Want to have a baby? Don’t go to NGH

Today was my day in labor & delivery and I just got home feeling frustrated, helpless and somewhat angry.  I guess maybe I need to get over this shit, but it’s not going to happen today, and when — god willing — I make it to being a midwife I’ll at least be able to do something about it.

The nurse I followed today was taking care of a primiparous woman who came in yesterday.  They ruptured her membranes for her (gotta speed things up, after all) and started pitocin (everybody gets pitocin at this hospital, gotta get those babies out quick, after all).  So she labored all night and this morning was at 9 cm/100% effaced when I got there around 8am.  She had an epidural and they gave her a bolus around that time because she was in pain from the pitocin, which was causing extremely strong & frequent contractions.  They were every 1-2 minutes and lasting up to 90 seconds, and the baby’s heart rate was going up to compensate for no recovery period between contractions.

She was 9.5cm at 10am, the baby was -1, she had a tiny little lip of cervix left, and she had a fever of 100.5 degrees.

Approximately 50% of women who get epidurals run a low-grade fever.  The doctors –actually, med students mostly — came in, diagnosed her with chorioamnionitis (infection of the uterus), told her she needed to have a stat c-section.

An hour before that, they had told her that she’d be pushing soon.  She was SO CLOSE.  She spoke no English.  She did not want a c-section.

She cried.  She was scared.

I don’t know, it was awful.  It was like this big cycle of poorly managed medical interventions that caused other problems that caused her to be forced (basically) into major abdominal surgery.  It infuriates me that people who go to this hospital all get pitocin.  I find it sick.  Without that drug, maybe it would have taken a little longer, but she could have pushed that baby out.  The heart rate most likely would have stayed within the normal range.  Or what if they’d given her something to eat?  That might have helped.  No muscle that doesn’t get food for over 24 hours is going to work very well, and that INCLUDES THE UTERUS.

It infuriates me that this doctor has a c-section rate of over 80%.  It’s creepy.  It’s all fear-based, fear of being sued and blah blah blah blah but it’s just fucked.  When we went into that OR, the nurse had to go under the table and push the baby’s head back up so the doctors could grab it.  She was totally down in the pelvis.

UGHHH.  I find myself feeling very militantly midwife-ish.  I’m sure this will probably just increase over time.

I just felt really bad for her.