Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jan
19
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“You Can Push Harder Than That!”
“Come on, you can push harder than that!” -OB to mother who pushed out her Occiput Posterior (OP) baby in five pushes.
There are 13 comments to this post.
Seriously, is there any medical reason why you should be in a major hurry to push a baby out?
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Fiona Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 8:49 pm (Quote)
Possibly, if the baby’s heartbeat suddenly drops.
My question is, why do you even need to consciously push? I’m sure I didn’t – my body just did what it needed to and my baby came out just fine.
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Margaret Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 1:34 pm (Quote)
Many women really DO need to push. Not that I am excusing the rudeness of this doctor, but many women push, isn’t that why there is an urge?
It took me 3 hours of unmedicated pushing to push out my nearly ten pound baby occiput posterior. I was in all kinds of positions. I personally had to give a tremendous amount of concerted effort in many positions to get her out. I had the same situation with my son, but he was a csection, perhaps due to epidural. Anyway, every woman/baby/birth are different! Some births don’t take a lot of effort….some do.
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Michelle Potter Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 5:06 pm (Quote)
With my third baby, I couldn’t have stopped her coming if I wanted. I barely had time to realize what was going out before she just sorta popped halfway out on her own. But with my second, I had to work for it. I definitely had the urge to push, and every time I did I could feel him nearly crown, but when I relaxed he’d slide right back. Ultimately I changed positions and he was born in, IIRC, just one more push — but I did have to push.
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Emma Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 8:55 pm (Quote)
There is one that I can think of (and witnessed at my friend’s birth) that is if the baby’s heart rate is consistently and alarmingly dropping (as in, not just dropping with contractions but dropping overall) then the little one has to come out quick smart.
When my friend was told if she couldn’t get the baby out she’d need a vacuum extraction immediately she found the strength to get her out next push. Baby was grey and needed resuscitation but now a beautiful healthy girl.
Natural active birth in a birth centre and grey baby resuscitated by the attending midwives btw. Who needs OBs?
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atyourcervix Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 7:38 am (Quote)
Actually, it’s physiologically better to hold off on pushing if there are repetitive deep decels during pushing. If you try to hold off on pushing for a few contractions, it’s going to let the baby “recover” from the decrease in oxygenation when mom is pushing. BUT – try to convince an OB or even a midwife that you should ease up on actively pushing when there are severe decels???? Not so easy.
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I really am bothered by all this “push harder” nonsense. If women weren’t flat on their backs or doped with pain meds, their uteruses would do the work for them.
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Emma Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 10:43 pm (Quote)
Absolutely. But not all the time. I was standing up with my first so had gravity and everything helping me along and still had to consciously push like a…. well push really hard! He had a pumpkin-head because his fontanelles didn’t squish like they’re supposed to. What do you want to bet that if I’d had a medicalised birth I would have ended up with a stuck baby and a caesar?
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I would like to point out that even in the scenario which would require a quick birth, the caregiver (why do we call it that when so many of them don’t care?!) could still say it nicely.
I was at a birth where the heartbeat was going down, so even though the nurse kept a doppler on the mom practically the whole time during the pushing, and even though she and the midwife were a bit worried, they didn’t try to scare the mom, and they only used encouraging and loving words to coax the mom to push.
I don’t remember how many contractions it was, but it was about 30 minutes, which is pretty short for a first time mother.
So it’s possible to be nice.
I’ve seen it.
Just not often enough…
Good words to use are: you’re doing great, can you give me one more push, you’re almost there, you’ll hold your baby soon (that one is amazing). Tell the mother what you see or use a mirror to show her .
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Add Your Comment.
This sounds like the OB I had with my oldest son! As far as OB’s go, I really liked him, but he did say some stupid things. Not the least of which was “You’re going to have to quit smiling so much and focus on pushing.” I didn’t take offense to it, but had I not been augmented to the point I chose an epidural maybe I would have known how hard I was or wasn’t pushing.
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Krista Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 5:30 pm Krista(Quote)
Forgot to mention that his head came out in two pushes and his body followed on the next push. He ended up with a broken blood vessel in his eye which the OB said was likely from him coming so fast.
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Jane Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 5:51 pm Jane(Quote)
Sounds like my stupid OB nurse for my first birth who was SCREAMING at me that I had to push three times on the same contraction or the baby would never come out, even though the contraction had ended and I had no more urge to push.
I pushed the baby out on the next contraction, and he came out so fast his nose was broken.
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