It doesn’t surprise me at all that this had been a problem; I also fully support it since it’s really for the good of both the mother and the baby.
I live in the Portland area, and work with quite a few women in the tech industry - our office mostly focuses on sales. Of the dozens of mothers I’ve worked with (most of them very nice people), I can count on one hand the number who didn’t schedule their births, some by as early as 2 or 3 weeks prior. Doing everything you can to make quota at the end of the quarter is a huge pressure cooker, and frankly, makes people do stupid things.
I always refused to ask my wife to schedule her deliveries, despite some ever-so-subtle pressure from my sales managers a couple times. I seriously had a manager ask me “Sooo, Crown Prince, you say your wife’s due in September…” - the last month of our second half - “Are you guys going to induce?”
To which I replied “No, we’re going natural. But she usually goes overdue, so it’ll probably be the last week of the quarter. Why do you ask?” :snicker: As it was, I moved into operations before that one was born, or else things might have gotten interesting.
And it’s not just my office - Portland has a lot of tech firms and sales offices - most major tech firms have regional sales offices here and we have a ton of local firms too. So I imagine there are a lot of professional women looking to time things just right.
The guideline is “no medically unnecessary inductions or c-sections”. If a doctor determines that it is medically necessary to deliver twins at 37 weeks because their size would pose a threat to themselves and the mother during a natural delivery, no one is going to argue with him.
There may occasionally be arguments over how to weigh risks, but not if something that clear cut is a risk.
In Spain that one would be considered “scheduled but not elective” (specially if the kids are in any position other than “both facing down” - the kids of a friend of mine were both sideways; my cousin’s, one faced up; another friend, both faced up). Same as my grandmother’s gallbladder for example: it was scheduled, because it wasn’t so much of an emergency as to have to do it rightnowinthemiddleofthenight, but it was not elective because it clearly needed to come out, waiting longer would simply have turned it from something that could be done early in the morning to something which needed to be done now.
I was hoping that someone from Portland would chime in here and explain the climate in which this all was taking place. Thanks! And good for you for not bowing to pressure.
And? Once again, choosing to take risks is my decision. Not the hospitals. If my DOCTOR was saying “no, you’ll need to find yourself another doctor,” that’s different. All the HOSPITALS in Portland colluding to do this are completely removing a woman’s choice.
But why shouldn’t those women be allowed to schedule a birth if it saves their career? If someone’s baby being born a week or two early could mean the difference between keeping your job or being fired at your next review I would say that is an excellent reason to schedule a birth. For some women they are able or willing to walk away from their job and be a stay at home mom or find a part time position but some of those women, especially in our current economy, probably have husbands that are unemployed or underemployed and are not able to support the family. Some of those women are probably single mothers who will be the only source of income in a household. Given a choice between being born a week early and spending the first several years of their lives in poverty I’m pretty sure most people would choose the first option.
If a specific doctor says that something isn’t safe and they won’t do it that is fine and commendable but hospital admins should not be the ones making that decision. There is a lot of thought that goes into choosing to induce or elect an early cesarean and sometimes these choices are not made solely for medical reasons but that doesn’t make them wrong or bad.
It can also mean the difference between a baby that is born with problems of prematurity and a baby that isn’t, and the doctor’s job is to ensure a healthy mother and baby, not to protect your career.
Edit: To be clear, our system of maternal leave and the pressures that are put on new mothers to go back to work early makes me completely insane with rage, seriously. But hospitals and OBs have the primary responsibility of ensuring your health and your child’s health. Yes, being able to schedule your delivery three weeks early might be very convenient for you and help you greatly in the workplace, but if scheduled early C-sections and inductions lead to increased poor outcomes with no possible medical benefit, I think it’s a legitimate and justifiable stance for a hospital to say, “We aren’t doing those.”
Yes, but you’ve taken the case where someone wants to schedule an early delivery. What about the case where they just want it scheduled? Not 3 weeks early, just on the due date or in the same week. Imagine the case where a woman has saved up 3 weeks paid leave. She can only afford to take paid leave. her husband has also saved up 3 weeks leave, so the baby can remain in parental care for 6 weeks total if they time it just right. If they don’t, the baby loses out. How is it wrong to schedule delivery to maximize the full time parental care the child receives?
These are the exact same side effects of being denied an abortion, to hear most anti-choicers tell it. :dubious:
Is there a list somewhere of specific instances in which a conscious, sane woman is incompetent to make her own medical decisions? Forewarned is forearmed, and all.
Well, the ban is only on early deliveries (prior to 39 weeks), so simply scheduling a delivery is still OK.
For instance, pbbth’s scheduled delivery (a few days prior to the due date) wouldn’t be a problem under this ban.
Lasciel’s boss’s DiL’s scheduled delivery would probably be OK, or could be scheduled to fit within the 39-41 weeks range, if all that was wanted was a Friday evening delivery.
randomface’s doc’s Christmas would have been safe - 3 days early wouldn’t be questioned.
And kunilou’s wife’s doctor would have to file some kind of form saying ‘medically necessary early c-section due to large twins’ and then that one would be fine. Y’all can get yourselves all in a lather about how these evil hospitals are trying to kill women by disallowing needed early deliveries, but you’re just being silly.
Just so y’all realize - when they talk about hospital ‘arbiters’ and ‘administrators’ making these decisions: I’d bet dollars to donuts that those people ARE medical professionals. Many hospital management staff are medical doctors and/or nurses. They’re not just random guys with a business degree in basketweaving. Medical oversight staff are almost always actual medical people; frequently it’s a committee of specialists that are basically doing a peer-review thing.
40 weeks is the standard length of a “complete” pregnancy, i.e. that’s when your due date is. I know you know this, but I want to be clear for the benefit of anyone else reading. At 38 weeks you are indeed technically considered “full term” although again, that doesn’t mean that the second you reach 38 weeks, your child is fully developed and ready to be born. (And on preview, it sure as hell doesn’t mean that for 37 weeks.)
42 weeks is generally the point at which most OBs will consider you “overdue” and schedule an induction, since negative outcomes tend to rise fairly sharply after that point.
Dangerosa, why should the hospital be forced to allow medically risky, unnecessary surgeries for your convenience? Yeah, you can sign some piece of paper saying that you know the risks - but that doesn’t stop people from suing (and winning) when one of those risks actually materializes.
Nava, I wish we used that terminology here. The “elective” phrasing is misunderstood by most people IMO. The anti-abortion crowd use it all the time to mean “frivolous abortions” when all it really means is “scheduled, non-emergency procedure”. Elective <> not medically necessary.
I do question the 39 weeks cutoff, since Dangerosa is right; a 38-week pregnancy is considered full-term.
Crown Prince, thanks for the actual info on local culture. I wonder if part of the purpose of this ban isn’t trying to give people an easier way out of that sort of pressure. Now they won’t have to risk their jobs to refuse to deliver early, because no one will be able to do that in Portland.
I just wonder why these people are bothering with having kids. If having a baby is threatening to your career, then just when are you going to have time to actually rear a child?
See, they’ve been cutting on the other end also, in favor of inductions and c-sections. I know several people whose doc’s have insisted on induction at 40 weeks, because anything past that was “overdue”. I understand the need when the baby is large, but not when they’re 7 pounds. I don’t know anyone that was allowed to go to 42 weeks.
There really has been a huge move in USA obstetrics towards way, way, way too many inductions (which, among the other problems, also increase the number of c-sections).
I think that trend is what this ban is trying to fight. You can disagree with their method, but I think the intent is good.
DianaG, it is the hospitals who have decided not to perform early deliveries. They HAVE chosen.