'Earlies' on monitoring trace

[igivein]

Ds is 2.5 and absolutely fine, and I don't have any issues with the care I recieved when he was born (it was fab!), but something I heard the midwife say has always stuck in my mind and I wondered if anyone knew what it meant.
I had an epidural and was being continuously monitored, at one point the midwife went to fetch a senior midwife, showed her the trace and said 'what do you think, there's a few 'earlies' here'. I can't remember the timescale of events, but later the consultant came, had a good feel around and I was taken to theatre for a try with the ventouse and ended up having a section.
What did the midwife mean by 'earlies', was it early signs that the baby might be in distress? It never occurred to me at the time to ask her (18 hours in labour, brain a bit fuddled!), but as I'm still wondering 2.5 years later I just thought I'd ask if anyone knew.

Earlies, are a type of deceleration of baby's heartbeat. Eary means that they trough of the decel is just before the peak of a contraction.

It can be a sign that baby is distressed but its also a quite normal part of a second stage trace. Head compression as coming down the birth canal causes earlies. But I'm guessing if you had a section that you didn't get to fully dilated?

Somtimes yu can get earlies if the cord is being compressed slightly with a contraction. The m/w would need to look at the trace overall - if there was good recovery and good variability then I wouldn't be overly worried but probably would mention it to the Reg on call if it persisted and didn't resolve with position changes, etc.

I'm guessing the consultant must have been concerned. Were you 10cm if they tried for a ventouse? Did they try and take a sample of baby's blood at all?

I was fully dilated and pushing. They didn't take a sample of the baby's blood. We got to the point that they could see / touch the baby's head, but then he seemed to get stuck. The midwife was a bit miffed with the doc because she thought I could have pushed ds out. Call me a wimp, but I was 42, it had taken 7 years and 2 miscarriages to get to this point and I didn't want to take any risks, so went with the doc's advice.

It is unusual to do a section at that stage but maybe the Dr thought he couldn't do an instrumental quickly enough if baby's head wasn't in a great position. So thought it was safer to do a section.

Hope I've answered your questions about the earlies anyway.

Thanks stripey - you've stopped me wondering!