It's disturbing.

This has really been making the rounds in the bloggin natural birth community, and now I can't resist adding my two cents in. Mostly just links for you, to what others have said, women who have experienced far more than I on the subject.

"Pit to Distress" is causing quite a stir. It started with Jill of Keyboard Revolutionary, bringing up her own findings online about the term "pit to distress", which refers to the practice of upping the pitocin on a laboring woman to at worst, force a crash c-section, and at "best", steamroll her into an unsafely fast labor and/or other interventions without worry for her safety or that of her baby. She continued her thoughts here.

Nursing Birth writes about her firsthand experiences as an L&D nurse with physicians who practice this. The other Jill, of Unnecessarean weighs in, twice even, with more interesting information.

As I'm sure many others are, this is really making me double back and consider the induction of my son. This is the best definition I can find of tachysystole. By the sounds of it, it's hyperstimulation of the uterus before it causes major issues for the baby. I'm kind of considering it the warning sign, to sloooow down the pitocin. Perhaps my mom could weigh in here, because she probably remembers the time frame a little better than I do, but as I recall after they broke my water and cranked the pitocin I hit this point. For hours. After they were already "worried" about hyperstimming my uterus since I contracted so quickly. (As I remember it, I was having contractions that lasted 45 seconds to a minute, with about 15 seconds in between) Granted, Ray tolerated it well. Thank god. But from what I'm reading above...I was not. If I HAD been tolerating it well, then sure, it could have just been part of my contraction pattern and reasonable to continue the pit at that level.

But I wasn't. I was crying through every contraction, panicking when they came on and begging "No no no no no". I don't have a good grasp of the time here, obviously, which is why I ask my mom. I do remember that even in between contractions, there was still pain. I've still not had an answer, from any professional, about if that is normal or "ok" or not. To me it seems like it's likely a bad thing.

Now, given what I know of the hospital I was in and it's staff, I would have to claim ignorance and naivete on their part. It's a teaching hospital, and they seemed clueless on so many fronts. I don't know how much this may have contributed to the c-section, beyond helping me along on my path to "needing" an epidural. (Which one nurse, when I mentioned going natural, laughed in my face and told me their epidural rate was 99% and that only women who were irrationally afraid of the needle said no) Could there have been an element of wanting to prove to me that I too, couldn't do it?

I don't know. I guess this doesn't change anything, but it makes me wonder even more. What the hell were they doing? Were they really that clueless, that they were playing around with the life of my son? I never knew I was giving them permission to needlessly play around with his life, and for what? It wasn't a busy hospital. Their paycheck was not dependent on my birth methods and how many interventions were used. I was only one of three women that birthed in as many days there. And that was "busy" for them. One was a scheduled c-section, the other came in well into labor and had pushed her son out in a few short hours. Most times when I went in with preterm contractions, I was the only one there. Doubting that they were overworked and horribly exhausted by it, beyond the usual military BS and long hours.

I'll probably add to this later in the day if I can think of something to say beyond shocked rambling.