Speaking of “Rites of Passage”
The Birth Activist recently wrote about restrictions of food and fluids for laboring and women, and how Robbie Davis-Floyd has written about this phenomenon as a “rite of passage.” The Birth Activist highlighted a recent Cochrane Review that found that food/fluid restrictions in labor are unnecessary, something I agree with whole heartedly, having eatten a VERY large breakfast more than 12 hours after contractions had started in my first labor. She then points out that Robbie Davis-Floyd has long identified the ban on eating/drinking in labor as a “rite of passage.”
Speaking of “rites of passage,” what is with making the dad put on scrubs before he can go with his wife to the OR? She wears the same hospital gown into the OR that she’s been wearing for hours in labor…but he needs to put on scrubs. As a doula, when I’m allowed to go in, I’m given a set of hospital scrubs to put on…even though I’m already wearing my own scrubs. I’ve never argued it because it just doesn’t seem worth the ill will…but really, what is the point?
I understand why the medical staff wear scrubs–in case they get bodily fluids on them while performing surgery, they don’t want to carry potentially infectious materials home with them. But the father? Presumably he has exchanged fluids with the mom. And me, as the doula? Well am I really any more likely to get fluids on me when sitting next to the mom’s head during a cesarean than I am holding her leg during a vaginal birth?
It seems to me that the donning of scrubs by persons not on the medical team is yet another “rite of passage.” Just as the laboring woman is expected to put on an ill-fitting hospital gown upon hospital admission, stripping her of her own clothing and thus symbollically removing some of her autonomy and individuality; I believe that that donning of scrubs before entering the OR is yet another part of the taking the individuality away from the expectant parents in the modern technological birth.
Tags: cesarean, rite of passage, Robbie Davis-Floyd, Scrubs
It’s because it is an operating room. It is perfectly fine for the “patient” to be in the gown she has been wearing (although, she does need to put on a cap to cover her hair — hair sheds - creates floating contamination). Everyone else - everyone - need to have clean scrubs, cap, mask and shoe covers. This is to reduce the amount of outside germs that enter into the OR. It’s all to reduce the total risk of any infection into the open surgical wound.
Hi Jenn!
I wear black scrub bottoms but a tshirt as my “doula uniform”. I used to wear more “obvious” scrubs, but the reaction from the hospital staff was fairly hostile. I feel the need, sometimes, but don’t aways follow though, with the “I’m the doula, not nurse, MW or OB” speech. I just want to be clean!
As for the OR, when I had my section with the triplets I was the only one without the headgear
Yes, the OR is a sterile (sorta) environment, but considering, dad, mom and doula are waaaay away and behind a drape, all these costume changes are a little nutty.
Really Jen? You’ve gotten hostile reactions if you wear scrubs? I have two sets–one is shades of purple, and the other set is brown & teal. They are very obviously NOT the blue scrubs provided by the hospitals (though I can think of two occassions where I’m pretty sure hospital staff members though I was also on staff–once when I accompanied a client’s baby to the nursery, and once when the on-call Dr. visited my client for the very first time 10 minutes before she gave birth…and in his flurry to get gowned up, he was annoyed because no one jumped right in and tied his sterile gown–so I tied it.), but I wear them to present a more professional look. And they are comfortable/easy to move in. Your black scrubs/t-shirt idea is a fine “uniform” too, as I’m sure you are wearing a high quality T-shirt. And yes, putting a cap on the mother does seem to vary from hospital to hospital, or even birth to birth within the same hospital. That’s another thing that has always struck me as “funny.”
At Your Cervix…I *might* accept the idea of sterility issues, except that the mother’s gown, which is much closer to the surgical site than the father or doula, most likely has all of the same bacteria on it as the father and doula had on them–since the trio has been touching each other. Second, the scrubs themselves are not sterile, as they’ve been transported from the hospital laundry then sat in a storage closet. Last…nurses that go into the OR at the hospitals I’ve been at do not change their scrubs before going into the OR, nor do they put on sterile gowns over their scrubs…and yet they have been circulating between multiple patients prior to going into the OR.