Birthing mother abused for refusing male nurse

[sakura184]

This kind of crap is why I opted for homebirths

pjmedia.com/parenting/colorado-doula-and-assault-survivor-investigated-by-dhs-for-refusing-male-nurse-during-birth/

"a resident isn’t a nurse" yes of course that is the most important aspect of this woman’s trauma

The point is it was a doctor wanting to examine her not a random male nurse.

I have given birth twice in the U.S.

The first time was over 45 yrs ago in a inner-city hospital where I was was friends with the British trained midwife who practiced there. She and I were appalled at the attitude of the pregnant women - most of them didn't care about the health of their unborn babies.

The prenatal clinic was in the hospital where you gave birth. I watched once as a midwife was handing a bottle of prenatal vitamins to a woman who told her "fuck you" and walked off without them. The women often would not show up for appointments & had poor diets (I saw what they feeding their toddlers - cheetos for lunch). They drank, smoked and probably did drugs. Not one woman there breastfed and the women I spoke with considered BF to be animal like and disgusting.

I showed up for the same care they would often turn their noses up at and gave birth to a big robust healthy baby. My midwife friend, even though she is long retired, still writes about what she saw in the 30 years she worked there.

For my second baby I gave birth at a hospital the other side of the country where the patients had a very different attitude about their pregnancies. They were doing everything they could to assure they had had healthy babies. The care was once again excellent.

I can agree that in a stable infant (term or preterm) with reassuring vitals, delayed cord clamping may have benefit. However, if a neonate has a low heart rate, is limp and not breathing, or is dusky and blue, you grab that baby and go! The benefits of neonatal resuscitation are well-proven and clearly established in the literature and are used world-wide. I can personally attest to the fact that early supportive care of preemies works and results in healthy, neurologically normal babies. I can also attest to the fact that delayed intervention can have a less positive outcome.

Let me also just say this: I am and always will be scarred by the number of times I have had to pass a dead baby to a mother. There is no cry of pain like that of a mother who has just lost her child.

Birth is natural, yes. But it is also risky. We all know this.

This is NOT to justify the over-medicalization and highly interventional approach that we have in the US, which I have agreed can be harmful. I am simply stating that no side of the charged birthing debate is 100% correct. Finding a balance is critical and something for which I support increased funding and research FOR women and, preferably, BY women.

Also, I don't advocate repeated trauma for victims of sexual assault. My point was simply to explain that in many rural hospitals of the US, there may be no other physician available. Hospitals here are very protocol and physician driven; it's typically expected that a physician perform a cervical exam as part of the assessment of a laboring woman. I'm not saying I agree with this--an experienced female nurse can report her findings to the physician and should be trusted, but that just isn't our system here.

In a nutshell, I think it is very appropriate and important for feminists to discuss birthing practices, especially for women who have been abused or victimized. I believe we should be constantly looking for best practices that are woman-centered and reduce maternal and infant mortality AND morbidity. This is a long overdue conversation and I absolutely support discussing our current systems, for better or worse. However, I'm not sure this case is quite what it was presented to be, and the article was clearly biased, rather misleading.

Anyway, I have charts to finish. Mumsnet, you are such a distraction from me getting my work done! :)

home birthing countries like the Netherlands have a much better maternal death rate than over medicalized countries like the US

I’ve given birth in a Scandinavian country obsessed with natural birth and while many things are good, there is still a problem with women having to do it the way they want or face problems -over there it’s ‘natural above all else even with significant risk factors and fuck the health or opinion of the mother.’ Same struggle, just a different thing you’re struggling against.

My point is that there is no one ‘right’ way to give birth. Some women are best served by a home environment. If there’s no compelling reason for them not to then they should be allowed to choose home birth. Some women will be best served by a section. Some will be best served by a midwife unit. What’s important is respect for the women’s bodily autonomy as far as is possible, ie unless life/limb/serious harm is threatened. That means giving women accurate information, it means listening to what THEY want and request and it means things like continuous ongoing consent.

george fayne makes some excellent points. This story reads to me like a mixture of a mother who has made some poor choices and a setting which is not treating women with quite the respect and autonomy they need. These two things are not mutually exclusive.

Context is key - I would much prefer a female to examine me, but if I am in need of life or health saving intervention and the only person capable there at the time is male , my preference takes second place. Without knowing the context it’s hard to say in this specific case what happened. However, multiple threads on here have produced stories of women in labour being belittled, ignored and subjected to outright violence - it does happen and a serious conversation needs to be had about how women are treated ante/postnatally.

An example: No woman should be having an internal (routine, non emergency) exam without consent being obtained verbally via a quick ‘hi my name is... I need to... I am going to... is that OK? Right, at any time you can ask me to stop, let me know if this is uncomfortable.’ It takes seconds and there’s no excuse in routine care to not do this.

With regards to delayed clamping - I requested it with the proviso that only if it was possible should it be done. In the event, one of mine needed some quick attention and so it wasn’t done, and that was just how it was. It’s something that I think should be routine for babies that don’t need any extra assistance. But if they do, then that just has to take precedence.

Everyone needs an informed advocate with them when giving birth in hospital. Or they can sometimes be their own advocate.

*AmeriAnn
*
*"a resident isn’t a nurse" yes of course that is the most important aspect of this woman’s trauma

The point is it was a doctor wanting to examine her not a random male nurse.*

Yeah I think it's worse, as I said, because of the power difference. Doctors lording it over women in labor, it's gross

I am and always will be scarred by the number of times I have had to pass a dead baby to a mother

See this is going to be just me probably, but just in a visceral sense, i feel that men shouldn't be there, as part of this. It just feels they're out of place to be involved in such a primal and vital part of life like birth.
That being said I had my husband at both births and was glad he was there , although I made sure he stayed at the head end. I felt protected by his presence

@Bowlofbabelfish

Thank you for your comment. Lots to think about there and I agree with most of it

Why are you assuming I'm a man? I'm a female physician and damn proud to be one. I've been pregnant five times, lost two babies. Three all natural vaginal births, and yes, I now pee my pants every time I cough. I have been breastfeeding since 2011, (and probably still will have a nursling for another two years). Does that give me enough mama credibility for you, sakura? Can I be present at something as sacred as birth?

Where did anyone assume you were a man?

GeorgeFayne wrote I am and always will be scarred by the number of times I have had to pass a dead baby to a mother

The OP responded
See this is going to be just me probably, but just in a visceral sense, i feel that men shouldn't be there

Where did anyone assume you were a man?

This might be referring to Sakura’s otherwise inexplicable comment about ‘mansplaining’ above.

Maniak I think it was the post about mansplaining which OP randomly invoked when several posters didn’t toe the invisible line she had drawn in the sand about what we can and can’t discuss on this thread. If it’s not wholehearted acceptance of the story in the link and support for the writer of the post we’re probably men or not feminist enough.

It’s a fairly common ‘j’accuse’ tactic used to avoid answering or to deflect an opposing viewpoint. It’s kinda like the mumsnet version of the Godwin law.

Thanks. I didn't read it that way, but I see that it could be.

Well, my impression of reading Sakura's follow-up comment to mine about dead babies seemed to suggest she thought I was a man. (I'm not sure how else to take her response otherwise.) Think I'm mistaken here?

The explanation of mansplaining was directed possibly at MagneticSingularity or possibly anyone who doesn't agree with the OP.

The specific comment was in reply to GeorgeFayne posts about working in a labour ward. OP thinks men should not be there. They are stealing jobs from women and lording it over pregnant women.

Regardless of your views on birth, surely it stands that a woman’s body belongs to her and putting your fingers into her vagina should always always be a question.

SweetMelodies
I agree 100%.

Lass and Magnetic
Thank you! Thought maybe I was being crazy or paranoid for a minute. :)

Yes, I too think it was directed at me, Lass. What can I say? Obviously I can say anything on an anonymous Internet forum but, for what it’s worth, I am a woman with two pregnancies and two live births to show for them. My feminist card dates back to 1977 when my O’level (yes, I’m fairly old) English teacher introduced me to the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan et al having picked up on something, I dunno maybe a kindred spirit thing, in my work and reading tastes. My mumsnet card dates back around 3 years. I’m a Brit living in the USA and I’m on my umpteenth name change. My usernames are loosely connected thematically.

But enough about me...

Sorry, I just didn't read it that way the first time. I thought she was just thinking of the moment with a dead baby and how sad it must be and how she wouldn't want a man there. Not that you were. But maybe she did mean that. She might have.

And mansplaining, I thought she just meant the style of argument (nitpicking) had the same effect of undermining the message, but again, she might have meant it that way. I don't know.

I just genuinely didn't know what you were talking about. Thanks for explaining. I see now.

GeorgeFayne I assumed you were a man too, but I've just googled your username and discovered it's a (female) Nancy Drew character. It must be over 30 years since I read those

Anyway sorry for another detail.

Meuh
YES!!! George Fayne was Nancy's sidekick and I always thought she was the coolest. She was truly gender nonconforming, always described as "boyish" or a tomboy. She was adventurous, smart, and infinitely more fun than Bess or Nancy. She had short hair, was athletic, and had different boyfriends. George was the best!

That is a HUGELY biased article.

I'm already biased against the US healthcare system, in particular their over medicalisation of birth and active marginalising of midwives, so I SHOULD be highly receptive here, but this article tells me that the mother went in to the hospital highly aggressive & combative on every point, to the extent that the staff felt it necessary to do a drug test.

She arrived laying it on thick about only being there because she HAD to be, how natural is best (which is fine but she's literally in a hospital now for treatment which she needs to save her baby) and generally treating the medical staff as the enemy, freely admitting that she kept repeating "I know my rights" over and over again.

A male member of staff asked to examine her because they hadn't ready/interpreted her admission record properly & she refused. That's the only mistake I'm seeing here.

The hospital safely delivered her baby, but she feels like she had her home birth "stolen" from her & is blaming them for everything she can think of - with a lot of editing help from a dubious and heavily biased website (that never even spoke to the mother anyway?).

What I meant by nit picking was this. You expect a certain level of feminist awareness on a feminist forum. If I wanted a mainstream chat where I'd expect people to say birth trauma is made up tosh I'd have posted it somewhere else.
What I should have done is made clear this thread was about birth trauma. But because I didn't expect people to make out other issues in the article were more important than the birth trauma the woman experienced I didn't make this clear in the OP.
The lesson to me is: know your audience. Even in a feminist space people will try and make the thread about something else, anything else , other than the women centered topic you originally wanted it to be.

So to clarify: the topic is birth trauma. If you don't see birth trauma in the original article by all means go and google your own acceptable article , don't worry there are plenty out there.

Then I would love a productive discussion about the topic in hand

But the effect of nitpicking is the same as mansplaining. You end up forgetting what on earth the post was supposed to be about and find yourself defending random shit.
Which seems to be the whole point of mansplaining and nitpicking. Keep women focused on anything else but the issue in hand