A Message to Pregnant Ladies, Part I

I'm in rare form today, I know. Three posts?! When I should be studying for my first Physiology midterm that is tonight?! Priorities might be a bit skewed, but I've been meaning to get this post written for a while and I finally remembered to do it today.

So, while I was pregnant, I was hellbent on having a 100% all-natural birth. If Jake and I didn't live in an apartment, I probably would have tried to have a home birth with a midwife (Jake probably would have protested). I wanted to have my birth exactly how I wanted: no drugs (or pressure to have drugs), no c-section (or pressure to have a c-section), food and drink if I wanted, no IV even for saline, permission to walk around as much as I wanted, and the ability to labor how I damn well felt like laboring. I had read all these books and websites that painted a picture of obstetrics and L&D medicine like this:

The doctors will pressure you to do this or that, and the nurses will belittle you and be total bitches, they'll try to sneak an epidural into your spine or Pitocin into your IV, blah blah blah.

I'm normally a very non-confrontational person. I'll think wicked thoughts but I won't say anything to someone who pisses me off. Usually. But this whole birthing thing was a different story. I was ready to go to the hospital in all my angry-pregnant-laboring-totalbitch glory and lay down the law in my L&D suite like I was the dictator of Labor Land.

Also, I was ready to hand out my birth plan with cookies so the attending nurses and OBs might actually read them (because I had been assured by anti-medical websites that they would take my birth plan and drop it in the toilet and take a big dumpie on it).

When I actually began childbirth (not the hard part yet, the early easy stages) and I went to the hospital (Sunday morning), I was greeted with an awesome nurse whose first question was, "OK, how do you want to do this?"

When I said I wanted to do it naturally and could she please fetch me a birthing ball, she said, "No epidural? Awesome! You can do it!" And she promptly got me a birthing ball (which wasn't as awesome as I had been led to believe).

That nurse was with me until the end of her shift several hours later, and every time she came in to check on me (about once an hour, since I wasn't hooked up to the constant fetal monitoring), she offered encouragement for me to continue the natural path I was on. It wasn't hard at this point, because the pain was at a 3, maybe 4. It was still a breeze.

The nurse that took over after First Awesome Nurse left wasn't as awesome but was still pretty cool.

The entire time I was there, no one pressured me to do anything. I stopped progressing after about 5cm and the attending OB mentioned Pitocin, and I declined. She said "OK" and that was that.

There was no talk of a c-section. After I said no to the Pitocin, they didn't ask me about it again. No one pushed the epidural on me. In the thick of hard labor, when I could do little more than scream and try to break Jake's hand, one of the nurses asked if I wanted [some kinda medicine] to help take the edge off of the pain. I was lucid enough to ask what it was, and she told me but I don't remember the name. I asked it it was like an epidural, and she said no, and I said, "GIVE IT TO ME."

I don't know what it was, but they may as well have given me a baby aspirin. It did NUFFINK.

So if you're pregnant and have been told by all kinds of books and websites that doctors and hospitals are evil and they'll try to do all kinds of shit you don't want done, I'm here to tell you that's totally untrue.

When you're going to school for nursing (even something as lowly as a CNA, which I am, by the way) there is a huuuuuuuge emphasis on patients' rights. CNA training seemed to me to be aimed mostly at caring for people in a nursing home, and you are constantly reminded that they will decline medication and care and food, even against their doctor's wishes. It's their right to decline whatever they want to decline, even if what they're declining is keeping them alive.

It's the same in a hospital. If they want to give you Pitocin and you say no and they give it to you anyway, you can sue the bejesus out of them. You could decline an emergency c-section, too, and they wouldn't be allowed to wheel you kicking and screaming into the operating room. They'd probably have you sign a liability release that absolves them from responsibility if you and/or your baby die, though.

Doctors make decisions based on the favorability of the outcome. They'll choose the less-risky option if it means a better survival rate, even if that's not what you want. They're looking out for their best interests by looking out for your best interests. Even if a doctor is evil and doesn't care about human life (as some of these books and websites would have you believe), they'll still try their best to keep you alive because if you die, that doctor is going to be up to his ears in malpractice lawsuits. It's not their fault; it's the fault of the lawsuit-happy assclowns that sue people for breathing too hard. Doctors have a lot of medical school loans to pay off, and if they get sued every week, they're going to have a hard time surviving.

My advice to soon-to-be moms is this: be straightforward with your OB. Know what you want and don't want, and tell him or her. Hope for the best but plan for the worst. If your baby is in distress, are you willing to risk a vaginal birth, or are you OK with deviating from your plan and having a c-section? Prepare for an unmedicated birth, because the epidural doesn't always work. Be in control, and make sure your partner knows what you want so they can advocate for you. Be respectful to the nurses and doctors, but don't let anyone walk all over you.

It's your birth, so have it your way! But even if you can't have it exactly how you want, remember that the only criteria for a successful birth is to have yourself a healthy baby at the end of it. How you get there isn't all that important in the end.