If your obstetrician took that view, you might have a point.

Fortunately most of them (even the male ones ) don't.

Yes, they did, not that it matters that much, I do not think that my personal experience is in any way exceptional. But I have hammered this point enough times and now rest my case.

I have been told from a doctor, who's family contains many gynaecologists, that male gynaecologists either love women or hate them-that there is no in-between. It's rather freaky thought. How would a man feel to be told by woman that she understood his hormones and reproductive organs better than he because she had a diploma? I think that if women didn't intuitively second guess their doctors and get a second opinion there might be a lot more lawsuits. It recently almost cost me my life. But granted we certainly don't want to go back to the days of my great grandmother who did 'laying-in and laying out'!

Page 189 Midwives of 17th century London How men learned obstetrics from women and I guess are still learning.

http://books.google.com/books?id=y8J...esult&resnum=2

I am guessing if you had a bad experience with a crap midwife it explains your choice of article to dig up. I would seriously recommend next time you change your midwife or doctor or whomever it was.

This is off topic, but did you ever try to turn your posterior babies? I found a website called www.spinningbabies.com and I am wondering if it is worth a try. My second one is also posterior now.

Low risk pregnancy doesn't necessarily mean a low-risk delivery. I was someone that wanted a homebirth beforehand. My son was perfectly fine being monitored during contractions when I was overdue. On the delivery day the heartbeat slowed down to dangerous levels. Waters were broken and it was green so they took him out ASAP. He was grey, not breathing and needed all the gunk sucking out of his lungs. During labour only a midwife was present apart from the doctor popping in 3 times. The midwife had her hand on the emergency button most of the time, telling me to turn and lie on different sides, standing up and crouching seemed to make the heartbeat slow right down, and I thought the midwife was really risking it not pressing that emergency button. We couldn't find the heartbeat a few times before she finally pressed the button. Had I not been in a hospital I doubt my son wouldn't have made it.

Then I bled way too much finding out later that the placenta wasn't fully removed (about 2/3 was left). A couple of friends have needed manual placenta removals to stop the bleeding too. I believe that a hospital is the safest place to give birth.

Marie, I would think carefully about this... it is very painful for both mother and babies and can often result in immediate need of intervention.

A friend of mine with posterior baby was going to try and then somehow her gut told her not to and it turned out baby had cord wrapped around her neck and that was the reason for not turning... a manoeuver like that could have caused serious harm.

Have you tried acupuncture? Yoga? Moxibustion? I find these are all much gentler methods

Cheers,
K

You are quoting someone trying to sell their book. Even they go on to say: "Start small when intervention becomes necessary. " No doctor goes straight to the operating theatre when things go wrong. Checks are made, and the minimum intervention that is needed is used.

In Switzerland at my hospital, the midwives are the only people that attend a normal delivery, continuous electronic fetal monitoring is only used during induction, episiotomy is only given for non-normal presentations or assisted deliveries and epidurals weren't even mentioned with me.

so has it come out yet??

On the posterior question, all mine (3) were posterior...my only suggestion would be to avoid induction if possible - the baby needs to turn before they move down... if you have ARM this is going to 'speed up' the process but might not give the baby the same chance of turning as they move through...with posterior, my experience is that you are likely to go late, with long prelabour and backpain...make sure you don't go into labour dehydrated and eat/drink a bit just in case (don't starve) - assume it's going to be a long labour, not a short one...

And my second one was significantly smaller and easier to birth than the first...and after a lot of intervention, I ended up pushing him out in under 10 minutes with no compllications.... You never can tell...

My sister is a midwife in the maternity unit at the RIE so I asked her about this, this was her reply:

Sorry Al.

Well done with 3 posterior labours. With my first I had terrible back pain and was puking after every contraction. Induction wasn't fun, with my first contractions 1 min apart. What worked for you at easing back pain during labour? In the birth preparation classes they taught us massage that didn't work at all for the back pain.

My in-law family has two midwives and these both entertain some pretty scary opinions on science, technology and the state of the world in general that involve a mixture of wild conspiracy theories with esoterics and a bit of astrology. I once got into an argument with one who claimed that it didn't matter when babies died in childbirth as this was necessary for their karma and next reincarnation, and that if science tried to save too many babies who oughtn't be saved, it was negatively offseting the karma balance of the entire planet. In fact, science was a product of evil spirits who has created these technologies for precisely that purpose. I though this a rather irresponsinle attitude for a midfife. I don't know whether this is widespread in that profession or these are one-off cases. But I suppose that as long as they do their work well, other things shouldn't really matter.

Maybe they had been exposed to a bit too much of the gas and air pipe at all those births they had attended...

methinks shes in hospital guys..

we may not get a report for a while, til things settle at home.

good luck nettle, grab sleep when you can!

Is anyone in contact Nettle and Lavender ? Presumably by now she's a home with her bundle of joy but would love to hear how she is doing.