Midwives, No pain, no gain (BBC2)

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Anyone watching?

I've just looked on their website and they offer a birth afterthoughts service, so I think I will give them a call tomorrow and see if I can arrange that. Thanks

I am really shocked at those midwives who crusade to try to get women to change their minds about having an epidural, surely if it is a choice offered then you should be able to avail of it if you want? I have never EVER heard of this sort of behaviour from midwives who have looked after friends and colleagues and mums who go to the mother and baby groups. And they say Doctors have a God complex? Dreadful.

Tatiana was ace I wish I could have ad her. With dd I ad to be flat on my back on a monitor and never questioned it. Bu with ds I insisted on using the water and walking about

I wonder if Tatiana was trained in our NHS or elsewhere, wish she had been at my births.

I always watch these programmes and they always make me mad and sad. I am going to dump on the thread too.

ooops fat fingers
I had two shit births, one of which was horrendous/traumatic. It was sad to see such young relatively new MWs already instutionalised in poor practice, esp the one who preferred to care for continuous monitoring rather than care for the woman and continuing to insist on trying to place a scalp monitor on a woman who had nearly delivered, I was just thinking LEAVE HER ALONE

Crikey some of these stories are awful.

Just for a bit of balance I gave birth in MLU in the Heath Dec 2012 and I had a lovely midwife, didn't see her on this TV show though. However, I would add that I begged/demanded to go home straight from delivery suite as I hate hospitals and dreaded a ward stay so I was one of the lucky ones - in mid morn, water birth baby mid afternoon, home mid eve, then community midwifes etc came to see me over the following days to do the baby checks, help BF etc.

Everyone I met was lovely, but in fairness that wasn't many people and I didn't have any pain relief so perhaps I fitted their 'box'?! I was also bloody minded about my birth plan with DH (full on needle phobic) very on board - no way was I letting any bastard near my spine with a needle unless the babies life depended on it.

baby's
apologies for poor grammar, said baby is being a PITA this morning!

The more I think about it, the more tempted I am to complain to the BBC about the programme last night. The mere fact that it was called 'no pain, no gain' is grounds enough for a complaint, let alone the awful programme content.

Doodle, definitely try and get a debrief appointment. I heard some stories on here that sometimes the hospital try to claim things were different from how you remembered, so I think it is best to be prepared for that possibility, but my experience was fantastic and the senior mw very willingly admitted that there were several things that had gone wrong with my care and even brought them up in a team meeting. It was hugely cathartic and though I am now adamant that I was an elcs for any future DC as I'm not willing to risk not seeing my baby again, I felt hugely reassured about what would happen if I did go into labour again and had to attempt a vbac.

And yes, complaining to the BBC is a great idea. Now you mention it that is a terrible title for a show Do you know how me complain?

Try calling the unit direct to register a complaint about what their MW's said. Ask for the director of MW services. Of course they'll try to blame the editing ...

The other thing which strikes me about these programmes is they always say 'some women cope better with pain than others'. I see it a lot and last night I heard it said a few times by various midwives. I don't disagree in loose, general terms, but what they seem to forget is that every single labour is different. It's not like it's a set amount of pain and then some women are just better at it than others. Some women have malpositioned babies or wonky pelvises or back to back labours or trapped nerves or a million things besides. The implication in 'some women cope better than others' is that some women just aren't very good at handling pain. I don't think pain thresholds have a lot to do with it tbh. Objectively, I think I have a fairly high pain threshold. I've had two very long labours. One was excruciating. One barely smarted. All down to the individual circumstances on the day, plus the level of care I received. Of course once they've reduced it down to some women managing and some not, then requests for pain relief are reduced down to whether or not she's coping and whether she'll be disappointed to 'give in'. How about, it's more painful that she can cope with and she'd like the hear her options instead of a comparison to any other woman or some weird ideal where she carries on regardless.

How we talk about birth is quite detrimental to a woman's mental health in many ways. There is an odd dichotomy of failure v success in giving birth. Failure to progress, failure to thrive, stalled labour etc compared to statements like one I heard last night where the mother got the drug free, vaginal delivery she 'deserved'. What is this reward system they've set up? The reward is a healthy baby. The process is treating each woman as an individual and ensuring her physical and mental health according to her wants and needs.

Oh ramble ramble. I find it very cross making.

Urgh, just watching this now. Their attitudes towards women's pain are just so medieval.

I thought it was revealing at the beginning when they said something along the lines of "our goal is to help Mums have a nice vaginal delivery blah blah blah, oh and a healthy baby." What about women's mental health? What if they don't want a vaginal delivery? What if they are happy to accept the risks of an epidural? etc etc. It just seems to me that they are only interested in improving their stats and don't seem to care at all about how the women they are supposed to be caring for actually experience labour.

I'm also at some of the things I've read on here about people's notes.

It is all so paternalistic and uncaring. I'm really upset by it actually.

I don't get why there seems to be the implication that it's a terrible thing, or a failure, if a woman isn't coping. Who gives a fuck if she is or isn't, in the wider scheme of things? It's a massively painful experience, it's probably the most physical, scary, invasive and out-of-control thing that the majority of women have experienced even if things are progressing nicely. If a woman is finding it too painful and too overwhelming then help her, don't just tut and shake your head and say "oh, well, she just can't cope with it".

That's what makes me so, so cross about it all.

There's no medal for 'coping' vs 'not coping'.

Really disappointed in the episode last night having previously thought this was an excellent programme. I have had one straightforward birth on gas and air and one complicated one ending in epidural, episiotomy and pph (I don't believe the 3 were connected, I literally could not push anymore without an epidural and mine was administered at fully dilated).

I wasn't disappointed at "needing" pain relief just grateful to be given it. I thought the programme was patronising.

That's great that the debrief helped you Thurlow , I am going to call them now and see if I can arrange one for me. I was fine after I had my DS, but recently i've been feeling upset about what happened so hopefully it will help. I am adamant that I want a CS for future children too, too many things went wrong last time for me to confidently face that all over again.

I imagine we would need to comlain to ofcom, but i'm not sure of the complaints procedure. I will look it up online!

Totally agree with everything you have said showofhands- It makes me really cross too!

Yes, and that stat about epidurals and complicated deliveries - correlation doesn't equal causation! It seems to me that they are only administering epis to women experiencing complications anyway, and so of course those women are likely to have higher surgical birth rates.

I think most women who've asked for an epidural are pleased to get it tbh. No-one wants a needle stuck into their spine unless they really need the pain relief do they? Women in labour aren't getting epidurals for shits and giggles.

ShowOfHands, that is so well put. I couldn't agree more.

I gave birth at the Heath in December 2011 and they were fab. Once my labour was established it slowed down and my contractions were constant, they tried pethidine, but when it made no difference they gave me an epidural, no questions asked. There was a one to one midwife until the baby was safely delivered. I was 6 days in hospital and my care was kind and compassionate. I was looking forward to watching this, not so keen now!

We were taught as studentsNot to use the term 'to cope' because it is value laden and I always discuss this w/ my students. Mind you the student MW's that we shared foundation studies during my training were a gormless lot continually complaining that 'they' didn't need to learn how to 'nurse' people, or attend general physiology lectures or do Mental Health placements (I always concentrate very hard upon pushing MH w/ my student MW's when I mentor them on their MH placements).

Obviously in student MW land, people w/ medical issues/illnesses do not have babies nor do women become ill when PG nor do they consider that they do have to do a certain amount of surgical nursing when a woman has a CS.

Actually, I can see why the lady with the back to back baby didn't get the epidural - but they should have explained better.

I had a really good, long chat with an anaesthesiologist recently - he said that (where I'm giving birth) they're 24hrs, in hospital, dedicated to maternity - that him getting there within 10 minutes was rarely actually a problem, the problem came with a) getting the epidural in safely when a woman was that far along - it's just very tricky when contractions are so close, and b) that it takes 20-30 minutes for it to kick in - and obviously more if for some reason it doesn't work and they need to top-up/resite.

If she really was already that close to actual delivery, then the chances are that the epidural just wouldn't have been in time. However that should have been explained to her, rather than just fobbing her off.

I am also shocked at the number of births on their backs though. If you're high risk, and going through all the monitoring/on back etc. then obviously your chances for an intervention free birth are lower - acting as though it's the high risk that causes the intervention, rather than the general interference contributing seems just a touch dishonest.

The woman who was denied a water birth, and had to stay flat on her back on the bed to be continuously monitored, was slimmer than I was when I had both ds2 and ds3 at home - and ds2 should have been a water birth too.

If there had been some genuine reason for needing the monitoring - ie. decelerations in the baby's heart rate - I could have understood why they were so keen to place the foetal scalp electrode - but it was just 'she's fat so the risks are greater'.

What about the fact that, by keeping her flat on her back, they were introducing more risk into the labour?

There is a cascade of intervention, and something as simple as keeping a woman lying flat can be the start of that cascade.

That programme really brought back my DD1's birth: induced on a busy day ward with children running around and when i started getting quite intense pain I burst into tears as I just wanted somewhere private, not on a busy ward in front of other patients/relatives.
Then another patient got the midwife because I was being noisy, she suggested diamorphine to shut me up I said no, she sorta went 'ok be a brave soldier then,' and I gave up at that point. I was 2 cm dilated and I gave up. Said yes to diamorphine. Went to sleep. 30 hours later DD1 was born by emcs -after drip to bring on contractions, then epidural then realisation that my birth was so delayed (drip needle sited wrongly so my hand swelled up but no one noticed for hours) that DD1 got a Strep B infection. SCBU for 2 weeks.

That's only a tiny bit of the story..

What struck me was the few health professionals who really make a difference - I will always remember Sheena the lovely SCBU nurse who showed me how to breastfeed when I was sobbing alone in SCBU trying to feed a very ill DD1, another nurse who stood up for me and wrote a very strongly worded note in my notes stating I should be supported to breastfeed as SCBU was intent on giving DD1 bottles as it was easier for them - after she did that they found me a room and I was allowed, after three days of being separated from DD1, to sleep in the same room as her.

Ive just qatched this. I am fucking fuming! The poor woman in the 'high risk' labour! the dark haired midwife was awful! Im a 'bigger lady', who has had 2 previous DC's. My birth plan wherever I go wil read "I do not agree to continuous monitoring under any circumstances" and "I wish to remain mobile".
The midwife Im under for AN care is very nice. I mentioned home birth. She was very positive.
I watch these programmes, but they are very biased towards giving the messages that we 'need' to hear.
Fat women need continuous monitoring.
Fat women can't give birth without help.
Homebirth is bad.
An epidural is failure.
It makes me cross.

This programme is fucking shocking.