February 2013 Moms

Forgive me, dumb pitocin question

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I know sometimes they will administer pitocin to help regulate contractions....but I'm confused as to why? Can you chose to wait it out....keep laboring and maybe walk around to see if they regulate and/or become closer together? (Basically wait for them to do whatever they want the contrax to do?) or is there a reason why you might need to speed things up and not have all the time in the world, like maybe the baby is in distress or something...? 

Thanks ladies! :) 


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Re: Forgive me, dumb pitocin question

  • For me it was bc my water broke they don't want your water broken for more than 24 hrs before baby is born. I only went from 1cm to 3 cm in 7 hrs so they gave it to me.
  • Same here, it was because my water had broken at home and we rushed to the hospital
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  • Gotcha!! Thanks ladies, that's kinda what I thought the reasoning would be!

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  • I was on Pitocin for my first baby to speed up contractions, but then they took me off b/c it was stressing out the baby.
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  • imageDC2London:
    Usually the only reason you would "have" to have pit is if your waters have broken and you aren't having active contractions.  Because of the risk of infection, they will usually insist that you deliver within 24 hrs of SROM.  You can almost always decline interventions like pitocin.  There are many other ways to help labor progress.

    even if your water you should be able to decline it... labor most often will kick in within 24 hours of your waters breaking... my MWs would then have me do things like nipple stimulation, castor oil etc to see if they could get labor going... as long as you aren't showing signs of infection and the baby isn't distressed, there really shouldn't be a 24 hour limit for the baby being born...

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  • For me, they started pit because at 5 cm, after they broke my water, my contractions completely stopped.  My body was so exhausted by that point, it just couldn't keep going.  I had been in non-productive but constant labor for three weeks prior to finally being admitted to the hospital.

    However, if it wasn't a necessity situation similar to this, I think that pit would be a last resort option.  Or at least, I hope it is! I never want pit contractions again!

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  • My water broke with DD and NOTHING was happening after 14 hours. Like, nothing. So they gave me pitocin but went really slow and made it clear to me that unless I showed signs of infection I was free to labor as long as was needed, as long as DD was doing ok. I ended up delivering 5 hours after starting pitocin and it was an easy labor. I have no regrets. My hospital did not follow the "24 hours after water breaking" mandatory delivery rule, thank goodness. I was so worried about that when I went in but it was not an issue.
  • Because they are impatient and not willing to let a woman labor naturally....

    Sorry, couldn't help myself.  There are legitimate cases where pitocin is necessary - if a woman isn't dilating herself and the other option is a c/s.  But unfortunately, the hospital often has stupid rules for a woman in labor - like that they have to progress a certain number of centimeters in a specific time frame (like 1 centimeter every two hours or something).  The problem is that most women don't fit that pattern.  I never have.  I tend to stall at 4 cm for a long time and then go from 4-10 very quickly.  So it's unnecessary to make me have pitocin just because I haven't progressed from 4 cm in four hours, because I know that pretty soon I am going to be in transition.  With #3 my contractions completely stopped through the middle of the night.  My MWs saw it as a sign that I needed to get some sleep, which I did, and then when I woke up in the morning 4-5 hours later it all picked up again.  If I had been in the hospital and they would have required pitocin because my contractions stopped I would have never had the energy to push out my posterior baby later that day.  I needed rest and my body knew that.  Sometimes I just wish doctors would relax and let our bodies do what they need to do.

    I think the worst thing to do would be to give pitocin when a baby is in distress, because it tends to cause unnaturally strong contractions that a distressed baby is going to have a hard time handling.

        
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