Mothers are being abused during childbirth. We need our own #MeToo

@Beansandcoffee That’s exactly my point. I didn’t have a single examination by a doctor after my c-section. Not in hospital or after I came home. And I didn’t receive any support with rehabilitation either. No physio, nothing. DF had a knee op and he was given tons of physio.

My partner had a hernia operation on the NHS. He had to go to a new private hospital, had his own ensuite room, tasty food and got to stay in overnight. He was assisted with his shower next morning and was treated with dignity and kindness. He was discharged with a bag of pain killers.

I had a CS in a NHS hospital. I got to share a room with 6 other ladies and 6 babies. I didn’t get a shower, was told to get mobile within 6 hours and was discharged with no pain relief a few days later having received no sleep, little food or care.

At which they inform us that if we need pain relief or need any assistance or anything goes wrong then we didn't practice Hypnobirthing properly or well enough.

This is my main beef with hypnobirthing. It’s a good technique with some solid factual basis - for straightforward births. It’s a tool to help you keep as calm as you can, but you have to recognise the limitations of it. It cannot help a malpositioned baby. It cannot help your anatomy and the interaction of your anatomy with the positioning of the baby. The role of hypno in a more complex birth is limited to you holding it together while other interventions and pain relief are kicking in.

The use of things like hypno should be: ‘here’s a technique that’s useful for mild to moderate pain and distress, it’s just one tool, we have pain relief of course as well’. But what it’s actually doing is driving the attitude that women’s pain is a moral reflection of themselves - pain is felt by the lazy/weak/whiny/didn’t practice hard enough.
In reality - the amount of pain you feel is dictated by the positioning of the baby on the day and how that works with your own anatomy and any other medical issues. It’s not a reflection on how tough you are or how worthy you are.
Can you imagine a man having had abdominal surgery being told to visualise his fucking pain? No, it’s ‘sorry sir, here’s pain relief, please call us with the button if you need more so we can make you comfortable.’

It’s an almost biblical argument - women give birth in pain. Having been through it, I can’t help but feel like having an extremely vulnerable women in pain in a time limited process (ie you know you won’t deal with them long term) brings out an attitude of sadism in some. I felt like it was acceptable to unleash aggression and dismissal towards me in a way that it would have been in any other situation.
I found the attitudes towards me as a pregnant woman and a woman giving birth/postnatally very, very peculiar and unsettling. And at times extremely frightening and distressing - and I consider myself a strong person, able to advocate for myself.

I had straightforward virginal births by the way but it didn’t stop me being assaulted by midwives.

I particularly disliked the ‘praise’ I got from midwives afterwards for having a vaginal birth. It was very much implied that having a CS would have been bad and that I had pleased them with my compliant body. Made me feel sick, like I was some kind of performing breeding animal.

I really wish I’d freebirthed all of them.

There’s another shitty society attitude - people who freebirth are treated as dangerous monsters. Because the idea that a woman’s body and the feotus within it is entirely hers to make decisions about is so repellant to so many. If we really cared about the babies we’d be thinking how to improve access to care for babies needing it - not focusing on judgment of the women.

But then care costs money and judgement and censure is free.

Not wanting to ‘scare’ women (who are all ickle darlings who can’t cope with facts) is just another side of the institutional misogyny.

But we are all guilty of it every day - how often do you read sneering of PFB on Mumsnet? Why is there no recognition that of course people are precious over their babies that their bodies worked so hard to grow and labour? All this ‘not the first human child’ and ‘not the second coming’ bullshit is just another way of grinding down the miracle of life/birth into something not important, mundane.

People rarely tend to examine their own attitudes and how that feeds into wider social attitudes.

Oh TwittleBee, that makes my heart sink...how can so many professionals get it so wrong???

I had the opposite mumslave . At our hospital they do free Hypnobirth courses which they encourage us all to go on. At which they inform us that if we need pain relief or need any assistance or anything goes wrong then we didn't practice Hypnobirthing properly or well enough. It's certainly what contributed to my PND, kept thinking it was my fault I didn't manage to breath my baby out and that I was the reason for my shit care. Took counselling to realise it wasn't my fault.

One more thought...I was genuinely scared of giving birth first time around after reading about the hideous things that had happened at my local hospital, but didn’t question my care once there because I thought it was all just par for the course. I believe it’s indoctrinated into us that birth is generally an awful, undignified process where we should almost expect to walk away mentally and physically damaged, at least temporarily. I put up with it because despite being a well educated professional and doing NCT, I felt vulnerable, lacking in confidence and fearful that if I might put my baby at risk by voicing my needs for more respectful treatment.

Three births and my 1st was traumatic the 2nd was as it should have been and although I nearly died with the 3rd it was still better than the 1st.

I was ignored, bullied and forced to walk down a corridor while my son was crowning and I was contracting. I had such a strong contraction that i nearly fell off the trolley as they just dumped me on the edge of it. My DH caught me but dislocated his shoulder in the process.
They delayed taking me to delivery as there were no beds/rooms while telling me I could not give birth on the labour ward as it could cause infection only to be told I will have to give birth there as there was nowhere else.
A room became free so for some reason they decided to walk me down the corridor despite my DHs protests. He and my mum literally had to carry me as the contractions were so strong I kept collapsing.

My son was born not breathing and I am convinced that is the cause of his SEN.

I was so traumatised i didn't even make a complaint. I wanted to forget the birth ever happened and just focus on my son.

The 2nd pregnancy i demanded a different hospital (my city has 2). My GP said I had to go back to the same one as it was a geographical thing. I flatly refused and said I would home birth which was not great as I was at risk of GD.
I told my GP about the 1st birth and he referred me to the hospital of my choice.
Much better care the birth was calm and I was in control. I was listened to and supported. I should have received that care the 1st time too.

Though I agree that the NHS is not perfect and the complaints procedure particularly is rotten, I feel this is a feminist issue. I hate how women are treated by health professionals (sometimes even other women). I had an early menopause when I was 38 and hoping to conceive. It was really upsetting and the GP just laughed at me and told me to take vitamins. It took me a year of awful symptoms before I went back to a new female GP who gave me HRT.

I hate the ‘you are naughty if you don’t go for your smear’ narrative, too.

Women are seen as too infantile and hysterical to take seriously. Symptoms are dismissed. And we are treated as selfish if we have a healthy baby and still want to complain about something that happened during the process.

As an aside, when I had my son I had to have an internal scan. My husband was really shocked by it and how easily I agreed and just got on with it. When I said I was used to that sort of thing he was even more shocked.

These stories are awful. We've still got victims of symphysiotomy with us, living with the damage.

I've been a feminist for thirty years and I only knew it existed a few years ago when women in Ireland got compensation.

FGM in some forms can also cause birth injury.

But biology isn't important, oh no 😒

This thread really resonates with me, so many of my friends have had awful birth experiences.

Mine left me with PTSD and PND. My waters broke at 36+5 and I was put on an open ward with women and their partners waiting for have C-Secs or waiting to be induced. It was a heatwave too. I had to go through first stages of labour with no pain relief in front of all these strangers, no air con, not able to strip down (instead I was asked to cover up when I put just my nightie on). MW performed an non-consented sweep infront of all these strangers, i didnt even want to be checked how far i was gone but she shouted and intimdated me. I felt humiliated. When I did move down to a labour room, a MW tried breaking my waters (which had already been confirmed to have been broken!!!!) And instead cut me with the hook, I screamed in pain and she only stopped hacking at me when my Mum pushed her off. I ended up needing forceps, my DS and I both got sepsis and spent a week in hospital. DS got jaundice too, he ended up getting so bad with it because they didn't set the lamp up correctly, it took them 3 days and him getting dangerously jaundice before they realise that.

I had no one to listen to me afterwards, the MWs and HVs just kept telling me it could have been worse and I have a healthy baby.

I've been saying for ages that this is a really important feminist issue.

I have been relatively lucky during my three pregnancies and births but it is extremely common for women to experience ill-treatment during labour that would amount to an assault or a human rights violation (I am a lawyer with a good understanding of this area of law).

In this country the law is clear that a woman's bodily autonomy is paramount. There is a really important principle that pregnant women are not reduced to being vessels for their baby. As far as I am aware this is not the case in the US.

In the UK an unborn child does not have human rights in a legal sense so any conflict between the interests of the mother and baby should be resolved in favour of the mother. Of course in the vast majority of cases the mother has the best interests of her baby at heart.

The charity Birthrights does some really good work in this area.

stumbledin it's not because medicine is a male led profession. Fuckit has, for me, nailed it. The NHS is broken and not fit for purpose, millions of £s of funding are mismanaged, a significant number of HCPs are totally lacking in empathy, caring for patients is beneath them.
However, this shocking lack of care is not reserved for women giving birth, neglect and abuse is an equal opportunities situation on the NHS.
My DSis and I have spent more of this year at the bedsides of our elderly parents than we have at home. Our DF died because the staff ignored the sepsis protocol despite us both asking and begging for help. We complained and it was investigated, they admitted their failings but also said that due to his age treatment wasn't financially viable. They left him to die frightened and in agony from starvation and dehydration.
DM's treatment has been shocking, nothing short of neglect but we also witnessed other patients (especially those without visitors) being treated the same. Those other patients were male and female.
There are excellent HCPs in the NHS but they are fighting a losing battle.

Drain the swamp where have we heard that before? Now that is chilling.

It doesn't have to be America or bust. Other countries manage to have a free-at-point-of-service healthcare system without, like described upthread, doing things like leaving a sepsis patient unmonitored.

Lack of funds (IMO willful and politically motivated) is an issue . But that doesn't necessarily cause something that comes up again and again on these threads - lack of respect and empathy and what can only be described as sadism. So many stories of people being stitched without anesthetics! These aren't one-offs, they are deeply entrenched and we need to face up to this.

I'm a midwife and this thread makes for really chilling reading. It's true that staffing has a big impact on the care we're able to give - some days I spend 14 hours working flat out on the postnatal ward without getting time to eat, drink, or pee, but no matter how hard I work I just can't give the care to the (sometimes 10-15) women in my care (plus babies) that they deserve. Sometimes, too, it's about emergency situations where - rightly or wrongly - a decision is made to save the life of a woman or baby, and every second counts so we don't use the time to explain things or get proper consent. Particularly with regard to instrumental deliveries, I think there needs to be more discussion antenatally about this so that women don't end up feeling like they have no idea what's going on in the labour room. The antenatal midwives don't want to scare women by telling them how stressful labour is for a baby and how common it is for their heart rates to become irregular and for them to need to be born very, very quickly - but the alternative is glossing over it so that if that situation does arise the woman is completely unprepared and traumatised.
BUT all of that aside, there is just no excuse for being spoken to rudely, ridiculed for not knowing something, having your pain / gut feelings dismissed, being needlessly exposed to an unwarranted number of medical staff, or not being given pain relief. (And probably a raft of other unacceptable things I can't think of just now.) None of that can be blamed on poor staffing or the time pressures of an emergency situation. I'm so sorry for what some of you have gone through.

I’d love to hear a physician’s perspective on this, but are there not many here? Would be nice to know why these are such common experiences

This didn't happen during childbirth but was in a women's medicine setting. I was getting a mirena coil put in and had my legs up and the Dr with no warning came over and shoved his fingers into my vagina to do a pelvic exam. He then did the coil insertion and told me nothing about what he was doing. It was extremely painful. I found out years later that he'd dilated my cervix without saying that was what he was going to do or asking me if that was OK. I felt very violated and have struggled with gynae medical appointments since then.

I wish I'd complained but at the time didn't realise it was wrong and now it's probably too late.

Reading all this, my experiences are relatively good although by no means perfect...DS1 born in birth centre. Pushing for 4 hours with no intervention so when he finally arrived my undercarriage was in a shocking state (I couldn’t walk for 5 weeks, got an infection...). I was left alone in a room with a baby with no clue how to care for him and no help or guidance offered. He wouldn’t feed yet I was discharged 5 hours after giving birth. My baby had actually been born with a serious health condition but this was repeatedly missed (for 12 weeks in fact) and me repeatedly dismissed when seeking medical help on the basis that he was my first baby and all first time mothers are paranoid.
DS3 was born at home on the premise that more care seemed to be offered at home than available at the local birth centre and a transfer to a labour ward if required would be more readily available (odd but true!). In established labour after a series of brutal sweeps, the midwife arrived and informed me she’d forgotten the gas and air but it was OK because i’d birthed twice before without (!!!). Despite me telling her about the constant and intense pain even between contractions, I was told again and again with much authority that my contractions weren’t long enough or painful enough for the baby to be arriving imminently. When she said she was heading back to the hospital to do some paperwork and for me to call if things got worse DH and I were flabbergasted and disheartened. I was in so much pain i’d have consented to a csection on the bathroom floor with no anaesthetic I was so desperate. As she pulled off the drive my waters broke and DH had to call her like a mad man hoping she would stop the car and pick up. She did thankfully and headed back straightaway. DS3 was born shortly after she arrived to her cries of “oh my god he’s enormous” as he was crowning. When she saw the size of him she conceded that maybe I had been in more pain than she had thought.
DD2’s arrival was by far the best - delivered at home by my husband with emergency services guidance on the phone. Read into that what you will.
But 3 tough labours and 3 big babies later my lady garden isn’t quite what it was and I have been left with a prolapse. The GP told me there’s nothing they can do, just go home and give the pelvic floors a squeeze. A friend who happens to be healthcare professional who trained and who has practiced predominantly in mainland Europe tells me she doesn’t understand the UK system. She said other countries “put their women back together” post partum. I am told this involves a little painless internal work to check and address any muscles damaged in the birthing process and a few sessions of physio to get everything back in working order. The result being fewer UTIs and incontinence issues and better prolapse management. She said the NHS says they have no money to do it, but the issues created by not doing so lead to more serious problems which affect a woman’s day to day quality of life and require much more unpleasant and resource thirsty treatment further down the line.
I never really bought into the idea that women are treated more poorly by the NHS until experiencing pregnancy and childbirth myself. Looking back now I feel very much like a pregnant woman, particularly one in labour or a woman who has recently given birth is viewed as a bit “unnecessary” and simply a robot vehicle for bringing new life into the world rather than an actual person and is treated as such.
The lack of post partum care is a whole different story and sadly I think an epedemic which spreads far beyond maternity services. Certainly in recent years my experience of geriatric care (as an on looker) in hospital and in the community is appalling. My husband has long said that he thinks the NHS/Govt are doing their best to ensure needy old people die as quickly as possible in their own homes rather than live longer, happier lives being cared for at a cost to the state. I’m sadly starting to agree with him.
Whichever political party you support, anyone with a modicum of common sense and any real recent first hand experience of our healthcare system must concede that the NHS is no longer fit for purpose. The quicker people stop banging on about it being free, the envy of the word and insisting that we should all put up and shut up, the quicker we can start opening up to sensible debate about taking responsibility for ourselves and perhaps prioritising paying for healthcare as a mandatory living expense, much like utilities, over luxuries like cable TV, a new car or a boozy night out.

Yarnswift I had my spinal wear off too during a c section. I then spent the next pregnancy with undiagnosed PTSD only discovered when I had a meltdown and refused to sign the consent form for my next c section. They gave me an epidural & a spinal to ensure it didn’t happen again.

After 5 children I have a few tales to tell. Thanks to austerity/cutbacks I have seen a real deterioration in maternity care between 2004 and 2015 when I had my children.

Oh and I was also told my stubble was coming in nicely by my gynae consultant after I had been shaved for a laparoscopy. I was 19 and utterly mortified.

Had to crawl along corridor to labour suit after being sold I was havering that I could feel baby between my legs.... I could... the minute I got on to the bed she slid right out.

Also. When I went for my 12 week scan I was told that " Eh...there's nothing there now.... no ehm heartbeat...". When I asked what happened next I was given my coat and sent off without so much as a leaflet.

My friend whose child was still born... was left in a ward full of jubilant New mothers.

Every time I go to the GP I am asked if I am stressed/anxious/depressed/everything ok at home??? NO I AM FUCKING CONSTIPATED!!!

Woman are nothing but stupid, neurotic, empty vessels as far as western medicine is concerned.

I got ridiculed for having pubic hair (i had a big bump as baby was 10lb 4oz when born. Couldn't see down there if i tried!)

The after-care for women who have had epidurals or c-sections seems particularly brutal. Yes, it’s a good idea to mobilise asap after a vaginal delivery, but how can it be that HCPs who have gone through whatever level of training and have experience of working on a post-natal ward not understand that epidurals take some variable time to wear off, and in the meantime women are at risk of falls, and that c-sections involves major surgery.

My understanding is that people who have hip or knee replacements do get encouraged to mobilise asap but with assistance, certainly in walking, by physios, often two of them. (I used to work in a hospital and it was quite common to see two physios helping an orthopaedic patient practise going up and down the stairs.) Orthopaedic patients need to adjust their gait, because that’s been altered through coping with the pain of bad joints.

Post-partum women have to adjust their stance and gait because they’ve spent months accommodating for the weight and position of pregnancy. Women who’ve had c-sections also have to deal with a significant abdominal wound.

I’m still upset about how I was treated some 40 years ago, but I’m bloody fuming that these days, women are still routinely ignored and dismissed.

Sorry for posting again, but I really needed to rant. I’m getting on for 70 years old now, and those two moments in my life should have been the most wonderful, but they weren’t.

And it’s still happening.