Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jul
13
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Warm Water Will Burn The Baby.”
“Warm water will burn the baby.” -L&D Nurse to laboring mother after her doula suggested a bath to cope with labor pain.
There are 33 comments to this post.
So the baby was in danger in my uterus where the amniotic fluid temp was 98.6? Oh, what have I done to my baby?
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Jessa Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 3:43 pm (Quote)
Better get some ice in there STAT 
Don’t want to boil that baby *headdesk*
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 5:23 pm (Quote)
OH NO! I’ve been scalding my baby for the past NINE MONTHS! AAAAAAAAAIGH!
So that’s why everybody is so desperate to speed things up with a routine pit drip.
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Jane Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 5:51 pm (Quote)
Quick!! Apply an ice-cube to your belly and maybe you can heal him!
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Rebecca Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 6:21 am (Quote)
quick, Sarah! after applying the icecube roll 2d8 and add half of your con to see how many HP your baby recovers!
(I say this because before you had mentioned D&D and I am a huge NERD. If it wasn’t you, then let’s pretend this never happened.)
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Jane Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 9:44 am (Quote)
Maybe she could use an ice cube of infinite healing?
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 3:57 pm (Quote)
Maybe the nurse quoted above could stop using her arse of infinite holding?
I so get tired of health professionals pulling folk wisdom out of their arse whenever labour and birth is concerned. Medical bullshit is bad enough, but stuff like the quote above – pheeeew.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 3:58 pm (Quote)
PS. With the exception of our second daughter, Liesl, our offspring all seem to have inherited the CON 18 of their parents. 
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Bahahahahahah….:::gasping for breath::
So, what is a pregnant woman to do for hygiene for 9 months??? Sponge baths?? This nurse might have had a 1/10th of a leg to stand on if the doula was suggesting a water birth (at least she wouldn’t have sounded *quite* so asinine!) Wow…
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And this person is working in what is considered to be a critical care unit? Wrods fail me.
And people can’t understand why I don’t want to be a nurse. Beside the fact that they’re overworked, underpaid, have too much responsibility and too little authority (for which we thank the Good Lord in many cases, such as this one), I don’t want to have my innate intelligence and common sense sucked out of me.
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My guess: the nurse was trying to undermine the doula by coming up with a reason that the mom shouldn’t do anything the doula suggested. And this was the only thing that could come out of her.
BTW, if the water is never even in contact with the baby, it would have to do such serious damage to the mother that she herself would require intensive care, long before the baby got “burned.”
After birth, what will the nurse want to do? Wait for it….bathe the baby. I hope to high heaven that the mom told her, “No, you told me you can’t bathe my baby!!!! You told me warm water will burn the baby! You said so yourself!” LOL!
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 5:28 pm (Quote)
I thought that was an excuse to use cold water and aggressive towel scrubbing when getting rid of the “icky” vernix.
Which, by the way, I also disagree with. Poor babies. What a horrible way to be introduced to the world: lukewarm water and an unfriendly towel. And then it’s time for eye goop (because every mother is a clap-infected crack whore, or has had sex with someone who frequents the same and doesn’t use latex), shots (including Hepatitis B – see previous justification), and if it’s a boy, probably circumcision if the mother doesn’t stick to her guns (at least in the midwest and southern parts of the United States).
SIGH
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Susan Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 12:26 am (Quote)
I always get so sad when I look at pics of newborns and see that they’ve had the eye goop. 
Thankfully I don’t have to worry about that, the Hep B, or circumcision here (I’d opt out anyway, but it’s nice not to have to fight them on that – the only thing I have to worry about at birth is the Vit K and delayed cord clamping).
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Evelyn Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 4:26 am (Quote)
I live in the southeast and we did not have to fight to have our son remain intact, or to not have the hep b or the vitamin k. The hospital was great about all of it. Our ped, however, kind of freaked when we told her he didn’t have the vit k, and gave us all sorts of printouts on it.
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JulietsButterfly Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 2:11 pm (Quote)
I’m in GA and they insisted on the vit K shot for both my girl and my boy, different years and different hospitals. My son made it out all in one piece though, without the at birth Hep B shot that my DD had.
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The Deranged Housewife Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 6:14 pm (Quote)
I’m with you. I think this was a comment that just came randomly out of her butt because she had to think of *some* reason to not allow the mom to have any leeway whatsoever. Even if there’s no harm in it, we’re still going to say no because. Just because.
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Midwife Emily had this to say,
Jul 13, 2010 @ 6:29 pm (Quote)
hat was mine. I was the doula at the birth. When I suggested the mother take a bath, the nurse argued with me and then went to run the water because she didn’t trust me. 10 min later, I went into the bathroom to check the water and it was tepid. I told the mother that the water was too cold and she wouldn’t like it. (A side note here I am an interning midwife and can feel with my hand to know roughly the temp of the water.) Back to my story, the nurse hearing me say this to the mom runs into the room and blurts out “Warm water will burn the baby”. I have to say that birth was ridiculous. That nurse argued with everything I said and ended up saying the most uneducated things.
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Margarett the Midwife had this to say,
Jul 13, 2010 @ 8:43 pm (Quote)
Bullsh#t!!!!
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Wow. OK, in order to burn the baby while still in utero you would first have to BOIL the mama. Unless the doula was a member of the Spanish Inquisition, she probably wasn’t thinking of quite that extreme a measure for supporting her client.
….then again, I’ve heard “no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition,” so maybe this nurse should be commended for being cautious….
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 15th, 2010 at 4:00 pm (Quote)
Bring out the comfy chair. It’s great for birthing.
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As I was reading along I remembered being told not to go in the hot tub while pregnant because they really are too hot for baby and thinking that nurse dumbass thought she knew something because she heard it wrong. Then of course I get down to the pink OP and see Nope she was just being contrary.
What exactly does it take to have a nurse removed from caring for a patient? Does the patient have to say something or can the doula do it? That was my husband’s job. I told him if anybody does a Jekle and Hyde and starts talking stupid that he was to play bouncer, but it was never necessary.
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doula los angeles had this to say,
Jul 14, 2010 @ 5:45 pm (Quote)
I don’t think warm water will burn the baby will it? I am going to try to have a baby next year and decided to start on some research. I am confused from the decision of natural birth to the type of bottles. At the same time being smart and cost efficient. So much decision!
Leslie
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no, warm water will not burn a baby at all – especially not one that is still inside his mama’s belly like this nurse was saying. In fact, water is often called the “midwives epidural” because it is so effective at relieving pain and helping women work through their labors. If you are at the very beginning of your research, a good book to get you started would be Sheila Kitzinger’s “Complete Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth & Newborn”.
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My first thought is that maybe someone just doesn’t want to deal with filling the bath, so they dribbled out this ridiculous piece of misinformation.
Unless the nurse knows there’s some chemical in the water that can cause burns, in which case, the hospital has a MUCH better problem.
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Jena Reply:
July 13th, 2010 at 7:07 pm Jena(Quote)
*bigger
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