Hello to those who may be reading my blog, thanks for stopping by.
Today's long awaited post is going to be about my 2 traumatic birth experiences and where I am at in my healing from them. I have had a lot of time to think about these experiences over the past few weeks or so since Jaycen started school (he's doing extremely well at school too by the way and loves it), even with the girls here the house has been quieter and I've found myself wandering around aimlessly and thinking about the past and beginning to work through my feelings about my birth experiences.
I know it will still be a long time before I can truly accept them, but I am starting to move forward and that is the most important thing.
To begin with I have finally reached the stage where all I feel about my cesarean delivery is sadness. As recently as January 2013 I still felt angry about it, angry at myself for not knowing enough, not listening to my gut instincts, and not doing more to avoid the cesarean, and most importantly not saying no when the cesarean was first mentioned as my son was still happy and the decels during contractions were still within normal limits according to the research I have done since he was born just over 5 years ago.
So now I am sad, sad that it happened at all, sad for myself that I had to experience that kind of introduction to motherhood, sad for my son who has to live with how he was born and it's possible effects on his body and mind for the rest of his life, sad that he has had to live with a mother (myself) who was not entirely there (suffering from un-diagnosed post natal depression) during the first 4 years of his life, sad that we didn't have the inst-ant bond that the girls and I had, sad that he never got to breastfeed, sad that he spent the first 4.5 hours of his life away from me in a crib in the nursery on his own only being picked up by nurses for a feed, sad that his first feed was given to him without mine or his fathers permission and that it was formula that he was given, sad that none of the midwives even bothered to ask me if I wanted to breastfeed until he was already 3.5 days old (it's no wonder my milk took over 7 days to come in and that my supply was always lacking after he was born and disappeared so quickly when I got mastitis 3.5 weeks post partum).
I am sad that my whole introduction to motherhood was coloured by the traumatic experience that was Jaycen's birth. No mother should have to go through that kind of trauma. To look at your newborn baby and think that he isn't yours, to think that they have given you someone else's child by mistake, to not feel anything at all when you look at your newborn child, that is the most horrible feeling ever. And you feel guilty because you don't have those loving feelings that everyone tells you about, you feel disgusted in yourself, you feel like a horrible mother because you don't love your baby properly, and you feel like a failure because you couldn't do what nature made you to do - you couldn't deliver your baby vaginally and you couldn't breastfeed. That is how I felt back then, and to some degree those feelings are still inside me. Jaycen and I don't have a very good bond, it is only just now starting to strengthen, but I still have moments where I look at him think that he isn't my child. He doesn't look like my husband or I or any of our family members if I am truly honest, where the girls have dark hair, eyes and skin like my mum and myself, Jaycen is blonde haired, blue eyed and has pale skin that freckles easily but doesn't tan in the sun. It is hard to come to terms with the knowledge, knowledge that I have always known but was completely unable to accept in the emotionally traumatic aftermath of his birth, that he did actually grow inside my womb and did actually come out from it.
Emily's birth is a different story and not one that I have shared publicly outside of a private facebook support group before so now I am sharing it here so that others can know that they are not alone and so that others can do things to prevent this happening to them as well, and traumatic for far different reasons. Yes she was born vaginally, a successful 2nd VBAC only 15.5 months after my first successful VBAC, but things happened to me, were done to me, all without mine or my husbands permission, that I am still very very angry about. Being honest, I am grieving the birth that should have been with her, just as I grieved for what Jaycen's birth should have been as well, I may have succeeded in what I set out to do but through no fault of my own my 3rd and last- birth was medicalised and filled with unwanted interventions and nothing that I said or did made any difference. I was effectively relegated to the status of a bystander in my own labour and birth, I was ignored, denied, treated worse than an animal, things were done to me that I didn't want done and I was never asked if I wanted it done and when I refused I was told I couldn't refuse and in some cases even physically held down while they did it.
Some who read this may think what I have mentioned doesn't happen in this day and age, but the truth is that this all happened only 1.5 years ago, in early July 2012, and these things are still happening all around the world now. I am not alone in my experience, and one day I hope that these things will never happen again, that no one will every have to feel as scared, alone, afraid, terrified, angry, disheartened or made to feel as stupid as I was at that time.
What should have been a beautiful and empowering experience like Elise's birth was turned into a horrible experience that I don't know if I'll ever be able to recover from. Sometimes I wonder, how do rape victims recover from their horrible experience? I was "birth raped", this is a new term in birthing circles, I believe it was first coined in the early 90's (though of course I could be wrong), and I have lived through it, experienced it first hand, and my husband and children have had to live with the consequences of it ever since.
While I was in labour I had an obstetrician walk into my room unannounced and stick his hand up my vagina without even saying one word to me. Yes, that's right, he stuck his hand up my vagina without permission and then told me to keep still while he was examining me (I was squirming in pain and discomfort and horror, this was not what I had asked for or even expected and this strange man had stuck his whole hand up my vagina without introducing himself or asking permission!). He spoke to one of the midwives and then left. The midwife told me who he was and that I was 4cm dilated and asked if I would like something to help me sleep, I asked for pethidine. I was given an injection through a drip (something that I hadn't asked for and it was put in place before I could even say that I didn't want it, so much for the laws regarding the need for full consent before medical procedures are done), I was deemed to be dehydrated so fluids were started. I had been asking for the midwife to call my obstetrician for 6 hours by this stage and it would be another 6 hours before another midwife finally called him and told him that he wasn't required at the hospital.
Much later, when my youngest child was just over 1 day old, I would find out that I was given something that wasn't pethidine, I was instead given a drug that is used to stop premature labour, why I was given this I had no clue, and I was at the time of the drug having been administered 40 weeks and 2 days gestation, so most definitely NOT in premature labour. To this day I still cannot remember the name of the drug, I was in such shock after being told that (along with the fact that both myself and my newborn daughter were severely vitamin D deficient and that she was at risk of developing rickets if nothing was done about it) that I just didn't take it in. All I could think was "What next? What else was done to me without my knowledge?", I already knew what had been done to me without permission, but this I hadn't known and I am so angry at my treatment and what was done.
My birth plan had been thrown into a bin by a snotty midwife not long after I arrived at the hospital, I was told that because it wasn't signed by both my OB and the midwife I had seen through shared care it wasn't able to be followed in the hospital (I have since found out that this is a crock of shit and the midwife in question should be investigated for taking away my basic human rights of freedom of movement and for not following MY BIRTH PLAN which was for MY BIRTH) and as a result she refused to call my OB for confirmation of my birth plans.
In my birth plan I had wanted a physiological third stage with delayed cord clamping, not too much to ask at all, and really very simple. I mentioned my wishes several times throughout my labour, as did my husband, but once my youngest was out (through my vagina! A HUGE STUFF YOU to the Paediatrician and the Surgeon who were there when my cesarean was done at around 12:30pm on December 23rd 2008 at Sale Hospital in Victoria and came to me as soon as I was out of recovery and before I had even seen my baby, while I was completely on my own with no one to support me, and told me I would never, ever, deliver a baby vaginally and would only ever have cesareans because my pelvis was the wrong shape and too small for a babies head to fit through) the midwife immediately jabbed me with the synthetic pitocin and they cut the cord, and then began pulling on the cord to get the placenta out as soon as possible.
Once the placenta was out the horrible OB from earlier came storming back in and jabbed me with local anaesthetic in my vagina. I had a 2nd degree tear, a mild one, one that would have healed quite fine without stitches. Once again I was never asked for permission, and within moments of the local anaesthetic being administered the OB started stitching me up. I never even got the chance to tell him that local anaesthetic doesn't work well on me and takes forever and over a dozen injections to even start working at dulling the pain.
So I was stitched up, and unbeknownst to me a student doctor was also in the room without my permission, the first time I became aware of the student doctor was when I stopped being in agony from the stitches enough to hear the OB telling the student that "this is how you do this stitch, and here's a couple of extra ones that aren't really necessary just so you know exactly how it is done".
So you can see why I am ANGRY at what was done to me. I had a strange mans hand shoved up my vagina without permission, I was given medication (that I had never had before and therefore could have possibly been allergic to) given to me without permission, my birth plan was thrown in the bin and ignored, my requests were ignored, my demands were ignored, my OB was told that he wasn't needed even though I DID NEED HIM and had told the midwives over a dozen times that I REALLY BLOODY HELL DAMN FUCK YOU ALL I DID NEED HIM, I was physically held down on the bed so things could be done, I was stitched up without permission and given extra stitches that weren't needed at all and as a result I have extra scar tissue down there that shouldn't be there because it "over healed" with the extra stitching.
This same OB I have mentioned above had also been in the emergency department when I was 16 weeks and was there for severe lower abdominal pain and extremely high BP (it was 240/180+ for a couple of hours while I was there and only came down when I was given morphine for the pain). He never once examined me, never ordered an ultrasound. I had a large ovarian cyst on my left ovary and it had burst and he never investigated it. I could have gone into premature labour and lost my baby or bled out or even developed sepsis because of the cyst rupturing but he didn't care. All he said to me was "You are either having a miscarriage, a placental abruption or have pre-eclampsia, either way there is nothing we can do for you and we will just send you home to wait it out". Just what you want to hear at 16wks prengant with a much loved and wanted baby, NOT.
I am angry, I am devastated, I am frustrated, and I am still hurting from that birth experience. It should have been a wonderful birth, the birth of my 3rd and last baby, and instead I wasn't respected, I was treated horribly and expected to "GET OVER IT" because I had a "mostly" healthy baby. I should have been treated with the utmost respect, I should have been left alone to labour my way, my requests should have been honoured right away and my OB should have been called in to come and see me. It was MY birth, MY body, not theirs, and they took everything away from me and left me feeling like I had no control over anything. They were the bad guys in this story, what should have been beautiful and peaceful was turned into a horrible fiasco that I will never "get over" and will have to live with for the rest of my life.
So that is what happened, that is how I feel and why I feel that way. I hope I can help others who have been through this and feel like they are all alone, it is a horrible thing to go through.
Until next time,
Jenna
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