Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Sep
18
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“…We’re Going To Break Your Water…And Then We’ll See How You Feel About That Epidural.”
“Well then, we’re going to break your water and start up some pitocin to make your contractions stronger and then we’ll see how you feel about that epidural.” – L&D nurse after mother declined an epidural during labor.
There are 41 comments to this post.
so, “if you do not comply with us we will torture you until you comply with us”
mmmm. Nice.
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Holly Reply:
September 18th, 2010 at 6:34 pm (Quote)
EXACTAMUNDO! And this actually happened to me with my 1st b/c I was unaware I could decline pitocin or water breaking… They really do thrive on control, don’t they!?
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
September 20th, 2010 at 6:54 am (Quote)
That’s okay, she’s only a labouring mother, she doesn’t have any rights. She signed them all away when she got her pregnancy confirmed. Remember, “All That Matters Is A Healthy (i.e. alive) Baby!”
*yak*
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Sadism and nursing shouldn’t go together. The nurse has effectively said she will hurt a laboring woman until she gets to manage the birth her way. It’s the “Well, then,” which implies that if the mother simply got the epidural, she wouldn’t retaliate by breaking her water and starting up the pitocin.
(So is that a medical indication for pitocin? “Patient refused epidural”?)
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Nurse Ratchet at her finest. Poor Momma. Not wanting an epidural isn’t a bad thing.. just like wanting one also isn’t bad. Its all a personal choice.
Come and tell us what happened please. I hope you didn’t have to go through all that the nurse was threatening.
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None of these things changed my mind about refusing the epidural. OP sorry this nurse thought she could talk to you in such a manner. That would have been the last time she was allowed to enter my room.
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I bet nurses just push for the epidural because as empathetic living people it is psychologically distressing for them to watch someone else be in pain and not to be allowed to make them feel better. Maybe someone could focus on developing techniques to help nurses manage their own reactions to seeing another person in pain.
I don’t really like what the nurse said because it puts the patient in the position of feeling like she lost some kind of stupid power struggle if she does change her mind and gets the epidural, but I can also see why nurses get stressed watching people in pain and why they might not always say things in the most sensitive way possible. That said, I hope I don’t have to deal with insensitive people like this when I give birth in a week or two.
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christine Reply:
September 18th, 2010 at 4:28 pm (Quote)
Nurses push for epidurals becasue it keeps the patient confined to the bed and on the monitor, so they can simply check the computer monitor to see how things are going, rather than check in on the patient in person (or just leave them alone until they ask for help, which is how I prefer it.)
I had a great nurse at my last birth. I had expressed my desire for a natural delivery and was fully supported. In transition I got a little panicky and started asking about an epidural, she said “you are making such great progress, this is the birth you wanted, I know you can do this!” And she was right!
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Dee Reply:
September 18th, 2010 at 5:13 pm (Quote)
I think it’s both. After DS’s delivery, the new nurse begged and begged me to take pain meds (I had pp bleeding, so was on Pitocin). She kept saying, “I don’t want to see you in pain.” I felt fine, but was tired of the fight. Wish I’d refused, but that’s another story. Yes, there are plenty of nurses who do want to “control” the laboring mother, but I do think the “fear of someone in pain” element is also there.
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alice Reply:
September 18th, 2010 at 5:24 pm (Quote)
Its not so much that midwives find seeing women in pain distressing, its more to do with looking after them is less physically and emotionally demanding.
A woman with an epidural requires limited ‘hands on’ care and allows relaxed ‘chit chat’ and requires little more than observing and recording the output of monitors etc, and sadly alot of medicalised midwives don’t posses the skills to support a woman in labour, they’ve been exposed to it so little. They can panic and freak out! A woman may express that she’s in pain and a midwives only solution/answer is ‘it hurts? do you want an epidural?’- implying theres something wrong if it hurts and/or the woman just isn’t coping.
Denis Walsh sums this up beautifully in his book, ‘Evidence Based Care in Normal Labour’ (availible on Amazon!) where he criticises the overuse of epidurals and their detremental physical and emotional effects, which caused a bit of contraversy last year here in the UK, I recommend it as a good read!
To support a woman in an unmedicated labour requires skills that can be very hard work and draining! (but worth it, obviously)
This nurse is more worried how she would cope or how stupid she may look infront of the OP because she truely doesn’t know how to cope/ what to ‘do with’ a woman labouring without an epidural. Sad.
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Susan Reply:
September 19th, 2010 at 3:37 am (Quote)
I think you’ve hit on it, really. With my first, when I expressed that I was in pain (sciatic pain – was coping with the contractions, but baby was back-to-back), the young and less experienced midwife who took over at the shift change just kept telling me I wasn’t coping and asking if I wanted pethidine, but didn’t have any other suggestions.
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VW Reply:
September 19th, 2010 at 3:37 am (Quote)
I bet nurses just push for the epidural because as empathetic living people it is psychologically distressing for them to watch someone else be in pain and not to be allowed to make them feel better.
What do you mean, not allowed? There are lots of things nurses could learn about and then put into practice to help with a patient’s pain management…hot towels (aka the homebirth epidural), hypnosis techniques, hydrotherapy, TENS, breathing, hip squeezes and counter-pressure (in no particular order). You know, like doulas and midwives do.
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Sheva Reply:
September 19th, 2010 at 7:44 am (Quote)
When I see a laboring woman, it hurts to watch them in pain, but my response is to reach out, find the pain, and try to make it go away with massage, pressure, and whatever else the mother asks for.
How does threatening her with more pain get translated to empathy??
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“You try it and I’m going to break your face and then we’ll see how you feel about patient rights and proper bedside manner.”
Two unnecessary, control-freak procedures. *sigh*
Also stupid since my waters broke on their own at the beginning of labor (okay, after 5 hours, but for me, that’s the beginning) and I had pitocin after so many hours in and then 5 hours of stopped labor with broken waters… and never even felt the need for an epidural.
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I really wonder how these people would feel if someone confronted them about their inappropriate comments? I mean, like saying, “What is wrong with you? What makes you think it’s okay to talk to someone like that? Are you socially impaired in some way?” *sigh*
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Charity had this to say,
Sep 18, 2010 @ 1:54 pm (Quote)
This is almost like my first… “We don’t like what his heartrate is doing, so we’re going to start you on IV ‘fluids.’” She never actually told me what the fluids were, even though I asked her several times. She even went so far as ignoring me. It was pitocin, of course. My contractions were getting worse and worse (wonder why) and she had the nerve to come back in 30 minutes later and say, “How do you feel about an epidural now?”
I told my midwife what happened, she smiled and said, “I’ll be right back.” I could hear her yelling from the hall. 
“What gives you the right to give her pit? Didn’t you READ her birth plan?”
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laura Reply:
September 18th, 2010 at 6:44 pm (Quote)
WHAT the HELL? She snuck pitocin into your IV? I’m reasonably confident that that must be illegal. I mean, surely. Oh, I’m pissed off now.
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Lauren Reply:
September 19th, 2010 at 1:57 am (Quote)
That happened to a friend of mine too. She came to the hospital for her second delivery in active labor, wanting another natural birth. Her birth plan said NO pitocin, and they sneaked it into her IV. She had such horrible pain from it she was beside herself, and then saw that she was on pit; she ripped out her IV and the nurses kept putting it back in. She told them she did not want or need it and they ignored her. She NEVER consented. She was pit to distressed into a C-section by the vilest OB I’ve ever met and dealt with myself. He is earning his spot in hell, tell you that much. When she told me her story, I cried until I got sick.
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Charity Reply:
September 19th, 2010 at 10:48 am (Quote)
I learned, years later, that she was fired for this exact thing. 8 patient complaints! It took 8 women being abused by this woman and knowing enough to complain… Even if it’s standard orders, nurses are still supposed to follow patients’ wishes. Patients have the right to refuse anything. All I wanted was to see my midwife before we did anything and she just kept saying, “Don’t be silly. It’s just fluids.” I figured it was probably saline and my ex kept badgering me to do what she wanted. I knew she was wrong, but I had no one to back me up. I’m so thankful that my husband now is so much more supportive. For my second, I had a nurse giving me all kinds of hell because they found my heartbeat instead of my daughter’s and they freaked out. She was sure I was killing her and we needed to get her out now. My husband took the monitor away, found the correct heartbeat, and all was well. No IV, no interventions, everything was perfect. He told that nurse that she should probably find someone else to care for us because it was “obvious our personalities don’t mesh well.” LOL He delivered my third in our bathtub, unassisted. He’s such a great supporter. Every woman should have someone to back them up in the delivery room.
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I thought that nurses needed doctor’s orders for those procedures? Pit is prescription only and most L&D nurses don’t have prescriptive privileges and even if they do, it’s USUALLY hospital policy that they don’t do a bunch of stuff beyond VEs and routine IVs etc without the patient’s doctor’s permission. It sounds like this nurse was just being a jerk 
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AJ Reply:
September 18th, 2010 at 2:46 pm (Quote)
It’s called standing orders and most hospitals and doctors have them for most common reasons for hospitalization. Basically if you are addmitted as a paitent of Dr A for B reason then the nurses have standing orders from Dr A to be able to do or give X, Y, and Z.
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Alyson Miers had this to say,
Sep 18, 2010 @ 2:18 pm (Quote)
I don’t see anything here about “medical indication,” Nurse.
An epidural is for pain relief, right? So, if the patient refuses pain relief, then she clearly doesn’t need it.
Furthermore, pit and AROM have their own set of risks. I don’t see any medical indication here for them, either.
Since it’s not your uterus or your spine we’re talking about, why don’t you keep your damn hands to yourself? Go take a Valium, if you’re so enamored of better living through chemistry. It might make you less mean-spirited to your patients.
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Lindsey Carr-Ruck had this to say,
Sep 18, 2010 @ 6:25 pm (Quote)
If this were in a different setting, it would violate the Geneva Conventions. I could TOTALLY get on a soapbox…
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say,
Sep 20, 2010 @ 6:52 am (Quote)
Oh, no, you’re not. Get away from my labouring body before you encounter my foot. It’s been two decades since I studied kung fu, but I can still kick.
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This is mine
This nurse was just awful, I ended up consenting to the epidural, and the anestesiologist had to stick it in 5 times because he couldn’t find the spot, so he just stuck it in and dug around while I screamed in agony. And even better, the epidural wore off right before I hit transition, so I didn’t get to work up to it at all, and then they wouldn’t bump up the epidural because I was 7 cm. I will never birth in a hospital again, it was awful!
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Brittney Reply:
September 21st, 2010 at 2:35 pm (Quote)
also, unknown to me, she had already started a pitocin drip without telling me. not ok.
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kelli Reply:
September 21st, 2010 at 6:19 pm (Quote)
i agreed to an iv in transition and then found out i was given pitocin after the birth without my consent (i never even signed admission papers with the blanket consent, there wasn’t time) i had no signs of hommorhage, there was no reason, i felt so dirty and violated when i found out. i just had a great midwife attended homebirth in june and the labor was way more intense yet sooo much easier without poking, prodding ect. i’m ecxited to do it again already but we like a few years between the kids.
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Add Your Comment.
“No, you are not. I refuse consent for those procedures.”
I would ask to see that she documented that I refused consent.
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