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

I was in severe pain with a large back-to-back baby but was told I couldn’t be admitted until I was sufficiently dilated. They sent me home with no painkillers. I struggled alone until I couldn’t cope any more and went back. Still not dilated so sent home again. Nobody would listen to me. I never did dilate so would have basically been made to stay at home until I died. Except I went back and refused to leave. I sat in the foyer until they agreed to admit me for an emergency c-section.

By this time it was late at night so I was put on the ward, paralysed from anaesthetic, with no support available till 8am and no food. I rang the bell and asked for help with my baby, the nurse stood there in front of me and said no, the rules are you have to look after your own baby. I was on the ward for two days and wasn’t fed because apparently you have to order your meal 24 hours in advance - as if I knew I’d be there!

The bigger issue imo is that after I was sent home nobody gave a crap about my recovery. I’d had major surgery yet only received one cursory checkup with a doctor who didn’t even examine me. I was told the NHS can’t afford physiotherapy or further checkups to assist my recovery.

In America anyone can go to an emergency room and be treated and billed later which if you don't pay it affects your credit. They also have medicade which is a government health plan they give to people that qualify if you make under a certain amount each year and it doesn't have copays or premiums that you have to pay the state pays.

I actually thought about suing them for malpractice but my family talked me out of it.

These stories are very disturbing. I must have been very lucky with my maternity care and birth, but it shouldn’t be luck. It should be the standard.

The NHS is on its last legs.
Care in the US is only available to a limited number of the population and is extremely variable.IME.
I onow several people who live in France and the system there seems to work very well. It is a mix of state and private insurance.

@Kendallmg23 that sounds absolutely horrific, I hope you had support afterwards and I'm glad your little boy pulled through and is doing well x

Kendallmg23

Hi, I am 26 and l live in the United States and it happens everywhere. Here is my horror birth story if anyone is willing to read it. My story starts when I was 19 weeks. I went to my OBGYN and I was told I was dilating early I was put on some hormone medication and sent home. The next week when I returned it had got worse and I had read online there was a procedure called a cerclage and I had asked my doctor about it and he said "I wasn't a candidate because I had never had any children before". So I was at home and without thinking I had picked up my little niece and I felt a little bit of pressure and something different down there. It felt like a little bubble coming out of my cervix, so I went to two different emergency room labor and delivery department and one sent me home without even doing an exam. The other didn't do an exam with a speculum they had a nurse do it with her hand she said the all she could feel was the cervix and I was fine. I knew she was wrong and I had an appointment at the OBGYN the next day when he checked he said I had a bulging sac and I needed to go straight to the hospital from there. For the next week I spent not allowed to eat and in an inverted bed to keep pressure off my uterus and cervix. I remember crying because I was so hungry. So after about a week of being there they came in and did the daily exam. Me and my sister and mother we're all just hanging out worried and I started bleeding directly after, the nurse told me it was normal but went and got the doctor and they checked again. Very quickly I was push to another room and they did an ultrasound and I was told the baby's foot was coming out. They said I needed to have a C-section. So I'm carted the surgery room and I can't exactly remember but I know that they had me romove the hospital gown and I was completely naked surrounded by at least 20 doctors. I remember being so cold that when a nurse put her hand on my leg it was a huge comfort. I was completely shaking all over. To had a med student do my spinal while another doctor guided him on how to do it. I remember her telling him she wasn't in and to not worry just push a little harder, it took what felt like a long time. I laid down and the first half went fine. Halfway through I started to feel so much pressure that it felt like someone was standing on top of me hammering my stomach I could feel a huge burning sensation which I thought was the cauterizer. I was screaming on the top of my lungs about how much pain I was in crying and then they gave me more medication which didn't really take effect till after it was over, it felt like hours. I was even screaming to the surgeons to hurry up. The medicine kicked in I guess once I was in recovery and my my mom was shocked because I was lifting up my legs to show them that I wasn't numb down there and could move. It was absolutely horrific. That is basically what happened to me but then my son who was only 24 weeks at the time was rushedstraight to the NICU on the top floor he was immediately intubated they tried to get a PIC line in and couldn't. He spent the next three months in the NICU. When he was two weeks old he contracted a MRSA it's like a staph infection from the nurses or the NICU which I know because The first time I held him he was a month old. He had so many procedures more than I've had in a lifetime. He was on a ventilator and a feeding tube most of those three months. He came on oxygen and on a heart monitor. He had retinopathy of prematurity and once he was sent home he had to go weekly to get eye exams and had three eye surgery before he was 9 months old. He is now two and is a pretty normal two year old for everything he's been through but he still has some developmental issues, and his entire body has scars everywhere. I was traumatized by what happened to me and I am pretty lucky that I now have a happy healthy two year old. Doctors need to see people as human.

Sorry you went through it too. I've told DP and while he has an amazing pain threshold it's almost as if he doesn't believe me that this is being routinely done in hospitals?

I said it to room of people (mostly first time parents to be) on a tour of the labour wing when pregnant with DC#2. I just got looks of feint distaste but the staff couldn't get me out of there fast enough.

@charis I completely agree.

My DH had a vasectomy, he was fussed over, made comfortable, had carefully monitored anaesthetic to ensure he felt nothing at all, he had a nurse at his side to monitor him.

When in labour I had gloved hands roughly shoved into me without warning or consent. All I said was 'ouch' once and got barked at that she was just doing her job. I had a second degree tear stitched up with no warning, not a word spoken to me, when I nearly hit the ceiling in pain I was tutted at and told to have some gas and air.

Nobody

Ha ha ha ha!

Have you ever met Matt Hancock? I used to know him fairly well....let's just say he is an unlikely women's rights campaigner.

I do think this is why many women are huge advocates of home birth, many have had such poor experiences in hospital. I think women of childbirth age and the elderly have the worst of it, as care often can leave the patients feeling humiliated and traumatised.

I had a “surprise” membrane sweep and while I personally didn’t feel violated, it was painful and ineffective. Yet, stories on here vary, as some say it helped them go into labour. I wish I’d have been asked first, and if I ever have another child, I’ll definitely refuse and let it be known I won’t allow it at any point (and I’d already put it in my birth plan, but I definitely, definitely would always prefer c-sec over birthing tools).

It often appears that hospitals are reluctant to change long-standing procedures, even when the evidence suggests that they should do so.

Hasn't Matt Hancock promised to make UK best place in world to give birth? Perhaps he should come on for a web chat. I've never given birth but think this is really important.

The entire system is inherently awful. Men aren't given none or inadequate anaesthesia for procedures on sensitive areas. And they aren't being sent straight home with complete responsibility for a new human including using their bodies to keep them alive either. No, they are usually cared for by relatives or friends, time OFF etc

There's not much to be done about this inequality but it's something I usually bear in mind when dealing with MRA types banging on about men doing dangerous jobs. It doesn't get much more dangerous than childbirth and prostitution.

Some of the stories about women not being listened to in labour or given membrane sweeps they didn't consent to are disturbing.

Fuckit said...

"I grew up believing the lie that the nhs was the most amazing social creation that was our national pride, that we all defend to the death. But once you’ve experienced the very worst of it you actually don’t think you will miss it when it’s gone. Other countries seem to do well without an nhs I’m not advocating a US healthcare system but I think the model we have is broken. It was great in the 20th century times have changed. Something radical needs to happen now."

Hey steady on now. It's the envy of the world...

Apparently.

I do think some issues like consent and informed choice are particularly bad in obstetric care as opposed to other areas of medicine though. There was an article on it in another newspaper (can’t remember where now) and an obstetrician themselves was calling for change, they commented that obstetrics was one area of medicine where adult patients are treated more like children.

There are issues with the language used and also a lack of transparency about risks and benefits. I had a horrendous forceps delivery which, in hindsight, wasn’t in my best interests personally but would have contributed to better c-section stats for the hospital.

For a lot of people giving birth on the NHS is the first time they get to experience hospital care beyond A&E

I think so too. Anyone who has had significant dealings with medical staff will have sad stories of feeling violated, dismissed, shamed and belittled. Women just happen to experience this earlier than most men.

This is such an important conversation to have. There are too many dreadful experiences that women have in childbirth - and so many of them avoidable. Haven't Mumsnet been having a campaign about prevention of, and better treatment for, post birth injuries?

A young male doctor shoved his hand up my vagina, without consent, he had massive grin on his face, even the midwife looked disturbed. I looked at my DH thinking wtf just happened. I felt I was sexually assulted. I shudder thinking about even now, nearly 4 years later.

My experiences were mild compared to others, but they still drove my desire for home birth with my younger DC. I'm not a perfect candidt, but I know that I'm happier calmer and treated better at home. I am a person, too, and not just a baby incubator.

The obstetrics situation in the USA is arguably worse than in the UK and the thought of us following that model of care for labour and delivery makes me shudder. At least we still have midwives driving obstetrics here; I'd hate to change that, even though some midwives are horrible too.

There are some terrible stories here
I do think the chronic understaffing of midwives and nurses plays a part in this. Staff who are overworked, frustrated and resentful take it out on those who rely on them. You end up with staff who have nothing left to give and feel hopeless and powerless to change the situation... and it is ultimately the patients who suffer 😞
I am not excusing their callousness or inattention mind but I do think the long term grinding down of the NHS workforce is partially to blame for the horror experienced by some patients.

I've never experienced any kind of good care in any of my 3 pregnancies/births. My first birth was horrible. I was spoken to like dirt, examined roughly during contractions, had pain relief I didn't want forced on me. No one explained anything to me or asked my consent to anything. I was stitched up without pain relief and despite a traumatic instrumental birth with considerable blood loss, was sent off for a shower alone straight after walking the corridors in nothing but a bed sheet dripping blood everywhere. I was then put into a private postnatal room and left completely alone until the following night, even though I was a first time young mum who was trying to breastfeed.
Second baby I was denied any care for severe pelvic pain that left me housebound. I was left to go very overdue despite the fact they knew baby was very big. I eventually laboured at home, when I felt I needed to go to hospital my DH called and they told him no I had to stay home another hour. I birthed my 10lb meconium covered baby alone in my bathroom 40 mins later.
Third baby, refused early scan despite bleeding. Midwife was awful and missed a lot of antenatal appointments because of her not turning up/running hours late. I was pushed into another home birth I didn't want, labour ward again refused to let me go in. The birth went ok but I had a really bad bleed alone a few hours after. Hospital again didn't want to see me and sent a midwife out who wouldn't even look at the copious amounts of football sized blood clots I'd passed. I was also wrongly prescribed clexane that I didn't need. Postnatal care was non existent in all cases.

This resonates with me. After about 40hrs of labour, I begged for an epidural, and the c section that I'd asked for several times. I was nearly two weeks overdue, had had my waters broken for me, and 40hrs in, I still hadn't got to 10cm. The two males doctors were very, very slow to provide the epidural, and wanted to have a long conversation with me first whilst I was screaming in agony.
Once it was administered, they basically patted me on the shoulder and told me "it wouldn't be long now".

Another 5 hrs later I had an augmentation (like the induction drugs). Another 5hrs later I was ready to push, but by that time I was just done for and just couldn't get anywhere.

Thankfully, by then the surgical team had changed, and it was now staffed entirely by women. They whipped me straight into theatre after 52 hours of labour, but it was too late for c section, meaning episiotomy and forceps that have left me with life long damage.
In my birth debrief, the consultant raved about one of the male doctors. "Such a good communicator." apparently. It was clear from reading through my birth notes that baby was large, stuck, and not positioned correctly to descend. I had no chance. The best I got was "we're sorry. In your case, we got it wrong."
I'm never having another child.