did you refuse iron tests, urine tests, bp checks, doppler checks etc?

[nappyaddict]

if so why? i can understand refusing tests that find out abnormalities if you wouldn't terminate anyway but i can't understand why people refuse those mentioned above.

'by alleging mistreatment you actually make yourself look churlish, and immature.'

No, it doesn't, SM. It makes her look like someone who has suffered long-lasting damage.

I think it's rather mean-spirited to downplay how deeply that can affect a person.

i mean mistreatment on this thread not the harrowing birth she suffered.

but when thread get hot it is churlish to say oh im being picked on.

agree wholeheartedly, a bad birth can inform your viewpoint about a certain aspect of birth in a very strong way......

you had a terrible time

it has led you to research a particular area of pregnancy and birth and made you angry & passionate

no bad thing.

debriefing is important, through the link that scottishmummy has linked to or the birth crisis helpline too.

always good to debrief before setting foot in a labour room again

i had a crappy first birth, not as bad as what you experienced, but it gave me a passion for learning about a VBAC, and sometimes you cannot quite understand that not everyone else feels quite as strongly as you!!

www.sheilakitzinger.com/BirthCrisis.htm

"Everyone's opinion is as valid as anyone elses' " Really? Really? Oh, come off it. Then why go through the pretense of citing proper studies from PubMed if you could just reckon instead. Know fuck all about a subject but just give it a go. Reckon.

Been away all day and just returned to thread. Obviously an emotive subject that personal experiences are bound to influence opinions on. I had a truely awful experience when my ds1 was born, in delivery and postnatally and in scbu. Luckily for me my ds2 and dd were born at another hospital. Don't know how I would have felt about going back to first hosp. Having said that I wouldn't try to influence others with my personal experience and it didn't stop me having routine tests either. But that was my choice. Testing made me feel reassured about my babies health, particlarly scans. Ds1 had a cleft palate amoung other problems and just being reassured that ds2 and dd didn't have same was very comforting. His other problems couldn't be tested for other than a detailed anomoly scan which still couldn't give absolute reassurance. Whether or not there was any medical point to the tests really didn't occur to me at the time. But emotionally I felt supported by the reassurance they gave me.
All we can deduce from this thread is that people have strong feelings about the subject but it is all down to personal choice. We have a duty to ourselves and our children to make sure that the choice we make is informed and we can sit comfortably with the consequences.

Being "persuaded" to have tests that you are not comfortable with I would imagine to be stressful and stress can't be good in pregnancy. So long as the pros and cons have been explained and understood I don't think any pregnant woman should be persuaded to have tests they don't want. I would just worry that all these choices were being made rationally and for the right reasons. It's clearly a subject that provokes extreme emotions if this thread is anything to go by. I wonder if you can be balanced and rational in such circumstances.I don't know the answer.

"Everyone's opinion is as valid as anyone elses'"

That is the view of a fool.

There was another thread not long ago where the woman was refusing scans etc and everyone got quite shouty (not least the OP)

I wonder why it rouses such strong feelings in people? I genuinely see it as an individual choice and not something to try to be prescriptive about.

i think , franny, it might be because the baby does not have a choice in whether the mother has tests etc.. but can be affected negatively if something is wrong. and i thikn it is somehow seen as almost 'unmaternal' to decline a test that could help the baby, IFYSWIM.. and maybe seen as putting the baby at risk.

just my opinion, but i can see why people do get shouty about it

i don;t think it does any harm to look at why we have the tests and if they are useful or create more panic.

i had all tests and scans, and it never occured to me not to

if i had another one, i would do the same again

i think there is a difference between declining all antenatal care with the belief that what will be, will be, and making a decision to decline some testing that is thought unnecessary.

some things in pregnancy and birth are worthwhile detecting , IMO

e.g placenta previa

transverse lie

multiple pregnancy

yes I think you have it right Lulu

i'm curious How do they test for GD? My dd was big especially compared to my other dcs and on the post natal ward there was a woman whose dd was over 12lbs. No mention of GD though. Is there more to it than a bigger than average baby?
As for testing in general I think I have a problem with women who refuse tests because they don't "like them". Ihave a friend who had a bad experience with pre eclampsia with her first son. He was delivered by cs at 35 weeks but perfectly healthy. She had 2nd ds 10 years later and got positively paranoid about testing. Kept discharging herself from hospital, refusing to have her bp taken or provide urine samples. She appeared to feel positively persecuted by medics. She eventually delivered by cs at 29 weeks as an emergency in the middle of night and suffered massive blood loss. She and ds were lucky to survive. I can not understand after her experience with pe she would be so dogmatic in her refusal to accept even bp checks. Surely the bigger picture is that you take home a healthy baby. I would put up with any amount of questionable testing if that were the result. Sadly, as I have learnt through experience, babies don't come with guarantees and anything that can be done to minimise the risk is ok by me. I wouldn't swap my ds for anything, I love him with all my heart but if I could go back and change things, If there had been a test or treatment available that meant he wouldn't now be living with a disability I would have been 1st in queue.

Was thinking about this alst night, and it occured to me that Jaynz is wrong about anaemia in her ist post.

I went to my 34 weeks appointment feeling really well, far better than at any stage in my previous three pregnancies. perhpas the tiredness iddn't register becuase of my being at Uni / having 3 kids etc but when the routine bloods came back my HB level was 9.5!!! I'd had no idea whatsoever. I've since had to attend hospital twice due to related problems, although HB level just within the normal range now.

I'm fairly much of the you know your own body mindset as a norm, and far from being over medicalised have booked a homebirth (not sure I will get it as forst of my 2 due dtaes is today and feel likely to need induction). I have a doula booked as well, but there is no substitute for proper medical care which can quite easily be delivered alongside a natural outlook in a normal delivery.

madje2 - in my case the first indicator of GD was sugar in urine (picked up by regular dipstick test at ante-natal appointment). Then I had glucose test (and I think a further test after that) before I was fully diagnosed. DD never measured big so that wasn't the issue in my case.

LeonieD, that's an awful story and I'm sorry that it happened to you.

Agree that a GTT isn't the be all and end all and that finger pricking over a period of time is a far better indicator. I had no GD indicators but I finger pricked anyway just for my own piece of mind (DH is a diabetic and has a blood glucose meter).

But the tone of your earlier posts was that you didn't believe that GD is a problem. Trust me, it is. I have no personal experience but there are plenty of people that have. Your experience does not negate that.

I have just come back to this. Leonie - I am sorry that you were rudely treated, and I haven't read anything other than what you have posted here, so forgive me if there is more that I don't know about.

From what you say, you clearly didn't have gestational diabetes, as your blood sugars were within normal range.

8lbs at 36 weeks is on the slightly larger side of average, but not abnormal or pathological - particularly as 37 weeks is considered full term.

If a fetus feels on the big side, it is worth just considering whether there might be difficulties with the delivery, and a scan is a reasonable way to check that.

I would say it is reasonable to check out any suspicion of GD to exclude it because it is a dangerous condition.

It sounds as if the problem in your case was the indefensible rudeness of some of the staff.

Once again - I am sorry if there is more than you have posted here, I am basing what I have said on what I have read.

Christina - I am so, so sorry you lost your baby. So very for you.

Peachy, I think that every person is different and pregnancy changes their body differently. I know that for some women an hb of 9.5 is actually high, the ranges are based on a bell curve that is pretty much a guesstimate as we don't know how much haemodilution affects each persons results. This means someone has to be on the high end and someone on the low.

I've seen a woman up and around and feeling really good - better than last time, looking after her baby, carrying on her life and when her bloods came back (she had bled a lot) her hb was 7.2! I wouldn't be able to function on that.

I've also known women with terrible lethargy etc who have hb's of upper 130's.

So, you kinda got what I mean in that each person is unique and blanket type care not appropriate. I was only talking about myself and my reasons for declining and didn't want to suggest that this was for everyone

I've never ever had a HB above 11 so I do think you're right on that.

i wouldn't bother next time with the iron tests, this time round I took the tablets after getting a 'score' of 9.5 only to read later on that noone actually knows what a pregnant woman's iron level should be anyway, iron levels go down in pregnancy, routine iron supplementation is associated with smaller babies blah blah. I felt fine. if i felt tired, i'd have a few steaks

also wouldn't bother with the triple test cos so inaccurate. would have liked nuchal but it's private here and we decided against. prob wouldn't bother with protein/glucose either altho did have p/ecl in first pregnancy but as I swelled to the size of a house that might be a give away sign.

ideally would like to turn up in labour having never had any checks previously. but hey - that's why I'm actually not going to have another baby as obv have some ishoos with the whole thing

as a family, we have been let down so often by doctors and the medical profession in general, misdiagnosed, misinformed, mistreated, that it is hard not to be very cynical about more or less every aspect of treatment. I double and triple check everything these days and question everything. i suspect many people who avoid med treatment or are v cynical have had similar experiences. incidentally in some cases in my family we initially thought we were getting really good treatment, it's only when you read stuff afterwards that you realise. sometimes I wonder how many people never realise they were misinformed/treated incorrectly etc.

having said all that, we've also had some wonderful caring professionals working with us whose hard work and dedication are really appreciated. But noone is infalliable

Leonie - the consultant was rude but your case against GD as a disease is very silly. A small percentage of women who have GD continue to have diabetes after delivery. Perhaps you'd like to know before you go blind or your kidneys pack up? Or women with GD are at increased risk of developing diabetes within the next 5-10 years. These are facts which exist regardless of your belief in them or not.

As for your not having a GTT but pricking yourself 3 times a day, look who's talking about not medicalising their pregnancy.

You say "They'd have had me starving my baby on some ridiculous diet or injecting myself with insulin when in reality, my blood sugars were already between 4-5," Shows how little you know about GD and how it's treated.

3littlefrogs - thank you. I had two healthy babies afterwards. I had GD with them (not with my stillborn baby) and I kept my appointments and tests. One thing I could do to help my babies be born alive.

what would people get out of refusing these tests - they are not there to bug you?

LeonieD - it is utterly irrelevant whether you believe GD to be a 'disease' or not. No matter how much you try to wish it away it exists. People have tried to be helpful and sympathetic to you but it is obviously pointless. Please go and get yourself some advice/ a debrief and stop banging this redundant issue over the head.