uncontrollable pushing at 3cm?

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went for a sweep and was 2-2.5cm dilated, a few hours later i ended up on the hormone drip after my waters broke due to slightly high blood pressure. i needed to be on continuous monitoring but couldn’t lay still, so they put the clip monitor on baby with great difficulty. i can’t remember any of this happening but my husband said i was in a lot of pain and they really struggled to get it on. i think they had to be quite rough with me to get it on & it took two staff members. she then said i was only 3cm dilated after they’d done this.

after they’d done this i started pushing involuntarily. i couldn’t stop myself, I’d start grunting, my head would go down and i’d start pushing so hard i’d pee myself. it’s as if i had the worlds biggest, hardest poo but someone had sewn my bumhole shut.

i didn’t have my baby for another 15 hours. ended up with an epidural as they said this would stop me from pushing. it only worked when they turned the hormone drip right down & if they turned it up too much i’d go right back to pushing involuntarily.

is this common? did anyone else go through this? is there any reason why this happened? is there anything i can do next time (other than all the yoga i did this time around to get baby to stop being back to back) to prevent this?

please share your stories it would be nice to hear x

Midwife here - most common cause is baby was OP (back to back). It can cause really intense involuntary pushing long before 10cm. Congrats on your new arrival

This, sounds like baby would have been OP, explains the involuntary pushing and the long labour. Because the head position is different it puts a different kind of pressure on, often way more painful, often felt more in back/rectum. It is relatively common, won’t necessarily happen again but not too much you can do to control it other than what you’ve done with yoga etc, and trying to be mobile in labour (if possible!) Congrats :)

This happened on my first birth. My eldest was OP, though I only found out when I requested my birth notes. They were also induced, which caused hyper stimulation of the uterus, & I assumed this played a part at the time.

Rather unhelpfully, no one told me the reason and instead just kept snapping at me to "stop that". 😅

I had a spontaneous labour with an OA baby the second time, and was relieved it didn't happen again.