Nothing will put you off a water birth quite like witnessing what happens when someone suffers a massive postpartum haemorrhage in a birthing pool, or realising that having your patient up to her neck in water is really NOT going to make resuscitating her easy.
Resuscitating acidotic babies tends to impress on one’s mind the value of foetal monitors and scalp pH testing.
I, personally had seen what a high foetal head, a narrow maternal pelvis and relative CPD can lead to in a worst case scenario. I’d also seen TTN, c-section scar infection and post-op clots and decided that the risks of surgery were worthwhile in comparison.
Someone with different experiences and knowledge might make a different choice, but that’s true of all decisions.
If you have no risk factors and decide to go for an all natural, drug-free birthing experience more power to you.
But putting that experience above the safety and welfare of yourself and your child- not a good thing.
I don’t think that basing your decisions on witnessing examples of worst-case scenarios is any smarter than basing your decisions on witnessing examples of best-case scenarios. I think that in any medical situation, including pregnancy/childbirth, you need to weigh all the risks and benefits and decide what’s best for you, taking under advisement the input of a doctor you trust.
I wanted an all-natural, drug-free birthing experience, but I was not willing and would never have been willing to put that “above the safety and welfare of my child.” For my third pregnancy, I had the good fortune not to have to choose between those two options as though they are mutually exclusive, which for many women and many births, they are not.
I get a little tired of people bringing out horrific scare stories about women who died in childbirth as examples of why you shouldn’t use a birthing pool or whatever. I mean, come on. Can I have a cite on how many women died pursuant to giving birth in a pool in the last year or so? I’m guessing it’s about as likely as getting hit by a bus, and yet I still cross the street on a daily basis. No, I personally had no interest in using a birthing pool and I agree that there are concerns with it, but using “a woman died that way!!” as an example of why not to do it is a little over-the-top IMO.
While I agree with you in general, I believe that IrishGirl is a physician and has possibly actually been involved in the attempted resuscitations of pool births gone bad, babies who could have done better with more and earlier interventions, etc. I imagine that type of thing would colour your view quite a bit which is why I find WhyNot’s suggestion that insurance is the only care even more grating.
I guess it probably doesn’t take that many dead babies/moms on your head before you’re pushing for every safety precaution available for every birth, just in case. Is it good medicine? Well, probably not, but I’m not the one that has to deal with the negative outcomes if things go wrong.
I do think that women should get to have the birth that they want - I just tend to be sympathetic to those for whom this isn’t the first, third or 27th birth, but more like the 1,897th who have seen all the bad crap that can happen and really, really want to make sure it doesn’t happen on their watch.
Personally, I subscribe to “plan for the worst, hope for the best.”
I, personally, wouldn’t do a home birth (couldn’t have reasonably done so anyway due to risk factors) simply because if the worst happens, you are that much farther from medical intervention. I want an attending OB and not a midwife for the same reason.
And, believe it or not, the most comfortable position I was in during labor was in bed on my back. My “fan of natural childbirth” OB nurse had me try and walk (NO), sit in a rocker (better than walking, but not by much) and try the tub/shower (which was wonderful in early labor, then the water hurt. ) Having never been in labor before, I’d imagine that like my girlfriends, I’d walk the halls, find the shower a relief and be able to sit in the rocker until transition. Birth plans are great to make, but as General Eisenhower said “plans are useless, planning is indispensable.” You need to be able to throw out your plans and change course - hopefully without regret.
It would seem to take a shift of focus as to what we have taught. The video goes into this a bit, that women were taught that childbirth hurts, and is a emergency situation. Both of these don’t have to be believed. When one believes pain is coming it will normally amplify it.
But there is a deeper level. That of the child is the Love of the mother and father, the child is their relationship in the flesh, and the desire of the heart to give that Love a life of it’s own so it can grow. This way relating the feeling normally associated with the sexual partner can be associated with the joy of the bond between the mother and the relationship of Love with the father represented by the living child. It is the desire of the father to give pleasure to the mother and that can happen (and should IMHO) through the child.
QFT. Absent any risk factors, I think midwife-assisted homebirth is something that is not unreasonably risky, although it is still too much risk for me personally. (Well, and I have type 2 diabetes, so homebirth was right out regardless, but even if I had been risk-free, I wouldn’t have wanted one.)
I had the same experience with the tub, by the way. In early labor, sitting in the bathtub felt great. When active labor began, it started to be uncomfortable, and then when I was in transition, I did not want anything/anyone touching me, including water. The classic “semi-reclined in stirrups” position actually worked very well for me. (This is for my final delivery, btw. With the other two I had an epidural before transition started, so I was just kind of hanging out in the bed. I have heard rumors that some people can get a “walking epidural” but with my two epidurals, no walking was happening. I could barely even feel my legs.)
MsWhatsit I had hoped to be clearer.
Being involved that PPH in a pool thing put me off waterbirths, I’m not suggesting it should put anyone else off, and nobody died.
But yeah, having someone say “your risk of cord prolapse is X%” is different when you don’t really know what that means and when you’ve been involved in a crash section for one.
Knowing that bad things can happen is different to seeing them happen, and yes, it makes you risk averse.
Exactly. I went into the labor with a mind to try natural as long as I could but didn’t think twice to switching to an epidural if things changed. I was informed of the risks of a walking epidural (as they called it, I didn’t walk around) during all my pregnancy classes and by my doctor.
In my case, after ~ 26 hrs of labor with ~14 of those hrs after my water broke, the labor simply stalled. I wasn’t in much pain. No anxiety. In fact, I remember watching TV and joking about how boring daytime TV was. But nothing was happening. The decision to induce was due to concern for the baby, not me. Once the pitocin was given, I was in serious pain almost right away. I couldn’t manage it and I was very tired by that time. There was a discussion between the nurses,anesthesiologist, my husband and myself. I assume my OB was on the phone. I don’t remember the discussion but the decision was to go with the epidural. Once I had the epidural, it was wham, bam thankyou ma’am.
Sorry, if one takes it that menstrual cramps are 1/10 of labor, I can categorically state that actual full term labor unmedicated would cause me to take a gun and blow my head off to stop the pain. I can categorically state that the best way to describe my menstrual pain would be to reach up my cunny, grab a handful of intestines after ramming through the back wall of my uterus and pull them out while twisting. If that is a tenth of labor, FUCK THAT SHIT. You may be all sunbeams and puppies, but I think that a fairly large percentage of women feel pain.
I never had an epidural (or a C-section), but I did have Stadol, Demerol and then a pudendal block for kids 1, 2, and 3. Bless all of the above.
Each woman is different, with different needs, expectations and bodies etc. Of course what worked for me may not work for** Dangerosa** or WhyNot or whomever, which is why the OP’s generalizations are specious and condescending. IMO, having an orgasm (if that is what I had–like I said, it was so quick) during birthing is no way to get your rocks off. There are much easier and less expensive ways to have that kind of fun.
With respect to the OP, I think it’s possible to birth-gasm, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to. I mean, seriously - regardless of the medicalization of childbirth, I sincerely doubt that women back in ancient times laboring on the bricks were bent on pleasure while giving birth.
And the whole, “being socialized to interpret childbirth as pain?” Women have interpreted childbirth as pain for all of recorded history and presumably before then, too - it’s not something that just started; otherwise, Greek physicians wouldn’t have been searching for a remedy for pain during childbirth and ancient Egyptians wouldn’t have recommended concoctions of various types of dung and other things to eliminate or mitigate it.
Here’s my obligatory anecdote ('cause I’m sure you all want to hear it).
After my Bradley birthing class and subsequent labor with kid #1, I wish that:
a) I had cut myself more slack - I insisted on going entirely natural, until my doctor told me it was my best interest to get an epidural after being in labor for 32 hours. I wish I hadn’t been conditioned to see it as a failure to get help when I needed it.
b) I’d read more on the potential complications of childbirth. The Bradley class I took made childbirth sound like all sunshine and roses. The lady teaching the class insisted, much like IO, that women don’t really experience pain during childbirth - they’re conditioned to do so - but just intense sensations that may be interpreted as pain. She also completely glossed over things like pre-eclampsia (“Oh, swelling is natural.”) and eclampsia.
Unfortunately, after nearly 34 hours of active labor and giving birth to my son, I waved everyone away so I could nap and promptly had a big fat seizure, my blood pressure skyrocketed and I had a migraine for about two weeks afterward thanks to uncontrolled high blood pressure. What’s funny is that the day before I’d gone into labor, my BP had been good even for someone who wasn’t pregnant - 113/67.
The way things worked out during kid #2’s birth was kind of ironic. I planned to have an epidural, and did. But it wore off by the time I pushed, even though it was probably just 3 hours after the epidural was inserted. I felt the episiotomy, her crowning, her shoulders - everything. And I was capable of walking about 20 minutes later. The whole labor still hurt (though back labor was mercifully absent with this one, and it only lasted 5 hours), though the epidural did dull it a bit.
Your description of menstrual cramps is quite similar to how I would describe my menstrual cramps and my induced labour was, indeed about 10 times as bad as that. I literally couldn’t move I was in so much pain. My husband and I had practiced breathing exercises, coping exercises, I was using entonox gas, I had the maximum amount of Fentanyl they can give and nothing touched it. My husband told me after that I was swearing at the doctors. Then I had an epidural and all was well for a little while.
FWIW, I think that’s quite unusual, even for induced labours. I’m not sure if it’s because Junior’s head was stuck or what, but something was just not right.
I’ve always been a bit dubious of Lamaze etc because of what I learned in nursing school: the focus on breathing gives the woman the perception of being in control and acts as a distraction for her. Now, it’s true I was in nsg school in the early 1980s, but that statement is still essentially true. I do know that I got no pain relief from Lamaze breathing, although the panting could and did stymie the desire to push prematurely. YMM(and most likely does)V.
I’m not saying that Lamaze and Bradley don’t have merit: used sensibly they obviously do. But there is no denying that giving birth results in discomfort, if not outright pain in all women (even those here who say they didn’t have pain admit to discomfort or pressure). Does that mean I want us to go back to the days where women were snowed etc? Of course not. Reasonable and prudent pain control, cooperative interaction, and proactive education are needed in all births.
My mom died about five years ago, so I can’t ask her. But I doubt Mom would have lied about this literally my entire life.
My older brother was delivered in an Army hospital in 1956, and she hated that experience and chose to seek out an alternative for my older sister, my younger sister and myself. If it hadn’t worked, why would she have done the same thing two more times?
My mom was not a self-deluding fool, and I honestly have never even heard of a fool so great as to suffer the pain of childbirth twice to spare the feelings of a doctor.
I agree. My experience was that Bradley did exactly that, distracted me from the pain and gave me a way to get through it. I wasn’t in control of it, but I had a task that kept me from freaking out and that helped quite a bit since 16 hours is a long time to keep yourself from just changing your mind and walking out
After the first baby (transverse & with forceps- so much pain) my doctor took my hand and said “this is how women used to die in childbirth”. Guh!
Second baby was super easy, sleeping between contractions that were seriously not painful. Cut to a 9 lb bouncing baby boy.
Third baby was a home birth that went south very quickly and without time to get to the hospital. One midwife brought that blue baby back to life right there in my bedroom while the other two worked to stop me from bleeding out and I’m forever thankful and amazed that we both lived through it. And yes, it hurt.
So it’s not just that bith experiences vary from one woman to the next, but also one woman can have very different experiences with each of her children.
Very true. And I see that I wrote something poorly upthread. It probably doesn’t matter, but I had Stadol for kid #1; Demerol for kid #2, and pudendal block for kid #3. Not all 3 for all 3…
I confess I will never understand why the experience of birth is deemed more important than the health of the baby and the mother. I have a friend who resents to this day (and the “baby” is now 22) that she wasn’t allowed to home deliver her due to health concerns that her OB had (and seconded by her midwife!). I know women who for some reason feel “lesser” because they had a C-section and didn’t deliver vaginally. I can understand (and sympathize) with grieving the loss of an expectation, but for 22 years?
I have a good friend who is now a pediatric oncologist. When she was doing her clinicals, she often worked with pregnant women.
When I visited my friend after she gave birth to her first child, she told me, “I used to describe delivering a baby as having your strongest muscle work as hard is it can. Now I’d describe it as <whimper>.”
