There is a mantra that we have culturally adopted regarding birth.
“Nothing else matters as long as there is a healthy baby”
And, I don’t know why I’m not used to it after 12 years, but it still shakes me up every time I see it.
Because…I matter. My feelings matter. My health matters. I have to live with the choices. I carried that child for the better part of a year and I have to raise that child…I matter.
While I had all my children naturally, my last birth was very devestating for me. I had two children previously….one in a birth center, one in a tub in my tiny little 2nd floor bedroom. That second birth was really the best birth I could have asked for. I had high expectations for number three to be even better.
But you know what they say about the best laid plans. I ended up in the hospital (while my birth tub was filling and subsequently flooding my bedroom). No, there were no problems and within an hour of arriving, I delivered my 11lb baby boy in about two pushes. And he was healthy and perfect.
Sounds good right? All that matters is a healthy baby, right?
While I stood laboring next the the triage table, I had nurses conversing around me as if I didn’t exist. I was repeatedly told “no” I couldn’t do things. I was instructed to lay on the table and do as I was told and when I didn’t, everyone stood around and stared at me as if I was crazy. No one helped me. At all.
I laid on the bed because my legs were about to give out and I quickly realized that the baby was NOT coming out in that position. I begged for someone to help me turn over onto all fours and the doctor said “NO!” and the nurses all just looked at me and shrugged their shoulders. When the doctor left the room, I scrambled awkwardly off the table, landed on the floor, got on all fours and pushed with all my might. I pushed out of fear that this stranger who didn’t know anything about me would come in and somehow wrangle me back into that God awful position. I knew I had to get that baby out ASAP. I did. A couple of pushes and some 3rd degree tearing and my son was born. I then had stitches that no one told me much of anything about. And the doctor walked out without saying a word to me. My husband looked on from a corner as I spoke my first words to my son…”I’m sorry….I’m sorry“.
The aftermath was…horrible. My husband blamed me for “changing the plan on him with out his input”. I couldn’t walk for a few days and it was probably more than a month before I wasn’t in agonizing pain every minute of the day. I was obsessively worried that I’d ruined my vagina and I would never be able to pee or have sex normally again. Oh…and post partum depression on top of all that.
I felt like a failure. That birth was not the empowering, healthy, safe birth I’d envisioned. And I grieved that.
Birth doesn’t matter? All that matters is the healthy baby? What does that mean for women like me, constantly being told to hush up and just be glad I have a healthy baby? My feelings don’t matter? My physical scars don’t matter?
I’m not exactly sure how I’m supposed to be a mentally/physically/emotionally healthy mom when I’m glossing over bad things that happen and pretending they are all sunshine and rainbows when inside I’m grieving a loss.
Birth matters. Lots of women in our culture aren’t told this and never even really get to experience it’s transformative powers. But it matters. Birth matters and moms matter.
The experience of the mother matters. Just as it’s important to celebrate the power that is realized when a women finds that her body is actually capable of making and birthing her children, it is also vitally important to validate and nurture women when they experience a birth trauma. Because it matters. Your feelings matter, my feelings matter, and we are all changed by the event of birthing our children. And the negative experiences deserve as much recognition as the positive.
Along with the “all the matters is a healthy baby” mantra, there is another saying I hear a lot. “Why does anyone care how anyone else has their baby??”
I care because it matters. I struggled with writing this because there is such a vast amount of information out there on the topic. There are so many ways in which we fail women in our society when it comes to maternity care and birth. If you haven’t watched The Business of Being Born, I really really really suggest you watch it. Even if you don’t plan on having more children. Even if you never plan on having children. That documentary explains exactly why birth matters and why moms matter.
Birth is powerful. Birth will change you. Birth is important. I deserved the birth I wanted, not to be bullied and ignored while in one of the most vulnerable positions of my life. I should have been able to be healthier coming out of that situation. We all deserve better. We all deserve to be healthy. We all deserve to be safe.
The United States has some pretty awful birth statistics for a 1st world country. And that isn’t going to change until we start recognizing that birth matters. Until we stop the rhetoric of ”all that matters is a healthy baby”.
There is more to birth than just a healthy baby in the end.
{ 238 comments… read them below or add one }
so much truth here. im sorry you had such a difficult birth, one that made you feel less than empowered. Ive had 4 natural births, 3 at home, and can totally imagine that I would feel the same had I required a transport. This was beautifully written, bravely admitted, and Im so glad you advocated for birth itself and for moms.. and how birth does matter. And that its ok, totally valid and understandable, to be emotionally impacted by it.
Glad to read this today. And Ill promote it, too.
Thank you so much.
This speaks so strongly to me. I had an absolutely terrible second birth for exactly the same reasons – I was totally abandoned and ignored and was certain that I was going to die… But at least “the baby was doing fine”… Grrr… A “nice” post traumatic depression followed. 3 years on I’m still struggling to come to grips with what happened…
*hugs* to you, mama. I struggled with mine for a long time too.
same. I just don’t get it…the mentality of some hospital staff.
Im sorry for bad experiences in the hospital. I’m a L/D RN at a hospital and we let patients have the kind of birth they want. Its not the hospital who makes decisions it’s the Dr. If you do your research and choose a Dr. that has the same ideas for birth that you do, you can birth in a water pool, squatting on the floor or whatever. I think birth should be how you want it, No matter where it is. PLEASE remember its not the hospital that makes for bad experiences, Its the Dr YOU choose.
Not necessarily true. Hospital policies dictate what happens to laboring women BEFORE the doc arrives. And we all know that many arrive just in time to catch the baby…
This is a good point but something else that women REALLY don’t seem to know is this:
NO ONE ELSE IS THE BOSS OF YOU!
While hospitals may have their “policies”, the LAW dictates that if they check you in while you’re in labor, they HAVE to help you. But you DO NOT have to do everything they tell you, even if it is hospital policy. Hospital policy isn’t the law, and no one is going to arrest you for birthing, say, on all fours even when your doctor doesnt’ like it. Now many hospitals simply won’t provide things like tubs, which stinks. But still…………
The bottom line is that we can do what we want. And most women don’t know that. There is so much language involving “they LET me do this” or “they LET me do that”.
No one LET me do anything. They aren’t in charge of me, I am in charge of me.
Way to engage in even more victim-blaming…
While you can not follow hospital policies, there’s always the threat of them calling CPS. The staff actually thinks they’re making decisions for you and your child’s safety.
It does happen. Google about court-ordered c-sections…
Birth is a time where a woman is in a very vulnerable position. Fighting and advoating for oneself is extremely difficult in the middle of labor.
Unless, of course, they’ve had a previous cesarean. Then you get an IV line put in, regardless of whether you need or want one, so you *can’t* get in the tub. And you get continuous monitoring, regardless of whether you need or want it, which limits your mobility and makes people hover around the monitor rather than the mother. And you get the invisible stop watch that says “Mom can only safely labor for X number of hours before she gets another c-section.”
I know this because this is precisely what happened with my second birth….even though I took special pains to find the “right” doctor and the “right” hospital. And, big surprise, I got bullied into a second cesarean even though my partner and I did everything in our power to have a vbac.
Yours is pretty much my exact same story…trying for a VBA2C this next time, but planning on not walking in until the baby is falling out…
10 months later, the grief and frustration with that day is still almost unspeakably strong. I’ve stopped mentioning it b/c all I hear is that stupid “But you got your healthy baby and that’s what matters”
That’s not true, not in Canada anyways. I am a previous c-section, I will be giving birth at a hospital with a midwife. She will be the only attendant in my room, unless I request otherwise. I don’t have to have an i.v. if I choose not to, I also don’t have to have continuous fetal monitoring if I choose not to. I can give birth in any position I want, and my labor isn’t being timed unless there is some kind of danger.
How nice. I wish my hospital had been like that. I had a good doctor who was on board with everything I wanted: no IV antibiotics (had been GBS+ in my first pregnancy, but not this one); no continuous monitoring; eating to hunger throughout labor.
The second I got checked in, the nurses told me that they’d be hooking up the antibiotics now, I needed to stay on the monitor, and they’d bring me ice chips if I wanted but nothing else by mouth.
“No,” I said. “No,” my husband said. And we argued, and we eventually got our way. And a couple hours later when the doctor got there, he backed us up.
And that’s how my second c-section started, with me arguing to have the birth I had planned with my doctor, in a hospital that actually has tubs in two of the birth rooms, with an excellent reputation for “good” births.
Why? I don’t know. It may be that the L/D RNs who work at that hospital would say the same as you… and the issue is communication. That my chart didn’t have my birth plan or my doctor’s notes in it. Or that it did but they hadn’t got there yet.
Unless your hospital has *no* routines, *no* defaults… what you say is probably not true, at least not in all births. And I doubt that there’s a hospital that doesn’t have those things.
Ugh.
Having to be arguing while your in labor is just such an incredibly messed up thing.
I have to disagree. In my case, it was the hospital. My doctor was great – but she wasn’t there when I gave birth. I think EVERY single staff that I dealt with at that hospital (except maybe for two) were awful. I came out scarred and cynical. Shortage of nurses is a big topic in Quebec and Canada. Yet, as I left the hospital, I no longer believed in that crap. There may have been about 30 different health professionals (including nurses) that same and went through my stay at the hospital, and most of them could be found huddled aroud the main desk, planning their weekend. I know, because I was huddled in my broken bed, freezing, shivering, crusty, disgusting and in pain, and all I could hear (because my room was directly in front) was the sound of their voices and conversations. My doctor was fine. She wasn’t there. The hospital was crap. Very undeserving of its fine reputation, which made me pick it in the first place.
This is so offensive to me. I had a wretched experience with my second daughter’s birth, and I had NO CHOICE over who was in the room. It’s not 1950 anymore. Many, many people have no say over who oversees the birth of their child. I had an HMO at the time, and my doctor, whom I loved, and whom I chose, was not the person handling the birth because that’s not how the the hospital was run. You got whoever was on staff when you walked in the door. In addition, the person who created a situation of pure agony for me was an inexperienced L & D nurse, not a doctor. Everything about my experience was made bad by my hospital. I assure you that if the setup were such that I was allowed to have my own doctor oversee my birthing experience, it would have been completely different.
Also, our hospital did not allow birthing pools, nor did they have space for them. I’m sorry, but I think you’re the one who needs to do the research.
I was lucky to have such great nurses and a fab doctor in Nashville. They were attentive, flexible, and compassionate. The hospital part of my daughter’s birth was the best part. Unfortunately, halfway through, we ended up doing an emergency C. I was crushed, devastated, and scared out of my mind. Until I finally came out of the anesthetic fog and found out that my baby was ok, all that really did matter to me was my baby. But when we got home, I spent the first 3 months crying over having not even getting to see my child first (felt the knife, they had to knock me out). I still cry about it in private on the odd occasion, 2 years later. You’re right. Moms matter. I’m glad I have a hospital with people who believe that. My next kiddo will be a scheduled c, to prevent the drama, and at least I will get to see my second baby first. :*(
Thank you.
I could have written this… even the city. I grieved. This time I want it to be different
I’ve heard really great things about the staff, decor, and etc at Baptist, but I can’t afford them, even with help from insurance. So I went with Centennial–my OB services both. The labor & delivery floor’s just been remodeled, and was really nice. The recovery floor still felt old… but the people were great. Dr George was terribly concerned that I’d had nightmares because of the drama–she’d had the same thing happen to her, and felt the knife too, and had nightmares about it. My story is sad, but at least the people were good to me.
What I’ve always heard is “healthy mom, healthy baby”. You obviously did not have a very compassionate doctor involved. Birth can go against the plan all the time, that happens. What’s really appalling to be is your husband blaming you.
*sigh* Yes that certainly didn’t help anything.
I came in as a planned homebirth and I think there is a lot of backlash from doctors who feel like it’s some sort of personal slight against them or who feel like women have no business making their own choices in birth so I think this particular doctor was just hell bent on making sure I learned my lesson.
Nothing wrong with a home birth, if you’re prepared. I’m glad I didn’t though, we might’ve lost one or both of us.
I’m a bit jealous of those who can.
No reason to be jealous……..virtually everyone can do it if they let go of a lot of the birth fear that we are taught culturally. Sadly, many many women believe that doctors “saved” them and their children when in reality the medical interventions and doctors put them in harms way. I know a lot of women who think they would have lost their child and don’t realize their doctor who saved them was the one who actually caused the problem in the first place.
In my case, my Dr did save us. I wanted to go vaginal, and she wasn’t sure I could because my pelvis is shaped kinda oddly, but she let me try. And baby got stuck, her heart rate disappeared… it was my own stubbornness that risked us. Yes, I believe that most should be able to birth at home, if they let go of the fear of the unknown. I honestly believe that I’m lucky to have had my Dr.
ML – so you had a completely unmedicated, natural birth and the baby got stuck?
Depends on the doc. For my first baby, I asked my OB about home birth, and he replied something like: “Some women try that, and when they finally come in we fix them up.” I switched to a midwife at a different hospital shortly thereafter, and had a wonderful experience. Now, early in my second pregnancy, I went to a different OB. His reply to my home birth question was: “If you decide to do that, you’d have every other appointment with me, and every other appointment with your midwife,” and “I can give you a list of at-home midwives we work with” and “The midwife is my eyes and ears.”
I’ve heard the “healthy mom, healthy baby” one as well. Though most people mean “healthy mom” to mean “not dead mom.” So the moms with c-sections, episiotomies/lacerations, broken tailbones, spinal headaches, PPD, birth trauma of any sort are “healthy” just because they aren’t dead. Not good enough.
*Like*
Very well said, Amber.
Yep.
Yep. They mean “Will heal, eventually, mostly anyway”, not “healthy” in any conventional sense, and especially not emotionally.
yes, this. Who cares if sex is excruciatingly painful for you for 6+ months because of the huge/deep episiotomy you “needed”? You look okay to me.
I’m truly sorry you have such negative feelings about what should have been a joyful moment. And that you didn’t receive the support you needed, even from those closest to you. It’s a shame you didn’t have a doula or midwife there to be your advocate, and deal with the doctor and nurses while you focused on your labor. But many things about birth can’t be predicted. How could you have known it would end up the way it did?
Moms definitely do matter, and we all look at the birth experience differently. I think it is wonderful there are so many options today, and that women are being empowered to have the birth they want. But I hear many stories like yours when it doesn’t go as planned. Thank you for being brave enough to write this.
The reason I went to the hospital was, in part, because I hated and didn’t really trust my midwife. She was there, but she just sat in a corner taking notes. It’s important to have an advocate in birth you like and trust, I definitely learned that.
Holy cow! That is just awful about the midwife. WTH?!
Yeah………
You had a lot of things going against you.
The fact things didn’t get any worse is a testament to your strength. Btw, I shared this post on The Mom Pledge FB page. I know a lot of women will be able to relate to your story…
Thanks.
I’m ok now……….it certainly helps that I completely healed up and was back to normal eventually. And recognizing PPD since I’d encountered it before, I knew when to get help for that. Not everyone does.
Wow further proof that no matter what type of care prover you choose they need to be right for you.
Was she upset you transferred? If so why bother going to the hospital with you? I became a Doula after watching my friends being railroaded into unnecessary cesareans and two of my own miscarriages with little sympathy from care providers.
As a Doula I understand that if you have a hospital birth you are shackled in many ways by hospital policy – but my goal is to preserve the wishes and dignity of the mother as much as possible and many times if the Doula and birth partner set this tone the care providers will follow suit. This week I attended an unplanned induction (13 hours after natural release of membranes and no labor established in a 41+ week mom with elevated BP) and other than pitocin we preserved the mother’s wishes for a natural labor.
The afterbirth was another story. A perfect storm of hospital policy and 11 hours of pitocin; the unblocked mother endured a manual extraction of the placenta with resulting hemorrhage which lead to many interventions. However – her husband stayed with baby and I stayed with mom through it all. The only person in the room slightly unsympathetic was the OB on staff – who doesn’t really like the CNMs – but luckily her OB came in quickly to intervene and we were all understanding, respectful, and caring for this mother.
Despite a traumatic experience she is doing well and will be monitored by myself and her caregivers for ptsd and ppd. Care, respect, and dignity are important too.
My own recent birth experience did not go perfectly as planned but I had a supportive CNM, OB, husband, and Doula who protected me. Still dealing with PPD – but I have support.
Much love and empathy for you with this experience.
woooow.
I don’t really know why my midwife showed up…she was new to her own practice so I think she was covering her own butt for some reason.
Hey! I read your post through a friends facebook and just wanted to send you some positive energy in your healing journey and let you know that women DO matter! you and every woman who has birthed and to birth, matter sosososososomuch! and I hope that one day soon the medical staff will let go of their egos and their inabilities to understand that birth is a natural process, and let love and intuitive knowledge into their hearts! If you don’t already know this blog, I suggest checking it out! This woman is amazing. http://www.motherwitdoula.blogspot.com/
thank you for the thoughts and the link…I didn’t know about it!
It does matter, and we fail to realize that when we do not respect the autonomy of women, when we do not empower them to make the choice that best meet their needs (and that of their children) – there is damage, REAL damage. A healthy baby matters – but it isn’t all that matters…mom matters too and when her choice isn’t going to endanger the health of her child, it should be respected -FULLY.
Hugs.
*hugs back* Thank you so much.
I hear you. While I did not have the exact same experience, it was somehow similar. At the end, I cared about me and I am 100% happy of the choices I made. It made me a better person and therefore made me a better mother. It all comes from within right? So, yeah, I matter.
Amen.
I feel for you, I really do. I hope you find peace with the birth that was not what you planned on.
My first birthing went smoothly. It was in a hospital my daughter and I were both healthy. My 2nd birth, not so much. My twins were born healthy and hearty and I am glad for that. But after the birth, my blood pressure started to rise. The nurses said, Every Time they took it, that it was because the cuff was too small (I was reading in the 150/90 range) and went around trying out different cuffs until they found one that gave them a “normal” reading. Every time they took it, which was pretty often. I was released a couple of days later with this high BP; but what did I know. I’d never had a problem with it before and everyone said I’d be ok, including the doctor that gave me my walking papers. Less than a week later I was in the hospital again – I had heart failure and skyrocketing blood pressure (around 192/117). I was in the hospital for a week and no one thought I was going to survive. I was in the hospital. My 4 y/o daughter and husband were home with twin newborns. I cried constantly the whole time. It was devastating. 2 years later I was finally released from care from the renal dr and cardiac dr. To say the birth and aftermath were traumatic is an understatement. My little ones are now 3 and I still check my bp and heart rate and the strength of my heart beat all the time because “what if”.
I try to be at peace, I try to trust my body. I try to forgive the drs. and nurses. But why would anyone make the decisions they did? With a high risk pregnancy b/c of twins to boot. It still makes me angry and sad all this time later.
I’m there too….I try every day to just be ok with it and get past it. But sometimes it sneaks right up on me.
Thank you for writing this post. I too had a birth experience that was traumatic. I suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, postpartum depression that turned into Psychoses.
No one understood or was even willing to listen to me grieve the loss I felt or how I was violated . Which is why I feel that I got so sick. It wasn’t until I was hospitalized, stripped of my rights was someone willing to validate my feelings.
I became a doula to at least witness healthy births and to help heal mine. Over time I have accepted what was done to me and my child. But still grieve the lost of what could have been. And yes at times, cry when I see a mother birth the way she wanted to. Not for her but me.
I’m 30 Weeks pregnant now and most of my loves one doubt that I have the ability to give the birth the way I want too. But my hope is if I do not have my peaceful birth someone will check in with me rather then shut me up for feeling robbed. Again, thank you C Lo.
Thank YOU for stopping by and sharing. I’m always around to check in with if you’re feeling not so great after the baby comes. Here is hoping it goes smoothly and brings you some peace and empowerment.
Thank you C Lo <3
This is amazing. Thank you so much for posting! Though I can’t really relate to the trauma and PPD myself, (this is my first pregnancy,) I do sympathize. My mom had two hard hospital births with my siblings, after having planned homebirths.
I have been having trouble with people telling me that “a healthy baby is all that matters”, and a hospital is the “safest” place. I am so terrified of hospitals, I cannot imagine how upset I would be if I had to transfer.
It really feels great to have someone say that I matter, and that my birthing experience matters. With people telling me that I’m being selfish for wanting this to go the way I want it to it gets hard to be so secure in my own plans.
So thank you. This is amazing!
It can be really hard with your first, because we have this weird cultural norm to tell women “It’s too hard! You can’t do it!”
But……..it’s really not that bad. I lived through it. Three times even!
wow, that sounds like my birth experience. I still get upset about it. my doctor never said hello. all he said was “stop moving” and “hold her legs down” to the nurses.
I remember begging my doctor to let my fiance cut the cord. He didn’t. The doctor didn’t even hold up my son for me to see. All I could see were arms and legs shaking from a screaming baby behind the blanket draped across my legs.
I tore so bad. I asked how many stitches I was getting and my doctor said “enough.” I had to ask for a pain killer shot. My epidural fell out. The nurses didn’t believe me and didn’t check. The anesthesiologist came in to “remove” my epidural and said, “oh someone already did” the medicine for my epidural pooled on the mattress behind my bruised and bloodied back.
Apparently my episiotomy was not necessary, as my son’s head was already out. I’m not a doctor, I don’t get it. Isn’t the head the biggest part??? It took me over a month to sit without pain. almost 6 months to have sex without too much pain. and a year to wipe normally. Heck, I still get uncomfortable pulling a tampon out (2 years later).
It was nearly traumatic. Makes me want to have my next at home.
I have a few friends who’ve gone through the same thing. So so wrong and so unfair and awful.
*hugs*
I feel your pain. I also had a traumatic birth of my son, ending up with emergency c section when I’d planned a home birth. Everyone said I was lucky to have a healthy baby but I was devastated and felt so cheated and useless because I couldn’t fulfil my primary function to deliver a baby naturally. I couldn’t pick him up by myself for days, I felt useless.We do matter. I am still scarred and in tears thinking about his birth and he will be 15 on Sunday. x
Yes I had that same experience. After my last birth, I was basically useless for several weeks, and what a horrible feeling to have when you’ve just had a baby.
“Birth matters and moms matter.”
I absolutely agree. Amen to that.
Thanks!
BRILLIANT!!!!! I’ve had these same feelings and have wanted to write a post but struggled to convey it as perfectly and profoundly as you did! I’m so sorry for what you went through. I’m sorry you weren’t listened to and respected. A mother’s mental health is just as important as her physical health following birth. Thank you!
Thank you, I hope this helps someone out there.
I’m sorry, I have to be the lone negative voice here apparently.
I had an unmedicated (besides being induced), vaginal birth and what do I have to show for it? A child that suffered massive brain damage at birth (placental abruption + cord around neck = lack of oxygen) and almost died because of it. I would trade a scar on my belly and a shitty hospital experience ANY DAY, for a healthy baby. Because while you’re still upset about your shitty hospital experience (which I can certainly sympathize with), you have a perfectly functioning child sitting next to you. So to someone like me who has had to deal with severe birth trauma and the repercussions from it, you seem incredibly ignorant and selfish. Can you not appreciate what you have?
Olivia-
I am truly very sorry to hear about your son and your experience. But how does that makes the writer’s experience and feelings unimportant or beneath you? You were already in a hospital setting and that still didn’t change the result, sometimes bad things just happen and it’s not anyone’s fault, certainly not yours and certainly not this writer’s. It matters that all women have people to support them in getting the healthiest birth possible for both mom and baby in any setting, so everyone has a right to care about their treatment. The simple fact is that women are routinely treated with indifference and ignorance when it comes to birth and everyone needs to speak up. What happened to you and your son is tragic, but you are misplacing your hurt and anger by projecting it onto another mother and you have no right to. There is a time and place for c-sections in true emergencies like yours and that is when they are blessings, but for far, far too many women that is not how they end up there. Your birth scenario was a 1% chance, yet 1 in 3 women end up with a C-section because of the same kind of treatment this writer is sharing making it was completely unnecessary – that is not safe for anyone. And it puts the mom and her future children at risk during birth again, doesn’t that matter? It is selfish to only care about your experience.
I’m sorry, you didn’t specify son or daughter.
Also, this might be a good time to mention that placental abruption is a risk of overstimulating the uterus with induction, but honestly how many of us who’ve had an induction were told about any risks at all?
Yes, and induction also can decrease the amount of oxygen to the baby’s brain, b/c of falsely concocted contractions. Too bad they made you feel like it was your fault when it most certainly wasn’t.
I just read olivia’s birth story http://prairiebabydreams.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/crashing/ and it sounds like her anger should be directed toward the Dr that felt the need to induce her (what was the induction method?) and give her a shot of morphine. Neither of those things are ok for babies in utero. Maybe her son would have had problems one way or the other but i certainly would look into those 2 things as causes if i were in her shoes. Birth Matters is the latest book by Ina May Gaskins…
informed consent, its a humans rights issue.
<3 Ina May. I feel like her books and Henci Goers books should be required reading for ALL pregnant women.
Olivia, I am very glad you chimed in. I don’t like it when posts like these turn into a mutual admiration society…It’s good to share all sides and I hope that it can be a mutual conversation.
To me, it seems ignorant to say “I had an unmedicated birth besides being induced”. That’s VERY hard on you AND baby. It’s a medical intervention. So………you didn’t have an unmedicated birth but I applaud you if you labored through induced contractions without pain relief. Those type of contractions are WAY harder than natural ones. Wow.
It also seems like comparing apples and oranges to make the leap in logic that I somehow don’t appreciate my children because I had a bad (or good) birth. Of course I appreciate them and love them more than anything. Having my amazing adorable feisty little redheaded baby is what makes that awful experience easier to handle.
And my whole point, really, is about when the baby turns out ok………..not when the rare circumstances happen where babies DONT turn out ok. That’s a whole different situation and I hope you see that.
I feel for you. I also had a placental abruption. I chose to have my twins at home because I had my first baby at home and it was fantastic. Also, the OB/GYN at the hospital refused to let me have a drug free birth. Negotiating wasn’t on the agenda. They also wanted me to have a planned c-section because my first twin was breech. So I knew that if I went to the hospital I had no chance or very little chance of having a gentle birth. I looked at the risks of both type of birth and opted for a home-birth with two experiences midwives and a doula. My breech twin was born without any problems however I had a placental abruption and I lost my second baby. You can read my story on my blog if you wish. As weird at it may sound I grieve my son everyday but not my choice. I do not believe the Dr would have saved my baby. I do believe I would have had a very similar result and a very traumatic hospital experience though. Placental abruptions are quite rare and when they happen the baby has little chance of survival without brain damage. Because I had a drug free birth I do not wonder “what if” I hadn’t taken this or accepted that. I had the birth I had and what happened happened because it was meant to be that way. My birth workers were and are still amazing to this day. Having the Major Crime squad interrogating us for hours afterwards was more traumatic than the birth and the loss of my little baby. It seems that home-birthers are not allowed to loose a baby and all hospital births are safe.
And this is my story…
http://www.anniebourgault.com/2011/08/twin-birth-grieving-my-son.html
Don’t take me wrong. Oh my God! I’m grieving and so wish things would be different. I’m not angry at my birth workers or the hospital just so very very sad.
I’m sorry to hear you had such an awful experience, but there have been so many statistics that have proven (unless presence of a true medical emergency) medical induction is not really a safe decision for mother OR baby. Ruptured uterus and dead baby can result from cytotec and that just sounds like a bad time to me. Perhaps, you’ve seen The Business of Being Born? As the author writes, it’s a very intelligent documentary. It sounds like you have some birth trauma of your own to work through. Perhaps you could reach out to women in your area to help?
After my first birth ended in an unplanned, forced c-section from a failed induction I was left feeling very broken. Everyone said– but you have a healthy baby! It made my skin crawl. No one understood. The only thing I felt I could do to right this ‘wrong’ was to change things the 2nd time. I delivered another healthy baby at home, in water, with an amazing midwife and doula and I felt fantastic– mentally and physically. Birth trauma is real and people need to respect it!
WOO!!! Congrats on your second birth, that is awesome!
This post is amazing, and so needed. I, as with so many other mothers, have a similar but different story to tell about the birth of my son, and telling that is not easy, and still catches in my throat 5 years after the event. Thank you for writing this, and you are so right, of course mothers matter, women matter. xxx
Thank you, thank you…….*hug*
Well, this story actually sounds close to mine, except I didn’t get the ‘luxury’ to tear – my 10lb daughter was stuck and unfortunately, I had a Navy “Dr” who had never delivered a baby before & she panicked — while SCREAMING for the on duty Civilian Dr, she took a scalpel and cut me from alpha to bravo! Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Civilian Dr. came in, threw my knees behind my ears and ripped my child out. When I ask what sex the baby was, my (now ex) husband answered “We’ll be lucky if she lives….” She was a blue baby from being stuck for so long IN A HOSPITAL! I had dreamed of having a baby in the tub – but the military will not cover expenses for that – and I suppose I was ‘lucky’ to be in a hospital w/ her being stuck and all — but I wish I had a real Dr deliver her (mine was golfing or something equally important in his life).
My child has issues – and I truly believe this traumatic birth has something to do w/ it.
OH, and my vagina is NOT right any more. While the ‘Dr.’ was stitching me up, with all the compassion of a Boy Scout sewing a patch onto a vest, I said “I am so getting my tubes tied.” To which she responded “You’ll change your mind in two weeks.” BTW – those are the ONLY words she spoke to me the entire time she was in my room. And I am pretty sure she purposely did a terrible ‘repair’ job.
I don’t often share this story – it scares those who have never given birth and for those who have – they are just thankful it wasn’t them! So, thank you for writing this & giving me an opportunity to share as well! I am sorry that we have this type of story in common…..
*hug*
I think more women have this type of thing in common but its true……….it’s hard to talk about and often we are made to feel insignificant and selfish for being sad about it.
Thank you for writing this, so well. You’re so right. I’m sorry things happened that way. x
Thank you. I’m doing ok now.
Thank you for Sharon your story. We are misguided with “all that matters is a healthy mom, healthy baby”. That’s the bare minimum, not all that matters! Nature has set birth up to have a profound impact on mothering skills, mother/child connection, and psycho and physiological health. The quality of the life of mom and baby from that time forward are significantly influenced by the birth. Birth DOES matter. It is not a SELFISH pursuit of an experience. It is a critical juncture of mama instinct, mama empowerment, mama attachment for future protection and nurturing of young, and establishment of health in baby. When we “manage” this process there are consequences. “Just being grateful we have a healthy baby” is NOT right- telling our birth story to a compassionate community of women is right. Grieving aloud and advocating for the next mama giving birth is right. Telling women and the world that birth matters is right! Thanks so much for posting.
Sorry- thanks for “sharing” not Sharon
Yes yes yes……….I had wanted to talk about the hormones involved in birth but then this got really long but YES! Thank you for your comment/contribution!
Right on! after two traumatic births, I am venturing into natural birth and have been told nothing matters other than a healthy baby and that I am in fact being SELFISH in insisting that I not be torn apart by the medical community again. I’m sorry you had this experience, but very glad you’ve done something like this with it! <3 much love <3
Thank you.
Much love and health to you for this time around.
Thank you for this! I’m so sorry you had such a traumatic experience!
I’m due with twins. I have 6 other children, all born vaginally, my last at home. I’m so scared this time of having a bad birth experience. My husband told me yesterday that all that matters is everyone is healthy, which to me is him saying that *my* experience & feelings about it don’t. I’m prepared to put up a fight for what I need & want. I’ve hired a doula to be there too. Here’s hoping for a great birth!
Indeed………..sending positive thoughts your way. I know I’d be a bit more scared, too, if it was a multiple birth. Good luck and thank you for stopping in and sharing.
I just gave birth to my 3rd baby 12 days ago. Like you, my second was the perfect home waterbirth that I planned for and I prayed that my third would be just as smooth and wonderful. But, as you said, the best laid plans and all that. I had to transfer to the hospital after 30 hours of my water being broken and having little to no contractions the entire time. My son’s heart rate was decreasing significantly with every contraction and they ended up having to take him by c-section. However, the difference in my story and yours is that I felt supported the entire way. I felt that the people caring for me, both my midwife and the doctors and nurses at the hospital I transferred to, wanted what I wanted and were disappointed for me that I was unable to deliver at home the way I had planned. They asked my opinion and explained things thoroughly every step of the way. Instead of feeling like a failure I ended up feeling like my body protected my son by NOT contracting on its own, since the pitocin-induced contractions were causing the cord (that was wrapped tightly around his neck twice) to hurt him every single time. I am thankful that I have a healthy baby. But I am still sad I didn’t get the birth I would have chosen.
And I’m so sad for you that you had to feel so trampled on by those who should have cared for you in such a vulnerable time.
Wow, that must have been scary. With my second, my water broke and labor didn’t start right away either and that was a tense several hours until it did, at least in my head.
I’m glad you had a “good” hospital experience. I bet they are possible (as has been shown in this thread) but I think they are still rare.
This is VERY true. And I’ll tell you why…. because even when your son dies during labor – like mine did – being respected and cared for during the birth gives you the power to say…. if I can give birth under those circumstances then I can recover from the horrible aching loss of my son. I had planned for a home birth, but when my midwife couldn’t find a heartbeat (a knot in his cord had cut off the circulation before she ever got there and before I was even in hard labor.) we rocketed ourselves to the hospital. Besides the newbie Dr. (he graduated med school just 3 months before my birth) who was at a complete loss as to how to help me and hadn’t learned anything about bedside manners yet everyone was wonderful. And the Dr. was only there for about 5 mins of the entire labor and delivery. And he did respect me when I said no and when I told him what things I wanted. My nurses were amazing and considerate. My family surrounded me with love and also grief of course. I labored naturally in the shower of the hospital room for hours and hours. And when I said to my nurse, “I need a break, I’m exhausted. I’d like to go ahead and have an epidural” (even tho I was already almost 9cm) no one asked questions or argued with me. They just did what I asked. And in just 3 pushes, less than 10 mins I pushed my lifeless son out with almost no tearing. The Dr. put a few stitches in me and left the nurses to finnish helping me. I know the searing pain of loss (am still dealing with it as it has only been almost 10months)… but I have no doubt that my birth and myself being respected have played a huge part in my recovery. I have still had to grieve over not having the beautiful homebirth I planned, but it was the best hospital birth anyone could really ask for.
I honestly feel incredibly lucky that you came and shared that. Thank you and sending peace your way.
Thank you for putting this into words. I work in a labor and delivery department and hear this ALL the time. I have had a hard time explaining this to the people I work with. I think I’m going to print this an put it in our staff lounge. Hopefully it will make people think before they put there foot in their mouth and say “Nothing else matters as long as there is a healthy baby”.
Thank you so much. That was one of the hardest things about my experience, my treatment by the staff.
I agree that it does matter, so sorry for your terrible experience. While a healthy baby is something to rejoice in, there is more to the situation than just the baby, there’s the mom.
Thank you for stopping in and for the support.
I so completely understand. My birth experience was terrible. The feelings you described were mine as well – in my case, I gave birth prematurely and it all went very fast. I felt like I was just caught in the current and had to go with it.
The care I received at the hospital was crappy to say the least, while some of the equipment was old and broken (my bed, our locker, the milk pump… appalling!). This hospital has one of the best reputations in Quebec. What a crock. I managed to leave the hospital early. Thank God I had mentioned it to my gynecologist the week before, so I told everyone she had given me the OK to leave. I had been to the hospital many times through my pregnancy, and left frustrated too many times. I already knew that it would be a very poor experience – I had experienced how they treated their patients. I was not wrong.
Like you, I grieved for many months. I couldn’t look at my son and not recall this experience – nothing like the “birth bliss” everyone talks about. I cried, locked in the bathroom, in the shower, sometimes even when feeding him, hating myself for it, hating the fact that he might interpret my sadness as being directed at him.
I think I am finally over it, 11 months later. But I was angry for a very long time at the hospital for “robbing me” of the joy of childbirth. I am 42 and may or may not have another chance. But if I do, I plan on a home birth, without question.
Thanks for sharing. It must’ve been painful to write down (tears are welling up in my eyes as I type… maybe I’m not completely over it), especially since society has us trained to believe that anything else than a hospital delivery might put the baby at risk. But what about the mom’s well-being? Too right.
I had tears in my eyes reading this. Yes……….yes to all of this. That’s exactly how I felt for a long time. My baby is now 3 and really it’s just NOW that I can talk about it and be more “ok” with it.
*hugs*
Thank you! I’ve needed to read this article! I’ve been lamenting the way in which my son came into the world for almost three years. This helps!
Good I’m glad. Thank you for stopping in.
I just had to share this! So beautifully written! I’m on my 3rd pregnancy and planning my first home birth. My first 2 were born in the hospital vaginally with an epidural both times. My first experience I grieved, my 2nd was a decent experience, but I always longed for a home birth. This pregnancy wasn’t planned, but I’m so excited for the possibility of having my “dream birth”. Nobody really understands while you can have a healthy baby that you can feel that deep need for a good birth experience and even without “trauma”, you can still want more for yourself and birth experience. Thank you for writing this!
Thank you. Having had a totally empowering birth the first and second time and KNOWING how it can be, that made that 3rd one that much harder to deal with. Good luck on your #3.
Cristin I could have written your response word for word. Blessings on your 3rd, I am due with my 3rd and first homebirth in Nov, as well.
I’m so sorry to hear about your birth, that is awful! It pisses me off when I hear about the extremely low quality of care women get at the hospital. That midwife sounds crappy too. Did you have that same midwife for your second birth or did you have to find a new one? The midwife situation in this country is ridiculous as well with most of them having to work secretly making it so hard to find one. I was having a homebirth for my second and was kind of assigned a midwife through a local group that helps women who are planning homebriths. This midwife seemed a little off to me but I wanted a homebirth SO bad, I was willing to just go with it, and it wasn’t really bad, she just had strange required reading, very strict sleep and diet requirements, would try to get all in my business and even asked me about my sex life (stuff that had nothing to do with helping me have a baby). I thought things were going good and then one day I got an email from her saying she had to terminate our agreement and couldn’t see me anymore, that things just weren’t working out with us. wtf?!? I was beyond angry, I was 7 months pregnant and now had to scramble to find a midwife and it seemed as though my homebirth was not going to happen. Luckily my wonderful doula who had been at my first birth got me in touch with another midwife and I ended up having a truly great homebirth, and I am still friends with my midwife. I was bitter and angry about the first midwife for a long time but then I realized her doing that to me was probably the best thing that could have happened, she really did me a favor by walking out on me. Because she was not right, and I’m sure it would have affected the birth like it did with you…ok sorry for my rambling, I wish you could have had access to a better midwife
I had a different midwife with #3 than I did with #2, and that was a mistake. My new midwife was a NEW midwife and unsure of herself and just not a good match for me AT ALL. ugh.
That sounds like a crazy situation. But I’m glad you ended up with a good birth.
I completely agree that birth matters, but I feel guilty complaining about my birth experience because I have friends who wanted to have a natural birth and were not able to because of complications and they had a c-section. Now I feel like I have no right to complain considering my baby was healthy and did not need to go the NICU or be life flighted to another hospital or worse. On the other hand, I feel like since my pregnancy and labor were completely uncomplicated, picture perfect, I should have been able to have the birth that I wanted. I did not feel like I was treated like a human being with feelings who mattered during the biggest event in my life. I made my wishes known from the beginning and they were ignored. I said I wanted to labor naturally, but was constantly being offered pain medication and told to lay back in the bed, even though that made it impossible to deal with the contractions. I was also told that I needed to be started on pitocin, which I was completely against because it was 100% unnecessary and based on someone else’s timeline. The nurses continuously ignored me and would not even get me a glass of water after my baby was born. I just felt like I should have been treated better and my wishes should have been respected. I definitely would never birth in that hospital again.
It is the most vulnerable you will probably ever be in your life, not to mention one of the most personal, emotional experiences you’ll ever have………..and it is SUCH a disrespected experience. It’s horrible.
Wow. There are a lot of similarities between your birth and my own, which was my first. I had made all the plans, preparations, and commitments to an all-natural labor and delivery, and in the end, I was COMPLETELY pushed aside, ordered around, poked, prodded, hushed up, and screamed at… then once the baby was born, I was ignored, pushed on, poked and prodded some more, and oh yea, ignored some more. It was unbelievably traumatic, both physically and emotionally. It’s over a year now, and yes, I am still very much dealing with some issues (physical and emotional) because of my birth.
My husband and I are talking about TTC Baby #2 which I am soooo ready to welcome, but at the same time, the level of fear/anxiety that still lingers in my heart and mind from the trauma of my first birth is a force to be reckoned with.
I know I will do everything I can to choose a care provider I trust this time around, and I pray it will be empowering, not humiliating and abusive, as my first one was.
Yep yep yep. I think so many women just ACCEPT that treatment as part of the package and don’t even question it. It’s so awful.
AMEN!!
I am so sorry you had such an awful experience
. You’re right, birth DOES matter and moms DO matter.
I had my daughter at home and it was wonderful. I grew up in the Netherlands and when I moved to the States, I knew I’d never give birth in a hospital here for the exact reasons you talk about.
I had my second son in a tub at home………I know how it’s SUPPOSED to be so maybe that’s why #3 was so hard for me to deal with even though it wasn’t THAT bad in the grand scheme of things.
Hospitals here scare the bejeezus out of me.
I’m so glad I came across this..I had a horrible birthing experience 3 years ago almost to the day. For this reason, I have not been able to have more children because I am so scared for the labour. I had my beautiful daughter naturally with midwives and do not regret that, but many things went wrong for ME. My daughter was healthy and fine, but my body was in a million pieces. Thank you for sharing your story, it helps to know I am not alone.
*hug*
I hope you heal and get some peace, mama. Happy birthing day to you……….
Thank you for writing this. It really resonated for me. I recently read an article that compared a disrespected birth to a rape. No one would ever say to a rape victim, “You are alive and healthy, so why are you upset?”. That is basically how we treat moms that experience disrespected births. I have a son who I love and adore. Im lucky enough to live in a large city with good options when it comes to obstetric care. When we choose an ob that ends up putting our life and the life of our baby at risk, with are supporting this model not just for ourselves, but for future mothers. If women stopped patronizing these doctors, because let’s face it at the end of the day this is about money not about care, these doctors would go away. For my next birth, if I’m lucky enough to have another one, I will be going to a midwife group affiliated with our local university hospital.
That’s a very good point. Feelings are feelings and it’s really never ok to tell someone who feels traumatized to just suck it up and deal.
Great post. Thank you for admitting the emperor has no clothes. I think in our society it is a hard idea to get our heads around — after all, mothers are all about self-sacrifice. …Well, sometimes, it’s like with the oxygen masks in an airplane: put your own on before you help put the child’s on. OF COURSE a healthy baby is what matters to us most — we’re MOTHERS after all. But how do we get there?
We have to look out for the mothers, that’s how.
Yeah….we live in this culture of worshiping doctors and thinking they can do no wrong. This is a person who’s income depends on us needing them………OF COURSE they are going to look out for that first. I think we’ve kind of gotten ourselves into trouble with the whole “not questioning doctors” thing. It doesn’t really make sense considering how much effort we put into researching everything else.
THANK YOU! Thank you for sharing this!!!! I’ve had to hear that mantra “you have healthy babies and that is all that matters” from so many and while I am SO SO SO grateful for my twins, I still feel robbed and violated whenever I think about their birth. They may be my only children, and so that was my only birth experience and I can’t even bear to remember it or I start shaking and feel my blood pressure rising.
Like you, I was bullied, ignored, and ultimately, treated with nothing short of negligent care (I nearly died from repeated post-partum hemorrhages that the nurses completely missed because they weren’t checking on me). And my babies were taken from me and when I asked if I could see them I was LAUGHED AT and told “uh, No!” in this awful sardonic voice by this cruel nurse whose face I will never forget. She looked at me like I was asking her to hand over her life savings. Like my question to see my new little babies was a joke.
I won’t even go into the rest of my birth “story” because I don’t want to relive it but let’s just say that the ONLY time I was given the time of day was when I shouted that I was going to aspirate on my own vomit and then projectile vomited all over the nurse in her sterile scrubs (which admittedly, was satisfying). I actually feel like “birth rape” wouldn’t be too far off the mark for my experience, and while my babies are happy and healthy now, it took a 10 day stay in NICU (because the nurse overfed her) for my daughter, and 10 day stay in ICU for me (because the doctor gave me contraindicative medicines during my transfusion) and it took THREE months for me to be able to finally nurse my babies because of all the separation, stress and physical trauma.
I hope someday I can have more babies (come on lottery winnings!) so I can experience an empowering birth. I hope EVERYONE considering their birth experience gives pause before going to a hospital and looks into home birth or birth centre birth and stays away from OBs and obstetric nurses if they have a normal healthy pregnancy.
Oh my gosh.
I hate hearing stories like this. I hate that they are so common. I am so so so so sorry you had to go through that. That is just horrible. I am so sorry.
Thank you for this! I found myself nodding in agreement the entire time. I had a terrible, just terrible experience with my first. I felt like my wishes were ignored, and I was mocked for feeling the way I felt…add onto that the 163 stitches I left the hospital with, it was an emotional experience. I was determined to have the birth experienced that I desired with my second, and thankfully, I did it. It was a healing experience, there’s no other way for me to describe it. The emotions I felt did matter, my opinion mattered, and while I was thankful for my healthy child…I was also thankful to be able to feel my own emotions, and feel the healing that took place.
Oh hon….
I’m glad you healed up and had some good experiences after that 1st one.That takes a LOT of guts to go that route after such a hard first time……you’re awesome.
Thanks for writing this article. It rings really true for me. I too was transferred to the hospital by my midwife, and still had a natural birth there. They say I was lucky…I think fear drives a lot of women to be transferred by their midwives to the hospital. And that fear took me over too. I could have checked myself out, but I didn’t. It is my hope that with each generation, there will be less unnecessary hospital transfers. Living in Mexico, after my birth in the US has given an interesting window: in Mexico the midwives seem less concerned about long births, but the fear of prosecution and lawsuits in absent too.
That’s a really good point….so much of our current state of OB care is driven by money and lawsuits and NOT what is healthiest and safest for mom and baby.
C Lo – thank you so much for writing this. I am so sorry to hear of your experience with your third child and I appreciate the courage it takes to talk about it. And of course – you are so right – birth DOES matter. On every page of our website we have written at the top of the page : “At Birthtalk we know that BIRTH MATTERS and how we feel about our births is IMPORTANT.”. It is on every page for a reason – because it is true, and because so many women need to hear it.
I found it out the hard way with my own birth centre-transfer-caesarean 12 years ago. I have since gone on to have 2 empowering hbacs – wonderful experiences that ultimately confirmed to me just how much birth does matter, as the impact of these births was just as massive, but in a positive rather than negative way.
We began Birthtalk 9 years ago, as I did not want any woman to feel the isolation I felt in the aftermath of a traumatic birth. For that reason, it is so important that stories like yours are heard, and I appreciate you sharing, as you are enabling other women to come forward and be validated, and perhaps ending their own isolation.
We have a blog called “The Truth About Traumatic Birth – what you need to know on the healing journey”. You might be interested to read this post in particular : http://birthtraumatruths.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/two-traumatic-births-ten-years-of-silence-why-author-emily-woof-is-a-woman-wronged/, as we challenge the myth that ‘home birth is guaranteed to be a non-traumatic birth’, when it so depends on the relationship you have with your carer, as you were saying you have now discovered. I have included an extract here :
“…when she hired a homebirth midwife, she was let down here, too. Ms Woof expressed her concerns about the size of her baby, an understandable worry, especially as she had felt concerned that she was quite small. But rather than being given validation for her concerns and reassured with further information ,she is admonished for not trusting nature. Fact is – why should she trust nature, if the midwife hasn’t given her any information – factual information – that would enable nature to earn that trust? So that worry about the baby’s size, rather than being put to rest, now lies uneasily in the back of Ms Woof’s mind. And, I can imagine, a bigger worry – that she is not being listened to. That her midwife is not taking her seriously. That she cannot ‘be herself’ and ask the questions she needs to ask, and open up to the tiniest of concerns that she may have. If she cannot be herself during the pregnancy with this midwife…what will it be like in birth, when we are required to be the most vulnerable many of us have ever been? Birth needs to be an ‘opening up’, but already, Ms Woof was required to close herself up, and not, as she described it, ‘question the faith’.
This brings more questions to mind. Did this midwife enable Ms Woof and her husband to work through the fears raised by the hospital antenatal education? Was she given the chance to see that birth is not about control, but about surrendering control, once we are in a safe space & have correct information? And did Ms Woof, indeed, feel safe? She dilated beautifully. Her body did an amazing job. And then progress stopped. To me, I can see many reasons why this might have happened. The most obvious may be that perhaps Ms Woof was not in a position to ‘open up’, emotionally and physiologically, when she was being ill-supported. Who would want to open up to a birth carer who pooh-poohs a woman’s fears about birth?”
So again, thank you for writing this article. As you can see from the comments you are receiving, it is resonating with women everywhere. In case anyone is looking for support or direction in their healing, we now specialise in ‘Healing From Birth”, and have Tips for Healing, FAQ About Healing, & Birthing Again FAQs on our website – I have included the link here to the “Healing From Birth” section : http://birthtalk.org/BirthWasntGreat.html
Best wishes in your healing journey
Melissa
Oh thank you! This is some great information and a great site!
It’s really too bad that so many women relate to this situation. It always makes me wonder when we are going to stand up and stop taking this kind of treatment.
Thank you for so bravely and honestly sharing.
I think this message is particularly important for women who have planned VBAC’s and ended up with repeat CS. I have a few friends that this has happened to. For me to understand, validate and acknowledge their feelings has been wonderful for them. Everyone around them is telling them they should be grateful, but I know they are scarred in more places than just their uterus.
I have also had “be thankful you are not in Africa, where women and babies are dying every day, you are lucky you have the luxury to whinge about your birthing ‘experience’” So deeply dismissive of the very real feelings that I have about my traumatic birth.
Hugs to you mama, lets hope that the wider public will eventually realise that the journey matters, not just the destination.
Yes and thank you.
I always hear a lot of “Well, a 100 years ago women were always dying so you’re just lucky!”
With no actual regard for REAL history or facts. *sigh*
I so agree with the statements in this article. Thank you for articulating what so many women feel.
Even though it kind of stinks that it’s this way, I’m glad that this is helpful for someone. It kind of stinks that so many women relate to this, though.
I had tears in my eyes after reading this. If I could track you down and give you a big hug, I would. Nobody deserves to go through what you went through. Im so sick of “health professionals” being so high on themselves and their attitude of “I know best so just shut up and listen to me”, that they forget about why they became doctors/nurses. To help their patients. To work with their patients. To actually give a shit about their patients. I’m horrified by this story. Most of my friends don’t understand my passion for pregnancy and babies. The one’s that do, understand what’s really going on. It’s not about birth anymore. It’s about our rights to our own bodies and making our own decisions.
Thank you. It’s 3 years later now and I’m actually finally doing ok with it.
This is just the norm for care now and so many women just accept it. I think there is an aspect of having someone take care of you and be responsible that is appealing……….but it’s just not worth this.
After almost 24 years as a homebirth midwife, who has had 4 cesctions, I know how important how a mom births, and how she feels about, DO matter. It matters for and to her, her baby, any other children, her spouse, the list goes on and on…. I have hundreds of stories about how a family birthed changed them and literally made them new people…. America has to stop looking at the profit line regarding maternity care and start looking at the M&M (morbidity and mortality) stats and the growing problems of disconnected parents! BIRTH MATTERS!!!
AMEN!
That’s one thing that honestly just makes me sad………..my first and second births were just LIFE CHANGING and I think they made me a better mother and a better person. To have knowledge of the strength you are capable of is an amazing, life altering thing. It truly makes me sad that MOST women never experience that and never realize what they are capable of.
thank you. you’ve put into words what i’ve been struggling with. my first hospital ob birth was the worst so far, the second still not what it should have been. trying a third time at home with a midwife that i trust will respect me.
it’s been over 4 years and still trying to process that first birth. currently crafting a letter to that delivering ob in my head to see if that doesn’t help release and heal some of what he did. same goes for the hospital midwife that attended my 2nd birth.
I did the same thing with the last one…………I wrote a letter to the midwife. I never sent it but I didn’t know if I would or not at the time. Getting it out on paper was a HUGE help and a HUGE release for me.
Good luck w/ #3.
I’m conflicted on this. Birth DOES matter. I gave birth in a teaching hospital where EVERYTHING was an experiment or a study. Parts of my birth experience were great (I had compassionate nurses & a great doc. My birth coach was an RN & she was on duty when I checked in to the hospital. She over-stayed her shift by 12 hours to be with me all the way to the end. That was wonderful. The negative parts were difficult & years later I still wish I could have/would have changed them. BUT……a healthy, LIVING baby IS what matters most. You realize this when the baby you carry for 9 months dies, for no discernible reason, right at birth. At that point…..the birth experience comes pretty damn low in priorities. At that time, you’d take the coldest, most unfeeling birth experience just to have your baby alive..
Yes Birth matters. Birthing mothers matter. Living, healthy babies matter THE MOST.
I think those two things are apples and oranges. I know that I’m specifically talking about situations where “in the end there is a healthy baby”, because that’s what generates the dismissive statement “all that matters is a healthy baby”.
When you step into a situation where you lose your child, that’s an entirely different situation.
But I have to say………my best friend lost her twin sons at 20 weeks and had to deliver them. And while, yes, the most important thing in that situation would have been being able to have her sons with her today…….she was treated horribly by her OB/GYN. Just awful. Of course she doesn’t really mention it much, but I can’t help but think the entirety of that situation impacted her and her grieving. Even in that, she should have been treated better.
I’m not really referring to situations where babies die in this article, though. Those are still, thankfully, the exception to the rule.
That is a good response to the comment above. In my own experience, one of my babies died in-utero at 19 weeks. How I gave birth to that baby was as important to me as all my other 4 births. Thankfully for me the medical people were falling over themselves to honour my wishes because they felt so sorry for me. I gave birth naturally and delivered placenta naturally. One nurse tried to push drugs on me but I knew I had to experience the birth fully conscious and present….to feel all the grief then in the moment, rather than being out of it, repressing things and having issues for years. They even left the room when I told them to and my husband and I delivered the baby ourselves. Even in these situations birth matters – even more than usual I would argue because the mother’s experience will affect her grieving process, and whether she will be able to face having more children.
Yes, birthing mothers and birth is important, I fully agree. I have heard some terrible birth stories!
I will admit first that I have not read every comment before posting, so forgive me if this has already been bought up.
I fell pregnant naturally, was healthy for the first part of both pregnancies and then discovered preaclampsia with both. I was hospitalised at 42 weeks with my 1st and induced using the cervical gel, which started my contractions without further intervention. three hours later I had a healthy baby boy after a stress free, minimal intervention labour.
My second birth was induced with the gel again at 42 weeks. My body lacks the ability to start labour naturally, they believe. I don’t release the hormones necissary. My son was in distress before my contractions began. I laboured for 12 hours with no pain relief, with regular checks of the oxygen levels in babys blood (Im not sure of the technical term of it, but they were putting tiny ‘nicks’ in his head skin to check the oxygyen) because his heartbeat was so low by that point. I pushed for an hour with a room full of 10 specialists watching me, because I had put my foot down and said I would not have a c-section. My son was born dead, and it took 13 minutes for him to be revived. He now has developmental delays, and at nearly 3, has very limited vocabulary and understanding.
If I had gone through with the csection, there is a 95% chance that my son would have been born completely normal, and I would not have to face the heartache I feel every day knowing that my stubborness more than likely caused the problems my son will have to live with for the rest of his life. If I could go back and do it again, I would have taken the csection when they offered it. My decision lead to the pain of my child, not me, which is wrong.
Thank you for coming and sharing.
I’d like to start off by saying it is the fetus, not the mother, that releases hormones that initiate labor. Recent studies have shown that the lungs of the baby release hormones that start labor in mom. So………as a general rule, if your body doesn’t go into labor, it’s because the baby isn’t ready.
Your situations may the exception to that rule but if that’s the case then thats what they are………..the exception, not the rule.
That cervical gel is highly questionable as far as it’s results and impact on baby. I *personally* would never allow it in my body. Doctors are aware of this and STILL use it.
It sounds like you were given a lot of bad information and now you feel like you did something wrong and in reality……..you had caregivers who may have left things out of the facts they gave you. They should have known better, not you.
It’s a hard thing because as harsh as it sounds, women really do need to be educating themselves more, but we live in a culture that just doesn’t encourage that. So for now we are relying on doctors and then stuff like this happens.
I thank you for stopping by and sharing your story and I hope you get some peace with your experience and I hope your family heals.
It’s so sad that what you’re saying isn’t common knowledge. I know how you feel – I’ve just recently had to go through yet another cesarean after trying to have a HBAC. I never thought once that I couldn’t do it, until it became evident that I just couldn’t. I don’t know what went wrong, but I think about it every day. I held my baby and I cried as I told him I was sorry I couldn’t birth him how he should have been born, but am grateful that at least this time I was able to give it my all. There’s empowerment in that, even if there is also loss.
xx
*hug*
I’m really glad you can get some empowerment out of that. And I’m so sorry your vbac didn’t work out for you. Sometimes that happens………I’m glad you’re ok today.
I can’t tell u how many times I heard this after a premature induction of my twins resulted in cord prolapse and a general anesthetic for me as my Doula, husband and 16 yr old waited helPlessly. My 16 yr old was an induction as well, followed by 24+ hours of dry posterior labour, forceps, episiotomy and stitches. Hence the 16 yr break in having more children. The fear mongering that led me to the hospital that day to induce my twins turned out to be complete mistruth, ultrasound tech had made a mistake and came up with that 1 of my twins had not grown in 2 weeks. If I could tell anyone anything about birth it is simply this: it is a natural process that needs little intervention. Yes, it is painful but it is empowering. I wish I had been allowed just once to experience a truely natural birth.
In all truth, no one should be allowed to do anything… You should choose for yourself your own terms, not be allowed xyz.
yes, that’s something that I’ve learned lately……….we have so much language in reference to birth that is about someone else “letting” or “allowing” a laboring woman to do something. ugh.
I really think you’ve looked at that saying from the wrong side of the coin. I lost a baby this summer. There were some instances in my pregnancy where, if my educated concerns had been heeded over policy my daughter might have been saved, but we’re talking about birth here.
My water broke at 20 weeks due to an incompetent cervix, unaccompanied by any type of labor. At that point, there was nothing more anyone could do for her. My options were to induce or wait for labor to come on its own, knowing it could take up to a week and doing so would risk both my life and any future chances of having children. I agreed to induce, but otherwise refused any kind of drugs. I bore my daughter in complete silence apart from necessary communication. I was absolutely terrified. I’d done some reading, but I hadn’t taken any classes and I wasn’t sure I knew what to do. Both the nurse and midwife who had been tending to me were attending live births (deemed so much higher priority) and our families had left to give us some space. And so my daughter was born with just my husband and I, as drug free as I could manage it. I didn’t grunt or moan and she didn’t cry. She never even took a breath.
But here’s the thing: It really doesn’t matter whether things went down as I had hoped or not. My daughter is dead and that’s really all that has mattered. In that moment and even now, I would have taken all the traumatic, medicalized, unempowered births on the planet if it could have saved my sweet Elizabeth. You have no idea how fortunate you really were. You were traumatized by a birth, I was traumatized by a birth. You left the hospital with a healthy child, I left the hospital with empty arms and a death certificate.
Amy Phoenix has written something that touched me very deeply. She helps women heal their birth trauma among other things. Hope this can help all of us because we need it more than ever…because whatever your story is, birth does matter. Love to all of you.
Angela,
yours is a very sad story indeed, one that no one can grasp the intensity and pain of what you’ve been through, and I do believe that we are all so very sorry for you, you husband, your baby, family and friends.
As we cannot compare apples and pears, we cannot compare our pains and losses, because they are ours and nothing will take them away or change the way we feel about them.
Of course you would have given up anything for the life of your little Elizabeth, you are a mother! At the same time you took the right decision when it came to induction, one that restores hope and life and future ahead of both of you.
This wasn’t about a birth that went wrong or just simply traumatizing by its lack of humane and respectful attitudes from a hospital staff. Your case has a different origin all together, which has been clearly identified and from now on can be dealt with accordingly in the eventuality of new pregnancies, and there’s where the positive lies, even if it is too early for you to see it.
Seventeen years ago I too had a very traumatic birth which left me severely scarred, both psychologically and physically, and it took me 15 years to be able to heal that pain, a path that went from realizing that I had been denied access to birthing in an empowering and dignified way, suffering from neglect, fear and panic, verbal abuse and unskilled stitching by a careless obstetrician, lead to ‘accept’ that because my baby was alive and healthy I had no right to consider complaining… to trying to overcome the whole ordeal on my own just so I could try again and give birth on my terms, which fortunately I did, many years later…
Don’t get me wrong, but we all know how fortunate we are to leave the hospital with a healthy baby in our arms, and I know that we all hurt deeply when we come across unfortunate events such as the one you encountered.
There is a very fine line in birthing and basically we all come face to face with it. Only a truly informed, fully engaged and empowered labor can liberate us enough to go through it with confidence and serenity. All the ingredients I did not posses during the birth of my first child…
That’s why it is important for all of us to bring it up, talk about and explore the reasons, the causes, the outcomes, the pains and the joys, just so we can all help each other to hopefully one day be able to fully live our births in pride and joy!
Peace!
I have every idea of how fortunate I really am. I am very sorry for your situation but it’s entirely unfair of you to assume that those of us who got our healthy babies don’t appreciate what we have. I understand you are angry and grieving and sad……….but that’s yours.
I watched my best friend go through the exact same thing you did, only with twins. Her sons died in utero a few days apart and she was made to carry her sons until her doctor could “allow” her to deliver them. That woman is like a sister to me……closer than most of my family in fact. It wasn’t my experience but it’s as close as I’ll ever be to it and it was truly a nightmare. And yes, it made me appreciate my children that much more. I think as mothers, we are all acutely aware that your situation is a possibility. And I think that for *most* of us it’s always in the back of our heads and it makes us hold our babies that much closer.
That said………..those situations are the exception, not the rule, and not what I am referring to in my article. I’m talking about when you DO end up with a healthy baby………..the dismissive attitude society has towards mothers AT THAT POINT.
When a baby dies, it’s an entirely DIFFERENT coin and situation and they can’t even really be compared.
This post was such a trigger for me, as my planned home-birth ended up with a transfer and although my son was fine, the way we were treated in hospital was unacceptable. I grieved our birth for months afterwards and it affected the way I felt about my son initially because our bonding period was disrupted. Every time I hear women say that a healthy baby is all that matters especially after they just birthed one of their own, I know that like me they are actually grieving but tell themselves this to ease the pain. So many are quick to disregard themselves in their birth experience because we are culturally taught to and this is not okay. We deserve to feel empowered after growing and birthing our babies, as this is a wondrous event in our lives.
Yes. I don’t know about you but I know I probably got worse treatment in the hospital BECAUSE I was a homebirth transfer.
I completely agree with absolutely EVERYTHING you have written. I have had two births. #1 was awful, I was out of control, told what to do, unsupported, uninformed. 3.5 years later I’m still trying to deal with the grief that was caused that day. I’m still taking medication and seeing a councellor to deal with the post natal depression that followed.
Birth #2 I had wonderful support from a doula who knew all my wishes, needs and wants. I was listened to, supported, empowered, trusted to follow my body and as a result I irthedmy baby boy with no help at all (apart from that of my gorgeous doula!).
I also hate the saying “Who cares so long as it’s healthy”. People who say that have obviously never been through a difficult pregnancy or birth.
I live in Australia but watched The Business of Being Born and I was in tears much of the time -shocked at the lack of respect for the woman in labour. They’re not coming in to get fight injuries sewn up, they are bringing a precious new life into the world. A bit of respect would go a long way.
Well done on a fantastic story.
xxx
Thank you so much for coming and sharing and for the support. I am so happy you found a better birth that second time.
I absolutely agree with what you said. The actual birth, not just the outcome, does matter. Both my babies were born at the same free standing birth center w/ midwives. The 1st was very traumatic & after 5 years it still affects me. But everyone kept saying at least he’s healthy so I just kept all my feelings bottled up. When I tried once to talk about it, the person who was supposed to help me blew me off. When I was having my daughter I knew her birth HAD to be different! After my 1st birth &then a miscarriage I needed this next birth to help heal some of those wounds. I wrote a letter to my midwives explaining my feelings & thank God had an AMAZING birth w/ her. It has helped immensely in the healing process. I wish every woman could experience the healing power of birth. It’s truly the most incredible thing. I feel bad for my son that there are so many negative feelings & memories associated with his birth. I feel like I failed him sometimes. But I’m thankful I learned from it & was able to use that to have the birth of my dreams with my daughter. Thank you for writing this piece.
I love this statement of yours:
“I wish every woman could experience the healing power of birth.”
YES! THIS!
Lots of times people take it as a smug comment but it’s not at all. I truly truly wish every woman felt capable of doing it and knowing their power.
I want to say thank you for posting this. I had a very difficult experience with my son’s delivery over 5 years ago. I thought I had educated myself in everything and was prepared for what I knew was going to happen, but the trauma of the event still haunts me to this day. As I am preparing for the birth of my second child in Nov, I have received the “the only thing that really matters is that you have a healthy baby in the end that you get to take home with you” line over and over again by family members who just don’t understand the pain and grieving process that I am going through. I have a lot of people who recently have decided that I am making a big deal out of nothing and who have literally stopped talking to me over this and other birth related things. I have to say, the anxiety that I feel going into this birth in incomparable to the anxiety that I have dealt with my entire life and have actually started to see a councillor over the anxieties. It makes me feel so much better to hear that I am not being fussy, and “making a show of things.” It feel going to know that I am not the only one that feels this way, and am very grateful to you for posting this at a time when I REALLY needed to hear it. Thank you. Please feel free to read my birth story at http://thecrazymom-lifeinanutshell.blogspot.com/. I just started a blog to help express my anxieties and frustrations and it is not to be able to vent about the things that really matter to me. I think that it is so important that women are allowed to express their pain and grief about their birth without rebuke or reprise and with as much emotional support as they need to recover. Thanks again.
I’ll head over and read today, thank you for sharing.
I got to the point with my 3rd where I voluntarily just didn’t talk to people about birth. In fact……..I avoid the conversation still in real life most of the time. It can be painful to talk about when the general consensus is “oh as long as the baby is fine, the rest doesn’t matter”.
I completely agree. It is too difficult out there to find the support that women need especially from friends and family. I had a hard time identifying the feeling I had myself, and when I did they were shrugged off by friends and family. Women should be there for each other, to allow venting and emotional expression, no matter how big or small their experiences are, with out the negative feed back that we a society tend to deliver. I admit, before Topher was born, I completely agreed that a healthy baby is all that matter. He was my 5th pregnancy and all I wanted was a happy, healthy baby. The depression I went through after the delivery of my son was worse for me then the loss of my 4 angel babies. People have to understand that it is not just about birthing a healthy baby. Yes, it is true that a healthy baby does tend to make things better, but when you have depression as severe as I did that your husband described himself as a single father for 2 years of your child’s like, you know that this is a real issue. When women are shrugged off by their husbands, mothers, sisters, friends and other family when trying to express their feelings and emotions, then the trauma only festers and becomes a source of pain and an open wound. We as women need to openly encourage other women to talk about, write about and express their birth feelings without that dreaded line, because the mom does matter too. I just wish this was society’s norm, not just opinions of a few “wack jobs” as my I have been so admittedly labeled. LOL
Yes. The PPD component to this issue is another big problem. Women are told to shut up and quit whining about their birth and then they have PPD heaped on them and we are told we are bad moms if we don’t just appreciate our babies. Vicious vicious cycle.
fuck you.
Why shouldn’t a healthy baby matter? Have you had to spend time by your baby in the NICU? Watched them turn an awful shade of blue? Watched them be transported, without you, to a hospital in another state so that they didn’t die? What about prepped your newborn for surgery? Had to decide if they’d be a organ donor? Had to keep making those decisions as more surgical procedures are needed for them to survive?
You’re plan didn’t go off without a hitch, cry me a fucking river. Life doesn’t happen as we expect it to.
My birth plan involved having a LIVING baby — not even a healthy one, just one born alive. If that meant getting strapped to a table & being cut open, so be it. If another vaginal birth meant more stitches than a cesarean would result in (as my first did), SO FUCKING BE IT.
If your child died, you be singing a tune of how the drs/nurses/everyone & their brother didn’t do enough for you in order for you to have a healthy (LIVING) baby.
It’s time women stop whining about not getting what they wanted from a birth. It’s time to take responsibility for ourselves and stop blaming everyone else.
Yes, you matter, BUT it isn’t all about you. There is another person who matters, just as much, if not more than you do in a birthing situation. YOU can advocate for yourself, the baby can’t. It’s on you.
NO ONE strapped you to a bed. NO ONE held a gun to your head and physically forced you to stay there. YOU CHOSE to go to that hospital. YOU CHOSE to listen when you were told “no” just as YOU chose to get out of that bed and push quickly (which likely was the cause of your tearing).
I am sorry for your situation. And I am sorry you are having a hard time with it. That is terrible.
As I’ve said in a couple other comment……….that’s comparing apples and oranges, though. Those rare situations are the exception, not the rule. So……..there is not much I can say to this because you are talking about two very different situations.
I never said it was all about the mother and I never said that the baby DOESN’T matter. I don’t think anyone said that or believes it.
But I will say this:
It is absolutely NOT EVER the time for women to “stop whining about not getting what they wanted from a birth”. NEVER.
But you have an excellent point…then next step in all of this IS for women to take more responsibility for educating themselves and having healthier births. For themselves AND their babies.
birth is not “apples and oranges”
What happens AFTER the birth may be apples & oranges, but the act of giving birth isn’t.
A birth is a birth is a birth is a birth. Whether vaginal or cesarean, a woman is bringing a child into this world. Dead or alive, they’re now IN this world and separate from their mother. It doesn’t matter if you walk out of that hospital with a healthy baby, simply a living baby or a death certificate, you gave birth.
Your birth experience can be viewed completely different based on what happens AFTER. That’s a big piece of the puzzle that people don’t seem to see. You walked out with a healthy baby, so you wouldn’t see it another way. If you’re child had ended up in the NICU, you probably would be a little miffed about the experience, but you’d be grateful that they were simply born, alive, and getting the care they needed.
Right. What happens after the birth is the “apples and oranges” that we are talking about. Telling women they need to shut up and “stop whining” because they are “a little miffed” that they were treated poorly is the apple. Dealing with the after math of a hurt or dead baby is the orange.
I went and re-read my post and I stand by every word, even in the case of a harmed child. Mom STILL DOES matter. BIRTH matters. That experience matters. And how we treat women (AND their babies) afterwards matters.
My point was that the baby is not the ONLY thing that matters. While the baby may take a necessarily higher precedent in some cases……..what I said is true. With all due respect, I think you might be reading things into what I said that just aren’t there.
Women matter. I watched my best friend deliver dead twin sons. How she was treated in that situation MATTERS.
If I was treated like I was with my 3rd and THEN my baby died, that’s adding insult to injury. That would make that situation worse than it needed to be. Women STILL matter. When things go really wrong, it is still important how we treat the mothers.
I’m sorry……..it just is.
I am really sorry for your situation. I hope you were treated well, because you certainly deserved it.
I’m trying to word this as carefully as I can… so here goes.
My fourth son had a complication at birth that *could* have killed him, but bore no danger to me or my health.
If he had died, I know that the birth still would have mattered.
Let’s say I had a HORRENDOUS birth experience, with people who cared more about clocking in and out than me and my child.
Then let’s say that my baby had died.
I’m faced there with TWO different issues. 1. A dead baby. 2. PTSD from the way I was treated.
Now let’s say that my baby lived (HE DID!). I was still treated horribly. I still had a horrendous birth.
But my baby lived.
Now I deal with only ONE issue. PTSD from the way I was treated.
Just because you get a healthy baby doesn’t guarantee health for mom.
Mom is a human person. Mom is someone’s daughter, sister, mother, aunt, cousin.
Mom deserves to be treated as well as her “healthy” baby.
No woman should walk away (or not!) scarred because of how she birthed. Physical scars can heal and if they are lifesaving than glory be! Emotional scars can heal, but they should NEVER happen in a “healthy baby” situation.
If your baby IS born healthy, then rejoice.
If your baby dies or is injured that is a world all it’s own.
YOU as the woman bringing that child into the world STILL deserve love, gentleness, care, compassion and respect.
You made that baby. I don’t care HOW long you carry it for, 19 weeks or 42. When the time comes for your baby to come into the world, alive or not, YOU as a PERSON deserve to feel that YOU did an amazing thing.
Babies matter. I can say that as I hold my fourth son who very realistically could have died. A lot of babies in his situation do. But he lived. And I am thankful.
And I am thankful that I had an incredible midwife who never left me, who was patient, kind, respectful and support. A person I trust with my life.
People who lose babies are in a league of their own, their grief is a mountain I hope and pray to never climb, since I’ve stood at the summit and looked up.
But you are still a person and YOU STILL MATTER.
I should clarify that my response is hypothetical. My baby DID have a complication that could have killed him, but my birth was actually wonderful.
Thanks for the article. Very inspiring. I had a homebirth for my second child, and funny enough, even with the support, it was very traumatic for me. There was really a lack of profession support for AFTER the birth all the way around. I had to go seeking it. Thank goodness I did. I have a lot of pelvic floor damage from the birth because of her position, and am still dealing with it 7 months later. I did get some support. There is physical therapy available to help end the pain and rebuild the muscles. A homeopathy, injurotox also was amazingly helpful to me. Thank you for sharing your experience. In solidarity…Della
Thanks Della………
if you don’t mind emailing me, I have some questions about your muscle injuries and how you’ve gone about helping them out. Three years later and I’m still struggling with that issue.
not at all or feel free to call: della.chad.spam@comcast.net. I’ll give you more info from the email.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I wrote a similar article (although not as much about my personal experience) on my blog several months ago. See http://www.wp.me/p1yi7C-T. I run a new moms support group and the first thing the moms do at the beginning of a 6 week session is to go around and tell their birth stories. In many instances, the birth did not go as planned. The very fact that they are sitting there in the group indicates that the baby was healthy and ultimately, everything turned out okay, but we acknowledge that it is okay to mourn the loss of what we had hoped our birth would be like. It is a space where you have permission to say that you are sad about the way things happened when you gave birth and no one will say “well you had a healthy baby so it doesn’t matter who he/she got her.”
Thank you so much for sharing and thank you a TON for the link!
Thank you for this post. I had my first two sons at home, and my third son at a hospital when my midwives moved away. My daughter was born at 34 weeks due to severe pre-e. She needed 10 days in special care. I did not have a healthy baby. I had a baby who still needed 6 weeks in my womb. And how I was treated during that whole experience *matters*.
The physical scars are healing. The wounds to my spirit and my mama heart are still fresh. I have no doubt the interventions my daughter and I needed were necessary. That doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt, and that they don’t hurt still.
That’s such a good point. Even when there are medical interventions that ARE necessary, that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to be administered harshly and disrespectfully.
Thank you so much for having the courage and clarity to put this out there! It is women like you that create the kind of community I am proud to be a member of. I just attended a birth warrior birth story workshop inspired by the work of Pam England who co-wrote Birthing From Within. Our preceptor, midwife Augustine Colebrook, said many profound and moving things, but one of them was that birth trauma is created by unmet expectations. I realized I had expected my body to birth perfectly, and my cervix to open. I also expected to be respected as an amazing human going through a life changing transition, and thakfully, I was. You had a right to expect the same thing. I’m sorry you were treated so inhumanely. It should be illegal to treat women that way if it’s not.
Thank you. And WOW! You met Pam England!!?? That’s awesome!!!!!!! I LOVE her book!!!!!!!
She has classes- check out her website-http://www.birthingfromwithin.com/pam_england
Reading through others’ comments, I’m struck by how high emotions can run regarding birth, and how mean it can make people. I think the truth of what you wrote shines out.
I remember when you had your third child and how you felt in the aftermath. It does matter, of course you’re right. I had a similar traumatic birth with my first, they wouldn’t let me go into certain positions, treated me like cattle, wouldn’t listen to me when I told them I couldn’t get the baby out on my own (they had broken my water at 1cm, locking her head into a poor position, she was coming out OP with her head turned to the side and her hand by her face, it ended up being a vacuum delivery).
When I had my third baby at home, it changed my life. It changed who I am as a woman, a mother, and a natural birth advocate.
Thanks. I think one other piece of advice I’d give women is “don’t go online after having a baby!!!”
Thank you for your truth. This needs to be said. I had hypnotherapy with Eleanor Copp at http://www.relaxedparenting.co.uk using the ‘re-wind’ process which worked incredibly well for me to heal birthing trauma. My love to you. x
Wow thank you for the info. And the thoughts.
Thank you C Lo for your post, for sharing your feelings and experience and for creating an interesting and thought provoking thread. I am 32 weeks pregnant with #2 and live in australia, I was lucky enough to have a positive drug free, unmedicated, unassisted birth experience with baby #1, in hospital, something i didnt realise was a rarity until reading this and talking to many other mothers after giving birth, although I think australia is doing fairly well compared to the US in terms of intervention and drug free childbirth. I am planning a water birth at a birth centre (attached to a hospital) and am hoping for an even more empowering experience this time. Thank you for helping me to understand that a positive birth experience is essential in order to have a healthy post birth experience for both mother and baby. I think way too many people, drs and nurses included discount the influence a positive birth has on bonding, breastfeeding and over emotional well being of both mother and baby. There is a direct correlation between negative birth experiences and post partum depression, I think this is something that really needs to be taken more seriously, post partum depression can have a huge impact on both mother and baby and infact the whole family, something I don’t need to tell you about I’m sure. More energy and research need to be put into helping mothers have a positive birth experience and into avoiding the impact a negative birth experience can have on mother and baby in the weeks and years following birth. I’m sorry that your ability to experience a positive birth was taken away from you for no reason at all and I hope that your healing will continue for you and your family. Hugs
Thank you C Lo for your post, for sharing your feelings and experience and for creating an interesting and thought provoking thread. I am 32 weeks pregnant with #2 and live in australia, I was lucky enough to have a positive drug free, unmedicated, unassisted birth experience with baby #1, in hospital, something i didnt realise was a rarity until reading this and talking to many other mothers after giving birth, although I think australia is doing fairly well compared to the US in terms of intervention and drug free childbirth. I am planning a water birth at a birth centre (attached to a hospital) and am hoping for an even more empowering experience this time. Thank you for helping me to understand that a positive birth experience is essential in order to have a healthy post birth experience for both mother and baby. I think way too many people, drs and nurses included discount the influence a positive birth has on bonding, breastfeeding and the overall emotional wellbeing of both mother and baby. There is a direct correlation between negative birth experiences and post partum depression, I think this is something that really needs to be taken more seriously, post partum depression can have a huge impact on both mother and baby and infact the whole family, something I don’t need to tell you about I’m sure. More energy and research need to be put into helping mothers have a positive birth experience and into avoiding the impact a negative birth experience can have on mother and baby in the weeks and years following birth. I’m sorry that your ability to experience a positive birth was taken away from you for no reason at all and I hope that your healing will continue for you and your family. Hugs
I realise I have posted this twice but cannot figure out how to delete the first post, the second is the same except a few grammatical errors corrected. sorry
Yes, there are statistics to show that the US is actually FAR behind most other countries in terms of high instance of interventions = bad outcomes.
And thank you.
Thank you, thank you for this! I had my first at home and the second was transfer due to cord compression (all ended well, despite cord prolapse in the hospital and I gave birth the natural way to a healthy 4,3 kg baby boy). I was grieving and crying and being angry at everyone, most of all at myself. For not fighting enough for what I want and doing all I was told to – like getting up on that table to give birth, accepting giant doses of oxytocin, getting episiotomy (I did ask not to have that, but was ignored), not catching the moment when the midwife cut the cord before it stopped pulsating, allowing to pull my placenta out too soon (I ended up loosing 2 liters of blood and having a manual revision of uterus because part of placenta separated and stayed inside). The doctor then told me that it all happened because of my uterus being overstreched by pregnancy and “healthy uteruses do not act like that”.
And my homebirth midwife thinks I was being punished a bit for being a transfer, but I am not so sure – I think they are always like that. As I arrived with an ambulance and referral that I am almost fully dilated and the cord could get compressed when my waters break (which could happen any minute) the hospital staff spent 50 minutes without even listening to the baby’s heartbeat. I had to fill all those questionnaires about my first menstruation, job and health problems when I was 5 years old. Luckily the baby’s heartbeat had some decelerations, but was fine when we arrived at the hospital. The cord prolapsed later when the Dr. broke my waters at 10 cm and while the Dr. was trying to push the cord back, and I was being shaved and prepared for a C-section, their heartbeat monitor did not register heartbeat for almost 5 minutes. Then the midwife brought a new monitor and it turned out that the monitor they tried to use on me is broken. Those were the longest 5 minutes of my life.
I had a perfectly healthy baby and the birth was easy. I hate the ring of fire sensation, but I love the rest of childbirth, including the painful contractions and I heal easy – I was told to not sit on my cut bum for 2 weeks, but could sit on it immediately after birth without much pain. So I am lucky. And I am lucky that my son was born in such a good condition, despite cord being compressed during birth and having a cord prolapse, which ends so bad in many cases. But I felt bad about the birth, probably even more because I know how it’s SUPPOSED to be. I have made peace with everybody including myself for the way it was, but I still hope that next time will be better. So thank you for speaking out.
Thank you for speaking out as well. I’m glad everything is ok now.
Thank you. Thank you a million times over for writing this. I had an unnecessary cesarean with my first child. Everyone told me the same thing. “At least you and the baby are ok.” But I wasn’t ok. Of course I was grateful that my daughter was ok. Of course I was! But the gratitude I felt for that did not erase the pain and loss I felt from being robbed of something I was inherently supposed to be able to do. After months and months of well-intentioned friends and family uttering those very words, I finally lost it and told them to just let me mourn. I had to mourn. If I didn’t mourn, I would go crazy. I had to cry and people needed to let me be angry without trying to fix those emotions. So I cried. I got angry. I let it out. And then I was finally able to begin the healing process. Two years later, my “too narrow” pelvis birthed our second child in the comfort of my own bed. It was miraculous and beautiful. We now have three children, the third born naturally as well but in the hospital due to leaking fluid for 4 days without being able to go into labor. But it was still a beautiful, healing experience. Thank you for verbalizing feelings I have felt for years now. It does matter. Birth is important. Each woman deserves that respect and acknowledgement!
Thank YOU for coming and sharing that!!!!!!! Stories like yours need to be told. Thank you a million times.
I almost could have written this but I am not even close to being healed enough to express my feelings as well as you have here. There are days I’m sure the healing will never come. You give me hope that someday I can share my experience and help others. Thank you.
As cliche as it sounds, if I’ve learned anything in the last five years or so it’s that it almost always gets better. I seriously went through months of thinking I was going to be damaged forever and never live normally again. I was totally wrong. I got a lot of help actually from other sites online and from just asking………
If you ever need to vent or anything, you know how to find me.
It does get better.
Thanks for writing this. I had an induction with my first, that partly happened due to my naive belief it was completely safe, and because there was no other way to have my husband present. My doc informed me, but also went along with my wishes. I don’t blame her, at the time we did what we thought was best. Though I wish she would have convinced me that the baby and birth were more important than the audience.
I ended up with vac extraction and stitches when he could no longer take the contractions. I clung to the fact for months that at least I had been able to do it without pain meds, or that at least it wasn’t a csection, at least he is healthy, but I still blamed myself. I suffered horrible ppd and bawled anytime I heard or saw anything related to birth. Then I realized, I could have prevented most of it. Had I been educated, and empowered it may have been different. I read every thing I could get my hands on, kept myself as healthy as possible, and educated myself about what was and wasn’t “allowed” at the hospital (I only had one to choose from). I used the same doc, and had the courage to tell her what I wish she would have done differently, and she had the humility to agree that I was right. I went on to have a wonderful hospital experience. I was able to labor where and how I wanted. No iv, free to drink and eat, I even had a nurse remind me that I didn’t have to have pit if I didn’t want to. (I was suggested to my family practice doc by an oncall ob because my water had broke and I wasn’t contracting yet.) Though I pushed for 2 hours, my doc and nurses helped me and encouraged me, into early morning hours. I left proud of myself and my body. This allowed me to be a better mom, and be thankful of my baby. Birth isn’t just a means to an end. Sure you win the war, but you lost all the battles along the way.
And on the subject of “whining” Telling a mom that she can’t mourn the loss of her power and autonomy is wrong. If you lose the war the mourning isn’t comparable. It is apples and oranges. Birth should be happy, when it isn’t we all mourn for one reason or another. All should be supported and respected, whatever the loss.
That is such a great story…….it’s a relief to hear that situations like yours happen and exist. It’s a pretty amazing feeling to birth your own child and know “Hey, I did that!” especially when so many women think they can’t do it.
I read your stories…and I remember being traumatized by the birth of my baby daughter. While I was cared for by midwifes and a great doctor during prenatal…sadly none of them showed up when I went to the hospital. My water had broken and no real labor was happening so they said …”pitocin” it was aweful and they kept trying to give me drugs.” No, thank you.” then as this went on thru the night , the nurses hung out at their station and made cappucino’s that smelled like heaven….torture for me to endure since I couldnt have anything all 21 hours….I remarked about the smell and they closed my door.I begged them to open it because the room was hot.They ignored me except to come in occassionally to tell me they needed to place a probe in the babies “No!” head….because they didnt like coming in and helping me move positions. And we were in trouble…had afever and the baby was stressed.Still the nurses seemed upset That I didnt cooperate and left me alone to push…swinging one leg over the rail….by this time I was so exhausted and couldnt fight. Thank God the doctor came and yelled at the nurses for my condition when he arrived. He helped me push, the baby was posterior and was having trouble getting out….We were wheeled to OR for C-section. I begged him not to do it and he said He will tryone more time to help me~ a suction and I had my husband on top of me with a nurse pushing on my belly…of course She came finally out and I tore horribly. Could’nt walk properly and had so much pain.I HAVE NEVER BEEN THE SAME~ my tear area still hurts at times. I really felt that I hardly mattered to this hospital and nurses were aweful.But happy for no C section and grateful that the Dr. listened to me and was so kind. Perhaps this is one reason I had only one baby….I was not empowered and very scared. I pray for you all, thanks for sharing and allowing me also.
Thank you for coming. I hope you heal up well and get some peace with that. It’s a good thing you had at least one professional advocating for your care. It’s such a shame doctors aren’t required to stay with laboring women.
Thank you for writing this. I’ve always hated when someone says all that matters is a healthy baby and implies that if we aren’t happy about the birth than we don’t feel grateful for our baby. How I feel about my births and my babies are completely separate. I had a c/s with my first after 20hrs of labor and 2hrs of pushing. I questioned everything, all the decisions made during that labor, wondering what I could have done different, angry at myself, my OB, the nurses. I had a natural vbac with #2, with a wonderfully supportive hospital staff (the same OB and hospital I’d had my first c/s with, the OB was amazingly supportive of vbac, which helped me overcome my anger at her for my first c/s). With #3 I planned to have a waterbirth at a birth center. But after 2 days of labor and 2+ hrs of pushing in every position we could we transferred to the hospital. My midwife stayed with me to act as a doula. Baby got stressed and his heartrate dropped and wouldn’t recover so I agreed to a c/s under general. I didn’t even see him until he was 4hrs old. I knew that c/s was necessary and I was so grateful my little boy was ok, but I felt so broken that my body had failed and I’d missed the birth. I cried every day for weeks about how my birth had gone so far off plan, but I adored my little boy. With my twins I was able to have a vba2c, with wonderful hospital staff support. It wasn’t the birth I’d pictured, I arrived already pushing with no time for the epidural I wanted (because I was afraid of needing a c/s under general again), but it was wonderfully healing to me to have that birth against the odds. Through all my many different experiences, good and bad (they are all on the blog in my link), I am forever grateful that I always felt supported and cared about by those attending me. But I still hate every time I hear someone say all that matters is a healthy baby. I would go through anything for my babies and put their needs ahead of what I want, and am so extremely grateful they have all been healthy, but how I feel emotionally and physically matters too.
This perfectly articulates what I’m trying to say……..so thank you for coming by and contributing. And vbac with twins!!! AWESOME!!!
Thank you for sharing this. I was bullied into a lot of things with the birth of my first daughter 11 months ago. They didnt even look at my birth plan strapped me to the monitors and stuck me in a bed. The OB I had didnt even talk to me except to tell me he thought it would be 6 more hrs till my daughter would be here. Thats what he used to convince me to get an epidural. An hour after my epidural he told me she wasnt going to fit and I had to have a c-section. I couldnt even stay awake for the section because I felt him begin to cut me. I woke up an hour later and saw my daughter for the first time. I couldnt hold her couldnt nurse her she had already had a bottle while I was out. I felt so ashamed and like I had been cheated out of what I had wanted for my birth. I had went in with every intention of a natural beautiful birth and ended up bullied into things I did not want and feeling like I was a failure. Thank you so much for sharing. We matter our feelings matter. Yes we have healthy babies but were not healthy when we feel like we failed at what our bodies were meant to do!
Oh that is heartbreaking. I absolutely hate it when doctors sabotage women by telling them their body is defective.
Maybe you shouldn’t have kids if you can’t handle the “Trauma”, which is to be expected during child birth. I hope you lose your health care to see what it’s like to live without it. I’m glad your kids are healthy and you should be grateful for it, instead of wasting your time with this obsessive blog. Perhaps you should have given birth in the 1800′s when it was typical for the mother to die during child birth. If you have healthcare, be grateful. Since in most places in the world you need deep pockets if anything were to go wrong, you would be dead.
Good luck. Hope you deal with your problems instead blaming everyone else for your misfortunes.
BTW, Healthy 11 pound baby? I hear 7/11 isn’t the only place that sells food.
Well, the reason it was “typical” for women to die in childbirth in the 1800s is because of doctors, actually. For hundreds of years,women birthed at home…safely. But once doctors moved labor into the hospital it got deadly. “Child bed fever” as it was often called killed women because doctors were ignorant of cross contamination and germs. They would do something such as cut off a gangrenous limb, then treat a child with small pox…..and then without washing hands or changing out of their soiled clothes they would stick their hands inside a woman to “help” her deliver her child. THATS why women died do often back then.
And…………I’m not really sure what you’re trying to imply about the size of my baby, however it’s possible that some women just grow big babies. All mine were. My first was almost 10lbs and I didn’t touch sugar, caffeine, or any junk food at all with her. When you leave babies alone, sometimes they grow bigger than 6lbs you know.
THANK YOU so much for writing this! Although the stories of our births are so different, the feelings we share seem so similar. It took me months to start to come to terms with our birth experience. What is so shocking is that my husband and I felt so prepared. We hired a midwife whom we trusted, took classes (both natural childbirth and breast feeding) read everything under the sun about routine interventions and how to avoid them but in the end had many interventions and a forceps birth that still (19 months later) turns my stomach. I literally was SCREAMING NO while he was being pulled out. For months and months I felt like such an enormous failure and so many people said to me, “what is wrong with you look how awesome your son is.” Yes he’s amazing but what a large number of people fail to understand is that we should not be forced to birth under duress. No one has the right to pull a power trip on someone who is at their most vulnerable. Not only is it uncaring, it tips the scale toward abuse. Sharing our stories is so important. My hope is that women reclaim birth. There was a time when birth was not relegated to medical circles. My hope is that we can build a circle of strong women who, with their stories change the culture of birth in our country. We all deserve it. We deserve so much better.
That’s what I hope for too. It breaks my heart to hear stories like yours.
I was the same way…….I was SO prepared, I wasn’t scared, I’d done it already, I was looking FORWARD to my second water birth. And it still didn’t go as planned.
I can definitely relate to this article. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “the only thing that matters is that you end up with a healthy baby.” Really? Just like you said in your article– how am I supposed to care for this little miracle when I can’t even care for myself? When I constantly feel like poop every day? It more than sucks when other people disregard what you went through just because the baby is alive and well. I’m GLAD my children are here and that they’re well, but I myself still deal with thoughts about their births and just negative thoughts in general.
Thank you for writing this article. I hope it makes people realize how important MOM is in the whole birthing ordeal. It’s like they forget– without her, the baby wouldn’t be here.
Thank you. That’s a really good point……..sometimes it seems like when birth gets into the hospital, the mom is dismissed like a mere vessel instead of a person who deserves protecting as well as the baby.
Its not all that matters, but in the end, its what matters MOST.
To people who have lost a child at birth or before, all other things are secondary… Being told no by a doctor of a nurse isnt the end of the world. Count your blessing you have your child safe and well in your arms.
‘I’m not exactly sure how I’m supposed to be a mentally/physically/emotionally healthy mom when I’m glossing over bad things that happen and pretending they are all sunshine and rainbows when inside I’m grieving a loss.’
This actually upsets me beyond belief…
You are grieving a LOSS? You gave birth to a healthy baby and you are grieving the loss of not having done it in your picture perfect way?
Again… maybe you should realize a lot of people LOSE their child. They cant go moan about not having been able to do it the way they wanted to. All they would have wanted was a healthy baby… But hang on… no, thats not all that matters…
Seriously…
Negating the author’s pain because her children were born healthy is unfair. I am so for your pain and loss but denying someone a right to her feelings is no way to cope. Yes, she suffered a loss and yes her treatment at the hospital was dismal. Her writing is not meant to diminish your pain but your loss and feelings don’t change the fact that many women are treated like crap during birth and it’s okay to stand up and say so.
I’m sorry that you actually feel this way. I have to say that attacking the author because you feel that the words that she used to describe her personal feeling is unfair. I have to say that I completely agree with her feeling of “loss.” My son wasn’t completely healthy when he was born, but we knew his problems before we went to the hospital for his birth. He was and is healthier than most kids with his condition (which a lot of kids don’t even have the chance of living with). He was a healthy, happy baby comparatively. However, because of what happened to ME and how I was treated, I have PPD and 5 years later still feel the pain of what happened to me. My PPD was so severe that even in medication, going through therapy and having my supportive husband I LOST 2 or more years of my son’s life. My husband litterally told me that he felt like a single dad because of the severity of my PPD, which I completely blame on harshness, pain, and severity of trauma that I experienced in the hospital, during and after my son’s birth.
It is not ok to say that someone’s feeling are not valid. They are not yours, so you can not judge. Yes, some people do lose their babies during or before childbirth. I am one of them! My son was my 5th pregnancy. I lost 4 babies before I was able to carry my son full term. My depression from the result of the loss of my children before I even knew them was nothing compared to the feeling, emotions, and time lost with my living son. I grieve that loss every day.
I do matter. The author matters, and you matter, whether you want to or not. YOU MATTER! It’s not about being upset about the birth itself, it’s about coping with the emotions that occur because of the treatment from other people. The birth could have gone off with out a hitch, but if you are not treated like a human being, then you experience emotions like this. The same can occur in the opposite manner.
Please don’t criticize other women for having the emotions they do. That only leads to 2 things. Emotions that are left to just simmer and grow, leaving the woman scarred and unable to mend, and the inability of our society to grow together as human beings and more specifically women. We need each other for support. So whether you agree with her emotions or not, the right thing to do is just be supportive of others and allow them to have their emotions and express them.
Is that too much to ask?
Do you really think that we DON’T understand that our children could be harmed or worse? Really?
I’m not trying to say you dont have the right to feel like you werent treated well in the hospital and you didnt get everything out of the birth experience that you wanted. However, I think there’s worse things than that and saying you cant be happy because of it, while you have your child perfectly well with you, yes I do find that a bit… harsh… cause it could have been a lot worse… I know I would have given everything to give birth to my son in any possible way if he would have still been with me.
I’m sorry if you find that offensive…
@Kitty – I dont think its the same thing comparing a condition you got after giving birth to your baby and losing a part of your life because of it with having issues in the hospital cause you werent treated well enough emotionally… I’m not in any way trying to say that the woman behind the child does NOT matter, ofc not… I’m just, in my honest opinion, reacting to something that I find unfair from my personal experience. Yes, we matter and yes birth matters, but the initial statement of this topic, that “Nothing else matters as long as there is a healthy baby” has a lot of truth in it….
@C Lo – I m sure you do understand that that could happen, but I ‘m not so sure you see how lucky you are that it didnt… There’s something like relativity…
I think after the collective horror stories women pass around the pregnancy table we are all very well aware of what ‘could’ happen. No one here is dismissing that her child was born alive and well. I think failing to read a woman’s pain and inserting your own prejudices as to what qualifies as valid claims of injustice is a tad more harsh than most of us are comfortable hearing. It’s a bit like salt in the wounds to find women who don’t know how to support other women in their moment of healing; even if healing through venting or sharing incident. When we stifle someone’s pain, however relative it seems at the time, we remind our fellow human beings of those who offended us in the first place and scare others out of sharing, thus we potentially stifle other healing processes from beginning; both in ourselves and in others.
Read above to see the pain and hurt in these stories. Have faith in women to sense injustices and seek peace. It is the children raised today that could change the medical industry tomorrow. We should try supporting the hands that rock those cradles instead of tearing them down.
I guess you’ve been through a lot, and I respect that.
I do understand it could be worse.
But I don’t live in a land of “what ifs” and neither do the women who’ve posted here. We live in a real world where, whatever the “what ifs” are………..we have realities of what we are living with that we have to deal with. Like all of us.
I don’t think it’s the same grief as losing a child and I don’t mean to compare it to that. It’s smaller….but it’s still grief and still painful and still worth validating.
My mother (60 years old) would tell you that you’re selfish for thinking of yourself.
How do I know that she would say that? Because she said it to me.
Needless to say (but I’m going to say it anyway), she is not welcome in my home during the labor and delivery of my son.
Sounds like a good choice.
i bookmarked this and finally read it today… and so many of the stories that were posted along with it. i’m 34 weeks with my second baby. my daughter was born 2 years ago with relatively few interventions (one round of pitocin to speed up my labor, which wore off… and an episiotomy). today was a good day to read it because, now that i am on insulin for gestational diabetes, i am instantly in a “high-risk” category and have been switched to the MD team rather than the midwife team at my clinic… no consulting with me to see how i felt about that or to fully explain the line i’ve crossed that now makes me un-midwife-worthy. i met with one of the MDs for the first time today and it only reinforced WHY i chose midwives to begin with. for one, guess what line i was fed this morning? “the most important thing to me is that the baby is healthy.” well here we go. THANK HEAVENS i am working with my wonderful spouse and our incredible doula, who was such help to us last time. when i tried to explain that i am actually afraid of one of the MDs at the clinic, i acknowledged that it is probably an irrational fear and was interrupted from explaining with “yes, it’s irrational.” aaaaand let’s watch me get shut down. why would i want to share anything else with this person, who clearly feels that my worries and fears (emotions?? what??) are waaaay down on the list of what’s important… she is already suggesting possible induction because of the “inconvenience” of the insulin shots, as if having them for the next 6 weeks vs. 5 weeks makes much of a difference? i’m finding that my spouse and doula are going to need to be ready to do battle for me because i know i won’t have the emotional strength to do it myself at that point. i got lots of messages today that tell me my preferences, opinions, and especially feelings are not important. we chose to go with a hospital birth with the cushion of midwives and a doula, and now that one of those layers has been taken away all i can hope for is to labor as long as possible at home, and for it to go QUICKLY. not how i wanted to feel with 6 weeks to go.
Having a solid support system is key. I know that in my last birth experience, a huge hindrance was the lack of relationship between my midwife and I and the deteriorating marriage I was in. Having no support in a birth is tough, especially if you are in a situation like yours.
I hope #2 goes smoothly and peacefully for you.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. Birth does matter. Birth has been stolen from women and women have been made to be insignificant (often called selfish) bystanders in birthing their own babies. Moms and babies matter, not one vs the other. It should be about creating the best birth for the whole family with the situation that presents itself, not either/or. Every woman matters. You matter Cyndi!
Thanks so much and thanks for stopping in!
Really great post, thank you. I totally understand what others said about others thinking you’re “just complaining”. I think it’s hard for others to understand someone else’s birth experience, sometimes. I had an unmedicated birth, basically smooth and fast delivery, at a mom-friendly hospital with a great midwife and doula and ended up with a beautiful healthy boy. Sounds perfect, right? However, at the very last second as my son popped out, I tore badly–3rd degree. It was so weird–I kept waiting for that after birth rush women talk about where the pain just dropped away, but instead I felt even worse. I was in a daze and not really paying attention to the slippery bloody baby they handed me. Looking back I’m sad I missed all the excellent after-benefits you get from an unmedicated birth. The doctors who stitched me up were awful, rude, insensitive, and uninformative, and I still wonder if it was incompetence that led to my later problems, but they were the only bad hospital workers I encountered. Everyone else was lovely.
Basically, though, the tear did not heal properly and developed into a fistula (super, super rare complication). I had a truly horrible 12 months of multiple surgeries, fear like I’ve never felt before, depression, counseling, medication. I could barely take care of my son for the first few months because he was so huge and lifting him hurt. And then after my major surgery I could not lift him at all for 5 months. (Thankfully the surgery was successful.) My husband and he grew close and I felt like I was a stranger living in the house some days. I couldn’t spend any time alone with my son for so much of his first year because I couldn’t lift him. I didn’t feel particularly bonded to him at all. Even now, when he’s 2, I still feel like I can’t care for him alone. I sometimes avoid going places just he and I, and I nearly had a panic attack when my husband told me he had to go away for for work a couple months ago. Basically it all destroyed my confidence in my ability to be a mom.
I had very few people who I could talk to during all this. I had other friends who had preemies, who can’t conceive, or didn’t get the birth they wanted in other ways. Nearly everyone I talked to said either “At least you have a healthy baby” or “At least you got the kind of birth you wanted”. I ended up not talking about it with anyone besides my husband and, eventually, a therapist. I became horribly embarrassed about my injuries, and I felt so ungrateful that I couldn’t just enjoy my baby and feel lucky. Even now it’s very difficult for me to discuss. But I DO feel lucky that I pushed out a baby myself, and I DO feel lucky that my son was in perfect health. That doesn’t mean I have to feel good about all the terrible things that followed. Similarly, a mom can feel lucky to have a healthy baby but not happy about how that baby got there.
Oh, and I should add that I really do understand people feeling like I’m being ungrateful for “complaining”. I felt twinges of that myself when my cousin had a baby several months after me. She was going on and on about how much her 2nd degree tear still hurt and how hard it was because she and her husband couldn’t have sex until 8 weeks after the birth. I had just scheduled my major surgery a few days before and I was in despair. I remember wanting to scream at her and tell her she had NO idea what a real tear was. But of course that wasn’t her fault that she didn’t understand (and I hadn’t even tried to explain). I’m GLAD that she only had a 2nd degree tear, and I’m GLAD it healed properly. I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on my very worst enemy, and I bet my cousin is jealous of women who only had 1st degree tears! It doesn’t make her experience, or mine, any less meaningful.
THANK YOU for stopping by and sharing your story. I think you hit the nail on the head………it’s such a personal experience and if you don’t feel traumatized with YOUR birth then it is probably really hard to identify with someone who did…..because it’s soooo personal.
I think you’re right. It’s really hard to compare experiences like this.
Thank you for writing this. I am still grieving the loss of my birth the way I imagined it going. I am still dealing with those emotions. I’m envious every time someone has a birth that was the way I wanted mine to go and no one understands why I feel the way I do. This made me realize that there are other women out there like me. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for stopping by. I hope you can get to a place where you feel ok with your experience. I know it’s hard.
Thank you for this. I just birthed my third baby and am experiencing similar feelings. My second birth was my best, by far. I really hoped to exceed my expectations with my third but got caught up in midwifery drama and ended up not having my wishes followed. People tell me that having a healthy baby is what was important, but the experience is supposed to be the best part (IMO).
Glad to hear I am not alone.
You definitely are NOT alone. I’m shocked every day by just how many women identify with this post. I think it’s very telling.
I had a difficult first birth in hospital and a much more satisfying experience at home with my friend acting as a doula. The labour was really long and often arduous but I felt safe, nurtured and supported throughout. The two experiences have turned me on to becoming a doula and a hypnobirthing practitioner because I feel – like you – that birth matters and mothers matter. Thank you for a lovely post.
Thank you for stopping in and sharing. I was a doula for a while too for that same reason.
I think that society is failing mothers at the moment – we aren’t given enough knowledge about real labours and births and what our bodies can (and can’t) do – if we knew what it was like perhaps we would as a generation have better outcomes
Birth is traumatic, even when supposedly a ‘good birth’ it can be upsetting and distressing and this is totally under appreciated
Women need to be supported and nurtured through this transition as well as receive medical care based on the premise that their bodies can deliver healthy babies without the need for medical interventions
I agree so so so so much. Especially when you consider this is really one of the most vulnerable times in life. I think it’s probably easier to be traumatized by it because of that fact.
RE: C Lo September 2, 2011 at 5:09 PM
ML – so you had a completely unmedicated, natural birth and the baby got stuck?
I’m a little concerned you are surprised by this. Babies have been getting stuck in ‘natural’ births for all of human history, this is why midwives and obstetricians have developed techniques/manoeuvres to get babies out. Please don’t perpetuate the myth that babies get stuck only due to medicalisation of birth, people will start blaming themselves.
Right, but given what she describes and given her stance in this conversation and given the state of maternity care that we are currently living in, it’s a high probability that she had an induced labor and was probably only laboring on her back and the baby got “stuck”. Doctors even say “the baby got stuck” these days when labor just doesn’t go as fast as they’d like it to. Of all the “my baby got stuck” stories I’ve heard in the past 12 years, really only 1 or 2 of them were natural births where the mom tried different positions and the baby was STILL stuck. Usually it’s that the labor was induced and/or water was artificially broken, bringing the baby down faster than he would have naturally come down.
Thank you for this!
I was fortunate that the 1st of my birth experiences was at a hospital ONLY for this: It taught me that I didn’t want to birth in hospital again. The health care industry has convinced women that they are powerless during one of the most powerful things they will ever do. My other five births were at home with a midwife and the difference was marked. Before my first child was born I expressed my desire to have the birth naturally and without drugs to a friend and she blessed me with the words, “I hope everything goes the way you want it.” I thanked her with a smile, and wondered later if she offered that advice thinking things wouldn’t go my way…
As a refresher before the birth of our 2nd child, we attended a class on natural childbirth at a hospital where one of the other moms stated emphatically that videos that showed births as gentle, were lies and we should familiarize ourselves with drugs so that we could instruct the doctor to our preference, and that we should get over any desire for a natural birth so that we wouldn’t feel like failures after the c-section. Blech! We are grownups. We know when to accept medical interventions for REAL emergencies. The problem is we’ve come to think birth is a medical emergency and that women are just bystanders in their own experiences.
EXACTLY! It’s a really tough situation……..we need to call upon women to be more active participants in their healthcare, while calling out doctors for telling women NOT to do so. I think it’s a tricky balance and it’s why it’s so hard today to admit things like you wanted a natural birth.
I understand you… I love having babies and I love my girls. I was cursed with an extremely small pelvic area but wide hips (carry the baby perfectly birth them .. No way) I had medical reasons to have a c-section beside the pelvic issue. I had to find ways to make me feel as if I was the one doing all the work I focused so hard. I had PPD for 3 months after my oldest and it didn’t help that she was independent from birth and refused human contact till she was 6 months old. I had my youngest one for the same issues as the oldest and I got SO lucky I asked them if my daughter (born a month early) if she was healthy enough could I keep her in recovery for a few minutes, she was healthy I kept her for 20 minutes but due to her issues she had to go. I didnt have PPD I felt so in love. But after each birth I noticed no one cared about me and they all had the same mantra “As long as the baby is healthy” I got so mad at one point I told them no.. I said it is mom and baby that have to be healthy, and I have lived by that mantra and while pregnant I made my self super aware of my body because I lose fluid and it slows the growth of the babies. I would love to have another one but I am worried things will get worse so I am healing my self first and enjoying my silly girls who are now 3 and 13 months
Much love and thanks for sharing your story. Thank you so so much. <3
Thank you so much for sharing. I have very similar feelings, though in my case mostly about my endangered pregnancy and how I was dealt with at the hospital. It makes me hate the thought of being pregnant, even though I’d love to have more children and I adore being a mom… Sad but true. Thank you.
Is a mother going to love her child any less because he/she wasn’t born exactly how the mother wanted? Is your life over because you didn’t have a perfect vaginal birth? Are you less of a person because you weren’t in a pool, on all fours, or caved to having an epidural? Personally, I was fine with a c-section because I knew the end result: a healthy baby and that is all I cared about. My doctor gave me all of the facts before I decided on a c-section. I made (me, not the doctor) the decision because I didn’t want to go through labor and end up having an emergency c-section. Healing from two spots is far worse than healing from one. Besides, emergency surgeries have generally will increase the rate of complications than those that are planned. I also made sure that I was scheduled first thing in the morning after my doctor had a good night’s sleep. I guess I’m kind of shocked to see how many women out there feel terrible for not being able to have a natural birth. Parents, naturally, make sacrifices for their children, even if it is giving up the “perfect” birth for the sake of a healthy baby. Some even lose their lives for the sake of their baby…even with natural births.
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