It's taken over a year but next week I'm having a meeting with the Clinical Director of Women & Child Health and the Head of Nursing for Women & Child Health at my local hospital, to discuss a letter I wrote to them following the emergency Caeasarean birth of my undiagnosed breech baby. I am hoping to get them to think about ways to make the surgery less traumatic, and I would really like your help with this!
Having planned a home birth, I had anticpiated:
- seeing the baby immediately
- being the first to hold her
- mine being the first voice she heard
- seeing her all covered in goo
- generally being more of a participant at the point when she and I separated.
None of these things happened. Given the fact that I have a beautiful, healthy daughter it may seem churlish to complain about:
- People describing her to me while I remained unable to see her
- hearing her voice amongst others in the room (and the blare of the radio) but not being able to see her
- Her being cleaned, wrapped in an unfamiliar blanket and having a hat put on before my husband could hold her near enough for me to see her face while they sewed me up
...but these are the things that overwhelmed me with sadness at the time, and still do. I am aware that I'm not alone in this. On mumsnet and in magazines I have read about mums:
- leaving crusty bits of blood on their baby's eyelashes for days, as "evidence" that the baby had indeed come from inside them.
- feeling outraged about the HAT being put on before they'd met the baby.
- finding it very frustrating being able to hear the baby but not see them.
I think that if there is a general consensus about what makes emergency C-sections disappointing, this could form a case for urging hospitals to take note. Similarly if there's a consensus about what HELPS, they could make sure these things happen.
(From Mumsnet I learned about the terrible experience of women who have C-sections under GA, and how helpful it is/would be to have photos "proving" the baby they are holding the next day is the one that was indeed inside them before they were put to sleep. A midwife reading the thread said that henceforth she would try to take pictures in such a situation. This just seems so blindingly obvious to me that I can't believe it isn't general practice. I'll mention this in my meeting too.)
In my letter I wrote, "I understand that planned C-sections are significantly less traumatic than emergency ones, because such arrangements are made." I also wrote, "I understand most women's negative experiences of c-sections are very similar, yet it seems this information is commonly and routinely ignored with regard to new cases".
Am I right?
I don't have the time or energy to do proper research. I would just ask Mumsnetters to please share their experiences on this. I'LL BE CHECKING FOR LATE ADDITIONS TO THE THREAD SO PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD AND ASK PEOPLE TO JOIN IN by answering the following:*If you had an emergency C, what did you hate about it, and what might have made it better?
*If you had a planned C, what aspects of it DID you plan, and how did this help?
*If you've had experience of both, what was the difference?
*If, unlike me, you've done more reading around this subject, do you have any useful references/figures/data for me?
I just keep hearing that planned ones are so much better, and I think it CAN'T BE THAT HARD to transfer some general lessons from planned C-sections into everyday practice when they are doing emergency ones.
I'd like to go to this meeting and say, "I asked on Mumsnet, and X hundred women said they would rather you didn't clean the baby before handing it over. X hundred said they'd rather have seen the baby leave their body. And X thousand said they'd rather, instead of pestering them to have an epidural in the hour preceding the surgery, you'd been discussing these options with them."