Megan,
Yes, it?s the doctor?s job to intervene when there is good reason to. My personal opinion is that they intervene too often without good cause. In case you missed it, I did have the last two of my three kids at home.
My daughter?s friends are in the child-bearing years. Am I to imagine that the twelve+ women I?ve known over the past four years, who all had planned Cs or ended up with one, are just isolated incidents.
What I noticed and thought very peculiar, is that the most common question posed to the mother at social gathering or the shower, ?you having a C-section or having it naturally?, which indicated to me that Cs are commonly accepted as a ?non-emergency? option for moms. That seems to be supported by the comments here:
http://www.babycenter.com/comments/preg ... dbirth/221How is ?extended? defined? ?Ineffective labor?? I?m wondering if this phenomenon is related to the general poor health of women, therefore fetus, these days. Problems associated with overweight for instance. Lack of effective coaching and quality pre-natal care.
My daughter did request ?no pitocin?. The doctor scared her into agreeing. She also requested that my grandson not be given a bottle in the nursery. They arrogantly ignored that simple request.
I found this relevant:
A labor induced with synthetic oxytocin, for instance, is chemically and functionally different from a natural labor. Until recently it required the on-site supervision of the attending physician. Why doesn't it still?
According to the obstetric literature, oxytocin is barely present in the mother's blood in a natural labor until she's fully dilated and even then only at a fraction of the levels commonly used in induction. Parke-Davis, the manufacturer of Pitocin, warns that the dose of this drug that individual women can tolerate varies in unpredictable ways. An overdose can produce unusually strong and frequent contractions that stress the fetus, which may cause it to dump meconium into the amniotic fluid. This kind of hyperlabor can also rip the margins of the placenta and other tissue, exposing veins, releasing clotting factors, and opening the fast route to the mother's bloodstream, resulting in AFE.
Given that pitocin is regularly used and causes unnaturally strong, but largely ineffective contractions, I have to wonder if this isn?t at least in part, the reason there are so many birth complications these days.
Anon, was your baby full term with mature lungs (adequate surfactant)? It is my understanding that a collapsed lung is usually due to a lack of surfactant, a hole in the lung, or some situation in which air manages to get into the chest cavity. I?m curious to know how the long labor contributed to this condition, if you know.
