In a hard delivery we tell the mother “the baby is fine” before we know. Does keeping her calm make it right?
Its coordinates: 3.3.1 Bioethics and Medical Ethics
On our ward, when a labour goes badly, someone always says it: the baby is fine, keep pushing. Often nobody knows that yet. The heartbeat has dropped, the doctor is coming, and the mother is frightened. A frightened mother tightens, pushes badly and sometimes makes things worse. A calm one helps herself and the baby.
I have said it too, many times. Most of the time the baby is fine and nobody remembers the sentence.
But I have also sat with a woman two days later whose baby was not fine, and she said to me: "You all knew and you told me something else." She did not say it angrily. She said it as if a door had closed between us.
So my question is not whether it works. It usually works. My question is whether working is enough. Is a lie that helps the person who hears it still a lie in the bad sense? And does it matter that she cannot agree to it, because asking would undo it?
I come from the Baul songs, not from books, so I would welcome answers in plain words.