6 years ago
Saturday, March 5, 2011
If you only remember one thing...
Remember to eat before going to the hospital to give birth. Once you are admitted, nothing but ice chips will pass your lips. I know that the movies and TV make it seem like you should rush right to the hospital as soon as your water breaks (which is always portrayed as a dramatic and unmistakable event) and that within a short time you will be pushing your baby out. But the truth is, under usual circumstances, there is no need to rush right to the hospital. In fact, once you get there, it will take them some time to admit you. You might even have to wait while the shift changes before anyone will so much as take your blood pressure. Then, unless your labor is unusually fast or you have already labored quite a bit at home, you will spend many hours waiting, having a contraction, waiting some more, until the baby is born. It could be 6 hours it could be 23. There is no way to know in advance. But I can promise you one thing. You will be told not to eat. ANYTHING. So, before you go to the hospital, eat a good meal, fold your clean laundry, tie up the loose ends of your day. You'll be glad that you did.
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3 comments:
uh oh were you stuck with a hungry pregnant woman in labor?!
btw, water breaking is not always dramatic and unmistakable. in fact, in my case the doctor mistook it as "normal fluid leakage" (whatever that is - pee?) and sent me home. i returned to the hospital a day later with contractions and no fluid left.
Emily, your experience with your water breaking is more the norm than the dramatic and unmistakable experience--but in the media they usually make it dramatic.
Yes, I was at the hospital into the wee hours of the night with a woman laboring who had not eaten breakfast that morning before going to the hospital. This is the 2nd time that's happened to me, so I was aware that it can be a problem, and I thought that I had warned her sufficiently. But she thought she could eat until she got into active labor. She finally did eat 2 package of fruit snack while the nurse was out of the room. (She later threw them up, but she said it was better to have something in her stomach to come up than to dry heave.)
The reason that they don't want women to eat while in labor at the hospital is in case she needs an emergency c-section and they have to give general anesthesia instead of a spinal block. There is a possibility with general anesthesia that the woman could aspirate the contents of your stomach (that they could get into her lungs) and get pneumonia. While I agree that this is an undesirable event, I think that restricting every laboring woman's food intake in the slight chance that this could happen to her is unfair. It's like asking an athlete to compete in an all day event without any food. I think each woman should be told about the risk, the real statistics on emergency c-sections and aspiration, and be able to decide for herself if she wants to eat.
I am saddened by the fact that women in the hospital are often treated as if they can not and should not have a say in their labor. Childbirth is not an illness, it's a natural process that happens best when women are respected and empowered. I am very grateful that we do have technology that saves lives of mother and babies in emergency situations, but I wish that hospital births were more focused on the individuals and providing a quality experience.
I'll have to keep this in mind...
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