Comments on: This is National Unassisted Homebirth Week!

By: rish80

rish80 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:52:31 +0000

Ooh I found it somewhere!

http://www.worksmartlivesmart.com/pages/page_37.asp

By: Julinda

Julinda — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:09:41 +0000

So true about the IVs! But it’s not just by IV that mystery meds are given. I had 2 induced hospital births, and the first one was induced by placing a little pill on my cervix. I did not know what the little pill was. Several years later I started reading about a drug called Cytotec (misoprostol) that was used to induce labor and that could cause very serious (life-threatening for mother and baby) complications. Remembering the way my labor went, I wondered if Cytotec was the little pill they used. When I was pregnant again, I asked the doctor and sure enough it was. She apparently still used the drug in inducing labor, but since I questioned it, she did not use it to induce my second labor. Moral of the story is, no matter where or how you give birth, educate yourself. And don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself. If I’d been more educated and confident, my first labor would NOT have been induced, and the second one might not have been.

By: wiffersnapper

wiffersnapper — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:10:45 +0000

I’m another one who had an IV and had no clue what went into it… I didn’t find out that I was given Pitocin with my first birth until a year later, when I got a copy of my records to try and figure out what had happened. (It was not a pleasant experience!) I was apparently given Pitocin after delivering naturally, even though it is also noted that I managed to get rid of the placenta all on my own. I can’t imagine why they thought I needed it, and no one asked me about it in advance.

It is WAY too easy for medical personnel to put things into the IV of a laboring woman, whose attention is (by necessity) focused elsewhere.