Pregnancy: After Loss Community

I 110% agree! If your baby is not ready to be pushed out...laboring down can save your energy and possibly from a c/s! I didn't know about this with my son....and ended up having a c/s becuase I was completely exhausted from pushing for 2 hours to try to get my baby to decend. I later learned about "laboring down" and realized I spent 2 hours pushing, when I could have spent 2 hours relaxing and saving my energy for when I NEEDED to push!

I enjoyed this article, glad I saw it on the side under "helpful tips". Definitely something I would like to use during labor.

Yep, I enjoyed it too, though it was something I'd heard and read a million times before, you can't hear it enough. No reason to end up w a c over maternal exhaustion when they could have waited the extra half hour and let you push when and how your body was ready. I know I've already said this but baring an emergency I've told DH he has permission to remove anyone from my room who starts saying "Push!" Even if it was the MW(though I have no worries in that regaurd) I'd just ask her to leave for a bit and she could come back in when I'm crowning. I will not be forced into purple pushing:)

I shared this article with my lil sis yesterday too. She was one that a nurse convinced to have an epidural even though her plan was natural(I wasn't there yet, we live 5hours apart). Well, the epi was waaaaaaay too strong & she couldn't move her legs when she hit 10cm. They had her start pushing anyhow, even though she couldn't even feel the contractions. Her baby didn't make much progress until two hours later when the numbness went away & then he came right out. (I heard the OB tell the nurse to get surgery ready about 15min before she was able to push effectively, fortunately he was patient & waited a bit to see if she could do it on her own first.)
I learned a lot from her experience, that's part of how I feel so strongly about what I want. I had heard of laboring down, but not enough to really know what it is until now. I may have to ban the word "Push!" from my room also

Do it Lynnae! If it's a touchy, rushed situation that's one thing, but otherwise remind them not to say it a time or two then show them to the door! I'm glad your sis got her vaginal delivery, but it really bums me out to hear those stories of women being pressured:(

Not sure if this is targeted primarily to those who are planning to do natural childbirth with no drugs, but just thought I'd share my experience. With my first I had an epidural- it seemed to slow my labor down because I could no longer walk around, but other than that, I have no regrets. They tapered the epidural off near to when they thought I'd be pushing. They used side-lying to reposition the baby's head position, but ultimately, emptying my bladder with the catheter seemed to do the trick by creating more space for baby to turn (this may be another good tip). I pushed for no more than 20 min. before baby was delivered. Although they suggested that I try to deliver the head first and wait before delivering the shoulders and the rest of the body (to allow for more gradual stretching), I pushed as hard as I could (exactly how hard do you push to deliver just the head?!) and ended up with a fair amount of tearing because my son flew out all at once...oops! I'll try for the more gradual delivery this time. Just thought I'd share my experience.

What's interesting is, when I posted this, I had NO INTENTION of delivering without medication. (Although it says "1 year ago," I probably posted it in March or April 2010.)

When DS was born (June 2008), my doctor was in a c/s, and wasn't available for me to push. I just laid there and waited for close to an hour after reaching 10 cm. I could tell there was pressure, but it didn't hurt since I had an epidural. By the time my doctor got into the room, he was about a knuckle's distance away from crowning. One push delivered his head, the second the rest of his body, and we were done. It was VERY easy.

That was the good part. The bad part was that, since I couldn't feel anything, I had no idea that his slow progress was damaging the capillaries in my vaginal wall. I was in a lot of pain that night and for weeks afterwards...it wasn't until 2 weeks postpartum, though, that a nurse practitioner discovered that I had a grapefruit-sized hematoma in my vaginal wall, pressing both into my vagina and on my bladder, causing intense burning and pain every time I peed.

I think that if I'd been able to feel what was going on, I would have known something was happening and I could have changed positions to accommodate him and kept the damage from happening. But, on the flip side, without an epidural, I probably couldn't have gone that long without pushing, and the nurse might have ended up catching our little guy!

I didn't do this when I birthed my third baby, the one I was pregnant with when I posted this tip. I went through my labor with her without medication, and started pushing too soon. I'm fortunate in that I don't tend to push too long - even though I was pushing too soon, it was still only 30 minutes of pushing - but it was, at the time, arguably the worst 30 minutes of my life (or the 20-25 minutes until she was ACTUALLY ready for me to push her out, at least - once my body kicked in and I was working with it, it was not hard at all, and she came pretty quickly).

I really wouldn't recommend it pushing before your body is ready. Having experienced both (during my labor with #3), it is amazing what a difference it makes once you're working with your body.

If you're birthing with an epidural, I would think that what Beth experienced would be best - having them back off on the epidural so you can feel enough to move around, because I think the ability to feel a little bit of what is going on and move around some would have helped me avoid the damage I had after DS was born.