Women of Strength, how many of you have “failure to progress” on your operative report as the reason for your Cesarean(s)? Meagan and Julie talk ALL about failure to progress today– how it led to their own Cesareans and how after breaking it down, they both realized that neither of them actually qualified for that label. When is it failure to progress and when is it failure to wait? What does failure to progress actually mean? This is an episode you will want to listen to over and over again. From learning all of the ways a cervix changes other than just dilation to all of the possible positions you can try during a lull in labor, Meagan and Julie share invaluable current research and personal experiences on this hot topic! ACOG Article: Limiting Interventions During Labor and BirthAJOG Article: Safe Prevention of a Primary Cesarean DeliveryThe Journal of Perinatal Education: Preventing a Primary CesareanOBG Project ArticleThe VBAC Link Blog: Failure to ProgressHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello. I am with Julie today and we are going to be talking about failure to progress. If you have been diagnosed with failure to progress– and I say diagnosed because they actually put them on our op reports like it’s a diagnosis of failure of progress meaning our cervix does not know what to do. It cannot make it to 10 centimeters or it hasn’t or it will not in the future, then I am telling you right now that this is definitely a great episode for you. Even if you haven’t been told, it’s going to be a great episode because we are going to talk about some other great things in the end about what to do in labor position-wise and all of the things. So we’re going to get going, but Julie apparently has a Review of the Week. We weren’t going to do one, but she says she has a Review of the Week. So, Julie? I will turn the time over to you. Julie: This is my review. Are you ready? Meagan: I’m actually really curious. Julie: “I’m so excited. Thank you so much, Meagan and Julie. I love The VBAC Link!” Signed, lots of people everywhere. Meagan: I love it. Julie: We don’t have a Review of the Week so I just made one up. Boom. There. Signed, AnonymousMeagan: All right, you guys. Failure to progress: what it is and what it isn’t. Let’s talk about what it is. What does it mean? Essentially, it means that your provider believes that your cervix did not progress in an adequate amount of time and there’s also failure to progress as in your body may have gone into or you are going in for an induction and then they couldn’t even get labor going which we all know is usually not the case that your body really couldn’t do it, but failure to progress is when your cervix does not continually dilate in an adequate amount of time. Would you change anything about that, Julie, or add anything to that? Julie: Sorry, I didn’t hear half of that. I was just going through it. I was going through the things just to make sure that we are 100% accurate on what we are about to say. Whatever you said, yeah. That sounds great. Yeah. Let’s go with it. Meagan: Failure to progress– the cervix is not dilating in an adequate amount of time. Julie: Basically, yeah. Your cervix isn’t changing so you’ve got to do a C-section because it’s not working basically. Meagan: Okay, so what it isn’t– do you want to talk about what it isn’t? Julie: What it isn’t? It isn’t– sorry, I’m trying to say it. Meagan: It isn’t true most of the time. Julie: Most of the time it’s not true. It isn’t what we think it is and if it is, it’s not a sign that your body is broken. It’s not exclusion. It’s not a reason to exclude you from trying for a VBAC. It’s not your fault. It usually is a failure from the system where people are in a rush or in a hurry and just not knowing how to move past a stall in labor or not understanding the true flow of how some labors take. I mean, I was diagnosed with failure to progress. You were diagnosed with failure to progress and I know that both of our literal clinical outlook at the time we were diagnosed with failure to progress was not true failure to progress. Meagan: Mhmm. Julie: According to what the actual guidelines and requirements are. So I always say, yeah. What you said, it is not true. Meagan: It is not true.Julie: We joke about that and use it loosely. Sometimes it is true. I’ve seen one true failure to progress diagnosis in over 100 births, but I feel like most of us listening and most of us who have C-sections have them because of failure to progress. Now, mine when I was in labor, I was not told failure to progress. I was told fetal heart tones, but that’s another topic for another episode– what we are told versus what is in our op reports. So yeah, let’s do a little plug-in about getting your op report. Find out what is actually in the notes that say why your ...
