Posts by B Jones
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I liked the feeling of nitrous - I remember thinking how all the 14 year olds in Manners Mall would love to be in my shoes right now - but it was a pain to time with the contractions. You had to start it almost before they hit to get it to work with the peak of the contraction.
A guy on our antenatal tour got to try it as part of the demonstration.
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I had Comfortably Numb on my mental soundtrack. Didn't get around to doing a real one. Apparently a lot of midwives get totally over Enya in the course of their work.
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Danielle and Jackie - yesyesyes. I didn't have much in the way of plans, other than I'll see when I get there. I didn't have any Big Mystical Expectations either. So long as I got listened to, got things explained to me, and got through it with one (1) baby at the end of it and not too much damage to self, I was happy. And that's how it turned out. A few interventions, but they were a lot less scary or unpleasant than you'd think in advance.
The Baby Related Internet is scary. A couple of pockets of sanity - the birth stories on Salon had me in hysterics; and the Skeptical Obstetrician's pushback against the mountain of woo that's out there (although she often goes overboard judging right back at them). "Natural" is definitely a loaded term. And peddlers of homeopathy have hit paydirt in that particular field - drugs which actually have effects often have downsides to the baby, or haven't had safety completely established, so what better place for completely ineffective remedies?
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They told me at Wellington Regional that the caesarian rate is higher at tertiary hospitals because the women with high risk pregnancies are transferred there - if you live up the coast and they think you'll need a caesar, they'll take you down to Wellington for it rather than Kapiti or Kenepuru, where they aren't set up to do them.
For the same reason, not surprising that caesars happen on weekdays. If you know you're going to have one, may as well schedule it for a convenient time rather than 1am on Sunday morning. Inductions they try and work out so you go in at night and have the baby in the morning. Doesn't always work like that, but.
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Danielle - I hear you. Low risk, but high impact. I got very resentful of the whole cheese police thing, and declared that they'd have to pry my daily flat white out of my cold dead hands.
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Giovanni, you're right, the standards are much tighter here for midwife training, though I don't know if we've got the equivalent mortality figures.
Pasteurisation doesn't entirely rule out listeria, I understand, which can grow in fridges. The version of the cheese thing I settled on was that soft cheese was ok providing it was straight out of the packet.
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I think the guilt and inadequacy comes from the whole competitive parenting culture rather than the health lobby. I haven't seen it from any of the people I've dealt with, then again, I've been doing things the Officially Approved way. The woman next to me in hospital asked for formula from the get-go - one nurse politely asked if there was any particular reason she wanted to do that rather than breastfeed, she explained that she'd had such a hard time last time, and as far as I could tell they left it at that, and brought her formula when she asked.
The whole natural childbirth/la leche movement can be a bit more judgy, I've heard. No personal experience though.
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Read the debates on The Skeptical Obstetrician for the answer to that, Russell. Her view, and she expresses it very spikily, is that US midwives don't have good enough training to conduct homebirths, and the statistics show that it is riskier than hospitals, regardless of what can go wrong at hospital. She seems to agree that a high caesarian rate is a bad thing, but since you can't tell in advance which caesarians are unnecessary, there's no easy answer.
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Ross, your sample is a bit small, and teeth probably have more to do with water fluoridation. Here's some slightly harder data: UNICEF statement on breastfeeding research
Off to do some right now.
/edit. No, in fact off to change the third nappy in half an hour. Nnngh.
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B, if childbirth is like long-haul air travel, I suppose that solves the 'to drug or not to drug' question.
That was with drugs. After the pleasantly buzzy gas couldn't cut it anymore I called for Mr Anaesthetist. The downside is that after a while it pretty much immobilises you (so it felt like sitting in an airline seat) and they wouldn't let me eat anything afterwards, which I didn't find out until it was way too late. So, also like airline travel. I'd hate to fly with an airline that was like childbirth without the drugs.
Anyway, you don't need to decide in advance, and you don't get extra points for having a miserable time. Call it when you get there.
Kyle, medical professions I think raised it amongst themselves, prompted by requests from a few patients - the media went nuts over it when they connected it with the rising caesarian rate and misunderstood what elective meant.