Hi - I gave birth to DD a year ago and in the run-up to the birth I was approached by my local hospital regarding participating in the 35/39 trial. I always felt very uncomfortable with the details of this trial and was fairly vocal about it on related MN threads, and never for a single minute did I consider taking part.
By the way, the 35/39 trial involves induction at 39 weeks in women over 35, in order to see the effect on C-section rates.
Then when I was in labour, I was asked to take part in the Bumpes trial, a different study which looks at the effect of giving birth in different positions when you have an epidural. If you take part, you are assigned a position x or y, and the outcome is recorded.
Now, at the point at which I was approached regarding this trial, I had had virtually no sleep for 2 days thanks to waters breaking and prolonged early labour. All I can recall at the time was that I felt totally out of it and incapable of making sensible decisions. Looking back, I'm actually very surprised I agreed to take part in this study, given my strong feelings on the ethics of the 35/39 study.
Since the birth I've been very busy with DD and the reason this trial has been bothering me a year on is because I've just had a letter through the door asking me to fill in a follow-up survey, and thanking me for taking part. It's really upset me because I suppose they're thanking me for something I would never have agreed to do if I had been capable of making a sensible decision at the time!
I'm also curious as to how many women have taken part in the trial - the cover letter states they are 'well on their way to achieving their target of 3,000 women' but doesn't say how many participants they've recruited so far. I guess it's feasible they won't make their target which would invalidate the whole trial?
Has anyone else been involved in this trial (or the 35/39 one) and how do you feel about it?
Sorry for the long ramble - I still feel surprised that I ended up being in this trial when I didn't feel capable of giving any sort of informed consent. It's also left me with the feeling that being allocated a position to give birth in contributed to the interventions that I ended up with. I may well have had them anyway, but this bloody trial probably didn't help!