I experienced excessive blood loss after the birth of my second daughter. Don't know if it qualified as a postpartum  hemorrage (500 cc.), per se, but the midwife did have nearly her entire arm (!) inside my body trying to contract the uterus while the nurse searched frantically for an IV and pitocin (with the midwife yelling at her to hurry up).  In the meantime, I received a shot of methergin (sp.?) in my thigh.  While the midwife was trying to stop the blood loss, I tried putting my baby to the breast.   Although I had an unmedicated birth, she was not really interested in latching on right away (it took another 10-15 minutes).   Also, the midwife was working hard to stop the bleeding and I think found it more difficult to work on me while I was trying to sit up and feed the baby -- She seemed to want me lying down while she worked on me.  So, while I agree that the routine administration of pitocin after birth is unnecessary, I was grateful for the methergin and pitocin, which, I believe, saved my uterus.  And, given my history, I will never give birth again without (at least) a hep lock.

Julie Rosen, LLLL in NJ

You wrote:

Date:    Tue, 5 Nov 2002 13:27:15 EST
From:    Ann Conlon-Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Birthing questions

I assisted at a birth over the weekend in a local free standing birthing
center.  Two questions -- one-- why would the midwife be insistant upon
giving a shot of Pitocin immediately upon delivery.  She is one of four, and
she says that they all do this.  As the baby presented, she said, "Okay, now
I will give you a shot of Pitocin so that you don't hemmorhage."  In fact,
there was no excessive bleeding at all, nor any history of that.  Baby came
out, placenta followed.  My next question is that when I said, "Well, we will
just put the baby to breast to help assure that there is no excess bleeding."
 Her response was, "No, I do not want the baby at breast now."  It felt very
controlling and I had this sickening feeling that she was hoping for
hemmorhage to prove me wrong.  Between the dad and I we got her to hold off
on any Pitocin and of course, none was needed.  But, she did make us wait to
put this baby with open, searching mouth searching around on mom's chest, to
the breast!!    I would like to address this issue with this center's staff
but would like some feedback first from anyone who has any pertinent info or
from L&D staffers.  Is there ever a reason NOT to put a baby to breast?
Thanks, Ann Conlon-Smith, IBCLC, LLLL



             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html