(Untitled)

[bhakti]

Home-birthers have been saying this for ages, but the scientific community just caught up: telling women when to push during labor is unnecessary, and may cause problemsA couple of recent studies have found that the classic hospital model of labor-coaching, where a medical professional urgently tells a laboring woman to push at certain times, may

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Hello, I made the background to this blog.

[dyedinvt]

Hello

Re: Hello, I made the background to this blog.

[bhakti]

Hi!

Thanks for the background. I love it! I've been meaning to add a link to you from my info page; a picture would certainly be a nice touch. ;) (I did link to you in an entry back when I first put the background up, but that's a little while ago, now.) I haven't been to your site in a while -- it looks nice, and I like some of the new offerings. Very cool indeed.

I'm interested to hear that you lived on the Farm. I'm familiar with the writings of Ina May Gaskin (they're pretty much the foundation for my thinking on childbirth). I've always been curious what it would have been like to be part of that community.

Welcome, and thanks for posting!

Re: Hello, I made the background to this blog.

[dyedinvt]

Hi Zane

[danielgreyman]

Having recently spoken with R's OB, most hospitals and practitioners are getting into the practice of listening to the mother's responses even now. If you, or anyone you know or love is pregnant and her doctor is saying that they, or the hospital, will not allow one thing or another, get a new doctor. Also, check the records of the hospital's previous deliveries. They cannot give you exact names and outcomes, but they can give you grand percentages. Do your research. Even with a baby on board, it's still your body.
By the by, R and M are doing just fine, thank you very much.

[mamasee]

I was told not to push at one point (when I was going to start, with littleblur) b/c I might bruise my cervix (positioning problems), at which point another nurse was called in, who reached in and moved my cervix so his head could get through (I don't remember the logistics -- was 3 years ago and I was focused on "damnit I'm going to push"), but other than that I wasn't told to or not to push. (I think I also may not have been completely dialated.) Supported in pushing -- yes. Told -- no.

Having been through two births, I just can't see telling mothers to push when they don't feel the urge... I just don't think I could have done so. Maybe I just don't understand what people call "coaching"

SoC at my hospital (2 babies delivered) is to support the woman in pushing, but not tell her when to or any such as that. I'm surprised that that's not SoC most other places -- but then, I'm in Houston, and the doctors are damn good in/near the Texas Medical Center, and keep up with the literature. (I'm going to miss this terribly.)

[mamasee]

Also -- I have found that the "medical establishment" I work/live/labor with actually doesn't do what many people (particularly the midwives I've spoken with around here and in the books I've read) say they do. They do listen to women. They do listen to what they want. They do accomodate many things that women want -- yes, not all, but many. I talked with my OB before wiggly1's birth and spoke with her about eating/drinking during labor, and told her that I didn't want fluids restricted. She said that that was fine with her, but that she would also talk to the anesthesiologist if I chose to have an epidural. I ended up nursing a Sprite through most of my labor.

Just one example.

[entropyspring]

(A) I find your sarcasm both unnecessary and offensive.

(B) You seem to feel this is a failure of scientific medicine. I would posit that it is in fact one of the true benefits of the scientific method. Scientists, unlike many "alternative medicine" types, are self-critical by nature and are constantly re-examining our data to figure out how to do our jobs better. The article you cite is an example of researchers saying "we have found a problem, and we can address it."

(C) Our hospital, believe it or not, is one of many that provides childbirth classes that do, in fact, tell women to "do what feels natural." Nobody ever told my wife to push before she was ready.

(D) When you have spent 6 hours in a hospital room with a woman trying to push a 12-inch head through a hole that isn't meant to go bigger than 10 inches and trying to make time-sensitive decisions about how to make that process least harmful for everyone involved, *then* you can tell me that having people on hand who have overseen dozens to hundreds of births is a bad

[entropyspring]

I feel the need to clarify here that I am in no way trying to tell you where/how to give birth to your children. If you don't like hospitals, that is fine. Home births and birthing centers are perfectly good options (though the whole "unassisted" bit raises a red flag for me).

What I am asking is that you stop insulting "the scientific community" and the hospital way of birthing that my wife and I have chosen to use. You can have your beliefs without insulting those of others. You're a UU, for godess' sake, you should know that!

[placeholder]

Assertion that anyone must have certain experience to speak on the subject: rejected out of hand. Not to say that experience shouldn't be respected, of course.

I don't hear Zanne insulting the scientific community, or even the medical profession, which is not exactly the same thing. But while doctors are perfectly capable of addressing their own process and adjusting, it is optimistic to say they do so "by nature." In many instances they fall into ruts and bad assumptions, and anyone who might employ them is entitled to challenge these. In fact, if doctors were uniformly rigorous about seeking full feedback on their processes, one might imagine them never to be defensive when criticized, as criticism is data.

Accounts of hospital births involving pushiness, manipulation, intimidation and outright falsehood are far too widespread to ignore. They are of course not the only kind of hospital experience, happily, but they are common enough to constitute a trend. A bit of sarcasm isn't unwarranted, and a bit is all I was hearing.

[entropyspring]

Placeholder?

I don't hear Zanne insulting the scientific community

I am a scientist, and I was insulted. The gist of the post is that L&D nurses and obstetricians are more interested in rapid turnaround than in the well-being of their patients, and that the "scientific community" (what a non-entity!) has been blithely ignoring this fact for centuries, and will continue to ignore it. We are neither unfeeling monsters, nor do we aid and abet same.

Accounts of hospital births involving pushiness, manipulation, intimidation and outright falsehood are far too widespread to ignore.

Quite possibly, but this is purely phenomenological data. It is well known that people with bad experiences are far more likely to speak out than people with good experiences. If an objective surveyor found from a randomized sampling that a significant percentage of women felt they had been bullied into a bad childbirth outcome, this would be more persuasive.

A bit of sarcasm isn't unwarranted, and a bit is all I was hearing.Sarcasm is the language of