Monday, June 7, 2010 at 4:52PM
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.
800-951-4110
Bachelor’s Degree and Certificates in Midwifery
100% Online, State of Minnesota registered college courses
Doula trainings, Childbirth Educator and Post Partum Doula Trainings
Join us Today! Midwives and Allied Birth Professionals hold the future!
Reader Comments (35)
I got nothin'. I went to bed at 1 and got up at 4:30 and my house is silent but I have to do some stupid transcription before I go to bed.
That postcard is a little hot.
At what point is it right to tell your doctor you are going elsewhere for care? It seems that everyone's line in the sand is different...I'm just wondering what has pushed folks over that line to seek care elsewhere.
And as a follow-up to that one, what do you do when you are stuck with your OB for the remainder of your pregnancy, but you have discovered you have a substantial difference of opinion about how your labor should be handled?
Why a lot of womens that went thru a c-section under general anesthesia believe that they can't breastfeed? I went to my WIC appointment last week, and today to the pediatrician appointment today, and in both places they were saying how amazed they were at the fact that I am EBF my 6 week old, and he is doing great... they said the same in both places... that for some reason BF after a c-section with general is pretty unnusual... It is really??? I mean, it was hard to get him to latch, but with patience, it took us a whole night of skin to skin, and lots of love, and at 6:40 am on april 27th 2010, my hungry baby latched on and never let go... I want to know other womans experience with this... I am seriously thinking about doing some research on this...
StBridgit, how are you stuck? Most insurers let you change docs at any time, and docs themselves can't stop you. Are you afraid you wouldn't get someone else to take you?
And if you don't want to deal with your doctor, just call the office, tell them you have decided to go elsewhere, and then ask how to get your records transferred. Most docs are busy enough that they will not take the time to give you grief about it. And if they do...well, you don't owe them an explanation.
I guess if I was truly stuck in terms of no one else being able to take me, I'd blow off my OB and go find a midwife even if I had to go to another state. Or, worst-case, labor at home as long as possible and then go in pushing and use the doc on call, with a good support team to back me up.
Foxy Kate~ tell them immediately or just don't go back. I was 4 mos. pregnant when my OB said I'd have to have a cesarean, & I did not find a home birth midwife til I was 7 months, I just ate well & exercised every day & I had a 4 1/2 hour labor & delivered a 6.5 # princess! If you feel stuck in other situations in your life what do you do? I'm sure there is a solution. Women; birth is a JOY don't be afraid! Listen to the words that come out of your care givers mouth! If the words do not align with you, IT WON'T work out. Look at your self, are you the picture of health or are you sickly & weak? If you are led on a certain path & sway from it, you usually have a set back in other areas of your life. Same applies with birth!
Sorry I meant STBridgit
I have been thinking a lot about OBs and how they interact with women who have anxiety and other psychological conditions. I have witnessed a mother with severe anxiety related to sexual assault/abuse denied her meds and mistreated by her CPs. Another doula I know heard a similar thing about a mom with agoraphobia and other anxieties at the same hospital.
No specific thoughts except that what I witnessed was abuse and it scares the living poo out of me.
Have their been any studies done regarding the treatment of women with mental illness and the OB model of care?
For emjaybee's advice to StBridgit, I'd of course add to get a doula - add all the allies you can if you know you're headed into hostile territory!
Carolina: it is not that breastfeeding after c-section is unusual, but there is certainly some evidence that c-sections interfere with time to first breastfeeding and day that mature milk comes in - although recent reading and research I've been doing has cast some doubt on my received wisdom that "c-section = lower breastfeeding rates". I suspect, though, that a lot of providers/breastfeeding promoters share that received wisdom and so are impressed by your experience. Certainly the general anesthesia is especially notable given that we know some anesthesia goes to the baby and that a lot of those babies need extra TLC to get going - like your night of skin-to-skin! (I'd like to do more research on this myself - maybe I'll make a blog post out of it.) I should add that the WIC population in general has lower breastfeeding rates and so you are even more of an outlier for the people you are meeting. I think it's wonderful that you are demonstrating to those people that c-section under general does NOT mean you can't have a great breastfeeding relationship. I hope you're telling them about the skin-to-skin and loving care so that they can help encourage other moms to do the same, and not give up!
My friend had her c/s Sunday and baby has too much fluid in the lungs and they are not letting them room in yet. I know the fluid thing is common w/ c/s babies but why can't they room in? I know she was anxious about breastfeeding getting off to a good start. Ugh.
Also, anyone in NY, please please call your state reps and help get the Midwife Modernization Act passed! Here is the link and email I just got from my awesome midwife:
Hi Everyone,
Thank you all for everything that you are doing! We need more help. The MMA is coming to a vote tomorrow morning in the Assembly Higher Ed Committee but we have learned today that the position of the bill is tenuous. We need to FLOOD the Higher Ed committee so they hear the support for the bill. ACOG (American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) has been mobilized as well to ask their legislators not to pass our bill. We need to make more noise than they do. We need to busy the phone lines with calls from us. Please contact EVERYONE on the Higher Ed committee, regardless of whether you are in their district, asking them to report it out of committee tomorrow.
If you have a fax and can fax to all of the members please do. Please, even if you can't call everyone, make just ONE call tomorrow morning.
THIS IS CRITICAL!!
http://freeourmidwives.org/take-action/contacting-your-legislators/
Thanks,
Oh it's not me currently--I was in that situation with my last pregnancy, and I have since changed providers. However many pregnant women find that their "supportive" provider is not so supportive at about 37 weeks, and then it's a real scramble to try to find someone else--and many women can't find someone to take them as patients at that late gestation. And then there are many military moms who are stuck with whoever they get.
I'm just wondering what specific strategies women have used to cope with that type of situation--what has worked, what hasn't. For example, doulas are a great idea, but they aren't always allowed under all birthing scenarios. I'd just like to see specific language that will enable a woman laboring under those difficult circumstances to hold the lines that are important to her, without her labor room being a war zone and without her risking being declared mentally incompetent by the medical pros and totally ignored.
I started to get worried when my provider of ten years (who had done my vaginal delivery and my C-section) started asking me at every appointment if I was "still planning on a VBAC." I finally got the courage to ask specifically about VBAC policies at my 20 week appointment and got a lukewarm response that basically said they would prefer I had another C-section but would "let" me have a VBAC if I went into spontaneous labor by 41 weeks. I contacted ICAN and found a new provider who actually wants me to have a VBAC and doesn't have a deadline for it. If I had no other choice than the first provider, I would have refused a C-section at 41 weeks if it came to that. It would have been an uncomfortable experience, but so be it. I also have a doula for moral support.
It is a good question, and quite a conundrum, StBridgit. Did you see this inspiring story?
http://hypnobabies.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/mom-fires-ob-during-birth-when-threatened-with-a-cesarean/
Good luck, KK, seems like you have stacked the odds in your favor and you paid attention to the warning signs. Go, you!
Forget the research, there is no reason medically you cannot or should not breast feed after a c/s with general anesthesia. There is also no effect of the anesthesia on the suckling capability of the newborn by the time you get out of recovery. Note, I am not saying there is no efffect on the newborn at delivery. That is a different argument.
How do you change providers? Interview a new one first to make sure you can find one that is more compatable. If you are satisfied you have two choices. Talk to your old one which gives the opportunity for them to correct or at least allows for unburdening (not that you should need to). Or just change and request your records. If your prior provider cares they will contact you by mail or phone and ask why so THEY can learn. I have never been mad at a patient that left my practice. I do not try to be everything to every patient and somewhere they will find that doc that puts them on maternity leave 15 minutes post conception or refills the third xanax script for that week. People change providers and it is the ones that don't that I worry about.
Heres my open thread: Did you know that birthing balls have weight limits? Would you like to guess what it sounds like when that limit is exceeded? Down the hall? At 3 AM? When you were in REM in another LDRP? You flat out cannot go back to sleep after that.
That picture is both disturbing and fascinating. I'm trying to make out the text but it's too small. What alarms me the most are the enormous instruments on the man's side...compared with the vial? seashell? and the iron (WTF?) on the midwife's side. Looks like gigantic forceps, episiotomy scissors, and the world's biggest amniohook!
Also, as far as general anesthesia goes, I just looked this up today because I'm going to have some dental work done soon. Kellymom says it is perfectly okay to breastfeed after general, and that most pain relief drugs used in aftercare are compatible with breastfeeding as well.
Wow, exploding birth balls. I guess ye olde man-midwife never had to worry about that. S/he probably just had labouring wenches rolling around on a hay bale.
Ob, I had no idea that I could have potentially blown out a birthing ball. I wonder what exactly I would have bruised.
Another Rachel, that's really funny. I'm done with making humans but I would definitely consider planning a birth at a Renaissance Faire.
Renaissance faires... that's a topic. I went to one a few years ago. Wow. I wanted to excuse myself to go giggle in Ye Olde Port-a-Potty.
My husband didn't believe me that Ren Faires were real and not made up by the producers of Reno 911! I have to take him to one someday. Add Renaissance Faire birth to your list of great ideas!
BTW, you know my addiction to the Feedjit thing... I saw someone landed on the previous post due to searching for ... well it had to do with 'blow' and 'vagina'. LMAO.
I think the woman is holding a rag or something else to make a hot compress (note the fire behind her), or possibly it's just a wet rag for the laboring woman's forehead. But, yeah, the instruments by the man make me cringe. My one hope is that they are not specific to human birth, but maybe generic doctoring (veterinarian? pharmacy? -- note all the bottles of drugs behind him) apparatus. I mean, seriously, one of those things looks like something they used to use when they cut ice blocks in "Little House on the Prairie"! Although I suppose it's possible that the proportion is wrong, meant to highlight the wonderful tools that a man could bring to birth while a woman could only offer a cool rag? So those are regular forceps, but at least twice as big? I hope!
This week I went into the library intending to get Summer of the Monkeys and ended up with Randi Hutter Epstein's Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank. I enjoyed it; there were some historical bits in there I didn't know, and I also knew almost nothing about sperm banks and egg freezing and that side of things. Recommended as light fluffy fare and also interesting to read a longer and quite mainstream piece of writing about childbirth.
Also I read this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/fashion/06Culture.html
I have been feeling for a while now like I should write about my own views on childbirth, and what it is I think I'm after, getting into the area (recreationally now, and not having any kids, but potentially professional in the not-too-distant future). Maybe I will try to do that this week in time for next Monday's open thread. Hope everyone has a great week!