To think censorship of birth stories should not be allowed?

[NunntheWiser]

I love Standard Issue magazine, I really do. Earlier this week, Milli Hill was published in the Telegraph extolling the virtues of a natural birth and "imaginary pain" guff guff guff. All well and good.

The excellently sweary Cath Janes wrote an opinion piece about this - about how her own experiences of birth were very, very different to this, and whilst it's not right to scare women, it's unfair to expect them not to be honest about their birth experience.

Hill complained about this opinion piece and has forced Standard Issue to withdraw Janes' article, against the author's wishes. Now, I don't know if the fault lies with Standard Issue for not backing up their author, or if it's Hill threatening some legal recourse to the magazine but since when do women's opinions get censored?

In the meantime, Janes' sweary article can only be found using Google Cache: webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3An6IV7Qmr9GcJ%3Astandardissuemagazine.com%2Fvoices%2Fbirth-muthas%2F%20&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

I have read the whole thread and two things occur to me-

1 it is really important to acknowledge all women's experiences of birth including positive ones. When I said I wanted a hybnobirth at home I got all "riiight let us know how that goes, snurk snurk". Actually, it went great, and whilst I do not believe for a second that hypno gave me a good birth, it did give me tools to help cope with the birth I got doled out iyswim. I have never personally a reputable hypno programme that promises to do more than that, although I am sure there are some quacks out there.

2 I think we as MNers need to be careful that WE are not the ones silencing other women. Yesterday there was a Chat thread rubbishing a Guardian article about PTSD following birth. The author was calles whiny, self indulgent, and dangeroua because she would scare other women who might need a positive balance to her negative experience. I was shocked, and ppl on that thread were straight up calling for her to be censored because she was "wrong".

We need to call out the rubbishing of other women's real experiences wherever it occurs.

^Was that the Polly Clark article? Can you link to that thread? I thought the posters were taking umbrage at her scaremongering regarding SS and demonizing social services/health visitors because she said something along the lines of "they will take your children away" if you admit you aren't coping.
But the thread could have moved on since I saw only the first few posts (as I was referred to a hospital psych after PND with DC1 after admitting I wasn't coping, I chose not to add to that particular debate as I felt unsupported/judged/deemed a red flag by GP/health visitors and therefore knew exactly what Polly meant if she had been through the same).

The thread about the Polly Clark piece is here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2886885-Your-children-will-be-taken-away

There's another thread about it in Women's Rights.

Imaginary pain - ah that was the cause of my vomiting throughout the failed 3 day induction process then. And the infection pain after my c section was pretend too yes?
What about the pain caused for the several years later due to the scarring on my uterus walls following the c section (Ashermans Syndrome) - I guess that was imaginary too.

I actually had an overall positive birth experience but my word it hurt, and it hurt afterwards too. I've a fairly high pain threshold in general I think and no, it wasn't the greatest most acute pain I've felt (that will be the time I fell and my elbow dislocated and forced itself back in a few years back) but it bloody well hurt and the extreme tiredness of being awake for 3+ days didn't help either, at the time or after.

Something that struck me about being pregnant was that all the elderly women in my life suddenly felt able to talk about their often traumatic births with me. Without exception, every one of them could describe the whole process, how they felt, what happened in detail decades later.

Thanks to repeated accusations by MH about my professionalism, this is very close to becoming a legal issue. I have yet again asked MH to stop defaming me and my journalistic reputation. I intend to have no further communication with her while she is making these erroneous accusations, outside of legal ones, and kindly ask that, if you see she has not refrained from doing this, you inform me. I would be very grateful for your help in this.

Many thanks

Wow. How awful that Milli's behaviour has caused this situation. But as I said upthread, accusing people who say things you don't like of being bullies, unprofessional, nasty etc is in itself bullying and unprofessional.

I will certainly let you know if I see anything Cath, I hope other MNers will too.

Well done MH

Tit.

Personally, I'd like to see women talked through the risks of VB in the same way they are talked through the risks of CS. This article from the New Scientist last year gives me hope it may happen:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130813-000-uk-doctors-may-starting-warning-women-of-childbirth-risks/amp/

A friend had the 'joy' of a pain relief free labour, less than 7 hours from the start of latent labour until birth. She says it was hugely painful and the 3c tear she sustained resulted in incontinence. She would far rather have known the risks than have them played down in favour of psychological pain management.

If women go into labour afraid, it's because we aren't given the full picture and are left to manage with glossed over procedures and, at best, half facts. Address this - treat women like adults who are capable of assessing risk and making the right choices for themselves - instead of conning them with perfect labour scenarios, and just maybe the incidence of women feeling cheated, lied to or like failures, will decrease.

Personally, a large amount of my fear around the thought of giving birth is all the stories I've heard of the total lack of patient care around it.

The pain sounds absolutely awful but there are at least some pain management drugs available, I find far more disturbing all the stories of "my reports of awful pain were ignored", "I was starving but they refused to bring me any food as I'd missed the order form going around", "I was told I was making a fuss".

This seems like an area that campaigning could actually help with, theres no excuse for anyone being left in pain and hungry in hospital.

I found the risks of cs was glossed over dreadfully. I agree risks should be described fully.

Stormreader but many most midwives firmly believe you are better off having no/little/as little as possible pain relief so time and time again women's requests are ignored, they are made to wait, sometimes until it is too late for any pain relief.

Women are told they are fine when they don't feel it. They don't need pain relief when they have requested it.

There is no other area of medicine where a patient's express wishes are so often sidelined or ignored.

Certainly in my case the midwife 'thought' I was coping extremely well; she was shocked to read my complaint letter describe the horror of what happened to me.

Diring my labour when I said I couldn't do it anymore, she just said "you can do it cos you are doing it" Despite me repeatedly telling them I couldn't cope I wasn't offered anything else and I later found out it was because I didn't specifically ask for an epidural. So hours and hours of me telling them I was in agony wasn't enough I needed to use the correct password I didn't know about.

I don't know if most midwives believe that, but enough do. It's a pervasive school of thought, unfortunately. Agree this would never happen in any other area of healthcare.

Passport for me you've hit the nail on the head with this:

There is no other area of medicine where a patient's express wishes are so often sidelined or ignored

Not just pain but all areas of birth and post-natal experience. It is infantilising and infuriating, especially as you're so vulnerable already.

Reading this thread, if nothing else, it makes me very grateful for the outstanding ante and post natal care I had. My midwife was incredible. Just amazing.

Headofthehive55, what happened with your section?

You seem very down about it, did something go wrong?

That's terrible, Patsys. I agree that women are infantilised in labour in a way that is hopefully rare in other parts of healthcare. So if you say you're in extreme pain, then you can't really be in extreme pain because you don't know your own mind, and no you can't have an epidural because you're "doing really well".

IT was a standard section. A surgical operation. I found it traumatic to say the least and felt very vulnerable (and was - surgery isn't risk free). I ended up blocking out days of my first child's life due to the trauma.
The section caused problems in further pregnancies as they are prone to. That's not something that goes wrong, it's just a consequence.

I think what irritates me is that people refuse to believe that I found it traumatic, in a similar vein to telling women oh you aren't feeling pain, you are doing well, my feelings were minimised.

Headofthehive counters every comment made about bad VB stories with the equivalent from a CS perspective. It would be nice to hear a little more detail to understand her point of view. She is obviously very pleased she had a successful and pleasant VBAC but we haven't really heard anything about why the CS was bad, what risks/facts she did not know about prior to going into it, how VB would have been better in x y z ways.

It would really add some balance to the thread if she was willing to do it

Thank you headofthehive just saw your latest post.

What was traumatic for you?

For me in VB it was the total loss on control but perhaps it's possible to feel that about CS too?

If you knew you were having a CS what was the shocking part? I understand EMCS gives little time to process the concept.

Duggee I totally agree with that article. My job involves working with pregnant women and women with babies and I've see women with permanent injuries from VB. I know one woman who has faecal incontinence as a result of VB and another one whose baby is permanently brain damaged. I see many women whose PND is at least partly attributable to their birth experience- often women who plan for a very 'natural' birth, do loads of yoga and hypno birthing and are then bitterly disappointed when they end up having intervention or a CS.

I found the risks of cs was glossed over dreadfully. I agree risks should be described fully.

Personally I found the exact opposite, lots of stupid fearmongering, bullshitting and poor science scaremongering about sections, with nothing whatsoever about the risks of VBs. It's very clear, then, that we are not being given adequate information, and the problem is deep.

I agree we all need to know about all risks in order to be able to give properly informed consent. It seems that's not necessarily happening now. The reality is that attempted VB and CS both have risks, which differ according to the individual's attributes, and all we can do is choose the risks more acceptable to us. Yet this is not really the attitude that the NHS has.

Yes total lack of control, feeling like a piece of meat. Total disconnect. I didnt relate the baby to the one I had inside. Like I'd been given someone's baby off the street?

I felt like I'd been attacked.

I so understand the minimisation of "well you're ok now, look you've got a lovely baby... Oh forget about it..."
It's irrelevant whether it's a vb or CS really it's about how you feel about it yourself.

My second child also suffered a complication related to the first section.