People refusing induction against medical advice

[bollocksthemess]

I’m pregnant and I’ve been in hospital quite a bit lately, I’m in hospital now with a bit of high blood pressure, been here overnight but should be let out today.

I can’t believe the number of women I’ve overheard who don’t want to follow medical advice about having their baby.
There’s been over the last couple of hospital visits:

The lady who was 42+2 and was refusing induction, and walked out of her appointment without being scanned when the consultant said there was no benefit to her baby staying in longer.

The lady who came in at 38w with reduced foetal movement, was scanned and induction recommended, and was refusing induction even when the consultant explained that she was at term and the recommendation for reduced foetal movement at term is to get the baby out.

Today’s lady was in last night with pre-eclampsia at 37+5. Induction recommended. She wants to labour in the pool but obviously you can’t if you’re induced. She wants to go home and see what happens.

I just don’t understand it at all. I’ve had quite a bit of anxiety around this pregnancy and not being able to tell what’s going on with the twins, and while I’m trying to keep them in as long as possible there comes a point when they’re safer out than in.
I’ve seen more medical people in the last few weeks than in my whole life, I’m the sort to never even go to the GP and I’m usually of the wait and see mindset.
But Jesus, when someone who does this for a living tells you your baby needs evicting surely you’re just grateful that we have such good monitoring and get your baby out where it’s safest?
I know nobody wants to be induced, but I just want my babies to be safe, however they come out.

@Slayduggee

Because in an assessment area you are in a room
With about 15 others with curtains between you! So unless you are listening to music you can hear everything, without even trying to

I refused to be induced because, after having done a great deal of reading the research, I decided that the flowchart the medical professionals were following wasn’t the right thing to do.

There has been a big increase in the number of inductions and now spontaneous labour is less likely than induced or c section. Thing is the latest stats has shown there hasn't been a significant reduction in the number of stillbirths but have been an increase in other interventions and other side effects of those including physical and mental side effects.
NICE recently published new guidance on induction to suggest a lot more reasons to induce earlier than before and it caused outrage when it went out for consultation as it included reasons like mothers skin colour and heritage to combat the stillbirth rate in those minorities being higher with no research as to why that would help.

Women should be allowed to make their own decision about whether to be induced or not and be given all of the options including wait and see, monitoring, csection etc with the pros and cons of both. There are risks for all of these options.

I agree OP but generally I think these women have never had to go through losing a baby if they had they would take the route og getting the baby out safely over messing up their idealised birth plan

@bonetiredwithtwins

I agree OP but generally I think these women have never had to go through losing a baby if they had they would take the route og getting the baby out safely over messing up their idealised birth plan

I think you are making several erroneous assumptions there. And are extremely dismissive of what may be good and well informed choices.

Intervention begets intervention in labour. And intervention does not straightforwardly or automatically lead to better outcomes for women or children.

The reason the UK has higher rates of stillbirth than other countries is not that there isn’t enough intervention in or induction in labour. But obstetricians will seek to use the tools then have and know to solve problems.

Everything is a nail to a man with a hammer…

@AHobbyaweek

There has been a big increase in the number of inductions and now spontaneous labour is less likely than induced or c section. Thing is the latest stats has shown there hasn't been a significant reduction in the number of stillbirths but have been an increase in other interventions and other side effects of those including physical and mental side effects. NICE recently published new guidance on induction to suggest a lot more reasons to induce earlier than before and it caused outrage when it went out for consultation as it included reasons like mothers skin colour and heritage to combat the stillbirth rate in those minorities being higher with no research as to why that would help.

Women should be allowed to make their own decision about whether to be induced or not and be given all of the options including wait and see, monitoring, csection etc with the pros and cons of both. There are risks for all of these options.

Agree. Induction isn't risk free

My induction was horrendous but all the midwives were talking about how well it had gone, shudder to think what others are like. I’d still do it if I thought there was real danger to my baby. I can understand people trying to avoid them though. A lot of inductions end in complications.
It’s very difficult being pregnant and constantly having to risk assess everything. I’m not at all convinced all midwives and doctors know best so you have to gather all the information and do the best you can.
That said there is a massive social media focus on perfect births and natural birthing which brainwashes women. I’m not impressed with Ashley Graham’s Instagram at the moment for instance instagram.com/ashleygraham?utm_medium=copy_link

Inductions can be very brutal on the body actually! And they greatly increase the risk of Csection

More recent studies show that healthy pregnancies can safely wait until 42 w 0 d with increased monitoring. From my personal experience, doctors were* completely unwilling to wait beyond 41weeks, at all!!! Even with extensive history of late pregnancies. So it became battle, a huge source of anxiety at the final stage of super easy pregnancies especially for DD1 my body was not* ready for labour and it was so difficult..................

There is definitely over medicalisation of labour. YES doctors are amazing! But back off a bit from my healthy pregnancy!! You don't operate on a healthy heart or put a cast on a healthy leg!

(Don't know why my phone but that text on bold 🤦🏻‍♀️)

I think this is a symptom of the fact that people don't feel listened to or respected by the medical professional. Especially women, especially during pregnancy and birth. Options are often pushed into women without consultation or consideration of them and their needs when other options are available. Women are often forced to have to fight and fight for options that should just have been available to them. Doctors and other med profs acting like this is leading to a general distrust of the medical professions and this is a (very unfortunate and worrying) symptoms. But not unexpected, if you have no knowledge and don't feel you can trust your doctors when do you believe them or not believe them?

Am overhaul of the medical profession is needed with a far greater emphasis in informed consent and joint decision making being front a foremost for people to regain trust in our health professionals.

The desperation to induce you at or before 41 weeks is fairly new. And getting earlier.

No one even mentioned induction to me 12 years ago. And I didn’t go into labour until 42 weeks. It wasn’t on the care flowchart at that point.

The daily monitoring actually caused problems for me. Being place in that ridiculous upturned turtle position and strapped to a machine every day is what necessitated the EMCS I ended up with when i went into labour with DS3. It was time consuming and obviously uncomfortable for both of us.

If I found myself in the situation again, I’d have told them they could scan me daily if they wanted. But I would agree to that daily monitoring.

The way that due dates are treated like facts based on scan measurements is ridiculous. It in no way reflects the enormous margins for error involved. I have two friends who know for a fact the exact moment of conception (because they had IVF) but whose due date was changed after a 12 week scan. By a whole week in one case.

Yet we pretend that it’s just irrational pregnant women who are obsessed with the perfect birth. Rather than a one-size-fits-all system designed and delivered by people whose main tools are induction, instruments and sections that is not at all about the individual woman, fetus or pregnancy.

@VimFuego101

I think people get so attached to the idea of their perfect birth plan that they lose sight of why induction might be advised.

This !

@bollocksthemess

I’ve been on wards and in triage loads, there are just tiny curtains between you. You can’t help but hear what’s happening, I bet they can all hear my medical details too.

This is pretty much why I didn't want an induction. I didn't feel comfortable labouring, having VEs and pessaries in a place with so little privacy. Not to mention the hideous experiences many of my peers have described.

It’s an interesting discussion. In my personal experience (type 1 diabetic), I always expected to be induced between 38 and 39 weeks. I had a scan at 36 weeks which showed the baby was at the 95 percentile so I was advices to induce at 37 weeks. It didn’t work and I had an emergency c section. As it turns out my baby was tiny and just not ready!

While in my experience, I wish I had of waited another week or so in this case. The advice I was given was done with a view to minimise the risk to my baby and me. I would ALWAYS follow the medical advice given by experts. I do not confuse my ability to google with their education and experience.

@BurntToastAgain not just issues with measuring accurately the due date but the length of pregnancy is a bell curve! Yes most pregnancies fall around the 40 weeks but others do less time and others go for longer. Term pregnancies! Not under or overdue babies. My almost 42 week babies were not overdue, you can see when a baby is overdue, it does happen

I had my second last year. I had an emcs with my first 6 years ago which came about purely because of being pushed into interventions by medical professionals which were unnecessary for me but convenient for them. I wasn't given the whole story about the risks of the epidural and the induction drip, just told it was what I needed and I didn't question it. This time I was higher risk due to my previous section but couldn't have had a more different experience. The pros and cons

I blame NCT, they make induction sound like the end of the world.

Sorry, posted too soon. The pros and cons of every option were fully explained and I was reassured that every decision was mine to make. And that doing nothing was also an option. I had a wonderful vbac I accepted a couple of interventions that felt sensible, such as a cannula inserted just in case as my veins are awful, and an episiotomy. In my opinion, this is how healthcare should be. Sometimes these interventions are necessary, but they're often given when they aren't and can cause complications, which isn't good for mum or baby

[quote grey12]@BurntToastAgain not just issues with measuring accurately the due date but the length of pregnancy is a bell curve! Yes most pregnancies fall around the 40 weeks but others do less time and others go for longer. Term pregnancies! Not under or overdue babies. My almost 42 week babies were not overdue, you can see when a baby is overdue, it does happen[/quote]
Yes. This too.

All the women in my maternal line have long pregnancies. My children were all very ‘overdue’. I was born at 42 weeks. My sister was too. My mother was.

The issue isn’t simply that women are fixated on idealised labours; often it’s that medical professionals are so fixated on procedures and timetables and standard protocols that they are not looking at the actual woman they are supposed to be supporting.

I got induced due to reduced movements, I was hyper stimulated having non stop contractions and being sick everywhere and baby’s heart dropped to 10 beats per minute, I was nearly put under general and had to have a c section where she had to be resuscitated and I didn’t see her for 30 minutes, blood loss affected my milk coming in and I was so numb from the epidural I couldn’t feel her when we tried skin to skin. But and it’s a huge but, she’s here and healthy and I’m fine now. I understand why people wouldn’t want this birth experience, it was about as far from what I wanted as it could be but the possible alternative if I wasn’t induced doesn’t bear thinking about and I’m grateful to the medical professionals that I got to take a healthy baby home from the hospital. I’d get induced again for the same issue in a heartbeat.

I had a pregnancy yoga teacher who was part of a ' choices in childbirth' charity. She really encouraged a fear of medics and medical interventions. I remember at one class one of the mothers, who had been attending throughout her pregnancy, came in and started ranting about how she felt she knew more than the medics did now and she was terrified they were going to make her do something she didn't want to, other mothers joined in.

It was awful. One of the mothers at that class, had gone from wanting a c-section to a total natural birth. She refused induction past 42 weeks and in the end had to agree to a c-section, turned out the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby, preventing it from coming out.
This teacher also said that there was no need to induce placentas and it was totally normal for them not to come out for ages, and nothing to worry about if it did not come on, no need for intervention. I had a friend who had a homebirth, when the placenta never came the midwife took her to hospital as a precaution. She went and badly haemorraged at the hospital, thought she was going to die, medics almost had to put a needle in her neck to get blood in her. There is a reason why these precautionary measures are put in place. Another mother may have bled out at home if she had listened to people like my pregnancy yoga teacher.

Medics are there to keep mothers and babies alive. They are not the enemy. Its great that there is a movement to encourage safe and natural labouring in the manner that you choose, but it must be recognised that medical intervention has transformed childbirth to highly dangerous for mothers and children to being so much safer.

Babies do sometimes still die because mothers refuse all intervention after being indoctrinated against life saving interventions by the 'natural birth movement' . Because you know, in the glory days of natural births (pre modern medicine) that's what happened. Lots of mother and babies died.

It might sound like madness to you, but they probably have good reasons for not wanting to be induced and it is their choice. Maternal preference is an extremely important factor. They are doing what they think is best for them and their LO and it's not for us to judge that choice.

@chipsinonehandpieinother

I had a pregnancy yoga teacher who was part of a ' choices in childbirth' charity. She really encouraged a fear of medics and medical interventions. I remember at one class one of the mothers, who had been attending throughout her pregnancy, came in and started ranting about how she felt she knew more than the medics did now and she was terrified they were going to make her do something she didn't want to, other mothers joined in. It was awful. One of the mothers at that class, had gone from wanting a c-section to a total natural birth. She refused induction past 42 weeks and in the end had to agree to a c-section, turned out the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby, preventing it from coming out. This teacher also said that there was no need to induce placentas and it was totally normal for them not to come out for ages, and nothing to worry about if it did not come on, no need for intervention. I had a friend who had a homebirth, when the placenta never came the midwife took her to hospital as a precaution. She went and badly haemorraged at the hospital, thought she was going to die, medics almost had to put a needle in her neck to get blood in her. There is a reason why these precautionary measures are put in place. Another mother may have bled out at home if she had listened to people like my pregnancy yoga teacher.

Medics are there to keep mothers and babies alive. They are not the enemy. Its great that there is a movement to encourage safe and natural labouring in the manner that you choose, but it must be recognised that medical intervention has transformed childbirth to highly dangerous for mothers and children to being so much safer.

Babies do sometimes still die because mothers refuse all intervention after being indoctrinated against life saving interventions by the 'natural birth movement' . Because you know, in the glory days of natural births (pre modern medicine) that's what happened. Lots of mother and babies died.

There should be some sort of regulation of this sort of thing! Pregnant women are very vulnerable. Yoga teachers should not be giving out childbirth advice.

I was advised to have DS induced as DD was a large baby (nearly 10 lbs at 41 weeks) and although I managed to have her vaginally, I was ill afterwards and had to stay in hospital for a week recovering. I'm a small build and not really made to have such large babies!

I agreed to have DS induced at 39 weeks to prevent him getting too big. It was very painful on the drip, but over in three hours and I was up and about the next morning, home later that afternoon. He was 8lbs at 39 weeks so would probably have been another whopper if he'd stayed in longer.

So, it was the best option for me, but I can understand people's reluctance.

Some people just won’t take the medical advice. My SIL is currently pregnant via IVF and has been advised they would most likely want to induce her but she’s fighting it. She’s followed everything else so why she’s against this baffles me.