Stories like the one that holmes posted are the reason that I instructed both hubby and KellyM to deck the doctor if he tried this. Yes, sometimes the placenta is retained and needs to be extracted, not often, and waiting a few minutes for the placenta to be delivered can avoid some of the worst complications. I remember it did not take long, but it was after they let me hold Loren for a few minutes and took her away to be weighed. I was a bit scared because it felt like I was passing a monstrous blood clot, but then KellyM reminded me it was just the placenta. It was round and red with a membrane around the edge and the cord in the middle, just like the films showed.
Uterine prolapse, whenever it happens post-partum, is virtually always the result of malpractice. Whether or not the doctor is censured is mainly a consequence of who witnessed the prolapse. Generally, the “thin green line” will protect most doctors who cause prolapse; testifying against a doctor is a sure way to end your career at most hospitals and nonexpert testimony is generally insufficient to support a finding of malpractice. Only when the doctor is already in disfavor with the hospital administration will this form of malpractice result in censure. In those cases where permanent injury or death results (which is, alas, frequent), the case is almost always rapidly settled by the insurance company.
These are the doctors that are driving your ob/gyn’s malpractice rates through the roof, by the way.
whoozy
Oh, please stop…
whoozy
That “oxytocin” that KarlGrenze mentioned, he said it a “powerful hormone that promotes uterine contractions” – is that used to induce labour too?
I’ll promise not to post the recipe for, um, paté that appeared a few years ago. It was a great show 
My cat, after birthing each of her kittens, immediately ate the entire placenta and the cord all the way up to the newborn kitten’s belly. (Well, OK, I only saw her do this for the first kitten. The other two she gave birth to in a box in the closet, out of sight, but I assume she did the same, because we didn’t find any bits of leftover placenta in the box afterwards.)
Yes - I got it when my third baby dawdled. We’re talking serious dawdling, here. I’ve heard some women complain that they were given oxytocin because the staff got impatient. In this labor, labor would stop if I rolled onto my side, or if I fell asleep. Yes, I was napping during labor.
The pains are sharper if the labor is induced, but the duration is less, so it’s not a bad trade off.
2 things:
[ol][li]KG is female.[/li][*]Pitocin, a synthetic version of oxytocin, is usually used to induce labor. So more or less, yes, oxytocin is used to induce labor.[/ol]
Really? What a George Sand-like username! Cool. 
BTW, if you should happen to attend a precipitous delivery where there is no time to get Mom to the hospital you can just place the newborn on Mom’s tummy while waiting for the placenta. You can then wrap baby and placenta together until sterile instruments are available to cut the cord.
I once worked with a frantic resident who only put one clamp on the cord before cutting it. As the baby started to bleed out he was screaming at me to put another clamp on the cord while he was holding the baby up in the air. What an idiot! The correct procedure is to put two clamps or ties an inch or two apart and cut between them.
If the cord is not clamped immediately after the birth, more blood continues to flow into the baby for a while giving it a very red appearance and often causing some jaundice as the newborn tries to metabolize the extra blood. Since jaundice is sometimes toxic, it may delay the baby’s discharge from the hospital while they treat it with light therapy and check bilirubin levels until they are declining properly.
Oxytocin is the natural, Pitocin is the synthetic. Pitocin sucks. It causes a harder and more painful labour. Been there done that, twice.
Huh. I stand corrected, although thankfully it appears cord pulling as described is still very rare. I got the impression from the post I responded to that lee was saying that it was a common occurance. I’m glad I was wrong.
Seems like every OB and their dog uses pitocin nowadays. I see it on those delivery-baby shows all the time.
I thought oxytocin was the hormone that flooded through your body following childbirth, making you think the mucus/blood covered thing you just suffered enormous pain, for is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
Does it do that as well as detach the placenta, or have I confused it with something else?
I think you’re thinking of endorphines.
I had a little “Fun With Placenta” during the birth of Kid, the Younger. He forgot to take all his luggage on the way out, so to speak. Left a hunk of placenta about the size of a golfball. Very unkind since I’d just spent the last eight hours pushing his ten pound butt out!
Anyway, a couple hours after the birth, I had to go. Since I looked kind of - no, very pale, the nurse got a commode chair instead of helping me to the bathroom. She sat me on it, and I promptly slid right off. Fainted. At that point, she also noticed an impressive amount of blood.
The next thing I remember was groggily signing a form on my way to the OR to have the Kid’s leftovers removed. I ended up staying in the hospital for nearly a week and recieving six units of blood. Whoops!
Oh well, at least I got a great prize out of it all. He’s almost sixteen now and he’s improved greatly from the “mucous covered blob” 
Oxytocin can cause a sense of well-being, but it’s far from the much-hyped “natural endorphine high”. More a kind of drowsy contentedness.
Besides being one of the hormones involved in childbirth, oxytocin stimulates milk production. In turn, when the baby nurses, the nipple stimulation increases oxytocin production, making for a nice feedback loop. Baby’s extra hungry? He’ll suckle more, causing Mamma’s body to produce extra oxytocin, telling the breasts that a growth spurt is imminent and it’s time to crank up production. When Baby starts getting interested in other foods and nurses less, Mamma makes less oxytocin and the milk supply tapers off. The production of oxytocin when breastfeeding also helps to explain why some nursing mothers seem to almost glow with contentment.
I wouldn’t judge standard OB practice from those TV shows, LorieSmurf. Admittedly I haven’t seen too many episodes, but based on the ones I’ve seen I wouldn’t be surprised if the women on them skew towards the “Sure, Doc, whatever you say, just make sure I’m not in any pain” end of the scale. (And really, if you think of birth as something that’s going to get you sweaty and messy and probably make you swear and moan but it’ll all be worth it in the end - are you going to apply to be on a TV show to share this with the world?) Now, a single shot of Pitocin after the baby’s out, that’s routine in most developed countries, for good reason.
I’ve also noticed this. Out of the dozens (perhaps hundred) “Birth Story” shows I’ve watched, I can remember two that were without pain-medication. And, the women are always wearing makeup and their hair is perfect. Stab, stab, die. Some of us did it without drugs and makeup and perfect nail polish, and didn’t bitch when it was nearly 10 pounds.
Good for you!
My beef was that whenever they did show a woman going without drugs they made her out to be a kook just for that. Usually they showed a woman who had far kookier things going on.
I knew that the standard hospital gown would be very uncomfortable, so I bought a night gown to give birth in. It is a cotton jersey long, loose, with a satin v neck that goes nearly to my belly button. The satin is wide and overlaps so I can easily nurse or cover myself completely. It did not open in the back. The first thing the nurse tried to do was make me give up my comfy gown and wear one of their throat crushing variety. She told me that I would get my gown messy and also there was no way to put in the epidural. I told her that I had no plans for an epidural and she chuckled at me and acted like I was funny in my ignorance. I was put on pitocin right away because my contractions were slowing (mainly due to stress in fighting with the wheelchair guy and that chuckling nurse). Since it was my due day and I had spent all night in labor, I was already 3 cm dialated, I did not want to go back home so I let them. I also let the doctor break my water. Pitocin makes the contraction hurt a lot more. I swear that nurse who kept opening the iv more was a sadist. Every timew the pain increased a lot. I slept between my 1.5 minute apart contractions.
After I gave birth, the nurse opened the pitocin drip all the way to encourage the placenta to hurry up. Those contractions did not seem to hurt much at all. The placenta made the sound of a large liver going over a waterfall on the way out. Goosh…plop! I did not notice any new smell when the placenta came out. I remembered to massage my uterus to spur contractions (another waterfall of blood), and then they began to sew me up. The doctor inspected the placenta and since it was complete, I was spared of another internal exam or any D&C. The doctor estimated that I lost less than 250 ccs of blood with all that. I certainly did not feel like I was short on blood, like after donating a pint. I remembered to massage my uterus every 15 to 30 minutes. (It firms up when you do that after birth and each time seemed a bit smaller. A couple of time I felt the icky waterfall, but usually just a few small clots. Where the placenta was attached bleeds for a bit, that is largely what lochia is. Outside of the two waterfalls, my lochia was far lighter than my periods. As the uterus shrinks back to normal, the placental attachment area shrinks and heals.
The hormone oxytocin is implicated in "maternal behavior " in several animal studies. It also may play a role in affection and attachment .
It’s also the hormone that stimulates uterine contraction for childbirth, and milk production.
This is a normal thing for cats to do. ISTR reading somewhere that they do it for similar reasons that they bury their poo in the litterbox- it keeps predators from being able to find them.
Pitocin is the DEVIL!
Re: injection to make placenta come out. I’m assuming that this is given only to mothers who seem to be having trouble with it? I didn’t get an injection like that but then it came out easily just a couple of minutes after the baby.