Dilated same amount for hours?

[Jezzielin]

I feel bad for all the questions I'm posting but getting so close, I keep coming up with questions!

How long can you stay at a certain dilitation before they want to start pitocin?

Worried that after being say at 5cm for a couple hours, they will say 'oh we need to facilitate things'. Can they hold off and wait? I am nervous I will stop progressing but will want to tell them 'no' to intervention and just let me be.

This is my first child, so looking at the birth I want - maybe I should have opted for a home birth lol but we can't change it now lol...

 

[NaturalMomma]

You are allowed to refuse anything you want. Every woman's body is different. I've had clients with first babies who dialated fast and labor was only a few hours long, and some dialated really slowly. Most women will dialate 1/2 - 1 cm every hour after the first cms. The first few are the ones that go slow, usually. Most first time labors are 12-24 or so hours long. Don't get discouraged if you are dialating slow, your body probably needs that and it doesn't mean you "failed to progress", true cases of that are rare.

 

[LDC]

I was booked in for induction due to being overdue and they didn't want to do anything! I was there for three days before they did anything. My labour was non progressive and they broke my waters at 4cm then I ended up with an emcs as I wasn't dilating (a midwife said I was 8cm then Two hours later a dr said I was 6cm!).

You can refuse anything you don't want, I had propess at 3cm but it hyper stimulated my uterus so they had to take it back out within two hours.

Xx

 

[Blah11]

I was 3-4cm and stretchy to a 5 before I was even in active labour lol. He was born 3 days later after 7 hours of active labour. I'd ignore the 1cm an hour rule. With my first it took me a long time to get to 5cm then from 5 to 10 it was very quick in 2 or 3 hours.

 

[solitaire89]

I would refuse all internals. After all, you don't really need them regularly throughout labour. And, as I found, the internal didn't have all the answers as to what was going on in my body. There are other ways to gauge your progress, and I would ask if they could be used instead.

As various people have said, you don't HAVE to do anything. Be prepared to say no, and also get your birthing partner on side to say no too. The medics will very often use all of the tricks under the sun to get you to agree to things, the most common being the "it's best for your baby" card without any justification. The first question that you/your BP need to be asking is "Are either Mum or baby in immediate danger?" If not, then ask for 30 mins to make a decision.

If they pressure you to make a decision then use your BRAINS:

B - How will this be beneficial?
R - What are the risks?
A - What are the alternatives?
I - What do your instincts say?
N - What if we do nothing?
S - Smile!

Hope this is of some help!

*snip* (a midwife said I was 8cm then Two hours later a dr said I was 6cm!). *snip*

There is something called sphincter law - whereby the cervix can (and will) close up again if there is something that impacts negatively on labour. At the end of the day the cervix is a sphincter muscle the same as any other sphincter muscle in the body. Think about it, (sorry if TMI) if you're trying to do a poo and someone unknown walks into the loo and tried to have a good look down there, what would happen?! Bingo, suddenly you can't go anymore. Its exactly the same with the cervix, if you are stressed or worried about something, your cervix will fight against opening.

 

[patooti]

I would have a tendency to avoid most internals and to avoid any "hurrying along" unless there was evidence of the baby under distress and there was a need to get him out and they wanted to try that as a first step to avoid C-section.

I kind of believe that some of these "stalls" could be because things are happening that we don't know about. Maybe the baby is working to get positioned just right so that the trip out goes smoothly. Maybe cervical changes are occurring that the midwife or doctor doesn't perceive. Maybe hormone levels are adjusting and getting ready for the next stage.

I think the best thing to do if it seems like it is taking time is to keep moving, repositioning, try some stairs, try all fours, rocking swaying. Try relaxation techniques to make sure that fears or interference and pressure from birth teams aren't affecting you emotionally and dropping your levels of oxytocin or giving you extra adrenalin which is competing with that oxytocin and dropping it's effectiveness.

But as soon as they start encouraging stronger contractions that puts extra pressure on that baby and that cord and if she isn't positioned right etc. it's dropping the chances she ever will be etc. etc. and so the intervention spiral begins.

I think the BRAINS acronym is great.

 

[seaweed eater]

I was induced but wanted the slowest induction I could handle. I took every possible opportunity to say to the nurses, with a smile, "I don't have anywhere to be. I'm not in any hurry." I ended up having a fairly quick labor and didn't need Pitocin at all, so my resolve wasn't really tested, but all of the nurses I said this to seemed to take it very positively and I believe it would have helped. So I think it can help to get established upfront (in a cheerful tone) that you would accept, or might even expect, a fairly slow labor.