Why I worry about my sister
Some of these links may be triggering
More than a traumatic birth
The treatment these women received was enough to make them suffer to their very core, and do irreparable damage to their psyche. And yet the doctors who committed the act still practice, and the cycle continues.
Upon graduating from medical school, young doctors take an oath to protect their patients, and treat them with respect. In order to practice in this country, they are pledged to gain informed consent from their patients before providing treatment. Despite these oaths, they are causing such harm to women who deserve their utmost admiration and kindness.
This is why women choose to call it Birth Rape. Yes, it is used to shock. It is used to bring attention to something that is so significant, and yet never talked about.
The F-word - Not a happy birthday
Threatened, intimidated, bullied, violated: this is hospital birth as many mothers experience it. Amity Reed reports on the little-recognised crime of birth rape
The first two comments were from people who had no idea that childbirth was commonly associated with being mistreated/bullied/violated. I was surprised that they had no idea.
Why?
Well, I've encountered discussion of this topic often on the internet, but it wasn't internet stories that convinced me hospital births could be a majorly bad idea.
It was Mrs A, who told how the nurses had slapped her during childbirth. Who also said that she'd been shouted at and told to 'stop pushing, he'll arrive in the corridor'. She related her indignance of being treated 'like a teenager' when she was a woman in her forties having her third child. She's in her eighties now.
My mother is in her fifties. From her I've learned that stitches *hurt*. That being shaved feels horrible as it's growing back. That enemas are standard procedure (my child mind said 'ugh!'). That she was put under intense pressure to be surgically sterilised after every birth until the third "I think they gave up on me at that stage".
I visited Katie with her newborn and she told me how she 'behaved like a bitch' because she didn't want the nurses to touch her, but they told her it had to be done anyway (putting a monitor on her stomach).
That was her third birth. She 'slept through her second', terrified of repeating the trauamatic long labour of her first. For months approaching the third she was unable to relax, expecting once again the nightmare of her first delivery.
S had a planned caesarian while I worked for her family because a late scan showed the baby moving into breech position. An un-induced birth had never been an option given to her 'because of medical problems'.
A told the whole congregation after her birth how frightened she'd been because she'd been told that she would have to be induced if she went a week overdue and she didn't want to be induced - she went into labour naturally at five days over.
V had every baby after her first by caesarian because the doctors told her too much damage had been done first time.
J watched my boss assist a cow to calve. He told her "she's bellowing like that because of the labour, not because of what I'm doing,' and I thought to myself - she wasn't making a cheep till you stuck your hands in there and started pulling the calf. I applied lube liberally and caught the calf as it emerged, and J was enthralled, telling us how much better we were at delivering babies than the hospital. "Don't ever go there," she told me. "They just go snip snip." J was in her late forties with three teenage sons.
I visited my boss last year and he showed me the photos of his two new grandchildren, both born by caesarian. In every photo of one of the children his daughter lay, unmoving and expressionless, in the hospital bed.
B had her son by caesarean. "Every time I had a contraction his heart rate dropped," she told me. "The nurses said they had to get him out quick. I was a wuss." She thought her own anxiety had caused the problem and hence, the caesarean.
K, L and M have told me about two separate births, two little brothers, born in their mother's bedroom.
G told us about her experience in a natural birthing centre, finding herself a comfortable position on hands and knees. "It didn't hurt at all," she said in wonder. Her sister laughed. "You're lucky then. That's not normal."
There are good experiences out there. Overwhelmingly, I hear women talk about feeling ill-treated, or having to stand up aggressively for themselves against the medics. I know women who wouldn't contemplate a birth outside hospital, because of the fear that things might go wrong.
If it wasn't for one thing, I might accept these stories at face value and believe that birth was a particularly dangerous process and that the medicalisation of childbirth was truly for the benefit of both mother and child. Instead, I have a major problem with even begining to accept that idea.
I work with breeding cattle. Some years I've been responsible for the birth of three hundred and fifty calves in a twelve week period, some years I've overseen the calving process in less than a hundred and fifty cows.
Last year I 156 cows in my care calved. Out of the first hundred I assisted three calves into the world. Out of the next fifty, again, three were assisted - one of those a schistozome calf (genetic deformity).
Unless an inappropriate bull has been used, it's normal to assist 5 - 10% of births. Usually the reason for assisting is a malpresentation, or a still birth (an already dead calf doesn't actively try to jump out of the vagina the way a live one does). Sometimes milk fever is a factor, because calcium deficiency weakens muscle tone and hence, contractions.
How do I reconcile the fact that 95% of my cows birth safely in the paddock without any assistance at all, with the fact that perhaps 95% of women having babies go to the harsh medicalised environment of a hospital 'just in case something goes wrong' and up to 30% of those end up having caesarians while many of the remainder come home with a story of something 'having gone wrong'.
I've never in my career given a cow an episiotomy. The only vulval tearing I've ever seen was one cow who backed into a steel post during an assisted birth - the birth didn't cause it. One cow. Out of thousands.
You might say, 'well, women aren't cows'. Women often do say that.
S said her husband (a dairy farmer) said to her while she was in labour, "the cows do it all right."
"They've got four legs," she snapped back. "I've only got two and they don't work."
I didn't realise till much later that an epidural probably caused the lack of mobility. We've twice had the vet out to give an epidural to a cow - two out of several thousand. In both cases, because the cow was straining hard against a malpresented calf that needed to be pushed back into the uterus and repositioned for birthing.
The practises that were common when my mother gave birth are less normal now, and have been shown up for what they are - a convenience to the medics while of little value to the mother. When my mum went to hospital she would be given an enema, shaved and expected to birth lying on her back - I think in those days they may have used stirrups. Because birth obviously is such a damgerous process, women would be cut to enlarge the exit and ensure further ripping along the cut line (did I mention something about having never seen a cow badly ripped - tiny abrasion-type tears which heal within a day or two are normal) then re-stitched after the birth.
I have to say that while reading "Desert Children" I couldn't get western childbirthing procedures out of my head. How many women have suffered FGM if unneccesary episiotomies are added to the deliberate mutilations inflicted upon women and girls in the name of culture?
I don't recall whether a mother could have the assistance of a husband, friend or doula with her at that time, or if that change happened later. I do know the practice of whisking baby away and only allowing the mother short spells to see and feed her child was still normal.
Katie had a small room with Lily, when I visited. There was no separate nursery. Why should it ever be otherwise - to separate a mother from the child they've carried for nine months?
While I would hope to never have a child, I decided long ago that I was never going to darken the doors of a hospital without very good reason, if I did. It was a combination of being very familiar with the birthing process, an innate distrust of doctors, and stories like these that led me to that default decision.
Why do I worry about my sister? Because I'm certain as she takes advice from the people around her and her husband and in-laws, that she will be pressured into a hospital birth.
I have a good idea just how badly hospital births can go wrong (and a reasonable idea what can go wrong in an unassisted birth and when medical intervention might be needed - just as any good midwife or doula ought to have). I don't want that for my sister. I don't even want her to find herself going through a life-changing process in a strange environment among uncaring people.
For our mother's generation, hospital birth was the only and the right option. And so our mothers who have known the system and accepted it as normal often don't approve of the more 'modern' options of home birthing or natural birthing centres.
This is an issue we need to talk about: Debs, at The Burning Times, opens discussion
I'd like to see medics back off from childbirth altogether except for the few situations where they are truly needed. That's a hard line, not a universal one. It's true - and more worthy of discussion - that changes withn the system could do far better for women, without revolution. The early half of this century saw a steady progression towards the ulta-medicalisation of childbirth as the old midwife system was outlawed, hygiene procedures improved and at the ultimate, women were wooed by the promises of sleeping right through the labour and birthing process. Childbirth moved from homes into hospitals, and the practice of midwifery almost died. More recently, while lay midwifery has still been banned training has been provided to allow midwives to practise legally, and hence I think, the proportion of home births has increased.
When a home birth is transfered to hospital for complications, the midwife is subject to investigation and the newspapers make a field day of the incident.
Obstetrical rape: because it's not only during childbirth that women are abused by medics. Debs relates her own experience
In memorium: Barbara Seaman One woman makes a difference to women's health rights
By Heart of Women's Space - Ina May Gaskin, lay midwife
Just how ridiculous can a medical mindset towards birthing be?
Doctors convicted for medical rape - more from Hoyden About Town This is a good blog to explore for a knowledgeable view on this issue.
It's no doubt because of goings-on like the above that mothers-to-be find advice and comradeship in communities like naturalbirth and unassisted childbirth.
But perhaps we should be talking about the responsibility of medics to make hospitals a safe place for women, to be safe medics, to foster basic respect for women.
From last calving on my farm, one of my cows photgraphed through labour to new calf, unassisted The experience of childbirth when you're a dairy cow is quite another thing of course - this ain't the post to start discussing the buying, selling and forced breeding of bovine females.
More than a traumatic birth
The treatment these women received was enough to make them suffer to their very core, and do irreparable damage to their psyche. And yet the doctors who committed the act still practice, and the cycle continues.
Upon graduating from medical school, young doctors take an oath to protect their patients, and treat them with respect. In order to practice in this country, they are pledged to gain informed consent from their patients before providing treatment. Despite these oaths, they are causing such harm to women who deserve their utmost admiration and kindness.
This is why women choose to call it Birth Rape. Yes, it is used to shock. It is used to bring attention to something that is so significant, and yet never talked about.
The F-word - Not a happy birthday
Threatened, intimidated, bullied, violated: this is hospital birth as many mothers experience it. Amity Reed reports on the little-recognised crime of birth rape
The first two comments were from people who had no idea that childbirth was commonly associated with being mistreated/bullied/violated. I was surprised that they had no idea.
Why?
Well, I've encountered discussion of this topic often on the internet, but it wasn't internet stories that convinced me hospital births could be a majorly bad idea.
It was Mrs A, who told how the nurses had slapped her during childbirth. Who also said that she'd been shouted at and told to 'stop pushing, he'll arrive in the corridor'. She related her indignance of being treated 'like a teenager' when she was a woman in her forties having her third child. She's in her eighties now.
My mother is in her fifties. From her I've learned that stitches *hurt*. That being shaved feels horrible as it's growing back. That enemas are standard procedure (my child mind said 'ugh!'). That she was put under intense pressure to be surgically sterilised after every birth until the third "I think they gave up on me at that stage".
I visited Katie with her newborn and she told me how she 'behaved like a bitch' because she didn't want the nurses to touch her, but they told her it had to be done anyway (putting a monitor on her stomach).
That was her third birth. She 'slept through her second', terrified of repeating the trauamatic long labour of her first. For months approaching the third she was unable to relax, expecting once again the nightmare of her first delivery.
S had a planned caesarian while I worked for her family because a late scan showed the baby moving into breech position. An un-induced birth had never been an option given to her 'because of medical problems'.
A told the whole congregation after her birth how frightened she'd been because she'd been told that she would have to be induced if she went a week overdue and she didn't want to be induced - she went into labour naturally at five days over.
V had every baby after her first by caesarian because the doctors told her too much damage had been done first time.
J watched my boss assist a cow to calve. He told her "she's bellowing like that because of the labour, not because of what I'm doing,' and I thought to myself - she wasn't making a cheep till you stuck your hands in there and started pulling the calf. I applied lube liberally and caught the calf as it emerged, and J was enthralled, telling us how much better we were at delivering babies than the hospital. "Don't ever go there," she told me. "They just go snip snip." J was in her late forties with three teenage sons.
I visited my boss last year and he showed me the photos of his two new grandchildren, both born by caesarian. In every photo of one of the children his daughter lay, unmoving and expressionless, in the hospital bed.
B had her son by caesarean. "Every time I had a contraction his heart rate dropped," she told me. "The nurses said they had to get him out quick. I was a wuss." She thought her own anxiety had caused the problem and hence, the caesarean.
K, L and M have told me about two separate births, two little brothers, born in their mother's bedroom.
G told us about her experience in a natural birthing centre, finding herself a comfortable position on hands and knees. "It didn't hurt at all," she said in wonder. Her sister laughed. "You're lucky then. That's not normal."
There are good experiences out there. Overwhelmingly, I hear women talk about feeling ill-treated, or having to stand up aggressively for themselves against the medics. I know women who wouldn't contemplate a birth outside hospital, because of the fear that things might go wrong.
If it wasn't for one thing, I might accept these stories at face value and believe that birth was a particularly dangerous process and that the medicalisation of childbirth was truly for the benefit of both mother and child. Instead, I have a major problem with even begining to accept that idea.
I work with breeding cattle. Some years I've been responsible for the birth of three hundred and fifty calves in a twelve week period, some years I've overseen the calving process in less than a hundred and fifty cows.
Last year I 156 cows in my care calved. Out of the first hundred I assisted three calves into the world. Out of the next fifty, again, three were assisted - one of those a schistozome calf (genetic deformity).
Unless an inappropriate bull has been used, it's normal to assist 5 - 10% of births. Usually the reason for assisting is a malpresentation, or a still birth (an already dead calf doesn't actively try to jump out of the vagina the way a live one does). Sometimes milk fever is a factor, because calcium deficiency weakens muscle tone and hence, contractions.
How do I reconcile the fact that 95% of my cows birth safely in the paddock without any assistance at all, with the fact that perhaps 95% of women having babies go to the harsh medicalised environment of a hospital 'just in case something goes wrong' and up to 30% of those end up having caesarians while many of the remainder come home with a story of something 'having gone wrong'.
I've never in my career given a cow an episiotomy. The only vulval tearing I've ever seen was one cow who backed into a steel post during an assisted birth - the birth didn't cause it. One cow. Out of thousands.
You might say, 'well, women aren't cows'. Women often do say that.
S said her husband (a dairy farmer) said to her while she was in labour, "the cows do it all right."
"They've got four legs," she snapped back. "I've only got two and they don't work."
I didn't realise till much later that an epidural probably caused the lack of mobility. We've twice had the vet out to give an epidural to a cow - two out of several thousand. In both cases, because the cow was straining hard against a malpresented calf that needed to be pushed back into the uterus and repositioned for birthing.
The practises that were common when my mother gave birth are less normal now, and have been shown up for what they are - a convenience to the medics while of little value to the mother. When my mum went to hospital she would be given an enema, shaved and expected to birth lying on her back - I think in those days they may have used stirrups. Because birth obviously is such a damgerous process, women would be cut to enlarge the exit and ensure further ripping along the cut line (did I mention something about having never seen a cow badly ripped - tiny abrasion-type tears which heal within a day or two are normal) then re-stitched after the birth.
I have to say that while reading "Desert Children" I couldn't get western childbirthing procedures out of my head. How many women have suffered FGM if unneccesary episiotomies are added to the deliberate mutilations inflicted upon women and girls in the name of culture?
I don't recall whether a mother could have the assistance of a husband, friend or doula with her at that time, or if that change happened later. I do know the practice of whisking baby away and only allowing the mother short spells to see and feed her child was still normal.
Katie had a small room with Lily, when I visited. There was no separate nursery. Why should it ever be otherwise - to separate a mother from the child they've carried for nine months?
While I would hope to never have a child, I decided long ago that I was never going to darken the doors of a hospital without very good reason, if I did. It was a combination of being very familiar with the birthing process, an innate distrust of doctors, and stories like these that led me to that default decision.
Why do I worry about my sister? Because I'm certain as she takes advice from the people around her and her husband and in-laws, that she will be pressured into a hospital birth.
I have a good idea just how badly hospital births can go wrong (and a reasonable idea what can go wrong in an unassisted birth and when medical intervention might be needed - just as any good midwife or doula ought to have). I don't want that for my sister. I don't even want her to find herself going through a life-changing process in a strange environment among uncaring people.
For our mother's generation, hospital birth was the only and the right option. And so our mothers who have known the system and accepted it as normal often don't approve of the more 'modern' options of home birthing or natural birthing centres.
This is an issue we need to talk about: Debs, at The Burning Times, opens discussion
I'd like to see medics back off from childbirth altogether except for the few situations where they are truly needed. That's a hard line, not a universal one. It's true - and more worthy of discussion - that changes withn the system could do far better for women, without revolution. The early half of this century saw a steady progression towards the ulta-medicalisation of childbirth as the old midwife system was outlawed, hygiene procedures improved and at the ultimate, women were wooed by the promises of sleeping right through the labour and birthing process. Childbirth moved from homes into hospitals, and the practice of midwifery almost died. More recently, while lay midwifery has still been banned training has been provided to allow midwives to practise legally, and hence I think, the proportion of home births has increased.
When a home birth is transfered to hospital for complications, the midwife is subject to investigation and the newspapers make a field day of the incident.
Obstetrical rape: because it's not only during childbirth that women are abused by medics. Debs relates her own experience
In memorium: Barbara Seaman One woman makes a difference to women's health rights
By Heart of Women's Space - Ina May Gaskin, lay midwife
Just how ridiculous can a medical mindset towards birthing be?
Doctors convicted for medical rape - more from Hoyden About Town This is a good blog to explore for a knowledgeable view on this issue.
It's no doubt because of goings-on like the above that mothers-to-be find advice and comradeship in communities like naturalbirth and unassisted childbirth.
But perhaps we should be talking about the responsibility of medics to make hospitals a safe place for women, to be safe medics, to foster basic respect for women.
From last calving on my farm, one of my cows photgraphed through labour to new calf, unassisted The experience of childbirth when you're a dairy cow is quite another thing of course - this ain't the post to start discussing the buying, selling and forced breeding of bovine females.
posted by sophie | 4:33 AM
4 Comments:
Thanks so much for this post, Sophie. I'm afraid I can't read some of it yet as it is too upsetting, but it's so important that this is talked about. xx
Sophie, I don't know about your sister's situation at all, but I managed to have a hospital birth with only the midwife and D there throughout the whole thing. I tore a bit (it was my choice to tear if it happened, instead of having any cutting involved), but refused stitches and my midwife respected that.
Having a great midwife is of utmost importance. Maybe you could talk to your sister about that if you are worried?
I think 'Birth Rape' is a very apt description of what a lot of women go through. It is horrific; and in my opinion, another case of something potentially really beautiful being turned into trauma.
Thanks Z.
Last I heard, one of her friends had recommended a midwife (and has since been sworn to secrecy - it's still hush hush) and she has an appointment next week. She's also been doing a fair bit of research - so I'm a bit more hopeful that she will at least know her options.
I get the impression that her in-laws are rather conservative, which is partly why I was worried she'd be pressured into the full medicalisation (and also why she's not telling anyone yet; she dosen't want them nagging at her).
I'm glad to hear you were allowed that level of privacy in hospital - that is as it should be, and yet many of the birthing stories I hear of are quite otherwise. I thought the threat to induce A was a bit off (but she had a big baby, so of course her scan date was well out as well, and my reading around suggests that the medics get nervous about allowing big babies to be born naturally).
Heh - I forgot what I'd meant to start the comment with. She's new to the country, so had no idea what to do since it's not a free health-service (like in Britain). So she hesitated (and I have to say I encouraged that delay) and read around to inform herself.
Probably the best approach, rather than letting someone else *tell* her what to do.
Hmm - should I now make a move to prevent my not-so-little black kitten from shredding the cheque book - or just let her have it? Decisions, decisions
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