What if I don’t want to give birth in a bed?

Is this a hospital or a hotel? 0.o …? If they’re routinely running out of beds, there’s a problem.

While my 1st impression is “fear tactic”, and an abysmal use of it to pressure a possibly nervous woman to submit to unnecessary medical interventions for conviences….this ob might actually be serious. While it wasn’t long, maybe 45 min, I and my birth party had to stay in the labor room because an l&d post partum room wasn’t availible, when we were told it was we all get over there and end up waiting another 30 mins in the hallway outside the room because they weren’t finished cleaning it.

Well gee, maybe I’ll just birth at home then. *eyeroll*

I gave birth to my daughter 2 weeks before they opened a brand new birth center. I went to the hospital a few hours after my water broke (like a good little girl! To get my antibiotics.)

They were so busy that I was stuffed in a tiny room with a curtain, that housed their medical supplies. I didnt’ get my antibiotics, but I did get strapped to monitors and get no attention other than eing shoved back on my back when I tried to move to cope with the contractions.

People whisked in and out with no knocks to get supplies, and by the time I finaly got a room and a nurse, I’d been flat on my back so long, felt like I was in transition at 2 cm…I got the epidural after 12 hours of labor and gave birth abotu 3 hours later.

Now I wonder if I could actually have been approaching transition at 2 cm. With my son (drug free) I went from 5-10 in about 2 hours.

So… if I come to the hospital when I am in labor and my baby is ready to be born, they will turn me away if I don’t have a reservation made weeks in advance?

Good to know, I think maybe this hospital is not a great place to birth a baby.

Here’s when I will “schedule” an elective induction with no medical basis:
When a certain Very Hot Place starts renting out skis and ice skating equipment.

Hah..hahahaha. The place I had my son was very busy the night I came in and the few days after. I was actually placed in an outpatient room in the labor and delivery wing. That I know of they found rooms for everyone and didn’t turn a single woman away! I didn’t have to schedule or anything, though I did call in and ask some questions because I wasn’t sure if I should come in or not, so they had an idea I would be in in a few hours or so.

If this hospital can’t handle and influx of births, that’s a bit scary and I’m not sure I’d want to be there for my birth. They’re a hospital, they should be able to do a bit of thinking on their feet in sticky situations. It DOES just sound like a bit of a scare tactic to get Mom to schedule something though and not really a failing on the actual hospital’s part.

Please. They’re so worried about covering their butts that they bully women into having all sorts of unneeded medical procedures done, but they’re going to take the enormous litigation risk of turning away a woman in labor because they don’t have enough beds? Riiiiiight. That’ll definitely happen.

I mean, how could they turn you away? Everyone knows that your uterus explodes, and you and your baby end up as brain-craving zombies, if the OB doesn’t get his hands all up in your business once every 30 minutes to push the “don’t explode, please, I’m a doctor” button that only he knows about.

Speaking of zombies, what do vegetarian zombies crave? Graaaaaaaaaiiiiiinnnns. (Stole that from an 8-year-old.)

That’s when I’d be asking the doc if s/he has privileges at any OTHER hospitals, ’cause that one doesn’t sound like a mother-friendly place.

What I find interesting, on second thought, is that if the labor unit is that full, they’re going to turn away the scheduled inductions anyhow (the non-emergency ones) so if they admit you for an elective induction, you didn’t need to worry about space anyhow.

Moreover, since a woman remains in the hospital longer after a C-section than after a vaginal delivery, and since inductions more often result in c-sections than spontaneous labor, the doctor is actually contributing to the overcrowding problem by inducing in response to overcrowding.

I don’t think this logic stands up at all.

Does ACOG recommendations now include “room reservations” as a medical indication for labour induction? If it doesn’t I think I need to go make a phone call. May I borrow your phone, I assume you have ACOG on speed dial?

Ugh. And, like Jane said, what he doesn’t tell her is that if the hospital is busy, and there are no beds, she “loses” her reservation. Women having elective inductions are told to call in to see if there are beds available before they can come in. (I hadn’t even thought of the fact of the increased risk of cesarean) So what he says doesn’t even make sense.

The hospital where I had my babies sent me home a day early after my first cesarean because they were sending all women home they could because the night before 12 babies were born, and there were women in labour in Assessment waiting to go to L&L, because women in L&D who had had their babies were waiting for a postpartum room. It was also busy the night I had my baby, I was in an overflow room up in the postpartum unit the first night (and the nurse made a comment about it as I was being transferred to L&D, something about always busy on a full moon). This was before the recent “boom” in births the last couple years happening here.

Hmmm, I wonder if they would say that to you if they knew you were a “homebirth risk”

“Oh so you might not have enough beds? GREAT! I’ve got one at home!” mwa haha!

Great I will set it for 42 weeks and 1 day. See ya then.

Sorry, ya’ll took all the logical responses.

And I spent some extra time in recovery until they had a room for me. I had my baby tucked in my arm. I didn’t mind.

Yeeahhhh.

Nearly all hospitals have times when patient load (in some departments or in all departments) exceeds capacity. Some of that is due to population growth, and some is due to the financial constraints on facilities. I have a friend who lives in a small community with a three-bed L&D unit in the local hospital. By and large, this size unit is more than ample, and only 1-2 beds are taken at any time. Except that the month her first baby was born, there were twelve other women due and planning to use that hospital. The rest of the year, there were practically none. Random statistical spikes happen. Scheduled inductions won’t fix that, though.

The thing that really jumps out at me is that, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, hospitals are not permitted to turn away women in active labor. They may transfer laboring patients to other hospitals (after verifying that there is space available, via ambulance, and IIRC, at their own expense) if they’re out of room or lack appropriate facilities. But if you are in active labor, they have to take you on account of that eensy little Federal Law.

They can send you home if you’re not in active labor, they can bump elective inductions and c-sections, they can put patients two to a room, or do deliveries in the triage area, et-effing-cetera. This notion that if you schedule in advance, you can have your baby, no waiting! is bunk.

Didn’t Jennifer Block start her book (“Pushed”) with a story about a hospital in Florida running out of beds during a hurricane? Any women who weren’t ready to deliver right away were sent home to labor. They’d come back a few hours later, deliver, and have happy healthy moms and babies.

Maybe if they don’t have a bed available they’ll let mom go home and labor somewhere comfortable and wire free. You know, without worrying about ANY induction (for failure to progress, failure to behave, failure to book room in advance, failure to meet tee-time, failure not to be completely snarky…)

That just sounds too good to be true! So for my next baby, I call the hospital, reserve a room and I show up and chill with DH for a few hours in a posh room until concierge brings me a newborn? Painfree, workfree labor with no risks…sure!
I love how they want to make sure you get to the hospital by trying to schedule you into their agenda. They have to take anyone at any time if they’re in active labor. This is like the crap they pull with the racing moms in labor. When my OB was busy checking his other patient, I knew I was still in good hands. Those babies come out when they’re good and ready!

What if I miss check-in time? Will they keep the room open for me? Sheesh!

Yeah, I had to wait in observation for a labor room to open up (and a shift change) and yeah, I had to wait in labor for a post-partum room to open up, but damn… Our hospital here is notorious for running out of room. I actually was shipped over to pediatrics after I had my first because all the PP rooms were full of c-sections.

I know someone who went to the hospital for a schedule induction, and after being left sitting in the waiting room for over an hour, was finally told to go home because there weren’t any beds available. So much for that “reservation.”

I am a midwife and here in this Dutch city I work in it happens all too often that there is no place for a woman in labour. If we are lucky the next hospital will have her, but quite often that one is also chockablock. As long as there are no complications most of thse ladies end up having home deliveries and not regretting it, but in case of an emergency it gets unpleasant. Midwife frantically trying to find a place.

On my hospital tour the other night, the nurse mentioned that didn’t induce by request of the parent because they might run out of beds. Yet, my doctor told me at my last appointment that they induce if you’re a week late. Go figure.