Shoulder dystocia

[dinny]

Just wanted to ask if anyone else has experienced this? Keep thinking about it this last couple of days and feeling so scared and so grateful ds is OK. We had shoulder dystocia - superb midwife noticed quickly and they did the McRoberts manouevre and ds came out after that. I'm only now feeling upset about it. I'm just so relieved he came out. And the midwives were so skilled and fast-acting. Keep remembering the midwife's look of urgency when she shouted "shoulder dystocia" and rang the bell. So scary.

yes,

I had that, and he was delivered "flat at birth", intubated and taken away immediately before I had chance to see him. Still upsets me now, nearly 9 months on. He spent several days in SCBU, and is still being reviewed by paeds on a regular basis, although luckily no problems have been found. Still feel it's my fault. I never wanted an epidural but had to have a drip to get my contractions more regular and then was marooned on the bed.

Dinny, no idea if this is what happened to me but when I read your birth story it sounded familiar - my midwives suddenly seemed to get a a sense of great urgency and yanked, and I mean yanked, my legs over my head while pulling my pelvis apart and saying "You HAVE to get this baby out on the next push" There's nothing in the notes or anything and I got her out 2 pushes later but her apgar was low and they thought they might have to take her into hospital (I had her at home) but after some oxygen she was fine and her apgar went up to 9 so it was ok. Bloody terrifying, it really was so I know how you feel. Maybe mine wasn't the same but it certainly sounds similar.

NWmummy - I don't see how your labour interventions led you to have a baby with shoulder dystocia.... it's nothing to do with epidurals or even positions.
I know 4 people who have had it, at least 3 were in water squatting ! The fourth certainly didn't have an epidural but not sure what position she was in to give birth.
Dinny - glad your baby was fine, you could ask your birth doula about this... she is there to debrief you if you want to talk... same is true for your postnatal doula.

Is the McRoberts manoeuvre the 'legs over head' position?

We had shoulder dystocia with dd's birth (my second child, the first birth being a c-section due to cephalo-pelvic disproportion among other reasons)...I was in theatre being prepped for a potential section after many many hours of labour and 1 hour of pushing...the registrar decided the baby's head was small enough to deliver this time so used a ventouse to assist...Head was delivered, shoulders stuck...shout of 'SHOULDERS' and the alarm went..room full of people..legs over head..extremely extended episiotomy and baby delivered safe .

SCAREY! You are completely correct! How old is your ds now? My dd is almost 1 year old and so wonderful. I have on-going problems due to the cut and had counselling due to post-traumatic stress after the birth (not so much caused by the s.d. but things that happened in the hour or so before).

Best advice I was given was to talk about the birth as much as you can...in my case I chose to talk to people who had already had one successful birth but it does help get it out of your system.

Pupuce - I still feel that I haven't 'done birth' correctly so your post has reassured me that even if I hadn't have made some of the decisions that I did during my VBAC attempt, that I probably would still have ended up with my legs over my head Thanks.

pupuce - At the time it was all a big shock and I did not talk to anyone there about it. I can't even remember if anyone there told me it was an SD. However, I was pretty traumatised by it all, and so later got copies of our notes, where it said SD and that they'd put me in McRoberts etc.
I did some internet surfing and sometimes changing position can apparently help. Mears also asked me whether I'd delivered propped up on a bed, when I mentioned SD on another thread, as it can stop the sacrum moving backwards??
I suppose I feel like I just gave up, however irrational that is, and that if I'd tried to be more mobile then they may have got him out quicker and he would have been breathing straight away.
I was reasonably realistic that things don't go to plan during labour, but I had assumed that I would get to see the baby as soon as it was born. Instead the room kept filling with people. First to get me into McRoberts, and then the crash team who took him away without me having chance to see him. It still really upsets me that i had to wait a couple of hours before I got to see him while they sewed me up, and I feel guilty that I did not ask how he was during this time.
I suppose I keep going through things to see whether i should have done something different, although I know probably I couldn't.

SD happened with the birth of both of my ds's. The first time around I wasn't sure what was going on. There was a mad rush, lots of cutting and being pushed upwards. Ds1 had inherited dh's very broad shoulders. With ds2's birth the consultant had mentioned that there was a chance of possible SD. This time things were a lot less chaotic. A doctor was called in just as the pushing stage started. When it became apparent that this was going to be another case of SD another doctor and midwife also arrived to help. Ds2 was fine and had no ill-effects from the procedure.

What exactly is McRoberts?

When DS2 was born the midwife explained to me that sometimes when baby's have big shoulders they need to hold your legs up and that I should expect two additional midwives in the room once he had crowned. It was not frantic in anyway - they just came into the darkened room and helped out. I never even gave it a thought - did take 1hr20 to push him out which is quite a lot when you consider my labour was only 3hrs16

That sounds like McRoberts, Dejags.

Pupuce, have spoken to birth doula about it. She also just sent me our birth story. SUCH emotional reading. btw, only another 6 days of my PN doula - god, I will miss her!