Monday, December 20, 2010

Mom Defies Doc & Has Baby Her Way

On Thursday, December 2, as Aneka sat at home nine months pregnant, the phone rang.

It was her obstetrician wanting to know where the heck she was. Did Aneka forget that today was the day for her cesarean section? How could she have forgotten?

No, Aneka hadn't forgotten. She hadn't shown up intentionally.

"She told me, 'You're being irresponsible. Your baby could die. You could die,'" Aneka recalls. Then the doctor hung up.

Ginger's shortened version: With Aneka's first birth, her doctor decided that 10 hours was too long for anyone to labor and he ordered a C-section. Since her first was a C-section, he said her second one had to be too. And her third. Finally, when she was pregnant w/ #4, she started reading up on VBACs.(Vaginal Birth After Cesarean)

On December 5, three days after the C-section that never took place, Annan Ni'em was born at home. He weighed 9 pounds, 6 ounces and was delivered after 20 hours of labor, and, she says, just four minutes of pushing. He was completely healthy.


Read the whole story here.


I love stories like this! Doctors are your hired help. You should be the boss of your own labor.


5 comments:

Renee said...

I read this the other day on CNN. I can't believe they wouldn't let her do a VBAC. CRAZY!

Ginger said...

Why can't you believe it? This is very common practice around here. Is it not in your area?

Anonymous said...

We have only one hospital in our entire state (Maine) that will do a VBAC. Very sad.

RobinC

CK said...

I'm very late commenting here, and should let it pass, but I hate misinformation. (It is to me what grammar mistakes are to you, Ginger!)

RobinC, I live in Maine and with my second child, I was offered the choice of VBAC in two different hospitals. And I live in a rural area and only use a general practitioner for my pregnancies. This problem is bad enough without exaggerating it.

Ginger said...

Well noted. That's 2 hospitals, not 1.