JinJer and Felicity 43: No Homebirth, No Problem

[Georgiana]

The birth episode has aired, and FJ is picking it apart.

Continued from:

 

[Don'tlikekoolaid]

Jinger is my fav fundy and I am so happy she gave birth in hospital and had an epidural.  She is so tiny and I was worried.  (When I say fav I mean I don’t like any of them but I dislike Jinger the least).  Free Jinger!!!!

[NakedKnees]

To continue to the conversation from the last pages on the last thread, I don't think I'd define a "successful birth" as "mother and baby both surviving." It's a good starting point, but ignores the quantity of permanent injuries that can directly result from birth. It also sounds a bit pro-life-ish to me. 

I realize this is contradictory to me even commenting on it, but maybe "giving birth" and "successfulness" are two terms that shouldn't even be compared. It might be unfairly judgemental to pit births against each other in that way.

[justoneoftwo]

4 minutes ago, NakedKnees said:

To continue to the conversation from the last pages on the last thread, I don't think I'd define a "successful birth" as "mother and baby both surviving." It's a good starting point, but ignores the quantity of permanent injuries that can directly result from birth. It also sounds a bit pro-life-ish to me. 

I realize this is contradictory to me even commenting on it, but maybe "giving birth" and "successfulness" are two terms that shouldn't even be compared. It might be unfairly judgemental to pit births against each other in that way.

I agree.  The minimum I would accept for a "successful birth" is one where there are no permanent injuries which could have been avoided.  

[SamiKatz]

10 minutes ago, NakedKnees said:

To continue to the conversation from the last pages on the last thread, I don't think I'd define a "successful birth" as "mother and baby both surviving." It's a good starting point, but ignores the quantity of permanent injuries that can directly result from birth. It also sounds a bit pro-life-ish to me. 

I realize this is contradictory to me even commenting on it, but maybe "giving birth" and "successfulness" are two terms that shouldn't even be compared. It might be unfairly judgemental to pit births against each other in that way.

Once again, I don't have children but I would think that even if I gave birth to a child that had permanent injuries resulting from that birth, I would still consider it successful if my child was alive.

I can also guarantee you that I am not pro-life (as far it meaning anti abortion) in any way, nor do I think my response was indicating that either (and I'm not trying to start a fight here either).

I'm going to step out of this conversation all together actually.  

[NakedKnees]

11 minutes ago, SamiKatz said:

Once again, I don't have children but I would think that even if I gave birth to a child that had permanent injuries resulting from that birth, I would still consider it successful if my child was alive.

I can also guarantee you that I am not pro-life (as far it meaning anti abortion) in any way, nor do I think my response was indicating that either (and I'm not trying to start a fight here either)

No worries! I'm not trying to start a fight either and am not addressing anyone in particular. To me (personally, nothing I need anyone else to agree with) defining life without considering quality of life reminds me of pro-life philosophy.

I've never given birth either, so, big grain of salt

[justoneoftwo]

5 minutes ago, SamiKatz said:

Once again, I don't have children but I would think that even if I gave birth to a child that had permanent injuries resulting from that birth, I would still consider it successful if my child was alive.

I can also guarantee you that I am not pro-life (as far it meaning anti abortion) in any way, nor do I think my response was indicating that either (and I'm not trying to start a fight here either).

I'm going to step out of this conversation all together actually.  

Thats interesting, I actually might as well, although I wouldn't generally call birth successful...

The either or nature of this is problematic.  You can have things be successful and still be problematic.  I had a "successful" appendectomy, that resulted in a hospital stay of a week and a 6 inch scar.  I lived, but just barley.  That wasn't ok, but sure it was successful.  If my birth story was similar I would be pissed.

[HarryPotterFan]

1 minute ago, NakedKnees said:

No worries! I'm not trying to start a fight either and am not addressing anyone in particular. To me (personally, nothing I need anyone else to agree with) defining life without considering quality of life reminds me pro-life philosophy.

I've never given birth either, so, big grain of salt

I get that. I had a friend in college whose little sister had cerebral palsy. Healthy pregnancy and all, but horrible birth. The little sister ended up with severe brain damage. She never learned to communicate and couldn’t breathe on her own. She and the mom survived birth, but the family never knew if she could understand the world around her. And I can’t imagine how traumatic that experience was for her mother.

[finnlassie]

Perfect title.

[singsingsing]

I feel like I must have missed the start of the thread drift, because as far as we know Jinger most definitely had a successful birth, right? I mean, by every measure, she had a successful birth. She wanted to be induced, she was induced. She wanted to avoid a C-section, she was able to avoid a C-section. Mother and baby are both healthy and safe. Success!

I can't think of any Duggar daughter or daughter-in-law who's had an unsuccessful birth. Jill most definitely had an unsuccessful homebirth, but (again, as far as we know) despite two emergency C-sections no permanent harm came to herself or her babies. Yes, Jessa was transferred to the hospital after Spurgeon's birth, so we could call that one an unsuccessful homebirth as well, maybe, but surely not an unsuccessful birth?

I don't know, the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I can't imagine that I'd be happy being told that my birth had been 'unsuccessful' just because I'd had certain complications or interventions if I and the baby were fine in the end and there hadn't been any medical malpractice or whatnot. I feel really weird categorizing anything less than a totally perfect birth as 'unsuccessful'.

[justoneoftwo]

Just now, singsingsing said:

I feel like I must have missed the start of the thread drift, because as far as we know Jinger most definitely had a successful birth, right? I mean, by every measure, she had a successful birth. She wanted to be induced, she was induced. She wanted to avoid a C-section, she was able to avoid a C-section. Mother and baby are both healthy and safe. Success!

I can't think of any Duggar daughter or daughter-in-law who's had an unsuccessful birth. Jill most definitely had an unsuccessful homebirth, but (again, as far as we know) despite two emergency C-sections no permanent harm came to herself or her babies. Yes, Jessa was transferred to the hospital after Spurgeon's birth, so we could call that one an unsuccessful homebirth as well, maybe, but surely not an unsuccessful birth?

I don't know, the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I can't imagine that I'd be happy being told that my birth had been 'unsuccessful' just because I'd had certain complications or interventions if I and the baby were fine in the end and there hadn't been any medical malpractice or whatnot. I feel really weird categorizing anything less than a totally perfect birth as 'unsuccessful'.

No one thought Jinger't birth was not successful.  This started by a discussion of if her sisters has successful births or home births.  (I would say that 4 of the home births were not successful home births as at least 1 patient ended up in the hospital for each).  Then it went into what was a successful birth at all.  There has been a tun of drift.

[Georgiana]

3 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

I feel like I must have missed the start of the thread drift, because as far as we know Jinger most definitely had a successful birth, right? I mean, by every measure, she had a successful birth. She wanted to be induced, she was induced. She wanted to avoid a C-section, she was able to avoid a C-section. Mother and baby are both healthy and safe. Success!

I can't think of any Duggar daughter or daughter-in-law who's had an unsuccessful birth. Jill most definitely had an unsuccessful homebirth, but (again, as far as we know) despite two emergency C-sections no permanent harm came to herself or her babies. Yes, Jessa was transferred to the hospital after Spurgeon's birth, so we could call that one an unsuccessful homebirth as well, maybe, but surely not an unsuccessful birth?

I don't know, the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I can't imagine that I'd be happy being told that my birth had been 'unsuccessful' just because I'd had certain complications or interventions if I and the baby were fine in the end and there hadn't been any medical malpractice or whatnot. I feel really weird categorizing anything less than a totally perfect birth as 'unsuccessful'.

It was Jessa's first birth which started the convo.  Some posters felt Jessa had two successful homebirths.  Some felt that because Jessa experienced complications with Spurgeon serious enough to justify an emergency transfer to a hospital, it was NOT a successful homebirth.  Someone then said that because Jessa's hemorrhage was post-delivery that it was not technically a complication to the birth, to which I pointed out that the delivery of a child does not end the birth process for the mother and that immediate post-delivery complications are generally considered birth complications.  A mother can die from childbirth after the baby is born, essentially, so it doesn't make sense to draw the line right at delivery.  So then we started asking where the line is drawn.

Here's my perspective:

WHO is the one who gets to determine whether a birth is successful?  If it's outside parties, such as us here or medical staff, it definitely makes sense to define it as essentially "Everyone survives with no lasting injury".  But I do feel that on some level this negates or disregards the mother's experience, which is often very profound.  Women who undergo a traumatic birth experience, for example, would be right in protesting that they do not FEEL like they experienced a "successful birth" if indeed that is how they feel.  They experienced a traumatic birth, and it's counter-intuitive to link trauma to success, even if the ultimate outcome is good.  

You do still hear people say "It's all good so long as you get a healthy baby!" and the truth is...it's not.  Not always.  Some women need therapy to help them recover from the experience.  Some women need additional time to heal emotionally before trying again.  And when we push this narrative of "healthy mom+ healthy baby = 100% success", women who struggle to process their birth experience end up feeling like a failures when their healthy baby isn't "enough" for them to feel like they had a successful birth.  Ending up with a healthy child does not always negate or heal the very real emotions people experience during a traumatic birth experience, and I think that maybe stepping back from externally labeling all births where mother and baby survive as a "success" helps to create space for women to talk about bad birth experiences.  

Because even in 2018, we don't always leave space for women to talk about negative experiences and how those experiences impacted them, ESPECIALLY when the ultimate outcome is acceptable.  ESPECIALLY when there is already so much pressure to instantly morph into super-mom.  ESPECIALLY when the word you are using (success) implies that anything else could be failure.  

Personally, I think it's easier to use "complicated" and "without complications".  Because really, as an outside observer, that's essentially all I am able to comment on anyway.

Jill had two births with complications.  Jessa had one birth with complications and one without complications.  Joy gave birth with complications.  Jinger did not experience any complications to her birth.  All of them resulted in healthy babies and healthy moms (as far as we know), which is excellent.  

[singsingsing]

12 minutes ago, justoneoftwo said:

No one thought Jinger't birth was not successful.  This started by a discussion of if her sisters has successful births or home births.  (I would say that 4 of the home births were not successful home births as at least 1 patient ended up in the hospital for each).  Then it went into what was a successful birth at all.  There has been a tun of drift.

Thank you! I hope I didn't sound sarcastic - I was really wondering where I missed the drift.  In that case, I'd stand by my second paragraph.

[NakedKnees]

3 minutes ago, Georgiana said:

*snip*

Personally, I think it's easier to use "complicated" and "without complications".  Because really, as an outside observer, that's essentially all I am able to comment on anyway.

Jill had two births with complications.  Jessa had one birth with complications and one without complications.  Joy gave birth with complications.  Jinger did not experience any complications to her birth.  All of them resulted in healthy babies and healthy moms (as far as we know), which is excellent.  

I love this way of describing things- succinct, accurate, and not rude.

[Sky with diamonds]

I really enjoyed the birth epoisde. I'm so glad it went well. 

[Mama Mia]

1 hour ago, Georgiana said:

It was Jessa's first birth which started the convo.  Some posters felt Jessa had two successful homebirths.  Some felt that because Jessa experienced complications with Spurgeon serious enough to justify an emergency transfer to a hospital, it was NOT a successful homebirth.  Someone then said that because Jessa's hemorrhage was post-delivery that it was not technically a complication to the birth, to which I pointed out that the delivery of a child does not end the birth process for the mother and that immediate post-delivery complications are generally considered birth complications.  A mother can die from childbirth after the baby is born, essentially, so it doesn't make sense to draw the line right at delivery.  So then we started asking where the line is drawn.

Here's my perspective:

WHO is the one who gets to determine whether a birth is successful?  If it's outside parties, such as us here or medical staff, it definitely makes sense to define it as essentially "Everyone survives with no lasting injury".  But I do feel that on some level this negates or disregards the mother's experience, which is often very profound.  Women who undergo a traumatic birth experience, for example, would be right in protesting that they do not FEEL like they experienced a "successful birth" if indeed that is how they feel.  They experienced a traumatic birth, and it's counter-intuitive to link trauma to success, even if the ultimate outcome is good.  

You do still hear people say "It's all good so long as you get a healthy baby!" and the truth is...it's not.  Not always.  Some women need therapy to help them recover from the experience.  Some women need additional time to heal emotionally before trying again.  And when we push this narrative of "healthy mom+ healthy baby = 100% success", women who struggle to process their birth experience end up feeling like a failures when their healthy baby isn't "enough" for them to feel like they had a successful birth.  Ending up with a healthy child does not always negate or heal the very real emotions people experience during a traumatic birth experience, and I think that maybe stepping back from externally labeling all births where mother and baby survive as a "success" helps to create space for women to talk about bad birth experiences.  

Because even in 2018, we don't always leave space for women to talk about negative experiences and how those experiences impacted them, ESPECIALLY when the ultimate outcome is acceptable.  ESPECIALLY when there is already so much pressure to instantly morph into super-mom.  ESPECIALLY when the word you are using (success) implies that anything else could be failure.  

Personally, I think it's easier to use "complicated" and "without complications".  Because really, as an outside observer, that's essentially all I am able to comment on anyway.

Jill had two births with complications.  Jessa had one birth with complications and one without complications.  Joy gave birth with complications.  Jinger did not experience any complications to her birth.  All of them resulted in healthy babies and healthy moms (as far as we know), which is excellent.  

I like your reasoning. We can discuss whether there were complications or not. And whether those complications were handled well or not. ( I lean towards mostly yes, based on my own experiences and biases, many others here lean the other way, for the same reasons ). And we have no idea if any of these women found their birth experiences traumatic or not, particularly long term. 

[AnnEggBlandHer?]

@Georgiana an upvote wasn't enough. You completely nailed it with that comment. 

[emscm]

@Georgiana I was waiting for someone to bring up traumatic births and the stigma that surrounds women who experience trauma from their birth experience.  There is still a lot of pressure for women to suppress their real feelings about their experience and gush about how wonderful and amazing their baby and new motherhood is.  Those things are not mutually exclusive, and there should be space for women to be equally thrilled about their baby and traumatized by their experience without judgement.  

[Nargus]

@LegHumperBibleThumper it was definitely a foley bulb in my cervix to dilate me.

I had Cervadil in for 24 hours, which dilated me from 0-1cm. Then they put in the first foley. The resident doctor overfilled it and it popped while I was at home at 4:30 in the morning. Scared the crap out of me. When I got back to the hospital I was still at 1, so I got Cervadil for another 12 hours. The resident on call said I was still 1cm maybe 2, but they chose to start pitocin. My uterus eventually became overstimulated and they had to slow and eventually stop the pitocin. And after that 7 hours of pitocin I was still at 1-2cm. Thats  when they put in the second foley. It finally got me to 4cm so that we could break my water and start pitocin again. 

My induction lasted from a Thursday at 8pm till Monday at 11pm when she was born. 

Unless it’s done differently elsewhere, the way it was done at my hospital is the bulb is inflated behind the cervix and the end is taped down to the leg so there is constant pressure (like the babies head would produce) to force the cervix to dilate. 

[SorenaJ]

A birth is successful if the mother thinks so, if she is happy and content with the birth, then it’s successfuk, IMO. 

[violynn]

38 minutes ago, Nargus said:

@LegHumperBibleThumper it was definitely a foley bulb in my cervix to dilate me.

I had Cervadil in for 24 hours, which dilated me from 0-1cm. Then they put in the first foley. The resident doctor overfilled it and it popped while I was at home at 4:30 in the morning. Scared the crap out of me. When I got back to the hospital I was still at 1, so I got Cervadil for another 12 hours. The resident on call said I was still 1cm maybe 2, but they chose to start pitocin. My uterus eventually became overstimulated and they had to slow and eventually stop the pitocin. And after that 7 hours of pitocin I was still at 1-2cm. Thats  when they put in the second foley. It finally got me to 4cm so that we could break my water and start pitocin again. 

My induction lasted from a Thursday at 8pm till Monday at 11pm when she was born. 

Unless it’s done differently elsewhere, the way it was done at my hospital is the bulb is inflated behind the cervix and the end is taped down to the leg so there is constant pressure (like the babies head would produce) to force the cervix to dilate. 

My golly, that had to be so stressful, exhausting and just frightening as all get out!  I'm so sorry you had to get through all that to finally have your baby, @Nargus.  I was induced with each of my 5 pregnancies with pitocin but luckily my cervix made slow but steady progress w/out having a catheter.  My first and fourth children were over 18 hours labor, and that's a rough time, so I cannot imagine what you were dealing with.

[mollysmom]

43 minutes ago, Nargus said:

@LegHumperBibleThumper it was definitely a foley bulb in my cervix to dilate me.

I had Cervadil in for 24 hours, which dilated me from 0-1cm. Then they put in the first foley. The resident doctor overfilled it and it popped while I was at home at 4:30 in the morning. Scared the crap out of me. When I got back to the hospital I was still at 1, so I got Cervadil for another 12 hours. The resident on call said I was still 1cm maybe 2, but they chose to start pitocin. My uterus eventually became overstimulated and they had to slow and eventually stop the pitocin. And after that 7 hours of pitocin I was still at 1-2cm. Thats  when they put in the second foley. It finally got me to 4cm so that we could break my water and start pitocin again. 

My induction lasted from a Thursday at 8pm till Monday at 11pm when she was born. 

Unless it’s done differently elsewhere, the way it was done at my hospital is the bulb is inflated behind the cervix and the end is taped down to the leg so there is constant pressure (like the babies head would produce) to force the cervix to dilate. 

Wow!!!! That sounds exhausting!!! (to say the least!!!!) Wow!! You are a trooper!! Was that for your first baby? (I gotta be honest, if that was my first baby, there wouldn't be a second baby!!) That sounds so frustrating!!

[HurricaneBells]

Sigh. Now you have me thinking about it. I agree with @Georgiana I have a happy healthy gorgeous 3 year old son born via a rough emergency c section. Was birth successful? Yes. He is here with me, living breathing and talking back to me (cheeky monkey lol).  Was it the most traumatic thing ive ever been thru though in my life and am i still having physical complications? Yes. Do i feel like a failure? No because we both survived this horrible experience. Despite classing it as a success however,it still left its permanent scars (on me) and i normally dont like to think or talk about it. A successful failure if you like.

[BernRul]

On 8/9/2018 at 5:53 PM, Georgiana said:

You do still hear people say "It's all good so long as you get a healthy baby!" and the truth is...it's not.  Not always.  Some women need therapy to help them recover from the experience.  Some women need additional time to heal emotionally before trying again.  And when we push this narrative of "healthy mom+ healthy baby = 100% success", women who struggle to process their birth experience end up feeling like a failures when their healthy baby isn't "enough" for them to feel like they had a successful birth.

My sister theorized that post partum depression is really PTSD from childbirth.

Speaking of my sister, she had a "successful" birth in that both she and the baby survived with no lasting damage. It was definitely traumatic. And I know this goes against popular opinion here, but the trauma she experienced was specifically caused by the hospital. I don't promote homebirths by any means (and especially not the Duggar kind) but the irony is that if she had a homebirth, it would have been complication free. The complications were specifically caused by the hospital. 

First, her doctor stripped her membranes without her consent. She wasn't overdue, she didn't have risks of a large baby (in fact, the baby was under 7 lbs) and had no issues with the pregnancy until that point. My sister didn't realize what happened until afterwards, but once she did she felt violated. She wanted to sue the doctor, but of course she didn't have the resources to do that.

Her water broke (likely because he stripped the membranes) but the contractions didn't progress. Probably because her body wasn't ready for labor, but the doctor intervened without her consent. She finally needed pitocin to make it progress or risk an infection.

Then--and this part infuriates me on her behalf--they wouldn't deliver the baby because they were too busy. She was 10 cm dialated, she felt the urge to push, and her doctor/nurses wouldn't come. You could see the change in her; she went from fairly pleasant and joking (the epidural worked wonders on her) to writhing around on the bed in pain. We kept asking for a doctor or a nurse to come in and help, but they wouldn't. They were short staffed, but that was no excuse--that baby was ready to be born, and they told my sister to wait. It got to the point that my sister asked my mom, who is a nurse herself, to deliver the baby. Finally, my sister screamed "I just want to see my goddamn doctor!" for them to finally send the doctor in. Once the doctor finally decided to visit her, she saw that my sister was more than ready to deliver, and the baby was out in three pushes. 

Basically, they forced my sister and niece to suffer, and put them both at risk, because THEY didn't want to deliver the baby. 

The baby was healthy but she was born with a fever. I can't prove this, but I suspect that the trauma of being stuck in the birth canal either caused it or made it worse. So baby had to go to the NICU. 

Watching all of that put a temporary damper on my desire to get pregnant. I'm still furious at the hospital, and my sister is traumatized by her so called successful birth. I'm still going to use a hospital when I give birth, but I am damn sure going to a different hospital. 

 

[Nargus]

@violynn @mollysmom it was stressful and mentally taxing, just because it took so long, but my contractions were thankfully all pretty mild until my doctor broke my water. And from breaking my water to baby girl arriving was less than 5 hours. Though once back labour started, I repeatedly told my husband he’s birthing the next one. She was my first and while I do hope to have a second, I hope that I am able to go into labour on my own next time (I’ll do everything in my power to help keep my blood pressure under control without medication but it may be out of my hands). I like to say that she’s just stubborn and chose to be born on her due date, not early.