Here is some important information about how some physicians choose to use Petocin to induce labor. The link below is from a blog article from the following source:
http://www.theunnecesarean.com/blog/2009/7/6/pit-to-distress-your-ticket-to-an-emergency-cesarean.html
Jill from Keyboard
Revolutionary wrote about a new term that she recently
came across- “Pit to distress.”
“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 fetus. 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.
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.
Have you heard this term
before? What is your experience with “Pit to distress?”
Before you comment here, please go applaud Jill
from Keyboard Revolutionary for blogging about this term and enjoy her
brilliant and honest commentary.
More discussion of “Pit to distress” on the Internet:
The
then labor and delivery nurse who blogs at At Your Cervix wrote this in April of 2007:
I
see the wide use of cytotec (misoprostil) for inductions. I see what it does to
a woman’s uterus and to her baby. Not to mention - it’s not FDA approved for
use as a labor induction agent in pregnant women! I see many, many women being
induced with a “hospital made” form of prostaglandin gel to induce labor. I also
see a HUGE number of pitocin inductions/augmentations, where pitocin is
titrated at such high doses, so quickly, that it’s like we’re trying to blow
the baby out of the woman’s uterus.
Many
of the obsetricians that I work with are eager to “get her delivered” as
quickly as possible. There is also the “pit to distress” or “make the baby prove
itself” - in other words, keep
cranking that pitocin up until the baby crumps into fetal distress and the
obstetrician does a stat c-section —- all so the doctor can be done, and get
out of the hospital. Why wait 12-14 hours for a natural labor, when you can be
done in less than an hour?
Our
induction rates are through the roof. The nurses are rarely told the unit
statistics, and when we are given them, they seem grossly understated. The
L&D nurses know how many patients are induced or augmented, day after day,
because we are the ones there, admitting the patient, and running their
pitocin. We see them in massive amounts of pain from what is a very unnatural
process designed to speed up the labor process, thus leading to increased
epidural rates due to the higher levels of pain from synthetic oxytocin versus
natural oxytocin.
The
term was discussed in this Alexian Brothers Medical Center Employee
Newsletter
Back
in 2006, our tradition, like most maternity units, was to induce mothers when
the fetus reached term gestation which was 37-40 weeks gestation. The medication,
oxytocin (Pitocin), was administered to high dose levels to affect delivery. At
times, the over-zealous use of oxytocin led to uterine hyperstimulation
(terminology changed in September, 2008 to tachysystole), where the
contractions were occurring too close together to allow the fetus sufficient
time to recover before the next contraction would begin. The notion of “Pit to distress” was
commonplace back then.
It
was mentioned in this Mothering message
board thread about Cytotec:
With
a reactive baby (either by NST or auscultation) 25 mcg cytotec can be placed in
the back of the vagina for cervical ripening 24 hrs prior to hospital induction
and the mom sent home to wait, after observing her and baby for an hour. The
vast majority (like 90%) will go into spontaneous labor before coming in for
their “scheduled” induction. My biggest problem with cytotec is that we just
hit moms with it over and over again, and then , surprise, when it does kick in,
there’s too much on board, sorta like “pit to distress”.
Pit
to distress was mentioned in the comments of the post My Rant on Pitocin on Knitted in the Womb after the blog’s
author, a former chemist and doula, was scolded by an anonymous OB nurse
for not understanding the difference between microunits and milliliters when it
came to dosing Pitocin.
I’m
a trained chemist. I hold a bachelors degree in biochemistry, did some course
work towards a masters in chemistry, and worked for 6 years in an R&D lab
in the specialty chemicals industry. I probably know WAY more about different
units of measure than you do. I used “microunits” and “milliliters” in my
discussion appropriately.
I’m
not sure why I have to resuscitate a newborn to have “been there,” but since it
seems to be very important to you, I’ll talk about it. 90% of the time labor
should go just fine, with no need for resuscitation—this according to the World
Health Organization. Of the other 10%, not all of them would require newborn
resuscitation. If you’ve found that a large percentage of the births you’ve
been at have required resuscitation, perhaps you should look at the medical
interventions that might be causing that. From my end, the only clients I’ve
had who had babies who required resuscitation were cases where there had been
“Pit to distress.”
Sweet Pea in the Pod
www.sweetpeainthepod.com
928-963-1808
Sedona, Arizona
Sweet Pea in the Pod
www.sweetpeainthepod.com
928-963-1808
Sedona, Arizona
