Apparently you don't have to push??

[dappymoo]

Ok I am confused.
I've been looking into this hypnobirthing stuff as I am super nervous and anxious and aware that this will not help..!

So a book I'm reading (and some stuff on the internet) says that you can "breathe" the baby out, and that pushing is just something that has come about relatively recently due to the misconception that if instruments aren't used, we need to push ourselves.
It also says that animals don't make a big song and dance about pushing, they just "expel". And even women in comas have given birth apparently too?
And there's more about how pushinh tenses the muscles and closes sphincters etc...
This does make sense to me, and the idea of a calm, gradual birth is all very nice...

but...
Why does everything I have ever heard/ known about birth involve "PUSH!" and "the pushing stage" etc? Seriously, do we just go against everything they say in hospital. I plan to talk about this with my midwife, but are they really open in hospitals to you "refusing" to push...?
I don't really get it! Or, like a video I just watched, can you try and breathe the baby out and if you need to hurry (baby in distress) then you go for the more forced pushing?

I am so up for hypnobirthing and would love to try a homebirth but at the same time there is a worried cynic in me!

I think that hypnosis is good for getting the pregnant woman to relax and not worry too much about the birth. If you are terrified and tense then it reduces the chances of having a normal birth. It is best to relax and leave the worrying to your midwife. (Provided you are confident to trust her.)

Being excessively anxious does not help you in labour. If things go wrong then its best to cross that bridge when you come to it. I was terrified when my went into labour with my first child. Being tense made the contractions more painful.

With my second birth I found it helped to breathe in time to gentle classical music. (Not some hideous birth music, proper tasteful soothing music.) Your body needs lots of oxygen to power your muscles.

I did push, but it was involentary. It felt like a large piston inside my body. My second stage was really quick and my daughter narrowly missed being born down the toilet.

I read about and practiced techniques for hypnobirthing. I planned a home water birth and wanted to breathe dd out.

When it came to it, I was dilated for a couple of hours, waiting for an expulsive effort or an urge. Nothing. Just contractions on top of each other. So I had to try directed pushing. I tried. For 6hrs. I pulled a muscle and burst all of the blood vessels in my eyes.

Because of dd's position, I couldn't get her out. An episiotomy, manual rotation and ventouse couldn't get her out. I had an em cs.

I look back with such sadness that I never experienced this amazing natural force that people talk about.

i couldn't not push

with ds2 when he was crowning i was going "it hurts, it hurts, i don't want to do it any more"
so the midwife said "that's ok, don't push then"

so i didn't. and it hurt even more and i just HAD to push

you really can't control it

sorry, haven't read whole thread but I had to push a lot with both dcs - was induced for both and ended up with forceps both times after a lot of pushing. (after having intended to go the whole natural hypnobirthing route with both of them).

Its good to hear about other people's experiences. I didn't have to push either. DD was born in the pool after an hour of "breathing". She was a speedy delivery and I was hoping that by concentrating on breathing I would reduce the tearing... maybe it did but still had a 2nd degree. It was amazing though and I can't wait to do it again in a few months!

Such an interesting thread. I am another one that never ever got any urge to push. :( Laboured in a pool and kept active and upright, no drugs other than gas and air from 7cm but after 19 hours of labour - no urge to push at all. Just increasing crescendoes of contractions, oh and my midwife kindly removed my gas and air from me for the hour and a half fruitless pushing stage to help me concentrate. I kept telling her I had no urge to push at all, no movement or any sort of give, and it felt 'wrong' but as a first timer what did I know. In the end we tried all sorts of positions, lying on a side holding a leg, squat thrusts holding onto the side of a bed nothing. I ended up with an emc-section after my DS got wedged occipital transverse and then got stuck in deep transverse arrest (his head was stuck sideways in my pelvis - not front or back facing, and was being bounced up and down by the contractions for a good while)
He was a big baby for me 9lb 6oz and 55cms long! But I have been warned I could have a dodgy pelvis to boot. But I would like to try a VBAC as I would love to feel that amazing urge to push if I have another DC.

I had a water-birth, no drugs, all straightforward, but no urge to push whatsoever. Pushed when midwife told me though as wanted to get the baby out NOW please.

poppet, i wonder if you didn't get the urge because he wasn't in a good position to actually give birth?

i think that happened to me with ds1

Like lots of others, I found my body did it's own pushing, regardless of what I wanted! However, for some reason, after 1 push the midwife started telling me to push (despite specific birthplan requests not to), so I panicked, pushed hard (DS was out in only 2 more pushes, under 10 minutes in total) and tore badly. I'm convinced that my panicked pushing caused the tear, rather than the pushing that my body was doing without me.

With ds I never had the urge to push and remember really forcing myself to do it and it took ages and hurt a lot, an hour and a half it took and I thought to myself "I thought most women got an urge to push.", but with dd I couldn't stop myself pushing, and it took only a few pushes and she was out. I keep thinking maybe if they'd let me labour longer with ds and not told me to push with ds as soon as I'd hit ten centimetres my body would have done it automatically as it did with dd.

Poppet, I am a vet, and when animals go into labour but don't push it is very often the case that there is a malpresentation. In cattle you can almost spot them by watching over the gate. They don't push because they have no urge - their body knows it's not going to be effective. So it might well be completely different for you in another labour.

My body started to push with no control from me at all. My major problem was the midwives interfering and telling me to not push as they didn't believe I was fully dilated at which point this stressed me out as they made me ly on my back having been very comfortable in the pool while they examined me at which stage the combination of being moved, told to stop the pushing which is like telling someone to not open there bowels when they have urgent diarroahea it is impossible. Coupled with the stress this slowed my contractions and the birth story continues... all OK in the end but I definately think hypnobirthing is a very good idea, as little intervention as possible if mum and baby are progressing well and both in good health. The notion of expelling your baby is exactly what my body was doing with no active pushing from me at all.

Poppet, dd's position was exactly the same. Left occipito transverse and then stuck in deep transverse arrest. She had some muscle damage in her neck at birth due to the position and length of labour, forcing her head in the wrong position (she was also slightly asynclitic, so head tilted to one side which exacerbated the problem). I too knew something was wrong but as a first timer I think they just dismissed my concerns as fear. I knew she wasn't descending, I knew I wasn't making a bit of progress.

I have had counselling and lengthy sessions with the delivering consultant who said that lack of urge to push happens in babies in excellent positions too so he can't promise it wouldn't happen in a different labour with a differently presented baby.

DD was an average size btw.

Both of my stuck ones were LOT too.
I had a strong urge to push the second time and kind of feel as though had I been able to push for a long period she might have turned, but as it was a VBAC there wasn't time and when the baby became very distressed there was only one course of action.
The good news, Poppet, is that my consultant says that people like me are a strange rarety. Many women have DTA the first time and go on to have perfectly normal deliveries later.

Oooh, forgot to say earlier, at my local MLU they don't like you to push until the baby descends, so if your baby hadn't turned and you had no urge to push I guess they would just leave you to it for as long as it was safe to do so. No "coached" pushing, unless the baby is on the way out anyway.

Yeah I've tried the breathing a poo out! Ahh the things you do!

From what I've read it sounds like you just can't possibly predict what kind of birth you're going to have, even if you do all of that preparation your baby could end up in the wrong position making it all irrelevant...

Maybe my mother has a point when she says "Believe me you won't care how it comes out, you just want it out!!"

Sorry for the thread hijack Dappy. For what it's worth us LOT lot are very, very rare - am actually chuffed to discover someone other than me got a little one stuck in that position (sorry ladies but it's a first for me!)
And yes I've often mused that the reason I never got that urge to push was because he wasn't in a birthable position. I wish my midwife had heard of the 'rest and be thankful' stage of labour and had also wondered why he hadn't descended much. He never did engage!
Anyway maybe next time I might discover the downwards vomit!

You can try and increase the odds of having a nice birth, but ultimately its luck. Ie. you can do all the birth preparation in the world and still end up with a crash c-section under GA. Even if you attempt to encourage optimal fetal positioning by yoga and sitting on your birth ball listening to whale music.

I think the important thing is not to ruin your pregnancy worrying about things you have little control over.

So so so true reallytired. I for example spent the last three weeks of my pregnancy in a self-imposed sofa ban (what kind of idiot was i??) after my DS was judged to be in an OP position because I was so scared of a back to back birth. And so I draped myself over birthing balls, only slept on the left side, sat at forward tilted dining chairs and on the day before I went into labour had gone to pregnancy yoga and aquanatal classes. And what do I get instead of a back to back baby, a sideways one! If I ever get the chance to have another, DH is currently too scared/sleep deprived, I shall lounge on the sofa and eat much cake and let bubba get into whatever ridiculous position takes his/her fancy.

I talked to the senior obs at the hospital for hours (well I cried a lot, he held out tissues) and asked him should I have sat on the sofa less, bounced on the birth ball more etc (like you I was trying to get dd into a good position, I had an active, upright labour and pushed in every conceivable position) and he said that in his experience of counselling birth trauma a lot of women go to him saying I tried optimum foetal positioning and spinning babies and birth balls etc, why didn't I do enough? And he said it seems to have a strange effect of making women feel more guilty. Because you feel like there were things you could/should have done to prevent it or change things. And while he thinks it's brilliant to try, in 18 years of delivering babies he has found that there is no rhyme or reason to why a baby gets stuck and why it doesn't.

Poppet, LOT is apparently a good position for a baby to be in at the start of labour, but then usually the head hits your pelvic floor and they turn. Sometimes, though, the baby is looking up a bit, or his head doesn't mould well or whatever and the turning part doesn't happen. It is fairly random and unpredictable which is why doctors are happy for us LOT/EMCS crowd to try for a vaginal birth the next time. With me it was the second stuck baby (in exactly the same position) that indicated some sort of mechanical failure...

Thanks so much for the kind words ladies. It's all on my mind as DS was one yesterday and I was still in a high dependency unit this time a year ago after a complication following the c section also very rare first timers, I was just really unlucky! what a strange mix of memories, because amid all the medical guff, it was still the happiest day of my life.
Now to get my still traumatised DH, who was literally left holding the baby for four hours while they dealt with me, to agree to another. He's now so set on my DS being an only :(

Oh Poppet. It's only just recently having had counselling and talking extensively about it that I can even countenance the idea of a second. DH is the same. DD is 3 and a half. 6 months ago I couldn't even look at babies or hear about birth stories. I have had flashbacks and nightmares. I just couldn't reconcile the happiest day of my life also being the worst day of my life. I hadn't expected to be so poorly afterwards and I found the early days and weeks very, very hard indeed.

Have you tried the birth trauma association? Counselling? I didn't want counselling and didn't think it would help but I went for something that wasn't traditional counselling but more medical I suppose. Talked for hours about birth, mechanics, statistics and then how all of that fitted into my experiences and my future plans. It helped an awful lot.

I've always thought I don't need counselling either, but that more medical discussion that you had sounds quite tempting. I've done a lot of googling to find out why and I guess that's my big question: why. However I suspect the answer is that sometimes it just happens. No one ever came to discuss my birth or even tell me why they performed a c-section, I think perhaps they must have discussed it briefly when I was off my head on gas and air at the time. But it's not a great time to absorb information. Until I got a copy of my notes I actually thought DS was totally transverse, not LOT, as my hospital leaving form had been incorrectly filled in with a tick next to transverse/oblique presentation not cephalic. That DID confuse me for months! I should have had my suspicions given the same genius put down DS's head circumferance down twice - once for his head and once for his length, as my community midwife said no way was this one 35 cms a week ago! I guess in my head I'm thinking I'd have a midwife go through my notes thoroughly if I ever was pregnant again. As I say though with DH it's a big no no right now even though we were so sure we didn't want an only child when we found out about DS. Still I am hopeful as DS gets sweeter and sweeter with every day that one day he'll come round to my way of thinking. Right now he says I only want another so I can get the birth 'right'. :(