managed third stage - pros and cons?

[melfishfish]

Hi
My baby is due on thursday and I am planning a home birth. Not given much thought to the third stage until midwife asked if I wanted it 'managed'. She gave the impression it was much quicker and easier and I was less likely to have complications (such as heavy bleeding), and also that no-one can really relax til the placenta is out, and it can take hours if not managed whereas it would just pop out in 5 minutes if it was.... what are your experiences, I would be really pleased to hear them! My mum had a retained placenta and a manual extraction with my brother 32 years ago and still says it was the most horrific experience of her life...

Hi i have had both and luckly came quick both times, but my sister had opted for managed 3rd and still 45 mins later no placenta. was just prepping for op when last tug worked. so depends on how things go i suppose.

What are your feelings on it? what would you want to happen?
great your having home birth

Depends what you feel happy with and if you have any strong feelings. There's some more info here if you want to read pros and cons.

I'm also planning a homebirth with as little intervention as possible and for me it seemed odd to go through the whole birth naturally only for them to inject me with something at the end of it. For whatever reasons it seems that this is has caused the most discomfort amongst midwives that I've spoken to and the thing that I have probably had to argue most strongly for. Maybe you will feel like you do just want to get it over with on the day - they will have the injection there as a matter of course anyway. In my birth plan I've put that if the placenta hasn't turned up within an hour then I will reassess the situation. Having had a botched third stage last time, I would say that if you go for a physiological one it is important that it is just that and they stay hand off and let you get on with it - no traction to the cord.

Do you know if your mum had the injection or not? There is also some stuff on the homebirth website here

my experience was the same as dinosuar-with dd1 i had the injection and ended up with retained placenta, had to have spinal and get it removed in the operating theatre (which i reckon is why I couldn't really sit down properly for a week after the birth...).

second time, had home birth - opted for no injection (had to argue quite hard with the midwife because of what happened with dd1)- compromised by saying would give it half an hour or so and then have injection if need be. In the end took only 20 minutes, aided by dd2 latching on and having a good suckle. Much much better!

Hey there
Cheers for that
lucymum - it is my gut instinct to not have any kind of injections but she made it sound so much easier and I sort of said I would because of that... not so sure now, ergo this thread.
Gina, thanks for the info i will be reading up on it a bit more and weighing up pros and cons. Don't know if my ma had the injection but bro was born extremely quickly - she had to catch him before he hit the concrete of the outside loo floor. Also, as was the custom at the time, baby was removed upon arrival at hospital - before she had a chance to breastfeed - and placed somewhere else in the hospital (maybe this had an impact?). After about 2 hours (and a manual extraction) screaming baby was returned to her and the nurse was overheard saying, 'this one's been screaming his head off - I had to give him two bottles of cow and gate'! My mother was horrified, and is convinced this is why he is asthmatic (but thats another story)

After reading a bit more about it I am now changing my mind and thinking physiological might be best... hmm I like the idea of seeing how it all goes at the time!

I say go with your gut,

Good luck. xx