Drei Frauen beschreiben eine traumatische Geburt – und sagen, dass ihnen nicht zugehört wurde
https://news.sky.com/story/three-women-describe-traumatic-childbirth-and-say-they-werent-listened-to-13477907
Von sjw_7
Drei Frauen beschreiben eine traumatische Geburt – und sagen, dass ihnen nicht zugehört wurde
https://news.sky.com/story/three-women-describe-traumatic-childbirth-and-say-they-werent-listened-to-13477907
Von sjw_7
22 Kommentare
My experience of being a dad to two kids is that the third example is pretty normal: we luckily had a good maternity service and even there it was a bit of a carousel of bringing mothers in, waiting for the birth to be close to a medical emergency then doing something about it, at which point it was dealt with effectively. My wife’s waters broke on one birth and we were still in the pre-natal ward 12 hours later. I imagine if something happened “too quickly” that absolutely would be the situation. It’s the kind of thing we could do better for mothers.
What I don’t get is the idea that you’re robbed of a magical experience though – what magical experience involves shitting yourself before passing a watermelon?! Who doesn’t go into child birth thinking “this might be a bit of an unpleasant ride?”
Third one fairly similar to our second baby. Despite my wife crying out for pain relief she was given absolutely nothing with no explanation as to why.
Eventually we found out the anethesist was busy.
My wife got given a couple paracetamol and had to give birth without any other pain relief.
The maternity ward was all over the place with us, and while the midwives were great the process itself wasn’t. They practically forced a premature delivery because they kept saying the baby wasn’t developing but there was two months of consistently miss -measuring him in the womb. Pain relief was given but we think they intentionally let it run out to make her push more.
Aftercare is pretty shite too my partner and several people I know all ended up paying for private services to sort out post pregnancy issues because the NHS simply isn’t bothered.
The third one is a major failing of the system. Maternity wards don’t have a dedicated anaesthetist but just the one who works in the hospital itself and so could be anywhere at anytime. This is despite the fact epidurals are a very common request.
Maternity care is different to the majority of reasons someone would end up in a hospital because the patient isn’t actually ill at all, and in the majority of cases doesn’t need much in the way of intervention at all and often intervention can have a negative outcome.
The mental state of the mother is a prime factor in the outcome for years to come following birth. Yet, many hospital treat childbirth as an illness that is to be cured..
This is something women with children discuss every time there’s a new baby. Maybe once or twice someone’s had a good delivery. Everyone else absolutely traumatised, including me. I’m struggling to put into words what I felt but it can give me nightmares 27 years later and I’m not the only one. It’s beyond a system failure when it’s EVERY woman I have ever spoken to regardless of age
Edited to add because I see a lot of man talking about their partners experiences. I cannot emphasize enough how life altering it is. You never trust doctors again. No amount of „well you’re both alive and that’s what counts“ helps. So just let her talk and hug her
My wife’s second baby, she was in labour and was in incredible pain. The nurse came by and said “I only checked you 20 mins ago, there is no way you are any further forward” I can run you a bath and can’t give you anything other than paracetamol.
15 mins later my daughter had to be caught in the bathroom or she would have fell on the floor.
This absolutely gives me chills, it’s unbelievably horrifying what these poor women have been through. I consider myself so incredibly lucky that the Head Midwife happened to be around for my son’s birth and looked after me very well through his heart rate dropping drastically during my labour as it could have been so different. My heart absolutely breaks for all the women who don’t have the supportive care they deserve during such a vulnerable time.
3rd kid was very similar to some of the experiences here.
Midwives were not listening to the missus nor believing her. Almost ended terribly.
Some stern words were said by me that’s about it in terms of consequences I believe despite reporting the whole episode.
With my first I knew something was wrong and kept telling them something was wrong and was ignored because “I’ve not done it before so how would I know?”. Turns out after a day and a half I was right, despite contractions I wasn’t dilating and my heart rate and my sons heart rate was plummeting and he was getting distressed and defecated inside me causing us to have to stay in and both on antibiotics. With my second, I had to be induced but before I had time for my body to respond, she came out fast, tearing me open from the inside and pulling everything out with her (less than 2 months later I prolapsed), the doctors and midwives were crap and told me to stop being dramatic. As it was Covid rules, my partner wasn’t allowed with and I was dumped in a side room, an hour after birth on a broken bed from 2am to 3pm in the afternoon without a single check up on me, nothing to drink or eat and no sleep because the one midwife woke my baby up when I first got into the room and I then couldn’t put her down so I had to sit up with her, awake, the whole time, bleeding more heavily than I should have been. Again I was being dramatic.
I’m now foolishly pregnant with my third child (Contraception isn’t 100% and unfortunately got me) still having bad anxiety at the thought of birth and when I met with the doctor to discuss birth plans I was dismissed and told “Birth is birth, we all do it” despite my explanation of my previous experiences and saw me for only 2 minutes, disappointing because you would hope a female doctor would have some compassion and a better understanding.
I have also read recently that my local hospital had an incredibly bad reputation for care of expectant mothers and babies, including leading to deaths. Their care hasn’t changed despite these reports.
I think the CQC ratings are an absolute joke. My first birth was in an outstanding hospital, but my care was awful. I was sent home when I should have been kept in. My son ended up in NICU. I had a retained placenta and should have had an epidural & surgical removal. Instead I was left on my own to bleed for five hours, lost 1.5l of blood, and had an unmedicated removal of the placenta which was indescribably painful and left me deeply traumatised. I passed out from the shock and woke up 2 hrs later on a hospital bed still covered in my own blood. I had vivid flashbacks every time I lay on my back for about a year afterwards.
My second birth was in a Requires Improvement hospital. My care was phenomenal. My notes were read assiduously, I was listened to and felt totally empowered throughout. It could not have been a better experience.
Birth is messy and I expected it to be so, but my care failed NICE guidelines about 10 times. I still feel deeply let down by the NHS. But what’s the point in taking action because all you’re doing is taking money from other women who desperately need care.
I was never moved from antenatal. No one would check on me or even believe I was in labour, as I was „too stoic and not crying.“ For 14h, I kept begging to be checked, nothing. I asked for any pain relief when I started vomiting due to pain. Was given anti sickness medicine (that should have never been administered as it was an opiate and I was in late labour). 2h after, I finally got a midwife to check on me and an eye roll because I said I couldn’t sit on the bed out of fear I’ll hurt the babies head. My husband had yo help me topple into bed somehow for this supposed checkup. 2 seconds later, she said, „Push.“ 2 pushes, baby is out and isn’t breathing. She called resuscitation… in the end, everything was fine… but through no effort from anyone who was supposed to take care of me. She did say I’m sorry for not believing you…
I chose an elective section because I had no faith that there would be adequate staffing and monitoring when I gave birth. At least with a section they must be adequately staffed in the operating theatre.
It was the right choice as my NCT group of 9 had 2 natural births (both precipitous labour), two planned sections and 5 traumatic emergency sections. Everyone was utterly shell shocked after the event and all but 1 of the emergency sections had an elective for #2.
If I’d felt there was a chance we’d be well cared for I would have absolutely liked to have a vaginal birth. The postnatal ward was hell on earth and I pushed hard to be discharged as soon as 24 hours had passed. We paid for private doula and feeding help afterwards.
Women… not being listened to? Women’s PAIN not being acknowledged? Why colour me shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!
in all seriousness though, maternity is fucking bullshit for what they put people through. „No we can’t give you pain relief, it’ll slow labor“ „no we can’t let your partner stay with you, you have to stay alone all night in pain and terrified“
I was throwing up, bleeding heavily and shaking so badly I couldn’t walk and they STILL wouldn’t give me fucking pain relief. Then they lied to me about the bleed telling me it was „bloody show“ (which it wasn’t) and didn’t bother to even consider painrelief til 20+ hours into a horrific labor and ONLY, ONLY because the baby was now in distress as well. MY distress was meaningless, I was just an incubator after all, not a person.
It was dehumanizing and traumatic.
and then after a catastrophic birth in which I ran out of pain relief at the crucial moment, panicked and tore to the 4th degree then hemorrhaged because they’d INSISTED on breaking my waters to „speed labor up“ even though I was already in established bloody labor (an act which also gouged several large chunks out of my child’s scalp because he was literally engaged when they started attempting this and every time they tried to grab the membrane they hurt him. He’s got scars on his scalp from it ffs) I was wheeled into recovery after hours in surgery and had a nurse not only thrust a newborn into my arms while I was still weak and delirious from blood loss, the woman also forced my gown open, grabbed my breast and forced the baby to it while I protested and tried to stop her.
It was violating and yet another example of my dehumanization by the NHS staff. I wasn’t a person in labor and afterwards I still wasn’t, which meant a nurse felt she had full permission to touch my body without my consent. Worse, with my active REFUSAL. But I was still too weak to do much about it and nobody was advocating for me, so I was forced to breast feed an infant I could barely hold while I struggled to stay conscious.
I spent the next two days drifting in and out of consciousness while laying in a pool of my own congealed blood. Staff didn’t bother to try to get me clean sheets, to clean me up. My FATHER in fact ended up helping to peel me off the sheets on day 3 when I could finally stay awake long enough to shower.
It then took 13 years for the NHS to listen to me about the pain I was STILL in from the damage that tear caused and finally look at it, be honest with me and surgically repair it. THIRTEEN YEARS of walking around in pain, thirteen years of being told „oh no, that’s fine and normal“
That was my second child and the absolute worst experience. Honestly the worst night of my life was the night he came into the world and it took both of us a long time to bond as a result of the trauma we both experienced. It was awful and for a while there, when he was newborn, I worried i’d never be able to feel anything but pain when I held him.
then I had a third oops and for 9 whole months the NHS told me „oh, you had a traumatic delivery previously, we have a therapist to talk to. But she’s on leave. We’ll find another one… “ and they never bloody did. So I ended up not only at the same hospital, but on the same ward and in the SAME FUCKING BED and oh.. .what a surprise, I had a ptsd attack and ended up with psych called on me. They talked to me for five minutes and then lectured the maternity staff about being idiots and expecting someone with that level of trauma to be AOK like ffs.
I ended up being dumped with the on call midwife who was a bitch. She snapped and snarled at me throughout delivery and then once the baby was born and she’d cleaned me up she DEMANDED I have a shower RIGHT NOW despite having an epidural in. I protested, she insisted. She forced me out of bed, I got as far as the bathroom and the next thing I knew I was on the floor. The orderly caught me apparently and only just prevented me from clocking my head on the sink. Midwife never said sorry.
I love my kids deeply, but holy shit does maternity need reminding that pregnant women are PEOPLE and not things.
Thanks for sharing this article. So many women I know have stories like this. Terrifying. Great reporting from Sky which isn’t something I say often.
It’s something I repeat ad nauseam. The UK’s obsession with midwives is mental. Every civilised country has obstetricians involved throughout the process but this country chooses to use people with much less training because of a weird culture and because it’s cheaper.
Midwives just don’t listen to women – with my third baby (home birth in a pool) the midwife told me I hadn’t given birth when he was already in it having a swim – literally told me it was just the head that was out as if I could mistake the feeling of having a baby inside me versus not having a baby inside me – and that is the best birth story.
With baby 1 & 2 (singletons) they examined me without asking consent and both times told me I wasn’t in labour when I was (and pushing a baby out on both occasions within 10 minutes of essentially being told I was overreacting).
I ended up taking a promotion, saving for a few years, selling everything I could, not having a car and living like a penny pincher to pay for private maternity care.
To get a wonderful safe, calm and happy birth experience I had to pay a lot of money for it sadly. I don’t regret it at all, I loved my births, but I begrudge it. Especially as I’ve paid into the NHS my whole life and it’s truly a terrifying place for a mother in the 21st century.
As a childfree woman, I read [that article about „wild births“](http://theguardian.com/world/series/the-birth-keepers) a short while ago and sort of snickering and rolling my eyes at first quickly replaced by my jaw dropping at what those women have been through with doctors. Holy. *Shit* those women have serious reasons as to why they wound up going down that path. I had no idea things could still be so bad in this day and age and that mothers can be treated so poorly by medical professionals.
I have struggled with mental illness most of my life, and am autistic, so I know about all the crap that can go on with those things, but because I never wanted kids myself I just never imagined how dire it could actually still be when you’re having a baby.
So many women have gone through a special kind of hell that is simply not made aware enough.
The amount of time there seems to be a „the midwives said“ and „midwives left“.
> After doing a lot of research, she decided to have a home birth „with a birthing pool… no interventions, no medications… just a simple birth at home“.
I don’t know why this line was put in by the journalist. So the mother wanted a „quiet home birth“ and thought you could request one, even though not everyone qualifies and they also are very risky. What large amount of research is this? Later the story says she didn’t know much about delivery. Sky are doing a disservice to this person with bad writing. Also saying she cannot have any reconstruction for foecal incontinence? Is that a thing? My understanding it will take time but there are options. She should of been assisted at the time but the implications of „oh that is it for you“ sounds false.
No disrespect to the mothers. Their stories are valuable and tragic. But Sky are dreadful at copy.
First baby my water broke no contractions so they put me on a drip ended up with an epidural and had an episotomy because her heart rate dropped.They stitched me up too tight and had to be redone 8 months later then they sent me home no pain relief which was agony my GP was brilliant he complained for me.Second baby took forever asked for an epidural but said anaesthetist busy was in agony when my water broke they checked and rushed me to theatre as she was coming face first got told of for screaming she almost got stuck.Ive had back pain and nerve pain since then nearly 32 years now.Had bad PND and trauma from that.Cried when got pregnant with third but had great midwife who listened was induced and they let me have epidural from the start plus had extra health visitor visits due to severe PND from my second birth.
Something needs to change. This happens in private to so many people and when they share with others who have experienced it, they can at least relate. But it needs something to push it to the forefront of public image; tv series or film has been used before to shine a light on issues and ultimately get things changed.
This isn’t about laws (although maybe some laws could help) or even NHS guidelines; it’s about attitude and dismissal of women and pregnant people as not knowing their own bodies. And “women’s health” issues being minimised (how many of us are still waiting for an endometriosis diagnosis?).