Dray didn’t want to hurt her child, but she didn’t think the doctors were giving her a chance to have a VBAC...

Active labor is when contractions produce dilation. Early labor - active labor - transition - pushing.

She undoubtedly signed a consent form that entailed emergency treatments such as C-sections that she couldn’t opt out of even before she went into labor.

You can be admitted to a hospital and force fed and hooked up to ivs and given all sorts of treatment you didn’t want if you are considered a risk to yourself.

I’m not a birthing professional, but I’ve had three births at home and because I’m in that community, I hear A LOT of these types of stories.

Thank you for this.

“You can’t deprive somebody of their constitutional rights based on, ‘I think so, probably.’””

I was in labour for 61 hours and delivered naturally so the time was not necessarily an issue.

Doctors are gonna stay the Fuck out of OB. Every new mom thinks she’s an obstetrician. And when something goes wrong, they sue. Not worth it.

Happens all the time. In emergencies where the patient’s life is at risk. Last I saw was a drug addict with a gsw to the abdomen. He was on pcp and fighting everyone off. They put him under and cut him open.

I’ve never been to a hospital since I was a child so I could be wrong, but if somebody wheeled me into a hospital with a ruptured pancreas and I managed to eek out the words “No thanks, just wheel me out the door and I’ll be on my way” would they do so?

Her whole testimony sounds ridiculous to me as an attorney. She doesn’t remember key parts of her case. Like, she doesn’t remember if they told her the baby was in distress?  This is some grade A ambulance chasing right here. If you have a client who can’t affirmatively assert whether important elements of your case…

I see why that seems weird in this context, but I read medical charts for a living and a diagnosis almost always includes admission of uncertainty. There’s only so much a doctor can claim certainty about, and idk what they’re allowed to release to the public (i.e. what did the notes from the direct medical record say?…

I sent this article to my cousin, who is an OB. She says the doctor did the right thing (though maybe needs to work on bedside manner). According to her, any signs of fetal distress is enough to move for that emergency c section- apparent tanking heart rate is one of the last things that show- the damage may be…

My wife really, really wanted a natural birth. After a very long time of not progressing they started trying to talk her into an epidural. After she lost consciousness for a time (it felt like minutes but was probably seconds) she relented, and the anesthesiologist was in the room in about 4 seconds, cart and…

This exactly. My medical staff was clear and patient with me, and they made sure they explained it to me - as well as my husband, who had the benefit of not being drugged or in physically intense labour, and thus was able to talk with me about it as well. Everyone involved wanted what was best for my baby, and best…

Not necessarily so with a VBAC. Protracted 1st stage isn’t something that makes any birth professional happy where VBAC is concerned. It isn’t about infection (as with waters broken - which can be mitigated by limiting cervical checks) it’s about uterine integrity.

As a L&D nurse we use fetal monitoring to determine how a fetus is “coping” with labor. There are three categories of tracing of a baby’s heart rate - Cat I is a sign that a fetus is well oxygenated at that moment, Cat II is indeteminant, the fetus could be fine or it could be compromised, we can’t tell. Cat III…

I’m not a medical expert, but I am currently pretty well informed about the risks of VBACs, since I had one a few months ago (successful, thankfully!). I feel like we don’t have enough details from both sides of this particular story, so I’ll just say some general things based on my experience & my research:

This is also one of the real dangers of a culture that treats expertise as “elitism” and views people with the kind long-term extensive training that doctors go through with mistrust and suspicion.