Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Nov
30
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“You Can Either Push Or Stay Pregnant Forever.”
“You can either push or stay pregnant forever.” – L&D nurse to mother who was finding it difficult to push to the count of 10 as she was being instructed.
There are 32 comments to this post.
UGH! I HATE the directed pushing! It doesn’t allow for proper breathing for mom, thus giving baby less oxygen. Not to mention, it puts alot of stress on mom. And I agree with Amber. I never pushed this last baby out. My body did the pushing and I’m amazed that my body did it in 3 pushes.
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Partlysbabe had this to say,
Nov 30, 2011 @ 11:21 am (Quote)
When I was having baby Number 4 I thought that he was going to be my last and id never had an Epidural so I got one.. unfortunalty it worked too well i didnt feel anything at all from the waist down 10 minutes later I felt him coming… with nothing at all from me he was just slipping out.. yep your uterus will do it all by itself.. somtimes it just feel good to push… but NOT purple pushing!!
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first time mommy had this to say,
Nov 30, 2011 @ 11:31 am (Quote)
hmm i think i’ll stay pregnant forever. then i’ll make into the guiness book of world records and get my 15 minutes of fame.
oh I’m sorry that sounds totally ridiculous? So does what you’re telling me to do!
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Let’s see. The birth with the nurses yelling “push! push!” and counting at me (while I told them to shut up, because I didn’t want to purple push, while still doing what they told me because they kept bullying me), I had a cesarean. The next birth, I didn’t push and had a VBAC in 20 minutes from the first urge. My third? From the first involuntary push to birth, it was about 11 minutes.
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Is that an option?
With my first the nurse got upset because I was pushing in between her counting spells. She wanted me to only push when she counted. Good thing my mom (who had 7 natural births) whispered to me to ignore the nurse and just push.
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My last 2 babies pretty much came out on their own with hardly any pushing. The third daughter actually sort of popped out like a cork! My midwife actually called one of the nurses over and said, “Watch this…pretty cool, huh?” We were all on excellent terms and I didn’t mind at all. In fact, the whole staff wanted to take my room because we were so laid back and cracking jokes all the way thru the whole labor and delivery. I loved my midwives, but I’m very lucky to have a local hospital that is mama and baby friendly.
My point, of course, being that babies come out no matter what. Pregnant women in comas give birth for crying out loud….
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If the nurse said this to me I woulda laughed so hard the baby woulda flew out of me! What a stupid thing to say. I had a nurse try counting at me while I was birthing my second child. I totally ignored her counting and her eye rolls when I didn’t push for ten seconds / push when she counted. A person would have to be a world class athlete to push for a full ten seconds imo. I am an athlete and I have great spirometry and there is no way in hell I could do it. I always just pushed when I felt like I needed to and that is what I will always do.
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I never “pushed” while I was giving birth at home, and look… I’m not pregnant anymore! I don’t think I would have been able to tolerate someone shouting in my face during such an intense time.
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Even my wonderful L&D staff tried to rush me through the pushing stage. “You’re almost DONE!” Yes, I was excited to meet my baby, and yes, I wanted labor to be over, but is it really that important to be “DONE!” a few seconds sooner? I would rather have relaxed and let my body do what it was doing than be OMG DONE a little sooner. She didn’t count, but I would push once during the peak of each contraction, groaning, and then try to rest until the next one, and this one nurse was like, “Another push before this contraction is over!” Once she said, “You need to focus!” I said, “I need a break,” and my husband backed me up: “She’s been doing this all day.” She said, “Let’s get it over with, then!” I didn’t think it was the horrible ordeal she seemed to.
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Errgh! I hate purple pushing. Or instead of being pregnant forever you could let her breathe. Makes pushing a lot easier.
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Jane Reply:
November 30th, 2011 at 5:33 pm (Quote)
The nurses got mad when I’d let out my breath as I pushed. Apparently that’s ineffective.
Now if you look at karate, when they strike, they let out their air. When you look at weight-lifting, when they lift, they let out their air. When you look at tennis players, when they swing, they let out their air.
But really, what do world-class athletes know about the human body?
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This one makes me so angry! I really hate “purple pushing.” It’s stupid and even dangerous! Why 10 seconds? Who decided that 10 was the magical number?
Okay, I’m going to shut up now. This is a bad subject and if I start yapping about it, I’ll never stop.
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Knitted in the Womb Reply:
December 1st, 2011 at 11:11 pm (Quote)
Its all because a “base 10″ system makes the most sense, so we’ve adopted the metric system of course…
Oh, wait…we haven’t adopted the metric system. Hmmm….
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Thencamehenry had this to say,
Nov 30, 2011 @ 8:39 pm (Quote)
This is mine. This was my first baby, a natural birth in the hospital. I was exhausted after 20 hours of labor, vomiting multiple times, very little food and water. I think I made it to the count of 6 once but sure enough that baby came out. I don’t know the exact time, but I estimate ~30 minutes of pushing.
The nurse who said this was the extra one who came in for the delivery, not the one who had been with me all night. She made this comment just as I was starting to push, so it was not based on her observing me pushing ineffectively. I’m not sure if it was ignorance about the mechanics of childbirth or poor understanding of how to communicate with a woman in labor, but either way I found it pretty funny.
Upon later reflection I realized that she is probably just not used to a woman who can feel exactly what’s going on. I imagine 95% of the mothers at that hospital have an epidural. I felt like I was swimming upstream by attempting an unmedicated birth in the hospital. Many staff just aren’t that experienced with the natural course of labor, and even my other (awesome) nurse had to deal with hospital policies that contradicted my fairly mainstream wishes. I am very fortunate to live in a city with many safe alternatives to hospital delivery, and I just had my second child at a freestanding birth center 10 days ago. It was a much more pleasant experience.
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Jane Reply:
December 2nd, 2011 at 4:41 am (Quote)
She’d never even met you before that moment and decided to insult you? Because that’s a bullying tactic: you could either do what she said or else you’d suffer and your baby would suffer.
Whatever her reasoning, it was just a wrong thing to say.
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Just for the record, they count much slower than real seconds. I’ve timed them – some ‘ten-counts’ get close to 20 seconds. I just tell my clients to ignore them.
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Jane Reply:
December 2nd, 2011 at 4:39 am (Quote)
The inevitable outcome of this counted pushing system is to defeat the woman.
1) tell a woman to push when she doesn’t feel the urge, so it’s ineffective
2) Tell her to push in a way that’s nearly impossible for any woman to push, therefore when the ineffective pushing doesn’t produce a baby (because her body isn’t ready to push yet) the woman will feel defeated
3) If she does push as the nurse directs, her pushes will tire her out so that she’s not very effective anyhow, and then when pushing doesn’t produce a baby, she’ll feel defeated
It’s a whole nefarious structure set atop the horrible birthday cake which doesn’t even need to be there. 
It gives the nurses something to do and makes the woman feel like her body is broken and defective, either because she can’t do what they’re telling her to do or because she does and it doesn’t work anyhow.
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Actually, a woman’s uterus can do all the pushing on its own, no help from mama. Thanks for making her feel inadequate and like she’s not doing it ‘right’. Whatever happened to mother-directed pushing, anyway??
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