HELP ASAP Chiair and Childbirth

May 11, 2012

I really need ANY help that anyone has to give. I need research or whatever you

can point me to that shows that just because my daughter has had surgery for

chiari it DOES NOT mean that she needs to undergo general anesthesia and miss

one of the most precious moments in her life, the birth of her first child. A

bit of background... My daughter is 25. At the very end of 2003 when

she was 16 yrs old she underwent surgery for Chiari type 1 and her symptoms have

been very well controlled since that point. She has been married nearly 4 yrs

and has been hoping for a baby and now looking forward to meeting her daughter.

When she found out she was pregnant and went began going to the Ob she

encountered A LOT of ignorance, which is, of course not surprising. My

daughter planned on going through her pregnancy without any real attention to

the fact that she has chiari but I did strongly urge her to educate herself

because I had read things in the past about how pregnancy and childbirth should

be handled or chiari patients. I was particularly concerned with the pushing

part because I know any straining can be a problem. Well, her OB demanded two

things of Jess, first that she see a high risk specialist which my daughter

fought feeling it was not needed and a waste of money. The second was That Jess

agree to a c section to avoid pushing. Jess had done some reading by that point

and agreed to that. (She also did eventually see that high risk dr several

times.) SO, things have been going wonderfully for her. We are now just days

away from the birth of our first grandchild, a precious baby girl scheduled to

enter the world early on Wed May 16. Jess went yesterday for her preop testing

and came home raving about how much she loves the hospital she chose to give

birth at. This morning she gets a call telling her that the anesthesiologist

said that he was not willing to do any type of spinal or epidural and would only

be willing to do general anesthesia. My daughter is so upset but also not

willing to just go with it. She is going to fight him on it but in order to do

that, she need all the information she can get. So PLEASE, if you can help me

in ANY way, I would SO appreciate it!

Thanks so much

Tina

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