Mothers are being abused during childbirth. We need our own #MeToo

[stumbledin]

I dont necessarily agree with the idea that this is the same as #MeToo but definitely at the extreme end of how the entrenched paternalism with health services too often leads to women being ignored and not listend to. And there examples of how many standard procedures are based on the needs of a male body not a female one. (another reason why pretending gender identity is the same as biological sex is not only nonsense but could lead to inappropriate treatment).

interesting that the author is part of Index on Censorship.

Caution: some women may find this difficulat reading www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/28/mothers-abused-childbirth-metoo-movement-women-give-birth

Drain the swamp where have we heard that before? Now that is chilling.

It doesn't have to be America or bust. Other countries manage to have a free-at-point-of-service healthcare system without, like described upthread, doing things like leaving a sepsis patient unmonitored.

Lack of funds (IMO willful and politically motivated) is an issue . But that doesn't necessarily cause something that comes up again and again on these threads - lack of respect and empathy and what can only be described as sadism. So many stories of people being stitched without anesthetics! These aren't one-offs, they are deeply entrenched and we need to face up to this.

stumbledin it's not because medicine is a male led profession. Fuckit has, for me, nailed it. The NHS is broken and not fit for purpose, millions of £s of funding are mismanaged, a significant number of HCPs are totally lacking in empathy, caring for patients is beneath them.
However, this shocking lack of care is not reserved for women giving birth, neglect and abuse is an equal opportunities situation on the NHS.
My DSis and I have spent more of this year at the bedsides of our elderly parents than we have at home. Our DF died because the staff ignored the sepsis protocol despite us both asking and begging for help. We complained and it was investigated, they admitted their failings but also said that due to his age treatment wasn't financially viable. They left him to die frightened and in agony from starvation and dehydration.
DM's treatment has been shocking, nothing short of neglect but we also witnessed other patients (especially those without visitors) being treated the same. Those other patients were male and female.
There are excellent HCPs in the NHS but they are fighting a losing battle.

I've been saying for ages that this is a really important feminist issue.

I have been relatively lucky during my three pregnancies and births but it is extremely common for women to experience ill-treatment during labour that would amount to an assault or a human rights violation (I am a lawyer with a good understanding of this area of law).

In this country the law is clear that a woman's bodily autonomy is paramount. There is a really important principle that pregnant women are not reduced to being vessels for their baby. As far as I am aware this is not the case in the US.

In the UK an unborn child does not have human rights in a legal sense so any conflict between the interests of the mother and baby should be resolved in favour of the mother. Of course in the vast majority of cases the mother has the best interests of her baby at heart.

The charity Birthrights does some really good work in this area.

This thread really resonates with me, so many of my friends have had awful birth experiences.

Mine left me with PTSD and PND. My waters broke at 36+5 and I was put on an open ward with women and their partners waiting for have C-Secs or waiting to be induced. It was a heatwave too. I had to go through first stages of labour with no pain relief in front of all these strangers, no air con, not able to strip down (instead I was asked to cover up when I put just my nightie on). MW performed an non-consented sweep infront of all these strangers, i didnt even want to be checked how far i was gone but she shouted and intimdated me. I felt humiliated. When I did move down to a labour room, a MW tried breaking my waters (which had already been confirmed to have been broken!!!!) And instead cut me with the hook, I screamed in pain and she only stopped hacking at me when my Mum pushed her off. I ended up needing forceps, my DS and I both got sepsis and spent a week in hospital. DS got jaundice too, he ended up getting so bad with it because they didn't set the lamp up correctly, it took them 3 days and him getting dangerously jaundice before they realise that.

I had no one to listen to me afterwards, the MWs and HVs just kept telling me it could have been worse and I have a healthy baby.

These stories are awful. We've still got victims of symphysiotomy with us, living with the damage.

I've been a feminist for thirty years and I only knew it existed a few years ago when women in Ireland got compensation.

FGM in some forms can also cause birth injury.

But biology isn't important, oh no 😒

Though I agree that the NHS is not perfect and the complaints procedure particularly is rotten, I feel this is a feminist issue. I hate how women are treated by health professionals (sometimes even other women). I had an early menopause when I was 38 and hoping to conceive. It was really upsetting and the GP just laughed at me and told me to take vitamins. It took me a year of awful symptoms before I went back to a new female GP who gave me HRT.

I hate the ‘you are naughty if you don’t go for your smear’ narrative, too.

Women are seen as too infantile and hysterical to take seriously. Symptoms are dismissed. And we are treated as selfish if we have a healthy baby and still want to complain about something that happened during the process.

As an aside, when I had my son I had to have an internal scan. My husband was really shocked by it and how easily I agreed and just got on with it. When I said I was used to that sort of thing he was even more shocked.

Three births and my 1st was traumatic the 2nd was as it should have been and although I nearly died with the 3rd it was still better than the 1st.

I was ignored, bullied and forced to walk down a corridor while my son was crowning and I was contracting. I had such a strong contraction that i nearly fell off the trolley as they just dumped me on the edge of it. My DH caught me but dislocated his shoulder in the process.
They delayed taking me to delivery as there were no beds/rooms while telling me I could not give birth on the labour ward as it could cause infection only to be told I will have to give birth there as there was nowhere else.
A room became free so for some reason they decided to walk me down the corridor despite my DHs protests. He and my mum literally had to carry me as the contractions were so strong I kept collapsing.

My son was born not breathing and I am convinced that is the cause of his SEN.

I was so traumatised i didn't even make a complaint. I wanted to forget the birth ever happened and just focus on my son.

The 2nd pregnancy i demanded a different hospital (my city has 2). My GP said I had to go back to the same one as it was a geographical thing. I flatly refused and said I would home birth which was not great as I was at risk of GD.
I told my GP about the 1st birth and he referred me to the hospital of my choice.
Much better care the birth was calm and I was in control. I was listened to and supported. I should have received that care the 1st time too.

One more thought...I was genuinely scared of giving birth first time around after reading about the hideous things that had happened at my local hospital, but didn’t question my care once there because I thought it was all just par for the course. I believe it’s indoctrinated into us that birth is generally an awful, undignified process where we should almost expect to walk away mentally and physically damaged, at least temporarily. I put up with it because despite being a well educated professional and doing NCT, I felt vulnerable, lacking in confidence and fearful that if I might put my baby at risk by voicing my needs for more respectful treatment.

I had the opposite mumslave . At our hospital they do free Hypnobirth courses which they encourage us all to go on. At which they inform us that if we need pain relief or need any assistance or anything goes wrong then we didn't practice Hypnobirthing properly or well enough. It's certainly what contributed to my PND, kept thinking it was my fault I didn't manage to breath my baby out and that I was the reason for my shit care. Took counselling to realise it wasn't my fault.

Oh TwittleBee, that makes my heart sink...how can so many professionals get it so wrong???

Not wanting to ‘scare’ women (who are all ickle darlings who can’t cope with facts) is just another side of the institutional misogyny.

But we are all guilty of it every day - how often do you read sneering of PFB on Mumsnet? Why is there no recognition that of course people are precious over their babies that their bodies worked so hard to grow and labour? All this ‘not the first human child’ and ‘not the second coming’ bullshit is just another way of grinding down the miracle of life/birth into something not important, mundane.

People rarely tend to examine their own attitudes and how that feeds into wider social attitudes.

I had straightforward virginal births by the way but it didn’t stop me being assaulted by midwives.

I particularly disliked the ‘praise’ I got from midwives afterwards for having a vaginal birth. It was very much implied that having a CS would have been bad and that I had pleased them with my compliant body. Made me feel sick, like I was some kind of performing breeding animal.

I really wish I’d freebirthed all of them.

There’s another shitty society attitude - people who freebirth are treated as dangerous monsters. Because the idea that a woman’s body and the feotus within it is entirely hers to make decisions about is so repellant to so many. If we really cared about the babies we’d be thinking how to improve access to care for babies needing it - not focusing on judgment of the women.

But then care costs money and judgement and censure is free.

At which they inform us that if we need pain relief or need any assistance or anything goes wrong then we didn't practice Hypnobirthing properly or well enough.

This is my main beef with hypnobirthing. It’s a good technique with some solid factual basis - for straightforward births. It’s a tool to help you keep as calm as you can, but you have to recognise the limitations of it. It cannot help a malpositioned baby. It cannot help your anatomy and the interaction of your anatomy with the positioning of the baby. The role of hypno in a more complex birth is limited to you holding it together while other interventions and pain relief are kicking in.

The use of things like hypno should be: ‘here’s a technique that’s useful for mild to moderate pain and distress, it’s just one tool, we have pain relief of course as well’. But what it’s actually doing is driving the attitude that women’s pain is a moral reflection of themselves - pain is felt by the lazy/weak/whiny/didn’t practice hard enough.
In reality - the amount of pain you feel is dictated by the positioning of the baby on the day and how that works with your own anatomy and any other medical issues. It’s not a reflection on how tough you are or how worthy you are.
Can you imagine a man having had abdominal surgery being told to visualise his fucking pain? No, it’s ‘sorry sir, here’s pain relief, please call us with the button if you need more so we can make you comfortable.’

It’s an almost biblical argument - women give birth in pain. Having been through it, I can’t help but feel like having an extremely vulnerable women in pain in a time limited process (ie you know you won’t deal with them long term) brings out an attitude of sadism in some. I felt like it was acceptable to unleash aggression and dismissal towards me in a way that it would have been in any other situation.
I found the attitudes towards me as a pregnant woman and a woman giving birth/postnatally very, very peculiar and unsettling. And at times extremely frightening and distressing - and I consider myself a strong person, able to advocate for myself.

My partner had a hernia operation on the NHS. He had to go to a new private hospital, had his own ensuite room, tasty food and got to stay in overnight. He was assisted with his shower next morning and was treated with dignity and kindness. He was discharged with a bag of pain killers.

I had a CS in a NHS hospital. I got to share a room with 6 other ladies and 6 babies. I didn’t get a shower, was told to get mobile within 6 hours and was discharged with no pain relief a few days later having received no sleep, little food or care.

@Beansandcoffee That’s exactly my point. I didn’t have a single examination by a doctor after my c-section. Not in hospital or after I came home. And I didn’t receive any support with rehabilitation either. No physio, nothing. DF had a knee op and he was given tons of physio.

Same here. You have major surgery and that’s it, midwife checked my stitches on day 10 and no more. It took 10 weeks of bleeding heavily enough PP to require another transfusion and my refusal to leave a&e for anyone to even agree to scan me. I was fobbed off with ‘its normal to be in pain and bleed heavy post section’ ‘it’s probably a period now, your first one can heavy’ etc by 2 GP’s, midwife and labour ward, turned out I had a number of large retained products including placental.

Forgot to add my point I had surgery on my knee a few years prior, they couldn’t do enough for me. Always kept on top of my pain and I had regular appointments. Childbirth should not be seen as some sort of ‘here’s your baby off you go’ it’s so wrong and the longlasting effects mentally and physically caused by the utter disregard for woman is real and should be talked about more.
But then it is one of many things in life, when you have a baby as soon as youre pregnant, you can become almost invisible as a person and are instead a mother.
This topic really upsets me sometimes sorry for going on!

Except I went back and refused to leave. I sat in the foyer until they agreed to admit me for an emergency c-section.

I did this. Despite it happening in my first birth (in Canada) too (where I consented to an induction.. which did nothing but give me painful contractions with no dilation). I'd been having frequent, regular, contractions for a week - I was exhausted. I'm convinced that had it not been my second child, and exactly like my first, I would have believed them, gone home, and it wouldn't have ended well.

Then at every step, I wouldn't have had any pain relief (because I wasn't 'in labour' unless DP had camped at the desk (all my energy was being spent just willing myself to get through it). Despite explicitly saying 'no sweeps' the consultant definitely did (he met my eyes after having a painful rummage and coming out with bloody fingers - we both knew what he'd just done). The midwife trying to make me stay still on my back so she could get a good reading (one good midwife who understood and worked with me to get it whilst sat on the ball), no-one showing me how to use those injections they give you post c-section (so I guessed.. but didn't like it, and didn't do it after the first one), arriving on the ward with no instruction as to what happens now, or how anything worked from food to toilets to emergencies or painrelief - groggy from the spinal block, what was going to happen, and having to try and get me bleeding and post-c-section up an 8 inch step and through a tiny sliding door, whilst carrying my catheter bag for a shower (and assuming it was OK to leave the baby - there weren't any nurses or room to bring the baby with me) and not discharging me, so I just picked up the baby and started towards the door (being chased by someone with a discharge leaflet that suggested I do situps post c-section!)

Canada is a single payer system, and it worked much better - everything went to pot there birth-wise, but I did feel listened to, treated as a human (by everyone but one nurse) vs. NHS where I felt the exact opposite (ignored and dehumanised by everyone but one midwife)

Micke, almost nine years to the day since my second c-section, I still can't do sit-ups because my insides feel like they were put back wrong and when I bend over everything kind of scooches up and it's very uncomfortable.

My Uncle had a keyhole hernia op the same week I had dc1 by emcs after a long back to back labour, pushing and failed forceps.

They wouldn't let him go home without a responsible adult. He wasn't allowed to be on his own for 72 hours. He wasn't to do anything strenuous. He had two follow up appointments with his consultant in the weeks which followed.

Despite not having slept for 90 odd hours (75 hours of back to back labour which didn't get the memo about latent labour not hurting as much as the proper thing is rather hard to sleep through), hallucinated through an emergency section and not knowing which way was up, not only was I fit to look after myself but a newborn too.

The first time a Doctor looked at my scar was 3 years and 3 months later when they were about to cut it out to retrieve dc2.

I was given a physio leaflet however but by that stage my priority was killing myself because what was down in my notes as "baby blues" turned out to be post natal psychosis. I couldn't understand why they wanted me to visit a "doll" in NICU and was quite vocal about that. Luckily my husband had a very understanding employer because by the time I finally ended up in front of a psychiatrist ds was 7 weeks old. They diagnosed me with a variety of things beginning with P including ptsd from an old trauma which I'd relived on the operating table and told me I was very resilient. He's almost 4 and I'm still getting psychotherapy on the NHS to help me deal with all the issues his birth dragged up.

I don't cry in pain (too much "I'll give you something to cry about") so in both labours, both in my back I got the "you don't look like you are in labour" from midwives despite being over 5 with one and 4 with the other. If I say I'm in pain, I'm in pain...please don't roll your eyes at me.

Doctors who stroke hair...I'm a woman in labour, not a kitten. Keep your hands to yourself unless they are doing something you asked consent for first.

Oh and the hell of being the only mum without a baby on a busy post-natal ward. No wonder what was left of my sanity fell off a cliff.

to everyone who posted here, to those who have been reading and didn't want to tell their story online and to any woman who has gone through this.

It's like being in a secret club until you start talking and suddenly every woman has a tale to tell.

Christ we really do put up and shut up don't we!!
So many years of being told "women have babies in fields then carry on working what are you moaning about"

I DON'T LIVE IN A FIELD!!!

We should be getting better health care. We are producing the next generation ffs.

I hate to say it but if it were males that gave birth they would be treated like kings

Is there anything we can do?
Petition?
Review of practise?
Anything at all?

Of course women give birth in fields and carry on working. And loads of them fucking die from it too.

Well actually, I believe most subsistence type cultures have really strong traditions around the post partum period, whereby the mother is tended to, cared for, duties done by other women etc, for approx 3-4 months.

New my mil asked why (on day 4 after a c sec for twins which nearly killed me) her son was hoovering while I sat on the sofa!

I discharged early from hospital as I was getting zero sleep for many reasons and thought home would be better.