At Anita Lavine's 40-week checkup, an ultrasound determined her amniotic fluid was low, so her doctor decided this Seattle mom should be induced.

"I was given Pitocin that afternoon, which started contractions, but none that I could feel," says Lavine. "As it turned out, the more Pitocin I was given and the stronger the contractions got, the worse it was for the baby. Because the fluid was low, my uterus would squeeze down on him and the cord each time, causing his heart rate to drop considerably."

An exhausting night passed, with nurses occasionally rushing into the room to turn Lavine on her side in attempts to get the baby's heart rate back up. "In the morning, the doctor decided to insert a tube that not only measured the strength of my contractions, but was able to supply me with more fluid," says Lavine. "That immediately seemed to stabilize the baby so they could turn the Pitocin back up to the point where my contractions were causing dilation. Everything took off from there."

Lavine says that once she was fully dilated, she only had to push for about 15 minutes. But as she struggled, the baby's heart once again dropped, forcing her doctor to use a vacuum to extract her little one at the end of the delivery.

Lavine's alarming experience is surprisingly common and was once referred to as fetal distress – though that terminology seems to be changing.

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