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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to really hate the term "birth rape"

396 replies

laumiere · 21/04/2012 12:15

It's from this story where a woman is allegedly put under a GA under her will and given an emergency C section. All very unpleasant (although it does throw up the question as to how much we really expect to control a process which at a basic level is still capable of killing us and our babies) but commentators are starting to term it 'birth rape'. As a rape survivor and someone who has supported rape victims as part of my job I am so sick of this term being overused and devalued! (This goes double for the moronic "draping" on FaceBook).

OP posts:
EdlessAllenPoe · 21/04/2012 20:08

exactly, as often mentioned it takes time to assemble a team and scrub for a c/s - and this time can be used to go through what is going to happen really quickly.

from the sounds of things, the OB performing it wasn't in the room yet when she was tricked into being knocked out.

edam · 21/04/2012 20:13

Dionne - I dislike the word 'subjective' being used to dismiss a patient's complaint. The recall of every individual in that room and that process will be subjective and informed by their history and experience. You can't single out the patient and say their version of events is less worthy because it's 'subjective'.

DioneTheDiabolist · 21/04/2012 20:16

Of course it is possible, but having read her posts I think that it is improbable.

anychocswilldo · 21/04/2012 20:16

I find it hard to understand people like this and i speak from experience. I was admitted to hospital at 36 weeks with a bleed with dd2, 2 days later i was still in hospital (thank God) and on the monitor when dd2's heartrate went from 166bpm to 63 bpm Shock due to placental abruption. I was wheeled (very quickly)! on the bed into the operating room where i was told i would have to have a GA and C section to save my baby (and myself) whilst midwives were pulling my clothes off and inserting catheters and tubes God knows where! I wasn't really given time to repy, i guess the Dr's assumed that i would want to save my baby!! Do you know what? I didn't care! I didn't sign any consent forms, my husband was at home with dd1 and didn't sign anything. I think i must have been unconscious within 5 mins of her heart rate dropping and in my opinion the dr's and midwives did their job. All i can say is that its very easy when u have been in labour, maybe on gas & air and then in a stressful situation to forget or not take in a lot of what has been said to you. At the end of the day this woman may not have got the birthing experience she wanted who does? but her son is healthy, surely thats the most important thing. My daughter was unresponsive when she was born, however with a LOT of medical intervention she is now a happy, healthy little girl. Grin I dread to think what would have happened if the Dr's had wasted time explaining everything and waiting for me to discuss with my dh.

AThingInYourLife · 21/04/2012 20:22

"I was wheeled (very quickly)! on the bed into the operating room where i was told i would have to have a GA and C section to save my baby (and myself) whilst midwives were pulling my clothes off and inserting catheters and tubes God knows where!"

And you don't think the woman in question deserved this courtesy?

You think it was fair for her to be tricked into a procedure you had explained to you?

Why?

You don't speak from experience, you speak from the opposite experience. You had an emergency section you consented to and that was explained to you.

This woman wanted a VBAC. On that basis she was entirely right to try to avoid medical interventions. That doesn't mean she would have refused a section if one were needed.

Any woman going for a trial of labour knows that another CS is a possibility.

They just don't expect that CS to be forced on them by deception and without consent.

DioneTheDiabolist · 21/04/2012 20:30

I did not use the word subjective to dismiss this woman's complaint.

You are correct, the recall of everyone is subjective. We do not have access to all the information available. But her lawyers did and, in one of the most litigious countries in the world, they told her she didn't have a case worth pursuing.

anychocswilldo · 21/04/2012 20:31

Nothing was explained to me, the Reg shouted across the room while he was having his gown put on that i would need a GA and C Section just before the anaethetist started giving me the anaesthetic. I had no time to ask questions and nor did i want to! I was too distressed that my baby was dying! Of course there are 2 sides to a story but i wonder how much this woman is actually able to recall clearly, we don't know what other analgesia she had been given or any other circumstances. I'm not saying she is wrong to question what happened, or attempt to gain access to her notes if doing so can bring her some closure. For example i have never seen anaesthesia given via gas (please correct me if i'm wrong) this for me throws up some coherency issues. I just think that perhaps this lady needs to get some perspective, she and her baby are alive and well. Isn't that the most important thing? Can i also just say that the aftercare she received sounds awful, however that is a seperate issue to why surgery was performed.

NoOnesGoingToEatYourEyes · 21/04/2012 20:32

YANBU to hate that term OP.

But the woman who wrote that first post is not being unreasonable to feel unhappy and upset with the hospital for carrying out an operation without her consent.

By the time I had DS three years ago I had lost our first son to stillbirth and our daughter to prematurity, within just eleven months of each other. I'd had so many examinations and interventions, been induced to give birth to a baby we knew had died and then had an intervention to hurry the birth of a baby we knew would die shortly after her birth.

I'd had failed operation for a cervical stitch to save our daughter and then been told that because they were no longer working to prevent her birth but actively hurrying it on I would have to sign paperwork consenting to a late termination (and even now I can't even type that without crying and feeling like I betrayed her in some way). I refused and they threatened to have me declared mentally unfit to make the decision, make DH agree and do it anyway. So I signed and cried the whole time because I thought they would put 'termination' on her death certificate.

Teams of people saw me ill and bleeding and in various states of undress, every bit of my body had been touched and manipulated and injected. In all three births I was bruised and battered looking afterwards. I'd had forceps to remove the infected placenta that nearly killed me during my daughters birth.

I had another operation for a cervical stitch when I was pregnant with DS and thank god this one worked. But when the stitch was removed it was incredibly painful and difficult and DS's heart rate dropped quickly and dramatically. They were on the point of taking me for a c-section then but luckily we stabilised before they did so. But the doctor removing that stitch had actually shouted at me just before that happened because he didn't believe me when I said their was a pain in my bump and I thought something was wrong. It felt like something had clamped down on my baby and was squeezing us both, I tried to explain, he shouted at me and then the monitor went off and a team of people ran in with those electric shock things that restart hearts.

I spent days in hospital through all three pregnancies, had to explain myself many times to midwives who seemed to resent the special treatment they thought we were getting, sometimes even after they knew why.

And finally, after months of feeling heartbroken and grieving and being ill and bleeding and being public property I finally had my baby.

There are things about DS's birth that I cannot remember or that I remember wrongly (DH and my mum tell me different things to what I thought happened). I didn't even know I'd had my baby (forceps delivery following episiotomy after an 18 hour labour). I was delirious, having a flash back to my daughters birth and very confused about why they had put someone else's baby on my stomach when I hadn't had my own. I demanded to know whose child it was and then said "But it was supposed to be a girl" when I finally accepted it was my baby but a boy. I really thought I was giving birth to our daughter all over again.

And I did feel like I had been through a violent assault but I would never, ever, compare it to being raped. It took me months to be able to look at my body again and months to feel comfortable enough to let DH see me, months to feel able to physically have sex and many months more to actually want to have sex and think I might enjoy it. But I can't even begin to imagine that it compares to being raped because all of those things were done with the intentions of helping me and my baby.

Whatever that woman feels about her experience, and I sympathise very much with her as she feels that it was a traumatic and upsetting one she is struggling to recover from or accept, those other people are still wrong to attach the term rape to it on her behalf. I think that for some people even a 'perfect' or 'textbook' birth can be traumatic so what she went through is understandably hard to come to terms with. But still, that term is wrong.

OrangeCrushed · 21/04/2012 20:33

This reply has been deleted

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MummytoKatie · 21/04/2012 20:38

I have no idea if the woman's account is accurate or not. But if it is then I find it horrific that people here think that this is ok just because she and her baby were healthy at the end.

It is difficult in the birth situation as there are two lives to consider. But that doesn't mean that the rights of the woman should be ignored.

zookeeper · 21/04/2012 20:40

Has she issued proceedings for this grievous assault then? t

EdlessAllenPoe · 21/04/2012 20:43

this is interesting this may explain why she had to change doctors many times

in the UK VBAC is supported as a 'safe' choice.

in the US you may have difficulty finding anyone to do it. the things she wanted wouldn't have been so difficult in the UK - why do people on here think them unreasonable?

schmee · 21/04/2012 20:43

YABU - my situation is different but I know from personal experience that being forced into the birth you don't want can feel exactly like rape.

I wanted to have a repeat cs for macrosomatic DC3: my consultant said that I should have a forceps birth instead. Under law the choice was mine, but I was consistently bullied by a few medical professionals who felt that it would be better for me to cut my vagina and insert instruments into it, than to agree to a repeat csection (which would have been safer for my baby). In the end I got my way. But in the meantime I began to selfharm and to feel horrible feelings towards my unborn child, because I felt I was in a situation where I was being forced against my will and despite fighting back to have my intimate parts cut and violated.

It was the being forced against my will that made it feel like a rape. (I had gone ahead with the pregnancy believing that I would be able to opt for a repeat csection).

I hate women who devalue the word "rape" but I think it appropriate to be used in this situation.

EdlessAllenPoe · 21/04/2012 20:46

also from 'Unecessarean' -
Richard Waldman was quoted in May 2010, one week before being sworn in as the 61st president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, saying: ?Unfortunately we don?t get sued for doing C-sections. We get sued for not doing C-sections soon enough,? said Dr. Waldman. ?That has really increased, I think, our C-section rate.?

litigation for a c/s that did happen would be much harder to sell, especially as the only witness was her to much of it.

Kayano · 21/04/2012 20:54

I actually find it hard to believe her every word Blush

I don't see why they would trick her... She had been on god
Knows what meds and in labour for a while so I don't know how her recollection is so crystal clear.

My labour was really quick with only gas and air and I can barely remember it! I vaguely remember shouting something about Johnny cash and the 'fucking burning ring of fire' Blush

What if she had refused refused refused point blank. Do they just let them die? Then face a being sued by her husband/ partner? She was clearly
Set in her decision before anything even happened as she had changed provider many times to get her desired birth 'medical intervention number 1' when they only wanted to check on her baby.

I just don't
Know what is a doctor who is trained to preserve life supposed to do in this situation? What if they had let her have her way and the baby died? An innocent little baby dead because of a mothers desire for her 'perfect birth'

I just don't get it at all. I'm of the 'just get my baby here safely' school
Of thought

bronze · 21/04/2012 20:55

I had to sign a form. There was minutes between being on the ward to being under. In that time while they wheeled me they explained what was happening and got me to sign. They used gas to put me under and while they were doing that I could feel them putting in cannulas and catheter(ouch) and prepping my bump. I didn't have full info but if we don't get your baby out now it will die will you sign this form so we can was enough for me and would presumably be enough for most people. She didn't even get that.

5madthings · 21/04/2012 20:56

zookeeper because she and her baby suffered no physical harm no alwyer would take the case on as there was not enough money in it!

bronze · 21/04/2012 20:57

And as to why they did it... I suspect money was involved.

zookeeper · 21/04/2012 20:58

but many posters are saying say she was operated on without her consent which is technically an assault - surely then she has a case?

EdlessAllenPoe · 21/04/2012 20:59

as already mentioned, the hospital said her dH consented. he was told she had consented.

the notes say he consented, and he didn't.
why isn't this believeable ?

and from that 'But since US hospitals delivered 32% of low-risk women by cesarean surgery in 2007 and 1 in every 3000 of those died from the surgery,'

Emphaticmaybe · 21/04/2012 20:59

NoOnesGoing - what a traumatic experience. I think some medical interventions can be described as a type of rape, without in any way trivialising sexual assault. You have been through hell at the hands of (possibly well-meaning) health professionals, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to feel violated, for you or any women in similar circumstances.

5madthings · 21/04/2012 21:00

you would think so but the lawyers (and she spoke to a few) wont take on the case if there isnt a good payout and as mum and baby are healthy, there wont be!

the lady herself says actually she doesnt want money she wants an explanation and an apology,, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Kayano · 21/04/2012 21:02

I just think it was probably a miscommunication issue rather than

'lets trick the lady so I can cut into her tummy'

Mama1980 · 21/04/2012 21:06

Yanbu u hate that term too. I am
Not saying she has no complaint but I do find her hard to understand. I delivered at 26 weeks in hospital following a placental abruption no one explained a thing to me the last thing I remember hearing was dr s shouting that they had 3 minutes to get my baby out and blood pooling on the floor. They gave me a general and literally slashed me open from sternum to pelvis and then across. And I don't care thank heavens they didn't stop and explain they saved our lives 5 mins later and we wouldn't have stood a chance. Yes my
Body felt violated in a way and it took a long time for it to feel like it belonged to me
Again but I was never anything but bloody grateful to the doctors.

ReallyTired · 21/04/2012 21:19

Some women do experience extreme post traumatic stress because of childbirth. I have only met one woman in real life whose birth experience was similar to rape. The lady (I will call her D) was profoundly deaf and a BSL user. Like a lot of profoundly deaf people D has literacy difficulties.

D was in labour with twins and one of the twins got into distress. The obstrictian decided that an emergency C-section was necessary. The mother was told that both her twins were going to be delivered by c-sections.

When D was wheeled into theatre she was not allowed her BSL intepreter with her. She was given a spinal block and her first twin was delivered by C-section. D was given a concent form that she could not read. Without proper explanation of what was going on D's second twin was delivered by high forceps.
Understandly D found this terrifying.

Poor D had a terrible time recovering from the c section and the pelvic floor damage caused by the forceps. To make matters worse being profoundly deaf makes accessing councelling hard.