Comments on: “…Her 6 1/2 Or 7 Is My 4…”

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:39:48 +0000

OB said that to one of my clients just about 7 months ago…she had the baby three hours later….and the doctor came running into the room 5 minutes after the baby was born.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:38:31 +0000

I thought math was NOT an opinion!!!!

By: Cheeks

Cheeks — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:35:57 +0000

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….

By: Micki

Micki — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:32:07 +0000

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.

By: GranolaRN

GranolaRN — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:09:11 +0000

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.)

By: Lindsey

Lindsey — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:16:53 +0000

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.

By: Jane

Jane — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:00:28 +0000

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.

By: Heather P

Heather P — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:40:18 +0000

Not that it matters anyway. The mother will keep on laboring no matter what the nurse writes down on her chart.

Unless she needed to be dilated a certain amount to get her birthing credits.

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:22:42 +0000

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!

By: Sheva

Sheva — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 01:04:15 +0000

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!