No one will talk to me about the birth experience I endured so I hope it’s ok to vent as I feel horrible about it still and can’t talk about it.
So I should probably start off by saying my whole childbirth experience was affected by two things:
1.) awful midwife who didn’t give a toss about me and was as unhelpful as possible
2.) I had to be monitored during my birth as I was high risk
Essentially I was ignored when asking for pain relief as midwife didn’t think baby was coming so soon so postponed it and also was coerced to giving birth on my back, which was against my birth plan and there was not an especially good reason for it. Basically I needed help to move my body and the only person willing to help me move was my husband who had pretty much been told to butt out at that point.
The pain was absolutely horrific, and I say this as someone with a high pain tolerance. I ended up giving birth with no pain relief other than gas and air which did nothing for pain but made me feel ill and baby came very quickly, causing lacerations and I had an episiotomy. I only pushed for 20 mins and they kept shouting at me to push (hypnobirthing went out the window!) but literally nothing was happening, baby wouldn’t come out and I was losing energy and couldn’t push any harder. Later a different midwife told me that the pain would indeed have been bad with how fast things progressed - baby did come extremely fast in the end despite how it felt like he just wouldn’t come out. I am a very laid back person and went into the labour ward feeling optimistic and coping well with the pain. Dr and midwives literally exchanged incredulous looks as if I was a madwoman when I turned down their offer of paracetamol to help with the contractions. I then felt quite awkward about it, but I had thought it was quite normal for women to want to do without pain relief - but how would paracetamol have done any good anyway? It’s not exactly strong! I was all but tied to the bed due to BP monitor, drip, and two wires for monitoring baby and could do nothing more than lie flat on my back, perch on edge of the too-high bed or stand upright. Midwife didn’t want to get me a ball as she didn’t feel it was an optimal position for monitoring the baby - she eventually agreed but just didn’t fetch one. She didn’t help me move around at all, and my husband, who was currently quite unwell and also has a a bad back, had to help me as much as he could. Due to drip needle in my wrist I couldn’t even support my weight on my hands so I felt like I was trapped.
Afterwards I was stitched up, could feel a great deal of the needles going in and out, and they did this thing which I am guessing is normal when they kept pushing down on my stomach - I think they were trying to force out any more pieces of placenta, or maybe blood? All through this they were having light hearted conversations with each other while they dug their hands into my stomach and stitched me up as I lay there crying from the pain. It was horrible.
All I can think is, how is this normal? I felt like I had been tied to a bed and tortured. My vocal chords were shredded from screaming (two weeks later my throat is still healing). This, from me, who has a high pain tolerance, who is pretty unemotional and doesn’t over react to things. I’m generally calm and collected and cope well in a crisis and with pain. I later asked my husband if I had been overreacting, and he said definitely not. He said he thought I was going to die, and he felt traumatised himself from seeing me like that. We actually have become closer after going through that together.
I lay there in shock from what I’d just went through, at first sobbing, and then silent and shaking, while they all joked about me being ‘out of it’ or ‘tired’. If it weren’t for my husband I think I - well I don’t know what.
How is it normal for women to endure torture like this to the point where those midwives just shrugged it off and treated me like an object as they hurt me afterwards? Many women I spoke to afterwards either didn’t want to hear me talking about my negative experience (which i understand) or else just shrugged it off. Not one person, other than a solitary midwife later on, acknowledged that I had been through something awful. It would have meant so much to me if after the birth someone had put a hand on my arm and said ‘you went through a lot there’ or ‘that was a difficult birth’, but it was treated like absolutely nothing. At one pint, a midwife said ‘she’s in shock’, but no one did anything. My husband just held my hand and held the baby when I couldn’t.
I feel like I should have been offered counselling or something. I’m a strong person, I know I am, but that was the worst experience I’ve ever had, physically. Sometimes I have an emotional wobble and I just cry and cry. It’s so unlike me that I wonder if the traumatic experience has done this. I just feel like no one accepts that this awful thing happened, like I’m supposed to just be okay with it or get over it. I can’t accept this is what all women go through. I know there are a lot of factors actually which made my experience worse (lack of support, being forced to lie on my back, not being able to move or being given no privacy or peace to practice hypnobirthing methods like I planned) but my experience can’t have been that unusual or the midwives wouldn’t have brushed it off surely?
Am I alone in having felt like I’ve been tortured?
Afterwards I was stitched up, could feel a great deal of the needles going in and out, and they did this thing which I am guessing is normal when they kept pushing down on my stomach - I think they were trying to force out any more pieces of placenta, or maybe blood? All through this they were having light hearted conversations with each other while they dug their hands into my stomach and stitched me up as I lay there crying from the pain. It was horrible.
All I can think is, how is this normal? I felt like I had been tied to a bed and tortured. My vocal chords were shredded from screaming (two weeks later my throat is still healing). This, from me, who has a high pain tolerance, who is pretty unemotional and doesn’t over react to things. I’m generally calm and collected and cope well in a crisis. I later asked my husband if I had been overreacting, and he said definitely not. He said he thought I was going to die, and he felt traumatised himself from seeing me like that. We actually have become closer after going through that together.
I lay there in shock from what I’d just went through, at first sobbing, and then silent and shaking, while they all joked about me being ‘out of it’ or ‘tired’. If it weren’t for my husband I think I - well I don’t know what.
How is it normal for women to endure torture like this to the point where those midwives just shrugged it off and treated me like an object as they hurt me afterwards? Many women I spoke to afterwards either didn’t want to hear me talking about my negative experience (which i understand) or else just shrugged it off. Not one person, other than a solitary midwife later on, acknowledged that I had been through something awful. It would have meant so much to me if after the birth someone had put a hand on my arm and said ‘you went through a lot there’ or ‘that was a difficult birth’, but it was treated like absolutely nothing. At one pint, a midwife said ‘she’s in shock’, but no one did anything. My husband just held my hand and held the baby when I couldn’t.
I feel like I should have been offered counselling or something. I’m a strong person, I know I am, but that was the worst experience I’ve ever had, physically. Sometimes I have an emotional wobble and I just cry and cry. It’s so unlike me that I wonder if the traumatic experience has done this. I just feel like no one accepts that this awful thing happened, like I’m supposed to just be okay with it or get over it. I can’t accept this is what all women go through. I know there are a lot of factors actually which made my experience worse (lack of support, being forced to lie on my back, not being able to move or being given no privacy or peace to practice hypnobirthing methods like I planned) but my experience can’t have been that unusual or the midwives wouldn’t have brushed it off surely?
Am I alone in having felt like I’ve been tortured?