Pit To Distress: Or, Another Reason To Run Away From The Hospital.

Lately there's been a lot of buzz surrounding the article Pit to Distress: Your Ticket To Unnecessary Cesarean?

From the article:

“Pit to distress.” How have I not heard about this? Apparently it’s quite en vogue in many hospitals these days. Googling the term brings up a number of
pages discussing the practice, which entails administering the highest possible
dosage of Pitocin in order to deliberately distress the fetus, so a C-section
can be performed.

Yes folks, you read that right. All that Pit is not to coerce mom’s body into birthing ASAP so they can turn that moneymaking bed over, but to purposefully squeeze all the oxygen out of her baby so they can put on a concerned face and say, “Oh dear, looks like we’re heading to the OR!”

She goes on to say:

Jill asks the questions, “OBs, do you still think women are choosing not to birth at your hospitals because Ricki Lake said homebirths are cool? Do you
still think we are only out for a “good experience?”

I imagine that all of us who have openly questioned the practices of obstetricians in the U.S. have been hit with the same backlash. We must be selfish, irrational and motivated by our own personal satisfaction. We’ve been indoctrinated into a subculture of natural birth zealots and want to force pain on other women or just feel mighty and superior. We fetishize vaginal birth and attach magical powers to a
so-called natural entrance to the world.

Nah. It’s stuff like “pit to distress” that made me run for the nearest freestanding birth center. If I had to do it all over again, I’d stay home.

Yes, I am a big fan of home birth. But I'm not a "natural birth zealot". I don't believe that home birth is an option for everyone, but it is a real problem and a real shame when women who choose not to give birth at home have to choose instead to give birth in a hostile environment where Pit to Distress is becoming more common. Where women are told what they can and cannot do, where they are lied to, and where they are transformed into powerful women whose bodies are doing what nature intends to women who are forced to lay still, be helpless, and let someone else take over their birth for them.

Haven't we had enough already? Consumer desire is slowly making progress in terms of changing hospital practices, but it isn't enough. We need to demand more.

Pit To Distress: Or, Another Reason To Run Away From The Hospital.