3 hours 50mins you gotta be kidding right?

[Julie Doula]

What kind of crazy culture are we working with here, that every birth gets catergorized into pre-labour, false labour, spurious labour, latent labour, active labour, transition, second stage, third stage ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's BIRTH! What?? Active labour starts after 4cm??? Ideally, no one should have any idea HOW dilated you are! Arrgh, this wanting to have so much control over every tiny little facet of labour - while the woman herself barely knows what is going on and doesn't even get given her own copy of the notes! Wrong, wrong, wrong. Sorry, having a bit of a vent here.

In other cultures, the birth is so much more in terms of the WOMAN's experience of it, and not this external, mechanical assessing of it that divorces the reality of it from the woman who is actually doing it!

Time to take back possession of your birth and authority over your birth. YOUR experience and perception of your birth is the one that counts. Write it in your own words.

I know of so many stories of hospital birth notes being completely spurious. One woman had a 7 pound girl who needed resus and was taken to special care. The notes said she had a 9 pound boy born with perfect apgars. Riiiiiggght.

Another woman, when she got her notes, read that she'd had a c/s at her request, after 4 hours of labour. Actually, after 16 hours of labour, they told her that her baby would die if she did not consent to the c/s. She got such a shock when she read what they'd written in the notes. She went on to have a wonderful VBAC at home, supported by midwives and doulas.

So yeh, it is not only a matter of differing perspectives, sometimes the notes are just plain wrong. If it was mandatory to supply every woman with her own copy of the notes, as in other countries where women are more empowered, then i think those notes would be written with more accuracy and care. Maybe.

It can be a mistake to count labour from the very first contraction and it's a good idea to do a good case of denial and totally ignore labour for as long as possible! And not start the meter running. And keep busy doing anything other than focussing on contractions, timing them etc. But when your contractions are coming thick and strong, so that there is no chance of doing anything other than working with them, and nothing you do slows them down or spaces them out - well, that there is labour and from then on, count it according to YOUR say so.

I say my labour was 24 hours from mucous plug to placenta. Actually I had 6 hours of warm up contractions the night before I saw the mucous plug at 4 am. And I probably was not in "established labour" (another stupid term) until 4-6 pm the following afternoon. So by that count, I had 8-10 hours of 'active labour'. Thank heavens my homebirth midwife did not think like that. Labour was labour and I had a 24 hour labour, so there.

I also worked with a woman who had contractions now and then for 60 hours. She NEVER got into a pattern of 'established' labour, or regular contractions. Until her birth, I did not know a woman could get to 10 cm without there ever being a consistent pattern of contractions. I am sure that would have been pathologised had she been in hospital. But, she was at home, and although her labour was long, it was very gentle and the pushing stage was easy as.

It is such a battle to wrestle back control over your birth. But it is a battle worth winning - it's your birthright!