to let it bother me so much when couples say "we're pregnant"?

[Schnitzel]

I know this is really petty, but it REALLY gets on my goat. Where did this "we're pregnant" business come from?! I'm probably just being a really miserable git.

I never likened birth to rape. Some women do feel their birth left them feeling like they'd been raped, just because your difficult birth didn't doesn't mean other people's doesn't. It does however prove my point that you're putting your feelings of a situation onto someone else's feelings.

If a woman feels that word describes her situation best then no matter what you think, it's the best word to use.

I don't feel I gave birth, I had a section under general anaesthetic, "gave" suggests an action which obviously I didn't do. Would I argue another woman didn't give birth? No. If that's her feelings then I shall respect that. Should you argue with me I did give birth? You can try, but it's how I feel about my situation.

Everyone needs to stop putting their feelings onto another person. I don't feel the same as you, you don't feel the same as anyone else. Feelings are unique built on the unique situation that each of us are in and you can not own another persons feelings which is what 95% of this thread has been about.

Star, sounds awful and definitely a good example of what birth rape is :( If you have any more babies consider getting a Doula.

I heard of someone who had asked for minimal VE as part of her birth plan, she was mid-contraction and the doctor went to stick his fingers in without warning her because she was concentrating on her contraction. Her partner had to scream several times that the doctor was about to assault her because she did not consent.

Birth is the only place in a hospital where the patient is treated as a by product. It reminds me of being raped and being told your body is a scene of crime/ evidence. The difference is the police are usually aware they're doing it and are sympathetic.

I have been understanding of others' points of view but no, its pretentious bollocks and a complete insult to women who have experienced the real, life threatening, terrifying horror of a rape that you don't know if you will survive or indeed, if you want to.

Utter shite.

No, you have no understanding and are completely offensive. Even as a woman who has been raped I am offended by your comments. You have no idea what some women go through in labour, just because you never has doesn't give you the right to speak for others and say they haven't, in fact it gives you less right to say it doesn't exist.

Star, you can still have a Doula with a section, even if they don't go in the room with you they can be a big help. I'm possibly facing my third section (I'm hoping not to but I am candidate for an automatic section without discussion) and one of the first people I told was the Doula I already had picked out.

I'm not saying it doesn't exist! I'm saying calling it rape is wrong.

Trop Wed 01-Dec-10 17:45:17
I see your point, I do.

But really, its a whole different kettle of fish IMO.

Rape is an intent to inflict violence and domination and humiliation on a person.

No matter what kind of 'god complex' the professionals have its not on the same level as rape.

But I accept some women feel their free will has been taken away which can't be in any way acceptable.

Intervention during birth is NOT RAPE.

I disagree.
The intention to rape you was not there.

The intention was obviously to put your baby's welbeing and safety first.

Clearly they didn't do the best by you but given that babies can die during birth perhaps they were acting with good intentions.

Good grief, if they hadn't bothered and (god forbid) something awful happended to your baby you would call them negligent for not doing everything they could!

Certainly not intending to 'rape' you.

Often these are not urgent life-saving interventions, but completely unnecessary (as in StarExpat's story).

And even if it was ... what about consent? Aren't we supposed to have the right to refuse even life-saving medical treatment? As for the baby, I'm sure that 99.99% of women would willingly consent to anything necessary to have their baby born alive and well, but that doesn't make the consent irrelevant, you still don't just force medical procedures on someone without their consent and against their express wishes and attempts to resist!

Some rapists probably justify what they're doing and say it's for the victim's own good, or that it was what she wanted/needed. Regardless of the intentions and justifications, the effect on the victim is the same.

Like I said. The lack of consent is not acceptable but the intent to rape is not there.

Its Not RAPE

To call it that is a nonsense.

Imo some are so intent being a victim they don't consider that to call it rape is actually a huge offense to all health professionals who are (rightly or wrongly) trying to do the best they can.

Trop - If doesn't matter if you're a 'health professional' if you wrongly (ie without consent) force your hand (or anything else) into someones vagina it is rape.

I'm astonished that you are concerned at the 'huge offense to all the health professionals' my thoughts are with the women who have been sexually assaulted.

If the use of the word shocks some health professionals into actually thinking about what they're doing, and how they're subconsciously treating a pregnant/birthing woman as less human than any other patient...I don't think that's a bad thing.

I think they can cope with a little offence if it makes things change for the better.

Sexual Assault? Oh for goodness sake do you not realise how feeble that sounds?

These women are giving birth and they have gone into it with their eyes wide open. To then go crying rape? What drama queens!

Can't you see that were it not for the help of these ?rapists? a lot more women and children would die in childbirth?

Such ridiculous diva behaviour.

Next you?ll be suing toilet paper manufacturers on the grounds of buggery!

Its not rape and it certainly isn't sexual assault. Birth rape - I've never heard anything so silly.

I haven't read the whole thread, but want to give my tuppence worth. I read a similar thread on a different forum about a man saying "We don't want an episotomy". Now if my husband said that I would probably end up giving him one.

The first midwife who examined me in early labour shoved her hand in and squeezed the bit up there as hard as she could until I thought I was dying. When I gasped out a protest, she explained that it is "to get you used to the feeling". She went off her shift shortly afterwards and I was left puzzling as to why I needed to get used to the feeling: nothing in my subsequent labour felt remotely like it and none of the subsequent medical professionals who examined me felt called upon to do anything of the kind, either in this or my second labour. I might not exactly call it rape, but I would certainly call it deliberate: on her own showing she did it with the purpose to inflict pain on me, just for the sake of it, because she felt I needed to know "what it felt like".

'The intention to rape you was not there.
The intention was obviously to put your baby's welbeing and safety first.'

Trop, you have a very narrow definition of rape that seems to rely entirely on the intentions and attitude of the rapist.

Nonsense, I have a realistic rather than sensationalist definition of rape.

'Realistic' I would take issue with, not just because it's impossible to measure intention, but because you argue that rape is in the eye of the rapist, not that of the person raped.

But I am talking about health professionals. NOT RAPISTS!

Dear me, talk about melodramatic.

I'm banging my head against a brick wall here aren't I?

You carry on with this 'birth rape' nonsense and no the professionals will not take you seriously, they will put it down to hormones and pnd and dismiss you totally as melodramatic, drama queens with 'victim syndrome' whereas if you discuss the issue of removal of consent with the calm perspective it deserves then you might find the matter is taken seriously.

The phrase 'your own worst enemy' springs to mind.

You are talking through your hat. Your assumptions are clearly much more important to your thought process and your argument than the real experiences of real women in real hospitals getting really painful procedures inflicted upon them without consent by really professional people whose understanding of the integrity of other people's physical bodies is very limited.

I have experienced both major abdominal surgery and childbirth five times, plus D&Cs, and could write a book on the glaring difference in the quality of nursing care between the two wings of the same hospital where all of the above happened. I didn't experience it as rape, but there are women who do, and who suffer ptsd as a result. I experienced it as a complete lack of any kind of caring, compassionate attitude, and in the case of nursing, attitude has an impact on the medical outcome for the patients. When a maternity nurse is phoning it in, patients suffer. It is completely unprofessional.

All health professionals are not created equal.

Any professional who does not take the complaints of customers/ patients seriously is being unnecessarily high-handed, and yes, that is exactly the sort of attitude that results in trauma for maternity patients. The whole effort of making sure mum and baby are delivered safely through the birth experience is negated if the mother returns home shaken to her core by her treatment at the hands of the 'professionals', suffering from ptsd or if she winds up with depression that can be traced to her treatment in the hospital.

And I am shocked that you think medical professionals would blame pnd for the feelings of women about their birth experiences. By saying that you have in fact damned those 'professionals' you seem to hold in such high esteem. The bricks you're feeling are all inside your head.