That's silly and also completely factually inaccurate. In fact, 60% of labours in the UK are spontaneous (meaning not induced) and probably a significant portion of the remaining 40% are induced for non-medical reasons. I had a completely natural labour and home birth, 12 hours from no contractions but waters breaking to giving birth, with no intervention other than one VE and occasional heart rate monitoring with a doppler. It's attitudes like that from midwives and OBs (some of whom may not see many normal births anyway because they are too quick to intervene before it's needed) that perpetuate the myth that all birth is pathological and needs intervention. Unfortunately, we have a culture where intervention is provided as standard, and often that intervention slows labour because women get nervous, feel watched or poked and proded, don't have privacy and can't relax, which means they are more likely to need induction or augmentation of labour (with Pitocin or other drugs). We also have a culture that is very focused on time with birth, i.e. that a healthy birth should take no longer than X hours. Because of that obsession with time, women tend to get pushed into intervention because they are 'taking too long' or 'failing to progress' even though everything is fine. I pushed for 4 hours. If I'd been in a hospital, someone surely would have freaked out and said that I was 'failing to progress' and needed forceps or a c-section. But we just needed to relax and be patient. I felt fine, baby was doing fine, and I had her when she was ready to be born.
Have you read at all about the practice of 'pit to distress'? It's fascinating and disturbing reading if you haven't. It's essentially the practice (largely in the U.S.) of intentionally using Pitocin to cause fetal distress in order to shorten birth by encouraging a c-section. It's not an official medical practice that any midwife or OB would admit to doing (though you'll see in the blog post below that it is cited as an obstetric technique in a nursing textbook!), but it's widely known about in obstetrics and many doctors do it, particularly when women are being particularly 'difficult' or resistant to further intervention. I have 2 friends in the U.S. who believe it was done to them, both hemorrhaged badly because they were given too much Pitocin and nearly died as a result. One almost needed a hysterectomy after her first baby.
https://theunnecesarean.com/blog/20...-emergency-cesarean.html#sthash.9Ya6vSVa.dpbs
This is actually a blog written by an L&D nurse about how she's seen it applied in her own clinical experience: https://nursingbirth.com/2009/07/08/“pit-to-distress”-a-disturbing-reality/
I had it with both my previous labours but because they both stalled a bit at abt 7cm so I was given a shot to get things moving again. The first time I wasnt asked and it was just given, I was 7cm and started progressing slowly after that point (I was on a tight budget which ob knew and only had 24hrs in hospital as I had no medical insurance, so he was doing it more for me than him) second time I had medical insurance and I had an epidural and I was asked because ob said the epi can slow things a bit would I like it or not, I was worried my labour might stall a bit again especially with the epi so I said ok. But I didnt HAVE to have it either time, labour would have started up again on its own I am sure, it would just have taken a bit longer is all.
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