Natural Labor Induction methods that do not work (on me)

Thank you to everyone for the continued thoughts/prayers!!

I am still pregnant and no signs at all of any kind of labor. For the last 4-5 weeks I've had pretty regular contractions and sometimes quite long stretches of them, but both yesterday and today I have had pretty much nothing at all. Ironic, considering this was supposed to be our due date(s).

Our Bradley Childbirth class and the knowledge of a few friends who are into herbal remedies has provided us with quite a few natural labor induction techniques which we have now been practicing for 2 weeks with varying regularity. We upped our efforts this weekend with the same techniques, and still none of them have any effect.

Here are some natural labor induction methods that do not work on me (disclaimer: apparently these do work on other people. Or so we have been told):

• spicy food (Japanese, Thai, Mexican)
  
• sex
• walking (we walk around White Rock Lake and our neighborhood every day now)
  
• professional massage
  
• nipple stimulation (breast pump and manual, following a strict schedule, have done this for 3 hours straight, several times - not fun, and not effective)
• acupressure (we learned the 3 exact positions in our Bradley class)
• black cohosh (not blue cohosh - I realize that blue cohosh is dangerous, and anyway it is impossible to find, considering that it is not approved by the FDA)
  
• red raspberry leaf tea in conjunction with black cohosh (I drank 2 QUARTS of tea PER DAY for 3 days straight along with the black cohosh. Nothing.)

As far as I can tell, the only methods left would be acupuncture or stripping the membranes/breaking the bag of waters (which has to be done by the midwife). We do have a recommendation for an acupuncturist, but I've never had acupuncture before and I am kind of leery of starting out with it so suddenly, to induce labor.

And yes, I have also heard of castor oil, but there are serious concerns about the complications it normally causes with the gastrointestinal tract. I can't think of many things more fun than being thrown into labor while simultaneously experiencing several types of gastrointestinal distress, if you know what I mean. So no, not trying that.

Right now the plan is for me to go back to work Monday-Wednesday this week, and we have our next prenatal appointment on Thursday, I am not planning on going to work that day. We will most likely allow the midwife to strip my membranes at that appointment, and potentially also break my water, which will induce labor for certain. I guess we are looking at a "new" due date of October 22, which will hopefully be our baby's real birth date!