It’s Not About Who You Are. It’s About Hospital Malpractice with Pitocin – Which May Be the New Standard in Hospital Labor and Delivery Units.

This post is dedicated to those who have been needlessly injured in an institution marked as one that serves and saves and have signed their chances of sharing away. You know who you are.

A good friend who came into my life while I was pregnant with Daniel told me that the Hospital I was leaning towards delivering at had a higher rate of Emergency C-Sections than another hospital in Orlando I was considering. Her words meant nothing to me because I wasn’t going to need an Emergency C-Section. Well guess what, it had nothing to do with me, it has everything to do with the drug Pitocin.

Hospitals are abusing it at the cost of you and your unborn child. Have you ever heard of “Pit her to distress“? I’m not claiming that is what the nurse did to me. It only illustrates the disregard hospital systems can have for the safety and health of their patients and instead the intense interest in the bottom line financially or other self-serving concerns.

Don’t wait until it’s too late, wishing you could turn back the clock. Every mother-to-be believes that hospitals have them and the precious miracle of life that they carry in mind when taking the hospital tour designed to persuade you to choose them over another as the place to give birth. I won a prize one time at a hospital tour and we got a free high quality infant car seat after delivering as well. Because hospitals will administer Pitocin during a first labor experience and because the trusting mother has no idea what Pitocin’s effects on the body are (countless women, are never told about what Pitocin is besides “It’s to start contractions” before it is administered) she will most likely believe from then on that her body has difficult and painful labors scaring her into a false sense of security with a hospital’s Labor & Delivery Unit . It is never actually HER body. It is the painful contractions that Pitocin forces the Uterus to have with synthetic Oxytocin taken from A MAMMAL (for illustrative purposes only; who knows which kind).

Now that I have come to realize the horrifying, and still unknown effects that Pitocin can have on the mother and baby, through my own catastrophic, mind-blowing, can’t-wrap-my-head-around-how-it-was-allowed-to-happen experience, I don’t want to believe any healthy woman with no medical issues would think its okay to have her baby forced out of its protective, nurturing environment UNLESS the baby or mother were in harms way.

What if healthy new moms-to-be (no prenatal complications) realized that women have been giving birth for centuries and that our bodies actually are designed to give birth with exceptions of course to those who have experienced medically dangerous pregnancies. Thank goodness more and more Doulas are helping women realize they still have a choice by educating them about their own bodies ability to give birth.

Hospitals have the upper hand in marketing themselves as the best place to give birth. Just remember, they want you have birth their way (especially once you get an Epidural) its safer FOR THEM financially in more ways than one. One way is that they get more money for performing the C-Section which may or may not actually go to cover their cost and the other way is that the doctor and hospital have – only in theory – more control over any disasters happening thus staving off Med Mal lawsuits as well as saving everyone time from a lengthy labor process. This should tell us moms that things just aren’t what they seem.

Even though the hospital that almost let my helpless baby and I die is a not-for-profit hospital, it is a quirky trait of businesses to follow trends that are bringing in any kind of revenue no matter where it goes, for their business. In my opinion, they are creating the perfect storm. Yes, it truly is a big business for Hospitals. They take it very seriously but not in the way that an unsuspecting mother like I was would hope.

Stop and think about what Pitocin is being used for today. This has almost become the standard of Labor and Delivery.

When I think of the trap moms-to-be can fall into I want to cry for the helpless countless children that are the real victims and I have. We can be led to believe that our bodies labor is so painful and so difficult that induction is the way to go. My doctor supported this convenient induction practice. The fabulous, brand new, state of the art Hospital designed just for Women and Babies welcomed me as my bodies ability was given over, imprisoning it to drugs and monitors as I got settled in that day.

Do we really live in a Barbarian Society? Do the wonderful L&D Nurses really understand a woman’s bodies ability to labor and give birth or are they a product of medical training on how to read print outs and how much drug to give? If so, my nurse’s training wasn’t good enough since she did not prevent the coming disaster that not only the machines were telling her but my own body as well.

One of the very telling and commonly known signs of a Uterine Rupture (See Signs & Symptoms) that I had to learn the hard way is pain in the upper chest area especially where your clavicles are- the long thin bones below your neck that run horizontally to your shoulders. Why would that area hurt so badly you might ask? Because the epidural had my lower body completely numb. I couldn’t feel pain until all the blood was pushed upward from bleeding out internally. Daniel was blocking the other exit for the blood so it pushed upwards almost destroying my diaphragm.

Instead of allowing a woman’s body to do what it is already designed to do- labor to get a new life out and into the world, women are led to believe that forcing a baby out of the womb is the best way to labor, never questioning that it is going completely against our bodies natural course. We can be led to believe this by OBGYNs and hospitals. When I wasn’t taken care of by those sworn to ‘do no harm’ disaster struck and soon I was splayed out naked onto a metal table, a doctor desperate for me to be numb enough to slice open, an OR tech yelling at me that if I didn’t splay my arms out flat then I must not care about my babies life. After no liquids for at least 12 hours, me, trying to explain with a desert dry mouth that excruciating pain was not allowing me to spread my arms out, a compassionate and patient nurse appearing and laying pillows across my naked chest to allow my arms in a crossed position, a place to rest- as if I was practicing for my casket, and finally, an unreal yanking of my body to pull my lifeless, traumatized baby out.

If that is not a nightmare you think you ever want your girlfriend, daughter, sister, friend, niece, cousin, or wife to ever have on top of the possibility of death for both mother and baby or at the very, very least, permanent life altering injury including but not limited to:

Brain Damage

Cerebral Palsy

Possible Removal of the Uterus for Mother

Paralysis from the Necessary Epidural after getting Pitocin

Seizures

…then keep your eyes open to what is happening in a Hospital system.

For Daniel and I, we lived, but he with Cerebral Palsy and a Seizure Disorder and for me, gone… the opportunity to EVER have a natural childbirth.

Oh! how I LOVE this boy! To think that I almost didn’t get to meet him!

It is my hope that women today hold sacred their bodies gift to bring life into the world and seek education with the same weight they pursue a college degree about their bodies ability to give birth. It’s almost a lost art except among those women who are knowingly sharing their knowledge in such a controversial landscape.

The dangerous trap is that women might not get the chance to be empowered during their pregnancies when doctors and hospitals seem to have the upper hand which most likely makes women vulnerable to believing that a hospital has their best interest at heart.

Contrast mine and others horrible birth experiences to an Empowered Maternal Mother that would still be able to go into a hospital to give birth but have control over her birth plan, understand her choices, understand clearly the risks associated with her choices and be the one in as much control as her body allows in such a process, not the Hospital system of rendering her completely helpless through the use of Pitocin and Epidurals.

I think Two Generations of women – at least, have forgotten the art of giving birth due to the marketing of convenience that both well meaning doctor’s and up standing hospital’s propagate. I hope that sharing my experience will add to the effort many others in the form of midwives, doulas, birthing coaches, and hypnobirthing instructors, are making in trying to warn and help other women. I also hope Daniel’s Story will interest men, as the fathers of children who are being maimed by the overuse and improper monitoring of Pitocin.

Mine is not by far the only ‘story’ to tell. Feel free to share your experience here if you feel it might save a life.