eating in hospital during labor

Christine wrote:
NO WAY.....you wont want to eat....BUT after the whole thing is
over you will KILL for those ice chips..lol....and I mean they
taste SoooOoO good!

Don't be so sure. Plenty of women want to eat while they're in labor. I
certainly did (and ate what I felt like eating).
--
Be well, Barbara
Mom to Sin (Vernon, 2), Misery (Aurora, 4), and the Rising Son (Julian, 6)

Aurora (in the bathroom with her dad)--"It looks like an elephant, Daddy."
Me (later)--"You should feel flattered."

All opinions expressed in this post are well-reasoned and insightful.
Needless to say, they are not those of my Internet Service Provider, its
other subscribers or lackeys. Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a
fight. -- with apologies to Michael Feldman

Kim E. wrote:

In article ,
says...

Be warned though- my DD was born with borderline low glucose
which may have been due to my not eating during labor. As a
result, the hospital insisted on supplementing her, which led to
nipple confusion and difficulty in establishing breastfeeding (which
we overcame after *much* angst).

Wow, that is something that I had not realized could happen. I think my
hosp allows juice - it seems like that would help the baby's glucose
levels.

Absolutely. When you starve yourself, your baby
starves along with you. The baby will still get some
nutrients, and your body will rob itself to feed the
baby, but the baby will still experience significantly
lower glucose levels. This can be even more aggravated
in a pregnancy with gestational diabetes, because the
baby tends toward higher insulin levels to cope with
the higher than usual glucose levels in mom's blood.
With all that insulin circulating, it gobbles up
the glucose even faster when there's a sudden drop
in mom's glucose levels from the norm.

Best wishes,
Ericka

I think it would depend on how long and how intense your labour was, to
whether you felt like eating. My labour was induced and relatively short,
and once it got established eating was the last thing on my mind. Someone
ordered me a sandwich, and I think my parents ate it, lol..
I got nauseous in labour, partly from the pain relief and partly from labour
itself, and when you're throwing up you don't want to eat.
I think if I was there for the long haul and things were going slowly, I'd
smuggle food in like someone suggested. It would have to be a great hospital
that has someone attending to you all the time ;-)
One thing I'd recommend if you have the gas - nitrous oxide, don't know if
you have it over there - is boiled sweets, because your mouth gets
incredibly dry and sticks together and you need something to get the saliva
going. I think my labour diet was coke, water & peppermint humbugs.

"Kim E." wrote in message
a.net...
I just found out that the hospital i am planning to deliver in does not
allow women to eat during labor- except ice chips -lol, ice is water not
food!! Is this common? For those of you who have BTDT, did you even
want to eat anything during labor? I could not imagine going more than
a few hours without eating!!!

-kim

Amy wrote:


One thing I'd recommend if you have the gas - nitrous oxide, don't know if
you have it over there

Nope.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article , says...
Kim E. wrote:

I just found out that the hospital i am planning to deliver in does not
allow women to eat during labor- except ice chips -lol, ice is water not
food!! Is this common? For those of you who have BTDT, did you even
want to eat anything during labor? I could not imagine going more than
a few hours without eating!!!

Yes, it's common, but I would pitch a fit and get my
midwife or doctor to write orders to the contrary. Refusing
food has not been proven to be beneficial.

Yeah, we were planning to pack in food at least for my husband, so I
figured I would just eat light snacks if I was hungry, what are they
going to do, yell at me, ooh, i'm scared! I just couldn't fathom
that hospitals would not let someone eat for what could possibly be many
long hours. Seems crazy to me.

-kim


They might give
you the song and dance about it being dangerous if you need
to have general anesthesia; however, regardless of what you've
eaten when, they will still have to treat you as if you've
eaten recently. After all, if you get hit by a bus after
dinner, they don't refuse to do surgery because you have
a full stomach--they just take appropriate precautions, as
they should even if you're in labor and haven't eaten
recently.
That said, you may not feel like eating. Many
women don't. I think it's best to push yourself and
eat something small and easy to digest at frequent
intervals. You have no idea how long labor will go
on, and there's no sense in being weak from hunger
when it comes time to push! My first labor was very
long (~45 hours). I wasn't much into eating, but
my midwives insisted I drink (sports drink, red raspberry
leaf tea, etc.) every hour and eat occasionally. I
believe it made a huge difference in my labor. Despite
its length, I was fine the whole time and had no problems
remaining mobile and pushing effectively. I didn't eat
during my other labors, but then again, they went by
so quickly there wasn't really time ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article ,
says...
Kim E. writes:
: I just found out that the hospital i am planning to deliver in does not
: allow women to eat during labor- except ice chips -lol, ice is water not
: food!! Is this common? For those of you who have BTDT, did you even
: want to eat anything during labor? I could not imagine going more than
: a few hours without eating!!!

Yet another reason for homebirth!

The more I find out about this whole process, I now understand why
people do homebirth!

-kim

Kim E. wrote:
Yeah, we were planning to pack in food at least for my husband, so I
figured I would just eat light snacks if I was hungry, what are they
going to do, yell at me, ooh, i'm scared! I just couldn't fathom
that hospitals would not let someone eat for what could possibly be
many long hours. Seems crazy to me.

Well, in the best of all worlds, your labor may be quite a number of hours
in length, but you shouldn't be spending more than half of it in the
hospital, and when you're not at the hospital, none of their silly rules
apply. So, best advice: stay home as long as you can stand it. Wait until
you're contractions are regularly 2-3 minutes apart, 45-60 second or more in
length and you cannot talk through them before leaving for the hospital
(unless you are a very long way from the hospital, mind you). If you go
sooner than that, your chances of being in the hospital for longer than you
need to be go up.

As Larry said, though, it's a darned good argument for a home birth. You
don't have to figure out when to leave for the hospital and worry about
either being too early or too late.
--
Be well, Barbara
Mom to Sin (Vernon, 2), Misery (Aurora, 4), and the Rising Son (Julian, 6)

Aurora (in the bathroom with her dad)--"It looks like an elephant, Daddy."
Me (later)--"You should feel flattered."

All opinions expressed in this post are well-reasoned and insightful.
Needless to say, they are not those of my Internet Service Provider, its
other subscribers or lackeys. Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a
fight. -- with apologies to Michael Feldman

On Mon, 24 May 2004 16:17:41 -0400, Kim E.
wrote:

I just found out that the hospital i am planning to deliver in does not
allow women to eat during labor- except ice chips -lol, ice is water not
food!! Is this common? For those of you who have BTDT, did you even
want to eat anything during labor? I could not imagine going more than
a few hours without eating!!!

-kim

We packed some snacks in my bag. The nurse gave me the standard, "no
food" lecture when I was admitted, but when dh went to get a food tray
from the cafeteria, I ate half his meal ;-)
When my OB arrived right before the kitchen would stop taking orders,
she told me I could eat whatever I wanted. I asked her to inform the
nurses, and promptly picked up the phone to place an order.
If you want, ask your doctor to write an "order" that you're allowed
to eat.

Nan

On Mon, 24 May 2004 16:17:41 -0400, Kim E.
wrote:

I just found out that the hospital i am planning to deliver in does not
allow women to eat during labor- except ice chips -lol, ice is water not
food!! Is this common?

For the US, it is. I did pack food for my hubby as well as juice for
me. I didn't actually labor with either kid, so this is just my
experience.

--
Daye
Momma to Jayan and Leopold
See Jayan and Leo: http://www.aloofhosting.com/jayleo/
Updated 28 Feb 2004

I don't think that they should not allow you to eat...you are a grown woman
and can make you mind up as to whether you want to eat or not....... With
my DD I was not interested in food during labour..... I went to the
hospital in the middle of the night, no breakfast and didn't want to see or
heard about food at all. It made me feel sick. A friend came to visit and
had a bag of nacho cheese flavoured chips in his hand and I told him to go
eat them someplace else. He brought them in thinking I might enjoy a little
snakc but it just turned my stomah at even the thought.
For my DS I never thought about food at all..... just thought about getting
the whole thing over with.
Both were born at the same hospital and all I had during labour was some ice
chips, water ( little sips to keep my throat from being completely dry) ,
and a popsicle in a dish which was mostly melted by the time I finished it.
From the breathing you will need something to keep your throat from getting
to dry. Otherwise there is a pretty good chance you won't be lookng for a
big mac or salad, or a chocolate bar during labour.

Good Luck
Karen

"Kim E." wrote in message
a.net...
I just found out that the hospital i am planning to deliver in does not
allow women to eat during labor- except ice chips -lol, ice is water not
food!! Is this common? For those of you who have BTDT, did you even
want to eat anything during labor? I could not imagine going more than
a few hours without eating!!!

-kim