Monday, May 24, 2010 at 4:00PM
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Reader Comments (34)
Anything? How about that whenever I see someone say "Well I have a c-section scheduled for..." I get really frustrated. It's not even remotely my business but it bothers me so much.
I suppose it depends on why it bothers you. If it's because you think babies should only come out of vaginas and that they must be doing something wrong, then that's one thing. If it's a reaction to a rapidly rising cesarean rate and the realization that somewhere around one out of every three friends (most of whom would prefer not to be) is going to be recovering from surgery while caring for a newborn, then I'm with you.
I'd love to find more information on the percentage of cesarean moms who have problems breastfeeding. All I'm finding is a universal "many" in the material I'm reading. I had a c/sec with my first, and breastfed. My SIL also had a c/sec and didn't breastfeed. Of course, she was pretty drugged up the entire postpartum time she spent in the hospital, so I can see why she would have had problems if she had wanted to breastfeed. She hardly even saw the baby.
Hey, isn't that the LOST chick? The one that said, screw Solomon, I'll just kill the mother? ooo--is sounding obstetrical already!
It's because it makes me feel like no one is even TRYING to have babies vaginally anymore. My stepmother said "I'm glad I had a c-section, I don't want my vagina all stretched out anyway." And proceeded to schedule c-sections there on out.
Looks like most comments are happening over here.
Yes, Mother. I'll leave a comment. Just don't hurt me.
PS, Jill, did you hear MIB is named Samuel? I told Alex no wonder they never said it in the show - b/c it's hopelessly boring. lol
Saw my OB to go over my birth plan. It was treated with much respect and he was very agreeable to all of it - even though I am a VBAC! His only question came from me requesting to tear vs an epsiotomy - he does not routinely do them but feels a tear can be harder to heal and do not repair "nicely" but he did say he would let me tear if that was what I wanted. I am in love with him! My doula attended my appt and she was pretty enamored too.
Altho, my BP was super high! and he wants me on meds. Opinions? I have a monitor at home and my reading was 123/81 after about 15 minutes of being home.
Bonnie, I never once heard anyone say "Samuel." I'm hung up on "Christian Shepard," which I'd never noticed before Kate asked, "seriously?"
Heatherly, that is wonderful news about finding a doctor that you like. If you're concerned about his recommendations for meds, you can always get a second or third opinion so you can weigh what they have to say.
Three cheers for VBAC and doula-friendly docs. :)
First, I want to say that I know this is going to get some hackles up and I am sorry in advance. Birth is birth, however it unfolds, and I am in awe of any woman who can help create, gestate and then produce an entire human being from scratch. That being said, I am getting supremely frustrated with the language many women use to describe birth, especially medicalized birth. Oh, how I despise THEY.
"THEY won't let me go past 41 weeks." What are THEY going to do, exactly? Other than try to make you cow down and drop the Dead Baby Card all over the place until they hope they have broken your spirit, there is nothing short of a court order that THEY can do. Shockingly, a few court orders have been granted that did force pregnant women to undergo procedure against their wishes, but those cases are so very, very few that the average woman probably doesn't even think of such things. She just knows that she "isn't allowed".
"THEY wouldn't let me eat". Last time I checked, there were numerous and well-respected confirmations of eating to comfort during labor. I haven't had that many births as a Doula, but I have yet to see the Food Police sitting in a L&D room with any Mother.
"THEY had to induced me". Well, no, you agreed to an induction. I am not saying that induction with good cause is bad; I'm not saying induction in every situation is bad! I am saying that it's a choice. As with many interventions, (typically) no one is going to act against a mother's wishes. My point is, just like with the Australian woman who had "The Pitocin Police" show up on her door---the medical institution may bully and harass pregnant women, but it is ultimately the mother's decision to be admitted. The Australian woman, if I'm remembering correctly, did not get led away in handcuffs and induced against her will. She said "No," and made sure the local newspapers knew about it.
"THEY had to put me on PIt". No, you agreed to let a medical professional drip synthetic hormones into your body. It is not right for women to have to hire Doulas or rely on themselves or their partners to watch every action a medical professional takes for fear that a medication or procedure may be carried out without the Mother's consent. Don't get me started on doctors who say "Oh, I HAD to cut that *little* episiotomy" after he or she has put down the bloody (literally) scissors. That's a different matter. When a RN or MDs comes into the L&D rooms and huffs and puffs about how a Mother's labor is too pokey, not close enough to the Friedman curve, and that Pitocin is needed, it is not an ultimatum. It's a medical opinion, one that may or may not be followed. Pitocin is often a choice, one which is usually the tipping point of the cascade of interventions.
"THEY had to break my bag because I wasn't progressing". No, you let a doctor manually rupture your membranes. He or she may have said that it would get things going and the baby would be born by lunch time, but if it the bag of waters didn't need to be broken to avert maternal death or the death of the baby, then it was a choice! The Mother allowed an amnio hook to be inserted into her vagina and her bag plucked.
I could go on and on. Again, I am not trying to stir up those tender emotions and as a passive recipient of a train wreck of birth interventions when my first daughter was born, I completely understand how it feels. But I wish the words we use to describe managed birth allowed the Mother to take ownership of her choices, rather than default to the ever-so-dreadfully-common "THEY did it/had to do it." I've been trying it out myself in conversations with fellow Doulas, mothers and women in general. Try it the next time you talk birth. Listen to who owned the Mother's body. Did she make decisions? "I let them induce me", "I chose to have my labor augmented". Or did it all happen to her? "They took the baby to the warmer right after he was born", "They made me hold my breath and push". Something to think about.
Whew. I'm glad that's off my chest! I hope it came out as I intended it to. I'm not blaming Mothers. I am encouraging them to consider how they think or thought about their birth. The choices made during birth should always be the Mother's to make. If a Mother wanted to be induced, got an epidural early, agreed to Pitocin, and later to a C-section for FTP---that's just fine, as far as I'm concerned, so long as Mother is content with her choices. If she is satisfied with her labor experience at the end of it all, then to me, she made good decisions. You can only regret folly, not success.
At my OB appt. today (30 weeks) I found out that his practice is being taken over by a medical management company and he is in the process of moving to a different building. He will be gone all of June and the first week of July is full of inductions and scheduled cesareans. Regular office hours will resume July 7. I currently don't have a next appointment because the new management company wasn't doing scheduling quite yet and I should, "Just give us a call sometime." He does not have anyone covering his regular practice while he is gone - single practitioner in a small town. I am essentially without a doctor for the next 6 weeks. I am anticipating a backlog of appointments when he's back in the office again, which means it might take a week or so to finally get in. I'm due the end of July. This is my first pregnancy and I'm a bit baffled and unsettled by it all. We don't have midwives here and there are only 3 other OBs in town (one of which is currently on his own month long vacation to Egypt.) I feel like someone just threw me up in the air and said lets see what happens.
Breezy, you are correct in your opening sentence, your comment at least raised my hackles. Perhaps it is just my reading of it, but it does sound distinctly like in your scenarios the Mother is to blame. Often times these "choices" you are pointing out aren't presented as optional activities to a Mother -- you're not checking into a spa where you can choose your 2 p.m. activity given the option of a deep tissue massage or a refreshing seaweed wrap. You know the drill, THEY come in and say "this is what WE are doing." I think ultimately what you are blaming the Mother for is not being enlightened enough to stay away from OBs, or at least not knowing enough to shop around for one that supports birth choices.
And don't downplay that dead baby card. I KNOW that trick and yet I still allowed THEM to play it and keep my perfectly healthy newborn in the NICU for 2 agonizing weeks. THEY know THEY can get away with it because all women would rather walk away saying "I let THEM do ____." and feeling angry/foolish/helpless when the alternative could be "I killed my baby by not _____."
I totally agree with the THEM sentiment.
I wish I'd realized that while "Trusting Birth" is great, you also have to be ready not to trust much of the information that is filtered through others.
I really trusted myself to birth my baby but I did not arm myself with the knowledge that I might have to fight to be the one in control of my birth.
"They" did refuse me admission to the hospital even though I was having contractions that were off the chart. "They" did not listen when I said I thought something was wrong. "They" did argue amongst themselves about what was going on until it was almost too late. "They" did operate on me without getting written or even direct verbal consent, but I didn't stop them. I didn't demand full say in the choices that were made about my body.
It's hard to know how to inspire women to be ready to fight for their voices to be heard while also inspiring them that birth is a natural process that most of us can accomplish without intervention.
I for one am looking for this answer.
Breezy, I think I grasp your sentiment, and I tend to agree, although it still stings a little. Sure, we can shake our fists and demand that women stand up for themselves in labor, but until "THEY" sing a different tune, not much is going to change. So many women don't have the resources to educate themselves, and I think that was part of your point, but the fact remains that doctors take for granted that the majority of women are sheeple that they can railroad into pretty much anything with their degrees and white coats.
This is why I had a homebirth with my second. Everything I asked for in the hospital was denied. No you can't have food. No you can't have water. No I won't crank the bed up from lying flat. No, you're going to have a Cesarean now. With no labor support, and my body frantically trying to get "in the zone" with all the distractions, I did not have the wherewithall to stomp my foot, toss my hair over my shoulder, and get sassy with the staff. At home, everything I wanted was already a given, and I didn't have to ask for a thing.
Crap, I hit post too soon. I meant to add that, I've heard what you posted so many times, and although I get what people are TRYING to say, it still comes across as blaming the mother for what happens to her. Like it's my fault that I had a Cesarean. Instead of telling women, "geez, let's be a little more assertive here, ya buncha wimps!" let's change the face of care providers who would take advantage of these women when they are at their most vulnerable and suggestible (yup, women in labor are much more prone to "trying to please." something to do with the hormones. I just got out of bed, forgive me for not citing a source on that). Telling women to Take Back Their Birth is a good step, but we need to give them a birth to take back, and when your care provider doesn't view you as a sassy, liberated lady in the first place, it won't matter.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, sure, we should say NO to THEM. But we shouldn't HAVE to.
Yeah, it is upsetting and complicated-- the whole language and who is in control of birth stuff. (how is that for an understatement?) I keep thinking of how women are raised in this culture (US) where birth is the Worst Thing in the Universe / Just Get the Drugs Already, and it makes sense that she would think "why should I learn anything? I hear it is horrible. I have a doctor who went to school for 10 years and has attended a thousand births. I'll just leave it in his/her hands. I don't want to think about it. Ok, maybe I'll read 'what to expect' and watch 'a baby story.'" I like to learn things so when I got pregnant, I thought, 'I'd better learn something about this.' I knew I wanted natural birth and to avoid surgery-- I didn't realize what a Big Deal those goals were in today's world. I thank my lucky stars that I 1) had the example of my mom and her 4 natural births. I thought, if she can do it, why not me? and 2) I had birth-educated friends who gave me the 'right' books to read that made me say WTF. I had such an 'irregular' and 'long' labor that I'm sure if I'd been in a hospital, I would have had the dreaded cascade of interventions (I had a homebirth). So, all of this to say, I know I'm an exception. I share Breezy's frustration, but it is totally logical to me why women hand over their power on this. Sigh.
Thanks, as always, for an awesome site, Jill!
Heatherly, I know Ina May writes about a high protein diet to bring down blood pressure so you might look into that. Good luck!
Hang in there, Katelyn, that is frustrating.
I've got a home visit with my midwives today, and tomorrow I hit 36 weeks. I am "over" being pregnant, and really looking forward to being done, but trying to remember that these next few weeks are the last little bit of time it's just going to be baby and me. Soon I will have to share him with other people - like his father, LOL!
Breezy's comment and the responses have highlighted for me the careful line that we have to walk if we have anything approaching a strong opinion about pregnancy and childbirth. I often find myself apologizing for getting up on my soapbox, and shying away from the subject of natural birth when I'm with my friends. (I don't have a single friend IRL who hasn't had a medicated birth. TRUFAX.) Do I want to spread the word about the unnecesarean epidemic? YES. Do I want to share The Truth About Pitocin with my girlfriends? You betcha. But more than anything I want to preserve a good relationship with my friends, and sometimes... ugh, sometimes that takes precedence over my "birth passion." And that's hard.
Jill P-- you are right, we shouldn't have to battle during labor! As if birthing a baby isn't hard enough. I also agree that a woman in labor is at her strongest and most vulnerable. I remember my brain just felt like it was switched 'off' and I didn't want to think about anything. I'm sure if my team had suggested 'we think for the next contraction you should stand on your head and do the Macarena', I probably would have said, 'ok.'