Notice he didn’t say those babies were born via VBAC. Just that he doesn’t want ro deliver a dead baby (well duh, no one does!) So if baby dies spontaneously, will he quit to avoid delivering another dead baby? ‘ cause that’s the only way to make sure…

Well, then, you should be fine with a VBAC. Or do you ONLY do cesareans for EVERYONE? Or are you just utterly ignorant to statistics?

Honestly, I get what you’re saying. That’s why I can’t be a midwife. I could not handle when things went wrong. So I’ll give you the advice I took: If you can’t handle bad things happening, DON’T BE A DOCTOR (it’s why I decided I couldn’t be a veterinarian, as a kid, too).

I kind of got a similar rhetoric when switching physicians after having a successful VBAC. ACtually, both practices used this tactic to dissuade me and after they couldn’t “remember” the circumstances, I honestly began to wonder if they were talking about the same two people, and if they were even their patients. Perhaps it was merely shop talk about someone else who had two ruptures, and these guys heard about it. Word gets around, I’m sure, and if you can’t even remember the specifics (I asked if the patients were induced with Pitocin) then perhaps your memory is a little fuzzier than it should be.

As if a C/S = no chance of a dead baby. Way to pull the Dead Baby Card, you worthless medical “professional.” ARGGH

Ok, then. I’d prefer to have a more experienced doctor since you appear to have been doing this for such a short time. Thank you very much.

So… You’re not going to deliver babies anymore? That’s the only way.

The March of Dimes says stillbirths happen in 1 in 160 pregnancies. I believe one of my infant loss books said 1 in 99, although that might be all neonatal loss, not just stillbirths. If those statistics are correct, then this doctor can’t have been in practice more than three years (if this doctor delivers one baby every week.)

This doctor is equating control over the birth with “no bad feelings if something goes wrong.”

Unless both those babies had died in the past week, I think this doctor needs to talk to a mentor or a counselor to resolve the feelings about the previous stillbirths so s/he can provide evidence-based medical care rather than fear-based medical care. The death of a baby is a tragedy, and I’m not advocating recklessness, but this doctor has connected two dots that shouldn’t be connected.

I would want to hear the exact conditions of the two previous dead babies. This mother has already had one succesful VBAC. There is absolutely no reason for this OB to be dumping his own emotional baggage on her. He needs to go over this with a shrink. This is his problem not hers. We don’t do c-sections for doctor comfort!

So that means you DO want to attend my VBAC, because the risk of infant death with a vaginal birth is less than a with cesarian, right?

Jane’s note about the statistics of stillbirths puts this in better context for me. But regardless, if the doctor is so traumatized by these events – and I can readily believe it – then he or she needs to step back and seek counseling or process the feelings in whatever manner.

You shouldn’t be attending childbirth if you’re so frightened of it that you can’t provide the best care, and ruling out VBAC in order to protect *your* feelings is not acceptable professionally or ethically.

For once this one doesn’t make me angry at the doctor – I can easily imagine the trauma – but doctors need to be able to handle their emotional reactions to death without it adversely affecting their care. If they can’t do that, they need to be in the lab, not the clinic.

Well, I can understand not wanting to catch another dead baby. (And let’s get it right because it’s the Mom doing the delivering, not the doctor!) But I’m failing to see the connection here. What, is it because a VBAC was being planned? Have you read statistics, doctor? Do you have an ounce of common sense?

Nobody *wants* to, but it’s a solid fact in birth that sometimes babies die… whether you hire a midwife, OB, or UC… it happens- and you have to be ready to deal with that, doc- or you’re in the wrong field. OP, I hope you found a provider who took care of you properly.

It’s not fair to carry emotional baggage from completely unrelated incidents and dump them on this birth. If he’s so concerned with the birth outcome he wouldn’t push for major surgery which leaves both mom and baby more prone to things like respiratory distress and infection… and death.

My doc told me this, but not due to a VBAC, but cause I ended up being on insulin and he said that if I didn’t induce, placenta would crap out and baby would die. I understand his theory and he actually listened to me, so instead of being induced at 38 weeks, I got him to go to 40 =) Next time, it’ll be longer LOL

my sister went for a VBAC with midwives and they told her that after having one successful VBAC they consider it as if you never had a CS so next time she can have the homebirth she wanted with the first….

Great! Then you’ll go with the stats and respect my autonomy all at the same time by going with my VBAC plan?

The doc here seems to think that if s/he simply performs the right percentage of c-sections, s/he won’t ever have to see another stillbirth. This is a dangerously misplaced sense of control.

Stillbirths are a tragedy, but there is no 100% guaranteed way to prevent them. Babies do occasionally die. If you cannot accept the risk of attending another stillbirth, then perhaps you should practice strictly GYN care? You will still occasionally lose a patient, however, because you can’t control the universe.

If you NEVER wanted patients dying on you, why did you become a doctor?

The first midwife I consulted with for my VBAC basically told me the same thing on behalf of the doctor backing her. He wouldn’t allow VBACs in his practice because he had only done two, and on of them had ruptured. No word on whether the rupture was catastrophic.

Practice evidence based medicine much?

http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/569918