to want to slap the girl on 'one born every minute'?

[HoopsIsGettingMassive]

in the title really, she is really making a meal of it!!

Not even that, earthstar. Medical interventions that have made a significant difference to mortality rates haven't been around very long. Midwifery was only recongized as a proper part of medical training I think around 150 years ago? That's not long enough for the genetic factor to have any significant effect.

What is more to the point is that we walk upright, and we have huge huge heads in proportion to our bodies. Consequently, we give birth to our young far too early - given our life span, pregnancy should last much longer. So basically, back in pre-history, we'd already developed some of these things that make us 'human', and that did the damage: we're not well designed for childbirth.

Anyone who has lovely pain-free births is very fortunate and probably also very prepared, educated, well-cared for and so on - but if pain-free labour were such an easy, simple option, I think we'd have worked it out a few centuries ago instead of taking the lazy route and screaming, eh?

(Btw, earthstar, that last bit obviously wasn't aimed at you! And you know you don't die of shortsightedness, right? )

I was wondering about the short sightedness but if I lost my glasses at the park I'd have a hard time getting myself and my children all home safely!

How on earth do you die of short sightedness? Back in the day, were there lots of deaths due to not seeing the hulking great dinosaurs around?

If you rely on spearing prey for your food and you're short-sighted you're not going to be very successful!

Yes I meant to mention the developing world too Belgo.

Did anyone see the clip of the girl in Haiti being rushed to hospital by journalists for a c section? That would have been fatal for mother and baby had they not been there.

"not going to be less painful by screaming your head off"

Not sure about screaming but I read an article about swearing helping reduce pain.

Here

Littlereddragon I don't want to feel, if I get torn or cut or whatever, that alongside everything else, I have to pretend that if only I'd done it right, this wouldn't be painful and I wouldn't be getting cut about/worrying about my baby.

That's not what I'm saying at all and I'm sorry if that's how you read it.

Nothing to do with right or wrong and everything to do with not panicking, if you can keep clam it'll hurt less, you can calmly swear i'm sure.

Milly that was how I read it,glad it wasn't that way then.

IIRC though this lady had peth early oon didn't she?Like mewith my fist 3, in fact. Sor eally, once someone is drugged to the eyeballs anyay- and I was for sure, probably a good thing at times because really,some peopleweremaking some real messes of the delivery- by which I mean eclampsia, foetaldistress,no free anesthetist and bloods lost by lab so no idea if I had a serious complication called HELLP) they'renot entirely able to approach things from a rational angle are they?

I was made to birth well, hardly surprising- Nan ahd 16,other sides great nan 11. That lucky chance trick ofgoing from 5 - 10cm flat saved mt arse frankly, but equally froearlier births was unpredicatable- for MW's thinking we were on our way and unable to track down any medical help out as much as me. Later on, I was able to use that knowledge to help get through somevery realpain but first births,esp.when complicated, can be scary.

'But expat that is exactly the point i'm making if any of those things you describe are happening how would you know if you were too busy screaming the place down in the first twinges ?

The girl in this case came in howling like a banshee at 2cm's, she didn't listen to her body at all, made everything 10 times worse for herself.

My point is you may well have been in agony, I don't doubt that, but you needn't have been.'

Milly, you can't know that at all no matter if you're silent as a lamb or screaming how she was.

The only way you find it out is during delivery - that baby starts to develop problems and consultant comes in, has a look, a feel.

In my case, consultant got in with the forceps and we all heard her say, 'Oh, wee one, your wee hand shouldn't be up there!'

Until then, no one knew she was face up and positioned like that.

I needn't have been in agony? How? Please explain how I could have avoided the pain of a baby presented like that (my first)?

I listened to my body, and it told me it was in dire pain and so I begged begged and begged for relief.

So did Sam.

Her body, her reaction to pain.

We don't know, but that baby looked enormous. The baby could have been not a good match for Sam's pelvis size, malpresented, had cord round her neck and that is why she decelerated so much.

NOT because she had an epidural and shrieked.

Expat good post.

DS2 was presented badly; I was in a lot of pain early on, at 1-2 cm. the MWhelped me sjhift him with exercisesand all sorts of strange things and we werelucky and the pain reduced massively.

The pain therfore clearly was caused by the position because I did not change personality or (ahem) a mature frontal lobe halfway through the labour.

I didn't shrieklike a banshee becuase I was on award with other people, but Mwswerelooking confusedas I grabbed hold of dh for dearlife,and it was only when a vewry esxperienced MW indeed came in and tried something that they realised. I was given all the exercises to do and a timelimit for transfer for a CS, I made it with seconds to go. That was the MWs experience and my amazing dilation trick.

I never screamed the place down, either. But I begged and begged for an epi with my first and third, both of whom turned out to have presentation problems.

I screamed the most with DD2, a drug free delivery about 20 mins. after arrival at hospital.

With some births, the contractions don't stop. It's not a matter of 'that contraction is over and done with' because they are all on top of each other.

So there is no escape from the pain. And when you push, well, you feel like Tracey in the first week's episode having her 4th.

She didn't want to push.

I know why! Because she felt like her bowel was being pulled out with a fork, it wasn't relieving the pain, it was adding to it.

So her brain, her poor brain, was understandably reluctant.

If you break your arm, your brain's not going to send out a signal to go and whack it against the wall to make it feel better.

And to all you people who've never had a baby going on about how other people react to pain . . . best of luck!

Well that's the trouble with programmes like that, you have one list of possible causes and I can draw my conclusions that hyperventilating, no midwife giving one to one care and an epidural lead to that Csection, neither of us know what really happened on that day, to that woman.

My third child was OP and they wanted to get the foreceps out, I refused and out she came in her own good time, because I wasn't upset or drugged up to the eyeballs, wasn't in pain and the baby wasn't distressed I was able to give the baby longer to sort herself out.
Maybe that might have been the case for you too, we'll never know.
The point is enough of these dick measuring contests, my labour was worse than yours and slapping frightened young girls. What's the way forward, better care in labour. I don't think any of us would disagree on that ?

'Maybe that might have been the case for you too, we'll never know.'

you just said you weren't in pain and your baby wasn't in distress.

i just told you, again and again: a) i was in terrible pain b) my babies' heartrates were decelerating.

yet you're still implying if i hadn't been 'drugged to the eyeballs' things might have been different.

okay, who's got the problem with the frontal lobe now, folks?

and implying i was upset.

um, again, i already explained i was stoned on G&A and, in the case of the third, on morphine, too.

stoned and in pain, different from upset.

but keep on going! here's some more rope.

Look I accept you were in pain, what I don't accept is that it had to be that way - put it another way who's version of labour would you prefer your daughter to go through mine or yours ?

Instead of being all arsey about how horrific yours was why not make sure the same doesn't happen when your daughter is in labour ?

YOu see Mily I don't think that would ahve been me

Because I have those labours too you see,and know the diference

DS4 came in 35minutes on the carpet here, that was painful oh yes but it was a different sort of pain- a productive pain.

DS2 wasn't that, and it dragged on unproductively for 44 hours too, in which time I wasn't laid about, I went to the garden centre and walked formiles but nothing moved things on until the experienced MW stepped in. It was anot`her experience entirely to the last two deliveries. Which doesn't mean they didn't hurt- ow they did- but it was a qualittatively different hurt

'put it another way who's version of labour would you prefer your daughter to go through mine or yours ?

Instead of being all arsey about how horrific yours was why not make sure the same doesn't happen when your daughter is in labour ? '

So your version of mine, Sam's and anyone else's labour who didn't go like yours is the model by which we should all mold ourselves and I'm the one being 'arsey'?

Make sure the same doesn't happen to my daughter?

Let me whip out my magic wand! For all I know, either one of them will want an ELCS just because.

And I'll support them 100%. I have NO preference how they labour or if they have kids at all.

Because it's their body, their choice and how their labour goes or they react to pain, if they have it at all, is unique to them and deserves to be respected.

I'm glad Sam's mum calmed her so she could get her epi - you need to kind of have a grip for htat because you can't trash around.

But so she screamed and someone else didn't that makes that someone else a better labour, a better person?

[keeps paying it out . . . ]

'make sure the same doesn't happen'.....hmm. If only that were anywhere near approaching possible! None of us would have had awful traumatically painful labours cos our mums would have sorted it for us! If only!

Milly i dont ahve dd's but I dont think what happened to mewas preventable by anything I could have done

1-1 MW care may well have improved the experiencet but that was only achievable if you had ££'s

I misworded that, my apologies.

To paraphrase: if anyone's labour doesn't go how Milly's did, and they react to pain differently, it's not really the model they should strive for.

Yours is the best way, Milly. Of course!

We all bow to your goddess.

I haven't had straight forward perfect labour's, that's out of my control but my reaction to those conditions were in my control and that made the difference in my opinion.

Good luck to those due babies soon.
x

It really is comments like "make sure it doesn't happen for your daughter" and "you needn't have been in pain" that make me screamingly, burningly angry. If you had a labour without too much pain, I celebrate that, hooray. But to imply that you can somehow change what pain your body will experience....it is so utterly dismissive of the brutal and traumatising and unmanageable pain that some of us experience.

'Because it's their body, their choice and how their labour goes or they react to pain, if they have it at all, is unique to them and deserves to be respected.'

And that is w2hat it comes down to

None of us here have the right to judge Sam for her response at possibly the most vulnerable timein her whole life.

And frankly if you think you do, then you don't have the empathy to understand about the variations of experience anyway.

labour is not a test to be passed or failed,it just is. Every woman has her own store of memories (both physical and genral),personality,pain threshold, and base stress levels; dismissing anyone else imperfect experioence as them being less able than you is frankly lacking in empathy and rather more than slightly missing the idea that peopleand their births vary.

'my reactions were in my control' well that's clearly because you were not in umanageable pain. I think we need to do each other the simple courtesy of accepting that some people's pain is worse than others. It is a spectrum, from the Giseles of this world who feel no pain, to those who experience a level of pain and trauma which needs specialist post traumatic stress counselling afterward. Why is that so hard to accept and why is it some people have to express this feeling that if only people 'acted' a certain way they wouldn't have felt so much pain? It's truly bizarre.