Dr. Phil wants midwife horror stories :(

[shutterbugmom]

Originally Posted by Love4bob With my last birth the OB delivering my baby said when I was pushing, and I quote "I am a strange man with my hand in you! Push me out!" Like that was suppose to motivate me to push...it just pissed me and my DH off!

[Love4bob]

Originally Posted by shutterbugmom

Exactly!!

[Liddle1]

uhm.... EW????

[pantufla]

Originally Posted by abismommy Ughh damn you Dr. Phill ( whom is not even a real MD )! Anyways I do plan on sending in my story to him and even having DH send in a story of a beautiful experience with our birth center MW!

He is, however, a PhD, and therefore entitled to use the title "Doctor". I do think he's an opportunisitic sleaze-bag. But he's entitled to call himself a doctor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_McGraw

In 1989, McGraw was sanctioned by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists for an ethical violation involving a 19-year-old patient and employee (see "Criticisms & controversies: Sanctioned for unethical behavior", below). Due to the sanctions, McGraw was unable to practice psychology independently.

[two bricks shy]

I have NO love for Dr. Phil.

However, I sent my story of our attempted homebirth with DD that we transported to the hospital for. It outlines how our midwife is a trained professional and is absolutely wonderful. I also invited him to look at the statistics for outcomes regarding midwife assisted births at home and in the hospital versus OB/GYN attended births because the outcomes for momma and baby are so much better for midwives.

Oh and I'm soooo glad they had hospitals around throughout time for all those "traditional" hospital births.


Dr. Phil can bite my midwife loving, homebirth supporting bootie!

[LibertyChic]

Originally Posted by pantufla He is, however, a PhD, and therefore entitled to use the title "Doctor". I do think he's an opportunisitic sleaze-bag. But he's entitled to call himself a doctor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_McGraw In 1989, McGraw was sanctioned by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists for an ethical violation involving a 19-year-old patient and employee (see "Criticisms & controversies: Sanctioned for unethical behavior", below). Due to the sanctions, McGraw was unable to practice psychology independently.

Huh. Well I'll be damned.

[brandislee]

Originally Posted by medicmom I am probably going to be flogged for this but I think he needed to do this. He asked for the good side a few weeks ago and now he is asking for the bad side. There are usually good and bad sides to each story and I personally would rather get both sides and make my own informed deciscion than to just be told one side and base it off that. I did offer to go on the show and tell my bad OB/GYN story and to justify why I am having a UC.

Normally I would agree with you- both sides of a story should be represented. And of course, women should be encouraged to do much research and talk to other past patients before choosing a midwife. However, in this case and in this context, I think that a show with this aim would do more harm than good. 98% of women already give birth in hospitals, so it's not like he's trying to warn some uninformed majority of risks they may not know about. Women who do choose to use a midwife are far more likely to be informed on the risks they face by doing so than women who just go to the hospital. And I think that we need to move in the direction of encouraging many MANY more midwife deliveries (home, hospital, birthing center, whatever). By airing a show that is exclusively about horror stories he is simply empowering those uninformed women who were going to give birth in a hospital anyway to say "ha, the weirdo's who give birth at home deserve it" or something stupid like that, but to justify their UNinformed decision.

Anyway, I sent in a response, too. And I think mine is the longest... once I get started, I just can't stop! And I want to say how PROUD I am of the other responses- all of which have been very mature, informed (and in the case of almost all but mine, concise!), and well said.

Here's what I wrote. If you're in a hurry, skip it (It was 2p long when I cut and pasted to Word!)

First of all, I am just a little bit irrate at what you, as a show, are trying to portray. I am a very happy midwife patient, and I have tons (far more than half) of mommy friends who also have employed the services of a midwife, whether at home, in a birthing center, or in the hospital. And of the moms I have shared birthing stories with there are far more who have horror stories from doctor assisted hospital births than from home or birthing center births.

While it is relatively small, the reason that movement towards midwifes is happening is in response to the lack of consideration for the needs of the mom and baby in most hospitals with most doctors. It is no accident that the incidence of C-section has skyrocketed in the recent decades- the increased involvement of Doctors in healthy pregnancies introduces more unnecessary interventions, all of which contribute to the increased likelihood of C-section.

I think it is worth mentioning that in all other developed countries around 60% of mothers deliver using the services of a midwife only, saving the Doctor for the mothers who actually need them. The rate in the United States is something like 98%. But of all industrialized countries, the United States has the highest mother loss rate and the second highest infant mortality rate. It is obvious by these statistics that a hospital is NOT the best way for a healthy, low risk mother to deliver her baby.

I am 8 months pregnant with my second child. My first, I delivered in a hospital. Now, my story is by no means a "horror" story, but it is an example of how unresponsive hospitals are to the needs and wants of mothers. I had a long but otherwise safe and healthy labor. Seven hours after being admitted to the hospital (by this time I had been in labor for well over 24 hours) they finally convinced me that I needed and epidural, despite my husband's and my wishes that I deliver naturally (it was my choice, but it's one thing to make a rational decision when you're NOT in pain, and I feel that hospitals capitalize on this). Naturally, the epidural didn't speed up my contractions, so they then gave me pitocin. Finally, many hours later, I was ready to push. Because of the epidural I couldn't feel anything and couldn't effectively push my baby out, so I pushed for over two and a half hours and still hadn't given birth. At this point the doctor said that, if I didn't get the baby out soon, he's have to do a C-section. So, I told him to use the vacuum to get the baby out. I was VERY determined not to have a C-section and was willing to do anything to avoid it. Unfortunately, most mothers don't feel as strongly about this as I do and would have probably allowed one by this point. After two more pushes, an episiotomy, and a vacuum pulling on my baby's head (which I didn't realize at the time was a kind of risky thing to do) I finally had my baby. Thankfully, after all that she and I were fine. However, had we been in a more supportive environment and NOT had the epidural we could have avoided the pitocin (which, thankfully in my case didn't cause any further problems) and likely avoided the long hours of pushing, the episiotomy, and the use of the vacuum. None of them were medically necessary. I also had issues with my post partum care in the hospital. I had a large baby because they run in my family. I had no gestational diabetes or any other pregnancy problems to cause this. But, due to this and due to the fact that they had starved me during my labor, they insisted on checking my daughter's blood sugar every three hours for the first 24 hours. To do this, they poke baby's heel and take a blood sample. So, for the next 24 hours, none of us got the rest that we so badly needed after all that work because the moment we fell asleep they came in and poked her heel, which woke us al up.

With this pregnancy I gave much thought and did much research on the choices I had for prenatal care and delivery. Unfortunately, because of the way the health care system has been structured in this country, most pregnant women don't even know that they have a choice. They assume that an OB and a hospital are the only way to go, and those who are aware that midwives exist still view them under the unfortunate stigma that they were given decades ago as uneducated rubes. I chose my particula midwife after speaking to many people. She is a Certified Nurse Midwife (which is the same as a nurse practitioner, the highest level of nursing) and is supervised by a doctor, but performs all of the prenatal care and delivery (other than those that do get transfered to a hospital out of medical need) herself, with the aid of a few assistants. She has been delivering babies for years- she delivered one of my husband's co-worker's grown sons, and she delivered my husband's boss's last child. She is very well known in the community and is the most knowledgeable person I have ever met when it comes to pregnancy and delivery of healthy babies (and that includes my OB!). I also prefer the care that I have recieved from her to this point because I never have to wait (at my OB with my last pregnancy I often had to wait two hours or more before my appointment) and because she actually takes the time to ask questions about how I am feeling and answer any questions that I have instead of running in, checking the baby's heartrate, saying "everything's fine," and running back out.

Also, and because of all of the problems with the healthcare system in general I think this warrents stating, it is much cheaper to see a midwife and deliver either at home or in a birthing center, or even at a hospital with a midwife (and some hospitals, thankfully, are even encouraging this such as Kaiser Permanente- THIS is the direction that we need to be headed). We could save huge amounts of healthcare dollars if more women would do this. I am not anti-doctor, Doctors are wonderful and very much needed. But for the vast majority of women a Doctor is simply not needed and can actually (although in most cases not intentionally) cause more harm than good by pushing women into unnecessary (and costly, as I found out with my epidural!) medical interventions.

Obviously you are going to be able to find women who have midwife horror stories- just like medicine, midwifery is not an exact science and things don't always go as planned. And just like in medicine, I am sure there are some hacks out there practicing who shouldn't be. But I think that doing an entire show that represents using a midwife or giving birth at home as unsafe would be socially irresponsibe and would misrepresent and entire profession, a profession that is already having a difficult time shedding an unfortunate stigma that was so undeservingly cast upon them many years ago.

[brandislee]

Wow, longest post ever. I win!