Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Dec
18
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Nothing Tastes As Good As Pushing For One Hour Less Feels!”
“Nothing tastes as good as pushing for one hour less feels!” – Midwife to mother who started out at a higher weight than normal. Midwife was suggesting that the mother was eating too much.
There are 37 comments to this post.
Does weight have ANYTHING to do with pushing?
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Kathryn Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 5:10 pm (Quote)
The only thing that I can come up with is that this midwife is implying that people who are overweight are not athletic (and yes, I do know that this is not necessarily true for several reasons). Pushing can be hard, physical work, therefore a non-athletic person might have a harder, longer pushing stage. So if you’re skinny pushing will be easy and fast because skinny equals healthy/athletic. I think it’s stupid, false, and mean, but that’s the only explanation I’ve come up with…
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Dreamy Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 5:48 pm (Quote)
I thought she may have been implying that fewer calories = smaller baby = less time pushing. Which is also BS…
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Goldilocks Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 6:16 am (Quote)
I think the midwife is referring to the concept of soft tissue dystocia, in which the presence of or pressure from excess soft tissue prevents/complicates a vaginal delivery.
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Sheva Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 8:08 am (Quote)
According to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1532117/
it has nothing to do with fat.
Oops.
And if excess weight from the abdomen is pressing into the birth canal, well then, that would be a lovely reason to get mom off her back.
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Yes, also, the fat in the vagina makes it virtually impos—-
Sorry, can’t do it with a straight face.
Position and letting mom eat and drink at will during labor will do more for her pushing ability than denying herself during pregnancy.
And then, if mom starves herself and still pushes for two hours, and is pissed at the midwife, then what? Sounds like the midwife is promising an easy 2nd stage. Never a good idea to promise something you can’t deliver. (‘Scuse the pun.)
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Jenny Islander had this to say,
Dec 18, 2012 @ 5:51 pm (Quote)
The only appropriate response to this kind of nitwittery is a loud and hearty laugh right in the face of the professional who proclaims in. Preferably before witnesses.
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Pretty disturbing that a nurse would use a pro-ana quote for a pregnant woman…
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road2vba2c Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 7:08 pm (Quote)
That’s what I thought… Isn’t it, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”? Sick.
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mharry Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 7:28 pm (Quote)
Ding ding ding! And anecdotal evidence time, when I had a bout of acid reflux mix with a stomach bug my weight dropped to 108lbs (I’m 5’5″). You know how it felt? Cold, and a lot like the grinding of a hard gym floor rubbing directly on your prominent spine.
And our chef buddy’s duck confit salad with candied almonds and port wine vinaigrette? It tastes a million and one times better than that skinny ever felt.
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TyMc Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 4:21 pm (Quote)
Yeah. I was a big member of the ana community before i became pregnant with my daughter (current pregnancy). I lost 55 lbs in 3 months, then found out i was pregnant, so i changed my eating to keep her safe. Then, at my first prenatal appointment the nurses talked about how fat i was going to get. I actually submitted a post about it a few months back.
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TyMc Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 4:24 pm (Quote)
http://myobsaidwhat.com/2012/10/13/shes-just-gonna-get-fat-again/ <– Here's the link
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Steph in Lex Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 5:49 pm (Quote)
Kate Moss (I believe she’s the one who said the original quote) has clearly never eaten my mom’s recipe for peanut butter fudge.
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Steph in Lex Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 5:50 pm (Quote)
Ugh, bad wording. Never eaten the peanut butter fudge for which my mom has the recipe.
Yes, I’m picky with my word choice…I kept having a vision of someone eating a 3″ x 5″ card with the recipe on it.
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I was 230 when I gave birth to my third baby, (gained 37 lbs with that pregnancy) and pushed her out in TWO PUSHES! Weight has nothing to do with pushing!
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Nica Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 6:58 am (Quote)
Yep, weighed over 200 lbs with each of my births. Pushed out my first, 9 lb 12 oz, after about an hour of pushing. My second, who weighed in at 10 lb, 3 oz, came out in 2.5 pushes (the .5 is one that I didn’t time to a contraction!). So, there, lady!
Hmmm, maybe all my FAT pushed the baby out. ha ha ha ha
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Now, having spent 4 hours pushing a baby out, I do fall on the side of nothing being quite as nice as shaving an hour or 3 off the pushing time. That said, I don’t think what I ate or how much weight I gained contributed to my son’s nuchal arm.
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Krista Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 8:53 pm (Quote)
Yes it did!! YOU created your baby’s fatty nuchal arm! YOU!!
*whew*
Sorry, I was channeling illogicality for a moment.
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Jane Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 4:43 am (Quote)
Maybe the baby was shielding his face from the onslaught of Twinkies and ice cream that all of us pregnant women would consume for every meal unless this midwife were here to save us all.
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Robyn Reply:
December 20th, 2012 at 9:35 pm (Quote)
For some reason, your comment made me think of *this* one. http://myobsaidwhat.com/2011/06/22/i-like-to-eat-ice-cream-for-dinner-too-but-i-dont-have-to-push-it-out-my-vagina-afterwards/
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Elizabeth S had this to say,
Dec 19, 2012 @ 12:20 pm (Quote)
I’m one of the ‘skinny’ ones too who couldn’t gain the recommended amount of weight. Baby #1 took 1.5 hours to push out, flat on my back. Baby #2 was 10 minutes of me insisting I was not going to push or have a baby, and them trying to convince me baby was coming either way. That one was 0 pushes with me on my side because I refused to stand up, get on my knees, or roll over. So obviously weight doesn’t matter. More the number of babies, and positioning.
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Steph in Lex had this to say,
Dec 19, 2012 @ 5:56 pm (Quote)
I, too, was threatened with not getting to attempt a VBAC if my prepregnancy BMI put me in the “obese” category. At 180, I was 30.0–the cutoff for obesity. They found another reason to not “allow” me to VBAC at that hospital and I ended up going to another.
When all was said and done, I gained 35 pounds and was 215 when I went into labor. I had my first big contraction at 8 am, checked into the hospital at 8:54, and gave birth, vaginally, no medication, to my daughter four hours later.
So much for my “fat vagina.” It’s really the boobs and the stomach that are the problem.
And again dispelling the myth that skinny = healthy: when I was 20 years old, I weighed probably 110 pounds. I was smoking a pack a day and eating about one meal a day, which came from where I was working–McDonald’s. As I type this, I am still hovering around 200 pounds, but I have been working out virtually since I was cleared after delivering my daughter. I began working out five and a half weeks ago and work out for at least 45 minutes every single day, and have only missed four days since I started working out again. So…I wonder during which phase in my life I would be considered healthier.
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Ugh. Big fat me (close to 300 by term) has VERY short pushing times. We’re talking under an hour, every time. The range is 15 min to 40 min.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, fat-phobic midwife. :/
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Add Your Comment.
The original of this line is one of the things that makes me fume. Because telling me that the only way to “Health ” is denial and starvation is going to inspire me.
Also… My fat body pushed out two babies… One in under 15 minutes, one in under a minute.
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Kristy Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 4:09 pm Kristy(Quote)
But just think… one less twinkie and you could have pushed for negative 59 minutes! Now that would have been something to see.
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Kali Reply:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:24 pm Kali(Quote)
literally lol. And I was 100lb pre-pregnancy and it took a long time of pushing for my first baby. I got gypped!
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xanthina Reply:
December 21st, 2012 at 8:33 am xanthina(Quote)
By that math… DD#2 would have been a 26 minute labor. O_o
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amber Reply:
March 2nd, 2013 at 9:53 am amber(Quote)
I read a story last week about a 27 minute labor. yeah.
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Jane Reply:
March 2nd, 2013 at 1:09 pm Jane(Quote)
My brother was born in less than half an hour, but the footnote is that the doctor induced my mom because she was at 6cm without any contractions at all, and she lived half an hour from the hospital.
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Bonita Reply:
December 18th, 2012 at 5:02 pm Bonita(Quote)
I always gain enough weight in my pregnancies to hit 200. I’m 5’7″ and usually start pregnancy at 150. So that is a full 50lbs (it freaks obs out) but my most recent baby was born with 6 hours of labor and TWO pushes. I didn’t watch what I ate at all and rarely excercised. This whole fat phobia people have about pregnant women is sickening. I’ve known women who only gained 10lbs in pregnancy and had a much rougher l&d than I did!
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