Why did they put a drip in the back of my hand?

[BotBotticelli]

I gave birth to my son (DC1) almost 8 months ago, and whilst I had a pretty good experience, there's something that happened during the delivery that I don't understand and wondered if anyone can shed any light.

Basically, the birth went like this:

• Lost plug on Thursday evenning
• contractions started at 5pm ish on Friday evening, very irregular
• by 8pm contractions were every 5 mins
• by midnight every 4 mins (called MLU, advised to stay home a while longer as it was my first baby)
• by 3am contractions every 3 mins, called MLU again and agreed to make my way in
• got to MLU at 4am, was examined and found to be 7cm (literally the proudest moment of my entire life, was so chuffed to bit with myself!)
• got set up in lovely MLU room, bouncing on ball, toking away on G&A, chatting to MW in between contractions, pool was running etc etc
• 5am waters break during a strong contraction, full of loads of black meconium :-(
• 6am put in wheelchair and transferred down to hospital delivery suite. On arrival, had to get onto bed and they started digging around in the back of my hand to find a vein for a canula. They never asked my permission to do it, or explained why they were doing it. I was too busy focusing on DH and doing my hypnobirthing breathing to get through the contractions to bother with them too much. Eventually they found a vein in my other hand and then the situation seemed to calm down a bit.

Then they let me get back on my birth ball with G&A whilst DH held the monitor in place on my tummy, once they had a good trace of DS's heartbeat. I then clambered back up on the bed when I felt the need to push. I pushed for 90 mins on the bed, tried kneeling up but it wasnt really working, ended up pushing him out sitting/lying on the bed with my legs in stirrups.

I agreed to the stirrups cos they suggested it might help me push, but from the doctors muttering at the end of the bed, I could tell they were thinking about doing an episiotomy or something. Anyway, I thought I might be able to push him out myself so I pushed and then I fucking well PUSHED like my life depended on it, and finally i felt my boy move round the 'u bend' and he started crowning. I gave birth at 9am to my first child, a beautiful boy, 9lb 3oz.

It was not the lovely relaxed water birth in the MLU i had planned, and he was whisked away to SCBU for a few hours due to problems breathing and the meconium. But he was fine and I got him back on the ward a few hours later, we went home after 3 days of IV antibiotics for him as a precaution for infection. I was very pleased that I managd to push him out myself, even in a bit of a medicalised/scary situation (2 paeds hovvering at the bottom of the bed, a consultant obstetrican muttering about giving me some help etc etc).

ANYway, sorry for the mammoth post, thanks if you've stuck with me this long. It has been kinda cathartic to write this all down.

The thing that niggles at me though is: why did they need to put some sort of drip, in my hand?? I presume it was just fluids or something? It was not a hormone drip and had no real effect on me that I could tell.

Can anyone shed any light? For some reason I find myself thinking about this part of the labour a lot and I wonder what it was all about...

They put one in mine for antibiotics, could be because they thought they might have to have a surgical intervention?

Some places pop a needle in as a matter of course just in case you need it later (drugs I suppose). Was it actually attached to anything?

It sounds like you had a bit of a rough one! Bloody stirrups (they belong on horses). Why couldn't you have the waterbirth?

They put that into your hand probably so that they could:

1. Get medicines into your body ASAP (due to the meconium)
2. In case you needed an EMCS (longshot)

If its bothering you, did you know that you can contact the delivery team for a debrief of the birth? Maybe that will help ease your mind and make you understand.

HTH x

I once had a doctor try to take blood out of the back of my hand... even I know that's not a good idea! He got yelled at by the consultant for being an idiot. I joined in.

Was there actually a drip, with fluids going in? My first thought would be that it was fluids for you. I had something similar with infected waters and both DD and me suffering from some sort of bacterial infection, so when we were monitored we were both tachycardic(sp?) and I needed a lot of IV fluid. It's difficult but they don't always explain everything that they are doing, or if they did you weren't paying attention or didn't hear them. I didn't have a clue what was happening for most of the time between getting to the CLU and having an emcs!

You could think about asking for a birth debrief, I had one about fourteen months after DD was born because, like you, I had a lot of questions. Nothing traumatic, just a lot of question - essentially, the whole time we were in hospital (5 days for DD) no one really explained what had been wrong with her. Turned out no one had explained it because they didn't know! But I found it enormously helpful to go through mine and DD's notes step by step with a midwife and now understand exactly what happened.

Thanks ladies. Yeah, when I look back on it, I guess it was a bit of a hairy birth. It's weird, cos on paper it looks like a good birth, and I was so proud of myself for pushing out that big boy just using G&A, but some of the stuff going on around me baffles me a bit.

Yes, backpaw it was attached to something, cos I felt something cold going up my arm, and I remember saying to the MW "There's something cold going up my arm" and she said "Yes, yes, that's just the medicine to make sure you and the baby are ok".....what I want to know is, WHAT medicine? Was it a saline type drip to perk me up a bit (cos tbh, a few mins earlier I had been drinking lucozade and eating haribo in the birth centre and felt absolutely fine!). Maybe it was antibiotics because of the meconium.

Thanks molotov that's a good idea, maybe I will contact the hospital. I will feel a bit daft for doing so though, as nothing really went wrong with the birth as such, it's just I keep replaying it in my mind.

How were the contractions up until then? Was it the synthetic birth hormones (cytosine?). If it was then the contractions would come faster and harder. If they though you weren't going fast enough, you'd get this to move things along. If you were doing HB then they possibly thought you weren't progressing (or making enough noise to be 'in labour).

The fastest/only route for drugs and blood. It is extremely unsafe not to have one. Hence the venflon.
I am sorry it wasn't explained to you at the time and left you wondering all this time.

If things look like they might be going pear shaped it is pretty routine to put a cannula in the back of the hand in case they need to give you any emergency drugs (for an emergency general anaesthetic for example), fluid if you're getting dehydrated or blood in case of haemorrhage.

It can take a minute or so to put in so better to have it ready just in case than be faffing around in an emergency. At the same time as putting it in they can also take blood off to send for what's called a group and save - this means that the lab can have blood ready quickly in case it's needed.

After the cannula is put in it's usual to flush it with some saline as any blood in the tube can cause it to block, but this is done with a syringe. If they had put a drip up - i.e. a bag of fluid attached to a stand, it would have been fluid for rehydration or antibiotics.

The black meconium was probably a red flag to them that you may have ended up needing surgery to get the baby out quickly, in which case they usually put a cannula in to save vital time if you need meds, blood etc quickly - I had the same meconium situation and they were very concerned about possible infection in my waters. I ended up with four lines of stuff going in, including antibiotics just in case of infection.

I'm very surprised no one told you though - it's a good idea to ask the hospital for your notes to see if you can find out what it actually was.

I was induced so needed the cunnula but thought they did it to everyone in case of emergency so they could get drugs in ASAP if needed, it might just be if there's risk involved (in your case the meconium in your waters)

dili - what do you mean it is extremely unsafe not to have a cannula. That isn't routinely true, nor standard practice in this country. The OP obviously had reasons to have one though.

The cold sensation was probably just flushing if you could feel it spreading up your arm. I agree they were probably preparing in case they needed to give you more as it was now a potential emergency.

I've had 4 premature babies, all just labour, two were GAs. I've had cannulas in that never had a thing go through them other than to flush them!