Andrea’s Weblog

Now that you’ve read our birth experience, I’ll share what we learned from it. After planning for a natural labor, what we got was not what we prepared for, nor what we outlined in our birth plan.  Through a series of uninformed decisions and not asserting ourselves, we went from being in total control of the birth to having what felt like no control. It was like we were slowly molded into the type of patient that my OB felt comfortable dealing with. I should have known that the OB was going to be trouble when she chuckled while reading my birth plan. (It was the line about Frank cutting the cord.)

So these are some of the lessons we’ve taken away from our experience:

Lesson #1
Don’t go to the hospital too soon. Who knew contractions could be clustered?

Lesson #2
Seek alternatives to antibiotic IV drip
Next time we’ll try some other approaches if the Strep B test comes back positive–some women have had success using garlic and oral antibiotics prior to delivery. Then we’ll ask for a retest. Since we won’t be at the hospital for so long next time, I’ll spend less time on antibiotics.

Lesson #3
I can’t believe I put up with the cables dangling to my feet and impeding my movement for the sake of the nurse’s convenience! Every time I had to pee, I had to drape the cables over my shoulder, and make sure they weren’t in the toilet. Next time I’ll take the belt off and let them put it back on when they need to monitor.

Lesson #4
Demand informed consent. When the doctor told us she was breaking my water, we didn’t question her as we should have. I just assumed that she understood the kind of labor we wanted (based on our birth plan) and would only intervene when she felt it was absolutely necessary. We also didn’t ask for the risks associated with pitocin. If we had demanded informed consent, we might have avoided some of our mistakes or, in the very least, felt more in control.

Lesson #5
You can eat during labor! I’ve read in several places that it’s ok to nourish yourself during labor. The food ban is based on the risk of throwing up while under anesthesia and inhaling it. It turns out that it may be more dangerous to inhale the concentrated stomach acid of an empty stomach than miso soup remnants.

I could have had more GU!

Here are some things you can eat.

Lesson #6
An epidural won’t solve all your problems. Once you have an epidural, you’re in the OB’s hands since you can’t move around. You’re like a beached whale.

Lesson #7
This is the biggest lesson I’ve learned. Labors progress at different rates. In fact, I just found a chart in a baby manual we have that describes 4 different types of labor: Fast Labor, Average Labor, Plateaued Labor and Slow-to-Start Labor. The Slow-to-Start labor is 24 hours long, only reaching 6 cm dilation after 18 hours. (FYI, the fast labor was only 4 hours.)

The OBs seem to have their own idea of how long labor should take, probably based on Friedman’s Curve, or just their desire to get home for dinner. This website compares Friedman’s Curve (the average) to normal progress in labor. Normal labor has plateaus during which labor is still progressing, but the cervix isn’t dilating. In other words, you can have a “normal” labor and still have a doctor deem it failure to progress because he’s trained to follow Friedman’s Curve. Here is a study concluding that the Friedman’s Curve be revised.

And here is an interesting article. This quote hit home for me: “Because progress is normally slow in early labor and nil if the mother isn’t in labor, early admission plus impatience [by the OB] often equals unnecessary intervention.

Next time they threaten me with a cesarean, or other interventions, unless I dilate faster, I will ask how the baby is doing. If the baby is doing fine, why interfere?

Elizabeth’s birth taught us a lot that we’ll hopefully be able to use to have a better birth experience with McPherson #2. We’re definitely going to be a lot better at surrounding ourselves with people who are supportive of how we want to give birth.