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Pushing: A Spectator Sport?

Abstract:

I was pleased when our group decided to look at second stage as our inquiry project and I gladly volunteered to investigate pushing. Since my introduction to midwifery practice my naivete has been shattered. I had placed 'coached pushing', which has been likened by some to yelling at a rugby match, into the birth archives where I felt it well and truly belonged. But much to my amazement I have found it alive and well and fair bursting out of the delivery rooms. 'Oh, Dear! How terrible,' I thought. 'How degrading, how patronising, how can this still be happening in the '90s?' The first birth I attended as a student midwife in the hospital was shared care with a GP who, during the woman's labour, chatted with colleagues in the corridor, leant on the desk by the nurses' station and occasionally stuck his head in the door to see if it was nearly time for the 'real' work.

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coached pushing, physiological birth, second stage