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Originally Posted by savithny  I'm not saying that *everyone* *must* wait, by far. Women are not machines and labor is not a checklist, obviously. Every body is different.
But the assumption that if our body is telling us to do something it *must* be correct and beneficial is a dangerous one and is frankly wrong. Our bodies have a lot of reflexes and responses that are at best value-neutral and at worst *can* be damaging, and to say that ignoring the demands of our bodies is somehow always a bad idea is potentially dangerous.
I might have an overwhelming urge to scratch at a chigger bite. Does this mean it is beneficial to scratch? Does this mean if I scratch that bite until becomes a big open wound, that is what my body needs or wants? No. The urge to scratch comes from a reaction of my nervous system, but has no higher-order meaning or message about my body's destiny or the best way to accomplish a goal. It just *is,
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For sure, I hear you that our bodily functions and urges are not some cosmic message, and that they may be value neutral. But many urges are not value neutral -- hunger means we need to eat, thirst means we need to drink, lust means we need to perpetuate the species, fear means we needed to escape the cave lion, and so on. They're not urges, they're biological imperatives -- commands rather than requests -- and if we ignore them, we get bad outcomes.
I hear you saying that the urge to push is just triggered by certain nerves being pushed by the baby's position, and that it's value-neutral. I'm saying that I think it's entirely possible that it's not value neutral -- that maybe the pushing urge is more like hunger or thirst than it is like scratching a chigger bite. Childbirth is a natural process, a chigger bite is an injury, an anomaly. While birth can break down and problems can arise, it seems like in general, during labor, a woman's body does do a fairly good job of guiding her through the childbirth process. That's just evolution. Look at the amazingly complex interplay of hormones and chemicals and physical urges that make up childbirth, which evolved over millions of years and millions of species.
If a woman feels an overwhelming imperative to push, it's a lot more reasonable to assume that pushing is the correct thing to do rather than assuming that she shouldn't push.
The main thing, though, is this: if a medical provider wants to use an intervention, I believe the medical provider has the burden of proof to show that the intervention is needed. And I am still waiting to hear anyone indicate that you get better outcomes resisting the urge to push.
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Originally Posted by me&3 I didn't have the urge to push for my first two, because of the epidurals I received. With my third, a homebirth, I wasn't sure what to expect, and at some point I was just really tired and wanted to get the show on the road and asked the midwife if I could start pushing. She said, sure, why not? I believe I was probably 9 cm, but I don't exactly recall. Long story short, my cervix *DID* swell, and it prolonged the labor. In the end, the midwife had to manually hold back my cervix - - can we say painful??? I'm sorry I didn't wait until feeling an urge, and will definitely not try to do that this time!
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I think this is an interesting counterpoint -- pushing when you're not feeling the urge to push can be as damaging as not pushing when you do feel the urge to push. The women on this thread who resisted the urge to push have mentioned that that actually caused their cervix to swell, and pushing without the urge can also cause swelling, while the women who pushed through it are saying they didn't swell.
