Very much looking forward to birth!

[Snowlet]

Right, let's fill this thread with positivity.

I feel empowered, educated, calm, at peace with what my body was born to do and ready to not feel like a truck anymore! (which is so sad because I'm only 29 weeks)

Whatever we'd like our birth plans/preferences to be, whatever choices we make, I'd love for every woman to feel that they are HERS, that she is powerful and that her wishes are important.

It does matter what you want, you should picture your 'perfect' birth over and over again and you can't receive what you don't ask for.

So then, is anyone else looking forward to labour and birth as the unique, life changing experience it will undoubtedly be?

My experience of an almost EMCS was that yes indeed things did happen very quickly. I went from happily using my TENS machine, to finding the contractions very intense even with G&A, to DS's heart rate dropping, to being wheeled to the operating theatre for an EMCS in about 15 minutes. My positive story was that he was just coming very quickly indeed and so I had an unassisted birth with no pain relief, it just happened to be on an operating table before they could knock me out.

So my view is not 'oh the pain is so terrible' but that the people I know who struggled emotionally with a complicated birth were those who thought it was all about the fancy breathing and then discovered the positive visualisation wasn't enough. They thought they'd failed because they'd set thear too high. Me? I had doctors and MWs come to see me repeatedly after DS's 'dramatic' birth and express surprise at how calm and collected I was after all the drama.

thear? their expections

I really think women can have higher expectations of birth than 'not dying'. I cannot begin to fathom what is wrong with people who read that a pregnant woman is looking forward to birth and feel the need to respond that the best she can hope for is to come out alive with a baby along with various horror stories of labour.

It's really rude and patronising to dismiss breathing and visualisation as 'daft hippy ideas' - if you bother to read the thread you will see that many women have found them useful and helpful. Doesn't mean any of us think they are enough to prevent anything from going wrong but also we don't feel that things going wrong is so inevitable.

The OP is both positive AND prepared. She wants and expects a good birth experience. She is also informed of potential complications and the interventions that may follow.

Why can't a pregnant woman just be allowed to be excited about labour? Why do people feel the need to immediately puncture her enthusiasm and try to fill her with dread and fear? What is wrong with people???

well legoplaying perhaps your attendants could have done with a few breathing exercises to calm them down, instead of a hysterical panic, which appears to have been the case.

From your story lego it sounds as if it all worked out naturally in the end. No section required. Gives me even more faith in the body that story, not less.

Things can go wrong very quickly but that's rare, yiu usually have a lot of notice of things starting to deviate from normal - hence the good outcomes for home births we have in this country.

I think someone ages ago said that childbirth is dangerous. It's not.
Childbirth can become dangerous if things deviate from normal. And this is not what happens in the majority of births. The majority of births stay within the normal range (hence the term 'normal').

Lego, I was labouring fine. The contractions got very intense. My dd's heartrate dropped. The MW made a note to check it more often than every 30 minutes. Checked it again 5 minutes later, it was still down and not recovering. She suggested we walk to the bathroom, which we did, where I leaned over the bath and she listened again. Couldn't hear anything that time, so I went to a sitting position. Still down and getting lower. I complained I didn't want to have the baby in the bathroom, the MW said we can deliver the baby anywhere, even hanging from the chandelier if that is what it takes. The contractions continued back to back and very intense. We realised I was close to delivery. I felt better on hands and knees so I assumed that position and eventually the MW found the heartrate in that position and listened. Dd was born in the bathroom after all, not too happy with her speedy squeezing, meconium present, a bit shocked. She went straight onto my chest through my legs and warmed up on my tummy skin to skin, her cord wasn't cut until 30 minutes later when I finally got up off the floor, so she got all her oxygen and blood. Her heartrate dropped because of the unexpected rapid delivery (9 minute second stage) just as you describe. Only our treatment was watching, waiting, moving, a warm towel and my chest.

Following on from 'childbirth being dangerous', I decided to hunt around for some stats.

Even in the worst cases, i.e. Afghanistan and Central African Republic, i.e. severely impoverished war torn countries, with poor health care for women, it looks as though the maternal mortality rate is less than 2%.

www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/apr/12/maternal-mortality-rates-millennium-development-goals

Turning to the UK in the past, this article www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/

suggests that it was only around 1% 300 years ago.

It's worth pointing out too, that major factors involved were illegal abortion and infection.

So the idea that women died in their droves in childbirth doesn't seem to stand up.

According to the World Health Organization, 'Every day, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth'. here

I do see that this isn't birth itself. Just that there is quite a bit of death around the whole process still. And that's not, presumably, including stuff like fistula and prolapse.

Another thought, OP. The birth is what, 12 or 24 hours? Probably less that 48 hours, anyway.

It's the baby that's the lifechanger. That's what will really blow your mind.

"A woman’s lifetime risk of maternal death – the probability that a 15 year old woman will eventually die from a maternal cause – is 1 in 3800 in developed countries, versus 1 in 150 in developing countries."

Makes you think - so much we take for granted. Even something as simple as a clean place to give birth and a trained MW!

True, although that sounds an improvement on the figure quoted in my second link.

Although these factors pertain in North America, Europe and Australasia, this is not true in the developing world, where maternal mortality still accounts for just under a million deaths a year, often from unnecessary and potentially curable causes. The factors mentioned were puerperal pyrexia, abortion, toxaemia and haemorrhage.

I think his final clause is the key: much of this death could be avoided.

OMG it's unbelievable to read this thread from the top, it starts out with an enthusiastic first time mum expressing her excitement and positivity. It disintegrates to people quoting statistics on death in labour.

OP you go girl, I wish you a truly wonderful, positive experience!! Even if it doesn't go to plan it can be liberating and empowering to know you can handle it with grave and ease.

Good luck!!

**grace

Guilty,WouldLove I was quoting stats about death in labour, but it was to attempt to give the lie to those who were going on about how dangerous childbirth is and how things can go wrong so quickly that your baby will die.

I was trying to be positive!! For most of us it goes right.

WouldLove the bit I quoted, likewise, was comparing us (lucky!!) to the developing world. As in 'aren't we lucky, we have midwives and hospitals'. :)

I completely agree with jellyandcake Tue 25-Mar-14 20:00:00

Wouldlove it actually went immediately from the positive OP to some posters mocking her for daring to think she may have a positive experience. And now someone has actually said the best a woman can hope for is for her & her baby to be alive at the end of it. Unbelievable.

Yes Jellyandcake has written some brilliant posts & has said very well everything that I think.

lego

I agree, I think the line that made me shudder in ops first piece is the ^what our bodys were made to do line.

I couldn't help but think of the people I know who were left reeling, battered broken and bruised in shock, feeling guilty, feeling like they had let the baby down and all sorts of rubbish, simply because something had gone wrong.

Things go wrong all the time, its usually no ones fault and certainly not the mother.

Some people would have you believe that everything that goes wrong is because there was some intervention somewhere and its horrific.

Someone has actually written a baby can get stuck because the labouring mother was spoken to by a MW during a contraction.
Its frightening.

Its not unbelievable its the truth about child birth.

I think first timers should be told the truth so they can go into it, fully armed and not be in shock or feeling like they didnt have the birth they wanted when in vairably it fails because real life, real life child birth, is not, glowing candles and slight pressure and the baby comes out,

its not like that its a myth thats pedaled.

I was a midwife. I know the truth about childbirth. People still laughed at me when I said I wanted a water birth at home.

its not like that its a myth thats pedaled.

No the myth that is ALWAYS pedalled is that giving birth will be some kind of horrendously painful experience that you will have to endure.

This is not always true. It can be a wonderful transformative experience.
The pain I experienced from a kidney infection was worse than giving birth, by miles.

My truth is that labour was not very painful. It was calm, peaceful, straightforward and magical.

Another woman's truth is that it was terrifying and agonising.

Neither is a myth, it depends on circumstance. There is no need to terrify pregnant women. There is no certainty either way. By all means, I believe women should be well informed about labour and birth but that does not mean scare mongering and horror stories.

It does not 'invariably fail'. It didn't for me. It didn't for many other women on this thread. You aren't 'arming' a pregnant woman, you are needlessly frightening her.