Mmmm, hungry....

Of course this comes from nurse-midwives...

Clinical Guideline Backs Food & Drink During Labor

Imagine training for the longest, hardest triathlon of your life. Physically and emotionally demanding, exhausting, draining, yet ultimately rewarding. You take care of yourself in the months leading up to this event, yet you aren't expected to be able to hydrate and/or nourish yourself DURING the event itself. (I know, triathletes don't eat during the marathon, but they drink and they have an intake of nurtrients.)

Labor is kinda like that. You're really working. It is hard, hard work, too. You utilize all your muscles and put your entire body and soul into the effort. It lasts a long time (in many cases). Regardless of how well you've prepared for this event, denying your body the basic nourishment it requires to keep up the strength you need and allowing only intravenous hydration is sheer torture.

My last hospital birth was cruel in this regard. They brought me in for induction on a Monday morning. I was instructed not to eat for the 12 hours preceeding my admission. So the last meal I had was at approximately 6pm Sunday night. (I was nine months pregnant, very hungry to begin with!) I was induced but the induction didn't take because, quite simply, she wasn't quite ready to be born (I was 37 weeks along). So I laid there in the hospital, being allowed nothing but ice chips and the saline IV, for 27 hours. Add the 13 hours that I hadn't eaten before being brought in, plus the long sleepless night wracked with painful contractions, and yet they expected me to have the energy to push out a 6lb, 8oz baby.

I did it. Only because the night before, I made my husband smuggle a 12-inch Subway Club (extra olives) in to my hospital room. I threatened him with increasingly gory forms of torture followed by a long, drawn-out death, if he didn't. I was still REALLY hungry. And of course, when she was born, it was a full two hours before the hospital served "lunch" (all I remember is that it tasted horrible, was quite cold and there wasn't enough of it). I never, ever understood why a laboring woman couldn't have sustenance to carry her through... because there's a less-than 3% chance she could require general anesthesia??

So... if I go out to eat, I should not drive home immediately because there's a chance I could get into a car crash that requires me to be rushed into surgery. And if I had just eaten, I might aspirate during surgery. Now that makes no sense and no one would recommend it. But it is, essentially, what's expected of birthing situations.

The midwives know - you can't deprive a laboring mother of food and drink and expect her to handle the situation well. Doctors... well, they seem to be way behind the rest in coming to such realizations. However, "Clinical Guidelines" or not, I doubt hospitals will begin allowing moms to eat after admission, because it's just not the way they think.

I'm so glad to be having another homebirth.

Too true to be funny... almost

55 More Words

Here we go again! Two Friday 55's in a row... I am on some kind of roll.

Within the cramped walls, I blandly recite sins to the bored, faceless entity behind the screen. I am sentenced to prayer, a penance easily accomplished. I leave church following confession feeling lightweight, buoyed by forgiveness not truly earned. My soul safe for another week, I live as I choose, unencumbered by guilt or personal accountability.