"Be open-minded. You may want to control the situation, but ultimately your baby will tell us which direction we are headed," she explained. "We often have to continuously monitor the baby during active labor to ensure the baby is tolerating the stress of labor. For example, you may have wanted to deliver vaginally, but your body may have stopped dilating at five centimeters when it needs to be at 10 centimeters in order to deliver. In that case, the patient will have to go for a C-section. Another example is if a patient is laboring, and the baby has a deceleration in heart rate that does not come back up after a few minutes. That would be an emergency C-section. Again, our main concern is safety for the baby and mom."