This article was in Sunday’s Paper.
Rising maternal mortality rate causes alarm, calls for action
Why the rise?
Increased cesarean rates: Although many are done to save the life of a mother and her baby, perhaps half are elective, meaning the surgery is medically unnecessary.
1/2 cesareans are medically unnecessary. That is a lot of unnecessary risks for moms and babies.
Inductions: The induction or prompting of labor by medication, which is sometimes medically advisable but more often performed for the doctor’s or patient’s convenience, has climbed so steeply — it now occurs in 22% of births — that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists felt compelled to advise its members last year to avoid inductions before 39 weeks’ gestation.
When labor is induced a week or so before the due date, the uterus may not be ready, leading to prolonged labor. After delivery, the exhausted muscle may not contract properly to stop bleeding. Blood can no longer clot and becomes the consistency of water.
I would like to add, whenever a mom is induced it is highly likely her uterus isn’t ready, otherwise her baby would be born on his own timetable.
Also I am shocked it is only 22% of moms get induced. It seems like a lot more than that.
Electronic monitoring, Lu said, may have the unintended consequence of making the monitoring of women during labor so passive that they may be neglected, with warning signs missed.
I could see this. Nurses are watching the monitors out at the nurses station and not actually with the mom for a good part of the birth. So they may miss warning signs of other problems.
So moms should choose care providers and birth locations with low cesarean rates and low induction rates as well.
“Also I am shocked it is only 22% of moms get induced. It seems like a lot more than that.”
When I had my first, I went to the hospital two or three times unsure if I was in labor. The last time they told me, “Yes, you’re in labor, but you’re not progressing quickly enough so you need Pitocin.” This was within about an hour of arrival, and since I ended up with a long, hard labor that ended in c-section, I have often wondered if I was even in labor at all. Maybe I would have had my son just fine a few days later if they’d just sent me home.
Since then, I’ve heard doctors saying that women try to “sneak” inductions by coming into the hospital when they aren’t in labor. It makes me wonder how often a woman who, like me, goes to the hospital because she doesn’t know if this is it, ends up with what is really an induction because the doctors think she “wants” it, while she thinks she’s really in labor and is having medically-warranted “augmentation.” I also wonder what the records say when the doctors give (by their own account) under-the-table inductions — do they call it induction, or augmentation?
Wow, I just began writing a blog post yesterday about this exact same thing. I’m just having a hard time framing it so that I don’t piss anyone off, lol. A LOT of my friends have had C-sections and have been induced, but (at the risk of sounding kind of judgemental) it’s their own darn fault! If they had done some research and not just taken the same, tired doctor/hospital route, they would have had the education to help themselves make better decisions.
Ugh, so frustrating.
Hmm, indeed I doubt you needed pitocin after only an hour there. Maybe they did think you wanted to be induced. This is where hospital policies really can help lower cesarean rates. By not admitting moms until they are in ACTIVE labor. Mom has to be at least 4 cm to be admitted, this can help lower the need for pitocin.
Also, you are right I don’t know that they would “call” this an induction. It would be called “augmentation” of labor.
It is frustrating and what I really want to help change. Educate moms about their choices and the effect they can have!
I’d like to see midwife-attended births become more the norm in our culture, either in homes, birth centers, or if need be, hospitals. From what I’ve been reading the obstetrical community is running into lots of problems with soaring malpractice rates, fewer residency programs producing OB/GYNs, and areas like southern Florida where women have to go out of state to find a obstetrician. I hope this signals a logical change to midwifery care. We do it it backwards in this country. Midwives should outnumber OB’s and care for the majority of relatively healthy pregnant women, like its done in Europe.
Great point, you are so right. If midwives attended low risk moms births, the cesarean and induction rates would go way down!