by Jennifer Wells

Created on: September 13, 2010   Last Updated: September 14, 2010

Mrs. Wells walks into her doctor’s office, pregnant with a child who has been measured six weeks past her upcoming due date (still two weeks off) in growth. Dr. H smiles and tells her that this is the day; she will be induced, and the wait to meet this child will be over! He states that he should do a c-section, but since she had chosen nine months prior to try vaginally, that he will allow her to do so. He also says that she should have an ultrasound before going in, due to the baby’s size… but…

We rejoin them in the delivery room where Mrs. Wells is passing the two hour mark of pushing, and has been asking for a c-section. Doctor H has been asleep down the hall, and his staff wakes him, certain that the end is at hand. He shows up, all smiles, and instructs Mrs. Wells to keep pushing. He uses forceps, but states that she is pushing so well that he is just guiding the baby through. A happy Mr. Wells, about to become daddy for the first time, proclaims “She is here! I see her, she is here, honey!”

In a moment that is forever frozen in time in Mrs. Wells’ memory, she screamed a primal scream and thought “Who has just stuffed me with a cabbage?!” On her second delivery attempt, she heard the same words of a child nearly delivered, followed by the same unbidden scream of horror and unlikely thought “Who is stuffing me with a cabbage?!?”

Friends, I introduce you to the Zavanelli Maneuver. A controversial, even barbaric, procedure that you will not find in “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”, or any other mainstream book about pregnancy and delivery. It is the dead-last attempt at removing a large baby, halted in delivery by shoulder dystocia, from his mother, and can result in physical trauma or even the death of both mother and infant.

Shoulder dystocia; the medical term for when the shoulders of an infant, in this case over twelve pounds, are too wide to fit through her mother’s pelvic bones. Among other attempts he made over the last half-hour of pushing (2.5 total), this doctor’s ultimate decision was to ‘pop’ the baby back into the womb. He attempted this twice; the first time twisting the baby and causing the umbilical cord to wrap around her neck. The second time he held her in place, calling for an emergency c-section he admitted later would have been preformed without anesthesia.

Unfortunately, the baby could not tolerate this procedure and

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>