Oh, so close, doc, but I’m afraid you don’t qualify for Thoughtful Thursday. If you had just left out the “and suffer longer” you might have been acceptable…

Okay let me review this one. Remaining pregnant is suffering, but pitocin is a breeze. Yeah right, you FAIL. I’m good at going past 41 weeks just keep the salty chips out of my house and I will do just fine! Being induced sucks. First off that means you get to spend the entire labor at the hospital hooked up – gag me with a spoon. And then there is the fact that Pitocin makes labor worse. So take that and shove it. For the record I’ve never been purposely induced, but I did have my water break and went to the hospital immediately which worked out pretty much the same way. Not something I would volunteer for or do that way again.

If by ‘suffer longer’ you mean reduce my risk of all kinds of other interventions and their possible complications AND reduce my baby’s risk of needing a NICU stay due to being forced out before he’s ready, that’s exactly what I want.

While you may say suffer, I would prefer to say uncomfortable. Being 36 weeks pregnant now, I am uncomfortable. I have hit that stage where I am just uncomfortable, but I am not suffering by any means.

We got one like this from the ‘good’ ped in town that ‘allows’ you to slow down vaccinations to a couple a month instead of doing the big five or six drug cocktails every two months. “If you want to stick him more often and let him suffer more that’s fine with me.” Yep… that’s why we are doing this. Hurt him as much as possible.

Ooh, let’s break it down!

“If you want to refuse an induction and suffer longer, it’s up to you.”

Technique one: shifting the burden to the mother by implying an induction is the natural state of affairs, which she has to actively “refuse.” Creates the illusion of an uphill climb.

Technique One-A: the “if you want to” implies that it’s the mother’s whim rather than a necessity. It makes the mother seem frivolous.

Technique two: “suffer longer” implies that the mother is already suffering, especially if the doctor started the appointment by asking her about physical discomforts, and then puts the mother into the position of either saying her previous statements were lies/exaggeration or conceding that she’s suffering.

Also implies the suffering is pointless.

Technique three: “it’s up to you” again puts the burden back on the mother but this time implies denial of sympathy or support from the doctor. This is designed to leave the mother feeling alone and defenseless.

The combination of this all is designed to get the mother to give in to the doctor in order to prove she’s not a creature of whimsy and she wasn’t just complaining about nothing.

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Do some doctors really consider themselves heroes when they spare a woman from ordinary discomforts?

And then when we say, “No, that’s fine, I’ll {remain pregnant}{deal with the contractions}{tear rather than have an episiotomy}” do we somehow call into question their very reason to be? I don’t see any other reason for doctors to hit below the belt on the induction issue as often as we hear about on this site.

pit is absolute hell!! if you dont absolutely have to have it for real health reasons dont get it! i had pit with my second and i hope never again. one minute contractions coming every minute or two that were 1000 times worse than my natural labor.

By 36 weeks with my 4th I WAS miserable, and suffering with excruciating back and hip pain. I hadn’t been able to lay down to sleep in 6 weeks.

There was no comfortable position whether sitting, sleeping or standing.

BUT, you know what? I persevered on and went into labor (almost 32 hours) on my own, and had my baby at home.

It’s MY pregnancy, MY baby and I’ll do whatever it is I have to do, and endure whatever I have to endure to get her here on HER time frame, not mine.

For some women, it is suffering. For most, it’s discomfort.

But all that aside, even if I’m actually suffering, IF the state I’m in is at all tolerable for some period of time, I’d rather suffer something that will not cause any permanent damage and which has an endpoint than suffer something that could have serious long-term consequences for both me AND my child. Not to mention which usually (usually) causes greater suffering during its administration than the suffering I am already experiencing.

It’s like at the end of my last marathon. I knew I was going to finish, and I was not-surprisingly in a fair bit of pain, but I also recognized it as lactic acid pain/fatigue and not an injury. I wouldn’t say I was “suffering,” as I had chosen the situation, had worked through worse, knew I wasn’t permanently harming myself and was in no imminent danger. Because the weather was bad (among other extenuating circumstances), I knew I wasn’t going to finish with the time I wanted. I had gotten sick or hurt (but still finished) my other two marathons, so I decided I was happy enough to finish without feeling like total h3ll (I guess it’s relative, LOL) and I made a conscious choice to slow down. I knew if I slowed down, I’d still set a personal record, I’d actually somewhat enjoy the rest of the race, and I wouldn’t likely be risking injury.

If someone had come to me then, at mile 19, and told me I could finish much faster if I went out as hard as I could possibly go– you know, to get my “suffering” over with (and sure, I was in some pain, and extremely tired)… I would have told them to bite me. Why would I trade another 100 minutes of pain and discomfort (yet with some enjoyment, and being 99% certain I’d finish without injury) for 85 minutes of sheer torture and a MUCH greater chance of getting ill or injured? For what? 15 minutes off my time? I was hardly going to qualify for the Olympic trials anyway.

I remember saying to my mom, when I was much younger, that at least her pitocin-induced labor with my brother (9 hours) was shorter than her natural labor with me (12 hours). She looked at me like I was an idiot, LOL.

High-handed condescension aside, this neatly encapulates an unexamined assumption underlying much of U.S. obstetrical practice: Pregnancy and labor are bad (if not bad now, then perpetually about to go bad) and anything the doctor does to force pregnancy and labor into acceptable guidelines is good, because at its heart the doctor’s attendance at a labor is an act of rescue. Therefore, the side effects of pitocin use in a shared mother-fetus system that has not ripened sufficiently for labor to begin are not worth mentioning. The doctor delivers the baby, who is not permanently impaired and therefore healthy–never mind the probable stay in the NICU or the additional interventions that will most likely be needed to get the baby out at all because labor wasn’t supposed to start yet. And the pain of artificially induced labor is nothing compare to the suffering of not being delivered of the bad thing, the pregnancy. Anyway there are drugs for that.

Here’s a labor and pre-labor maneuver that all OBs should learn: Put your hands behind you, then sit down firmly but gently on a chair.

I went to 42 weeks with my first and 41 and a half with my second, and I got a little tired of all the remarks made with pity toward me! “You’re still pregnant? Oh, are you doing okay?” “Your doctors are letting you go this long?” “Aren’t you going to be induced??” Like being pregnant is some terrible thing that women have to go through to get the baby at the end. I have to say, I was perfectly comfortable all the way to the end, which I realize not everyone experiences. I still think you shouldn’t pity a pregnant woman, but applaud her strength even when extremely uncomfortable. Mothering starts before they’re even born!

The longest and worst suffering I endured was when they started to induce me…

I disagree with any doc trying to push induction on a mother who doesn’t need it and I will say being induced turned my pain free early contractions into immediate pain, but I, in general, had the opposite experience to most people. My labour I’d do again without an issues, despite pictocin (and I refused to have an epidural). Infact, my labour was no where near as bad as I expected. From the beginning of the process to my waters breaking I was moving around and not on monitors. It was only after my waters broke and I needed gas and air that I was bed-bound.