I can’t help it, I hold grudges. It’s just my personality to seethe over things when I feel like I’ve been dumped on, and it just stews inside my bones, boiling under the surface for months, weeks, years, decades… until I find a way to resolve my anger.
I have a lot of unresolved rage over things that happened in my first two birth experiences. My first was an induction-turned-unnecessary cesarean, and my second was a hard, hard, hard-fought VBAC that nearly resulted in a second unnecessary cesarean about a dozen times before my labor finally finished.
Having my VBAC, and my then my Home VBAC, ultimately healed the way I felt about my body after those traumatic births. It was empowering and liberating. But it didn’t shake the anger over the way I was treated in the hospital because I know so many other women are experiencing the same mistreatment every day, and in some weird ways it makes it feel like it’s still happening to me.
In both of my first two births, there were some things that the hospital staff did that I may never forget, and certainly have not yet forgiven. And I’m not alone here, either. Jessie Peters of Roanoke Birth Services, a doula and midwife in training says,
“I believe that we as women never forget how we felt, and were made to feel during the births of our children, and that the way we are treated during this vulnerable time impacts our future.”
Many highly trained birth and psychology professionals agree that birth imprints memories on us in a way that can’t be shaken, which can be especially hard to process if they are negative feelings. But I’m going to try to process them how, in hopes that it will relieve some of the internalized anger that nags at me. I also hope that if labor & delivery professionals stumble upon this, it will make them rethink the little things they’re doing that will forever impact how a woman remembers her birth experience.
Bloated beyond recognition after my unwanted and traumatic cesarean.
Here’s what I’d say to some of those hospital workers if I could see them today…
To the nurse who insisted that she had to start Pitocin just because she had also “accidentally” broken my water:
NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Get the EFF away from me with that Pitocin or there will be hell to pay. That Pitocin is going to hyperstimulate my uterus, put my baby in distress, and ultimately start me on a cascade of risky interventions that will lead to a traumatic surgery that will scar my insides, literally and figuratively, for the rest of my life. PUT IT DOWN AND BACK AWAY! And don’t you DARE try to act like I’m a silly moron for questioning the things you’re putting in my veins.
To the resident who kept tossing my hospital gown back over my slimy belly full of ultrasound gel after you took your hourly unnecessary look at my baby:
Oh. My. God. Have you ever had your stomach covered in ultrasound glue, and then put clothes on over it? Come here and let me put that sticky crap all over your abdomen, and let’s see how much you like your shirt sitting on top of it. It’s incredibly uncomfortable! Where did you get your bedside manners? The back of a truck? Wipe that shit OFF before you tug my gown back down over my stomach. I’m laying strapped to a hospital bed with wires hanging off every limb. I do not need one more thing to make me uncomfortable, for crying out loud.
To the med student whose face I had never seen until he kept knocking my mirror out of the way as I was desperately trying to watch my VBAC baby’s head crowning:
Dude, I will NEVER EVER forget your face, or the violence I felt toward you as you were ruining my shot to see my vagina doing its job for the first time. It was INCREDIBLY important for me to see that – to experience that – after what I had been through the first time, and you stole it from me. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the feeling of wanting to kick you in the face while I was strapped on my back, being shouted at to Purple Push. Your job as a med student is to watch and learn – not imprint your face in the mother’s brain because you’re royally screwing up her pushing experience.
To the nurse who asked if I really, really, really wanted my baby circumcised:
NO. I totally don’t! I just didn’t realize it at the time. That’s not your fault – that’s mine. But it needs to be on this list because it’s something I wish I’d said to hospital staff. I spent so much time freaking out over my first pregnancy, I didn’t research anything about babies. And I spent so much time worrying about getting my VBAC, I just carried on doing the same to my second son. I’ve come to terms with it, but it will weigh on me until my sons are old enough to let me know how they feel about that.
To my OB who told me homebirth was for morons and that every woman who attempts it always transfers into his ER, and who laughed at me when I said I’d started doing my own research:
Ultimately I think I know more about normal birth than you ever will. It makes me sad that your patients aren’t getting information and expert care. But thanks for the not-totally-ugly cesarean scar. I know now that you had a whole lot of practice doing them.
I think I feel a little better now. And maybe I can refer back to this bit of catharsis any time I start seething again.
Do you have any unresolved feelings toward your prior maternity care providers? Let it out, sister. Perhaps we can heal together.
I am so very sorry to hear all these sad and scary stories. just say no. Just go to a qualified midwife - interview as many as you need to until you find one you like, no, until you find one you love. That is the answer. No more hospital births unless they have birthing tubs, midwives on staff, and promise to let you direct your labor and not attach you to a bunch stuff that looks like it belongs to the dark ages. My love to all of you and to your babies. You need to be cared for, not treated like a medical emergency.
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