"I think sometimes ignorance is bliss"

[BellyBelly]

Great suggestion about the DVD and note, I would agree with that too You can only try - some people are much more responsive with no pressure.

[MamaPan]

yep the dvd and card would def be as far as i would go with it... she can come to you if she wants to talk about it. personally i wouldnt do this in the workplace after i had broached it and she rejected myoffer of info butIF I was to do go further this would be agood approach

[widdly]

I'd say dont mention it to her again. I believe ignorance is bliss, unfortunately Im too smart for my own good and dont have much ignorance! After her first birth she will decide whether she should watch the DVD or not.

I stressed myself quite a bit earlier in the year when two of my sisters had their first babies. They were both quite happy to let their OB lead the way Both ended up in c-sections, but one Im sure could have been avoided, BUT, my sisters are both happy with their births, and thats all that matters i guess

[Trillian]

Just thinking about it more after reading your last post Lulu, maybe she's been told all the 'horror stories' too and she just can't take it anymore and this is her response to that? To give her the benefit of the doubt as well it might be that she's actually **** scared of giving birth - maybe the pg wasn't planned so she may not be mentally prepared for it, maybe her mum or other women in her family have had trouble and it's not ended well and that's playing on her mind, or maybe she's had a loss and just wants to get through the pg and not think about the birth kwim? I guess it's something that for all intents and purposes seems really sad and the outcome somewhat predictable but it could really not be like that at all.

[Patooties]

I usually keep myself out of these type of discussions, but i'm going to be brave.
I am probably similar to the OP's colleague. When pregnant with dd1, I was happy to follow my Ob's advice, I didn't know that there was any other way to give birth. I didn't read too many stories on what could go wrong - because it petrified me. I was induced due to high blood pressure, and because my Ob was calm about it I didn't worry. Thankfully I had an enjoyable birthing experience. With dd2 it was the same. By the time I was pregnant with dd3 I had found Bellybelly. I stayed with my ob, and once again needed to be induced, but this time I was really scared because I now knew what could go wrong. Thankfully, once again, I had a wonderful birthing experience. So I have to say in my case, ignorance was bliss. I tend to get peeved when I read over and over and how sorry people feel for women with similar attitudes to mine. I'm happy with the way things turned out, and incredibly proud of myself for vaginally birthing 3 gorgeous girls.
Ok - got it out. I'm ready for a whipping

eta - ok, shaking after writing this - should i really feel so uncomfortable voicing my feelings?

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

Ignorance is bliss. Just see what I went through for two years after Liebling was born if you want to see what being empowered does for you in a system that lives to disempower women. There were times I wished I knew nothing of BB - although my attitude would still have been "I'm a woman, women give birth, therefore I can give birth so everyone else can just go forth and multiply."

Good luck to your friend. But when I was pg the last thing I wanted to hear about was other people telling me how awful birth is. And should I get pg again if any bugger even thinks about mentioning birth to me I'll wallop them. PG hormones meaning I can't articulate a good reply. I don't care that you had a great birth. I had a crap one and it WASN'T because I was uninformed. Next one will be a freebirth, despite three midwives this year telling me it will result in a dead baby if I do that. Fully informed freebirth. And I don't want opinions, so will just tell people "I don't want to know, ignorance is bliss: I'm just going to go with the flow." Because that's what's going to happen.

And I won't be doing any extra reading up next time either!

[Glamourcide]

JazahMum - NO, you shouldn't AT ALL feel so uncomfortable voicing your thoughts!! I feel pretty much the same - DD1 was induced and I had not done enough research to know the risks involved. I was the one who asked for it, my doctor went along with it, and I nearly died. But, because DD1 was never in danger and I had no idea BB existed, I was okay with how things went because I knew that with all births, there was the potential for things to go seriously wrong, and I was just glad that it was me who was 'hurt' and not my beautiful baby girl. Then I discovered BB and learned more and tbh I'm still a bit angry with myself for not doing more research on inductions before going ahead with it, but I did what I could with the information I could find, and really, until finding BB, I had no idea that my experience was anything other than normal.
I scared the pants off myself when I was pg with DD2, because every story of late loss I read involved babies that were overdue - heart beating strong one minute, mum waiting for labour to start... then waking up the next morning to find the little angel had flown. I was overdue myself and could barely sleep for poking my belly every two minutes to make sure all was well in there - if I'd never had access to a forum like this, I would never have realised that it's not uncommon for overdue babies to be born sleeping, kwim?? So yeah, I agree, in some cases ignorance is indeed bliss! I don't think you should feel at all uncomfortable saying it out loud, especially here - if we know anything, it's that everybody's experiences and feelings are different and I would hope that we all respect those feelings, regardless of our own.

[Sagres]

I don't know if I would say ignorance is bliss for me, I needed some information to work from but I didn't want to be drowning in information either.

I wouldn't assume just because she is using the services of an ob who she trusts she is not informed or going to be taken advantage of. I found that through choosing an ob I could 'hand pick' some one who had similar views to me and who I could talk to and work with. I always felt very comfortable with the decisions my ob and I made together. No my labour didn't happen quite how I would have chosen but that wasn't because I was using an ob, it was a because my body was developing PE and that meant my ob and I had some different decisions to make together.

At the end of the day your collegue could do all the research in the world, be wonderfully well informed and still chose a labour that is influenced by medical interventions, because that is what is OK for her. It isn't what I would choose, it isn't what you would choose, but some people are absolutely fine with that type of birth experience.

[dust]

i can absolutely see why ignorance is bliss.... if she goes in with only the expectation of walking out with a baby then she believes that she wont have false expectations of not screaming down the halls, being strapped to a bed, up in stirrups etc etc... then again she might even end up having a totally unexpected home birth???!!
I had #1 with just a few baby magazines (ok so bout 20 odd magazines) education and all i got out of it that i would be vertically birthing, no drugs and quietly (fits my personality anyways) however when it came to the placenta stuff n the shot i was confused as to what i was getting as a shot.. was it the vit K? LMAO! however with a slow start to milk production started my search on what screwed that up, i was convinced it was whatever they had injected me with! So i guess im saying.. let her take her own journey you never know with #2 etc she may just take up your offer Ignorance is bliss until you find that there is a better alternative and sometimes stubborn people will only learn that lesson the hard way.

[Trillian]

Oh and another thing too, birth is the only area of health care where you never get told the full story and all the risks associated with various interventions by your Dr - if you were looking down the barrel of serious surgery for cancer or organ transplant/heart surgery etc your Dr would fully inform you of every single detail of the procedure they will do and the risk that it carries and also what your possible outcome of success will be - birth isn't afforded that same openess and honesty and thats why women get let down by the 'system'. Thats my biggest issue with women who just leave it all up to the Dr's because they never tell you that inductions in first time mothers have a high percentage of failure that may lead to further intervention (instruments) or c/s or even that induction can also cause uterine rupture. You don't get told that Syncto has some very nasty side effects there is no transparency at all and even for someone who does *know* all this stuff beforehand still has to pull hens teeth to get the info from her Dr.

[bon]

Very true - I was induced with my first two babies, had the syntocinon drip and both times suffered a PPH afterwards. Which I now know is one of the possible side effects of synto - something I was not told either before or after. In fact, I wasn't told anything about any of the possible side effects of the use of syntocinon at any time. Now, even after birthing my third baby with no synto and (surprise surprise) no PPH, the hospital still want me to have a cannula in my hand during labour JIC I haemorrhage again. So they don't acknowledge that it was the synto that caused it.

[Trillian]

yep, me too with my one and only induction I had my one and only PPH. Even though at the time the induction was necessary, I would still have like to have known about it just so I knew that the induction could have been a contributing factor in it instead of just being told it was "one of those things that about 1 in 25 women will have' even my Dr was really shaken by it and took us aside a few days after her birth to tell us how concerned he was about me and that it was quite a serious event. And I thought he was one of the 'good guys' too.