Really? Come here so I can show you how strong they are.

oh really? wanna pull a Freaky Friday and see for yourself?!

My “midwife” said something similar to me when I was in the AquaDoula tub transitioning. When she finally agreed to “check” me to get an idea of where I was “really” at, I was nearly complete with a big bulgy bag. She got this horrified look on her face. She had been a horrible crab to me from the moment she walked into my house an hour before. I wish that was the worst of how she and her partner behaved. I don’t recommend her practice to anyone.

I don’t think your machine works as well as you think it does.

There are so many women that have a higher pain threshhold than other women. Also, some uteruses don’t have to work as hard to open up the cervix. Midwives should know this. Unless they are strictly hospital midwives that mostly see pitted and spinal-tapped women 9 times out of 10.

Based on…?

I almost got sent home from the hospital because their silly machine said I wasn’t having contractions at all. The nurse very apologetically told me that without the monitored contractions and no record of progress, they would send me home. I consented to a second VE, and the shocked nurse immediately admitted me. I had progressed from 4-7cm in under an hour. I was ready to push about an hour after that. ALWAYS trust mom over the silly maching, ALWAYS.

This was my submission and it was said to me during active labor when my contractions were slamming into one another with hardly a break in between due to baby’s posterior position. I was bouncing …on the birth ball with the EFM strapped to me and it kept slipping, so they couldn’t get a solid read on my contractions. So the medwife assumed that either they, or I, or both were weak. PS: I’m pregnant again, and we’re homebirthing this time.

Really? How about I hit you as hard as they are hurting. Then maybe you can have a little EMPATHY.

I always tell women that every contraction counts, even the weak ones. Even if they don’t feel like they’re doing anything.
A little positive encouragement goes a very long way. That midwife is an embarrassment to her profession.
OP, the woman should have listened to you. Good for you for realizing you deserve better and finding better care this time around!

You know, modern medicine is great, and modern technology is great. *If* and only if they augment a person’s reasoning, abilities, and thinking, never when it replaces them. Wish the machine happy labor attendants could remember that.

‘Cos the midwives know exactly what the mother is feeling, whilst obviously the mother can’t possibly, because she has no degree!

My experienced midwife watched me when she first came out to the house after I’d gone into labour. She said she thought I had a long way to go, but as I was high risk (VBA2C, high BP and high BMI) she would prefer to stick around. Not long after that she called the second midwife in incase of problems, and about 20 minutes after the second midwife turned up my baby was born. Later the midwife said she really hadn’t expected me to be that fast, as I seemed a little too calm and comfortable to be so far on. She also admitted she sees so many medicated births, where the mum usually begs for more meds closer to the delivery, that she’d forgotten how an unmedicated mum often appears in less pain and therefore harder to predict. She is very experienced (more than 25 years), and didn’t say anything in a nasty way or contradict me, and admitted she’d been wrong. I’d rather a midwife say I was hours off, and be proved wrong, than her say I’d be holding my baby in half an hour, and then 2 hours later still be in labour!

Those stupid monitors always make my contractions look tiny, and then confuse the poor midwives when they find the baby is crowning! I’m so glad they can’t monitor during home births!

I asked to go on the monitor (I’d been in hospital a few days with an irritable uterus and a positive FFN test at 34 weeks ) one morning because I thought things were happening. The monitor was the stillest I’d ever seen it but there was a tiny peak about 3 in 10. My midwife thought it looked too regular even if it wasn’t strong and spent half an hour with her fingers on my belly. I was in labour and never got a very good reading on the CTG.

This was the one thing that I appreciated about my OB. I went in for an appointment and she asked how I’d been feeling. I said my asthma had been getting bad the past 3 or 4 days, and she said I was in labor. She sent me down to the hospital and the nurse refused to believe I was in labor because the EFM wasn’t picking up contractions. She refused to even admit me but figured that the OB would be visiting soon so she didn’t force me to leave. The OB did an exam and I had dilated 3 cm in under an hour. She was mad at the nurse and explained that I was having a rare form of back labor which wouldn’t show on the EFM. They only hooked me back up when I was pushing, and even then, they didn’t see the contractions, just baby’s heart rate. Thanks to my OB, they actually believed I was having contractions, even though they couldn’t read them.

That’s a riot. I had the same thing from the L&D nurse at my birth. I had been throwing up and was feeling the urge to push, so I hit the call button. She got me out of the tub and checked me with the attitude of a much put-upon waitress getting a fifth order of free bread rolls for a table full of obnoxious drunks. (First and only time I hit the call button the entire night, btw.) And yes, I was having the baby. My (great) OB was still asleep down the hall, and had only enough notice to sprint into the room in time to do a baseball slide and catch.

I just reciently had a baby and I went in to labour but even though I was contracting I was not in pain at all … and my midwives were not really sure I was in labour although my water had broken… my contractions were regular for a while but when you are not feeling pain… (I had to pay attention to actually feel them)

this went on for 2 days when I ended up going to the hospital so they could put me on the machine to see just how hard my contractions were… I finally let the midwife do an exam and she was shocked I was at 5… and not in any form of pain.
I ended up on pitocin and I only started to feel pain when I was in transition….

It was rather fustrating to try to tell your care provider that yes you are in labour but you do not feel pain until you hit transition.

This is annoying because I thought everyone knew that CTG was RUBBISH at telling us anything about contractions. Get your hands on the mamma’s belly – way better than any machine!

I had a midwife say something similar to me during my last home birth. She told me I had hours and hours to go and I’d probably be best going to hospital if I was finding the pain so hard to deal with at this stage. I really started second guessing myself, I was weepy, frightened and very close to telling my husband I wanted to go to hospital. Luckily I had prepped him well beforehand that if I started saying I couldn’t cope or freaking out he should remind me that I was probably in transition. My daughter was born about half an hour later.