I delivered both times at a university hospital with a level III nursery.
They probably had a high section rate because they have more patients who are high risk.
I wasn’t really the 2nd time, but our local hospital wouldn’t take me.
Oh boy, sometimes I don’t know how to interpret what my iPad says, I think post #118, should be refusing not free fusing.
Auto correct is the soothe of modem Stuckey.
That’s what my phone wants to say anyway. 
Every family has to weigh pros and cons of where and how they want deliveries. I was happy that the best pediatric and maternal hospital in our state was a short stroll from our apartment. We really didn’t consider anywhere else. It was perfect for us.
Our first was 11 days late, and my wife spent the night pacing the bedroom in our apartment. Even though she wanted to get to the hospital, we had strict instructions not to leave until she had three consecutive contractions spaced less than five minutes. My job was to sit there with the stopwatch telling her, “Not yet, that was six minutes.”
So we got to the hospital, she was at 8 cm and got to go to the delivery room right away. Most first-timers are sent to walk the halls for hours until they get to at least 6 cm. I had to go to the bathroom but did not want to miss anything. He was born 2 1/2 hours later and it was astounding, seeing him for the first time, being there, cutting the cord, kissing my wife. The midwife stayed for a few minutes after the placenta, made sure we were OK, then left for her day job. I finally had a chance to get to the bathroom.
That’s when things got exciting. I hear MY wife screaming, “THE BABY! THE BABY!” Of course, my heart stops. What could have happened so quickly? I finished as best I could, run back into the room, she is holding the baby in one arm but holding herself off of the bed with the other. Thankfully there was nothing wrong with the baby, but wife was in pain way worse than contractions. Turns out she had blown a blood vessel during delivery and had a hematoma the size of a golf ball. She told me to stay with the baby as they wheeled her down the hall on a stretcher. The hematoma was the size of a grapefruit when the got to it in the OR 10 minutes later.
The expected overnight in the hospital turned to two nights before they could come home. Night three was spent at home, but wife didn’t feel well. Night four was back in the hospital with a 105 degree fever - dirty surgery, which we did not find out about until more than a week later. Her hematoma had turned into a grapefruit-sized abscess. The OB who had saved her three days earlier was now potentially the one to kill her. They thought it might be an infected uterus, sought her permission for a hysterectomy but she refused. She spent the next ten days with high fevers, semi-lucid, making me promise to visit her family while he was growing up after she died. She was on doses of antibiotics reserved for bone marrow transplant patients.
On day 10, they finally diagnosed the abscess and cleaned it out surgically. Day 11 her fever broke, and day 12, thankfully, we were back home with an undernourished infant and a wife the same color as our bed sheets. Things gradually returned to normal.
Our next two, including the third being born stargazer and 9lb 13oz, were a comparative walk in the park.
Maybe it’s just me, perhaps a sign I am a normally happy person, but I wouldn’t give up a second of it. Life is so much better with a front row seat. So guys, if you are able to make the choice, be there for the birth and all that comes with it.
Being born stargazer?
Facing the ceiling (the stars), normal is face down. Apparently it’s significantly more painful.
Whatever, calicash. Postpartum hemorrhage can strike any woman without any warning whatsoever. Ditto for shoulder dystocia. Ditto for a whole host of things. When that happens, you want trained medical personnel who are well-drilled / well-trained, and an OR by your side – not sitting at home waiting for an ambulance to come get you or to drive to a hospital and have to be re-checked by the docs there.
My H can call for a C-section for fetal distress and be in there lifting baby out within 90 seconds. Can’t do that at homebirth. And TIME IS BRAIN. It’s as simple as that.
Not just doctor but top notch hospital. Really there are only a few top notch hospital thats can take care of very borderline case. I wouldn’t be complacent when it comes to medical situation.
@magnetron - yes, I had a “posterior” baby too. She eventually turned but it took f o r e v e r!
Wow! Sounds like some scary situations.
Glad everyone made it thru safely.
@oldfort @Pizzagirl And? I swear it’s like sometimes, it doesn’t even matter what I say. Just by virtue of it being me saying it, you have to find a reason to disagree. All I said was that I think that either women need to have more home births or hospitals need to put more care into how they treat women because maternal health in this country is disgraceful. We are last out of all first world countries when it comes to maternal health and your experiences with delivery don’t change that. I never said there was anything inherently wrong with delivery with a doctor. The problem is that women are not getting the proper care in hospitals. I’m not sure what your painful delivery means in the context of this conversation. If anything, it shows that there needs to be greater emphasis on finding the right ways to care for a mother and reduce the pain.
Our rates of obesity are higher, there is an explosion of multiple births because of fertility treatments, and women who wouldn’t have gotten pregnant in other countries due to underlying medical conditions (such as heart disease or Type 1 diabetes) get pregnant here. We also save babies that other countries don’t. We don’t have the homogenous populations other countries do, and of course we don’t have universal healthcare of any sort.
With all due respect, calicash - I’ve watched my spouse go through ob-gyn residency, train new residents, supervise rotations, manage situations ranging from the lowest of low-risk the-cab-driver-could-have-done-it all the way to wading in blood trying to stem a postpartum hemorrhage, delivering thousands of babies with mothers with all sorts of preexisting complications. I myself had a lot of complications that weren’t the fault of the “medical community” but were the fault of god, mother nature, or karma, whichever you believe in.
The fount of knowledge in ob-gyn (just like any other branch of medicine) is deep and he studies all the time just to keep up. It is more than annoying when some little direct-entry midwife with a high school diploma watches ten low-risk deliveries and proclaims herself an expert. It is more than annoying that the DEM certification test defies basic science (it’s the equivalent of “the earth is flat”). It is more than annoying that these people poison mothers-to-be with crap about their empowerment when they themselves weren’t empowered enough to actually get an education in the field they profess to care about. It is more than annoying when they dump births-gone-wrong at the OR door and leave the OB-gyn on call to be the one to tell the mother baby won’t make it. These are birth junkies getting their own jones through watching baybeees be born without getting the proper education. Shame on them.
@Pizzagirl
You’re arguing for complacency. There’s room for improvement in everything. Here is a summary of what I’ve said:
“The agony and pain you speak of usually happens in hospitals where they are primarily concerned about getting the baby out quickly rather than actually doing that’s best for the mother.”
“BUT to each, her own.”
“So though it benefitted you to be in a hospital, most would benefit from a more personal experience, something that most hospitals don’t offer. You should definitely check out that documentary though Perhaps hospitals need to be improved to increase maternal care. In that case, there would be less of a need for home births.”
I could literally say that the sky is blue and your response would be “No it isn’t. It’s Celeste.”
@Pizzagirl,
Wait a minute. I see what you just did there at post #133. You just made an argument for areas in maternal health that are lacking and need improvement. >:D<
“Women are not getting the proper care in hospitals.” “maternal health in this country is disgraceful.” And you know this how , as a teenager? There is always room for improvement but please be careful about being too sure of things at your age. . It is sometimes not that an attractive trait.
And thank you to your husband , PG (and to you for supporting him). I had preeclampsia at age 32 with first pregnancy (no obesity, or diabetes or prior high blood pressure so no known risk factors). I have a healthy adult kid because of my doctors. My dad grew up without his mother because of complications from childbirth so this is a sensitive topic.
@sevmom Lol, @romanigypsyeyes said
and she has worked and studied maternal and reproductive health. So I’m not sure what my age has to do with anything when it comes to what you quoted. She’s a PhD candidate if I’m not mistaken.
Despicable vs Disgraceful
I mean, I’m not gonna get into semantics, but those words are pretty similar.
I respect the fact that this is a sensitive topic for you. So if I offended you, I’m sorry. But let’s try to be consistent with the criticism here.
Part of the problem ( high mayernal/fetal morbidity) is that at least a few years ago, some women were not getting adaquate prenatal care.
Whether because they lacked insurance/transportation, or because in their culture, pregnancy was not necessarily something you routinely visited the Dr for.
So by the time they get to the hospital, they may have high risk problems.
Our statistics are pretty grim, let’s hope that our recent healthcare changes will help with that.
Statistics are influenced by many factors=.increased maternal age, more women with preexisting health conditions giving birth, better reporting, etc.