Questions about dilating and labor...

In My Humble Opinion
41

The stories aren’t scaring me into sleepless nights - but thanks for the concern. :slight_smile:

The sleeplessness comes on its own. Like an unwanted house guest, that you just can’t get to leave!

I have always had sleep issues - so I’m not really surprised with this fact. And throw being uncomfortable on top of that - it is a no-win situation.

As far as how I’m doing now…still nothing.

I tried to sleep in the bed last night, and I use the word tried lightly. I haven’t slept in the bed for a long time now because it just causes way too much pain in my pelvis. Well, more pain in the pelvis, and no sleep. So I moved back to the couch/recliner part and got some rest.

inkleberry thanks for the tips on what labor will feel like. As far as having sex, we’ve tried that - in limited capacity. I think my husband is afraid to hurt the baby. :rolleyes: Trust me, we will try that approach at least one more time this weekend though!

Chotii as far as my doctor and I being on the same page…he has been my doctor for over a decade. He is my OB/GYN. He is WONDERFUL and I would never want another doctor. He and I have discussed a million ideas about this birth…even down to the fact that there is a good chance I’ll need a c-section anyway due to the baby’s size. I have 100% confidence in his ability, as well as my ability to work well with him. Thanks for your concern though.

One thing I am nervous about it doing things though. Like I’d like to be able to go to the mall this weekend to pick up some things, but I don’t want to be too far from the hospital just incase. Yes, I live in Jersey and there is a mall ever 1/2 hour - but I am already 1/2 hour from the hospital - so I don’t want to make that trip last longer than it needs to. Even if I were able to go to the mall I’m not exactly sure I could walk around it for that long. When I stand too long the pressure kind of gets too much.

42

Before my first kid, I had planned one day to do a whole lot of stuff, including go to the mall (yeah, I’m in NJ too) after my checkup and get some diapers and baby clothes was one of them. My doctor told me I was about 3 or 4 cm dilated, and mostly effaced, so I must not go more than 15 minutes away from the hospital. Especially with one’s first, you really have no idea how quickly or slowly things will progress.

My mom had quick, easy labors. My sister had long difficult ones and rather largish babies. As it turned out, I was somewhat more like Mom, but not quite as good. My first was due on January 5th. I was pretty sure of the exact conception date, and was convinced I would be later than that (thus having procrastinated with the clothes buying).

As it turned out, she was born on December 30, so everyone’s guess was wrong.
I was having mild contractions all evening as we watched a basketball game, a hockey game, the news and the Tonight Show. Finally at about 1:30, I decided to give up and go to bed. At which point water leakage commenced. A beautiful, full-term, 5lb 8 oz daughter met the world at about 6 a.m. after zero drugs of any kind.

I was so hyped up I could not sleep all day. Boy, was I hungry, though. When my husband returned to visit me around noon he was practically drooling over the corned beef sandwich I was eating. “You gonna eat all of that?” “Yep.” The nurses took pity on him and brought him a sandwich, too.

43

For me, contractions felt like being squeezed by an enormous hand, so hard I couldn’t breathe. I’m sure there was pain, but I don’t remember pain. I remember making large amounts of noise, but I don’t remember pain. I remember panting for breath because I was being squeezed so hard. I got an oxygen mask between contractions, but fought it and shoved it away during them. And it wasn’t like intestinal cramps for me, either (although when the urge to push came, that did feel familiar enough in an intestinal sort of way, just turned up to 11.)

Having read many many birth stories, I’ve heard everything from ‘pain like the end of the world’ to ‘yeah, there was discomfort, but eh’ to my own mother: “I never knew when I was having contractions.” And she had 4 kids, you’d think she’d have figured it out eventually! I’m not sure there’s a way to extrapolate “what it will feel like” because nobody knows. But, a woman’s body knows on some sort of instinctive or basic-mammal level what to do, and just sets about doing it like millions of moms before her. If her attendants believe that, and support her in that, she’ll do a lot better than if they’re just sure something’s going to go wrong, that will be communicated to mom when she’s at a very vulnerable time.

Just for the record, a baby’s weight is less important than his lie in the pelvis and the circumference of his head. If he’s merely fat, well, fat squishes. Nobody really believed I could give birth to an 8 lb baby, because I’m 4"10" and “You’re so small, honey!” But she was in a good position, her head was given time to mold, and yeah, the doc gave her a bit of a tug with the vacuum. But my firstborn was in a bad position.

It couldn’t hurt, and it might help, to spend a little time on hands and knees, helping baby turn around so his back is along the front of mom’s tummy. This helps put the head in an optimal position for navigating the pelvis. I spent a LOT of time like this before Littlest was born. Also resting belly-down in a big bean bag chair. I find doctors tend not to mention fetal positioning beyond ‘is it head down’ and even the standard book they hand out, by Kepler, Whalley and Simkin, propagates this, saying that ‘head down’ is the only important thing. But of course that’s untrue: ideal positioning is always going to be better than non-ideal positioning, and moms can help influence that by…practicing not sitting with their knees higher than their pelvises, in late pregnancy…sleeping or resting on their left sides…and yeah, the hands and knees thing, with pelvic tilts. Like I say, it can’t hurt. I’m not sure why this information seems to be deemed irrelevent in obstetrics, since it’s common wisdom in midwifery. Perhaps because an OB knows he can always just do a C/S, and midwives know they can’t.

Also, if baby’s head is in an ideal position, it will press more effectively on the cervix, leading to more efficient dilation,and effacement, and more rapid descent - in short, an easier birth. I wish I’d known about this during my first pregnancy - it was probably my daughter’s posterior lie that led to the prodromal labor for weeks on end. Man, what I’d have given to be free of that! But nobody told me.

As a final note, I’ve always heard “When you can’t stand it anymore, there’s nothing left to stand.” So yeah, the inability to sleep sounds awfully familiar. I hope Skittles can catch naps here and there, even if it’s only a snippet at a time.

44

My goodness. I’m glad you say that that you are on the same page. That would just not work for me.

45

You know, the more I learn, the less and less helpful I think hearing other women’s stories are.

Because every labour is unique, every woman and every baby is different.

You can make all the birth plans you like, do all the knee-chest exercises you can, take Bradley class, self hypnotise, and you can still end up needing a traumatic mid-cavity rotational vacuum delivery, simply because your baby’s head shape and position are not compatible with your pelvis.

The important thing is to realise that in a lot of cases, you won’t know until the last minute exactly how things are likely to go…babies can turn during labour, contractions can be too strong or not strong enough, and some babies just can’t cope with the extra stress.

What you need is someone you trust who has seen as many of these situations as possible, so that they can make an informed decision about what best to do, based on your particular situation and their experience, abilities and facilities.

If you trust your midwife and Obstetrician, half your battle is over.
Personally, since I’m 5’ with a very small pelvis and lumbar lordosis, with a family history of CPD, foetal malposition and obstructed labour and my husband is 5’11, with a very large head and a family history of 10lb babies delivering at 37 weeks, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be delivering naturally unless it’s a 6lb, perfectly postioned baby. I’m fine with that. I was held up in class as the perfect candidate for elective section in first pregnancy!

46

Blowjobs, if you swallow, can also hasten labor. Maybe that helped for me. I also drank Raspberry tea. I went into labor, contractions 20 minutes apart, while watching West Wing and the contractions got steadily closer together until they were about 1.5 minutes apart in the morning. I had sent hubby and KellyM to bed and stayed up myself. The contractions were not that painful and felt like many of the braxton hicks contractions I had had. The difference was in their steady rhythm.

Hubby and KellyM did not believe I was in labor, until I tried to eat breakfast and had a particularly strong contration and then vomitted. When I got to the hospital, I was only 3 cm dialated. They did break my water and put me on pitocin. I did not have an epidural and gave birth at 5:19 pm to a very healthy girl.

For me the key to pain management was not closing my eyes during a contraction, thinking of something else, and focusing on something else in the room. It hurt a lot more and seemed overwhelming if I closed my eyes. I also napped the minute or so between each contraction; telling myself if if felt bad, that I could have a nap in a moment or two, and then napping helped a lot.

Everyone is different. Do get plenty of rest, and ignore the Google ad for Castor oil, that can cause some nasty reactions. Raspberry tea has been studied and is not harmful for women ready to go into labor and may have some benefits. It tasts yummy too.

47

Well I didn’t have much time to write yesterday. At one point I was almost convinced my water had sprung a leak. I had to be in the bathroom about every five minutes - and the walk there wasn’t as ‘controlled’ as I would have liked it. So finally after the entire day of this I called my doctor and he said to go to the hospital and they would check to see if it was my waters.

After an exam it was determined that it wasn’t. They kept me there about an hour just to monitor the baby and make sure things were OK. They were. The baby was doing great…that is the most important part afterall. Then they called my doctor and he sent me home.

So - back home we came. I kind of felt stupid a bit, but I figured - better to be safe than sorry. Especially if it were my waters leaking. I don’t have my appointment until Monday - and I know they typically like you to deliver within like 24 or so hours of that happening to lessen the chance of infection on the baby.

Funniest part about the entire thing is they asked me at the desk if I was having contractions and I said I didn’t think so - but that this was my first pregnancy and I could be wrong. The nurses all said - OH YOU’LL KNOW IT WHEN YOU ARE. I wanted to just laugh and say - so I’ve been told. The L&D nurses yesterday were all so very nice, and the staff there at the hospital seem friendly - so that will come in handy I’m sure!

So - today is just another waiting day. We’ll watch some football later on…and just stay close to home. Tomorrow I’ll go to my doctors appointment and see what he says our next step is.

48

I just want to reinforce that you should NOT feel stupid. Remember WhyBaby’s spectacular enterance into the world at 23 weeks back in February? That was all due to leaking amniotic fluid and a possible infection that they were afraid would spread to the baby. Once the water breaks, all sorts of bacteria, viruses and even fungii can get up there and wreak havoc.

You were very smart to go in, and if you suspect you’re leaking fluid again, you should go in again within a few hours, even if you think you’re overreacting. Once the fluid comes out, baby *must *follow soon after.

And trust me, the hospital staff would much rather be “bothered” by 10 false warnings than treat one infected and seriously ill baby.

49

I had to jump on as soon as I woke up to find out how things were progressing for you!
You were right…better safe than sorry.

I was the same way with my second baby because it’d been sixteen years since my last birth. I’d forgotten everything! So I made two visits to the hospital thinking…hoping I was in labor because my back was hurting like a mutha and I kept leaking (baby pressing on my bladder was all, they ended up breaking my waters for me when I finally was in labor). When I really did go into labor three weeks past my due date I did know. It woke me up out of a dead sleep on Christmas morning. The feeling was completely different from those backaches. It wasn’t really all that unpleasant, just a squeezing, but I knew for sure what it was.

Best of luck to ya Skittles. I know every day seems like a week, but it’ll be over soon. :slight_smile:

50

[QUOTE=irishgirl]
You can make all the birth plans you like, do all the knee-chest exercises you can, take Bradley class, self hypnotise, and you can still end up needing a traumatic mid-cavity rotational vacuum delivery, simply because your baby’s head shape and position are not compatible with your pelvis.

[QUOTE]

Oh, mercy, I would never disagree with this. But there’s a difference between giving yourself the best chance possible…and having a doctor who thinks he might have to cut you because the baby might be too big. LOTS of women get cut because their doctors THINK the baby MIGHT be too big…and deliver a baby under 8 lbs. Oops! Well, at least you have a healthy baby, too bad you had to have major surgery, and will always have to have it again for every subsequent birth because no doctor or hospital will “let” them try a VBAC anymore.

Statistics show that more women end up with c/s deliveries for suspected “large” babies - whether they actually are large or not - than for babies not suspected to be “large”. Late-term ultrasounds are notoriously off by up to 2 lbs. Everybody knows this. The doctors know it. And there are better ways to estimate fetal weight than ultrasound, including simply asking the mother how big she thinks the baby is… but everybody loves their tech.

If a woman doesn’t mind having major surgery, and if she doesn’t mind the fact that she will always have to have it again for every baby after, of course, it’s her baby and her body - many women choose elective cesareans for non-medical reasons and are very happy. And, cesareans are tolerably safe, as major surgeries go. Personally, I hated my cesareans and was extremely distraught at the idea of being forced into a third. So I found a doctor who believed I could give birth - yes, at 4’10", with a very small pelvis, and a husband who is 5’11", and two previous cesareans - and I did it. There were no guarantees, of course. Somewhere along the line during the pushing stage I gave up and was ready to be wheeled off to surgery, but my doctor believed in me, and that made all the difference. I couldn’t bear having a doctor who half expected to cut me (like her colleague who was on call that night - my OB came in on her night off to attend me). Because I’d have wound up being cut.

Saying “You can make all the plans you want and not get what you hope for” can easily be interpreted as as “So don’t bother trying, because what will happen will happen.” That’s not true. The more of your experience you place in the hands of other people, the more likely you will get what they want for you…and they don’t have to live with the outcome. So, I believe women should educate themselves as much as possible, and lay the best plans they can. Then of course, they have to trust their attendants, and hope for the best.

51

This is going off-topic, but I think that reaching a level of comfort with the future is an individual thing. It’s the same thing with the decision to get pregnant - how much must be going right in your life to make you bring a baby into it? You gotta know yourself enough to make the right decision for you.

And, skittles, you did exactly the right thing by going in to be checked!

Feel free to ignore this, but this is IMHO, so I’ll throw it out there.

My advice for women in late pregnancy - if you think it’s labor:

  1. Assess the situation. Labor contractions get stronger and closer together. Contractions that last longer than 1.5 minutes are unlikely to be labor, but rather painful braxton hicks contractions. Don’t keep timing for longer than 2-3 contractions.
  2. Continue with your regular activities. If it’s night, you should be sleeping. If it’s dinner time, you should be eating. If it’s straight-dope time, you should be posting. :slight_smile: I like to suggest going to the movies: it’s dark, loud, and in the back row, you can move all you want. Go back to #1 every 60-90 minutes and say to yourself, “Is this stronger/longer/closer together than the last time I checked?”
  3. Try to stop the labor, within the bounds of #2. Relax, hydrate, take a bath, drink a glass of wine (optional, use your judgement here). Real labor can’t be stopped, but this is a good mental game to try first.
  4. When you can’t stop it (#3) and it’s definitely ramping up (#1), call your crew. Contact the midwife, your mother, the hospital, etc. If your water breaks, this is where you come into the plan.
    5l Have a good goal. I offer the following goal for my clients: “Contractions lasting a full minute, 5 minutes apart, for one hour”. At that point, they are likely to be 5 cm dilated and well into labor, to the point that transfering location will not slow things down. You can get an epidural right away at that dilation. I’d say that 80% of people don’t make that last hour at home, but it’s a good goal.
52

Chotii has some excellent advice and insights. I would just like to add my experience in response to the many posts mentioning epidurals as if they are a natural and harmless part of labor. In the first place, it’s a fairly major intervention, and things can go wrong.

In my own personal experience, I’ve had three children. One epidural, the second two not. There’s a reason for that. Having done both, there is no way I would ever have an epidural again. Not that I’m ever having any more babies, mind you.

In the end, though, it’s your labor, your baby, and your body. Just know that you have options.

53

On the other hand, I know two horror stories where the woman’s OB said “we should do a c-section.” In both cases the woman firmly believed the doctor didn’t know what they were talking about. Natural childbirth is best, we can always do a c-section if there is fetal distress, most c-sections are unnecessary. The normal granola take. One went so far as to get a midwife fairly late and fire her OB.

One woman ended up in surgery post delivery and nearly died. The other lost the baby during labor. There are sometimes good reasons why OBs suggest c-sections, and it isn’t always for the convienience of their golf game. While I didn’t end up with the delivery I wanted, its hard for me to consider my labor mis-managed in any way when I walked out of the hospital with a healthy child.

54

Heh. I timed contractions with Littlest for an hour or so. They were uncomfortable (got my attention, couldn’t do anything else) but were erratic - mostly under 30 seconds long, and anywhere from 1 to 20 minutes apart. I finally gave up, went to bed, tried to sleep. Drowsed, no contractions I felt. Got up to the toilet, water broke there. By the time we got to the hospital 20 minutes later, things were GOING, BAYBEE, full-on, minute-long, 3 minutes apart or less, instant laborland, woo rollercoaster whee!

I have no idea if I was “in labor” before my water broke. I didn’t fit the norm. But man, when it kicked in, there was just no question. And while I did eventually get an epidural (after 2 hours of pushing), it was for cramping in my thighs, not for uterine or other pain. Kind of weird. :smiley: I don’t think my body has ever done anything “normally” yet.

They wouldn’t give me pitocin because I was VBA2C. Thankfully, nobody thought I “needed” it anyway.

55

Yes. There are certainly good reasons for cesareans. And there are women who get cut for no good medical reason. Who have horrible recoveries, post-surgical infections, etc. Their experiences matter too. How do you weigh the women who should have had cesareans and have bad outcomes, against the women who shouldn’t have, and also have bad outcomes? I hear a lot of sympathy for the former. The latter tend to get a head-pat and “Well at least you have a healthy baby.” The medical community seems to have a need to ignore these women, as if their pain, and their emotional health, is irrelevent. The healthy baby is seen as the only measure of success.

I have all healthy babies. I am not required to be grateful for how I was treated in my first pregnancy or birth, merely because I got a healthy baby out of it. I can be angry that I was treated that way, and want to help other women to avoid going through the same thing. I have no problems with my second birth despite it also being a cesarean delivery, which I did not want…because I understood why it was necessary, why I had to endure another experience like that. I genuinely enjoyed my third birth. The difference is in how I was treated - the attitudes of my caretakers - and the degree to which I felt I was involved in what happened to my body.

56

Well another quick update…nothing to report. As if that is a shock at this point. :slight_smile:

I did enjoy watching football all day though. Took my mind off of what wasn’t happening.

Tomorrow morning I will wake up and get ready for the doctor. That will give me a good idea of what is going to be happening this week. I’m am definitely looking forward to news at this point.

I truly have to laugh at how impatient I can be. I guess waiting for labor to start is a good judge of that!

57

Ah see, Chotii, that’s why I love Ireland.
VBAC is STANDARD procedure here, unless there is a clinical reason for a second LSCS. 70% of VBAC patients deliver perfectly normally, and there have been very, very few serious complications from that policy.

There is only one reason it differs in the USA.
Malpractice suits.
That and the fact that shoulder dystocia (every OB’s worst nightmare) is horribly hard to predict and yet is relatively common in babies over 8lbs.

Some actuary somewhere has decided that you have to do x unnecessary LSCS, with all their attendant risks, to avoid one shoulder dystocia, but that avoiding that one case will save the hospital billions of dollars. That’s what “risk management” in modern healthcare is about.

Epidurals are administered (or should be) with informed consent, that means all the risks should be explained to you before hand, and you should be signing a piece of paper to say that you understand those risks. A lot of the patient dissatisfaction arises either because the anaesthetist didn’t explain properly, or the patient didn’t ask questions and signed when they didn’t understand what they were signing.

Good Luck skittles…maybe baby wants to make sure that their birthday party doesn’t clash with any future Hallowe’en parties/trick or treating!

58

Well the doctors visit went well.

I will be admitted to the hospital tomorrow night. They will monitor me and give me Cervadil (sp?) to help my cervix thin out. The dilating is going well.

So I am hoping for a Wednesday birth. :slight_smile:

Tonight is the last night that it will be just me and mr. skittles in the house. That is insane!!!

59

May you have a safe and healthy labor and delivery.

60

skittles,

I hope you have a nice evening with your husband. And good luck with everything tomorrow (and the subsequent number of years, of course).