One Born Every Minute The Truth

[midwifeVH]

midwives and women have started a FaceBook page to try and redress the balance and give true information to women. The Popular TV series is watched by thousands of women every week and the stories of the couple involved are compelling and lovely to hear. What is not good however is that women are being shown outdated and non-evidence based practices. They are being given false and sometimes frightening information by the show. Childbirth does not have to be like that and the dedicated writers on the page are committed to making things better for women having babies....please come and like our page

www.facebook.com/OneBornEveryMinuteTheTruth?ref=tn_tnmn

I am very much liking the OBEM - The Truth pages.

I think what they are trying to do is commendable but I'm not keen on the way they are going about it. I think it's unfair to pick apart practice that we the viewer has not had the benefit of either being in receipt of or at least in the same room as. So much of OBEM ends up on th cutting room floor it's impossible to judge the care given on the small snippets we see onscreen.

I agree with Benedict. This page seems a bit nasty to me. We don't know the full details of the cases shown. Sure there are some things which don't on the face of it seem perfect, but we don't know that there wasn't good reason for those things.

Which practices are outdated? Aren't these experiences of real people at NHS hospitals? How exactly is it being claimed that what is shown is not the truth? It doesn't make sense to me.

Secondly, the fact that outdated and non-evidence based practices are used in hospitals is not news to anybody. The fact remains that they are used.

The horrifying births shown in OBEM are not one-off cases that are being shown to scandalise. There are women out there who do have to endure traumatic births involving forceps deliveries, crash c sections, extreme pain etc. Babies don't painlessly slide out during lovely water births with aromatherapy and soothing music, as many people would love to have us believe.Why gloss over the realities just so that women can stay in blissful ignorance?

PeaceAndHope - "Babies don't painlessly slide out during lovely water births with aromatherapy and soothing music, as many people would love to have us believe. Why gloss over the realities just so that women can stay in blissful ignorance?" - I have many friends who have had very straight forward births but surely the point is that current practices experienced by (as you suggest) the majority of women can be improved?

Dont get the facebook thing, ok there will be a lot of editing but you cant hide from the truth, those are real births that is what happens.

the most important thing is that people take home a healthy baby, yes it matters a lot how it happens but without "outdated "practices some of those babies wouldnt be here.

The only people who can comment are those who were filmed giving birth and the medical staff involved, it is no one elses buisness.

As Peace said.

Personally, I think a lot of women are not aware of what can and does go wrong during labour.

As Peace said.

Personally, I think a lot of women are not aware of what can and does go wrong during labour.

I have not watched this programme but just would like to comment that my 3rd child was a crash caesarean and it was a really horrific experience, for myself (they couldn't find the keys to get to the anaesthetic) and also for my husband who was left in the delivery suite where he could overhear messages shouting about help require for a paediatric emergency in theatre (we were the only ones in theatre).

This was a stark comparison to number 1 which was long but find, number 2, 5 weeks premature but quick and easy. There are different births and it can happen to anyone.

Hopefully, many of us watching will realise that, like any reality TV programme, the programme makers have their own agenda, and the editing always creates a story (i.e young couple v older couple). We take it as entertainment programme, not an information programme.

I rather suspect that, had OBEM been filmed in their hospital, the midwives would be seen doing exactly the same thing as the ones currently on the screen.

There's also a question here about the impact this sort of thing will have on the mothers involved. Particularly when you've had a very traumatic delivery and feel like you've failed in some way, the judgement of a group of women banding together to sigh 'if only she'd get up fgs' cuts very deep indeed when you really haven't seen the full picture. By all means campaign for better education and representation of labour in the media. But don't use a snapshot of somebody's delivery as evidence.

If I'd been on OBEM first time round, you'd have seen me transfer in after 6hrs of pushing during an attempted homebirth. You wouldn't have seen me being active for over 24hrs, in water, walking, rocking, on a ball etc. You'd have seen me flat on my back, accepting a spinal, in theatre with the ventouse and having an emcs. You wouldn't know the reason for the malposition which was found out subsequently. Or that it was medically impossible for me to give birth vaginally. And the idea of people sighing and muttering about 'get up ffs' is one of the things that still hurts.

It's right to try and encourage accuracy of info but that page isn't really the best way.

Also, the parents who have natural relaxed births are the ones least likely to want a film crew in there with them. Unsurprisingly.

As soupdragon kind of said.
If it'd been me they wouldn't of been able to film because there wasn't time to get consent etc. I was only in the hospital 25 mins before ds was born.
Even if they did get consent etc then it wouldn't be a very long or exciting episode. I got there pushed and he was born, just like that.

"not evidence based"? erm, what more evidence do you need than a woman who is, you know, actually giving birth.

I've never watched obem, can't see the appeal myself, but I would always have figured it as being entertainment rather than factual iyswim. It's not supposed to be educational.

Hmm.. I don't see how what they're showing isn't "the truth".

If people want to hear all the positive stories about childbirth such as natural vaginal deliveries without much pain relief, home births, unassisted birth and everything else that I personally consider to be a combination of luck and biology enabling people to do those things then people only have to look on the internet for those things...

Channel 4 is sensationalist docu drama tv when it shows One Born. Anyone would have to be stupid not to realise that. So of course they are going to show births that are traumatic or medically assisted. However, I've also seen plenty of reasonably straightforward births on there too - like the one the other night where the woman went from 3cm to 9cm in about an hour and then pushed the baby out without much help. It's not all forceps and c sections..

However the NHS maternity machine is over worked and over pushed. And many people, like me, do end up with very difficult traumatic births (3 days of labour, hours of pushing, allergic reactions to drugs, epidural paralysed from neck down for 48 hours afterwards, ventouse, blood tranfusion etc etc). Why hide that? Sometimes I think not talking about what the reality of giving birth is like for many women is just making women feel even more of a "failure" for not having the fairy's and angels floating about when they do give birth.

NonnoMum - I think that is the risk. Women may acknowledge it's a reality TV program and, if you're already mum, you can compare it with you're own experience. But if you've not gone through childbirth, you have no idea what to expect or what may have been edited out (you don't know what you don't know, IYSWIM) and watching OEBM may well be your 'education'.

Soupdragon makes a valid point "the parents who have natural relaxed births are the ones least likely to want a film crew in there with them".

Whilst I can kind of see where the midwives are coming from I don't really think they're going about it in the right way.

I really don't like OBEM the only thing I felt it "taught" me about childbirth was that I'm glad I'm not doing it in Southampton as I won't get any midwife attention due to all the tea drinking It just seems to go out of its way to be negative about the process of childbirth in the name of drama.

Whilst I was pregnant last time I also watched a programme called Special Deliveries which most of you won't have seen because AFAIK it was only shown in NI, but it just had a much more positive approach. As the hospital has an MLU & a CLU it could show a pretty wide range of experiences, from ELCS, very active births, Waterbirths, Inductions,epidurals, EMCS. It's hard to describe but the whole tone of the programme was just different, even though the content and events probably weren't that far apart.

There are a lot of midwives who don't agree with this page. Sadly the admins of the page are using that as justification for what they are saying.

Well I think OBEM was a fairly accurate portrayal of my first birth (which wasn't at one of the featured hospitals). Paradoxically I had been under the misapprehension that all I needed was a big bouncy ball, breathing and exercises courtesy of Marie Mongan and Juju Sundin and a resolute refusal of drugs and the baby would slide out, with perhaps the requirement of a few stitches. I wish I'd seen and been more informed about the medicalised side of childbirth as I was woefully unprepared for the induction/hyperstimulation/epidural/cascade of intervention/Keillands forceps/scarred baby that I ended up with. And before the epidural I could no more have "got up FFS" for a walk/rock/ball bounce than flown to the moon.

I fear that by saying OBEM is not an accurate portrayal of childbirth everyone will be under the impression that so long as you have an "active birth", you'll avoid all drugs and intervention and baby will slide out in an easy and uncomplicated fashion - that's just not true or fair to the thousands of women who don't have that experience.

a lot of what I have been reading (am hoping to become a student midwife) suggests that the negative impact of a program such as obem is far reaching, the effect that gives women fear of giving birth affects all the hormone balances that help labour and birth and can actually make the process far more traumatic for the labouring woman. the editing is scary, I saw a woman screaming and cursing and shouting that she couldnt cope, when i rewound I saw that actually looking at the clock behind her one incident was at 1pm, one at 4.30 and one at 7, now for all we know the woman was perfectly happy inbetween, walking around and having a good labour, these snapshots into the pain and stress are labour are dangerous, we all know going into labour that it is going to hurt, but we dont know how much strenght we have to get through it and get the outcome we want. There are horrendous births (I say this as someonewho had one) but although we do need to be prepared for the possibilites we dont need to see in that much detail.

I don't think the pages imply any criticism of the parents involved - it's the practives and norms of a maternity service which does not help or encourage women to do anything other than lie on a bed. Some women have never been informed that their labour might be easier and less complicated if they get up and move around - no - the bed is centre stage and the mother does as she is expected to do. That is not her fault and neither are any problems which occur as a result.

Disclaimer - some women WILL experience problems in labout=r no matter what they do but we'd have less problems IF modwives encouraged women to move around.

Yes I am a midwife (not practicing at the moment).

I'd rather have the chance to watch OBEM and have some inkling about what might happen, rather than put up with the completely inadequate antenatal information provided by my local NHS.
But then I was lucky and could afford to pay for NCT classes as well.

I actually don't find OBEM that scary at all, and I have never given birth. Compared to a lot of the stories you read on here about forced VEs, screaming/ snooty midwives, etc, most births on there look okay!

They do show natural births, I've seen at least 2 waterbirths - also epidurals, a CS, a forceps delivery - surely a pretty representative range?

I want a HB but watching OBEM has actually made me feel lots better about what might happen if I do go into hospital as the staff all seem really dedicated and nice.

OBEM definitely fills a need for preparation. As others have said the classes that used to exist antenatally are now either watered down or non-existent.