Jul 11

“…You Want A Blue Baby?…”

“You know what, I’m not arguing this with you. You want a blue baby? Because I don’t want to deliver a blue baby today.” -OB to a VBAC mother, when recommending a cesarean.

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There are 13 comments to this post.

Jane had this to say, Jul 11, 2010 @ 5:19 am (Quote)

Interesting. The doctor says “I’m not arguing with you” and the proceeds to keep arguing so that if the woman protests, the doctor can claim to be the logical rational one whereas the woman is prolonging the argument.

Plus, the use of a threat (the dead/damaged baby card) indicates that the doctor really DOES have to get the mother’s permission in this case and it’s not a crash/true emergency situation.

If there was a genuine reason the doctor wanted the c-section, the doctor could have provided that information. Heart decels, membranes ruptured 78 hours, mom having a fever, ultrasound estimates of a baby weighing 14 pounds. Etc. But once that threat entered the room, the doctor proved there was no medical demand for the c-section.

Plus, continuing to argue after saying “I’m not arguing about this” undercuts one’s own authority, since the doctor doesn’t even have control over the doctor: if the doctor doesn’t even respect his or her own decisions, why should the mom?

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Lilly Reply:
July 11th, 2010 at 7:31 am Lilly(Quote)

Jane, you always break things down perfectly.

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Anne had this to say, Jul 11, 2010 @ 5:51 am (Quote)

Speechless, truly speechless. Poor mumma, I would like to think that I would have said “you won’t deliver the baby anyway, I’ll deliver my own baby” but, alas, I know when something similar was said to me in labour with #1, I caved, signed the forms & was cut.

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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say, Jul 11, 2010 @ 10:03 am (Quote)

I won’t hold it against my baby if she turns out to be a Democrat. I myself am solidly independent, but there’s room for all types in the world.

Oh. Wait. You’re not referring to my unborn child’s voting preferences, but to her Apgars. You think you see a dead baby in your magic crystal ball. Guess what? I’ve read the studies showing VBAC to be safe, even if you haven’t. You don’t get to use that particular threat on me.

You also don’t get any more chances to intimidate me into scheduling a repeat surgery, because I’m taking my pregnancy elsewhere.

I doubt you’ll miss me very much, if it makes you feel any better. I really am a royal pain in the kiester.

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THe Deranged Housewife had this to say, Jul 11, 2010 @ 10:32 am (Quote)

What, like this doesn’t happen – and probably more often than this OB would care to admit – to babies who are born during typical vaginal delivery and/or c-section? WHy should the fact that it’s a VBAC be any different?

I think I’ve said this before – I wonder sometimes if the majority of doctors won’t do VBACs not so much because of the (low) risks involved but because they can’t aggressively intervene and augment labor like they do in a laboring woman who doesn’t have a scarred uterus. I bet they find essentially being forced to let the woman labor on her own to be the most annoying of all.

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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 11th, 2010 at 12:15 pm Sarah Dorrance-Minch(Quote)

Not that some don’t try aggressively inducing her anyway. Hence the statistics involving catastrophic uterine rupture, which confirm the obstetric opinion that VBAC (not induction) is dangerous.

I ran into a woman a week before I went into labour with my first child. We were both in a Crisis Pregnancy Center – for a free layette, also I was interested in the parenting classes they offered, because I wanted to learn parenting from something other than my own past, which I hadn’t been particularly enamoured of.

She had this glazed look as she stood there, with her newborn baby in what had to be a very heavy car seat, talking about how she was induced because she was forty weeks pregnant and hadn’t gone into labour yet, and her uterus ruptured badly during the induction, and they were able to save her baby with an emergency c-section that also wound up being an emergency hysterectomy. Lots of blood loss, necessitating a transfusion. And there she was a week later, on her feet, holding on to the baby in the car seat.

White faced, swaying.

I probably should have offered to hold the car seat for her, but it didn’t occur to me. I hadn’t yet had my own c-section, that would be a week later, so I also had no idea how heavy ten pounds of infant was, let alone infant plus car seat, or how carrying heavy things would make me bleed longer. And nobody else was offering to help her out, except her husband, whose arms were full of donated baby things that looked like they weighed at least as much as the baby.

“I was blessed,” she said, and everybody agreed with her. Healthy mother, healthy baby.

It was her first baby.

It would be her last.

Aggressive induction for being one day post-dates.

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StaudtCJ Reply:
July 11th, 2010 at 1:40 pm StaudtCJ(Quote)

I know that you claim to be unable to deal well with normal human emotions, but you invoke them in writing very well. I’m mopping up tears. It breaks my heart that people do this to women, and that women are downtrodden and browbeaten and marginalized until they not only allow it, but think they’re blessed for it.

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CCindy Reply:
July 11th, 2010 at 3:09 pm CCindy(Quote)

Wow, she never should have been holding so much and she is lucky she didn’t collapse. One thing I would like to add. She was not induced because she was one day “post dates” She was just one day past her EXPECTED Due Date. Post Dates is 42 weeks and some say 43 in Europe. Don’t let anybody pull that term on you, even if it is somebody here that I know knows better. Post dates is past 42 weeks. PAST not AT. She was simply DUE. Not Past Due. She (and her baby)is (are) not a Library book.

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TJ Reply:
July 11th, 2010 at 3:59 pm TJ(Quote)

That’s so sad. My husband’s family was telling me that his step-cousin had her baby. They induced her because she was “overdue” yet the induction they started night before last failed and they tried again yesterday but the ‘baby was too big and her body couldn’t do it.’

I told my husband’s relative that those reasons were full of crap and that they just were trying to force something that wasn’t meant to happen yet. But everyone around here acts like c-sections are what’s normal for birth.

Of course, I had my own moment at my last prenatal visit that I need to submit.

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Lindsey Carr-Ruck had this to say, Jul 11, 2010 @ 4:01 pm (Quote)

What? VBACs are the only time docs see “blue babies”? If docs really wanted to cut their “bad baby” rates, they’d lay off the inductions and stop clamping/cutting the cord before it was done pulsating.

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cheeks023 had this to say, Jul 11, 2010 @ 9:48 pm (Quote)

hmmm…2 of my 4 have been slightly blue at birth…I guess purple is more accurate. The first time, I asked why she wasn’t crying yet, the midwife looked at me, covered us with a blanket and said, rub her back and talk to her, the cord is still pulsing, she is still getting oxygen. She never did cry, she simply opened her eyes and looked at me, took in two large inhales, and one large exhale, and then proceeded to look around the room from the safety of my chest. She had apgars of 8 & 9. My 3rd baby did breath either for a long time, this time I didn’t ask, I rubbed his back and talked to him, the same midwife actually came over with her big noisy suction machine thing and suctioned him… He didn’t like that, and he cried… but he mostly definitely didn’t breath as soon as my first so I guess the mechanical suction thing was warranted. In both cases the cord was left alone for an extended length of time. In both cases, had they been in the hospital they would have likely cut the cord immediately and run them to the NICU in a panic, praising themselves for their good work, and commenting about how lucky I was to be there.

Even sectioned babies come out blue sometimes…especially if they have been bombarded with too much Pit.

I despise doctors who play the dead baby card to already emotional women.

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Amber had this to say, Jul 12, 2010 @ 11:05 pm (Quote)

“Oh dear, doc. A blue baby? You mean you saw from the ultrasound that there might be a problem with his heart, such as Tetralogy of Fallot, or did you think we might have a nitrate problem with our drinking water? Oh, you didn’t even know that blue baby syndrome was an actual thing with real causes and you were trying to make me afraid of delivering a dead baby? Wow. Would you like a napkin to wipe the egg off your face? Or a medical book to look things up? Maybe just a link to wikipedia?”

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