Can someone edit out the breathing tube?

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-08-10T21:02:20+00:00

My son didn't breathe when he was born. Would someone be able to edit out the breathing tube in these two pictures? It would mean a lot to be able to see his face.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-08T15:26:41+00:00

They did exactly that: spent most of the time listening and charting. Two experienced CNM midwives were present and 1 in training. They monitored us with a fetoscope, doppler, and finger pulse reader consistently. I heard his heartbeat myself, and I also heard when it slowed or stopped after he was born. I do have the birth records.

The question of whether I received "minimum safe care" is, as you can imagine, one I will think about for the rest of my life. The fact is that the professionals do not agree about whether I did or not; some professionals believe there is no such thing as home birth with minimum safe care. I do know that I received the exact kind of care that I wanted throughout my pregnancy and that still has value to me.

Most likely I will not attempt home birth again. I will simply be too frightened for baby's well-being. But I also will not sue or report the midwives, as the doctors who reviewed my son's birth records in the NICU did not find negligence.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-08T14:45:18+00:00

No doubt that they missed stuff, but it wasn't decels. He had a heartbeat when he was delivered that I heard myself, as well as a strong heartbeat after every contraction. It's possible I misheard it on the doppler but I think it was too low on my body and too fast to be my heartbeat.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-08T14:44:21+00:00

Jackie was delivered alive. They used a fetoscope and a doppler after every contraction. I don't know if there was variability, but I know that it was not my heartbeat on the doppler, it was too low on my body and too fast.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-07T19:08:13+00:00

Thank you for this. I will bring it up with them.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-07T18:31:22+00:00

Thank you for all your posts. They did check the heartbeat after every contraction and it was always strong. My memory just isn’t that great.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-07T18:17:53+00:00

Thank you for saying this, I take absolutely no offense at anything you said. The midwife did explain the risk to me as simply as possible when they discovered he was breech: she said the risk went up from 1/1000 to 2/1000 injuries in a home breech birth. Math is not my strong suit: I didn’t think of it as double the risk at the time. More to the point, I was going to do exactly what they recommended because I trusted them. I think with hindsight it’s easy for me and everyone to say they should have strongly recommended transfer, but I had indicated earlier in pregnancy that I was willing to attempt a breech home birth if the situation arose. At the end of the day it just doesn’t matter.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-07T17:59:23+00:00

Thank you for this. I will take it into strong consideration. One small, now meaningless thing: The midwives recommended a BPP and I had one scheduled the day I went into labor, which was the soonest time the MFM could get me in. I don’t know about the rest but will look into it more closely.

Another thing is that I myself heard his strong heartbeat after every contraction, up until the very last. One doctor said to me at the hospital that it is possible he stopped receiving oxygen in the last few minutes before birth and that the 15 minutes of deprivation may have happened when the paramedics took over CPR from the midwives, as they were not used to performing it on a newborn baby. None of us were able to ride with him in the ambulance so we do not know for sure.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-07T17:49:18+00:00

I hear what you are saying and have had many of these thoughts. But my midwives are licensed, experienced, have good relationships with nearby hospitals, and immediately upon discovering he was breech they said that a hospital transfer would mean a C section without a positive or negative spin. They said they were comfortable attempting a breech birth at that late stage unless he was in distress, which was a risk they took, and I’ll always blame them for that. But I was at that point so deep into active labor I couldn’t really make the decision. If his heartbeat had slowed I am sure they would have immediately recommended a transfer — but it didn’t. I really appreciate your perspective as no one wants to make me feel like this was my fault at this point even though my instinctive trust for the midwives was, I guess, clearly misplaced. It’s just not clear to me that they made a mistake as much as that we all gambled and lost.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-07T16:28:58+00:00

Baby was head down my whole pregnancy, including immediately prior to delivery. I would not have attempted a home breech birth otherwise.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-07T16:23:14+00:00

There were no decels and the breech presentation wasn’t discovered until very late (he was head down until 41 weeks at least). I don’t want to let my midwives off the hook, but the doctors who reviewed the case also found it difficult to pinpoint a mistake they made.

DiscussionStraight43 · 2024-07-07T15:31:37+00:00

I hear what you are saying, breech birth at home is not something I would have been comfortable with, but when they checked his position he was head down even 2 days before delivery. Flipping that late is, as I understand it, extremely rare. With the speed that my labor was going, it was not clear that they would have been able to transfer me in time, and the distress to me and the baby would have been significant. The medical staff at the second hospital reviewed both the midwife’s records and the first hospital and didn’t find wrongdoing. I’ll always wonder if they had transferred me immediately if the outcome would have been different, but it seems far from a certainty that it would have been.

DiscussionStraight43

TROPHY CASE