Inducement to birth?

How long is a human pregnancy?

If you ask that question, the answer you'll generally get is 37-42 weeks. The correct answer, to my mind, would be, "Who's pregnancy?"

Mine was meant to be longer than 42 weeks - I know this because at 42 weeks my little girl was happily chuntering along in there, all swimmy healthy fluid, hiccups and grand movements. Her head was engaged, I was starting to slowly dilate, but it just wasn't time yet.

But doctors don't like it. In some ways its fair enough - in another life, I worked in child protection, and one wall of the a supervisor's office sported a small poster which showed a picture of a man tightrope walking - the caption, in balloons on each end of his balance pole, read 'too much intervention' on one side, 'not enough intervention' on the other. Doctors have to hedge their bets, and they hedge cautiously, in the sense that they generally prefer to rush in and sort things out rather than let nature take its course. No doubt this has saved many a life, but sometimes...

Have you been induced? Have you felt the Syntocinon kick?

My birth was nothing like I expected, and I expect this is because it was controlled by strong medicine rather than by my body.

And no-one told me the risks.

I had a fantastic midwife, liked the 'baby - friendly hospital' I was to birth in, had done a form of hypno - birthing called 'Calmbirth', and thought I was ready. But at 42 weeks I was induced, and the experience was, I'm sure, both unnecesary and uneccesarily risky.

It's odd that we just pop the pill, steel ourselves for the slice of the needle or the knife, without expecting to have the benefits and risks presented to us as a matter of course. But you have to go on line, research, track down even the most basic product information for anything now. Nice of drug companies to want to save paper.

The doctors said that 42 weeks "is considered post-term." So I agreed to have my baby's life-supporting waters drained away by a hooked needle, to be connected to monitors for the entire eleven hours of hell, to be hooked on by a single fang in the back of my hand to a Syntocinon (Pitocin- an artificial form of oxytocin, the birth hormone) drip.

The labour was agonising. I'm no sook with pain, I've had broken bones and dog bites stitched without anaesthetic and been smashed by horse hooves. This was like fire, like firestorm, that took hold and crushed that baby from my body. Nearly everyone who is induced this way has serious pain relief. Many have ceasers, assisted births and other interventions. It's not a nice way to birth, it's hard and fast and frightening and out of control.

The potential side effects of artificial oxytocin for induction include; hypotension, water intoxication (potentially lethal), hypertonic uterus (continual extreme contraction), uterine rupture (!) uterine inversion, stillbirth, heart problems, nausea, and asthma.

The risk of other forms of medical intervention in birth once medical induction begins are hugely exaggerated, because it so seriously amplifies the trauma and strain of birth on the mother and baby's bodies. For the baby, the exaggerated and close together contractions have been likened to being held under water and only allowed to gasp for air before being pushed back under again.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but those seem rather serious to me. How many was I informed of before agreeing to this?
None.

After the birth, to my horror, I learned that at one point my daughter suffered fetal distress serious enough to concern the midwife. My contractions were so close together, right from the beginning, that they felt almost constant, and the pain between them almost unbearable. Somehow I avoided pain relief except gas, but only because the drip was turned off for a while instead. My daughter was extracted by vacuum and with an epesiotomy cut after a three hour long second stage, put down to 'maternal exhaustion'.

Women and their partners should be informed of these, and other risks with induction. It's that simple. We should know what we're signing up for before the needle goes in and the road is taken; once that first foot falls on the induction path, there truly is no way back.

Would I do it again? Not just for a long but perfectly healthy pregnancy. For a life threatening situation, of course. But a longer than average pregnancy, monitored to ensure the continuing health of the unborn baby, isn't a life threatening situation.

It's just a long pregnancy.
If I could replay the tape, I'd just relax and enjoy it a little longer, and wait for my little person to be ready.

The midwife's comment upon my tiny (less than 3 kgs) daughter's emergence? "Oh, she looks almost premature. She looks like she could have had another month in there." Guess I should have listened to my child, my body and those ultrasounds that said she was just fine in there.

And waited just that little bit longer.

Jumping right in

What is this baby thing about?

My little strong new(ish) daughter is breastfeeding on a pillow on my lap and its the best seat in the house. She's brought me new stuff - new thoughts, new emotions, new me. Her hands have grown; they look almost big! In the last ten weeks, plus the nearly 10 months it took to make her, I've grown too - so much bigger now! And not just my middle...

I want to write here about baby stuff, preggers stuff, and all the stuff inbetween. I want to write about choices, because it's an interesting word, with some strange permutations as far as I can make out.

As soon as that hugely tiny new potential person takes hold in your belly, you're riddled with new choices to go with her. Medicine seems to be oddly interested in the goings-on in there, and there's doctors for every occasion. Doctors to scan, doctors to inject, doctors to poke about, doctors to cut and suction and birth, doctors to help and hinder. I liked some of it. The sight of that delicately beautiful curve of spine on the nineteen week ultrasound, the little leggy blob on the eleven week one were the happiest pictures I've seen. The doctor who said, "You have one baby' changed my world - I have a BABY in there?! Being pregnant is one thing, but a BABY?! And the one who said, "Here's your baby!" and held aloft a tiny slimy whitish person with wriggling thin limbs and a keen face who is the love of my life, of our lives ... I like that doctor. But the one who prescribed antibiotics while I was breastfeeding, assuring me they were safe, information which clashed with what I later researched ... hm, not so sure. Particularly for an infection that turned out not to exist.

Maybe then it's as much about the news they have as about what they do. But regardless, there are so many lollies to choose from now. Tests, anyone? Amniocentesis? Induction for one? Vaccinations galore for you, Madame?

Already I've made some choices that I wouldn't have if I knew what I know now. I wouldn't allow that monster Syntocinin into my body to kick the baby out of my belly again. Not when she was demonstrably well and happy in there, hiccuping and squiggling, when my pregnancy was just an unliked length. I am sure, though, that I won't allow those tiny needle pricks of vaccine into her precious body, and that's a choice that's made harder by emotion. Why is that one about guilt? Why is it not just another decision about an invasive medical procedure like all the others?

That's where the concept of choice gets murky, sticky, because there's free, knowledgeable decisions, and there's shoulds, musts, why nots. There's humped backs from the tiniest questions, there's eating guilt from the non- herd decision.

But, there's right for me. Hopefully I'm doing that.

Back to my baby, who needs me more than internet world does right now!