Dec 8

“…Dad Can’t Just Catch The Baby…”

“Stop pushing. Dad can’t just catch the baby! The doctor has to be here for that!” -L&D Nurse to mother after the baby’s head was delivered into Dad’s hands, and about 10 minutes before the OB made it to the room

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There are 19 comments to this post.

Crunchy Nurse had this to say, Dec 8, 2009 @ 4:14 pm (Quote)

What a great Dad! Did he get to finish the job or did the nurse manage to get them to wait for the doctor?

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Lindsey Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 4:57 am Lindsey(Quote)

Yikes, I hope he caught the whole baby! I can’t imagine having it sitting there between my legs for 10 minutes (and what if there was a cord around the neck, would that be bad to leave it in that tight spot for that long??).

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Jespren (formerly Jessica) had this to say, Dec 8, 2009 @ 4:37 pm (Quote)

Because the OB has to have some reason to bill you 5000 dollars for the ten minutes she will spend in the room with you during your 12 hours of labor!

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whiskers Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 5:27 am whiskers(Quote)

I was just thinking…or the OB won’t get paid…

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Nikki had this to say, Dec 8, 2009 @ 4:39 pm (Quote)

Apparently, he can! This actually happened to my cousin, too. First baby, and her husband couldn’t get a nurse’s attention, so he had to deliver his daughter himself!

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Tiffany had this to say, Dec 8, 2009 @ 4:53 pm (Quote)

Yes, because a doctor is essential for giving birth. Guess they’ve never heard of women giving birth by themselves.

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Heather had this to say, Dec 8, 2009 @ 5:28 pm (Quote)

Yes, it takes years of training in order to properly learn how to intervene and do a lot of unnecessary things. And everyone knows that babies can’t be born without the medical expertise of an OB.
I witnessed an “unattended” birth in a hospital once…maybe I should have documented it.

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Rachel had this to say, Dec 8, 2009 @ 7:22 pm (Quote)

HAHA! Stop pushing? Wait for the dr? IT TOOK 10 MINUTES?! The head is friggin OUT! The baby can’t just sit there out to his neck for 10 minutes waiting for the dr to come in and give him permission to come out.

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Sheva had this to say, Dec 8, 2009 @ 7:40 pm (Quote)

Hooray for Daddy!
I made my first catch in the back of my car!
And it was in the caul, and a compound presentation, too! (hand against the side of his head)
We got as far as the emergency doors, but no one came out in time. And I’m so glad they didn’t, otherwise she would have given birth in the hallway, into the hands of some random stranger. At least here it was into the hands of someone who cares for her.
I like to call it catching, though, because only the mother delivers the baby.

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Kathy had this to say, Dec 9, 2009 @ 4:57 am (Quote)

…And if baby’s head came out and the shoulders didn’t, this would be labeled shoulder dystocia, and all h*ll would break loose in the room, trying to get the baby out within seconds, because if he’s stuck in the birth canal too long, he could die… Yet the doc can leisurely amble into the room ten minutes after the head is born…???

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Knitted in the Womb Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 8:59 am Knitted in the Womb(Quote)

EXACTLY Kathy.

It frustrates me to no end how Dr’s immediately begin pulling on the baby’s head after it comes out, instructing moms to push when they feel no contraction. Do they even wait for the baby to spin? I don’t think so. Seems like a recipe for shoulder dystocia to me. I just watched it happen again 2 days ago, and after all was said and done, the Dr. was somewhat “bragging” about how she’d had to really think about the right way to push and pull the baby, since she’d never “delivered” a baby with the mom in hands & knees before (yeah, I figured that out when you had no clue what to do with the umbillical cord when we were trying to get the mom flipped back over), so everything was upside down.

I was aware enough to take note with my previous two births, and my babies’ heads both came out on one contraction, then I waited for the next contraction to push out the body. With my 2nd son in particular, it felt like his head was out “forever” before the contraction came for the body. In reality, it was about 5 minutes.

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Jane had this to say, Dec 9, 2009 @ 5:16 am (Quote)

And yet if the baby’s head had gotten stuck outside like that for three minutes with a doctor in the room, he’d have been yelling at the mom to PUSH PUSH!! while cutting an episiotomy. Go figure.

So it’s only the presence of the OB which determines whether that’s an emergency.

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Michelle Potter Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 11:33 am Michelle Potter(Quote)

I think an “emergency” is any time the birth of the baby and the entrance of the doctor into the room are not within about two minutes of each other.

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Jane Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 12:43 pm Jane(Quote)

LOL! You may be right. Either we deliver too soon or we deliver too late.

Although I frightened the heck out of my midwife when I delivered within fifteen seconds of her entering the room. They said that was a precipitous birth, and that too was an emergency.

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Kat Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 1:45 pm Kat(Quote)

How long had you been in labor prior to that? I bet it didn’t feel quite so “precipitous” to you if you’d been laboring for a while before the midwife arrived, huh?

Now, I read a birth story of one grand multipara (I believe she had 8 children already?) and she woke up in the middle of the night with a contraction, sat up in bed, her water broke and her baby was born with the next contraction. Now that… I would feel was a precipitous birth! (Mom and baby were fine, the midwife arrived minutes later to check them out, after getting a speeding ticket from a policeman who didn’t believe her that she had an emergency and had to get to the mom/baby with all due haste!)

What arrogance that some birth professionals feel it is their right to define our birth experiences for us based on when they arrived, or what interventions they wanted to perform on us!

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Jane Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 2:51 pm Jane(Quote)

3rd baby, I’d been in labor 82 minutes when she was born. I was in the hospital for about 10 of those, in the triage room for3 minutes.

During which time the Stupid Nurse said to me, “If you don’t sign this consent form, I legally can’t help you give birth.”

I signed my first name only, then pushed, my membranes ruptured, the nurse started screaming for the midwife, and on the next contraction, baby was out.

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Steph had this to say, Dec 9, 2009 @ 6:33 am (Quote)

This sort of attitude was the reason I didn’t tell anyone I was pushing – I was afraid they would tell me to stop and there was no way I was waiting for the doctor to be ready just to have my baby (besides the impossibility of resisting that urge to push I’d been laboring hard all night long and needed to be done.) Thankfully my nurse was wonderful – when she realized she couldn’t see what was happening she moved into a position where she could just in time to catch the little guy.

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Dawn had this to say, Dec 9, 2009 @ 1:59 pm (Quote)

Huh. I’ve had 3 babies in the hospital not caught by the doctor. My 4th child was caught with nurses backs turned and bounced on the bed (dad won’t go down there for catches), she was fine. 5th and 6th caught by nurses. So apparantly, birth can happen without a doctor. For me 3 of 6 have had no OB in the room. They’re great for catching placentas though. If they aren’t in the room I can push out the placenta without tugging (darn doc did tug last time because he got in 2 minutes after birth).

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