I’m about to post on my group blog about a topic that’s currently become more public, pit to distress. It’s a protocol by which basically pitocin use is abused and a baby is deliberately distressed to the point that the ‘miracle’ cesarean is recommended in order to ‘save your baby.’
Pitocin is most likely to be introduced to you as a means to either induce your labor, an additional medical protocol to induce your labor (you may have a prostaglandin gel on your cervix first, pitocin added via IV later) or as a means to speeding up your labor. Pitocin is a synthetic version of the human hormone oxytocin.
No doubt there will be many L&D practitioners who will deny they abuse oxytocin. Ask them what their protocol is: what is the dosage, how often is it increased, how likely are they to turn it off once your contractions reach an established pattern and what is their definition of a good contraction pattern? Most likely the answers they give you will actually constitute abuse of pitocin. They just don’t know that they’re abusing pitocin because they are simply doing what they were taught to do by people whom they trusted and believed they had no reason to question what they were learning.
I would never tell parents that all obstetricians are bad and all midwives are wonderful. That would be a lie benefitting no one, least of all the mothers and their babies. Instead, I will tell you that you must keep an open mind and learn to ask questions. You can best learn how to ask the right questions when you learn about the topic you’re inquiring of, that is why I posed the questions above as a sample of what you can ask your careprovider about their use of pitocin.
If you, like many mothers, are planning to push your baby out of your body under your own power by having the freedom to use different positions for second stage then you need to learn about natural labor in first stage. If you, like many mothers, are planning to hold your newborn baby for at least an hour after birth, then you need to learn about natural labor in first stage. If you, like many mothers, are planning to delay cord clamping until either the cord stops pulsating or you’ve delivered your placenta naturally, then you need to learn about natural labor in first stage.
Inductions will put your first stage of labor on a very different flowchart for labor progress. Ultimately it can turn your birth plans into fodder for a good fire in the winter. Remember there are wise birth practitioners out there. Have the courage to find a wise one whose comfort level with birth makes your birth plans theirs, not vice versa. Have an abnormal first stage labor and you raise the odds of giving permission to become an un-necesarean statistic.
