The cases she refers to in her post, many of them covered here at Strollerderby, are, without question, extremes. Is every woman abused by her doctor? Of course not. Are the majority of kids whose mums refuse to sign c-section consent forms whisked off to foster care? No, not even close.

And yet, it’s not hard to find stories of women who felt icky at best, or harmed by her caretakers at worst, during the birth of their kids.

How many of you know someone who underwent a cervical exam without being asked first? Or without even being introduced to the on-call doctor or nurse before they snapped on the gloves and started prodding around? Another common complaint is the stealth stripping of membranes or breaking the bag of waters, a factor that contributed to Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s eventual diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Women are often deprived of food and water for many, many hours during labour, despite evidence that both are safe and even necessary. I’ve heard stories of nurses cranking Pitocin just to get mum to submit to an epidural; episiotomies cut without discussion, despite a mother’s wish to consent first; babies given formula though the parents had specifically declined any bottles. And more, so much more.

Sure, it’s all anecdotal. But the fact that we hear these stories regularly should makes us wonder.

What’s baffling, especially, is the reaction to these stories. Our culture pays a lot of lip service to the idea of strong women, gut instinct, mother’s intuition, and personal autonomy. Yet when a woman is pregnant — and then ready to give birth — she is expected to be totally submissive to doctors, nurses and hospital protocol. Heaven forbid she ask to be informed and allowed to make a choice. After a traumatic birth, she’s supposed to be thankful that she and her baby are alive and feel nothing about what she experienced. Or, OK, feel something but just don’t kill everyone’s buzz over her pretty new baby.

I think part of the problem is that (1) our births are frequently the first we’ve ever witnessed and no amount of classes and reading can make it the mundane thing that it is to maternity ward caregivers and (2) the doctor-patient relationship is powerfully imbalanced: doctor is the expert, patient is not. The two of those things working together make it difficult for the patient to confidently speak up and for the doctor to listen openly. Kudos to those who do!

So while I think it’s important to write about these headline-grabbing, abusive births, I found Goer’s post ultimately unsatisfying because she doesn’t say what it is about the system that allows for these egregious acts — and the more subtle ones — to occur. Or, more importantly, what can be done about it.

I felt exposed, powerless and often frustrated during the hospital birth of my first child (which actually turned out just fine). But I also felt like I had gotten away with something thanks mostly to sheer luck. Because I don’t like to leave important matters up to luck, if I can help it, I went down a path to home birth for my next kid. That, for me and a lot of women, was the perfect solution. But just because home birth is an option for some, doesn’t mean those delivering care in more mainstream settings are off the hook.

Did you experience subtle (or not-so-subtle) mistreatment during your births?

Photo: Double X

Mum Amanda Sullivan began having contractions at 6am last Thursday at her home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Also at home were her sons, 11-year-old Rohan (pictured) and Christian, 8.

As it became clear that the babies were coming earlier than planned, an ambulance was called and Rohan delivered the first twin, brother Ashton, with instructions from a paramedic over the phone. As Ashton was born with  his protective “sack” still intact, it was Rohan, as directed by paramedics, who had to delicately cut the sack open and keep him warm until help arrived.

Ambulance crews then took Ms Sullivan and Ashton to hospital where sister Indi was delivered a short time later by caesarean.

Both Ashton and Indi (weighing 800g and 700g respectively) are still in hospital where they are in a stable condition.

Rohan’s grandmother, Christine, said of Rohan, “He’s a remarkable young boy, always caring and generous, and he idolises his mother.”

How lucky that her boys were at home, rather than at school, when she needed them. It must have been a terrifying experience for the mother. Let’s hope that the twins are home soon too.

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Now one of those mothers, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, has written a powerful piece for Salon detailing how her son’s nightmarish birth sent her into a tailspin – and how the disgnosis of PTSD freed her from feeling weak and misunderstood, and instead brought her into a community of women with similar experiences.

My difficult experience with my daughter’s birth was nothing compared to what Brodesser-Akner endured — it took six hours from the time my water broke to the moment I was handed my beautiful, blessedly healthy little girl in an operating room, and the medical professionals who attended me through the birth were almost uniformly professional and kind. But I shared her experience of lying hopelessly in a hospital bed, feeling as terrfied and powerless as I’d ever felt while my daughter’s heartbeat pinged down slowly to nearly nothing, feeling “Oh my God, after everything we’ve been through, after finally getting here, we’re going to lose her.”

She’s five now, and writing that sentence above still made my heart race and tears spring to my eyes. I still grieve that instead of a moment of transcdence, the birth of this little girl that we longed for for years and who has brought such joy to my life is a horrible memory, a moment I was so terrifed to relive that I chose a c-section for her brother’s birth two years ago tomorrow. I knew that if any aspect of his birth was the same as hers, even if I went late with him as I had with her, it was not going to be pretty. So I gave up the chance to ever birth my own child — a decision I now regret despite an incredible, beautiful experience with my son. And I am fully aware of how good I had it with her in every way. My situation was difficult, and if it’s still holding power over me five years later, I can only imagine the repercussions from something like what the writer went through, or worse.

I’m glad Brodesser-Akner has found some peace by acknowledging what happened to her was traumatic and getting help to cope. I don’t think anyone is suggesting that birth is inherently a traumatic experience — the study that started all this found only 30 percent of births could be classified as traumatic, and only 9 percent of mothers experience PTSD symptoms. But sadly, sometimes it is, even when the ultimate outcome is good (her son was born healthy and she was fine physically as well). Knowing it, claiming it, can only help us cope with the aftermath of something that is supposed to be so happy, and instead turned out so terrifying.

In 2005, she was resting at the hospital after the birth of her third child. Her beeper went off — it was one of her patients, in active labour. She’d only given birth four hours earlier, but as she said “I had gone through her pregnancy with her and felt obligated to help.

Plus, I was already there.” So she yanked out her own IV, got a resident to slip her a set of scrubs, and snuck down a staircase to go be there for her patient.

Okay, there’s dedication, and there’s dedication, you know? Her next quote from this NY Daily News story is even more amazing: “I felt fine. I delivered my patient, and then I went back up to my room to go to sleep.” She did confess to her own doctor the next day, who was incredulous but figured it was just par for the course for Roth, who’s known as a go-getter.

The funniest part — guess who was wheeled in as Roth’s roommate the next day? Yep, that very same patient.

Midwife Nigel Lee, of the Mater Mothers’ Research Centre, said the treatment, involving less than 1 ml of water being injected just under the skin, provided fast relief from back pain to about 85 per cent of women who received it.

The injections apparently work by stimulating nerve transmitters, blocking pain signals being sent to the brain.

Other benefits of the treatment are that women can remain mobile and that the baby remains unaffected. Unfortunately, the injection won’t stop abdominal pain as the uterus contracts – you’ll need something  a bit stronger than that.  Would you give H20 a go?

Source

When I was pregnant with my third child, I accidentally wandered into a conversation in which two mothers I’d recently met were extolling the virtues of homebirths and water births, midwives and doulas. When the well-meaning mums asked about my birth plan, I told them I was having a scheduled C-section. Their faces conveyed self-righteous disapproval and my mind was immediately awhirl in disclaimers: I was having the scheduled C not because I wanted the convenience, not because I was afraid of labour, not because I didn’t want to miss my manicure appointment.

“My oldest son would have died if I didn’t have a C-section!” I said instead.

It was unfair to pull the “my kid almost died” trump card, and if I hadn’t skulked off in annoyance and then embarrassment at having reacted so defensively, I could have told them about my first pregnancy and the months of bleeding, followed by the morning at thirty-two weeks in which there was no kicking; then the hours on the monitors where the heart rate was at first fine, then shockingly not fine, which provoked the careening stretcher; the epidural which didn’t have time to take effect, so instead the general anesthesia and the intubation. It was birth as highly medicalised and impersonal as critics of the C-section claim, one in which I had no voice and no control.

I also could have admitted that I’ve occasionally felt a twinge of loss that I’ll never give birth more naturally. Having never experienced labour, I sometimes feel like a little girl eavesdropping on the grown-ups’ tales of childbirth. I pore over pictures my husband took during one of my C-sections, to convince myself that this was my body, my baby. When I watched a friend’s video of her home birth — in water, no less — I felt as I do when watching Olympic figure skaters: as much as I would love to do that, it’s never going to happen.

But that loss is nowhere near what I would have felt had all those highly-interventionist, medical-establishment doctors not been exactly where I needed them. After a month in the NICU, when we were finally ready to take our son home, the resident who’d been on call the night of my C-section told us how blue our baby was. He held his fingers imperceptibly apart and told us we’d come “this close.”

Those words followed me for the four years in which I worked up the courage to get pregnant again. I went back to the same OB, who warned me I would be closely monitored. But this pregnancy was so uneventful that by my third trimester, my doctor raised the possibility of a VBAC. I was aware of the spate of newspaper articles decrying the increased rate of C-sections and moved by a relative’s joy at having a VBAC. Mostly I was tempted by the opportunity to prove to myself that I could do it. My mother used to tell me about her paternalistic male OB who, in the days of twilight medication and fathers in the waiting room, had instructed her to “lie back, sweetheart, you don’t have to do a thing,” to which I’d always rolled my eyes, confident of my physical capabilities and glad for all that had changed in the world.

If I’d tried, and all went well, perhaps this would be an essay in praise of VBAC. But that of course would only be evident in hindsight, when the result of the birth was cradled in my arms. Not yet having crossed over to that safe other side, what my prior experience taught me most starkly was that birth was not a process that I could control. The incision scar fades after a year or two, but the scars of near-tragedy are etched more permanently, making it hard to care about the experience, rather than the result, of birth.

My scars also make it hard not to hear a tone of triumphalism on the part of some who are lucky (because that, after all, is what it is) enough to have the birth of their dreams. Or to hear narcissism at the wishful fantasy that it is simply a matter of “trusting my body,” or to hear folly at the idea that what matters most in a birth is your own experience of it. Surely the current obsession with the process of birth comes in response to the many years in which women were told to lie back and do nothing, yet it reminds me of the bride fixated on the wedding, not the marriage, the bride bedecked with a breathtaking array of flowers, as if the abundant beauty can serve as a talisman against the harsher realities that lie ahead.

For me, the question of VBAC was easily decided when at thirty-seven weeks, my doctor saw a heart rate deceleration. While this wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm, she wanted to do a C-section that evening. Was this the much-maligned elective C, which I was choosing because I was distrustful of my body? Was this the voice of the medical establishment, belittling my capabilities, trampling my rights? Was this an example of a doctor rushing to surgery, for fear of malpractice? What I heard was the voice of my doctor, wise, capable and kind, who had saved the life of my first child. My desire for a certain experience, my image of who I thought I was or wanted to be, mattered least of all.

During my third pregnancy, with a different OB in a different city, there wasn’t a conversation about VBAC. November 26, 8 a.m., was penciled in on our calendars, though given a variety of complications, it seemed unlikely I’d go to term. But the weeks passed and the baby grew, until the date loomed before me, and I remembered more viscerally the physical pain of my previous C-sections. When I told my doctor how afraid I was, his nurse happened to repeat the same sentiment my mother once heard. “Lie back, he’ll take care of everything.”

Beautiful words, those were. Because a C-section is a scary thing in which I was glad to take no active role. Even when it’s planned, it doesn’t necessarily go according to plan. This time, I knew the date so far in advance that I made sure to complete a major project beforehand; the night before, I packed a few days’ worth of school lunches and laid out my kids’ clothes. Most of all, I concentrated on not letting my mind wander to the netherworld of all that could go wrong. Yet no matter how much I’d prepared myself, I still felt terror at being wheeled into that operating room. Despite the fact that I’d had every test and an inordinate number of sonograms, the moment my baby was lifted out was unexpectedly fraught with worry as the neontalogist present was concerned about a possible malformation. While my baby was examined across the room, I had to wait helpless and terrified until I was told she was going to be fine.

Was it the birth of my dreams? Hardly. Do I wish it could have been different? Sure. But compared with the result — my daughter, Liana, little sister to my sons Eitan and Daniel — I really don’t care. If I’ve learned anything in ten years of motherhood, it’s that the way our children are brought into the world means very little for how they live in the world. Nor do the intense hours in which we become mothers shape the months, years and decades of our actually being mothers. And if the experience of childbirth is in fact a crucial process, then let it be the process of teaching us that our children will emerge in ways varied and complicated, not necessarily in times or manners of our choosing, neither made in our image nor as proof of our prowess. Let birth remind us that, with children, so little goes according to even the most well-drawn plan.

Photo: Kelly Sue DeConnick via Creative Commons

Well, yes, according to Michael Odent, a leading obstetrician. He also reckons men’s presence in the delivery room can lead to caesareans, marriage break-ups and mental illness.

Apparently if your bloke’s in the room wiuth you, his anxiety and stress (oh! Diddums!) can osmose into you – and your labour could be longer and loads more painful as a result.

But what about sharing the beautiful moments of joy as your baby is born? What about men trying to be useful in some way (ie being a human punching bag, for instance) to women in labour?

According to Odent, “the ideal birth environment involves no men in general.” Read the article here and tell us what you think!

Photo: MomLogic

Do you remember seeing this on What’s Good For You on Channel Nine? Nup, we must’ve missed it, too – but not this time!

Starting out with the provocative statement that research shows men can stand a lot more pain than women, a doctor begins an experiment in gender bending that makes for a pretty enjoyable watch.

Using electrodes that simulate contractions (whose accuracy is vouched for by a mother of four), the father of twins sets out to see if he can withstand the pain of childbirth. Two hours in, he couldn’t care less about which gender can withstand more pain. And even assuming these contractions are realistic, this man’s “birth” experience is clearly nothing like the real thing, which could only be posted on YouTube at the risk of an obscenity trial.

Still, it’s kind of fun to see how the experiment ends.

So, do you know of any men who’d willingly experience simulated contractions? On camera?

As for how she got here? I can thank Anna Wintour.

Resigned to being overdue, I made plans to see Vogue documentary The September Issue at the movies at midday, secretly hoping that I’d jinx myself into labour. Sure enough, 15 minutes in to the movie, just as Paris Fashion Week was in full swing, I clocked the light contractions I’d had all morning at 6 minutes apart. The regularity convinced me that this could indeed be ‘it’ so I figured I needed to leave while I could still drive home, so rang my husband and had him meet me back at the house.

At home, I practised a few techniques from Active Birth to get me through the increasingly strong back contractions. Vocalisation (“Ahhhh”) worked well, stamping and bouncing on a fitball not so much. Just like my son’s posterior labour I found the greatest relief under a scalding hot shower by candlelight. Strangely, contractions usually came on when S. wasn’t in the room, giving credence to Michael Odent’s recent theories on men and labour.

Once the contractions were four minutes apart, I called the birth centre and asked if I should come in. The midwife’s advice was to hold out until either I couldn’t take the pain anymore or I ran out of hot water. Whatever came first.

I held out for another hour or so in the bathroom before the faint promise of pain relief became an overwhelming need. So at about 7.30pm we headed off to the hospital, me screaming through two contractions in the front seat and again out the front of the hospital. I think i may have frightened some small children…

At the birth centre I was examined and found to be 4-5cm dilated – promising, but I still thought I had a long wait ahead, based on my last labour which was about 17 hours long.

But back under the blissful double hot water jets, The frequency and force of the contractions, which had slowed as my body adjusted to the new environment, kicked back in with great intensity. I summoned for the gas and clamped down on the hose like a demented animal.

The next hour and a half was quite a blur of shouting, sucking on gas and sobbing as the contractions started to come right on top of each other. I frequently told my partner that I couldn’t do it anymore, he responded each time that I was doing it and that she’d be here soon. I felt really strong baby movements and could actually physically see my stomach distorting as she changed positions from posterior. No natural “pain management technique” was useful anymore, all I could do was hang in there for dear life.

The next thing I knew, the new shift Midwife, Sue, had me on my back in the bath and my waters broke. She took my crack pipe gas hose away said that if I felt like pushing, to go right ahead.

Woah, steady on! I was only just getting my breath back from going through transition. I announced that I was not ready to push and wanted to get out of the bath. Intense emotions are common at this stage of labour and in my case I was shaking and in denial. Sue and my husband kept up the encouragement and sure enough, the next contraction (thankfully these were not as fast and painful as the earlier ones) were accompanied by the urge to ‘bear down’. Having had an epidural with my son the feeling was unusual and scared the crap out of me.

Within only two rounds of pushing, her head was ready to crown. Terrified, but overwhelmed now by the incredible, primal urge running through me I bore down several times in quick succession and several excruciating seconds later the worst was over and her head was out. All too quickly I was being told to give just a couple of small pushes and she slid out, scooped out of the water by Sue and placed in my arms. Squealing ‘my baby, my baby!’ it was a moment of utter joy as Shane and I held our beautiful screaming girl for the first time. I felt the flood of oxytocin that I’d only read about and all pain was forgotten as I cradled her. Here is the magic moment.

It was 10.30pm, only 12 hours since I’d gone into early labour. The midwives marvelled at her size and the skipping-rope length umbilical cord. At 4.33kg she was almost half a kilo bigger than my son who was born 10 days later in gestation, with the same big head size of 37cm (yes, I needed stitches, lots of them, let’s not talk about it.)

The next couple of hours were idyllic as the placenta was delivered without incident and we were left alone in the home-like confines of the birth centre for skin-to-skin bonding time and a brilliant first breastfeed, after which Lucinda fell into a massive seven hour sleep.

I couldn’t believe how amazing I felt after a natural birth. Too wired to stay in bed, I woke at 5am, put on lip gloss, made some toast and read Grazia magazine while my new family slept. Such a civilised way to recover post-birth.

The exhaustion has caught up with me a few days later, but now that I’m home after a short hospital stay I can sit on my own couch, eat chocolates and take endless photos of Lucie. We’re getting the hang of the whole feeding thing, her brother is getting used to not being the centre of the universe anymore (anyone got any tips on sibling jealousy?) and I’m remarking at how it is indeed possible to function on only 4 hours of broken sleep a night.

Thanks for following my journey to this point and I wish all my pregnant readers the best of luck with their own births and baby moons. So, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go take a nap.

To say that such a long pre-labour is frustrating is an understatement. But now that I’m due tomorrow, I know that the end is in sight (well, no more than two weeks away). My son was born at 42 weeks so I’m under no illusion that due dates mean anything.

The other benefit of being due this week is that now when random strangers tell me that I look ready to pop, I can actually reply, “yes.. any day now” instead of  ”err… I’m actually about two months away”.

The texts and emails have started, and if I don’t update my Facebook status daily you can be sure there’ll be a query on my wall. It’s nice that people are interested, even if I feel like screaming SHE’S NOT HERE YET at the top of my lungs.

Among the advice I’ve been given to bring on labour this week have been the following:

- Bumpy bus ride

- Long walk followed by a curry

- Sex (semen contains prostaglandins which induce labour, apparently)

- Nipple stimulation

- Fresh pineapple

- Fancy restaurant reservation or hair appointment (acts as a jinx)

- Acupuncture/chiropathy/Bowen therapy

- Castor oil (did that last time, disgusting and ineffective)

- Brazilian waxing (ouch!)

But really, unless I’m staring a medical induction in the face I think I’ll stick to my regime of chilling out, nanna naps and life uninterrupted by a three-hourly feeding schedule for as long as I can.

Tell me – how did you bring on your labour?