Thats true Stanford
40+ years ago my mum was a teenage girl in premature labour alone in a maternity ward and treated like a stupid and irresponsible tart. Her voice not listened to, by the time it was recomended that an emergency C Section was need both our lives were at risk and we both had to spend a good amount of time in hospital to recover.
You'd hope in that time woman or mother centred care would become better but last year my cousin's wife gave birth for the first time. she's a very slight woman and was pushing for over an hour, all the time my husband begging HCPs to help her, and being told this is normal she just needs to calm down and stop being silly, unfortunately by the time they decided a vaginal birth would not be the best option it was too late for them to perform a c section and she and their daughter again spent a lot of time in hospital recovering from this traumatic birth.
Almost every woman I know who has given birth in recent years regardless of their race, class, education or age has had similar experiences of not being listened to, patronised or not being centred in their care. A huge amout of them had emergency C Sections or forceps delivery after going on way too long in labour.
Too many maternity wards can't seem to get basic patient centred care right in the first place,too many mothers (and father) live with psycological trauma following unnecessarily traumatic births, too many children and mothers are living with life long effects of preventable birthing injuries, too many babies are being lost and mother's lives are being put at risk because they are already being infantalised or dehumanised in the place where their need should be put front and centre.
So yes I would love everyone to get the correct care they deserve, we can start by not diminishing and belittling mothers, stop treating them like a problem that needs to be fixed, and stop with the confusing and dehumanising language towards us