Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Feb
15
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“…Her 6 1/2 Or 7 Is My 4…”
“Well, I know she said you were 6 1/2 cm dilated, but her 6 1/2 or 7 is my 4. So I’d call you 4 cm dilated.” -Said by L&D nurse, just before mother proceeded to hit transition.
There are 13 comments to this post.
Some caregivers measure by ‘fingers’ instead of centimeters. Maybe she meant ‘fingers’. But 4 fingers is about 8 centimeters, so she was still wrong…
The idea is to learn how many of YOUR fingers makes how many centimeters, not that 10 fingers equals 10 centimeters. Could you imagine? TEN fingers?! None of us would ever deliver vaginally! Sheesh!!
Also, some babies don’t need the full 10 cm and some need more. Often the best indication of when the mother is ready to start pushing is when they start pushing!
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This was my birth- just after that nurse said those words, my water broke and transition began. She was MOST CERTIANLY wrong! I’m now expecting again and you can bet that “Please only report positive progress” is going in the old birth plan!
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one of the nurses said that at the hospital, there was one OB who had very thick fingers and always estimated dilation as less than everyone else on staff. It was something of a joke to her.
They don’t really measure CM, though, because every baby’s head size is different, so dilation is always different. 10cm isn’t a magical dilation where suddenly the baby comes out. For a bigger baby, you need to dilate further.
So they’re judging dilation based on the feel of the cervix around the baby’s head, and if the baby’s presentation is different or the baby’s size is different than they expect, or the cervix has a lip, they’re going to compensate for that with a different number.
During my homebirth, the midwife never did an internal at all! She judged my progress based on my behavior and how I was handling things. So I didn’t get my Contraction Credit Certificate 
but I did have a stress-free birth because I wasn’t trying to keep the chart happy.
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Lindsey Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 6:16 pm (Quote)
Ditto, I had to ask to be checked (things were getting hard!) and I was a 9…the worst of it was over and I am SO glad I wasn’t worrying all that time about getting to a certain number.
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Micki Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 9:32 pm (Quote)
Then there are those of us who don’t follow normal laboring rules and don’t know they are in labor without an internal exam. LOL I don’t have any painful contractions until transition and then it’s 6 cm to pushing in under 5 minutes. Once I feel pain, the baby’s coming.
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This is why I hate internal exams, and think they are more or less useless. Dilation is not the only way to determine how far a woman is along in her labors. And in fact wasn’t used as a measure at all for a very long time. (I suspect when men started taking over the delivery of babies).
The only time my midwife every checks me is when I am starting to feel pushy…and that is just to make sure there is no rim leftover. For comparison’s sake, my one hospital delivery, I was checked every hour or 2, and after “only” reaching 6, I finally broke down thinking that 10 looked SO far away. I couldn’t remain calm or in control and so I requested an epidural….
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a centimeter is a centimeter… who does she think she is changing the laws of measure?
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GranolaRN Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 10:09 am GranolaRN(Quote)
Actually when it comes to measuring a cervix, a centimeter is not a centimeter because we’re not talking about real centimeters. 10 centimeters on a 24 week preemie is not the same as 10 centimeters on a 9 pound term baby. What we’re measuring is basically what percentage of your cervix is open compared with what percentage of your cervix is still there. In general, when all of your cervix is gone then the opening measures somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 centimeters, but it’s far from an exact science where a centimeter is always exactly a centimeter.
The nurse probably needs a little practice on her cervical exams, but so did I when I was new at this. This nurse probably has bigger fingers and is new at cervical exams. It’s all guesstimating and I’ve seen patient after patient suddenly gain or lose several centimeters because a new person checked them. Unless you’re closed or complete, it’s all a guesstimate (and the numbers really don’t matter.)
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