The Mother's Touch
When my husband and I were married in January of 2003 there was one thing we knew for sure: we both wanted a family quickly!! We were so happy to be pregnant two months later. We felt so blessed.
I knew I wanted a low-intervention, natural birth so we went to a midwife instead of an obstetrician. The midwife still delivers in the hospital but has a much more natural approach to labor and birth. We also hired a doula. A doula is a professional labor coach. She is at your side through early labor, goes to the hospital with you and helps out after the baby is born. Doulas provide emotional support and pain relief techniques such as massage and warm water immersion. They also tell you when it’s time to go to the hospital. I hired a doula to be my “drug free” epidural.
Of course we received many warnings from friends and co-workers about going this route. But my prenatal care from these women was absolutely excellent: They were extremely kind and always seemed to pay great attention to us. I felt like I was their only patient from the personal care I received and I never had to wait longer than 15 minutes for an appointment! We developed a trust and friendship with the midwife and the doula and felt that we were in the hands of capable professionals that we were proud to also call our friends. They promised to be with me every minute of my labor and birth and promised no medical interventions without our permission. Besides, if there was an emergency an obstetrician with an excellent reputation would be immediately available. I really thought like I was in safe and capable hands.
Then my baby was breech at 38 weeks…. The midwife was great in arranging the referral to a high risk doctor to have the baby turned around…and promised to by with me during the procedure. Our doula came along too to help me be relaxed during the procedure. I was so relieved that they would be there for me. WELL, the midwife showed up at the hospital briefly but left before the procedure, she did not stay like she promised. The doula never got up off the chair and did nothing to help relax me. Maybe I should have got a clue that they were not as dedicated as I thought they were. BUT I was so excited to have the chance at a natural birth back I missed the warning signs.
Two weeks later, I went into labor…
First, the doula bailed out. She did not provide any early labor support…..I called her after 5 hours of consistent contractions, she just laughed at the suggestion that I would need her this early and told me to go back to bed. I still can feel the deep sinking feeling I felt in my stomach when I hung up the phone: I had called her for help and she blew me off!. Two hours later we called again and again she told me that since I sounded calm I was OK and this was not real labor. Another few hours later we called her, contractions double peaking at 8 minutes apart: she tell us to try to go out to breakfast or shopping to take my mind off labor! I am freaking out and that is going to slow me down. She suggests I take two Benedryl if I can’t calm down. I hung up the phone and cried and cried. I had befriended this woman (and paid her a pretty penny) to be at my side in labor and here she is just blowing me off. After the forth phone call, we told her our midwife was coming over to check me out, the doula hesitantly told us she would take her kids to the sitter and then come over. She arrived after I labored alone for 13 hours, not exactly the “at your side every minute” support she promised. I felt like she had abandoned me.
Thank God our midwife decided to come to our home. The midwife examines me and thinks I am 7 cm and 100%. The doula checks me too and she says I’m 8-9 cm, honestly this is the only thing I think the doula got right that day. It is sooooo time to get in the car. It’s a 40 minute drive to the hospital. I can’t repeat anything I yelled to my husband in the car!! (We arrived less than a half hour before the birth!)
When we got to the hospital the midwife did every thing she promised she would not do. My baby’s heart rate was totally fine and I was complete. The midwife ruptures my membranes without asking permission or even telling us what she’s doing. Then she screws a scalp electrode on my baby’s head…she does a poor job doing this and it comes of leaving a chunk in the baby’s scalp….then she just screw another on right back on. No consent for either scalp probe. She does no perineal protection during the delivery and has me lay flat on my back with the labor nurse pulling my legs so far apart to overstretch the perineum. Not exactly the gentle, low tech birth she had promised us.
I’d love to say that the only thing that went wrong was our doula bailing out, a painful, hurried car ride and a midwife acting like a doctor. But, the midwife did a poor job delivering the baby and I was injured because of this. The injury, a fourth degree laceration was too complex for the midwife’s skills to fix so the obstetrician was being called in for the surgery. Except it was the doctor they told us they used and I had to wait a pretty uncomfortable hour for her to arrive. The midwife did not tell us that she had never used this doctor or that this doctor was new to the area, she had no ties here. (We learned this much later…in fact this doctor didn’t even have a sign on her office door, just a piece of printer paper with her name hand written in Sharpie ink. She had no staff in her office, no nurse, no receptionist. TOTALLY new to the area. We would have never let her touch me if we knew this!) No pain management was done during this hour.
The doctor arrives and doesn’t even introduce herself. She is the epitome of “rude and conceited doctor.” She looks at the injury and says, “Whoa, this is a bad one.” She puts in a local form of anesthesia and begins the repair. BUT the anesthesia was completely ineffective. They give me a shot of pain medication, tell me to relax and that the surgery will take 2o minutes. Well, pain medication is not replacement for anesthesia. I was screaming and crying through the entire 45 minutes of the procedure. Our midwife just stood there and watched me scream. My legs were in restraints and the doula was holding my arm very tightly so I couldn’t get up. I just layed there trying to breathe while this doctor put hundreds of sutures in my genitals without anesthesia. It was an absolutely horrific ordeal. When the surgery was over the doctor just walked out of the room with no explanation of what had happened. They just gave me my baby and told me I was OK.
But I wasn’t OK. That night I kept thinking I could feel the pain of the surgery again; I would have a flashback to the pain. I felt so sad that I had labored alone even though I had hired a doula. The maternity nurse told this was normal to “be taking it all in.”
I developed a complication and infection within a week. Turns out the doctor had made several mistakes, not just forgetting adequate anesthesia, she forgot to give me an antibiotic. The complication was poorly managed until I finally realized I needed to go to another doctor. Several doctor visits, lots of invasive tests and painful surgeries later I am as physically healed as I am going to be. To add insult to injury, we learned that I had a right to anesthesia for the repair. The reason the midwife just stood back and watched me scream is because she did not want to upset the doctor: If the doctor gets mad at the midwife telling her what to do, the doctor can decide not to back-up that midwife anymore. SO my midwife decided to allow the torture to continue to keep up a good relationship with the doctor. This just made me feel totally betrayed by the midwife. We had developed such a great friendship with her during our pregnancy it hurt us so badly, emotionally, to have her decide a business relationship has more value than human dignity. The midwife would never even acknowledge the extent of the complication we had afterward. We met with her several months later to try to come to some peace with it all and she told me her only regret was sending me to have my breech baby turned around: She wishes she had just sent me for a C-section. This comment by her, when I was trying to make peace, just felt like another knife in my back. Both the midwife and the doula had totally turned their backs on us.
But as difficult as the physical recovery was, the emotional recovery was worse. I continued to have nightmares and flashbacks re-experiencing the pain of the surgery. I was very hyper-vigilant and jumping at everything. Very easily startled. Symptoms that I now know are called Postpartum Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The nightmares were so real and intense that I didn’t want to go to sleep unless I was absolutely exhausted. This led to a worse condition called Post Partum Depression. I began to spend the day shaking and crying. I had repetitive obsessive thought that I was a bad mother and I was consumed by guilt and anxiety. I felt like I was in this thick fog and I couldn’t see any sunshine. My wonderful husband would hold me and pray with me. I felt like I should be able to snap out of it one day and when I couldn’t I was fearful that I would never return to normal. I had a beautiful, healthy baby girl why couldn’t I cheer up and enjoy her? I began to have feelings that she would be better of with someone else. I began to think that I should abandon my precious baby or hurt myself to escape from all these terrible feelings.
I knew I needed help and I wanted to feel better. I began seeing a psychiatrist and taking medication. This helped the Post Trauma symptoms greatly but I was still very teary and sad. Remember I was dealing with a tough physical recovery too. We sought resolution by complaining to the hospital but the complaint fell on deaf ears. So we hired a lawyer.
We served the doula first who immediately refunded her entire fee. I had the check in my hand, but this brought no peace or resolution. I still felt so hurt that she had promised to be by my side then abandoned me when I needed her. The facts stayed the same. We complained to agencies that regulate the quality of care in hospitals. But between my versions of the story, the provider’s versions of the story and what is documented in the chart there was not enough objective evidence to warrant disciplinary action to the midwife or doctor. We wanted to know why things happened the way it did and more importantly, what they were doing to keep it from happening again. But the doctor and midwife insisted nothing was wrong with the care in the first place. I was devastated. I needed peace. I wonder if this is how Jesus felt when Judas betrayed Him for a bag of money??
I had been hesitant to tell others about what we were going through. I was fearful that someone would take my baby away. Fearful of hearing the “I-told-you-so’s” about using a midwife. Mostly fearful that others would see my weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says “My Grace is sufficient for you; for my power is made perfect in weakness…therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” I continued taking the medication prescribed by my doctor…and… We sought out a Christian counselor and told our small group how I was struggling. They prayed for me and offered great counsel. The peace and resolution I needed was going to come from the Lord, not a complaint or a lawsuit.
I also joined a post partum support group and met other women who were having the same thoughts and feelings as I was. It was a great group for me to find. I remember thinking how it would be so perfect if this was a Christ centered group. AND wouldn’t you know it…right at this time Pastor Rick gave one of those sermons that spoke right to me. He shared about how your greatest ministry will most likely come out of your greatest hurt. Several support group leaders shared their testimonies that week about how God helped them to help others. My first reaction was, “Well, if God would just totally wipe out traumatic and disappointing births, post partum depression and other peri-natal mood disorders there wouldn’t be a need for a support group!” But I decided to pray about it and have my small group pray about it too.
Within weeks I began to see subtle signs of post partum depression in some woman I met at church and work. I never noticed it before. I felt a longing to comfort and help them. Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” I do not understand why I had such a traumatic birth and difficult recovery. I don’t understand why two women who had been so kind to us would abandon me and lead me to be mamed and tortured. But I know God was in control the whole time. God saw the good that would come from it. As long as we are living on this side of eternity, there will be disappointing and traumatic births….there will be post partum mood disorders. Our job as Christians is to help each other through the tough times with the same compassion we felt from others who helped us.
Post partum depression is real. It affects upwards of 25% of all woman. It has been described as a dangerous thief that steals a woman’s precious time with her baby. It affects woman from all walks of life. That is why I am hoping to start a new support group for new mother’s experiencing a difficult emotional recovery following the birth of a baby. My husband and I hope to be able to come alongside other families and with the help of the Lord, go through this difficult season together.