Stupid Things People Say at Births.... - Page 26

[bmcneal]

I remembered some things that people said to me before/during the birth of DS.

Not at the birth itself, but every day from ~38 weeks, my mom would call, and ask me if we had him yet, and tell me that some people just aren't meant to have babies naturally, and that some people always have to have c-sections, and that I was being selfish/careless/reckless to try for a VBAC. (I went on to have happy, healthy baby at 41w5d.)

The whole time from the time we went in to be induced, until after DS was born, this one nurse kept asking me, "Why do you want this (VBAC) so bad?" Maybe not stupid, but quite annoying.

[mommyammons]

I've been reading through this thread for 3 days just waiting to get to the end so I could add my own. 

I think my first was probably the worst with the stupid comments.  36 hour labor with contractions starting at 3 min. apart.  We of course rushed to the hospital bc it was my first and I had no idea how bad the contractions where actually going to get.  I remember sitting at the registration desk breathing through contractions and saying "I'm about to have this baby and you are actually asking me my religion."  Of course I was only about 1.5 cent. at the time, but she didn't know that. 

Then I get to my room and they start hooking me up to everything and I ask about walking, birthing ball, shower, etc (all of the things we were told about in the birthing class which was the class the hospital offered) and the nurse said "No, honey.  You have to stay in the bed with the monitors."  Me: "What?!  They lied to me.  I have to stay here with this itchy monitor strapped to my belly?!"  I was one peeved momma!!! ( I also had a horrible rash on my belly, so the straps were "killing" me)  Then my nurse who came in to check me every couple of hours had very short stubby fingers, so I asked for someone else and made sure to check all of my nurses hands before allowing them to do cervical checks.  Everybody seemed to get a kick out of this. 

I also remember my hubby making some very irritating comments.  Once during a contraction I was squeezing his hand at the peak and he had the nerve to ask if I could "let up a little"  I told him that he just had to deal with it bc that was only a fraction of the pain I was dealing with.  Then he falls asleep while I'm moaning and groaning on the bed and has the nerve to ask me to "keep it down" because he's trying to sleep!!!!!  I was like "eeexxxxccuuuusssseee meeeeee for interrupting your beauty sleep!"  And then there was also the constant complaint of it being freezing in the room bc I was in labor and extremely hot.  He kept asking the nurses for extra blankets.  And going out into the waiting room to visit with our family and friends bc he was bored and didn't want them to feel left out!  (I'm not even sure who was left in the waiting room bc it seemed like EVERYBODY was in the room with me! 
 

[mommyammons]

Then of course, my doctor was out of town so I ended up with the oldest dr. ever!  He insisted on breaking my water at 4cm, attaching the internal monitor on the babies head and got very irritated when I told him I did not want those things.  He said " I have to keep the baby alive"  What?!  I believe I'm the one that has been taking care of this baby for the last 9 months and will continue to do so for the next 18 years, but you have to attach a probe to its head to keep it alive? 

Not to mention being 9.5 cent. dialated  according to the nurse and I'm telling her I need to push (my body is actually doing it involuntarily) and she refuses to call the dr. because I'm not ready yet.  She kept getting mad at me bc I would ask her every 15 min. to check to see if I was ready, because I really needed to push.  She said "I have better things to do then to continue to check my cervix every time you want."  I ended up swelling so bad I told my mom (during my post delivery shower) that I looked like I had a softball sized vagina.  And my poor baby had a cone shaped head that added a whole inch to her birth length. 

The quack dr. also sewed up my 2nd degree tears with no local bc he said if I had dealt with the whole 36 hour labor med free then I should be able to handle a few stitches!  This was after pouring about 5 gallons of soap over my vagina and babies head as I pushed her out to make it sterile.  This at a hospital who routinely took the baby away for 4 hours to be accessed and stabelized after birth.  When she wasn't brought back to my room after 6 hours, my husband called the nursery to ask why and they said that they had to pump her stomach bc she swallowed amniotic fluid...Hmmm, you mean the stuff she's been swallowing for the past 9 months or could it have been the soap you guys kept pouring over her head!!!

Ugh!  there were just sooo many things about that birth that irk me!

[mommyammons]

At my second birth which was pitocin induced I tried my best to resist the epidural, but in the end I gave in.  It was actually the best epidural experience ever.  My nurse was so sweet, she let me lean on her and hugged me like she was my momma!  As soon as I laid back down, I was numb and she told me I was ready to push!  She actually said if I pushed the baby out b4 dr. got there not to worry bc she had done this before :) I pushed her out in 5 min just after the dr. sat down on his little stool!!!!   And shortly after I told the nurse I had to pee and she was surprised that I could feel the need to pee, so she took out the cathater and I walked to the bathroom!  My husband rudely commented that I should have just stuck it out and that I didn't even need the epidural!  Well maybe not, but that was my decision to make and I'm glad I did it, bc it made the last hour of my labor very pleasurable :)

At my 3rd hospital birth, 2nd pitocin induction...I was finally ready to push after about 12 hours.  The nurse set up the stirrups and told me I could go ahead and push bc it would probably take a while...she hadn't even called the dr. yet!  I tried to tell her that I pushed my last baby out in about 3 pushes but she insisted that I get started.  So I pushed one good time and baby started coming out.  She immediately took my legs out of the stirrups and held them together and told me to wait until the dr. arrived.  Of course I start crying bc now I'm holding an 8 lb baby in my vagina (any body ever heard of prairie dogging..lol) and she says, "OH now don't cry you're just gonna get stuffy and not be able to breathe"  Then the dr. finally comes and starts joking around with my husband about hunting or some stupid man thing and I say "Excuse me, I'm waiting on you to catch my baby!!!!!"  Cool thing about his birth was that his umbilical cord had two true knots in it.  The dr. said he had never seen that before and he kept it to study it! 

4th birth was just weird.....I had so many weird interventions.  I was induced "again"  bc I had excess fluid and when they broke my water it just started gushing out.  There was a student (I'm not sure what kind) standing off to the side and when I looked up and saw his face, I started laughing and that just made the water gush out more...haha!  They put IN all sorts of monitors, one on the babies head and one attached to my uterus, which didn't work and they had to change out the wires 3 times, then of course the catheter all while I'm laying on the bed unable to move bc of epidural with my legs spread open and people are just coming in and out as they please including two male students.  Then right before I gave birth they said they needed to put insert more fluid into my uterus bc maybe they pushed out to much when they broke my water?!?!?  Needless to say I ended up with a horrible infection a couple of days post partum.  Not to mention when she was sewing me up from the horrible tears she comments on how she's never seen anybody swell so much!  I was like maybe because you guys kept feeling the need to shove things into my vagina.  I also had to get a second catheter (after epidural wore off and after birth...very painful) bc I couldn't pee.  My uterus was too swollen to let me relieve my bladder.  I didn't sit for 2 weeks after baby number 4!!!

I'm going for a natural waterbirth and a midwife with baby number 5, so we'll see how it goes :)

[Sudonk]

During my first birth I was stuck in a triage cubicle for 8 hours because there were no rooms.  It was a teeeeeeeny little room with barely enough room for my husband and my doula and me, so there was no room for moving around.  I kept going out for walks because I needed more movement.  I was calm and focused using self-hypnosis and a nurse saw me leaning against my husband calmly relaxing through a long, powerful birthing wave.  She decided that would be the perfect time to walk over, tap me on the shoulder and begin a long diatribe about how excited she was to see me using hypnosis and all about every instance she'd ever encountered of someone using it, etc.  My husband kept politely asking her to wait until my birthing wave was over to talk to me, but she was oblivious.  I was trying to ignore her and stay focused, but her bubble-headed jabbering gave me the giggles!

[myra1]

Wow some of these experiences break my heart! We need more doulas and womens advocates! Mine are not as bad but....I labored 12 hours alone at home while caring for my preschooler (and by caring for, i mean moan on the floor while he consumed an entire bag of goldfish crackers) before transitioning and starting to push while seatbelted in during a 45 min car ride, knelt on the bed and ripped open pushing out my 10pounder a few minutes after arriving. A few hours later, the new nurse glanced at my chart and crowed about how short and easy my labor was....as if since she didnt witness it, it was short, and as if me not arriving at 2 cm asking for meds meant it was easy! Reminds me of the quote...the secret is not that birth is easy, it's that women are strong. At the same birth, it was just a few minutes post delivery and I was blissfully holding my baby, taking a breath, the nurse was insisting I brfeed. I said sure, in a few minutes. Next thing I know she is right in my face, repeating my name loudly and saying, "if this brfeeding thing is going to work, you're going to have to get him latched on now! " then she grabs my breast and starts stuffing it in his mouth. Way to kill my new mommy buzz.... I appreciate her enthusiasm for immediate brfeeding, but would also appreciate some respect for my choices and ability. My two other brfed kids were standing right threre...

[Banana731]

Some of these are so funny, but many are really sad

Originally Posted by amberskyfire 

[



: Did we have the same doctor?!

I felt that I had an ectopic with my third pregnancy and went to the OB to have it checked out. He didn't even examine me or see me in an examining room. He heard I had come in to have a possible ectopic checked out and took me straight to his OFFICE where he saw me behind his desk and calmly informed me that I "did not have an ectopic pregnancy." Yes, he could apparently tell this JUST BY LOOKING AT ME. Just another case of doctors refusing to hear a woman who suspects something might be wrong with her because goodness forbid a patient might actually know what's going on with their own body.


He refused to test me several times and finally lost his temper with me and I left crying. I took myself to the nearest hospital and begged them to help me and they took me in the emergency room and assigned me a new OB. I was rushed to the tech room to get an ultrasound.


Guess what they found growing in my right ovary?



And what happened when I called the previous OB's office and told them what happened and asked why I didn't get care that could have saved my life? They told me I was never allowed to call there again and that they were destroying my file.


Nice.

I wonder if his completely innapropriate and unprofessional reaction had anything to do with his personal feelings on termination...

Originally Posted by kalirush 

Originally Posted by white_queen_22

Did you ask him if he scrubs and sanitizes his penis after having sex?



That's a truly ridiculous comment.

Maybe he's gay...


It would explain the irrational distaste for female genitalia.


)

I actually think that there is a certain percentage of male OBs who are really and truly misogynists. As in may have actually become OBs for that reason. I just can't come up with any other reason in this day and age Why we have practitioners who have things like 80% episiotomy rates. I obviously don't have anything to back it up, but from what I have seen, I truly believe it.

[Banana731]

Originally Posted by Narn 

When I was getting ready to push (on my back with no feeling from the waist down and my legs in stirrups) the nurse squirted Johnsons Baby Shampoo into my vagina. She was swishing it around, and my sister asked her what she was doing. She said:


"I can make bubbles!"



That's pretty stupid!!!!!

I think I can shed some light on this!

I met a someone who told me that an old OB they knew would squirt this in mom's vaginas because it kept the mothers from tearing. He was using it as a lubricant. :/

[amlikam]

When I had PROM with DD at 36 weeks I called the hospital/midwives on call and told them "I am 99% sure my water broke"- they asked me "We need you to come in because we can't be sure without checking you to see if it really is amniotic fluid." after they said that loud gush of water into the toilet they ask "what was that?" and I said "I thought it was my water, but I guess I can't be sure until you tell me"... Then they were more serious about how I should come in because it was ealier than anticipated. At the hospital every nurse commented on how they have never seen a woman gush so much water.

I ended up with pitocin aumentation and the RN would come in every time all cheerful and say "it's the best time of the day! time to up the anty" (WTH? Serious?)

At one point DH said to me "I'm tired, I think I need a nap" this was after him sleeping all night while I was awake hoping for labor to start on its own and him sleeping in the day before. I hadn't slept for over 72 hours and really wanted to punch him...

Also I asked if I could have something to eat and the RN said "sure would you like red or green jello?" I looked at her and said "seriously, I want to eat, jello is not food." At which point the CNM came in and said "sure do you want some toast or something." I said, "No I want a large steak and cheese and something really acidic so it burns like hell if it comes back up."

[Cali2SC]

Originally Posted by Babytime 

I gave birth to DD2 at a teaching hospital and the young doctor was poking my vagina and saying, "push here!" I was like, really, I had no idea!

There are some really awesome ones in this thread!

With DD we transfered to a hospital from a birth center.  It was 42 hours from my water breaking until I finally birthed our baby vaginally.  For the most part everyone was awesome.  It was a teaching hospital and I think I met all the residents that day.  Only one was male.  First time he came in to check me he actually shoved me up the bed!  I said something to the effect of "WHOA!" and he said he would come back when my epidural was working..... Ummm maybe it is your big man hands?!?  Seriously everyone has been up in there and you are the only one that physically shoved me up the bed!

He didn't show up again until I was actively pushing, undirected.  He started in with cheerleader style "Push! Push! Push!"  I actually stopped pushing mid-contraction, and gave him a look.  My sister said it was great because DH, myself, the other ob resident and the nurses all paused and shot him looks in perfect unison.  He turned around and walked out of the room.  

My sister also overheard the head resident comment that she "wasn't ready to give up on me yet."   When she was leaving the room, after checking on me.  I would have totally panicked if I had heard this!  My water had been broken for so long that DH was convinced that they were going to whisk me away for a c-section as soon as we arrived (though to his credit, he never said so until much later, like DD was over a year old!)  I think my mw must have lied about how long my water had been broken (making it sound like it took place at the bc and not at home the night before we even went to bc.)  

[Cali2SC]

Originally Posted by EBeth0000 

Not as much stupid as just funny

Me immediately after birth: "Is it a boy or a girl? Honey, is it a boy or a girl?"

DH (sobbing, holding our DS): "It's a baby! It's a baby! It's a baby!"

um, yeah, he was too overwhelmed to check on that particular piece of information for me for a while. . .

 love it!

[Vaquitita]

Loved these. I was not happy with my first hospital birth (3rd bàby) but after these, it seems a lot better. Nobody told me to be quiet or gave me grief over my choices. The first nurse I had kept asking me how my pain was? I just gave her à blank look, it's a contraction, but I'm handling it fine. The next nurse was better, tried to make it as close to my homebirths as she could. found after the birth that they have a 95 percent epi rate! they kept telling me they were full, but i never saw or heard another woman. so my birth was def out of their comfort zone!

The most annoying thing that happened was while I was pushing. The nurse and the ob had this long conversation about whether my water was clear or not (it broke in the tub). Doc: was it clear? Nurse: idk, it broke in the bathtub. Doc: but was there meconium in it? Nurse: idk she was in the water. If I had been capable of talking, I would have told them it was clear, I obviously have more experience with this than them lol. The tub was white, the room bright, it wasn't hard to tell. It was also very annoying that so many people were talking while I was pushing. Push. Don't push. I was on my knees with my back to them. Dh too was trying to talk over them, trying to give me something to focus on (cause I was screaming). Which is good in theory,, but just added to the confusion. I finally just screamed and pushed that bàby out to gèt it over with. On the plus side, the baby just slid out onto the bed (i had one hand on him, i had one hand on my vagina feeling his head the whole time i was pushing) and i flipped over and picked him up. That doc was pretty hands off, looking back, she probably couldn't see anything.

the nurse was convinced that I had torn (maybe cause of my 'huge' 9lber. Not even my biggest babe) so the doc gave me a local (after asking my permission), but after cleaning me up there was no tear. That local was kind of nice, took away the stinging from pushing fast.