Failure to Progress and The Freidmans Curve

Many of us have looked back on our hospital birth records and see FTP (or labor dystocia) listed as a reason for an intervention or eventual c-section. Failure to Progress is defined by Pregnancy Today website as "occurring when there is no fetal decent of cervical change (with adequate contractions) for more than two hours." FTP is also referred to as failure to wait by those of us who might of liked more time. As Rita Rubin writes in her Pregnancy.org article "Women today are held to a half-century-old labor standard called the Friedman curve, one of the first things obstetrics students learn in their training."

What is the Friedman's Curve?
According to this Journal entry from Medscape Today "Dilation in the active phase was much slower on the modern curve than on the Friedman curve (mean time from 4 cm to complete dilation, 5.5 vs. 2.5 hours). Among the current study's patients, labor lasting more than 2 hours without apparent change was not uncommon before 7 cm of dilation."
Essentially Friedman's curve is an "An Obsolete Approach to Labor Assessment"

Here are some more links on the Freidman's Curve

The Friedman Curve on the Homebirth Debate Blog
Use of abnormalities in the Friedman curve as a predictor of operative delivery in macrosomic babies.
Reevaluation of Friedman's Labor Curve: A Pilot Study
The “Rule of 10” Versus Women’s Primal Wisdom
by Lydi Owen
Editorial: Love that Protects
by Jan Tritten
The “All That Matters” Phenomenon: Grieving the Loss of a Vaginal Birth