In labour, shorter doesn't necessarily equate to better OR easier!
Besides the usual interventions that are pushed on labouring mothers by the medical system to rush things along, which are most of the time completely unnecessary and cause more problems and a cascade of further medical interventions, the very real fact is that rushing birth is not helping the mother or the baby (except in the rare cases of true medical emergencies).
I have written (and experienced) about all these supposedly necessary medical interventions that are pushed on mostly unknowing mothers. I will not rehash all the reasons that these interventions are dangerous and unneeded in 99% of labours.
I want to focus on the actual topic of "fast and slow", normal and unnormal, better and worse.
I, like many other mothers out there, have been green with envy when hearing that this friend or that one had a 3 hour labour... "oh you're sooooo lucky!!"
But the truth is that most of the women that I've spoken with who had super fast labours were even more traumatized by their birthing experience than many mothers I know who've laboured for 18 hours. Why? Because the suddenness and going from 0 to 100km/hr so fast did not give them the time they needed- physically, emotionally or energetically- to find their center or that balance point that can flow WITH the labour, instead of being slammed by the tidal waves of contraction on top of contraction.
Faster does NOT equal better.
As for what is perceived to be "normal" in labour, yet again we run into the wall of unrealistic expectations and the medical machine that wants to process all labouring women with a cookie cutter. What is normal for one woman and one birth is not necessarily normal for another woman or even another birth! I have one friend who's first baby was born after 10 hours of labour, 3 hours of stalled labour IN transition, then 4 hours of pushing. Her next child was almost born in the car on the way to the hospital!! Both labours were perfectly "normal" and yet if she had of had midwives, she would of been forced into an unnecessary Cesarean Section with her first child and probably into an elective C/Section with her second because,.... you know, she obviously wasn't capable of birthing naturally. lol
This is the very same in all aspects of pregnancy, labour, birth, and the beautiful babies that are born. When you try to compare and create a paradigm of "normal" or "not normal", instantaneously you are setting an unrealistic president.
I love that the studies are now proving that these cookie cutter labours are not working. Now it's up to all of us to make sure that this information gets out- not just to the public, but to the hospitals and doctors AND midwives as well!
It only by challenging the accepted "norm" that we can CHANGE it.
Study Suggests Misplaced Fears in Longer Childbirths
Launch media viewer
A
new study in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology suggests that women
in labor may be subject to unnecessary interventions by doctors who
wrongly fear labor has become prolonged.Laura Segall for The New York Times
Epidural anesthesia lengthens the second stage of labor, the one in which women push. But a study published on Wednesday
has found that epidurals are associated with an even longer duration in
the second stage than is generally recognized, suggesting that some
women may be subject to unnecessary interventions by doctors who wrongly
fear labor has become prolonged.
The
finding indicates that “clinicians might need to wait later before
intervening with oxytocin, forceps, vacuum or a cesarean,” said Dr. S.
Katherine Laughon, an investigator at the National Institutes of Health
who was not involved in the study, which was published in Obstetrics and
Gynecology. Still, she added, “clinicians and women need to balance
benefits of vaginal delivery with potential increases in risk for mom
and baby.”
The
new study suggests a normal second stage can take as long as 5.6 hours
for women who get epidurals during their first births, and as long as
3.3 hours for those who do not get epidurals.
For
women who have given birth previously, the group’s guidelines define an
unusually long second stage as two hours with an epidural, one hour
without. The new study found that the second stage for these women can
be as long as 4.25 hours and 1.35 hours, respectively.
“This
paper is very important, and ACOG needs to update its 2003 guidelines,”
said Dr. Robert L. Barbieri, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at
Brigham and Women’s in Boston, who was not involved in the new study. He
added, “I will change my practice and feel more comfortable going to
five and a half hours with a first birth after an epidural with
reassuring fetal monitoring.”
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco,
analyzed the records of 42,268 women who delivered vaginally without
problems between 1976 and 2008. Roughly half had epidurals.
The
investigators compared the average length of the second stage of labor
among women who had epidurals with that among women who did not. They
also compared the upper limits of duration for both groups.
Thirty-one
percent of first births and 19 percent of subsequent labors would have
been classified as abnormally long by the current ACOG definition, the
researchers found.
“It’s
time to re-examine what normal and abnormal is, and revise our
guidelines based on modern obstetric population,” said Dr. Yvonne W.
Cheng, the lead author of the study and an associate professor of
obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San
Francisco.
The
research is part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that a normal
second stage of labor is now longer than it was decades ago. In 2010, a study of more than 62,000 women found it was as long as 3.6 hours for first-time mothers after an epidural, and 2.8 hours for women who did not get one.
But this latest study is the first to suggest such an extended second stage may be ordinary.
“One
of the messages of this study is, sit on your hands a little longer,
don’t rush into an instrumental vaginal delivery or a cesarean, because
really everything could be fine,” said Dr. Barbara Leighton, a professor
of anesthesiology at Washington University in St. Louis School of
Medicine, who has researched the effects of epidurals on labor.
But
while Dr. Leighton supports revising ACOG recommendations, she believes
that the current study did not prove that longer labor is caused by
epidural anesthesia. Women who request anesthesia may be predisposed to
longer labor for other reasons, she said.
Dr.
Jeffrey Ecker, the chairman of the committee on obstetrics practice for
ACOG, said today’s clinicians are “increasingly recognizing there can
be healthy outcomes and vaginal deliveries of healthy babies when the
second stage extends beyond how it’s traditionally been defined.”
He
added, “Often what’s best and most appropriate — and most difficult —
during labor is patience.” He would not say whether a revision of
guidelines is in the works.
Patience
during labor is not risk-free. The new study found that babies are more
likely to have birth trauma, such as a bruise on the head or a clavicle
fracture,
after longer second-stage labor. But these infants did not have lower
scores on tests designed to measure physical health in newborns, nor did
they experience more admissions to intensive care.
The
risks of significant perineal lacerations and postpartum hemorrhage
were higher in women who experienced prolonged second-stage labor, both
by ACOG’s definition and by the upper limits of the study’s definition
of normal.
While
Dr. Laughon applauded the large number of participants in the study,
she cautioned that “they are saying we should wait longer, but we still
don’t know if that’s safe.”
A
lot has changed since the 1950s, when labor progression norms were
established. Back then, more babies were delivered by forceps and
continuous fetal monitoring was not used.
“We
are doing less interventions to facilitate a shorter second stage, and
we’re letting the power of the uterus and a mother’s pushing determine
the length of the second stage,” Dr. Barbieri said.
