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I was checked, I was 8cm and I was in pain, but still surprisingly manageable.  Once I was checked I was told I needed my water to be broken.  Again, I asked if that was necessary, and I was told, by a male doctor I’d never even seen before, either they break my water or I can go home.  No joke, I was actually told that.  I looked over at my ex-husband, helpless as I was laying there with legs opened and this guy frowning at me, my ex looked even more helpless.  Of course, before I even had a chance to respond, he broke my water.  I remember my feelings being hurt, but then I got a contraction and that contraction felt monumentally different from any I’d felt before.  I couldn’t relax during it as it did before, I was tense and hurt.  But after getting sick twice, I was told it was time to push in less than 2 hours of being in that hospital bed.  And so I began to push.  All my efforts were focused on just getting this over with so I get the hell out of this unpleasant cold place.  I really wasn’t thinking, I can’t wait to see my baby, I can’t wait to hold him, I want the pain to end, I was thinking, I want these people away from me. And then I heard my good friend who was present at my birth say something like, “Do you know she is going to cut you?”  Some other doctor, a woman this time, I’d never meet was giving me an episiotomy, something I knew I didn’t want, without so much as telling me what she was doing.  I pushed my son out in less than 20minutes.  He was 8lb 8ounces, laying in the warmer, and for the first 10minutes I had no interest in him at all.  I wanted her to stop tugging at me like a piece of meat, while she was stitching me up.  I wanted all my attendants to leave, and I just wanted curl in a ball and go to sleep.  I didn’t nurse my son for 12 hours or so.  I thought at the time, I was just tired.  But as weeks, months and years went by, I knew it was more than that.  I felt violated and instead of anger or tears, I retreated within myself.  The sheer beauty and pride of having birth my son, and his total reliance on me is why I didn’t sink into a depression about it.  And I think all the time how tame my story is compared to other women.

Thank you to P.B. for sharing her story with us.

“There she lay … a stranded beetle tethered to the bed … a bleeping machine with wiggly lines on one side … another bleeping machine infusing some kind of ominous cocktail into her veins on the other side … and suddenly she sat bolt upright and cried, “I’m frightened!”

The midwife seized her by the shoulders and pushed her down flat.

“Now listen to me! Just lie still!”

“Deep breath, dear. Nearly there! We just have to give you a little pizzy,” came from the nether regions beneath the surgical drapes.

An aside to the student nurse: “Jab that into her thigh with the birth of the anterior shoulder. Don’t worry. She won’t feel it.”

Such was my lasting impression of birth during my rotation in an obstetric unit. That was enough to make any thinking woman run screaming down the road in the opposite direction.

I vividly remember my midwife mother tut-tutting, “These modern career women! They’ve no instinct, you actually have to teach them how to breastfeed – and the fuss they make during the delivery!”

In due course, I myself became one of these modern career women and in the fullness of time, got pregnant. My mind still echoed with the gory stories Mum brought home from the delivery suite. I winced at the memory of myself as the student nurse poised with the needle aimed at the trembling thigh of the stranded beetle (I never did believe that ‘she didn’t feel a thing’). I knew one thing for sure …. Wild horses couldn’t drag me into a hospital to have my baby.

To be humiliated and stripped of my clothes and my choices… Left shell-shocked and out-raged, struggling with ambivalent feelings towards the squalling infant in my arms… Swallowing rage at the loss of control and dignity, yet having to act grateful…  All banged up and cut and stitched and patronized and having all different uniforms peering at my intimate bits ….  Oh sure. Sign me up now.

There just had to be a better way.”

Thank you for sharing your story with us.

During ante natal care for my vbac I was reassured by the words “as long as you progress there won’t be a problem”.   I did not realise that “progrees” was limited to 1/2 an hour of full dilation without an urge to push and then taken to theatre without consenting to the surgery and having a midwife forcibly encouraging me to remain on my back.  My husband had been sent out of the room.  I guess this was a way I couldn’t speak, with no husband to be my voice and an intense transitional labour….I was at there mercy !

As sad as it is, Iwish I could say this was the only VBAC experience I heard like this, unfortunately there has been so many restrictions put on this process, it is nearly impossible for a mom to have a successful VBAC.

Thank you to Melissa for sharing her experience with us.

First birth, one of MANY things was that during a vaginal exam, while I was spread-eagled, an orderly walked in to check the trash bin and got a good view.  Then, a nurse w/ long fake fingernails did one of the many vaginal/cervical checks and it was painful.  Then after a long induction and  non-emergent cesarean (because doc was ready to go home after a long weekend),  baby and I got no sleep thanks to the JACKHAMMERing going on above our floor and pieces of rubble we’d hear falling through the walls.  It’d start early in the morning and go 10 or more hours, and was so loud it’d wake the baby.

As if that experience itself was not bad enough, she was subject to a second cesarean section despite trying for a VBAC.

I was punished for attempting a VBAC (different hospital, completely different area/town), thus lectured relentlessly by every doctor and nurse who came in my door.  I was rolled down the hallway to OR shouting “I do not consent to a c-section.”  I didn’t have the ability/strength to get up off the table (during contractions) and walk out, they were holding me down to get an IV in.  A week later, I had a raging infection in my incision, (probably from how terribly dirty the hospital was, my socks were black on the bottom, the floors were so dirty) that had to be reopened and left open for 2+ months, packed and cleaned by home health nurses and my husband.  All of this gave me and baby thrush from all the antibiotics, and I ended up with a large hernia at the incision cite, that I’ve now had 2 surgeries on to repair.

And just when you think it could not get any worse…

Third pregnancy and birth:  placental abruption and uterine rupture, loss of full term son and almost lost my own life…resulted in some lifelong lasting complications and hysterectomy at age 34.

So many women are choosing to have c-sections not thinking of the major consequences that can go with these choices. And the women who would do anything not to have another, live through these situations.

Thank you to A.M. for sharing her experience with us, may sharing her story help her in her healing process.