CurlTalk - View Single Post - does anyone know what my mother-in-law could be talking about? (re: breastfeeding)

Amneris · 01-12-2008, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedCatWaves

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amneris

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedCatWaves

Maybe she had bad reactions to the hypnotic medications they used to give back then for labor. There was quite a trend to give women something called "twilight sleep" during labor and then put them out under general anesthesia during the actual delivery. It was usually a medication called scopalamine. It had no pain reduction properties, but it gave women amnesia. In other words, they hurt like hell, but couldn't remember it later, and they were often delusional and wild during labor. If they were lucky they also got a bit of morphine for the pain, but not always. It wasn't uncommon to tie women in restraints during twilight sleep labor...for their own protection, and the staff's protection, because they were kinda crazy.

Scope and morphine also depressed babies pretty well for the first few days after delivery, so they weren't able to nurse. It could be that her poorly nursing baby coupled with her fuzzy head from the drugs she had, made her hard breasts just drip drip and never produce correctly. Recovery from birth took a very long time because of those awful drugs.

She said she had an epidural with my husband because the doctor recommended it and wanted one with his sister but they wouldn't give her one because she was progressing too fast so she got other drugs - maybe the ones you are talking about?

Sounds like she was given twilight drugs during both deliveries. She sounds very confused about both experiences...which is not unusual when listening to birth stories from women who gave birth from the 1940's thru the 1970's. If you think the OB industry is effed up now...it's nothing compared to how effed up it was back then (although they had better outcomes and lower c-sec rates then...go figure...).

Definitely very confused, and a lot of inconsistencies or things she was completely unaware of. For example, her husband said he was not in the delivery room as men were not allowed, and his brother verified that he was sitting outside anxiously waiting, but she swears she saw him in the delivery room. Probably a hallucination. That's really sad.

My mama also had kids in the 1970s but she says she definitely didn't have any of those drugs or types of experiences, just epidurals. Even so, I find she doesn't seem to remember everything absolutely crystal-clear in terms of timelines (she had no idea how long she pushed), but I don't know if that's just because time has passed. For me, I can't imagine ever forgetting that, but who knows? Oh, Mama did say that she turned blue as a result of a reaction to the epidural and they gave her blood and thought she was going to die (?????????)

Why would it be that even with all those potent drugs, there were less C-sections? Was it because they used forceps more for dystocia? (My mama had forceps used.) I can't figure out either WHY all of this started happening. Was it women's request or the medical industry forcing it on us?