Family Forum / Parenting / Children's Health / September 2009

Well lets look ay a recent WSJ article
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115266494103204113-email.html

    '"  Hospitals are conceiving new programs to make childbirth
safer, amid mounting evidence that overuse of labor-inducing drugs for
preterm deliveries and other common practices in the delivery room are
endangering both mothers and infants.

Driven by soaring liability-insurance premiums for their obstetrics
units, hospital groups are adopting policies to discourage or prohibit
births induced before the minimum 39 weeks recommended by maternal and
child health experts, unless medically necessary. They are curtailing
the use of drugs such as the hormone oxytocin to start or speed up
contractions, which in too-high doses can lead to ruptures of the
uterus, fetal distress and even death of the infant....."

.....At Premier-affiliated Baystate Medical Center in Springfield,
Mass, for example, staffers conduct informed-consent discussions about
oxytocin at the hospital instead of leaving it to a doctor's office
visit..........

......"Pitocin is used like candy in the OB world, and that's one of
the reasons for medical and legal risk," says Carla Provost, assistant
vice president at Baystate, who notes that in many hospitals it is
common practice to "pit to distress" -- or use the maximum dose of
Pitocin to stimulate contractions."