Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jul
24
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“If You Would Stop Screaming And Push, You Can Have This Baby.”
“If you would stop screaming and push, you can have this baby.” – OB to mother during crowning.
There are 30 comments to this post.
Kasondra had this to say,
Jul 24, 2011 @ 6:42 pm (Quote)
it occurs to me that if the mom is in THAT much pain, maybe the doctor is doing that “forced pushing” thing and making her push too fast. It might be that if she pushed gentler, at her own pace, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as bad.
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Mama Wrench Reply:
July 24th, 2011 at 6:47 pm (Quote)
Or if she didn’t have to push at all, and just let the natural ejection reflex and gravity do the work…
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She said this during CROWNING?! The baby is almost out. It sounds like screaming worked just fine up until this point. Besides, you don’t want to push really hard then anyway.
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himom Reply:
July 25th, 2011 at 4:59 am (Quote)
Sometimes crowning can take a while. I had a client who crowned for nearly an hour. Baby’s heart rate stayed stable and the mom did not want an episiotomy. The CNM on call and the OB on call both supported her choices. It was surreal watching the baby’s head twist and turn as she tried to make her way out.
Mom had a perineum of steel, but – guess what? It *did* stretch. It just did so very slowly. She did tear a little bit at the end, but certainly not as much as an episiotomy would have cut her.
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well damn, I guess with all that roaring I did, the baby shouldn’t have come in less than 45 mins… I’ll get it right next time *rolls eyes*
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Angela Reply:
July 25th, 2011 at 3:01 am (Quote)
transistion to holding my baby was about 8 minutes… I only pushed (on my own terms) for about 3 minutes, you can bet I screamed a little! It was a hard and fast birth(I knew the woman in the next room and the next time I saw her in public she teased me a little about it, “good thing I had just had my boy, with all your screaming I would have packed up, gone home, and said forget it to this whole ‘birth’ thing!”)
I guess with all the hullaballoo I was making my daughter is an anomoly too! It is so great to know we are all doing it wrong!
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A comment very similar to this one really ticked me off during my 2nd birth. The nurse kept saying that I could have the baby on the next push if I stopped screaming. I knew that she was not quite low enough for that. So, at one point, I yelled at her, “YOU’RE LYING TO ME.” My DH always brings this up with a chuckle as an example of how out-of-character I was in labor, and I always defend my remark. The next time she said it, I looked to the OB and asked if it was true and she at least gave me a straight answer.
I never had any intention of an unmedicated birth (happy it turned out that way), so it took a while of pushing with screaming for me to get my head around the idea enough to really focus. Ultimately, I did decide that I could stop vocalizing and push more intently, but I couldn’t do that until I was ready and until my internal dialogue gave me the advice. It was good that the nurse had planted the idea of that being a useful thing, but I don’t appreciate that it was stated in a way that wasn’t actually true. Word to the wise: Patients who are scientists really appreciate factual info, so do many other patients, and even those who don’t appreciate it deserve it.
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road2vba2c had this to say,
Jul 24, 2011 @ 8:39 pm (Quote)
My doctor laughed with me (in between contractions/pushing) when I would scream during pushes, “GET OUT! GET OUT!”
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Lisa in Texas Reply:
July 24th, 2011 at 9:54 pm (Quote)
I did the same with a couple of my babies! I alternated between screaming “GET OUT” and “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!” I know it was nutty but it help me to focus.
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At the end I was screaming “OW OW OW” and “STOP IT” because it felt like the OB was sticking his finger up my but. Now I think it was a nasty hemorrhoid forming as my daughter’s 14″ head came out. After all those birth classes and with a doula present at the birth I hadn’t heard about a natural ejection reflex and everyone was coaching me to push really hard. (My lips would go numb and my hearing would fade out in the middle of the pushes.) Didn’t make any sense to me at the time, where else do they encourage you to tempt a hernia??
No ring of fire but I also did the perineal massage in the last month.
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Heather Reply:
July 25th, 2011 at 11:35 am (Quote)
I wasn’t even pushing, baby was just coming and I was going, “Ow owowowowowow!” lol Well, it’s not a pleasant feeling! (and 14″ is average isn’t it? Both my girls supposedly had over 14″ heads, but my first didn’t fit into newborn hats and my second did, quite easily)
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I don’t remember a lot about the last hour, the last half hour of dilating then I had a break when my waters broke and I spent 12 minutes pushing her out.
I asked my OH why they had got the stirrups and forceps out (forceps were never used) and he said I wasn’t pushing, I kept screaming. I fell out with him over it and was really upset. I couldn’t remember what happened but I didn’t believe 12 minutes is not pushing! I spoke to my Doula and she said yes I was screaming so much I wasn’t pushing but as soon as someone told me to stop and push I did. I know I was still crying out because I was stuck on the bed, they wouldn’t allow me to move and I was sitting on my coccyx (I have PGP) so was in a lot of pain aside from the labour. I still did it in 12 minutes!
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Jane Reply:
July 25th, 2011 at 4:54 am (Quote)
I think they’re taught that if you aren’t holding your breath, you aren’t really pushing.
Contrast to physical exertion like weight-lifting or karate where it’s understood that you HAVE to grunt and let out your air when making a big push. (And in tennis, when you hear them go “UUH!” every time they swing.) But I guess weight-lifting and karate and tennis aren’t run by doctors and nurses, so those folks don’t know anything about the human body.
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I really wished the stigma of screaming, yelling, vocalizing during labor would go away. If it helps the mother, so be it. Obviously if it is counter productive, then yes, it needs to be refocused, but stop with all the negativity. No one tells someone with a broken leg, or a stab wound to stop screaming.
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Debra Reply:
July 25th, 2011 at 8:34 am (Quote)
Actually, sometimes they do tell injured people to stop screaming.
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Kit Reply:
July 26th, 2011 at 1:08 pm (Quote)
Actually, while they were trying to x-ray my very broken elbow, they told me to stop yelling and crying. They were twisting and bending it to get it in the “right” position for the x-ray and I hadn’t had any pain meds yet. I think I told them I would stop when they would. Didn’t go over well, I was labeled “uncooperative.”
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“If you could learn to support unmedicated mothers during their births, she could have this baby without screaming.”
You know, crowning HURTS. But it didn’t hurt as much during the births where I’d used perineal massage from 36 weeks onward. I’d “taught” the tissues to fan out around the baby’s head and there was no ring of fire sensation for those births.
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Krista Reply:
July 24th, 2011 at 6:22 pm Krista(Quote)
Oooo, good to know. My second birth had plenty of screaming. But instead of shaming me my midwife understood that’s what I needed to do to cope and supported me. I felt safe and had the baby very quickly.
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Jane Reply:
July 24th, 2011 at 6:51 pm Jane(Quote)
I found the instructions from The Birth Book online here:
http://cmb0414.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/perineal-massage/
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Tasha Reply:
July 24th, 2011 at 9:27 pm Tasha(Quote)
I remember screaming during my 2nd birth, too (first unmedicated) but when I mentioned it to my midwife recently (I’m seeing her again for a baby due in 5 weeks) she said, “You screamed? I don’t remember you screaming.” She was more focused on supporting me than worrying about any noises I was or wasn’t making during my birth…
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Sheva Reply:
July 25th, 2011 at 10:49 am Sheva(Quote)
I love your midwife!
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Tasha Reply:
July 25th, 2011 at 11:38 am Tasha(Quote)
I rather like her, too.
Especially after my 36 wk appt this morning when I found out my baby boy is breech. She was so calm and encouraging about the entire situation.
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Jena Reply:
July 25th, 2011 at 9:41 pm Jena(Quote)
That is good to know! I didn’t really scream while my baby crowned (I don’t think I did, anyway), but I do remember saying, “Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow…” (like I do when I cut myself in the kitchen or twist my ankle). At the time, it struck me as something I’d find really funny when I was done with the delivery–and I do.
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