What should I know about pitocin? скачать в хорошем качестве

What should I know about pitocin?

Many women have questions about pitocin, especially if they've had to be induced in their past or their doctor recommends induction. They want to know how it's done and if there's pros and cons to it. There's two reasons to be induced. One is just for fun. It's called an elective induction and they're only done after 39 weeks of pregnancy when your cervix has proven that it's ready to do this thing and usually if we start pitocin, then your body will respond well and start contracting. The reason why it works so well is because your brain when you spontaneously go into labor releases a hormone called oxytocin. This acts on the uterus and tells it to contract. We give you a synthetic form, which is pitocin. It's like the names are interchangeable; pitocin, oxytocin. They both tell your uterus to contract. If your body hasn't spontaneously done it, you're 39 weeks along and your cervix is favorable, your doctor may give you the option to come to the hospital, start an IV, have pitocin go through it and it makes you contract and have a baby. This is perfectly fine. Your doctor and your nurses will also let you know that with induction, there's a slightly higher risk for C-section. But, again, this is why we wait 'til you're 39 weeks, your cervix is favorable, proving that it will respond well to pitocin. This is usually only offered after you've had at least one baby. Your body's more stubborn on your first and doesn't always respond as well to induction. That brings us to the second reason for induction. Sometimes you have to have your baby because of some sort of medical indication. The most common one is the fact that you have gotten to 41 weeks and you haven't delivered yet. That's the problem. Your body hasn't done anything to prep itself for labor. So oftentimes these inductions can be very long because we have to do what your body has not done and should have been doing over the periods of days to weeks. We need to do that in a period of a day or two. So we bring you to the hospital and give you medication to ripen your cervix and prep it for labor. This can take as long as a whole night. And then the next morning, we start pitocin, cause your uterus to contract, and ultimately, hopefully you deliver vaginally. But again, with this, there's also an increased risk of C-section. There are other reasons to be medically induced, such as preeclampsia. Maybe you have an extra-small baby that's not being fed as well by the placenta inside anymore so it's been determined by your doctor and other specialists that the baby needs to be born. They'd be better outside. There are a few other reasons as well but you don't need to be afraid of pitocin when your doctor recommends induction because pitocin actually plays a vital role before, during and after having a baby. After the placenta comes out of the uterus and is delivered by the doctor, the uterus needs to cramp down really hard over all the vessels that were feeding your baby and help prevent hemorrhage. It kind of acts like a tourniquet to control the bleeding. If your uterus didn't do this, then you could hemorrhage and bleed too much. And it's really cool because if you end up breastfeeding your baby, the hormone of let down is oxytocin. So every time you breast feed your baby and milk is let down, your body's releasing oxytocin and this then causes your uterus to cramp down and during the first week or two after you've had a baby, you may feel extra spurts of bleeding and extra painful cramps while you're breastfeeding because of this. So it helps your uterus go back to its normal pre-pregnant size and control bleeding afterwards. Pitocin and oxytocin aren't something to be afraid of because it's a natural hormone that does really good things for your body. Now when it comes to induction and being afraid of having pitocin, the number one reason I would say that I hear on labor and delivery that people are afraid of is that it's going to make you hurt more. But it actually just makes you hurt faster. What I mean by that is that labor spontaneously starts out with, you know, very irregular, maybe not so painful contractions and gradually works up to contractions that are every 2-3 minutes and they're really hurting; the ones that need to happen in order for your cervix to dilate. Now, if we start pitocin on you, we may just take you from 0 to 60 faster. You don't have as much time to acclimate to the contractions you've been having. You kind of go from not hurting to hurting faster. So it will make it feel like your labor is more painful when you have pitocin. But again, like I said, it doesn't hurt more, it just hurts faster. If you have more questions about pitocin and how your doctor may or may not use it during labor and delivery in your situation, be sure to ask them. But if you have any other questions for me, feel free to ask them on our Facebook page at facebook.com/intermountainmoms and recommend us to your friends and family, too.