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

RedCatWaves · 01-12-2008, 10:55 AM

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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?

No, women really don't forget the details of their births. Ask any elderly woman about her births, and she will give you every minute detail, even 80 or 100 years later.

Back in the 70's, the OB industry was not above slipping a drug cocktail to women who had just given birth with an epidural, with or without their knowledge...it kept them nice and quiet...so your mother might have been drugged without her knowledge and forgotten a lot of details due to the drugs. They do it less, but they still do it now too. Lots of women who've just had c-secs get drugged through their IV line and go to sleep, thinking they were just very tired, and then miss the first hours of their newborn's life because they just can't wake up.

As for turning "blue" from an epidural...that was probably a precipitous blood pressure drop. Yes, you can die from that...I nearly died from my first epidural too. The blood she received was probably to replace the blood she lost during delivery (forceps and the episiotomy to use the forceps can cause a LOT of bleeding) and not really related to the epidural itself.

There are many reasons why the c-sec rate has gotten so outragiously high. Many of which have to do with lawsuits and control. I don't think birthing women are completely to blame for the state of the OB industry, but they are definitely part of it. They allow themselves to be controlled and treated like crap, because they don't know they have a choice.