I suspect her viewpoint on this is going to change mightily once she becomes a practicing nurse.
I suppose you won’t see this now, but I just wanted to answre your first paragraph here. Normal childbirth isn’t a disease process, but it is still deadly. Moreso than most diseases, actually. So…there’s good reason IMO for birth to have become medicalized, and I for one am grateful that it has been.
Ok. I had not remembered the details of your delivery of her. But how does that change anything? If your premise is that the docs/hospital put their legal department first, what makes you become a patient is irrelevant-it doesn’t even have to be childbirth. Color me even more confused now.
There is SOME truth to what you are saying: birth can be (and often is) treated as a medical condition, instead of the natural thing that it is. But there is no denying that problems occur; that some C-sections are invaluable; that medical intervention has saved countless mothers and babies.
Of course the flipside of that is there are mistakes: fatal errors, horrible decisions made by the OB; miscommunications by the RN to the OB and vice versa, and that some C-sections are unnecessary. There are so few absolutes in medicine (one reason it’s an art and not a science) that is hard to state categorically X, whatever X may be.
But I can say this, and I think most RNs (and MDs) here will back me: if you put your patient first, most everything else falls into line. By “most everything else” I mean priorities, care plan, scheduling of treatments and care and so on. I think that is THE most important thing I ever learned in nursing school.
Now, I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that we also learned CYA (cover your ass), but CYA was not intended to ever pull the wool over pts’ eyes or cover up shoddy care: that’s falsifying medical records, the penalty for which can be severe. CYA’s intent is to ensure a concise, accurate thorough and timely record of the care the pt received:its intent is to dovetail with putting the patient first.
If that means calling that nasty doctor, the one who never has a nice thing to say to any nurse back to confirm his order, so be it. If it means getting another RN to listen to fetal heart tones because you can’t seem to find them, no matter how personally embarrassing that is to you, so be it. You are covering your ass, but also putting the safety of the patient first. There is no excuse for not doing so (unless you personally are on fire or dying–but then you need to be on fire or dying in the hall or nurse’s station. Your pt comes first, always.)
I certainly don’t mean to lecture you, but I have seen new grads come out and not understand this simple basic premise. The nurse/pt relationship is inviolate, as is the MD/pt relationship. To undermine that is an ethical breach.* No harm, no foul on a message board, but that attitude cannot be on display on the floor. I think you were venting here and maybe took a shortcut to say something about your frustrations with modern labor and delivery. I hope that is the case.
*there are ways to express concerns if you as an RN witness something unethical or wrong. There are avenues and policies in place so that you can CYA that way, legally as well.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Whoa, a lot’s been posted since this, and I know you may not see this, but honestly, I trust my doctor and my hospital to cover their asses by providing me with a healthy baby, not a perfect birthing experience.
I am not a doctor. No matter how many books I read, I’m still not a doctor. If my doctor feels that I need some intervention, I’m going to ask why, but absent some seriously compelling reason not to, I’m going to do what my doctor says, because he knows stuff that I don’t. That’s why he’s there.
Chicken!
It doesn’t even make sense to move this to GD. The OP asks for opinions on (hurk) orgasms during birth. The highjack might need a GD thread, but it’s a highjack, and I thought those were generally frowned upon here, not moved to the appropriate forum.
Now that this (typical) mess has shown up in GD, (instead of the BBQ Pit where such topics are usually hashed out), may I ask everyone to take a deep breath, [ breathe…breathe], and dial back on the hostility.
Statements regarding what any woman has felt during pregnancy or childbirth are fine.
Statements regarding what any woman should feel during pregnancy or childbirth are presumptuous and silly; please refrain from such comments, henceforth.
Statements already made regarding what any woman should feel were made prior to this thread being tossed into Great Debates. Given the new rules for this thread in this forum, we can all agree that such comments were ill advised and, so agreeing, do not need to continue harping on them.
Confine any further remarks to some sort of discussion regarding the appropriate actions a woman about to give birth might choose and omit any comments regarding the personal expressions posted prior to this point.
[ /Moderating ]
Once again, I had a similar experience to alice_in_wonderland. Sorry Whynot, but your posts are contradicting the information I was given, in which complications to this type of epidural were very rare. Your posts set off my skeptical meter and appear to be full of absolutes and exaggerations. Anyway, after my epidural, things went very smoothly and quickly for me. Plus, I could still move around and had no problem pushing. I was NOT lying flat on my back. My baby took a few seconds to cry but was immediately alert after that. Therefore, I also request some cites and not just natural childbirth propaganda.
Actually, despite the hijack, I think it was the right move. **InterestedObserver **created a controversy with her statements regarding orgasmic birth, so even if we had stayed on point, it would have made sense to move it here.
Yah - despite the boatload of drugs I was on my baby cried right away and had APGARs of 9/9 (he was obviously faking with the prolonged decells and just wanted the whole thing over).
I know during my childbirth class we were told that narcotics (I think I was given phentanol at the beginning) may make baby drowsy if birth happens shortly after administration, but it was a full 9 or 10 hours after getting it that Junior arrived and didn’t seem to have any effects on him.
He DID struggle to get the hang of breast feeding, but I was told by the lactation consultant that was more likely attributable to the c-section than any medication I had taken. She suggested that passing through the birthing canal prompts babies to suckle. I have no idea if that’s true or not but her other tips and suggestions worked like a charm so I have no reason to doubt her.
Ladies - can’t we just all agree that having kids is a bad idea and leave it at that? 
I don’t know if it has been mentioned in this very long thread yet, but me and my two sisters were born with our mom under no drugs. The only pain management was hypnosis. The Osteopath worked with her during her pregnancy implanting the suggestion that she would feel no pain and that it would be a beautiful experience, and mom always said she felt no pain. I was born in 1960.
Just offering this data point.
If not for a heart rate monitor during my mother’s labor after a completely normal and healthy pregnancy, I might well have been stillborn. As it was, by the time they could rectify the problem (I was too big and got stuck, compressing my cord) they ended up needing to give me O2 before I was completely delivered.
I also know a woman who went through labour - an induced birth with a 9lb baby - using only aromatherapy for pain relief.
And I’m sure it could help to believe that you’re not going to feel pain. Though hopefully not of your Mum’s multitasking osteopath/hypnotist’s customers ‘failed’ and felt guilty about it afterwards. Some of them would definitely have felt pain, however, I’d be willing to bet - there are limits to mind over matter.
Those women who have uncomplicated birth canals, babies lying straight down, a reasonably quick labour, etc, are simply lucky to have factors which make childbirth easier. Most women have something or other which causes them to feel at least some pain - one of the main things being the process of childbirth itself, which isn’t perfect.
Wisdom teeth emerging also varies in how much pain it causes, but I don’t think there’s a huge school out there saying that wisdom teeth are natural so growing them shouldn’t cause pain for anyone.
FWIW The is no longer a recommended limit to the number of c-sections of 15% of all labours.
Cite:Should there be a limit on Caesareans? - BBC News
The WHO states that “there is no empirical evidence for an optimum percentage” and stresses that “what matters most is that all women who need Caesarean sections receive them”.
To be honest it is not surprising that the number of c-sections continues to rise.
We are now in situations where no female in a family has had a vaginal delivery for 4 generations.
A narrow pelvis, a tendency to uterine atony and a cervix that doesn’t want to dilate is no longer a death sentence, but they might be heritable traits you pass to your daughters.
There is no longer a Darwinian selection of the fittest for labour and delivery, and that, combined with bigger babies over time is going to inexorably lead to higher c-section rates.
I get where Whynot is coming from, but it isn’t my experience.
Yeah, I agree. I do think there probably were too many caesareans for a while, there are logical reasons for the caesarean rate increasing. Apart from the factors you mention, more high-risk pregnancies last till labour. Many of those probably would be fine with a normal delivery, but ‘probably’ isn’t very reassuring when it comes to potential death or disability.
Caesareans are also better than they used to be. At least, this is my impression based on the fact that caesarians used to be under general anaesthetic and now they only are in a dire emergency, and from what doctors have told me when I’ve possibly needed operations, general anaesthetic is safer now too (but I’m struggling to find anything online confirming or denying this).
Most people I know who’ve had a caesarean were able to stay awake for the whole process, which is better in a legion of ways. Probably rules out any orgasm during labour, though.
I think doctors probably have motives beyond legal CYA for being overcautious. I imagine you remember the dead babies for a long, long time.
As a lawyer who has defended well over 100 OBGYNs as well as nurses/hospitals its not the dead babies that haunt those professionals–it’s the children with CP, shoulder dystocia and other neurological conditions such that the baby might grow up but will never have a shot at a normal life.
Monitors are a very good thing, and picking a good hospital and OBGYN are key. That way you can and should trust your health care providers. I am eternally grateful that my OBGYN didn’t strangle me as I tried to pull a “I know more than you” while giving birth to my first. Love ya Dr. W!
PS: I deserved it.