Ohhhhhhhhh!!! I thought it was the contractions and pushing (and gravity? we should be so lucky) that make a baby come out.
This gem will make it easier to answer my kids when they ask how a baby comes out.
“Oh, the nurse checks me and it just swooshes right on out!”

How can we educate our sisters so this kind of misinformation is ignored when it is spewed?

I’m considering not allowing any checks at all this time. I mean, c’mon people, docs feel they need to start checks at 36 weeks and then they “play” sometimes with membranes. During my last birth I was not myself, and the nurse was doing checks at least every 20 minutes and stretching me during them. She both stretched my cervix and my peri area. It was baby # 6, don’t you think my body knows how to stretch for birth? It hurt, she had me on my back which caused decels, and she’s the one who said, “you’ll love these stirrups.” I got my fair share of poking around in there and I do NOT want any more during this birth.

Because… babies never come out unless some stranger has their hands shoved up your lady bits?!

Ridiculous!

Another classic “kick you in the head moment”. During transition they checked me while I was squatting, lol, just to make sure I’d gotten rid of my rim that was haning on. Sure ‘nough it was gone and I got him out in 15 minutes.

I begged my midwives to check me when things started getting hard…my water had broken so they were hesitant to introduce germs but they did check me…I was a 9! I progressed to a 9, all on my own, without someone’s hand up there every 5 minutes.

It’s a classic case of “if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.” Until the chart is full of numbers, the cervix has not actually dilated at all.

My 5th birth, the midwife never did an internal at all. She could tell how dilated I was by how I was handling things.

I have no idea how my son came out then, because my midwife didn’t do any internal exams at all.

Just another example of doctors and nurses asserting authority over a laboring woman. I don’t think they want to believe that women CAN have babies without them doing anything.

I actually told my midwife to do all the vaginal exams while I was having contractions — that way I wouldn’t notice or feel a thing (except the dang contraction).

Of course the baby wouldn’t come out otherwise. She apparently had to pull the cork out.

Ok, I’m sharing a story similar to this posting. I had a woman and this was her 5th baby and since she was afraid of needles, she did not want an epidural; yet, she was unprepared for natural childbirth. I waited for a contraction to end before trying to check her. Now it was just me, her and an older OB nurse from NY training in the room. Curtains were pulled. All of a sudden as I insert my index and middle finger for a cervix exam becaus she was asking for pain medicine, she clams up, the legs go together making it impossible to check her and my fingers are over lapping inside of her causing discomfort. I remember saying something along the line of “Keisha, I know your legs weren’t spring loaded when he did this (referring to her husband that was not in the room at the time). She waited all of 2 seconds and shot back with “Miss Thea, that was different, he started at my breast and worked down.” All three of us were laughing so hard I had to check my pants. I told her she had me fair and square. She was by far one of the worst patients at delivery. Her legs went out straight, her pelvis left the table, she was thrashing about in the bed and the whole time all of us are screaming, PUSH, PUSH, PUSH because part of the baby;s head was out getting banged around. She had a beautiful if not dazed little boy. I told her I was going to claim her as a dependent on my income tax because I had worked as hard as she had to deliver the baby. She still sends me cards with his picture. He’s beautiful. She appologised afterwards when we were alone. I told her if cursing, biting, kicking and general abuse from doctors were offensive to me, I would have left OB years ago. I now may have to leave OB d/t health issues and I feel myself already grieving. I worry about my mother’s that deliver stillborn babys and if the newer, younger nurses will take the time to sit with the family and discuss the grieving process, tell them we’re going to give this baby the same respeat and dignity of our live born babys, to give the baby a name for future reference to s/him and how no child ever replaces another. That she’ll be OK, not today, tomorrow or even next week but time does help and it gives her the time needed to learn coping skills, not to hurt as bad; but never ever will she get over it. that kind of event last forever. Who will take care of my mothers having natural birth or work with the doulas that accompany them. I’m not sure where all this came from. I must have ADD where I start one thing and jump to something else.

I always tell the oncoming nurse the total number of vag exams that have been done to that point. Studies show as little as 6 vag exams with ruptured membranes can start an infection. sometimes it’s like this info falls on deaf ears. Also the earlier comment about an open cervix that is not laboring is correct. Women that have had multiplr births are more likely to have a relaxed cervix at about 34 to 36 weeks and not be laboring. Go figure.