Secrets of your trade.

Sorry this hear such a horrible experience.

I think, I hope, you were just unlucky with your MW. You have every right to document your experiences like you have here and out them into a complaint against that MW. I'd encourage you to do that, and get some answers for yourself.

Also, it will hopefully make other's get a better experience from now on.

My HV was also amazing, and I relied on her heavily for support and guidance when my babies were very small. I wonder if their role has changed significantly to be one of more child safeguarding than support and educator for DM. I don't know, it would be useful to hear from one! This is what I've heard anyway.
So glad your second experience was so much better. I think there are also plenty of oldeolder DMs with stories like yours also though.

A question for midwives ...

Do you (or do you feel it’s plausible that some midwives might) judge/discriminate against younger mums? I was late teens when I had my first and I distinctly remember asking for pain relief and being told if this is how I was coping now, my only option was an epidural. She refused to check how dilated I was and so I got the epidural but it didn’t work properly as I’d been given it too late - when she did check me afterwards it transpired I’d dilated really quickly and was much further on that anticipated. This really spoiled my whole birthing experience as I was obviously confined to the bed and when I went up to the ward I couldn’t even reach my baby from the bed. I honestly felt that had I been 10/15 years older things would have been different

I’m not a midwife hater by any manner of means and have nothing but positive things to say about my second experience.

Also just wanted to add a for Health Visitors. Mine absolutely saved my sanity when mine were very young and they are definitely there to help. This trophy that women give themselves for having ‘not seen a HV since my baby was 6 weeks old’ is baffling but I suppose it feels like an achievement to have never needed any sort of support as a parent. Hearing people complain about pre-birth visits and HVs just wanting to be nosey - surely if that helps only one child or Mum in need it’s been worthwhile?

Wonderful insights. There is a fair amount of cruelty going on anywhere where there are vulnerable humans, whatever age or sex but birthing women really can get a raw deal.

I have known a MW slap a woman's leg and tell her to pipe down with all the noise!! When you're in labour, what can you do?! You may as well be gagged and roped to a chair for all the good you can do in labour

Added: EMLA cream in a torn vagina is excruciatingly painful! Ask for SC lignocaine with a 26G needle.

"Midwives, how do you know over the phone that someone is ready to come in?"

There are many signs we listen for, not only how strong contractions are. Who is on the phone (in advance labour few mums can hold a coherent conversation, so often they will pass the phone to their partner when the contraction comes, or it will be their husband calling), how their voice sounds, how the contractions sound, their breathing... Even on the phone you can pick up signs that labour is still too early or imminent. Where I live, in New Zealand, your midwife comes home to assess you, so if you go and see the mum and she is not ready, you recommend her to stay home for some more hours. However midwives get quite good at picking up the signs and I am proud to say I rarely get it wrong _. Another one of my tricks: if the labouring woman's mum is there with her, and she has had vaginal births herself, I always listen to her opinion. They know, they feel. I once had a primip (first time mum) whose mum called me, she was convinced her daughter was in advanced labour but the she herself thought not and she didn't want her mum to call me because she didn't want her to waste my time in the middle of the time. I listened to her mum and went to assess her daughter. She was 9 cm!

"Next time I don't think I want that injection that helps you give birth to the placenta. It made me feel HORRIFIC, can I say I don't want it or is it necessary?"

If you have had a normal birth and have no increased risk of bleeding you don't need the injection. It is a high dose of oxytocin which makes your uterus contract and expel the placenta faster. I rarely give it to my women unless there have been interventions that mean it is necessary. If you have birthed your baby normally, you can birth your placenta by yourself. Many midwives are used to the injection and have stopped rationalising why they use it, unfortunately many times it is "to save time". Normal birth of the placenta can take over an hour, while if they give you the injection they will be pulling it out by brute force (literally!) 5 minutes after. When you don't use the injection, the woman pushes her own placenta out by herself, in her own time, with no one pulling it. Much gentler, and it gives the mum uninterrupted time to bond with her baby. Also, breastfeeding her baby helps the contractions to push the placenta out naturally.

"The doctor that stitched me up, I called her a bitch, I still think about it now, she wasn't a bitch but it really bloody hurt. More than giving birth."

Again, this happens often because of rushing. Examining and cleaning the wound can hurt, but the stitching itself shouldn't. The midwife or obstetrician just need to give the vagina enough time for the anaesthetic (injected lignocaine) to work. If you start to stitch right after giving the anaesthetic, of course it will hurt like hell! If the woman is telling you it still hurts, you need to give more anaesthetic! Not rocket science, really. But if you have another 10 women in line and are short staffed, you will give the injection, pull the placenta out and stitch the woman in 10 min. faster but definitely not better!

No-one comes near my vulva after giving birth, that's the law in our house! Midwife or no. Tears or not, fuck off, no more looking and certainly no touching, as for needles, I'd fight you to the death!

ha ha confused mixing it up a little there with some aircraft chat thrown in between the talk on unanaesthetised stitching of perineum's and cervical dilation s....only on MN

I’m not sure I’d want any numbing cream on my poor battered vulva. I’d rather have the very short lived pain of the injection, surely any cream would sting like fuck. I do remember the examination being painful but it was very quick and didn’t bother me too much and the midwifes were very quick.

I'm a scientist and you'd be surprised about how many breakthroughs are made with homemade apparatus that looks more than a bit ghetto. Like the element factory at in Russia made of spare parts.
The brown paper envelope containing new superhard metal samples. Thr fact that sometimes physical science is surprisingly physical and dirty.
And that you still spend a lot of time writing stuff down in lab books even today.

In 2019 it’s appaling that they expect women to be stitched after a painful experience without pain relief.

Just to clarify - yes there IS local anaesthetic for stitches, they just point blank refused to give me any.
With my third child I had a homebirth and one of the first things I said to the midwifes as they arrived at my doorstep was that I would refused any suturing if they didn’t give me a local anaesthetic this time. They were both a bit like and when I told them about my previous experience they were horrified. I did need stitches again and they did indeed give me local anaesthetic. I cried, I was so grateful that they listened to me.

.

Can’t Midwives use Emla cream before they stitch. I always used to insist on it for my children before any treatment.

So am I being a bit of a wimp to want anaesthetic just to look to see if I needed stitches? I'd rather spend 5 whole minutes crowning than have that ever again. I almost kicked the poor midwife last time and I could tell she was trying to be really gentle.

see this thread on saying NO to medics during and before labour

I’d never stitch a woman up without using local anaesthetic or an epidural - are there actually midwives —bitches— who do this??

There is local anaesthetic for post birth stitches, or at least there was when I had children 25+ years ago and when I did maternity placements five years ago. The injection was painful as nearly all locals are but the stitches themselves weren’t. Mine was a second degree tear.

These practices are absolutely barbaric

No, I refused examinations. I'm talking about checking to see if I needed stitches, so after placenta was out.

Are you talking about checking dilation? Previously it was about checking if needed suturing being painful!!

There's no anaesthetic for stitches?! Thank fuck I never needed them!

It was extremely painful to be checked both times. I had two home births, one back to back, no pain relief and being checked was so much worse than anything else. And I know they were being really gentle as well.

What is painful about 'checking if needs sutures?' Genuine question,just wondering what form of torture this is that hurts so much. In the main this is women doing this to women!

It is actually disgusting practice to be stitched without anaesthesia, only women, no-one else has this done, and repeatedly told it won't hurt. Yeah, well you do it to yourself. I refused any stitches eve for large tear (including 2nd degree). Screw that.