Obstetric violence - legs forced open against my will

[NibliaBiblia]

When I was in labour with my daughter, the midwives spent twenty minutes trying to force my legs open to get me flat on my back with my legs up. There was no emergency. It was so they could get a better CTG reading. I physically resisted for as long as I could and verbally told them to stop. They didn't stop until I gave up. After that they did other things without my consent, but I did not they to stop them again.
I complained to the hospital and they have done nothing. I complained to the police and they told me there must have been an emergency. I've complained to the NMC and the CQC. I hope they will do something but it's a long process so I won't know for a long time.
The police used to say that domestic violence was a private matter. They used to say that if you got in the car/went into the apartment/were drinking then you must have agreed to it. I think this is exactly the same type of justification, applied to equally criminal behaviour.
I don't think my experience is abnormal. I think this is fairly routine. They thought that when I gave up that meant I consented.

I have my notes, I've spoken to many midwives and managers. No one from the hospital has attempted to offer any justification at all. They've either apologised or pretended it didn't happen.
Apologised verbally and then ignored it in writing for the most part. They "investigated" without even mentioning my actual complaint, instead investigating whether or not I was given an arm without consent, which I've never alleged and never believed.
They read my notes carefully enough to pick up that i thought it might have ruptured by accident during a membrane sweep, because I mentioned that in the birth debrief, then mis-characterised that as me saying it was on purpose. But they didn't even mention in their response that I said they had tried to force my legs open. Not even to say that it hasn't happened/wasn't remembered. They just didn't even address it at all.
The only reference to it was when said there was doubt about "whether the consent process was experienced by you as truly collaborative" 😂

I've had 2 births with no vaginal exams they are not normal and often completely unnecessary and if you say no to a stranger putting their hand in your vagina that person shouldn't just go ahead and do it anyway, no one gets to put their hand in your vaguna without consent

Hockey puck on a band

You can't tell that anyway, how far do you think they put their hand in? They only put their fingers in the cervix to see how much it's dialated. But it's 1. Inaccurate and 2. Unreliable in indicating how long is left of a labour anyway.

I was told I was 10cm and to push. And hour later I was told I wasn't actually fully dilated.

To be fair, it doesn't sound like something you'd be able to do in labour. Especially less than an hour before the birth!
I think it was because they left the bed up high and were pulling back. If they'd dropped the bed they could probably have got better leverage, but i don't think they were thinking all that clearly about it or they probably would have just stopped and tried to communicate with me like a human being.
They thought that me eventually giving up meant I had consented. Yes to the debrief. Apparently the CTG was normal.

I declined ve's in labour too. I did end up requesting one as I had been pushing for a while (3rd baby) and my friend who was my midwife told me baby was in a difficult position so we used positioning to turn baby. If you've spent time with a woman you recognise changes in behaviour, movement, body changes too. I do think that VEs can have their place but I do think there is an over reliance and they don't take into account the full holistic picture of labour and birth.

What aren't you able to do sorry?

Assume she was responding to this: As for the comment above about you managed to keep your legs closed for 20 minutes, not even worth a response

Ah thank you, yes that makes sense

Sorry, another commenter doubted that i would have been able to hold my legs together for twenty minutes while the midwives were trying to force them open. Implying that I'm not remembering it right.
I get it, it sounds like you wouldn't be able to resist it for that long. Also i remember very clearly what happened but the only way i know how long things were happening for us from reading the notes, so I can understand people doubting the twenty minutes. I wasn't looking at my wristwatch!
I know from the notes it started before 0850 and ended after 0900 but before 0920. My best guess is 20-25 minutes but it could plausibly be up to 35. Bare minimum of at least 10 minutes.

Not sure what the problem is. Surely you knew that your knees would be spread during childbirth and health care professionals would be working down there.

Certainly didn't have my legs spread with my second baby!

You should put your experience into writing and send an email complaint.

They are relying on the fact that nothing has been written down and their notes don’t record what you’re saying happened. Get your own written version of what happened, including the fact that you’ve looked at the notes and the where the notes do not document what happened.

Get it in writing now and sent to the hospital as even if you don’t want to use this now, if in years to come you decide you do want to act on it, you have a written documented record of your version of what happened. At the moment only their version of what happened is in writing.

If your baby had been born poorly I imagine you would have then sued?
Doctors and midwives are not God but most of them only want the best and safest way to get a baby into the world and we should not forget this.

So sorry you've experienced this and thank you for fighting against it for the future women

A CTG doesn't stop a baby being born "poorly".

OP, I'm quite distressed at some of the responses you have received on this thread.

Why are people treating the possibility of coercive physical conduct as almost morally irrelevant because the people doing it were healthcare professionals?

If a healthcare professional deliberately uses physical force to make a woman do something with her body that she is explicitly refusing, outside an immediate emergency, calling that "just what healthcare professionals have to do" is itself part of the problem. Medical indication is not consent.

The threats of dead babies and having healthcare withheld if you aren't a good little girl who does what the midwives and doctors tell you, is exactly the kind of culture that allows the maternity scandals to occur. I'm most distressed by the idea that some of the posters behind these posts are health professionals themselves. If you are, shame on you, sit up and take notice. It might actually protect you to stop being so defensive for 5 minutes.

There is a challenging reality here where the law in England does consider sexual assault to have occurred if touching of the genitals occurs after coercion, and public understanding of this has grown. The various medical and midwifery bodies have failed to engage with this reality head on in a way that protects both professionals and patients, and that should be the bloody scandal.

OP, again, I have also experienced sexual assaults that were much less distressing and traumatic than being coerced into being on my back and having vaginal exams while in labour, But postnatal check-ups never involved asking me whether or not I got flashbacks I got afterwards, so no harm was done right?

Her baby wasn't. There was no indication given that there was a chance baby may be poorly. If the midwife had said "we have concerns about your babys heart rate and we really need to get a good contact with the heartrate to make sure they are okay. I know it's uncomfortable but can we please just try and get the contact back" then the poster would have had a very different experience (as would have the midwife)

This healthy baby at all costs saying that gets trotted out whenever a women dares complains about the way she is treated is so tiresome. Of course the mother wants a healthy baby. In all my years of midwifery I have never met a woman who didn't want their baby to be okay. But a healthy baby isn't all that matters, the mother does too. Respect, dignity and good care are just as important. You can have an obstetric emergency and still give respect and dignity. I have done birth reflections and the amount of trauma caused by actions of obstetricians and midwives is heartbreaking and often incredibly preventable.

I have written it down, and I've emailed it to the trust. I've also submitted it to the PHSO, CQC, NMC, and police.

I'm not sure how helpful this would be but what about your local MP?

What a bloody shit comment.

Why would you say something like this to a woman who is obviously traumatised?

This exactly. There's no conflict between the rights of the mother and the rights of the baby. I wasn't What's best for my baby more than i want what's right for me! I'll crawl through broken glass for my baby. They won't remember her or me in a few days time.
When there was an actual emergency, well after this and completely unrelated, i did exactly what i was asked to do. This wasn't them rushing in to save my babies life. If it was is probably have very different feelings about it.
As far as i can tell they did this for convenience at first, and then kept going because they just weren't thinking things through.

What did the police say when you went to them? Was your husband with you and did he also corroborate your story? Was he asked to make a witness statement?

I am thinking maybe you can go back to the police, tell them exactly what crime has been committed (AI is excellent for finding the except wording to use to match your experience with what laws and rules say the legal issue is and which exact law has been broken) and also mention that you will make a complaint against the police if they don’t treat you seriously (again, AI will be able to word this more effectively).

Good idea

They said there must have been an emergency therefore it couldn't be a crime. When i told them there was no emergency they told me to go to the hospital. I'm escalating to the IOPC.