Yesterday we published the news that explained that a Scottish midwife had administered 15 oxytocin women with the intention that their deliveries were complicated, they would end up in caesarean section and so she had less work. The midwife has been found guilty and now she needs to be punished, for a fact that many women, especially in the Babies Facebook group and more, bothered a lot.
Now, has anyone stopped to think that what the midwife did Is it something that has been done for many years in many hospitals? Perhaps not in such an obvious way, perhaps not with the same intention that the deliveries are going badly, but administering oxytocin too indiscriminately for what should be the normal delivery care, scheduling deliveries for specific days and doing many more Caesarean sections of the necessary. That is why I am asking: Why don't gynecologists also judge drugging women with oxytocin so that deliveries end in caesarean section?
The midwife cannot do it, because it is not she who indicates the medication
One of the reasons why the midwife cannot administer synthetic oxytocin on her own is that she has no power to do so. He is not a medical practitioner and, as such, cannot administer any medication that has not been previously prescribed by a gynecologist. But it is not the only reason, because the serious thing is not that, but to do it causing problems in babies, that deliveries would be complicated and that many would end up in caesarean section.
However, sure that right now there are many who can say that in your case exactly the same thing happened and that it was not a matter of the midwife, but of the gynecologist, who decided to speed up the delivery because it was Friday, because dinner time was approaching , because you had been there for a few hours and he thought "come, go, let's help you a little", and the oxytocin made everything start to go wrong, ending in caesarean section.
"If you lose control we will put the epidural"
I already explained it in his day, but when we presented a birth plan for our second child, and in it we said that the idea was to give birth without an epidural, the midwife told us this, that if Miriam lost control during childbirth they would put the epidural Forgives?
Of course, if they work like this, it is not that they do it to you by force, it is that they go and overwhelm you until you say yes: "make it very nervous, that your son cannot be born, that you are hurting him, that If you spend too much time you may suffer, that you will be calmer and the delivery will go better, than… "and of course, in the end you say yes.
So, as they put the epidural and the birth slows down, sometimes more than expected, they add oxytocin to rekindle it. The logical and normal thing is that they explain it to you, that they are going to do it, but in many occasions they do not explain anything to you: "I put a dropper, okay?" "What is it? Is something wrong?" "No honey, be calm that you're doing very well: it's just a medication to help you with contractions." And hala, they've already cracked you and you thinking that everything will be fine because you're in good hands and it turns out that minutes later (it doesn't always happen, but it does happen many times) the monitor starts to whistle because the baby is doing bradycardia.
It happened to us with the first one. Bradycardias, they tell you that something is wrong and everything ends in caesarean section. Caesarean section! Miriam was 23 years old and she was giving birth to a healthy baby that weighed just over 2,700 kg. She could have been born just perfectly, but we fell into the cascade of intervention and control of the professionals that take you to control the birth in such a way that It is the mother who loses that control, and in the end it may happen that everything goes well and seems to be thanks to them, or to end up in Caesarean section and think that something was wrong, but that your son is alive thanks to them.
The "weekend" effect
For a long time, in many hospitals (we saw it in the hospitals of Andalusia), the "weekend" effect was happening, which is a decrease in births on Saturday and Sunday, not because those days babies do not want to leave, but because to many women they are scheduled for birth so they don't fall on those days because gynecologists are not doing well. Programming means inducing, and inducing means calling bad weather.
The inductions of the famous
Why induce labor is to call bad weather? Because you're causing a birth that didn't have to happen yet. And it is not the same as a birth that starts because Mother Nature considers it the right time (the baby is already prepared to leave) than one that starts because the woman or the gynecologist is doing well ... in that case the baby He is not so prepared to leave.
We said it a few weeks ago, celebrities have the dubious privilege of being able to decide when to give birth, because gynecologists have the dubious habit of allowing them that eccentricity. And yes, it can be negative for babies and consequently they should be able to respond to the law too, right?
According to WHO:
No geographic region should have an index of induced labor greater than 10%. Induction of labor should be limited to certain medical indications.
And they don't say it because they want to annoy mothers or gynecologists with few scruples, but because it is known that it is better for the baby to be born when it touches him and not when they tell him it is his turn.
In 2010, a study that analyzed 407,503 Scottish children of school age concluded that being born in weeks 37 to 39 doubles the risk of a child having learning problems. That is why they concluded that:
Scheduled births or caesarean sections should be done in week 40 because even a baby born in week 39 has a higher risk of having special educational needs than a baby born a week later.
But we must bear in mind that in this study only the children's learning problems were analyzed based on when they were born. Waiting for them to be born is done because they mature better, have more time to gain a little more weight and be born more strongly, with fewer problems to feed, less problems to maintain body temperature, etc.
In addition, induced births, not being spontaneous, make the risk of instrumentalization higher, as there are more interventions: synthetic oxytocin produces stronger, more intense and painful contractions, with very few women who can opt for a delivery in the position they prefer, having to put on the epidural to withstand the pain, and there is also more probability that you have to end up using suction cup and forceps, and that these methods fail and delivery ends in caesarean section.
The caesarean sections of the private
Finally, we have a very clear data and about which nobody does anything: In private centers, caesarean section rates are much higher than in public centers.. Why? Why are more caesarean sections? Does the money in the wallet define that one woman has more capacity to give birth than another? In 2014, public health had a rate of 21% of births and private of 30%, which is twice what WHO considers acceptable (15% of deliveries end in caesarean section). That difference is due to "births on demand", and that is not the fault of the woman who asks for it, but of the obstetrician who allows it.
That is why I drop my question: Why don't gynecologists also judge of drugging women with oxytocin so that deliveries end in caesarean section, or directly perform a caesarean section when it is not indicated for medical reasons?
Photos | phalinn on Flickr, iStock
