Think you’ve done your reseach on birth? Take the quiz to find out.
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Author:Amy Tuteur, MD
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72 Responses to “The “I’ve done my research on birth” quiz”
Amy Tuteur, MD
Dr. Amy Tuteur is an obstetrician gynecologist. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1979 and her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1984. Dr. Tuteur is a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She left the practice of medicine to raise her four children. Her book, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting (HarperCollins) was published in 2016. She can be reached at DrAmy5 at aol dot com... More
LOVE it. I might know the answer to question 6, but that’s all…
I am a physician. I am sure about 4 of the answers. I have never ever delivered a baby though, I practice in a totally unrelated area.
So the P in HELLP doesn’t stand for Platelets?
Thrombocytes are platelets.
Ah. Now I get the joke.
Love this!
Oh it does 🙂 She was just being tricky.
I’m fairly sure of 3 of the answers, but what I lack in actual knowledge I more than make up for in enthusiasm. And not to intimidate anyone with my professional knowledge, but I know how to knit AND crochet. Based on that, I think I’m overqualified as a CPM. (When I have my business cards printed, I’ll be sure to post one here!)
I’m a knitter.
Why oh why didn’t my sister bring her knitting when I was in labor?! The kid would have been out in 20 minutes!
I crochet. I’m going to crochet during my next labor–that kid’ll be out in no time.
Of course, I’ll probably have an epidural to accomplish this feat, since a crochet hook would probably turn into a deadly weapon during unmedicated labor.
Honestly, I did do a lot of research on pregnancy and birth. I came to the conclusion that a hospital birth would be best.
I didn’t do much research, but did briefly fall for the romantic idea of giving birth at home. My husband said “I’m not comfortable with that. What if something were to go wrong?”. My romantic ideals disappeared and I suddenly felt very out of my depth and thinking how helpless my husband would feel and how traumatising it would be. I decided to try and work on my fear of hospitals and medical stuff first.
I’m glad I did. Firstly for myself and my babies during their birth. Secondly as the kids have grown I’ve had more and more to do with doctors and hospitals. Not just through normal childhood illnesses and accidents but also due to a rare disease now being controlled and medicated. My hope is that my daughter, who has inherited my over-strong immune system, won’t go deaf like I have.
Oh, I wasn’t all sensible. I was the pregnant woman crying and vomiting at night because I might have…A C-SECTION! !! I should have just taken my dumb butt to sleep.
I didn’t cry and vomit, but I worried. And then of course I had a c-section, and it was great!
Will you post the answers for us 100% non-medical people? I’m embarrassed to admit that a few of the questions I couldn’t even understand half the words. I’m in HR and never did well in science classes.
Ignore the words you don’t understand. Can’t be important, really. Birth is natural.
Just joking. Alas, quite a few of the NCBers out there wouldn’t be if they gave that response.
Lots of excitement here: I’m going to be an aunt! My SIL has done her research consisting of, “Hey, who was your doctor? What did you think of him/her? What tests does he/she offer?… etc.” and getting recommendation from other Evil Medical People. Instead of Googling, she’s going to the guy who knows the answers without thinking much. Imagine this!
Our Grapey is fine for now, as per the guy’s opinion. He/she’s been Blueberry and Raspberry respectively this far. But my brother cannot remember his/her name for the next week! Now, that’s a question I’d like to get an answer to but for some reason, SIL doesn’t want to call the doc with this particular question. We’ll have to google it, clearly.
Congratulations!!!
Thanks! Very happy here! I already have my plans: I’ll steal Grapey from time to time and spoil him/her rotten before returning him/her to his/her parents to be moulded into a decent human being.I am so pleased with my own cleverness.
That’s the best part, right?! My first nephew was born three weeks ago. Already teaching him naughty words. And, since it’s in ASL, my SIL is none the wiser.
*eyes light up*
I never thought of that! Oh, I can’t wait to see my little practice nieces and nephews now!
Yes. Oh yes! I’ve got lots of practice on my friends’ kids and it’s totally the best part.
Problem is, most of these kids now consider ME their very own property. They say, “Oh Amazed is coming to visit us? She cannot come when I’m off to school. I won’t be home!” Their moms try to explain that there’s no visiting “them”. Mom have a visitor, that’s it. But they don’t get it. And it’s my own fault because I’ve spoilt them rotten in the first place.
But that’s a problem Grapey and I won’t be having in a few years, at least. My plan is so awesome that even my mom has tried to insert herself into it. SIL’s reaction? “Can’t I come over to be spoiled rotten? We’ll leave Grapey with his/her dad to discipline each other!” Whaaaaaat? No!
I have a nephew the same age as my son, and when nephew was visiting recently, my son started calling me Aunt Momofone. I told him it was fine to call me Mom, and he said, “I don’t want to–Aunt Momofone is a lot nicer than Mom. When Cousin says, ‘Aunt M!’ you say, ‘What do you need, honey?’ When I say, ‘Mom!’ You say, ‘You know where that is–look in the cabinet!'”
Sounds cool!
Just a few weeks ago, I woke up to the sound of a kid whining, “Mom, when is Amazed going to wake up?” “Hush, R, let her sleep.” “But it’s BORING here in the bus and who am I going to talk to if she keeps sleeping? You and Dad just tell me off and to shut up for a while!” Suddenly, the reasoning behind her insistence that I should tell her son off from time to time because else, he’d turn me into his personal toy and become demanding and whiny took another meaning altogether… Perhaps he wasn’t joking when he introduced me to another kid with, “That’s Amazed. She thinks she’s all grown up.”
Still going to do the same thing with Grapey, though. It’s fun, fun, fun!
Aunthood is awesome–all of the fun and none of the heavy!
The only thing more awesome than Aunthood is Grandmotherhood.
Grandson Ilan the Toothmacher [a.k.a. Ilan the Drool], who has developed an incredible attachment to car keys, remote controls, and my iPad [he’s just turned 1 and is upright and mobile] will be leaving my tender care and going to a daycare playgroup in about 6 weeks. Boo hoo!
I’ve been hinting to my daughter that she shouldn’t wait too long before trying for child #3…
And congrats again! It was you who announced the arrival here and lamented that you could not go over immediately to meet him, right?
Yes, that was me! I had to wait a few days to meet him for the first time. I am starting my Ph.D. in Los Angeles. He is in Sonoma. I was down there for an event. I made up for it by lavishing him with a suitcase full of USC merch. Drives my B and SIL nuts. They’re both in law school at Cal. Congrats to you, too, Amazed!
Congrats!
I’ve been reading here for four years and only feel semi-confident that I could answer two of them. So basically I’m completely qualified to receive my CPM certificate (i.e. print one I created in MS Paint).
Same. In fact I thought there was a spelling mistake with “apgar”. For the past six and a half years since I’ve given birth and five years since I started reading Skeptical Ob, I thought it was “agpar”…. Shows how much attention I’ve been paying to the details..
Um… The answer to number 4depends just how badly managed the shoulder dystocia was…
Not sure what you mean? Only one of these 4 can be a consequence of shoulder dystocia. The other three are unrelated
Well, I suppose if the SD is not resolved in a timely fashion and you get enough brain injury that you have brain swelling and increase in ICP you might end up with another one of the consequences (although double vision would be the least of the kid’s problems). Crazy attempts to extract an arm could lead to a fx. Wrenching on neck leading to some muscle spasm etc. Once again, the least of the kid’s problems. But there is clearly one best answer.
Oh God. I hurt just reading that.
Yeah, that’s what I meant.
One common complication, three horrible things that could happen if you did things horribly wrong…
I’m pretty confident on 4 out of the six, but I wouldn’t call myself a midwife even if I knew them all.
I feel good about 6 out of 6 and I’m a physician and I have delivered about 100 babies, and I would still never deliver a baby without an OB in house (in the hospital) 24/7. Preferably standing in the room. Gloved.
I’ve got 5 out of 6 – and that’s one of the reasons I would never homebirth.
My MIL – who has lived on a dairy farm her whole life – and me – the recent transplant – were talking about homebirth. She had mentioned one time that she had thought about homebirthing back in the late ’70’s when her oldest son was born but listened to her OB who reminded her that if anything went wrong she and/or the baby would die.
I wanted to know how she dealt with the potential fear of having a delivery similar to some of the calvings gone wrong we see occasionally here on the farm.
She pointed out that she grew up with 40 cows and had less than 200 cows for the first 40 years of her life. Because of that, she almost never saw complicated deliveries because they had such low numbers of deliveries that the tricky deliveries of weird breeches (one hoof back or head backwards on a stillbirth) happened about three times a year and they never saw nightmare situations (calf coming tail first with legs fully extended towards the dam’s head and the spine down or stillborn twins that are intertangled).
It was only once the farm got over 400 then over 800 cows – when my husband took over the dairy aspect – that we got enough deliveries to start seeing breeches that needed help weekly and the nightmare situations once every three years.
For me, being in the barn for two nightmare deliveries has given me a healthy respect/fear of ‘natural’ birth. I’ll take an epidural in case something goes wrong and the doctors need to do some crash maneuvers and I’d like an IV or heplock or both.
yes, ditto all that. physician, know 6 of 6, have delivered on the order of 100 babies, and will ONLY do so with an in-house OB hospitalist 24/7, who I’ve never hesitated to call into the room at the first hint of trouble…. and I even live in portland…. and I tried to learn to knit one winter, but it never took. 🙂 thank you, dr amy, for all of your amazing advocacy–and for the sense of humor that you somehow manage to maintain!
OT but today I found out about something called ‘tweaking’ pregnancy tests (messing with the contrasts/colours of a photo of a HPT to try and get earlier results) and it seems so sad, fertility treatment must be very difficult.
I recently found out I’m expecting my second baby and joined a birth month board. The women requesting tweaks of their pregnancy tests typically aren’t the ones who’ve gone through fertility treatments. I think it’s the oddest thing, personally.
You can be just as desperate during the first two week wait as the tenth, especially if you’ve been wanting to try for quite a while but couldn’t for whatever reason.
I think once you’re on to the heavy duty fertility treatments, you frequently have a medical team to do the tweaking for you.
I also think from what I’ve seen that the women who have been dealing with infertility/TTC for a long time have been using OPKs and charting basal body temperature, and often get to a point where they refuse to test before a missed period. That’s my observation at least.
I admit I was guilty of this. After two miscarriages, I was really desperate and obsessed every cycle during the “two week wait.” We finally conceived and have a beautiful daughter. That calmed me down some and now we are casually trying/not trying for number two. It can get to be a real obsession if you’ve had difficulty.
I can imagine, congratulations on your daughter 🙂 I’d also hazard a guess that your mind gives you symptoms during those 2 weeks which makes everything a lot more stressful and difficult. I don’t think women who tweak their tests are doing anything wrong, I just imagine it’s a challenging situation to be in for them and that’s a way to alleviate some of the stress.
Ah yes, the symptom spotting… I’m so glad I don’t feel so desperate this time around, just happy with whatever happens at this point.
Don’t tweak an early test unless you are emotionally more able to handle knowing you had an early miscarriage/chemical pregnancy than you are able to handle waiting until your period is actually late before you test.
That is an individual thing, but very early positive tests are often literally counting chickens before that have hatched, so to speak.
As a doctor I find it very difficult to manage women with chemical pregnancies. Often by the time they see me their HCG is back to normal and I can’t even confirm that they were ever pregnant, all I can tell them is that when things end that early it is more likely to be a genetically unviable pregnancy rather than an issue which is amenable to treatment. That’s not a great conversation to have.
Personally, after early losses, I had made a decision to wait until I was late before I tested. For me, not knowing was definitely better.
Of course, my period was due on Christmas Day this year, so I broke my own rule and decided to test…we’re expecting the baby at the end of August, best Xmas Present ever!
Yes, we have always cautioned women in our clinic about the “grey area” in very early test results, and counsel them to repeat the test in about 2 weeks, meanwhile, not expecting too much.
It can be heartbreaking to watch some of the women in fertility treatment who are hoping, against hope, that THIS time it will “take”.
It’s an awful time. I had a “chemical pregnancy” just before Christmas one year before we headed across the country to see our families. Kids and pregnancies and announcements galore. It was fucking depressing and I stopped testing early after that purely for self-preservation. I didn’t know IVF had worked until the clinic rang me because I refused to test.
I was wondering about this too, seeing forum boards devoted solely to women who are “peeing on a stick” literally every day and then trying to figure out whether it’s yes or no. For me it seems so stressful and would be warranted only if woman can be exposed to environment that’s not suitable for pregnancy (like, working with radioactive agents or something like that, but it’s extremely rare).
I tested only after missed period (well, I suspected it earlier but wanted to be sure because I already had one late period which, I assume, was actually an unviable pregnancy ending) and got to the doctor at 7w to confirm the fact when baby’s heartbeat was already detectable. No stress and no need to spend money on numerous tests.
I’m guilty of this. I saw a very faint positive line one day (I think 9 days after my IUI), wasn’t sure about the next, then it was clearly negative on the day of my beta. The tests are very sensitive. I’m happy I got to see a very faint positive at least once, even if it didn’t result in a pregnancy. It gives me hope that if I try again, it may work. I’d imagine if I saw 3 very faint positives turn to negatives I’d feel differently though.
Don’t forget OPK’s as HPT’s! OR the Q-Tip cervical swab test!
I did all this when I struggled with infertility. When I was tweaking my tests… I was looking for any ‘signs of life’ even a chemical pregnancy might mean that we could avoid costly IVF. It also helped me not to get my hopes up… In 18 months of trying, there were only about 3 cycles where I was really hopeful that I might be pregnant.
After 18 months of trying and staring at so many evaporation lines.. I finally saw a real positive.
With (the unexpected) baby #2 I had a vivid dream of being handed a baby in the hospital, I woke up so early, took a test and saw a faint line (2 days before the missed period). At first I thought it was an evap, but it was real and a bit of a surprise.
Funny how when you are ‘trying’ every evap. could turn into a BFP.
When it’s unexpected, a faint positive looks a lot like an evap.
I’ve had to explain why OPKs don’t work as well as pregnancy tests a few times. Just out of curiosity, did you end up needing IVF? My Obgyn thinks I may need it (after 2 clomid cycles), but I’m not so sure and am getting a second opinion from an RE.
After a few types of interventions (YAY SCIENCE!) we were able to DIY our babies.
Best of luck!
Sneaky sneaky trick question, making your “P” anwer start with a “T”.
don’t hellp them =P
I giggled a little at that too. 🙂
I would have picked the ‘T’ answer for just that reason, because it didn’t ‘look’ right. Settlng multi choice is tricky.
The other answers would have all been complete guesses, so maybe I would have scored 2/6.
Surely enough for a midwife’s licence-though I don’t knit and rocking chairs make me seasick, so perhaps I’m really not qualified after all?
You CANNOT be a midwife without knitting and crocheting skills, and quilting or embroidery is a plus.
Take it from someone who knows
Yeah, that one was great! It took me a second or two to figure it out.
Your 7% has 2 “%” marks after it.
Meaning B and D are actually the same number 🙂
Thanks! Fixed it.
Oh, this is fun. I’m going to pretend I’m answering as a homebirth midwife:
1) Doesn’t matter unless I can see it from my rocking chair while knitting.
2) Don’t know. I tell my clients to follow the Brewer’s Diet so none of them will ever experience this.
3) Probably C, but numbers aren’t important. Those babies that are meant to live will live, and those that are meant to die will die.
4) Won’t ever happen in a homebirth because the mother isn’t forced to labour on her back like at the hospital. Also, Ina May handles these perfectly well 100% of the time – that’s why they named the Gaskin Manoeuver after her.
5) Less than the risk of taking antibiotics on the mother and baby’s microbiome, duh!
6) None of the above. Homebirth is always safer than hospital birth.
See Dr. Amy? I sure showed you. (snark)
Ooh! Let’s do FB consults!
Number One can’t be important. If it’s in Latin, it’s something BigMedicine made up, so you can ignore 1a and 1d.
Nearly everyone has a mole or two so we can ignore that.
Umbilical cords are MAGIC! *makes new age whale sound*
So, we’re good!
Crickets.
Where are all the natural childbirth and homebirth advocates who think they’re “educated” about birth? I thought they’d be thrilled to demonstrate their knowledge and prove me wrong.
“Where are all the natural childbirth and homebirth advocates”
Furiously Googling?
I admit I don’t know the answer to any of these. Only GBS came up for me and that was more “antibiotics will clear that up so it doesn’t hurt your baby”
I could answer all of the Immunology questions, but none of these. It’s almost as if knowing something in one field doesn’t automatically mean you can easily know something in other fields…! (Not that warrior mommas with college degrees would agree.)