Healthy Baby, Healthy Birth: Why You Are Not Safer When Doctors Rush Your Pregnancy
Time is a frequently unnamed and unacknowledged medical complication plaguing most births currently taking place in hospitals and even birth centers. Considering the fast-paced nature of modern culture, perhaps it follows that the issue of time is having a never-before-seen, and increasingly disastrous effect, on pregnancy, birth and postpartum recovery.
Time first becomes an issue in medically attended pregnancies when the due date is established. Early ultrasounds are now the routine authority on when a baby is “due,” regardless of a mother’s personal sense or determination of her dates. This date is critically important, as it is the basis of medical expectations of when birth should occur. Perceptions of the normal window of birth have narrowed from “Two or three weeks on either side of your due date” to “We’ll schedule your induction if you haven’t birthed by 40 (or even 39) weeks.”
It’s now common for mothers to be induced at what is thought to be 39 or 40 weeks,
but in reality turns out to be 37–38 weeks gestation, as clearly evidenced by the baby’s developmental signs and weight. The negative consequences of these choices often appear after the immediate postpartum period, commonly leaving parents to manage these challenges alone, feeling isolated and responsible.
These early babies may be stable at birth, but then struggle with failure-to-thrive issues from around two weeks of age. This can lead to a domino effect.
When these early babies are lacking the fully developed fat pads in their cheeks (which develop in utero towards the end of pregnancy), it may lead to a (temporarily) weaker suck.
One common consequence for the breastfed baby is their weakened ability to completely draw the fatter hind milk from the breasts.
These babies are okay gulping down mother’s milk as it pours out based on the hormones from the placenta, but at around two weeks postpartum, her milk supply becomes dependent instead on the “supply and demand” system.
Biologically, the milk supply is now regulated by the breast being regularly emptied of milk; babies with a mild suck aren’t able to accomplish this.
The insufficient emptying of the breast has challenging consequences for both mom (declining supply due to insufficient stimulation) and baby (not getting enough milk for their efforts.)
Often, the baby’s pediatrician will advise supplementation with formula to help their weight gain, but this also compounds the dwindling milk supply issue when the demand decreases even more.
This challenging cascade may also burden the family with nipple confusion for the baby, confirmation that the mother “doesn’t have enough milk” and plummeting self-confidence in the mother.
A rather extreme example of the power given to ultrasound scans happened to one of my homebirth clients. After initiating prenatal care for her second pregnancy with her OB/GYN, she came to me wanting a VBAC homebirth. Early on she had challenged the inaccurate due date set by the ultrasound tech but was brushed off, told that the ultrasound results were quite definitive. Knowing that her opportunity for a successful VBAC would be at greater risk if her doctor believed her to be further along than she really was, this client once again asked the staff to review her chart. Even when she pointed out that she was pregnant from a single artificial insemination (and in a same-sex relationship, guaranteeing that it was the only conception time possible), her concerns were blindly dismissed with an insistence that ultrasounds “don’t lie!” This is when the client wisely showed up in search of more responsive care.
Nearly all pregnancies attended by medically-oriented caregivers are colored with concerns about the baby being “overdue.”
Much emphasis is placed, and care is focused, on the perceived risks, including:
Multiple ultrasounds to date and monitor the pregnancy,
Getting the baby out before it gets “too big”,
Frequent non-stress tests,
Amniotic fluid evaluation, and
Scheduling for inductions that starts as early as 37 weeks.
This little one is a great example of the healthy, safe results of high-quality, personalized care.
She was home birthed at 43.1 weeks, 3 weeks '“overdue”, and in perfect condition at 7 pounds with robust Apgar scores of 9/9.
Mothers expecting twins are routinely tracked to high-risk OB practices that are especially time-sensitive. Assuming the language of their OBs, they describe their pregnancies to the day: “I am 23.4 weeks.” As soon as they get to 36 weeks they immediately begin to define themselves as overdue. Several times I have asked these mothers when are they “just right?” (Ie. Not stressed about prematurity, or about so-called postdates), and every time I’ve been met with a blank stare and shaking of the head—never! Is there really no “healthy due” window for twin pregnancies?
By-the-way, well-nourished twin pregnancies commonly carry to ‘real’ full-term, 38-42 weeks. Yes, really. But that’s a blog for a different day.
I’ve found that even healthy mothers having an uneventful pregnancy who are using routine OB prenatal care, often need at least a 45-minute phone call with their doula or dual-care midwife after each 3rd trimester appointment. They need the active support to calm down and emotionally “normalize” due to the pressure, stress, and fear emphasized in these brief and impersonal medical experiences.
These are just some examples of rushing pregnancy and labor, and also of the many unaccounted-for hours that doulas, midwives, and families spend to compensate for society’s complex time issues!
Time also affects the experience of birth. Births taking place in medical settings are often hurried along to:
Begin,
Continue without pause,
Begin pushing,
Rush pushing,
Transfer,
Start an IV,
Use an instrument (forceps or vacuum),
Perform surgery.
There is pressure to complete the birth within a certain amount of time.
There is a rush to proclaim that the cord has stopped pulsating and should be cut,
That the placenta be born with little or no pause after the baby,
And that bonding should happen quickly;
All so that the birth can be wrapped up and the paperwork completed.
This inability for the medical model to respect the natural or personal pace of birth has become an institutional given. Women are left to process their disappointments alone and commonly spend tremendous amounts of time, energy and money sorting out what happened.
Anecdotally, conversations I’ve had with other midwives suggest a sharp increase in the number of babies birthing with asynclitic and compound presentations, such as neonates’ hands up by their faces. Could there be a relationship to the sharp rise in mothers working right up until their due dates? Due to economic distress in the area where I practice, many mothers enter pregnancy without considering a reduction in their workload or work hours prior to giving birth. Medical complications can result from:
Excessive edema, anemia and hypertension from the extraordinary physical strain of carrying an extra 30–60 lb.,
Filtering the blood and functioning for two, with an expanded blood volume of about 12 pints of blood instead of 8.
While also trying to be mentally accountable,
Publicly presentable,
Awake, alert, and upright for extended work hours.
Going into labor tired or exhausted can increase the risk of longer and more painful labors. Women who work right up to the time of birth often don’t feel ready and go “overdue” as they work with their babies to tune in and prepare. They have little time to soften before the birth—not only to open their bones, but to open emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. I often describe to moms the need to get into a “soft focus,” allowing their energetic boundaries to become sort of blurry or hazy. One of my very athletic homebirth clients responded with a smile, saying that it was as if she had become a “couch magnet!” It’s often a radical idea to these moms to suggest that during those last few weeks of pregnancy they are already spending time with their baby and that their baby needs them to be rested and emotionally relaxed for things to go well.
When teaching childbirth education over the past few decades, I’ve often illustrated the normal quiet postpartum recovery with the analogy of a mama cat and her kittens in the back of a dark closet. It used to be that a large percentage of the students had been around a pregnant or birthing pet at some point, and would naturally draw analogies of what normal postpartum behavior looks like for mammals.
In classes of the last decade, though,
NONE of students have seen any sort of animal birth, or have had any idea of the normally reclusive behavior of a mother animal after having babies.
YouTube, while an amazing resource, does not substitute for the sights, smells, sounds and experiences of a birth. In fact, it unfortunately instead promotes the myth that to be modern and cutting edge is to get back to the gym and one’s worldly routine asap. There seems to be a lack of understanding that it takes time to get to know a baby, time to establish breastfeeding and time to recover from birth. And that this is not just about the mother, that the baby also needs some maturing time skin-to-skin with mom. (NOT just for 30 minutes after birth.) I’ve even seen more than a few fathers take time off work after the birth, somehow expecting that in addition to attending to their postpartum partners/wives and new infants, that they would also finish their thesis or the house renovation project!
For a generation that has developed their expectations of life from the artificially fast-paced media, it can be terribly shocking to discover that life is not “back to normal” right after the baby comes out, and that it truly takes some time (months, not weeks or days) for things to settle down after a new baby arrives. There is a warped sense that things should be quick and efficient. In the last year, my practice has seen an exponential rise in mothers repeatedly texting me during their labors, expressing a desire to “be in touch but not be a bother” (in spite of repeated assurances that they are not a bother and, indeed, that being available is part of quality maternity care). Social media (and it’s peer pressure) is often a part of their lives from their postpartum beds, with Facebook, Web site posts and emails all happening in the immediate hours after birth.
This perspective is compounded by our societal expectations. Mothers in the United States are given dangerously short maternity leaves, lasting twelve, eight, and even only three weeks before they are expected to be back at work. Recently, a mom who was going back to work the next day attended our breastfeeding support group in tears. As a surgical resident at a nearby hospital, she was required to work long hours up to the day she birthed and to return to her responsibilities at three weeks postpartum (even though she had given birth by caesarean and had had a secondary surgery on her gallbladder in the same time period) in order to keep her residency.
This time is too short to assure:
Bonding with her infant.
The stabilization of even a normally physiologically immature infant.
The stabilization of a breastfeeding relationship and milk supply.
Or even a health full recovery from birth!
What often results are higher health care costs for both mother and infant, greater long-term health risks and a huge drain on family resources. These unbelievably short maternity leaves also dramatically increases social, cultural and medical risks such as postpartum depression and child abuse due to lack of sleep, reduced bonding and financial strain.
In this age where time-honored traditions are being lost and attempts are made to quickly integrate vast amounts of information,
the welcoming of a new baby gives the family an opportunity to slow down and connect.
Mothers must be given accurate information about the enormity of the work of birth, the length and demands of a full postpartum recovery, the high needs of the baby and the long-term ramifications of rushing through this critical and once-in-a-lifetime chapter in their lives.
The original version of this article first appeared as “Time in a Bottle”, Midwifery Today, Issue 97, Spring 2011.