Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Apr
14
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“…You Haven’t Been In Labor Long Enough.”
“You’re just not ready to have this baby. You haven’t been in labor long enough.” ~Nurse to mom in induced labor for 4.5 hours with second baby. Ten minutes and three pushes later, the baby was born.
There are 24 comments to this post.
Apparently she just had to hit the Snooze button until it was time.
Granted, it seems that a lot of inductions take much longer than 4.5 hours, but this is still another case of “Please trust your patient.”
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My brother was an induction; born in 45 minutes. THe nurses didn’t want to believe my mom either.
I wonder how many panicked moms they get who scream “THe baby is coming now!” who are only at 2cm. It seems as if there has to be a lot of the opposite for us to hear as many stories of this variety as we do.
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cheeks023 Reply:
April 14th, 2010 at 5:48 am (Quote)
This is why I put so little stock in being checked. A woman can literally go from 2-10 in less then 10 minutes. Listening to the woman is a FAR better judge of whether or not the baby is coming, then how far dilated she was 10 minutes ago.
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Michelle Potter Reply:
April 14th, 2010 at 12:18 pm (Quote)
Even if a mom was genuinely panicking and insisting that the baby was coming when she was really only 2cm and nowhere near close to giving birth, I don’t think that dismissing or ignoring her is the best route.
Instead, how about letting her know that even if the baby IS coming right now, that’s ok? In one or two short sentences you could convey to a mom that you care and are taking her seriously, and also reassure her of your faith in her and support so maybe she won’t feel so fearful and panicked about the baby coming — however long it takes. Something like, “The baby is coming right now? Ok, that’s alright. May I check and see, and then we’ll call the doctor?”
Secondly, why not just check? Maybe you’ll be surprised and find a crowning baby (in which case, DON’T PANIC!), maybe you’ll confirm that she’s only 2cm. In that case, just gently inform mom that she still has a ways to go, but you know she can do it. Encourage her to listen to her body, and let her know that you will be here when she says it’s time.
Third, especially if mom still seems to be panicked, it might be a good idea to find out if there is some other problem. Maybe she has some kind of emotional issue from her past, or maybe she’s scared that someone important (like the father or her mom) won’t be there in time. Maybe she’s having really strong contractions (especially if there’s Pitocin) that made her sure she had to be closer to the end. It could be something you can do something about, or maybe the best you can do is offer caring support. Regardless, it’s a whole lot better than blowing her off.
(PS, in this I mean the general “you,” and mainly those nurses who make comments like the above, not actually YOU, Jane. It was just your comment that made me think of these things.)
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Jane Reply:
April 14th, 2010 at 12:50 pm (Quote)
I’m not a birth practitioner, so I got the general-you thing. 
I’m sure there are many nurses who would respond exactly as you say: by listening, letting the mom know she’s been heard, and then taking appropriate action, letting her know how much progress she has made, a rough timeframe of when they’d expect to see a babe-in-arms, and asking if there’s anything else they could do.
But maybe it does happen often enough that the jaded nurses (in my experience, one in three) discount ANYTHING that doesn’t happen in the right timeframe as being disordered. So women told not to push when they’re crowning and women being rigged up to pitocin when they’re not in the right part of the bell curve. Because again, it’s all about making a pretty chart.
When you care, you have to put a little bit of yourself “out there” and maybe some nurses, after a while, don’t have any self left to put out there, when they’re working against a system that discourages caring and individuality and tells them a row of machines and phones is just the same as hands-on care.
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Sheva Reply:
April 14th, 2010 at 3:50 pm (Quote)
A midwife I know just shared a home-birth-transfer birth story. At the hospital, mom was being given an epidural, so she hugged the mom to help her curve her spine right. The nurses there frowned at her (really – she mimicked their faces and everything!) and made the mom lean over the bed-table, and they held the table so it wouldn’t roll away.
Why? Why couldn’t they give the mom the touch she needed so badly right then?! And, why couldn’t they let the midwife, who was prepared to give mom what she needed, hold the mom?
Can nurses chime in here, maybe share their feelings and thoughts about this?
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Mirage Reply:
April 14th, 2010 at 5:00 pm (Quote)
I dunno but that’s precisely why I have and will avoid the hospital like the plague. Too sterile and uncaring. Birth is a beautiful, natural, amazing, empowering experience- except in a hospital where it is usually a sterile, frightening, drug-pushing medical proceedure that usually winds up in “emergency” surgery brought on by too many interventions by unsympathetic staff.
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Jacquie had this to say,
Apr 14, 2010 @ 5:53 am (Quote)
I could have written this word-for-word except my labor was only 3.5 hours. And the other comment I got from the nurse was “Can you keep your legs together for a few minutes?” My OB had to run from his office to the delivery room. It was funny at the time b/c my husband said “oh, if only you had told her that nine months ago!” LOL
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my OB said something similar to the L&D nurse when she called and said that I only had a lip after 4 hours with my first labor. The nurse told him that the baby didn’t get that note and was on the way.
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Stephanie Reply:
April 14th, 2010 at 6:13 am (Quote)
What an awesome nurse! I labored at home with my second son (VBAC) so when I got to the hospital at 6cm they were like “Oh she’s gonna be here awhile,” and didn’t believe me 30 min later when I told them I was pushing. Ten minutes and 3 pushes later my son arrived.It’s amazing how women know these things…
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Partlysbabe had this to say,
Apr 14, 2010 @ 7:19 am (Quote)
I was checked before my Epidural (4cm) (I thought it would be my last baby(#4) and had never had one…) by the time they got it in (after 3 VERY painful tries) I lay back and 10 minutes later I said to the nurse.. I think hes coming! She said ridiculous, you only just had your Epi… I said I think you NEED to check he’s slipping out, she looked… panic look hit her face and called for the OB because sure enough with not being able to feel a thing the baby was slipping out from my body, with no help at all!!
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Well of course, she was in labor for 4.5 hours, there’s no way she could be over 4.5cm dilated. Don’t you know every birth goes by the book and is never over 8 hours?
Note to every nurse and doctor: Woman are NOT stupid, and know their body better than any machine will tell you. When you get into the medical field, there is no such thing as ‘impossible’.
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Someone needed to tell that to my client who had been in labor for 1 hour and 50 minutes total when her 6th child was born…lol! The triage nurse didn’t believe me at first when I told her the last 2 babies had been born in 2 hours, but I think the look on my client’s face convinced her!
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3 hours into my induction (3rd baby) I had to send my husband to find the nurse since I felt like I was in transition and I hadn’t seen her since she had started the IV. Sure enough, I was ready to go. Not sure when she was planning to come back in to check on me…
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My induction was 6 hours. I went from 4-10 in 15 minutes. When my mother told them to check me, they didn’t want to, because I had just been at 4, and when the midwife announced “a smidge before ten” (apparently that’s the proper term for a lip?) the whole room (felt like 15 people) had a massive cow.
At the time their panic was mind-jarring, but I look back and cackle at their dumbness.
And by the way, most anyone who has ever had a baby will probably agree with me that 4.5 hours of labor is quite enough, thank you very much.
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My mother (and me and my sisters) follow this pattern of labor: slow, no dilation, slow, little dilation, 2 cm, no change, no change, 4 cm, oh, no, here comes the baby!
When my mom was in labor with #5, she said to the doctor, “I’m having this baby very soon.” “No you’re not,” he said, “I have a lot more experience than you do.”
She said, “yes, but how many 5th babies have you delivered?”
He left and went to dinner. My brother was born shortly thereafter, caught by my dad with the nurses freaking out. Then the doctor sent a bill and my parents said, “I don’t think so, you weren’t even in the hospital.”
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such a common response to women communicating what they are feeling. maybe if they kept their hands out of the vagina and didn’t have the information that a woman was ‘only 4cm 20 minutes ago’ they wouldn’t be so damn condescending.
it seems this happens the most with women on their 3rd/4th babies. thankfully when I was progressing like lightning with my 3rd. closed at 9:30,2cm at midnight,5cm at 1AM, baby at 2AM..I had an old time L&D nurse who knew at midnight when I was ‘only 2cm’ that things were going to go fast by the way *I FELT*.
now I am at the other end of the spectrum as a great-grand-multip and most nurses think the baby could fall out at any second when in reality I take quite a while to get to 6 but after that it is only 15-45 minutes until baby. here’s hoping the L&d nurse at my next birth listens to me, it is so much easier and nicer when they do.
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Glad my midwives believed me, then. With my second child, I was in labour a grand total of 4 hours – only 1.5-2 hours of active labour. Never had any internal checks. With my first I had 3-4 hours of active labour & surprised the midwife by going from 3 to 10 cm in 1 hour.
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This one is so comedic to me because it is a story I’ve heard all my life. I submitted this one from my mom’s labor with my sister. After this comment was said, my mother grabbed the nurse by the scrubs and screamed, “I’m telling you, this baby is coming!” The nurse checked and my sister was crowning. She screamed to get my mom to Delivery (no LDRP rooms back then). My mom pushed once in the labor room, once in the hallway and once in the delivery room.
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