Hospital Births No More

In the last 2 1/2 months I have seen the ugly side of hospital birth and I have seen, first hand, the long term effects of a poor birth experience. I can't watch it any longer. I have decided to take a break from hospital births for a while. It helps that I was getting ready to stop taking clients regardless of where they were birthing with the exception of repeat clients. Now I'll only take repeats who are having homebirths...not even for them can I bring myself to step back into a hospital right now.

I have two hospital birth clients left then I am done.

If you are pregnant and reading this and wondering why I am done...be forewarned, you may not believe what I am going to tell you so be prepared to let the thought of "But my doctor cares about me" go. Your doctor doesn't care about you in the way that you think. He/She cares about making money, making it home for dinner on time and not being sued. Please note: I am speaking of the doctors here in my community, not anywhere else.

-An experienced nurse doesn't have her stuff together when she starts an IV causing mom to bleed everywhere (and I mean EVERYWHERE; all over her hand, leg, bed and floor) and much more pain than necessary. This, in turn, causes mom's labor to stall every time a nurse comes in the room. This is common in mammals. If a mammal feels threatened during childbirth they stop their labor until they feel safe again. Mother Nature is a force not to be reckoned with. Because mom is not medicated, nurses are coming in quite often and mom is only having good contractions for about 10-15 minutes before they stop. She doesn't progress for a very long time and decides to get an epidural as the nurse tells her she just isn't able to relax and that is causing her to no dilate. If this were the case, getting the epidural would cause her to dilate very quickly (within an hour, in my experience). The nurse stays in the room for the first hour after the epidural is placed and checks her just before she leaves the room...no change. Mom is now left alone (by the nurses, dad and I are there) for two hours straight. She's numb, has monitors on continuously and is resting so they don't want to bother her. In those two hours she goes to complete. When she pushes with the nurse baby doesn't move down. When the nurse has to leave the room for something and asks me to push with her she makes huge progress...then the nurse comes back and said progress stops. Baby is born with the assistance of a vacuum. Re-reading this it doesn't sound like a big deal. It was. Especially if you consider that if mom had had a homebirth (or a nurse with her shit together when placing the IV) she most likely would have birthed her baby about 12 hours sooner.

-An abuse survivor is laboring with her first birth. She is complete and pushing when the on-call doctor for her practice comes in and forces her legs open and checks her (rather aggressively) without talking to her first. Mom tells him he's hurting her. He keeps doing what he is doing. He tells her she has plenty of room to push out her baby but she's just in too much pain so she needs to get an epidural or she'll end up with a cesarean. No shit she's in pain, you just put your hand in her without her permission and didn't stop when she said you were hurting her! Mom gets an epidural and is pushing her baby out when Dr. Ass-hat comes back in to do some fundal pressure and cut an episiotomy without telling or asking because she's not pushing the baby out fast enough for him. How do I know that is the reason? He was off call 45 minutes ago and decided to stay on and finish her up (read: get paid for her birth). Gee, how nice of him. Mom's tummy is red and sore for days from the pressure he put on it to get the baby out faster. Baby's heart tones were fine, there was no rush on the part of mom or baby...just him. Interestingly enough, her contractions also stopped as soon as he came in the room the second time...and she was on pitocin! Again, Mother Nature is not a force to be reckoned with. He then stitches her up with out cleaning the perineum first and is done in less than 7 minutes after birth.

-A beautiful unmedicated birth ends with a hemorrhage because the doctor had the placenta out in less than 4 minutes. Doctors can do that when a woman has an IV line going with pitocin on-board because they are "controlling" the situation (it still isn't the best idea, IMO). When a mom doesn't have pit on-board the last thing you want to do is force the placenta out before its ready and that is just what this doctor did even though he told mom he wouldn't do it and he was fine with waiting for it to come on its own. Mom got to hold her baby for 5 minutes before she handed her baby to her husband because she felt woozy then almost passed out. And even before this happened, baby was only on mom for 30 seconds because he wouldn't cry. He was pinking up, breathing, looking around and even moving his arms and legs but he just didn't want to cry so the nurse had to take him to the warmer to make him cry before mom could hold him. In the homebirths I've been at the baby doesn't usually cry. Myself and others I've spoke to say that is common in unmedicated birth but the nurses aren't use to it.

-A mom wanting a VBAC is verbally abused by one of the doctors in the practice she is with (not her normal doctor). She decides she would rather birth on the side of the road than have him deliver her. She goes into labor two days later, she arrives at the hospital complete and guess who the on-call doctor is. Dr. Verbal Abuse. She and her husband amaze me and stand their ground saying they don't want him and would prefer a resident. Eye rolls from the resident in the room (mom doesn't see this) and all the nurses are telling her she can't do that. I tell her she can do what she wants to do and if she doesn't want him there she has that right. Nurse Ratchet doesn't like me now and asks for my name. Dr. Verbal Abuse arrives and comes in, mom tells him no and to go away. He pulls me out into the hall and asks if he has to go through me for everything...WTF???!!!?!?! I say no, she's the one in charge. He goes back in the room and is rather saccharine. Dad tells him to leave and then goes in the hallway to talk with him. He blames mom and dad for causing a commotion and dad comes back in and says he understands why mom doesn't want him there, he wouldn't listen to a thing dad had to say. Meanwhile, every few minutes a new nurse would come in the room and feel mom's belly and say 'Your first baby was less than 7 pounds and you needed a section for her. This baby is way bigger!' or 'You've got a pretty big baby in there!'. I wanted to scream. I didn't, it was hard not to. Mom pushed for an hour then went back for another cesarean as the baby never moved past 0 station. I feel it was psychological. Can I prove it? No. Can anyone prove that it wasn't? No.

-A repeat client who is early in her pregnancy is suffering from severe PTSD from her first birth where she was told that if she didn't do what her CNM was telling her to do she was going to kill her baby (her CNM was the one saying this to her). Not just her baby would die (playing the dead baby card) but that SHE would kill her baby. Then, as she was pushing her baby out the doctor who was there to deliver her baby was no where to be found and her baby was held in at her perineum until the doctor could be found. The resident moved her hand as the doctor put her hands in ready position and baby slipped right out. One minute APGAR of 6 and five minute APGAR of 8. Baby goes to special care nursery for several hours for breathing issue.

There you have it. Written down it doesn't seem as bad as it was but trust me...it was bad. And I just can't watch this any more. I can't watch the abuse, both verbal and physical. I can't watch people who should feel so privileged to be apart of bringing a new life into this world disrespect the process as much as they do. I can't sit though more prenatals listening to women say their doctor said this or that and knowing that their doctor is lying to them. And I try to get them to see that, oh how I try...but they won't listen! They have to experience it for themselves first and then they'll understand. But I can't watch that experience any more. If I do, I don't know that I can continue on my path to become a doctor because I'll just get so angry with everyone and I don't want hatred to be my driving force. Change has to happen soon. And when I'm done with residency isn't soon enough.