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Discussion

Birthing positions

I am just curious as to what birthing positions you all are encouraging. Do any of you still routinely use stirrups or have you gotten your practitioners away from that barbaric practice? We use the footplates if necessary and the squat bar makes an excellent footrest (especially if the lady has an epidural). We try and have our ladies sitting up, squatting or at least at a good tilt.

It's always fun to talk with others and find out what everyone is doing. In general, I think most places are trying to be mother friendly and NOT make birth a medicalized event.

How receptive are your docs to NOT performing routie episiotomies?

Let's ee what's going on around the country and the world.:chuckle

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No doc I have worked with does routine episiotomies. Disgusting horrible outdated practice! I encouraged every position there was! Squatting, side lying, hands and knees (doc needs to be able to think backwards), support people lifting legs (it starts to look like a game of twister after awhile:))....

We encourage multple delivery positions as Fregi alloted to. We also do waterbirths...even though we are new at it (7 deliveries)...I have delivered a gal on the floor by the bed because that is what she wanted. The doctor was cool with it as well. We use a lot of mineral oil to massage the perineum before delivery. Never do we routinely do episiotomies....so old school.

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Must be nice to be a new mom these days......when I work OB, I often share stories of the "old days" when I was having kids: trying to hold in the enema while you're having contractions 3 minutes apart, getting your pubic hair shaved, then being strapped into stirrups in the "dead bug" position and pushing uphill. Episiotomies? Most MDs did them routinely, and then you had to SIT on those stitches (OUCH). Now I rarely see a mom who's had one.......sometimes they tear and have to be sutured, but unless the baby's very large, the docs don't do them.

Yes, life is good for birthing women today.......but I can't help feeling a little bit proud that I went through childbirth five times without benefit of epidurals, being allowed to choose my own position, or jacuzzi tubs. Yep, those were the days, my friend: six moms in one room, patients smoking in the hallways, sterile, cold labor and delivery rooms, being made to have a BM and to demonstrate that you could bathe the baby before being allowed to go home........good riddance, and may they never return!!

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mjlrn97 . . . my first child born 20 years ago sounds like your experiences. Enema, shaved the entire pubic area (why???), pit induction because I wasn't moving fast enough for the doc and she had places to go:( , episiotomy . . .oh my gosh, the healing of that plus the growing back in of the hair - I was miserable. I remember having to go downstairs to the cafeteria for our "special meal" and being given a "donut" to sit on for the hemmorrhoids. And the ice bag between my legs. I loved the sitz bath though. And the bottle of warm water with Hibiclens. ahhhhh.

I also remember a good friend having a baby in 1977 and the hospital didn't allow visitors so she had to get up out of bed and wheel the baby down to the glass doors for me when I visited. How nice is that to a new mom?

Thank goodness we've come a long way baby . . . .

steph;)

still using the birthing bed stirrups...argh!

hhk

Stirrups for almost every delivery. Have a couple of docs who still routinely do episiotomy (whether they need it our not) 1 or 2 of the new docs want the foot peddles or support people to hold the legs. All lithotomy...... all the time.....LOL

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yep, all lithotomy, all the time. But that is not because of the docs. We just don't. hmmmm . . . . . gotta think about that.

steph

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Oh, lordy, I'd forgotten about the misery of the hair growing back in.....the maddening ITCH that just about drove me insane! (Why is it that men can scratch themselves in public and we can't?!) Nowadays they don't even clip the hair, unless of course they do a C-section.....then you've got the healing scar PLUS the "nubs" to deal with. ARRRRRRGH! Boy, am I glad MY childbearing years are over.......

No routine episiotomies, no routine IVs, we don't break the bed, we don't do epidurals, and they can be in whatever position they want for labor and delivery, though it is almost always semi-fowlers with their feet on the push bar. We got a new doc last year that wanted us to break the bed and use stirrups but most of us kept forgetting and I think he finally gave up.

You don't do epidurald? At all?

What's a push bar?

We use as many positions as we can to facilitate pushing...Funny this topic came up because the other morning, with a patient sitting (squatting) on the stool, both the doc and I ( women in our 40s) were sitting on the floor coaching the girl, looking at a mirror strategically placed so we could see how she was doing, and when we elected to change positions to the bar with her pulling on a blanket, we both realized too late that we were really sore trying to get up and our knees cracked at the same time...Both the patient and her husband ( in their twenties) first were startled and then started laughing at the expense of us two "old" women....Poor girl used the stool, the bar, the bathtub and pushed for two hours with out an epidural ( some of that time with her foot on my shoulder to get her legs open wider) and THEN ended up with a section for CPD! I went home sore from head to toe, but felt ok about it knowing we had used just about every position known to OB before the poor girl had to "throw in the towel"....Orthopedically, I was hurtin for certain.....:)

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