Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jan
24
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“It’s Not Fair For Me To Be Here At Midnight Delivering Your Baby.”
“It’s not fair for me to be here at midnight delivering your baby.” -OB to mother who arrived at the hospital three hours late for her induction, because the family wanted the mother to be well rested and not start the induction at 6:00 AM.
There are 26 comments to this post.
You are so right Doc! It’s *NOT* fair that you would make a newborn baby’s birth day and a momma’s birthing day all about YOU.
So how about you go find a profession where you can feel like that oh so special snowflake and let someone who is not a total ______ (pick your term of choice, I got a million of em) attend the miracle of birth with the respect and love it deserves.
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The Deranged Housewife had this to say,
Jan 24, 2010 @ 10:50 am (Quote)
OK, everything about this post makes my blood boil. WTF?!
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The mother KNEW when the induction was scheduled. If she didn’t like the time, she should have had them schedule a later one when SHE made the appointment.
That doesn’t really excuse the OB, but he/she probably staggers inductions and has OTHER patients besides the one MTB with entitlement issues.
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Chara Reply:
January 24th, 2010 at 6:10 pm (Quote)
I’m pretty sure that it’s standard procedure to schedule inductions to start very early. I’m pretty sure you’d be hard-pressed to get them to move it to a later time… All of my friends have had their inductions and c-section scheduled for extremely early hours.
On the other hand, I do think it’s kind of ridiculous for a mother to go through 9 months of sitting forever in waiting rooms and expect the OB to then wait on her for a couple hours.
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Sheila Reply:
January 25th, 2010 at 2:58 pm (Quote)
Some hospitals do have very flexible times for inductions, others don’t. But hospitals also take scheduled inductions into consideration when staffing for the day. So someone not showing up when her induction is scheduled is also being rude. BUT, the OB still should not have made that comment.
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Who knew that inductions take exactly fifteen hours? I had no clue. I thought they take as long as they take.
Or is the doctor intimating that 12 hours (from 9AM) isn’t long enough for him to declare “failure to progress” so he can call for a c-section at 9pm and be home by 10?
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My induction for my firstborn took 6 hours start to finish. I went from 4 to 10 in 15 minutes. My midwife (I switched after that one, of course) said they were giving me a very high dose. So inductions can go fast, if the doc has a twitchy finger on the pit.
And my friend ‘missed’ two inductions for the same baby. The first because she wasn’t interested, and the second because she was already in labor. She told them not to schedule them but they did anyways! Then, when she came in at 1PM with the baby in her arms – he was born in my car 
– they actually yelled at her for not showing up – for the induction that she had told them not to schedule!
Sheesh.
So let’s not blame the mom here – she was very possibly pushed into this in the first place. And this was her very legitimate and clever way of taking care of herself.
I say good for you, Mom!
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I’m with the OB on this one, for the most part. She should have shown up at her scheduled time, or fought to have it scheduled later.
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Kat Reply:
January 26th, 2010 at 6:24 am (Quote)
How do you know she didn’t?
And besides, why *should* a woman fight over her health and safety while birthing her child?
You know, I hear/read stories all the time where women show up at a really early hour, and then are told “We’re busy. We aren’t going to start your induction now.” So there they are, told they can’t eat, got out of bed at Oh-dark-thirty to get there, and then left hanging for the doctor’s convenience. But if the woman decides she needs more rest, and wishes to re-schedule, she’s “not being fair?”
No. Sorry. Not buying it.
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kitty Reply:
January 26th, 2010 at 6:46 am (Quote)
Kat: Kat Reply:
January 26th, 2010 at 6:24 am (Quote)How do you know she didn’t?
And besides, why *should* a woman fight over her health and safety while birthing her child?
You know, I hear/read stories all the time where women show up at a really early hour, and then are told “We’re busy. We aren’t going to start your induction now.” So there they are, told they can’t eat, got out of bed at Oh-dark-thirty to get there, and then left hanging for the doctor’s convenience. But if the woman decides she needs more rest, and wishes to re-schedule, she’s “not being fair?”
No. Sorry. Not buying it.
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Jane: Jane had this to say, Jan 26, 2010 @ 6:29 am (Quote)
I got scolded for not showing up at the CNM’s preferred time because the front desk wouldn’t schedule me for that time. When I went to the front and said, “{NAME} wants me in here at 8AM on Tuesday to be checked prior to induction,” they said, “Well, the earliest we can get you in is eleven.” At 9AM, I got a call from the CNM: Where are you? Why aren’t you here?
Without knowing the back-and-forth between the mom, the OB and the office staff (who quite frequently seem to do their own thing anyhow) and hospital policy, it’s impossible to know who’s at fault here.
But the doctor’s statement is still ludicrous because there’s no way s/he could know when the baby would be born regardless of the time the induction started.
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You don’t make any sense. What are you not buying? She wishes to reschedule and rightfully should? Okay, in that event, make a phone call that you won’t be in at oh dark thirty hour. Der….
And what does a scheduled induction have to do with health and safety and her showing up 3hrs late for an appt? And exactly what point is she trying to make with “we’re busy, cant start your induction now” and left hanging for the doctor’s convenience? Is he busy eating, sleeping, f*cking a nurse in the mop closet? I am sure busy probably means delivering someone elses baby. Big difference between a woman going into labor on her own and a scheduled induction.
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Stacie Hogan Reply:
February 7th, 2011 at 10:56 pm (Quote)
This is exactly what happened to me! I was supposed to be ther at 11 and didn’t get started til almost 2. Besides which, even if the induction had started at 6, who knows how long it would actually take. It was an ignorant comment on the part of the dr.
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I got scolded for not showing up at the CNM’s preferred time because the front desk wouldn’t schedule me for that time. When I went to the front and said, “{NAME} wants me in here at 8AM on Tuesday to be checked prior to induction,” they said, “Well, the earliest we can get you in is eleven.” At 9AM, I got a call from the CNM: Where are you? Why aren’t you here?
Without knowing the back-and-forth between the mom, the OB and the office staff (who quite frequently seem to do their own thing anyhow) and hospital policy, it’s impossible to know who’s at fault here.
But the doctor’s statement is still ludicrous because there’s no way s/he could know when the baby would be born regardless of the time the induction started.
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I think that she’s the rude one. If you showed up 3 hours late for a scheduled appointment, the OB has every right to comment on it. You certainly would if they were 3 hours late.
Sorry, no sympathy on this one.
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Kat Reply:
January 26th, 2010 at 7:49 am (Quote)
Comment on it, yes, but make ridiculous statements like the one posted, no. If the OB had simply stated “I thought we discussed starting this earlier, where were you?” then it’s not likely the incident would have warranted a mention here.
My sister had an induction and her baby was born in about 4-5 hours. Others have inductions that go on for 48 hours with no change (as previous posts to this site have pointed out). So the start time of an induction does not accurately predict how long the labor will last.
Would it be OK for the doctor to say this if the woman walked into the hospital in active labor at 6pm? Of course not!
Personally I think it’s indicative of a deeply rooted attitude problem on the OB’s part, an irrational belief that the woman’s labor should be able to be fit into the OB’s schedule when the OB thinks is “fair.”
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Knitted in the Womb Reply:
February 1st, 2010 at 10:52 pm (Quote)
I’d agree Jill, if the comment was “its not fair for me to be here waiting for you for 3 hours while you are late for your appointment.”
But that wasn’t the comment. Even if she’d been on time, that is no guaruntee that the birth wouldn’t have happened at midnight (or later!) seeing as the average first time mom takes about 18 hrs to labor to 10 cm.
Oh, but wait…not with an induction. The Dr. can insist that 1 cm per hr is required, and he is being generous to allow that to slide a TINY bit, and do a cesarean at 6 p.m. Home in time for a late dinner.
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Ellen had this to say,
Jan 28, 2010 @ 12:17 am (Quote)
6 AM is the absolute worst time to begin an induction and that is when 99% of them are scheduled. They don’t give a lot of options. I don’t ever labor during the day, if I am ever induced, they can expect me at 6 PM, no matter when they schedule me!
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MilkChocolateMidwife had this to say,
Feb 1, 2010 @ 9:34 pm (Quote)
After reading this post as well as many of the comments posted, it seems to me that this isn’t about the mother being late. It’s about control.
The scheduled induction was the doctor’s way of maintaining control of this woman’s pregnancy/birth experience. And don’t tell me that it was possibly for dire health issues because those aren’t “scheduled” – you hustle your butt and mom’s to the hospital ASAP for immediate care.
Maybe mom choosing to be late was her way of trying to gain back some control even on an unconscious level. So many women are essentially bullied into inductions that they feel they can’t refuse because that would make them “bad mothers” for supposedly endangering the health and life of their child. Maybe being a few hours late was the only way this mother felt she could assert any power over her birthing experience. The ultimate act of control would be not showing up for the induction at all.
Either way, seems like the doc was more upset over the loss of control than the time issue. If you don’t like the hours, get out of the field, doc.
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I’m the “late mom”. I showed up at 9am. I didn’t want an induction…period. She said what she said at 1pm. I explained that I didn’t want misoprostol she told my husband that we could go home, “But when she’s seizing in your arms this weekend…” Basically a “don’t come crying to me” thing. She also yelled at me for grunting when I pushed…stating, “You can grunt, but you’re just wasting energy.”
Actually, I have to mention that I didn’t have any health issues until the first mention of induction. I immediately started stressing over the possibility and had high blood pressure from then on. Up to that point my blood pressure was amazingly low, very healthy.
I wanted a natural birth. I had an extremely clean pregnancy, no caffeine…nothing. And she induced me with miso, pitocin, and broke my water. This was not clear to me before the “birth day”.
Also, I was in labor when I got to the hospital, it just wasn’t as advanced as they preferred (contractions 10 minutes apart). I’d like to mention that this was the Thursday before Easter…hmm? Yeah.
I understand if you think I was rude for not showing up, but I was in fear of giving birth – something that should not have been the case. I was in fear of the plans of the doctors and hospital staff, not the natural event that was supposed to happen.
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“well, maybe you should choose a different profession then, because I’d rather be sleeping too, but you should know that babies come when they are ready. Maybe if you hadn’t have insisted on an induction it would have come in the day time.” *:D*
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