In 2004, I met and married my husband. We were both active duty Army, and shortly after our marriage, we were stationed in Germany.
In the early months of 2005, we discovered to our great fear and delight that we were expecting our first child. Most of the pregnancy went well, with a few scares, and concerns raised by me to be pooh-poohed by my doctor, only to discover later that they had been valid concerns.
Between my 15th and 20th week, my gums began bleeding when I brushed my teeth; my hands started to have slight swelling (couldn’t wear my wedding ring anymore), and I noticed an extreme weight gain. (13 pounds in 3 weeks.) It can also be seen in my chart that my blood pressure was gradually rising. I was told to stop eating for 2, and everything would regulate itself.
At 30 weeks, I started experiencing severe pain about 2-3 inches below my right breast. I called my doctor, because I couldn’t remember whether it was safe to take Tylenol or Advil. I don’t usually go for pain medication for minor aches and pains, but this pain was severe enough to distract me from my ability to work. He heard me describe the location and sensation of the pain, and told me to hang up and go directly to the German ER.
At the ER, there were some communication issues with the doctor, but it was ultimately determined that I had a condition called “HELLP” . The ER doctor wanted to keep me overnight with a strong probability of a c-section the next day, delivering my little girl 10 weeks prematurely.
My husband and I freaked for a minute and then decided that if our daughter needed to be born at 30 weeks, fine, but we wanted to be able to speak to the doctor in our own language and know that we were understood and not misunderstanding anything the doctor might have to say. So I checked myself out of the German ER against medical advice, and we drove nearly 2 hours to the American military hospital in Heidelberg, Germany.
At Heidelberg, I was seen by an amazing woman, Dr. Preen; she calmed me, reassured me, ran tests, and told me that in her professional opinion, a c-section could be postponed for at least one more week. I was placed on modified bed rest so that I could continue to work on my military separation, and was told to come back weekly for more tests.
The next seven weeks were very boring, to say the least. It took 3 more weeks and a phone call to IG to get my chapter processed, and the final 4 weeks of my pregnancy were spent with very little human interaction apart from my husband. I spent a lot of time on the internet.
At 37 weeks, I went back to the doctor; Dr. Preen had the day off, so I was seen by another doctor at the clinic, Dr. Malinowski. He ran the same tests, and it was decided that my blood pressure was too high for me to safely remain pregnant. Since I was in my 37th week, the baby was considered full-term, and would at most need only a 24 hour stay in the NICU. At 6:30 pm on Tuesday, 9 August 2005, I checked into Heidelberg Regional Medical Center for an induction.
Dr. Malinowski and I had a conversation while I was getting settled into my room; since my cervix was still tightly closed and I was nowhere near ready to go into labor on my own, he was going to start me on the lowest possible dosage of pitocin, just to trigger some sort of cervical change, and “we” would reassess in the morning. I was to hang out with my husband, relax, try to sleep, and mostly enjoy our last night without children.
At 6:30 the next morning, a new doctor, whose name I will not share, came to check my cervix. I was 3cm dilated and 80% effaced. He decided this was not enough progress, so he articially ruptured my water and turned up the dosage of pitocin. (Let me be clear. He explained to me what artifical rupturing was AS he was doing the procedure. By the time I was given the opportunity to say yes or no, he was done.) By 10:30, I was in agony and begging for the epidural. It was administered…by 12:30 it was still ineffective over half my body. When I said so, the anesthesiologist and the OB told me to stop being such a wimp.
Around 4 pm, I felt an indescribable NEED to get out of bed. I NEEDED to stand up and be vertical in a way that I have never NEEDED anything before or since. So strong was my need, that the doctor ended up calling a male nurse and having him and my husband physically restrain me flat on my back in the bed. I started pushing at 4:45.
An hour later, zero progress had been made…the doctor inserted his hand into my vagina to try to shift the baby around my pelvic bone so that she could enter the birth canal. The next hour was spent with me physically restrained, flat on my back, with my husband holding one leg and an unknown male nurse holding the other, and the doctor with his entire hand inside my vagina yelling at me to push while I begged and pleaded for them to “please let me rest”.
At 6:30, the doctor announced that I needed a c-section, and finally removed his hand from my vagina. The nurse and my husband were allowed to let go of my legs, and I was finally allowed to rest for a few minutes. The anesthesiologist came back and started prepping me for surgery…the first thing she did was test my reflexes and declare “Wow, your epidural really wasn’t working. You could have been up and walking this whole time!” (SIX HOURS after I told her it wasn’t working.)
I was so exhausted that I kept falling asleep/passing out during the 30 second gurney ride between the delivery room and the OR. My husband stayed by my head, and kept slapping me to keep me awake during the surgery, as he knew I would want to be awake for the birth of my baby. When the doctor cut her out of me, he handed her to a nurse who began walking to the door…I had to ask if she was a boy or a girl, and if I could see her. To show her to me, the nurse held her up from across the room…12-15 feet away. Yes, she was a girl…my husband left me then, and followed our baby girl. The first pictures were taken by a nurse, of my husband standing next to my daughter, while I was in another room being stapled closed.
The next several days are a blur in my mind. I was hospitalized for a week, on a magnesium sulfate drip, because my blood pressure was so high, seizures were a concern. I was not allowed to be alone with my baby, so my husband was unofficially given time off work to stay with me. While I was in a double room, the nurses made sure I didn’t have a roommate, so my husband would be able to sleep in the second bed. (These concessions to us came after a nurse walked in to find my husband laying down in my hospital bed, holding me while I held our little girl. That half hour he spent laying with me marked the single biggest drop in my blood pressure during our stay.)
Other than a baby, the biggest thing this experience left with me was PTSD, and a million questions as to WHY I had to go through that. It couldn’t POSSIBLY be normal. How could women have a second child if that was the way they were treated?!?! Had the failure been mine? Could I have prevented the pre-eclampsia? Where did it go wrong, at what point was the c-section inevitable? Why was I so scarred from a c-section when millions of other women have them voluntarily? Why could I not just shut up and accept that I had a healthy, living baby, and that was all that mattered?
Because that’s not all that matters. The unnamed doctor treated me as an incubator, not as a woman. He did what he thought was best for my baby. He gave me a healthy living baby, and in so doing, managed to avoid doing anything for me.
IF.
If he had asked me before he ruptured my water, I would have said no. Even by medical standards, he should not have broken my water. I was only 3cm dilated and 80% effaced…he saw that was all the progress I had made in 12 hours of pitocin, but he never SPOKE to me or ASKED me what else I had done to enhance labor in those 12 hours. The answer, of course, would have been nothing, as I had been following the OTHER doctor’s orders to relax.
IF the unnamed doctor had given me even ONE hour of walking around on a higher pitocin drip before rupturing my membranes, MAYBE gravity could have done its job and moved my baby down and gotten her head engaged.
IF the anesthesiologist had checked my reflexes when I said the epidural wasn’t working, instead of waiting six hours until she needed to prep me for surgery, I could have been sitting up in bed, instead of being held down by the man who is supposed to love me, and a complete stranger.
IF they had let me out of bed when I felt that tremendous need to be vertical; they could have helped me stand up, one of those strong men on either side of me. Gravity could have done its job.
A whole lot of If’s, and one big one:
IF at any time, the doctor had LISTENED to ME, instead of treating me as nothing more than an incubator for his patient…IF I had been given the opportunity to be a PERSON…I would not be sitting here 6 years later, unable to remember the birth of my first child with anything remotely resembling joy.
I find joy in my daughter. She’s an amazing little girl. I do not find joy in my first memory of her – a nurse holding her up 15 feet away. I do not find joy in my memory of her first week…because I don’t have one. I remember that I wasn’t allowed to be alone with her. I remember I wasn’t allowed out of bed. I remember watching the entire series of Friends. I don’t remember the baby. My “memories” of her are false, recreated in my mind by my husband, by the video camera, by photographs. MY memories are of feeling like I had been hit by a freight train.
I found other women like me, other women with similar stories of being treated like cattle because the BABY is the patient, and the mother should just sit back and not worry her pretty little head while the professionals do their jobs. I have found people who should have supported me in my feelings of loss, betrayal, and violation, who instead told me to be grateful I have a living, healthy child. Once again, I was being told that I DON’T MATTER, only my BABY matters. I DO MATTER. I am NOT just an incubator! I am a woman…and in that time, when I was most vulnerable, when I should have been coddled and protected, I was ridiculed, restrained and ripped apart…and never did I receive any help in putting the pieces back together. I don’t even have any legal recourse, because my baby is healthy and alive.
That’s NOT all that matters. EVERY pregnancy from then on, I will have to fight for my right to have a vaginal delivery. I’ve had one successful vaginal delivery, and yet I will STILL be considered to be a VBAC for the rest of my reproductive years. I will spend the rest of my life carrying the emotional scar tissue because I can’t just accept that the minute I get pregnant, I cease to matter. Even the anti-abortion debate is saying women who have the nerve and audacity to get pregnant NO LONGER MATTER.
This is BROKEN. My uterus and the contents thereof are NOT more important than ME! I MATTER. MOTHERS EVERYWHERE MATTER. That’s my point in the oversharing here. I matter. I am important in my own right, not just because I can carry a tiny human in my uterus.
I MATTER.
This isn’t a call to action…I’m not sure what action can be taken. Other than, maybe, to remind you that if a woman has a c-section…don’t tell her “at least you have a healthy baby, and that’s what matters”. Because while yes, a healthy baby does matter, SHE MATTERS TOO. Maybe a newly pregnant woman will read this. You matter. Don’t sit back and be a victim like I did. Speak up for yourself or hire someone who will speak for you (a doula). Maybe a doctor or nurse or labtech will read this…please treat the mother with care and concern for her emotional well-being, not just whether she lives or dies. LISTEN to her…even if what she wants is not feasible, at least give her the sense of having been heard. She is more than a walking uterus. Do not put a stain on her relationship with her child by having the child’s birth be the single worst event of her life.
Medical emergencies happen; maybe my c-section would have happened whether the doctor had listened to me or not. But, maybe then the only scar would be the one on my uterus.
