Birth Trauma

[Emsypemsy93]

I would like to know other mum’s opinion on whether they agree there were complete mess ups during my induction.

I went in for induction on the Friday, the pessary was put in around 4pm. It took three different nurses, and was extremely painful.They said I was around 1cm dilated.

The next couple of hours are relaxing… 1am hits and contractions start at around 5 minutes apart. Early morning is horrible pain and I start vomiting, can’t sleep and I’m given codeine/paracetomol… doesn’t even touch the pain. Throughout the day the contractions intensify, and I am begging for better pain relief, and I’m told its too early, not even allowed gas and air (no cervix checks). I can’t even move or stand without a contraction somehow triggering.
Midwife doesn’t believe me, puts me on the belly monitor, and eventually you can literally see the amount of contractions and intensity… makes no difference to her opinion. I can’t eat or sleep, and this stays the same until I give birth.

By around 12/1 I’m begging again for anything, doctor sees me and says its too early for pethidine (still no cervix checks). Time passes, I’m begging again, different doctor agrees to pethidine but it takes nearly another hour to arrive. During this the feeling of my contractions change, I feel pressure in my backside and my stomach is cramping and have the urge to push, I tell the midwife, she said its normal. She told me I need to go to the bathroom before pethidine, I told her I can’t walk, said I had to. In the bathroom, my mucus plug comes out, tell her, shes like okay, normal.

Eventually get pethidine, does nothing, and it comes to 4pm and time for pessary to come out. She takes it out, looks at me and tells me I’m fully dilated and need to go to the labour room asap.

Sorry for being so long, but I can’t stop thinking about how things should have been done differently. This was my first baby. Does anybody else agree? Anyone else had the same experience?

I forgot to add that I pushed him out in 14 minutes once they got me in the labour room.

That sounds absolutely awful :( I would complain. I've never been induced by pessary so I can't comment on the pain/progression side of things..

But at every turn you were refused pain relief, when in reality it wouldn't have been too early! Pethidine took too long to arrive and throughout you were dismissed. That must have felt awful for you. :( You should have been listened to all the way through and it doesn't sound like you were at all. Not even once. I am so sorry that you had this birth experience.

Yeah, similar happened to me (not in the UK). They kept saying it's too early for the peridural, by the time it happened it was too late.

I'd put in a complaint, not that it'll make any difference for you but might help another patient.

Did they check how dilated you were throughout all of this? They should have been keeping an eye on you and whisking you off to the delivery suite once you were beyond a certain amount dilated which dosnt appear to have happened. In the delivery suite you should then have the had access to the pain relief you needed.

@Fleabea
The only time they checked dilation was when they put the pessary in at 4pm the day I went in. From then until they took the pessary out at 4pm the next day, they did not check how dilated I was. That is what makes me so furious at how they could say it was “too early” for this or that, how could they know?

As for why I didn’t ask them to check how dilated I was, this was my first birth, and I wasn’t fully aware of how things should happen, I was naive enough to put my trust in the midwife’s hands that she knew what she was doing (its currently the 8th best hospital in England)

They don’t like to check too often and once in labour it’s only about every four hours. With my second labour I had to ask and be quite determined that I wanted them to check as I had failed to progress in my first labour and if that was happening again I wanted the emcs sooner than later.
I understand it was shit and painful but I think that it’s unfortunately very common for first labours. (Mine was extremely long and painful despite pain relief. It would have been better if they had acted sooner). I think they assume ftm are just complaining!
If if keeps playing on your mind and/or you get flash backs it maybe ptsd and it’s worth getting help for. I didn’t and I really should have done.

I'm sorry to hear you went through this. I had a very bad experience with induction that resulted in an emergency c-section (baby born 6th Jan).

If you feel it might be cathartic to write a complaint so that you put your experience into words and begin to process what happened then go for it. It is not ok to leave women without pain management and put them through additional stress of not knowing what is happening around them.

We considered going down the complaint route but ultimately I was just glad my baby was born safe and well and didn't feel it worth pursuing however I will flat out refuse to be induced ever again!

I don't think this is ok, no. For me, dilation was checked every few hours I believe, and when I said the pain had gotten worse. I was offered pain relief regularly too. I'm glad it worked out alright in the end but I think it's always best to put in a complaint for feedback, to help them improve.

I'm so sorry for your experience.
This happened to me also, in Northampton General, but ended up in a 24 hour labour and emergency c section.
I was being induced because I was 41 and therefore high risk. There was literally nothing else high risk about me! I was a very fit and healthy pregnant lady.
I really believe they should look at the process of induction and weigh up better the pro's and con's and trauma to pregnant ladies and partners.
Not sure about you, but I was not fully told the process otherwise I certainly would not have gone ahead.
I've ended up getting private therapy since my birth as it was just a total catalogue of traumatic events.
I hope you are feeling better soon ... sharing like this will help 😘

I appreciate midwives and drs, they were great for me during my pregnancy but honestly they’re all fixated on this supposed time it takes to give birth that apparently every woman’s body adheres to.

I told my midwife about a friends quick birth and apparently I was wrong and it wouldn’t have happened like that (it did)

definitely a screw up/bad practice that they refused to even check if you were dilated. I would have assumed they would do regular checks and regular blood pressure checks like I had (I didn’t have a pes, I had that balloon thing (so went home while they worked it’s magic) then got induced properly on the drip but I received regular checks on the drip)

like others have suggested, complain to maternity or hospital board (probably last thing you want to think of with a newborn)

Congratulations on safe arrival of your child 😊

I had a very similar experience 3 years ago. I still think about it all the time and comes up a lot near my sons birthday. Was induced at 36.5 weeks as scans were showing reduced growth. So was admitted immediately and told had to be induced - sweep, then a pessary. Then another sweep then 3 hours later my waters broke and contractions started immediately 2-3 mins apart. Would only give me codeine and then left me (let me have a bath) and within 2 hours of excruciating pain I needed to push and only then they examined me (wouldn’t do before that as under 37 weeks only a doctor can examine you!) and I was 10cm. Rushed down to delivery suite.

So sorry to hear you are feeling this way after 3 years @Lozboz1993 . I definitely think I would be the same but have had some help with talking therapy and ended up doing some hypnotherapy which means I can finally reference it without being in floods of tears and can reflect on the event in a different way. Sharing only as it may help for you too and please don't feel it's unusual to be feeling like this even after some time 😘