Talk about pressure. Talk about comfort? Let’s do an experiment where women give birth in an MRI machine.
This is happening in Germany, where doctors have designed an MRI machine that will accommodate a birthing mother. (Mind you she has to wear earmuffs throughout the birth to block out the high-frequency noise.)
They’ve already used the open MRI to take first-of-their-kind pictures of a woman giving birth, and doctors report that the procedure went without a hitch.
Aside from allowing the study of a baby’s movement through the birth canal in greater detail, doctors hope to understand why 30 percent of births don’t progress properly through the birth canal, requiring an expensive Cesarean section.
Noble scientific ideas, but I don’t think I would sign up for that. For so many reasons!
Yikes! So much for being able to move freely. I think I have an answer to why so many doctors order c-sections for “stalled” labors — they just aren’t patient enough, and aren’t willing to try other positions, lowering the mom’s stress level, etc!
Have you read what “Musings of a Montreal Doula” wrote on the subject? My thoughts exactly, and I wrote some of my thoughts up too. Bad on many levels.
MRI machine is scary by itself, so is giving birth. To combine the two together? Unimaginable! Is there enough room for the mother to sit up? Or are the doctors interested in seeing how lying down can stall the labour process?
Let’s hope the study is worth the difficulties of the labouring mothers who’ve signed up for it.
Honestly this is a stupid waste of money. Leave it to obs to build an expensive machine to observe the “procedure ” rather than observe a woman in her element giving birth naturally. Don’t we already know why some babies get stuck? Maybe they are too big or in the wrong position or mom is in the wrong position…what will they learn that they don’t know already? Oh look…there’s something in there that NO ONE ever saw before? Geez.
I wonder how they got the mother to “agree” to this. I would like to interview her if this was not in fact coerced in some way.
I wondered the same thing. How did they get a “volunteer” for this?
I disagree that it’s a waste of money. There is a lot of misinformation out there about cephalopelvic disproportion; it seems like every 3rd mom I know had a baby that was “too big to fit” – which can’t be right, can it? How would the species have survived?
I have a personal interest in this because I have an abnormal pelvis and I had a lot of fear about whether my son would fit through. (He did.)
I think that it would be really hard to capture a normal birth in an MRI machine, so I worry it would gather abnormal information. However I do also wish they had more information about how birth really works and how babies fit through.