I will say, having been an L&D nurse that LOVES squat bars for four years, they are a pain the butt to get hooked on the bed! Our unit had two models of labor beds (as one broke and was replaced, its replacement was sometimes a newer model), and more beds than squat bars. This means that you had to find a squat bar AND make sure it was the right one for the bed. If I ever said that quote, it was because I grabbed the wrong bar, it wasn’t because I didn’t like using the bars or support upright positions.

The nurse attending my first hospital birth didn’t even know they existed until my midwife pulled it up =D She was more like, “is THAT what that thing is for?”

Yeah, with the usual caveat that since it was submitted, someone must have found this offensive, this one doesn’t bug me too much. At least the nurse was trying to help, and since so many women opt for epidurals these days, the squat bars may just not be in very high demand. At least she didn’t do what we see so commonly on this site: turn her lack of expertise back on the mama. That is, she didn’t say something like, “Ugh, this is too hard! Why are you being so difficult, anyway? You don’t need bar! If you’d agree to the epidural, you wouldn’t be causing such problems!” etc.

I used the nurse as my squat bar during my second birth. She didn’t seem to mind, although she was startled.

(She was trying to guide me onto my back, and I grabbed her shoulder and my husband’s shoulder, wrenched myself up into a squat, and just stayed that way. She said, “Um….that will work too…” LOL!)

During the prenatal class/ hospital tour, someone asked about the squat bar and was told, “oh we don’t have that attachment, noone uses them anyway!”. I guess I should have run at that point!

Sounds like a genuine question to me. How are they supposed to know if they don’t ask? I’d imagine that they aren’t used that often. I’d rather they ask and figure it out than come up with some lame lie as to why they can’t be used (I was told I couldn’t squat because it would “blow everything out and everything down there.”) Guess I don’t see why this one is bad at all (shrug)

This one is mine again. I had a great FP and he saw that I was changing positions. He asked the 2 nurses in the room to get the squatting bar. They just stood there for about 2 contractions, probably because they didn’t know where it was. I finally asked for it again. It almost seemed like a comedic skit. First, they didn’t know where it was and they were fumbling around looking in closets. When they found it they put it on backwards and then said this. It was kind of sad. I am glad to know that at least 2 nurses know where the bar is and how to attach it now.

Never heard of a squat bar. Didn’t know you couldn’t squat without one…

In all fairness, this one doesn’t seem too bad to me. Given how rare an unmedicated birth is in the hospital, those nurses might not have ever even seen a squat bar before! At least they asked how it worked, rather than just poo-pooing the need for it.

But that is only what I am getting from the short version of the story. If it was submitted here, it obviously bothered someone. I’m sorry for that, OP.

This isn’t all that bad.
But that’s sad that the bar is used so little that she doesn’t even know what it is.

At the last birth I attended as a doula I asked the nurse where their birthing balls were. They had to look.for over an hour and came back with a sad deflated thing. On my to do list below buy a birthing ball is learn the basic mechanics if a squatting bar.

Ok, that’s just sad. It sounds like they don’t use it often enough at that hospital…