Midwives and my birth/story

Piggybacking; I missed the original somehow

"Karen" wrote in message
...
My comments:
- not such a good idea to head straight to the hospital after your
water breaks if there are no contractions. Chances are awfully
good that for a first baby, it isn't going to just appear from
nowhere if there are no contractions! I'd wait many, many hours
to see if labor starts on its own before heading to the hospital.

Ah, but practitioners routinely advise women to come to the hospital as soon
as their water breaks, contractions or no contractions. And the reason they
do it is, in part, to rule out a cord prolapse, which is life-threatening
and is a risk when your water breaks if the baby is not engaged. In this
situation, I would personally try to check *myself* to verify that a
prolapse hadn't occurred and wait it out, but women are simply following the
instructions they're issued when they dutifully appear at the hospital after
ROM. It's unfortunate that practitioners then feel the need to induce labor,
though, given that there's no evidence that it does any good in the absence
of GBS+ status or unknown GBS status and ROM for 18+ hours, but having got
the woman to the hospital, I suppose they feel a bit nervous about sending
her back home to wait, especially if it's a first baby.

- 18 hours from beginning to end for a first baby is average,
maybe a little less, for a first baby. For my first, it was
around 25 hours. I felt that was pretty good!

For a pitocin-induced labor, though, it's very long (they generally
administer the pitocin with the aim of generating a labor of roughly 8-12
hours in duration), and she *pushed* for over 4 hours, if I read right.
That's a very long time to be in the *hospital* hooked up to everything in
God's creation while laboring with pitocin-induced contractions that may
come on considerably more strongly and painfully than spontaneous
contractions. My pitocin-induced labor was a mere 8 hours from start to
finish while my second, spontaneous labor was 28+ hours (90 minutes in the
hospital) and I can tell with certainty that the 28+ hour labor was much
easier to cope with. 18 hours being induced with pitocin is my idea of hell
on earth. But I see you've had the experience, so you know.

I don't think Jill did anything she shouldn't have done except, perhaps,
have a little too much faith in medication's ability to make her birth
completely pain-free. But that's not particularly unusual: I daresay it's
what the *majority* of women hope for (we're just a bit of an odd contingent
here on mkp!).
--
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