I know this is nothing like what some of you had to go through but it has been bugging me. To start it took us 3 yrs to concieve, we didn't think it would happen then it did and we were thrilled. When I was 6 wks. we had to fly to his home town for his mothers funeral, when we got back I woke up the next day and starting spotting. I freaked and cried thinking I was loosing this baby. We had a doctors appointment that day and everything was fine.
At 24 wks we found out our baby was going to born with a cleft lip and palate, more worries. To top that off I spotted a week later again. I thought this can't be happening they told us she was healthy otherwise. My husband to didn't cry when we found out about the birth defect, started to cry when I started spotting thinking we were going to loose her.
My water broke at 40 wks, we went to the hospital and since I was only 2cm dilated and could not feel the contractions, they put an induction gel on my cervix and sent me home. My OB. told me at every appointment to get my butt to the hospital if my water broke or the contraction are less than 5 min. apart or the baby is not moving a much. The contraction started hard within 30 min. When they got to 4 min apart we went back. I still was only 2cm and the contraction were every 3 min. and they wanted to send me home again. I reminded them that the baby does have a birth defect and there is so much we do not know about her condition, like some cleft babies have breathing problems at birth and I'm not having her at home or maybe she has a problem with her heart they missed.
So we went home, the contraction got to 1 min apart, phoned the L&D unit, charge nurse was very rude and hung up on me. She did call back and told me to come in. I was still only 3cm and contractions every 1 min. they kept me this time. Got an epidural, which stopped the contractions, was put on the drip. A young nurse was doing the drip and increased it about every half hour but was supposed to watch the fetal heart monitor, which I believe she did just didn't have enough experience to know the early warning signs of fetal distress. I'm a nurse but work with adults and it has been 12 yrs since I took my maturnity training but I knew something was not right with the babies heart rate. My lo heart rate was increasing first to 170, 180 to finally over 200 but she kept increasing the drip. The babies heart rate did not change with the contractions but stayed at 180 or 200. I know the contractions were hard as I felt pressure in my rectum. my rectum felt like it was getting riped out. The nurse started to get worried and called a senior nurse in and the nurse whispered to the young one "turn the @$#$ drip off" then the doctor on call came in, I knew something was wrong as I was 5 cm and nowhere near ready to deliver. She told me I can have a c-section or wait. She left the room to review the babies heart rate paper and came back withing a minute, handed me a consent form and told me I'm going for a c-section. The induction caused my uterus to go into hyperstimulation which caused my baby to go into distress.
The epidural also caused me to shake constantly, they had my arms strapped down and with the shaking felt like my arms were being pulled out of their sockets, vomited through the whole procedure. When my lo was born she screamed so hard, my husband said the doctor looked worried that something was wrong but she turn out to be prefect.
As a nurse I guess I can be alittle more forgiving of the young nurse as she did have the senior nurse come in and called the doctor, as everything turned out ok I don't know if I would be if it didn't. I hope with this experience made her want to become more educated about fetal heart monitoring. Like I said it has been 12 yrs since I took any maturnity training and I know something was not right with my lo heart tracing. My beautiful little girl is now 9 months old and has had her first surgery and is doing great.

Hi

I am sorry you had such a rough time but I am glad your little girl is doing so well. It's quite scary what happened to you, to be left with someone who obviously wasn't as well trained as they should have been.

I was also induced first time round and was told my uterus was hyperstimulated. I was dilating though but it did send my baby into fetal distress her heartrate dropped very low and at one pont for more than two minutes - she's absolutely fine by the way.

This is obviously the reason why they monitor you so closely when you are induced but I don't feel like anyone told me the actual risks of induction. They wanted to induce me with my second baby but after weighing up the risks of induction and the risks of not being induced I refused and went into labour naturally.

There are times when induction is very much necessary but I do believe they are too quick to induce.

With regards to the treatment we receive we are all just so happy to have our babies that we don't complain and really we should so that things can be made better for others. I still haven't written a compaint letter but I am planning to one day and wrote everything down not long after it happened so that I could do that.

I hope you feel better for writing about it as it must have been a very scary situation for you and I found it quite shocking

Just what i wrote on another thread! Will be avoiding induction myself this time as i feel it will reduce my tearing risk.
And also, i wasnt told the risk of induction either. Just that baby "could" get infetion as waters had broken 48hours before. But maybe i could have waited a little longer, or they could have prepared me for potential serious tear.

I have become terribly anti-induction. I tend to keep my gob shut now as I think I have annoyed a few people with my views.

From what I can remember they did used to let you go longer than 48hrs if your waters went and you can still refuse induction - the risk is infection but you can monitor the situation and if there are signs of infection you would obviously opt to be induced. Induction is always presented as the only option but the fact is in most cases it's not. For example being overdue - you can actually asked to be monitored instead and they can check the placenta's functioning ok by scans and also regular CTG traces on the baby but that is rarely presented as an option to people.

Thanks teenytiny. I wonder why induction is often the only option thy share with you.... its cheaper perhaps! Very likely I think!