Get off the forum people! 'One born every minute' is on....

[littleEDfamily]

Just in case anyone else always forgets to watch...looks like some classic people are on...

[Helen GV]

Thanks (tu)

[littleEDfamily]

Did she just say "I have a pain in my backside and my minge"...?

[sanity girl]

Thanks for the reminder! Will watch in on 4 +1

[Ruth_Baldock]

LEDF: She did. Where else did you think it would hurt, lady?!?! Your right foot?

[Helen GV]

can't believe the poor woman asked for an epidural, was told she couldn't and then was told it was too late!

[prm]

yes why did they not give that poor woman an epidural??? that was so cruel, that midwife with the curly blonde hair was awful!

[littleEDfamily]

That show never fails to deliver. The blonde lady's facial expressions had both of us literally crying with laughter, complete with thigh slapping. She did do well with that face up bubba.

And the forceps couple were hilarious; like something out of 'Creature comforts'.

[Pickle]

Awwwwww. Cute little babies. Broody now.

I asked for an epidural when I had been told I was 4cm... the epidural man was in theatre and was delayed 30 mins, by which point I was fully dilated (that was why it was hurting so much, I was in transition without realising). But I was then really pleased I didn't have one, as was the lady shown, so it's not all bad.

I was really disturbed by the forceps delivery, how on earth do their little necks not get hurt when they're using that much force??

[buggie]

...have got this on sky+ to watch in the morning (so I can fully partake in the discussions prm!)

Think the fact that babies don't really have much of a neck helps prevent injury - most babies do Clive Anderson/Sandi Toksvig impressions for the first few months!

Am sure the MW wasn't really being cruel (am sure the MW's/hospital have a say so in what goes out on TV and looking bad wouldn't be good/help the TV crew get MW's happy to appear on it), is likely the effect of having several hrs edited down to a TV friendly portion.

The MW's are there as they've had the training/experience to know what is occuring - might have looked like she wasn't helping the woman, but she was likely thinking several steps ahead of what was happening and so could see a bigger picture **reserves right to edit this if it appears MW really was evil!**

[new mother]

Interesting programme.

re pain relief, I don't know any one of my friends on the NHS who got her epidural when she asked for it. Everyone I know was left to suffer in agony, whic I find unacceptable in the modern world. Hence my two electives.

[Sally81]

...my waters went last Monday while watching one born every minute! Had my son the next afternoon. The birth was a bit of a nightmare and I couldn't watch the show this week. It's a shame because I've been addicted to it!

[littleEDfamily]

I'm all for birth choice, but if you're having a baby on the NHS, there is a substantial cost associated with epidural, so I think it's only right that the health professionals exercise their judgement on when an epidural isn't appropriate.

At the risk of offending, I was pretty blown away by how monged out the lady on pethedine was. She probably needed the relief given the position of the baby, but a bit of a shock for me, nonetheless.

PS congrats Sally81

[Keef]

But surely every woman is different, and has a different pain threshold. So how can these people decide when you need pain relief. One woman we know said to Mrs Keef "it's not too bad, just like a bit of bad period pain". As Mrs Keef said, either this woman has the worst periods in the world, or she has a very very high pain threshold!

[ClareC]

A back to back baby is unbelievably painful! Poor woman should have been given an epidural. Far better for the baby than pethadine.

I felt so sorry for her.

Keef, the period pain line always makes me chuckle too, certainly wasn't that way for me either!!

[pebbles]

I too felt so sorry for the lady who wanted an epidural, however sadly i wasn't shocked. I have heard from so many friends who have been in exactly the same situation. I do understand the NHS money situation however for the baby an epidural I think is so much better pethadine so surely that's the choice they should have made?

I do feel sorry for her now when she watches it cos her face expressions were just hysterical :)

[Yak]

Congratulations Sally81!

What I took from it (as a 31wk slightly hormonal, slightly freaked out first timer) is that even though both women had a really REALLY tough time, they both took such pride in what they had achieved. The happiness on their faces in the post-birth interviews with them at home was just brilliant to see - despite and/or because of what they had been through.

[Belle]

Oooh, caught up on 40D, think I cried most at this one. Mainly because my son was a forceps birth and it made me sob seeing how they do it (even though I know it's perfectly safe and he was fine!). Think seeing births you can relate to are that bit more emotional. Absolutely LOVED the 'pain in my backside, pain in my minge' comment, and when her mum said 'she says it how it is'. Brilliant. Felt so impressed with both the women this week especially, they did so well in difficult circumstances. I cd see what blonde curly midwife was trying to do - hold off to see if the woman cd do without, guess she thought it was early on yet. But thought the second midwife dealt with the patient better.

I think people do have different pain thresholds, have heard the bad period pains from a few people.

[littleEDfamily]

I liked the second midwife with her "C'mon girl, give it some welly!"

Childbirth is meant to hurt. My heart goes out to anyone who has a complicated labour - that must be incredibly terrifying - but normal physiological childbirth is eye poppingly painful, and have to say, I view anything that interferes with that with some caution. I am for choice, to a point. I think it is important that the professionals do what they can to minimise intervention so that more resources are there for the genuinely difficult cases. That's not meant to be a personal attack on anyone, so I hope it's not taken as such. Just airing my opinion in the interests of healthy ED forum debate! Purely speculating here, but I wonder if the blonde lady would have managed to get that back to back baby out naturally had she had an epidural...

Keef - I don't personally believe there is such a thing as an objective pain threshold, in the sense that pain is fundamentally more acute for some people than others. I don't dispute that some births, especially back to back ones, are much more painful, but this is more due to variables such as the baby's position than the mum's pain threshold.

[new mother]

LEDF,

"Childbirth is meant to hurt."

Errr...how about broken legs? Are they meant to hurt? Don't we get pain relief, correctly, to such patients asap???

Childbirth nowadays hurts much more than ever before because the pelvis cannot evolve to be large enough to walk and to accommodate big well nourished Western babies' heads.

I must say I'm shocked by your comment. Women should support each other and not accept being the bottom of the list in terms of allocation of resources if failure to provide pain relief, as per your previous comment.

I fear there is also a contingent who do believe, mediaevally, that "childbirth is meant to hurt".

[littleEDfamily]

It's not a coherent argument you make, new mother. I was clearly making a distinction between complicated birth, requiring medical intervention and normal physiological childbirth. The latter is not remotely the same as a traumatic injury such as a broken leg. Birth is a complex process and interfering with the body's ability to respond to pain had been proven to interfere with that process, increasing the likelihood of intervention and less favourable outcomes for mother and baby.

I am no masochist; on the contrary, I believe the acceptance of the pain of childbirth is a form of enlightened self-interest. I don't want to make this a personal argument, or an emotive one, but I decided against an epidural on the grounds I wasn't prepared to accept the associated risks and didn't want the extended labour and increased likelihood of intervention goes along with it.

I emphatically dispute that my stance is anti-woman. In my view, it is far more insulting to woman to be told that their bodies are in some way defective and that they are not equipped for a process that (in normal circumstances) they have evolved to carry out. Although I do accept that modern babies may be slightly larger than they were in the past, so are we. And the pain of childbirth is not entirely related to the size of the baby, but rather to the the physiological processes required to prepare the body for delivery.

If there were medical evidence to demonstrate that pain relief via anasthesia (epidural) or narcotics (pethedine) has no significant outcome on mother or baby at a macro level (we all know individuals that have had good births using both), I would take an entirely different view, but this is not the case.

When we are under medical supervision for real illness or injury, we are not able to dictate what treatment we receive - my husband is regularly in hospital for kidney stones treatment always asks for morphine (it must be good!) but doesn't always get it. The role of a competent and ethical medical professional is to protect our health and assist our bodies to heal, not merely to shield us from pain.

[Belle]

Though interestingly, if you refuse an epidural for whatever reasons, you may still need one further down the line - I was given a spinal block at fully dilated, as forceps were expected to fail (they didn't), and a c-section needed (it wasn't), and one of my NCT group had a natural birth but extreme tearing, so she was given a spinal for stitches. So prob best to be at peace with whatever may need to happen. I had thought the risks were established as quite small?

Slight tangent, but I do get irritated by some of the tag lines on Baby Centre type posts, members saying things like 'three children, no pain relief', like a badge of honour.

[littleEDfamily]

Yep, belle, I agree - you never know what you're going to get going into childbirth. I think the epi risks are very small in terms of paralysis etc, but the correlation between extended labour and the need for further intervention is significant, as I understand it. And I also agree that boasting about doing it with no pain relief is annoying and insensitive, but for me no more so than people boasting about 'taking all the drugs'.

[Ruth_Baldock]

The whole epi/spinal thing makes me cry- I can't have either due to a spinal condition so anything that warrants them means I'll have to be totally out- under a general. I literally have panic attacks about this :(

Still love OBEM though. It's like my crack.

[Keef]

Interesting stuff.

Keef - I don't personally believe there is such a thing as an objective pain threshold, in the sense that pain is fundamentally more acute for some people than others. I don't dispute that some births, especially back to back ones, are much more painful, but this is more due to variables such as the baby's position than the mum's pain threshold.

Well, I don't know if there is proof either way, but some people seem to deal wih pain (in general) better than others, and I don't think that is just because they're "harder".

I also don' see why the hell anyone should suffer when there is no actual need for it, but there you go.