Pulling umbilical cord off

[Aahg]

Hi mums, please could you point me in the right direction. Is pulling on umbilical cord with a lot of force and tugging to the point where it has been pulled off trapping placenta inside, considered a malpractice? That's exactly what have happened to me 3rd stage of my labour didn't go as planned, it was a nightmare with all the pulling on cord/pushing on belly, hurts as hell!!! At some point I've been asked to sit on a toilet and let the gravity do the job, that's where one of the midwives came in and did the final pull, I thought I'll die of pain

Oh gosh this sounds awful so sorry! I don't have experience of this I did have retained placenta and a lot of pulling/pressing on tummy but mine was out after about 10/15 mins of this plus I was being stitched and loosing blood so couldn't tell much. Hopefully someone else will have more knowledge

Thank you. I had to have manual removal of placenta

I'm sorry you feel that your care was perhaps compromised in some way. Without being there at the the nobody can say whether the care you were given was appropriate or not. Sometimes cords do snap, sometimes retained placentas happen. Your best course of action would be to ask the maternity services you gave birth under about their debrief or listening/reflections service. This service will be able to review your notes and talk things through with you.

This happened to me, cord snapped and placenta retained, just prepping me for theatre and I felt the urge to push again, placenta came out. Very painful, horrible after giving birth then dealing with this, however malpractice??

How are you going to prove it was pulled too hard? Why would you think of that straight away also?

I had a debrief with my midwife 2 months after birth and we discussed it, she said it is very common.

I was happy with her response, things happen, yes it wasn't fun for me but my I was ok and DD was born fine.

I'm sorry this also happened to you and I'm glad it worked out in the end but to straight away think about medical negligence? Did something else happened at your birth for you to think this way?.

No, because the 3 stage management of removal of the placenta involves gentle pulling on the cord and waiting for the uterus to contract up and release the placenta. Sometimes this doesn't happen and the placenta won't release. All you can do is continue to pull and the cord breaking is just one of those things. Unless you are saying it was an immediate huge tug before the placenta was ready to be delivered?

It sounds like they were trying to get the placenta out which is part of their job. Why don't you ask for a birth debrief?
I had a hard time delivering the placenta after ds2 was born, along with the stitches it really was almost as unpleasant as pushing the baby out.

The cord snapped during labour for me. I also had to have a manual removal of the placenta. Having looked into it, pulling on the cord is quite a normal thing to do and they do snap occasionally. In my case I had been bleeding quite heavily. It was actually from the episiotomy I was given but they had to check it wasn't the placenta, so they wanted to get it out quickly, thus the pulling and pushing. It was painful and I asked for the gas and air back. It isn't malpractice in itself, for example in my case it was a medical decision that they needed to get the placenta out quickly and they couldn't predict the cord would snap. There could be other things that make it poor practice, like not offering pain relief, not telling you what they were doing or doing it with no medical reason. I was told throughout what was happening and was given pain relief, my Doctor was very good. It was still very unpleasant and I can imagine it could be very traumatic. As other people have suggested you could ask for a birth debrief and go from there.

Ds was born at 34 weeks and i had to be induced. The MW pulled the cord, i heard a twang and "oh shit" and the cord was in her hand. Que me with a dr elbow deep in my uterus trying to rip placenta out of me...was fucking horrific

it happens. cords snap and placentas ‘stick’. doesn’t sound like anything was done wrong

Hey same thing happened to me. I had a home birth and they midwives did everything they could so I didn't have to go hospital for an operation. Unfortunately the cord did snap with their tugging but I trusted them and still trust their judgement now. I did go hospital in the end but I know they did everything they could.

I also had manual placenta removal and can testify it's horrendous. However it is normal practice to tug on the cord at this stage. I insisted on a spinal block after being internally mauled for over an hour with no progress. It was a good decision as it still took another hour to remove in theatre.