I think I was treated rather well considering I had to be transported to a hospital with a NICU because my twins came early. And I was actually terrified of this hospital because I had heard horrible stories about the place. But it turned out to be a very good experience. It may have had more to do with my open mind about the experience, my knowledge about twin births, and that I had worked for doctors for several years and wasn’t intimidated by them at all.

But I can definitely see why these horror stories happen. For some doctors it’s just a job and not a calling where they show their patient empathy and care.

It’s not just the birthing mom that is second-guessed and has her rights stripped away… see earlier post about Utah prosecuting moms that miscarry under what the state considers to be suspicious circumstances. You become pregnant and suddenly you’re just a vessel not to be considered apart from the cargo.

Wow, I feel extremely lucky that I had a great experience when I gave birth. And mine was in a hospital with a C-section, but everything was explained very thoroughly, throughout pregnancy and birth. I really think it is important to keep women (and all patients for that matter) informed of what is going on.

One thing I have heard about a lot in our area is that women want something like an epidural and the nurses try and convince them they don’t really need it. And this has been in the big hospitals. I totally agree that procedures should not be pushed on people, but I don’t think we should go in the opposite direction either.

Helloooooooo, mommy wars. Not all hospitals are evil, not all moms who choose hospital births are being deprived, lazy, or uninformed. The dichotomy of doctor-as-expert, mom-as-layman is there because the doctor IS the expert. Yes, there are shitty doctors. There are shitty everythings. Both of my deliveries, in two different hospitals, with two different sets of life-threatening complications, went well. I was treated well by my doctors and nurses (I also treated them well, like the professionals they are… I also very actively informed myself of my various complications AND I’m a health teacher, giving me a certain level of understanding of the language the docs and nurses were speaking.)

Do people feel exposed and helpless when they have cancer and the docs are walking them through their recovery, perhaps without offering them all of the alternative and non-medical options? Do people feel helpless and mistreated when their real estate agents walk them through signing all those thousands of pages of documents to buy a house? Do people feel frustrated and helpless when the mechanic fixes their car or when the IT person comes to repair their computer? There are people in the world who are experts at different things, and some of them suck at their jobs (or just at their bedside manner), but just being an expert doesn’t make them a crappy person and doesn’t make the patient/customer/client weak or helpless.

GP, I really don’t think that is true for all hospitals/doctors. Most women I know have had low-risk births with OB’s in hospitals and have had good experiences. It all depends on the doctors. Like I mentioned earlier, the only complaints I have heard is when someone wanted an intervention and the doctor/nurse encouraged them to wait. (I can see how some insurance plans may limit which doctor you can see, which is unfortunate. Not to mention those without insurance.)

I think it just basically boils down to a person’s philosophy of birth…whether they think it is a natural thing the body was designed to do, or something that needs medical oversight, like an illness or disease or condition that needs fixing. I would just highlight the increase in C-sections in countries that over-medicalize birth as a piece of evidence that perhaps something is wrong.

Kikiriki, I LOVE that idea and am surprised such a thing actually doesn’t exist. I was very very lucky that my hospital takes the professionalism of its staff VERY seriously (Beaumont in Royal Oak, just in case anyone is looking). I don’t think anyone laid a hand on me either time without introducing themselves and telling me exactly what they were doing, except during one super scary deceleration that had people flooding into the room and during the c-section. And I still was pretty shellshocked–not because I felt I’d been treated badly but because the whole thing got super scary super fast. Madeline, you hit it perfectly with this”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 can only imagine how much worse this would have been if I’d been treated like a piece of meat instead of a person.

I agree Laure68, that is can be a bit of both. It sounds, too, like lots of people have different experiences and I do have to say that none of my friends who gave birth in hospitals had HORRIBLE experiences, either…

I think the problem is so few lay women, and many doctors, don’t understand birth (I’m not saying *I* do, but I do think I had the understanding I needed for ME)…like the poster who had a friend begging for a C-section because she didn’t progress for an hour…AN HOUR? That’s nothing. It sounds like many women are woefully unprepared for birth and have little to no understanding of what’s happening in their bodies, and no understanding of the risks associated with interventions (pitocin, epidural, c-section). You always hear those silly jokes about THAT huge thing not coming out of THERE…and Just give me the C-section…like it is somehow better to have your abdomen and uterus sliced open!

Women need to spend less time worrying about decorating the nursery and more time learning about birth—and breastfeeding!

PlumbLucky, I am so sorry to hear about your loss and your pain! Stories like this are very humbling and you are a superhero for having child no. 2. You rock.

PlumbLucky, I am totally stealing “turdburglar”! Love it! Also, thanks for sharing your story, and thanks to all for a really thoughtful and respectful discussion. I’ve really enjoyed reading it so far.

This is such an important discussion to have. One the most interesting points I found in this article though, which is something that I have thought about often, is the fact that, unlike in many other parts of the world, women here usually don’t ever witness a live birth until it is time to have their own children. That’s sort of crazy when you think about it!
I think one of the most powerful things we could do, instead of fueling mommy-wars and lawsuits, is to just bring birth more out in the open. And not in the discovery channel ‘A Baby Story’/'Maternity Ward Nightmares’ way- I mean real, live, normal births.
Ladies, go with your sisters, your daughters, your girlfriends. Be there with them as they labor and birth their babies. See for yourselves this miraculous process and encourage everyone you know to do the same. Talk to your children about birth. Familiarity breeds confidence. Instead of relying on the selective sampling of those who have had horrible experiences. Yes, bad things can and do happen, but the vast majority of births have the potential to be safe and beautiful. Be positive and not fearful and let’s hope that over time, the culture will change.

Hey, I had a homebirth and my midwife went off in the middle of my transition to throw a silent little pouty hissy fit. I had asked her to not ask me anything important until I was done yelling through a contraction… apparently, that was unacceptable and she told me to stop yelling and be quiet. I didn’t – it was what felt right and good. So she flounced off and did not speak to me for the rest of the birth. Well, she did scream at me to get my baby out while I was pushing. That was nice. And then she left my placenta on our kitchen counter because she “couldn’t find the bag for it”, which my husband had HANDED to her.
So. It’s not just doctors. Midwifes can be total dicks, too. Listen to your heart about them. I had my doubts, and I wish i had listened to them.

She lost me at homebirth. I’m so tired of the homebirthing agenda and scaring people away from hospitals. Not everyone has to do it the way you do it. Some of us had fantastic hospital experiences too, even with (horrors!) c-sections. Of course women should be treated with respect, given the opportunity to consent to episiotomies, etc. However, most members of the medical community really do have their patients’ best interests in mind.

@blue, the AMA has a bigger agenda than you would imagine, it seems…the only “agenda” I see with homebirth is empowering women…midwives, doulas, etc. are not in it for the money, I’ll tell
you that

what are YOU so afraid of?

GP – this is where you completely lose me, with the old “evil medication establishment”. Considering all of the schooling OB’s go through and all the loans they take on, they can’t be in it only for the money either. (They do have the highest malpractice insurance.) And you are really fooling yourself if you think midwives and doulas can’t have an agenda. When I was pregnant I spoke to 2 doulas and had terrible experiences. They made it clear they had a way they wanted the birth to go. This was much stronger than any ideal I got from a doctor. (And I had a lot of complications and saw a lot of doctors. They all treated me with respect and that my opinion mattered.) My friend hired a doula for her hospital birth, and when she decided she couldn’t take the pain any longer and wanted an epidural, the doula walked out, saying she was against pain medication. What kind of BS is this. Yes, women have the right to a natural birth, but for those who don’t want to take the pain, should they just bite the bullet and live through it?

Now, I am sure there are good doulas out there. I only considered hiring one based on a friend’s suggestion. However, since I get along with my OB so well, it didn’t make sense for me personally.

The biggest thing I come away with from all this, though, and especially reading people’s comments and those over on DoubleX, is how lucky, blessed, whatever I was to have the birth I had. There is a commenter over on DoubleX whose sister’s baby was severely brain damaged from NOT having a C-section soon enough because of midwife pressure (they say)…so, very sad…

I wanted to birth in a birth center but she did not want to come and I went beyond the cut off date for birthing with them. At the hospital they did with hold food and restricted my movement. This drove me crazy. I had my husband sneak a sandwich into the bathroom where he hid it behind my vanity bag. I would go in every once in a while to “use the bathroom” but really I was eating my hoagie and slowly bouncing on the birthing ball they would not let me use.

About food – sure, offer it. But I know had it been much more than offered to me, someone would have had it right up their nose in my case. My (darling) hubby went outside our room a couple times over the course of the day because the smell of food made me barf while I was in labor. I’d never heard of that one before!
Having vague knowledge about the sheer cost of the liability insurance (a good friend is an OB. She’s the kind who keeps you and your child alive, not the kind you pick, the kind who shows up with the stuff hits the fan mid-labor) I wonder if OBs are darned if they do and if they don’t. If they don’t push something that they see as medically needed hard enough and the mother refuses to listen, and there’s a bad outcome even though the mother refuses to listen, isn’t the OB still liable? We are (unfortunately, as a whole) a litigous (if that’s the correct word) society, and I think OBs have to be cognicent of that fact. Until that changes, I don’t know what we’ll see as far as progress in the field of obstetrics.

Forgot to add that he reason those tests are political is because there is a ton of federal and state money that go to these programs – what a waste!

As a former birth doula, I am horrified to hear stories of doulas with agendas. The point of being a doula is supporting the mother. If they can only do that in certain circumstances, with moms who prescribe to the doula’s notion of birth, then they have NO BUSINESS being a doula. NONE. PlumbLucky, I agree that threat of litigation is a huge motivating factor in OBs pushing for a standardized (medically controlled) standard of birth. Also, I will be joining you on the 2 under 2 insanity express! Woo Woo!

Every circumstance is unique and it’s nearly impossible to make a general conclusion, but I must admit that I had one “okay” hospital experience and one “awesome” hospital experience (showed up just in time to push baby out – zero interventions), but if I were to have a third it would be a home birth. There are some awesome medical professionals and some some just stink. You do the best research you can, but ultimately, there’s a pretty strong element of luck..

These stories are all so fascinating, and point to how individual each birth experience is. Laure68, I’m in agreement with you that birth is foremost a natural process that can benefit from medical oversight. I was very glad that I ultimately gave birth in a hospital. However, my experience was a mess like so many others’. I was supposed to deliver my daughter in a freestanding birthing center, but about a month or two before my due date, I was told I’d have to deliver in the affiliated hospital, because the baby was measuring a bit large. On the day itself (12 days past due date), I labored at home as long as I could, and then went to the hospital when I knew I couldn’t anymore. The doula, my husband and I walked in and were sent to triage, while the midwife on duty at the birthing center that day told us over the phone that she couldn’t get there yet. I had to labor in the disgusting public hallways, surrounded by random people, blaring televisions, and dirt. Said random people had to listen to me yelling, because I was already in transition. I don’t care about them, frankly. Let them hear me. But the moment came when I knew that the midwife’s advice to “walk the halls” was not going to work, so I took control of the moment and demanded to be admitted. We were finally put into a private delivery room, and that’s when the real chaos began. The place was FULL of personnel, none of whom had any idea what to do with me: a loathsome resident demanding that the anesthesiologist be called (until I snarled, “NO DRUGS!” at her – my chart stated that I was not to be given drugs, because of the baby’s size, but they didn’t bother to look at my chart); a nurse insisting that my baby would die unless I lay down and let them do constant monitoring (I could ONLY stand in labor – it was kind of a shock to me, but that’s how it went), and worst of all, a doctor who introduced himself as the head doc on the floor and then proceeded to follow me around the room *screaming* at me that if I died of a hemorrhage, he wouldn’t be responsible, accused me of refusing care (because I asked for a hep lock, a standard procedure and one I had been promised), and demanded that I sign a waiver – all while I was having intense contractions. I had to tell him not to raise his voice to me. Finally, I looked around the room, saw all these people, as well as three interns standing around with their thumbs up their asses just watching me like I was TV, and I shouted, “Anyone not essential to my labor, get out of here NOW!” and pointed at the door. Miraculously, they all disappeared, and finally, my midwife showed up and calmly delivered my beautiful girl, all almost-ten pounds of her, with one hour of pushing, minimal tearing, and no drugs.

I am absolutely NOT against drugs. I think they’re awesome. I just knew that they were not advised for me, and I knew I could have the baby much faster without them. I just knew, in that moment, that it was OK.

It is unacceptable to yell at and threaten a laboring woman. The chaos and hostility I experienced – these people acted like they’d never seen a woman in labor before, and as though there was a crisis; there was not – is something none of us should have to contend with while we are vulnerable and in pain. Even our extremely kind, unjudgemental doula dubbed that OB “Dr. A-hole”. I should also point out that none of these personnel had ever seen me before that day, as I was not their patient. This was at Maimonides in Brooklyn, by the way.

Afterwards, I was glad to be there because the baby needed a little extra suctioning. The postpartum care was mostly fine, though the nurses refused to remove my now-disgusting hep lock, streaked with blood and meconium, with a bent needle, for hours. Still, mostly ok.

I’m sorry, but I get really annoyed with this “do your research” talk. I’m pretty sure we left no stone unturned on our “research.” We read many, many books and reputable articles about birth and birth procedures in the US. We met with many practitioners and chose some who seemed to be aligned with us philosophically. That said, all of the research in the whole bloody world wouldn’t have changed the outcome of our miserable and traumatic birth. In fact, knowing more actually made it WORSE than if we had just shown up at a hospital right away and had the c-section. Saying “do your research” makes it sound like if you do enough homework you can control the outcome, and I’m sorry, but you just can’t.

I’m not saying that if you have a poor outcome, or actually a different outcome than one you would expect, you didn’t do your research, by any means, ann05. However, I have had one sister and several friends complain about various aspects of their birth experience – resident doctors, mandated IV, whatevs. My sister was really going off about being a freaking medical study case – to which I said “you opted to give birth at a teaching hospital…did you bother to read the paperwork they gave you at preregistration? I bet you didn’t strike out anything about being checked by resident doctors and medical students, and I bet its in there.” Another friend was crabby that her doctor wasn’t on call when she delivered – well, she went to a practice where it was a case of whoever was on call, and she knew this. (You would not believe how many friends of mine have this same complaint…I’m just scratching my head over this one, really) That’s what I mean by “do your research”. The hospital I went to was very clear on what standard procedures were (IV fluids, basically, was the only one – fetal monitoring was determined on a case by case basis. I had one simply because my body hates IVs and fuh-reaks out for about the first two hours after one is started. Nothing like my BP dropping to 70/30 to make the bambino do the same. Once my BP was back to sane, his did too, and they only monitored for about five minutes an hour). Do other hospitals NOT do this in a clear manner? My doctor gets downright pissy if someone else delivers “his” babies – he figures he’s seen Mom for the better part of nine months and she was probably a patient of his prior to the pregnancy anyhow, he’s been keeping track of both her and the babe, and its his obligation to see her through delivery and help her deliver the baby. I’m sure that there are circumstances that have happened where he can’t always be there, but it is something he tries to manage so that he’s at all his patients births. I know that not all practices have this philosophy, but is this not known prior? That’s what I mean.

And I think you stated the key words: you cannot always control the outcome of childbirth in the manner in which you would like to.

@M_S yep…planned C (you) or stuck with the same restraints and concerns and questions as I was ::last time:: all over again. Saw both docs yesterday…concerns are the same as the potential for reinjury and such are still there to the same degree as last :-S. With that bit of knowledge, my hope is simply for a healthy babe and a delivery that does not cause me to need major hip reconstructive surgery…whatever means happens to get us there is good.

@M_S – there really isn’t a medical “definition” for the injury to my hip but its part birth defect (I have what I call “low level defects” in most every joint…the bones aren’t quite formed correctly, they seem to be slightly more prone to injury, but that’s about it. They haven’t really impeded my jockish tendancies yet.) and part “my dumbass got thrown off a horse I was helping break” when I was younger. The latter half of it caused a major dislocation that involved muscle and tendon damage on top of the bone separation, the former half of the equation led to the fact that it’ll never quite heal (it randomly dislocates, though this is somewhat abated by phys ther), stress fractures that run parallel to the bone itself, and if the damage gets worse, they’ll need to do reconstructive surgery on it (as in, grinding & reshaping the bones, tendon/muscle/ligament grafting and relocating, pinning the blasted stress fractures, you get the idea, with the possibility of actually having to replace the whole kit and caboodle with a mechanical hip if the reconstruction doesn’t work the first time around a possibility too) so that walking will be possible for me. I was incapable of walking without crutches for several weeks post-injury, it was nearly a year of physical therapy to where I was healed enough to walk normallly, and I can’t say that to this day it ain’t painful when it rains, because it is :-).

Thanks, and to you too!!! (There is a very fine line between “tough” and “freaking stupid stubborn”, as I am frequently reminded by my orthopedic doc. He’s been seeing me since I was a young teen due to these injury prone joints of mine, and he often shakes his head over my adventures!) I have known at least one other gal with that pubis symphasis thing, and it was very unpleasant for her :-s