Pitocin 101: What Every Mom Giving Birth Needs to Know | 197

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Trish: Hey mama.

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Welcome back to the birth experience.

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Today I am sharing a live that I dove into a topic

I know you have thought about, which is Pitocin.

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We're gonna break it all down.

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What Pitocin is, why it's used during labor and sometimes after birth.

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Actually.

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Most of the time when it's helpful, when it's overused, and the stuff no

one explains to you about, you know, your choices and what it means for you.

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This is not about scaring you because y'all know that I believe that

all of the interventions, including Pitocin, can be necessary at time.

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I just want you as educated as possible, so you walk into your birth

knowing your options and feeling confident to ask the right questions.

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So grab up your raspberry leaf tea and let's get into it.

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Okay, you guys.

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So let's talk about Pitocin.

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We're gonna break down Pitocin, and the reason I wanna talk about Pitocin is because.

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If there's one thing that over 16 years as a high risk labor and delivery nurse

that I saw at most births, it was the use of Pitocin, whether it's to start labor,

whether it's to what we call augment labor, which means you've already started your

labor, but we're giving you Pitocin to speed it up or get it going, or we use it.

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During postpartum right after baby is born.

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So we use it also as a preventative or a preventative measure for a postpartum hemorrhage.

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And so we're gonna talk about why the obsession with Pitocin, in my opinion, right?

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Why are so many doctors and providers obsessed with with Pitocin?

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We're also gonna talk about the fact that even though I'm super

crunchy, my students say that I'm crunchy with a site of medical.

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I'm also medical.

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Right?

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I also, I also believe that there's a reason, and thank God we have the interventions.

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We have.

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I'm not against all interventions.

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I'm against interventions being pushed on you.

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But inside of my, my course, my students know, and my

members know, I say this all the time inside of my community.

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Nothing out of convenience or curiosity unless it's for you.

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If it's your convenience or your curiosity, that's different.

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'cause this is your birth and you're the queen of your birth.

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I also say we can refuse anything.

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But should we?

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So I wanna encourage you guys that even though I'm gonna like take a stand

about some things when it comes to Pitocin, I also think that sometimes.

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It might be needed.

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Right.

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Does that make sense?

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Hopefully that makes sense.

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So Pitocin, it is like the big gun of labor and delivery.

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And if you've never seen Ricky Lake's, documentary, the Business

of Being Born, there is a scene in that, that documentary that is.

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So familiar to me, and if I have any labor

nurses on here, you know what I'm talking about.

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But it's a doctor who comes on the floor and they're standing in

front of the board, the whiteboard where they have all the patients.

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They have what each patient is happening.

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You know, back in the day when we used a whiteboard and not a computer, and he's like.

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Who's on Pitocin?

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How much Pitocin is she on?

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Why isn't she on Pitocin?

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Start the Pitocin, go up on the Pitocin, get Pitocin going, chop, chop, chop.

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And that's been my experience is that like everybody needs to be on Pitocin.

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And I truly feel like that's not true.

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And that's why you need to be educated and understand Pitocin right now.

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It's different.

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If this is what you want, you've, you've done your

due diligence and you're like, yeah, I'm fine.

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It's different if you're being induced, right?

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But even if you're being induced, you have some control.

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This is why I have my little mini class on induction, you

can get it or you can go to labor nurse mama.com/induction.

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Okay, so Pitocin, let's talk about Pitocin for someone who is being induced.

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Let's start there.

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'cause there's three reasons I told you we use Pitocin.

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One, we use it if you're being induced.

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Two, we use it because we wanna augment you, which

means speed things up, help your labor along.

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And three, we use it as a postpartum hemorrhage preventative.

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Okay, so number one, being used as a, an induction, it is

going to stimulate contractions as opposed to most inductions.

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A lot of inductions.

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Let me just say that A lot of inductions, we start

with something that is going to soften your cervix.

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The reason we need your cervix soft is because to open it needs to get soft.

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It needs to get thin.

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If you're ever blowing up a balloon, were you ever taught to like stretch this out?

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Get it stretchy and soft before you start.

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Sorry.

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That's Tula.

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Before you start blowing it up, your cervix is the same thing.

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So here's your uterus, the top of the balloon, and the tail is your cervix.

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Well, this needs to get soft and thin for it to open.

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So usually with an induction, we're gonna start with what we call prostaglandin.

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You guys know what the OG of Prostaglandins is?

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It's semen, so you can go there.

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We're gonna start with prostaglandin and then we're gonna move to Pitocin.

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'cause Pitocin is not gonna soften up your cervix.

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It's going to stimulate contractions.

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Okay?

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And when you stimulate your contractions, your cervix will continue to open.

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So Pitocin is usually it.

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I mean, it's always done in a titrated manner, which means we

start with a dose and then we go up periodically with another dose.

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What I teach my students to ask for if they're being induced, is to start low and go slow.

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So those of you guys who are being induced, I want you to write down, start low, go slow.

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And what that means is we're going up instead of starting at a higher

dose, which hospitals typically do one to two milli units every 30.

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Minutes.

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So I tell my students, ask them to start at one and go up by by one.

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Once your body takes over, tell your provider.

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And we all know when your body takes over.

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Once your body takes over and you are, your cervix is changing

regularly, you can actually ask them to decrease or stop the dosing.

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You can, you can slow stop increasing it or stop it altogether.

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If your body doesn't keep going, then maybe we need to give you what I call a sniff.

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So a lot of people think once you're on Pitocin,

I need to keep slamming it until I have the baby.

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But that's actually not the truth.

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And there's a lot of studies that prove that low dosing and slow

dosing is actually way more effective because your uterus only has.

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So many oxytocin receptors.

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Once they're full, they're full, right?

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So if we slam 'em and fill 'em, it's not gonna be as effective.

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So that's for induction.

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So remember, you're gonna start slow.

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Go slow up, slow, right?

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So maybe go up by one every 30 minutes.

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The other thing is.

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We're gonna talk about augmentation.

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So that means you went into labor on your own and you come into the

hospital and we, your doctor's like, well, we're gonna go ahead and start

Pitocin 'cause you're not going fast enough for their, like what they want.

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Right?

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That is something I would consider out of convenience or curiosity.

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So the doctor wants you to go faster, even though you're laboring.

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You are not laboring fast enough.

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So in that case, I would do your due diligence and I would say no.

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If you stall out, there are a lot of different positions and movements, and

actually there's been studies that have been done that show that using Gravity and

Movement is actually more effective and produces stronger contractions than Pitocin.

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But you don't see a doctor saying, let's get

her into good positions and get her up walking.

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They wanna give you Pitocin.

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So I really just want you guys to be as educated as possible because I can't

tell you all the scenarios, but I do teach that in both the birth classes.

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So we've got our full birth class, which is our calm labor, confident birth,

or the VBAC lab, and we also have our audio only class, which is the birth pod.

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And you can learn about all of them.

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But either way, you have to be educated because if you

don't understand when and why something is appropriate.

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You're gonna lean into someone else making decisions for you.

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And I can't tell you how many of my, my patients have said, Trish, what would you do?

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But what I would do might not be the same as Brandy.

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It may not be the same as, you know, deedee might do.

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You want to do what's best for you.

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And the reason I started Labor Nurse Mom is because

I don't wanna bully you into a decision either.

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I wanna educate you so that you can make the best decision for you.

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And I support you if you decide to be induced.

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I support you if you decide to be augmented.

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I support you, whatever you decide to do.

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I just want you to be educated and understand the decision you're making.

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I don't want anyone else to make a decision for you.

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Okay?

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The third reason we use Pitocin in the hospital is typically,

typically, most doctors want to use it right after baby is born.

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Either right after the baby comes out or after the placenta, they

wanna bolus a big amount into you to prevent a postpartum hemorrhage.

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Now, someone like me that's given birth a million times, 'cause I've had six babies.

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I am at a high risk for a postpartum hemorrhage.

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So I would not mess around with it.

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And I'd say yes to the Pitocin, but if it's your first baby, you have no risk of a

postpartum hemorrhage or low risk, then I would prefer they only use it if they need it.

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But again, you have to be educated, be able to

understand that, and that is the third stage of labor.

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And I have a really good podcast on the third stage of labor.

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If you search labor nurse, mama.

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Third stage of labor, you should be able to find it.

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Where I talk about the difference between a hands-on third

stage and a hands-off third stage, and part of that is Pitocin.

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So.

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I personally don't think that everybody should be getting Pitocin after

delivery because again, remember I told you you only have so many receptors

and our body produces oxytocin, which is way more powerful and effective.

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So those are the three uses, induction, augmentation, or

after delivery for preventative of a postpartum hemorrhage.

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So if you guys have any questions about Pitocin, I'm gonna post this live to my, my feed.

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You can post your questions there or you can shoot us a DM and

ask us, or if you join the community, become one of our students.

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You can always come to my hangouts on Zoom that I do for all my

students, whether you join the birth pod or the full birth course.

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Okay, you guys I hope you learned something really valuable.

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Remember, you are the queen of your birth room and you should be the one making decisions.

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All right, mama.

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I hope this episode gave you some clarity around Pitocin.

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Y'all know you can always ask me questions, so shoot

me a dm, head to Instagram, ask us all about it.

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And if you really wanna learn more, dive into the

birth pod or dive into the full birth classes.

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Remember taking the mystery out of everything surrounding your birth

gives you so much freaking power, and it also removes a lot of the

fear you deserve to know what's happening to your body and why.

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You always have the right to ask questions, slow things down and say no.

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If this episode helped you hit subscribes.

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You don't miss what's coming next, and would you do me a favor, girls?

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Leave a review and share it with someone you know who's pregnant when you leave a review.

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It helps me so much and it helps get this important

information into the hands of other mamas.

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You have got this.

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You are so freaking powerful.

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I am so proud of you.

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I'm cheering you on every step of the way.

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As always, I'll see you again next week.

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Bye for now.