Really Ridiculous Story #2

Got a call from a friend this morning who had this story to share:

She had dinner with a 40 year-old friend the previous evening. This friend of a friend, whom we’ll call, Lisa, had given birth to her first child about 2 months prior, and was ready to share her birth story.

Lisa’s water broke. They went to the hospital where an induction was begun. Six hours later, she hadn’t progressed at all, so they gave her an epidural. She dilated a couple centimeters. Her doctor came in, said, “Well, you aren’t progressing, we’ll give it a couple more hours, then we’ll do a c-section.” As expected, nay even as requested, a couple hours later, the doctor comes in, “The baby isn’t handling labor well, let’s do a c-section.”

Obviously, this is an abbreviated version of what took many hours to occur. The baby was born with no problems, and mother and baby seem to be doing fine. The mother was effusive of her praise of her doctor and how the doctor “saved my baby.” And then Lisa said, “I didn’t know that walking around and moving, getting off my back, would have made a difference during labor. I just didn’t know.” Lisa is a sports medicine physician.

What is there for us to take from this story:

1) The doctor did not “save her baby.” The doctor and the medical interventions were at least part of the cause of any distress the baby may have had during labor. Laying flat on your back, in bed, as it seems must have been the case if she was hooked up to an iv receiving pitocin so she could be monitored, will cause distress to a baby. Good grief, we’ve all read the books that tell us not to even sleep on our backs, let alone lay on them for any length of time.
2) I will say it again, you cannot trust your doctor to “take care of you” during pregnancy, labor, and birth. Apparently none of the hospital staff: nurses, doctor, interns, even the janitor for goodness sake, took it upon themselves to tell this woman, moving during labor is going to make a big difference. Or, here’s a breast pump, let’s try and get those bodily hormones to work for you. She was flying blind and she didn’t even know it.

As my friend pointed out, this woman may still have ended up with a c-section, even if she had been up moving, doing everything “right.” But she’ll never know, will she.

Oh, and by the way, this is the same physician my friend is using to deliver her baby. Things could get very interesting.