge. But you ended up at the hospital way too early.
Once you get there, they check the stage of labor – your dilation – and there are two possibilities:
1. It was just a practice contraction.
A Braxton-Hicks contraction, completely normal in the weeks before birth. Your cervix is closed, and true labor hasn’t even started.
2. It was real labor, but you were far too early.
When you arrive at the hospital too soon, no one really wants to wait hours and hours for you.
First births often take at least 12 hours – but hospitals rarely have the patience for that.
So to “speed things up” or simply to clear the room, the label “you’re not dilating” appears… and they start pushing toward interventions, sometimes even a cesarean, usually after trying synthetic oxytocin first (always refuse synthetic oxytocin unless there is a real medical emergency).
What should have happened instead?
You go home.
They usually discharge you if your dilation is small or nonexistent. And if they don’t suggest it—you can ask to go home.
No one can keep you by force.
You politely refuse induction, augmentation, and any unnecessary interventions.
And you simply say:
“Okay, I’ll come back later. I know that at home I can relax, and my labor will progress much faster.”
You arrived at the hospital too quickly during labor
Cervical dilation is unique for every woman. Its rhythm is unique too.
Some women dilate 1 cm in 7 hours and then jump to 9 cm in one hour. Others are the complete opposite.
There is no fixed rule. The pace of dilation is as unique as the woman herself.
(See the video below for an example.)
When you change environments — from home to hospital — the body almost always hits a pause.
You need time to calm down again, to relax… and that’s very hard to do in a hospital, especially in a public one.
Add to that:
• repeated vaginal checks
• verbal pressure from staff (“come on, hurry up”)
• other women screaming nearby
All of these register as danger to your body.
You can’t override your DNA.
At the very first sign of real or imagined “danger,” the body pauses labor completely, especially in the early stages.
Sometimes even synthetic oxytocin won’t work when a woman feels threatened or defensive.
Simply because it’s not a safe environment for bringing a baby into the world.
It’s not a safe environment for a woman to drop into the most vulnerable state of her life.
Your body protects you and your baby with this primal program.
Alone, without your partner providing a sense of safety, in a completely unfamiliar place, with strangers applying pressure in different ways — your body cannot open.
Relaxation is the main ingredient of birth. Deep, total relaxation.
When a woman has the right space, the right people, freedom of movement, access to food and water, and the ability to walk to the bathroom, she can fully relax.
And when she relaxes, the cervix opens in its own rhythm, in however many hours it needs.
And birth… happens beautifully, simply, easily.
Watch the video.
This is another version of normal.
She stayed at a small dilation for 20 hours with no clear progress — and then within 2 hours reached full dilation.
Important:
10 cm is just a subjective number, measured with the midwife’s fingers.
Every mother opens more or less depending on what her baby needs.
10 cm is simply an indicator that the baby has enough room to descend through the cervix — not a fixed measurement carved in stone.
And her baby weighed 4.3 kg.
Yes, it’s possible.
What matters is having the right support around you and having your own rhythm respected.
