Wow that OB was generous! When we had my hospital transfer, I was given 15 minutes TOTAL to get the placenta out. The OB started to pull and I yelled at her for it and she stomped and said “You’ve got 15 minutes”…bah … didn’t need it.

I was told this too… they called in the OB at the 30 minute mark and I convinced him to let me go another 15 – I had just had a natural delivery and they wanted me to have an epidural and be wheeled into surgery to remove it!
It came out at the 45 minute mark.

“You Have 16 Minutes To Get Your Placenta Out!”

Or . . . well, what exactly? “Or this thing’s gonna blow!”

It took about 90 minutes for the placenta to come out after my 5th child was born…and I’ll admit that it was a tad bit uncomfortable–I had a burning sensation in my kidneys for a good bit of that time. I tried nursing, I tried standing, squatting, sitting on the toilet…I wanted that thing OUT!

But sheesh…it came out just fine on its own. Perhaps my uterus was just a bit tired from the start-stop labor I’d had, and it being my 5th baby…or perhaps it was a bit shell-shocked from me going from 5 cm to birth in less than 20 minutes.

Oh, and I kept my daughter’s cord intact the whole time. I’m a firm believer that doing this helps to prevent post-partum hemmorhage.

Because what? She has dinner plans? Hilarious!

wow, how generous of you!

And you have 16 minutes to back up your threat with written evidence!

This one actually really upsets me because I had something similar happen. Minutes after my first delivery (which was induced after they played the dead-baby card on me), the OB insisted that the placenta had to come out right away. And then she went and yanked on the umbilical cord to get it out. The cord broke and she had to go in and manually extract it. It was excruciatingly painful. I was yelling more for that than the labor and begging my husband to make them stop. When what I imagine was the attending came in and was told what happened, his eyes nearly bulged out of his head and he asked her what the hell she did that for.

I remember she was pregnant, I can only hope that after her labor, she learned a thing or two.

My OB went into the uterus and ripped the placenta off the uterine wall. The blood overflowed the bin for the placenta and the splashing sound as it hit the floor was so loud, it was sickening.

I would assume that this means the mother is having a ‘managed third stage’. It is my understanding that the hormone administered allows roughly a half hour window before the cervix closes. Perhaps the mother wasn’t aware that this had occured since many hopsitals routinely administer it. If she was having an un-managed third stage however then this sort of timeline is, indeed, needlessly short.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong!

According to the research and literature (SOGC guidelines), a woman has a 6x greater chance of having a post partum hemorrhage when the placenta takes more than 30 minutes. This is why at the 30 minute mark, the OB is called (if he or she was not already there) to do a manual removal of the placenta. It’s not because he or she is a jerk, it’s because he or she doesn’t want to see you hemorrhage. No, not all women whose placentas come slowly are going to bleed, but as someone who has seen women a) lose their uteruses and b) die as a result of terrible PPH’s, I can tell you that no matter how rare, it does happen, and we who work on l&d units don’t want to see it happen to YOU.

The 30 minute time limit is because they are giving pitocin after every vaginal birth and within the 30 minute timeframe the artificial hormone causes the cervix to close. Once again it’s an issue of doctors not trusting our bodies.

How about let her breastfeed the baby and stop stressing her out. The breastfeeding will help the uterus to contract and push out the placenta and you not screaming time limits in her face would certainly help calm her down.

I mean come on, this isn’t a football game.