All excerpts taken from this blog
“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!”
The term is found in this 2006 article in this Wall Street Journal article:
Oxytocin is a hormone released during labor that causes contractions of the uterus. The most common brand name is Pitocin, which is a synthetic version. It’s often used to speed or jump-start labor, but if the contractions become too strong and frequent, the uterus becomes “hyperstimulated,” which may cause tearing and slow the supply of blood and oxygen to the baby. Though there are no precise statistics on its use, IHI says reviews of medical-malpractice claims show oxytocin is involved in more than 50 percent of situations leading to birth trauma.
“Pitocin is used like candy in the OB world, and that’s one of the reasons for medical and legal risk,” says Carla Provost, assistant vice president at Baystate, who notes that in many hospitals it is common practice to “pit to distress” — or use the maximum dose of Pitocin to stimulate contractions.
It’s also used on this AllNurses forum:
I agree, and call aggressive pit protocols the “pit to distress, then cut” routine. Docs who have high c/s rates and like doing them, are the same ones that like the rapid fire knock em down/drag em out pit routines.
“Pit to distress” appears on page 182 of the textbook Labor and Delivery Nursing by Michelle Murray and Gayle Huelsmann. In this example, the onus is on the nurse to defend the patient from the doctor if he or she sees the order “pit to distress” by immediately notifying the supervisor or charge nurse.
I'm a little bit not sure how to wrap this up exactly...but quite disgusted...go figure the midwives here dont' take VBAC patients...nice.
2 comments:
are you kidding me right now?? that's even sicker than i thought. midwives won't take you even though you had a successful vaginal birth? wow.
Well Homebirth midwives here - I think there is some legislation that prevents them from taking "normal, healthy" patients. To be truthful the homebirth idea in this home (new...landlords across the street) has me super nervous so it may not be a good fit anyway but still - I've looked into EVERYTHING. VA is pretty much not a good place to have a baby where birth friendliness is concerned.
As for the article...pretty nauseating isn't it? While I feel fairly confident that in most hospitals it isn't common I also feel confident that there are places and doctors with whom it is. Talk about a violation of a medical oath to "do no harm"
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