Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Nov
28
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“How In The World Are You Going To Handle Labor?”
“How in the world are you going to handle labor?” -OB nurse to mother after the mother asked to lay down during her blood draw due to her fear of needles.
There are 31 comments to this post.
This was said to me too. I was 19ish weeks with my first at 17 yrs old. Went to the ER and they wanted blood, I completely freaked out crying and everything, Im terrified of needles. Asshole doctor told me ‘You should have thought about that before you got pregnant!’
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I don’t get what one has to do with the other. Needles are not meant to occur during birth. Painful VEs are not meant to occur during birth. IVs are not meant to occur during birth. And they are DIFFERENT kinds of uncomfortable, both physically and psychologically. So why when we express any kind of fear or pain would you assume that we are not “tough” enough for natural labor?
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Jenny Islander had this to say,
Nov 28, 2011 @ 9:00 pm (Quote)
Since when does labor automatically involve needles?
Before my first pregnancy, I had a fear of needles so severe that I had to take a Xanax to get a blood draw. But somehow, that fear did not affect my ability to cope with two precipitous labors (zero to transition in about the length of a feature film, barfing all the way) or one lengthier labor that ended in a Nantucket sleighride of purple pushing as my son suffered frightening decels due to the cord being wrapped around his broad shoulders. Maybe it was because I was under the care of a birth attendant who did not preemptively declare me broken and try to direct my labor with IV drugs.
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I am terrified of needles. I’ve gotten gradually better over the years, but I still request a butterfly needle for blood draws. They freak me out BIG TIME.
But the last birth I attended, I watched the mom tear. No problem. I looked away when I saw the midwife go for the episiotomy scissors after the tear, looked back a second later, and I was fine. But needles and scissors… dfkjbckvkdjfxvkjdfhk Cause for involuntary keysmashing horror.
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Joanna Reply:
November 29th, 2011 at 8:39 am (Quote)
What’s a butterfly needle? And is it less scary than a regular needle?
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SculptorAlison Reply:
November 29th, 2011 at 10:57 am (Quote)
Why was she cutting her after she’d already torn?
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Mama Wrench had this to say,
Nov 29, 2011 @ 3:51 am (Quote)
I’ve always been VERY anxious about needles. It wasn’t till earlier in this pregnancy that I actutally had a blood-draw that was completely painless and fast. Then I realized I don’t hate needles… I just hate incompetent nurses/phlebotomists who don’t know how to draw blood or run an IV without digging around like they’re looking for the spare nickle in their pockets at the snack machine.
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A horrible thing for a nurse to say but I do admit to wondering how a person can endure hours of painful contraction but be afraid of a quick needle prick. Not a judgement just hard for me to understand as someone who doesn’t have a fear of needles.
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Nicci P Reply:
November 29th, 2011 at 6:14 am (Quote)
Not sure if everybody is the same but for me, its not the pain of the needle at all. It’s… hard to explain… its more to do with the actual process of a small tube being in your vein and your blood going through the tube, even thinking about it makes me feel sick and makes me cross my arms around each other protectively. Also the fact that somebody else is doing it *to* me. I remember being about 13 and needing a blood test and asking if they could just give me a scalpel and a pot to bleed in (obviously they said no) because I’d rather do it that way, still would really.
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Melissa C Reply:
November 29th, 2011 at 9:18 am (Quote)
Google trypanophobia or blood-injection-injury phobia. It’s not the pain that makes me freak and then faint. It’s the needle and the process and my irrational fear. I birthed at home–pain is not what I’m afraid of. It helps that my midwife is a good stick and that I feel very safe with her.
Another trick I’ve used with success is to cough when I start to feel faint–that can raise my blood pressure enough. That helped me me go from fainting when walking by a blood drive to being able to give blood (once anyway).
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Kit Reply:
November 29th, 2011 at 11:49 am (Quote)
For me its the very thought of my body being invaded by the metal. Its not very rational but it freaks me out.
Plus I have involuntary twitches and i have a fear of my arm getting ripped open if I twitch and the needle comes through my skin. I do better if i can distract myself… but for some reason the last person to do my bloody draw insisted I take out my ear buds so i could hear her “count down” to the poke.
It was awful.
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Mama Wrench Reply:
November 29th, 2011 at 12:27 pm (Quote)
This.
I’ve had some pretty gruesome injuries, including taking off most of the skin on my knee in a bike accident; I can stomach the sight of my own blood. I think it’s the thought of it being “drawn out” of me rather than coming out from a cut.
Also I ALWAYS request that they not count down. I hate it. Just let me read my book or look away and try to ignore what’s going on.
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Heather P Reply:
November 29th, 2011 at 7:02 pm (Quote)
For me its a PTSD thing. A vaccine doesn’t bother me. Neither does a finger prick. Its not the sight of blood and its not the pain.
Its a trigger moment for me that brings back a traumatic incidence for me. I can’t even type it out what happened without crying for hours. Getting blood drawn makes me completely panic and I got into fight or flight mode.
I’ve had two natural labors. One of which was at home because during the first one they were very pushy about me having a hep-lock. They put it in two fricken pushes before my baby was born because the OB didn’t know what to do without one. 
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Hmm. Well, from a medical standpoint, I can see how people would think that women couldn’t handle labor if they are afraid of needles. They *have* to get an IV, for starters. That’s a needle. They *have* to have their blood drawn upon admittance, there’s another one. They *have* to get a shot of Pitocin in their thigh when the baby crowns. Needle #3. They have a an 80% chance of *needing* an epidural. And even if they don’t want an epidural, they might need a spinal block to have a C-section 32% of the time. Needle #4.
So. If this is what you believe birth is like, how could a woman who is that afraid of needles POSSIBLY have a baby? Labor is full of needles!
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I had a nurse jokingly say this to me shortly before I got pregnant. I was trying to not pass out during a blood draw. The great irony is that I had low progesterone levels that never went up and ended up needing progesterone shots until week 36. I hated every injection and had to lay down for the shot, but we do what we have to do for our children.
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Jena had this to say,
Nov 29, 2011 @ 11:25 am (Quote)
Replying to SculptorAlison (on my phone): The baby was still stuck. She tore, was cut, and had to receive super… Crud, I’m forgetting the term. One of the nurses had to basically jump up on the bed and push on her stomach to send the baby under the pubus. It was a very dramatic birth. Everyone is healthy and happy, though Mom got stitched a little too tight (not a husband stitch, I don’t think; things really came extensively undone and required a LOT of repair) so she’s now working on breaking down the scar tissue so they can even think about trying for a second.
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jaed Reply:
November 30th, 2011 at 8:02 pm (Quote)
She was cut and then repairs were done so badly that she can’t have children (or can’t have sex – I am not clear from your wording) until additional procedures are done to remove the excess scar tissue?
That doesn’t sound like “happy and healthy” to me. It sounds like she had lasting and serious medical issues from the birth.
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Karolyn Mac had this to say,
Nov 29, 2011 @ 11:46 am (Quote)
Let me tell you what I’m going to do, lady. I’m going to go into labor and ROCK IT, that’s how I’m going to handle it.
Cripes.
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And what, exactly, do needles have to do with labor?
I only had one anywhere close to me and that was to put in a heplock. To be honest, it didn’t even phase me because I was concentrating on other, more important things at the time.
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