Umbilical cord too short

[Tel]

I would be interested to hear from other parents who have had similar experiences to me as I suspect I was fed a cock and bull story. This was abroad, but the obstetrician spoke very good english. I was given an epidural after 10 hours of labour and wired up to the baby monitor, at which point, the midwives appeared to panic and I was wheeled down for immediate delivery. My son was born by forceps in a space of about ten minutes, I had three medical staff inducing contractions and an oxytocin drip and preparations for emergency caesarean delivery going on in the next room. My baby was fine and I couldn't have done it without the staff, but when I asked the obstetrician what went wrong, he told me that the umbilical cord was too short such that as my son's head dropped, he stopped receiving any oxygen and blood, and had to be extracted pronto. Having spoken to a couple of doctors in this country, no-one seems to have heard of this as a birth complication. Anyone had similar explanations or am I being fobbed of because they let me go for too long? It has also occurred to me that perhaps no-one was available or didn't want to be called in - my baby was born at 8 in the morning. Either way, I feel it is my right to know what actually happened, and if I was fobbed off, insulted too. That attitude that docotrs are God really me off, especially since most parents these days are, I reckon, pretty clued up about the whole thing.

No problem with umbilical cord but.....my sister had her first baby 2 days ago. She went to hospital when the contractions were 3 minutes apart (as she was requested to do at pre-natal classes) but on examination they told her the baby was posterior. They told her she was in for a very long, very painful time and that she would require an epidural. Not that she may like to consider that option, but that she WOULD NEED TO! They sent her home after they had finished terrifying her and told her to come back when the contractions were one minute apart or if her waters broke and that wouldn't likely be the case until the next day! The poor girl went home, absolutely terrified, and rang our mother, who rang me (I live about 950 km away from my family). Between us we looked up all our reading (I had my first baby 22 months ago) and I read everything about posterior presentation to her over the phone, which calmed her down no end. As it happened, her waters broke about 30 minutes after arriving home and they drove back to the hospital again. Fortnuately my mother went with her and her husband this time so someone could put forward my sister's point of view while she couldn't. The baby ended up being delivered naturally (no drugs, no forceps etc) less than four hours later with my sister kneeling on all fours (the midwives wanted her on her back, feet in the air with an epidural!) and both mother and baby are doing well. I think it was totally unnecessary, and just downright cruel, to terrify a young woman so much during labour with her first child!

My baby was a posteroir the midwife at anti-natal pulled her face told me labour would be longer and more painful etc when I mentioned this. She suggested I knelt on all fours several times a day to get the baby to turn. This was not said at my check ups and worried me but there was nothing else to do about it. My daughter didn't turn and I had a 'normal' birth with no epidural. I found pushing back on my husband really helped during the early stages although this interfered with his paper reading!
I tried to give birth on all fours but they made me turn over after I cut my arm on the back of the bed during transition.

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Tel - bit mystified by the explanation you received too.
I'm guessing that, once you were monitored, the midwives saw signs of fetal distress (i.e heartbeat dropping or persistently too high etc), and felt the baby needed delivery quickly - noone would have been able to tell at this point how long a cord is - they would just act accordingly - ie. degree of fetal distress necessitating degree of emergency about the situation. Possibly the cord was noted to be a little shorter than normal after delivery, but this should not have made the slightest difference during your labour. It makes no difference what length the cord is - a baby can still lie on his/her cord, giving signs of fetal distress, whatever the length.
Another possibility would be that, as your sons head dropped, he actually trapped the cord in front of his head (cord presentation) - this would necessitate a very rapid delivery, and would display itself as fetal distree (heart rate dropping). However, as you say your son was born by forceps ten mins later, I'm inclined to believe this was not the case (not rapid enough), and it was a simple case of fetal distress (and who knows WHY that occurs in most cases) - certainly nothing to do with a short cord

I had my daughter two years ago and they rushed me into an emergency c-section because her umbilical cord was too short. They said it caused major problems and I HAD TO HAVE a c-section... I don't know if that was really right, but I asked for another doctor and his opinion and they wouldn't give me one. I wasn't in labor yet but they were monitoring the baby's heart rate and said that it was dropping and that the cord was too short.