Things I'm heartsick about
I'm up in the middle of the night again, feeling upset.
Remember that birth I attended with the non-consensual episiotomy? The official reply came back from the hospital, written by the doctor who attended the birth. It's very long, dismissive, defensive and also not true. I wonder if she really does see the birth the way she described or whether she had to write what she did because otherwise she'd be in trouble? The facts of the case were distorted. And some new things were in there that I hadn't noticed at the time, but the birthing mom confirmed. The bottom line: the doctor says she did what her medical duty required to save the baby's life and nobody else in the room had the medical know-how to understand the danger the child was in, and she is the final word on what happened. End of story. Mom says she doesn't want to pursue the complaint further because it just upsets her. I understand that. It upsets me, too. This is my second sleepless night over that birth, and I never lose sleep about ANYthing.
I'm now nervous about attending births at that hospital (which is where I go twice a week to volunteer as a breastfeeding consultant). I scheduled an appointment with the head of obstetrics, who is also my personal ob-gyn. Which would make you think we have a buddy-buddy thing going on, but we totally don't. I've often felt awkward communicating with him while he was my doctor - we had this annoying power struggle going on, and it was just like that making the appointment with him. I walked into his posh office at the otherwise dilapidated hospital, in my hospital outfit with name-tag and all (which I thought would put us on a more level playing field, kind of like trying to dress like a penguin to try to approach one and hope they accept me as one of the pack), I got what I asked for, which was a longish stretch of time to talk to him, but then was unceremoniously dismissed, like a student by the headmaster. This stuff sets my teeth on edge. I'm not even sure what I want to talk to him about... I guess I want to make a human connection with a doctor who I think is professionally the closest to what I believe is the correct approach to birthing. (And it is reassuring to me that I instinctively chose him to by my ob-gyn before I knew half as much about birth as I know now, and it is also reassuring that he is the head of obstetrics at a hospital. Unfortunately, that did not save my client's perineum at his hospital.) So now I have a knot in my stomach about going to talk to him, and I keep going over it in my head, how I should approach this whole meeting. I want to get rid of the stupid power dynamic, and talk person to person, not doctor to patient, or head doctor to volunteer. I wonder if I can. Tact and diplomacy are NOT my strongest points. To say the least.
Then my head is full of the story of a little boy from Babanet (a mommy-baby community portal). I've been a member of an online community on that portal since I got pregnant with Zsuzsi, nearly 5 years ago now. This community, the community of 2005 fall babies, is still going strong to this day. We check in regularly, and still get together several times a year. We learned last week that one of the 2005 fall "babies" had an accident. The little boy (same age as Zsuzsi now - nearly 4 years old) fell into the deep end of a pool at a public bath in a vacation town. He was apparently not with his parents, but with his grandmother and cousins at this bath. Apparently he was not wearing any floaties. Apparently there was no lifeguard on duty. Apparently there were 200 people at that bath that day, and no one heard him cry out. Apparently, strangers pulled him from the water and waited in vain for the management to find someone to resuscitate him. Apparently, he spent a week in a coma at some hospital before they determined there was no brain activity left and turned off the machine.
I can't believe this happened to one of us. Which is totally irrational, because tragedies don't just happen to others, they happen to everyone, including "us" and "them" and I'm well aware of this fact. But I can't help but think, every time I look at the girls, how it just takes a few seconds or minutes to rip your life apart. My mind keeps going back to try to imagine now what it is like for those parents, who trusted their boy to someone else, who used to have a little boy they loved and raised for 4 years, and now he's dead. I think I would lose my mind if one of the girls died before I did. Which leads me to thinking about parents dying, which is not much easier to contemplate (either my own death or the death of my parents), but at least it doesn't strike me as so totally unnatural as to lose a child. Or a grandchild. What must it be like for that grandmother who was entrusted with watching the boy?
And I've noticed the older the girls become, the more of a worry-wart I become. I never thought I'd be a "para-mami" (a Hungarian term for a mother who is unduly worried all of the time), because I tend to think I'm laid back almost to the point of irresponsibility sometimes. But I do worry about them more now than I did when they were babies. Does this mean I won't let them out of my sight when they're old enough to be getting married?
And back again to professional questions... and the question of numbers and time going by. If you attend enough births, you will encounter tragedies. That's a fact. As a doula, I will inevitably have a client somewhere down the line, if I attend enough births, whose baby doesn't make it, or whose baby is sick or has a birth defect. And I am already attending births where mothers are damaged - that seems to be an accepted and uncontested "necessity" at hospital births. Attending hospital births is a crucible in its own right; trying to support mothers through a process which feels most akin to accompanying sheep to the slaughterhouse. YOU (the doula) KNOW that unnecessary, damaging procedures will be done to them. THEY are hoping against all odds and against all rationality, that somehow they will be the exception, and that procedures which have been proven pointless and harmful will only be done to them "if necessary," but which procedures in fact are hospital routine and WILL be done unless they are lucky enough to somehow be in the minority who escape them. Okay, strong words. Because this slaughterhouse experience happens in the name of safety. And oh boy, safety. I could talk your ears off about safety; statistics that show how hospital births are LESS SAFE than home births, but apparently this is of no interest when people KNOW that hospitals are safer. Kind of like how people KNEW the earth was flat. Who cares about numbers anyway? *grinding teeth*
And home births. I'm reading a book now called Birth Models That Work. This book spends the introduction detailing models that DON'T work. And one of the models that don't work is the one where home birth midwives FEAR transporting a client to a hospital when necessary for fear of retribution. And this is exactly what's happening in this country. If you take the above fact, that given enough births, you WILL encounter a tragedy, it follows that if you attend enough home births, you WILL encounter a tragedy during a home birth. And this worries me, too. Because if I'm at a home birth when it happens, I think I can be prosecuted, too. I don't know. But I wonder.
I feel that I've found my calling with birth. This is what I want to do. But I don't know if I'm brave enough to take on the system, a system that appears determined to make birth a traumatic and dangerous event. If I attend home births, I'd like to do so with good hospital backup. Maybe that's why I want to talk to my ob-gyn. To lay the foundations - hopefully - for a good working relationship in the future.
And then I haven't even started getting into the drama around the midwife whose practice I'm ... in? Not in? Sort of in? That's another can of worms, but I think I'll leave that for another post.
Remember that birth I attended with the non-consensual episiotomy? The official reply came back from the hospital, written by the doctor who attended the birth. It's very long, dismissive, defensive and also not true. I wonder if she really does see the birth the way she described or whether she had to write what she did because otherwise she'd be in trouble? The facts of the case were distorted. And some new things were in there that I hadn't noticed at the time, but the birthing mom confirmed. The bottom line: the doctor says she did what her medical duty required to save the baby's life and nobody else in the room had the medical know-how to understand the danger the child was in, and she is the final word on what happened. End of story. Mom says she doesn't want to pursue the complaint further because it just upsets her. I understand that. It upsets me, too. This is my second sleepless night over that birth, and I never lose sleep about ANYthing.
I'm now nervous about attending births at that hospital (which is where I go twice a week to volunteer as a breastfeeding consultant). I scheduled an appointment with the head of obstetrics, who is also my personal ob-gyn. Which would make you think we have a buddy-buddy thing going on, but we totally don't. I've often felt awkward communicating with him while he was my doctor - we had this annoying power struggle going on, and it was just like that making the appointment with him. I walked into his posh office at the otherwise dilapidated hospital, in my hospital outfit with name-tag and all (which I thought would put us on a more level playing field, kind of like trying to dress like a penguin to try to approach one and hope they accept me as one of the pack), I got what I asked for, which was a longish stretch of time to talk to him, but then was unceremoniously dismissed, like a student by the headmaster. This stuff sets my teeth on edge. I'm not even sure what I want to talk to him about... I guess I want to make a human connection with a doctor who I think is professionally the closest to what I believe is the correct approach to birthing. (And it is reassuring to me that I instinctively chose him to by my ob-gyn before I knew half as much about birth as I know now, and it is also reassuring that he is the head of obstetrics at a hospital. Unfortunately, that did not save my client's perineum at his hospital.) So now I have a knot in my stomach about going to talk to him, and I keep going over it in my head, how I should approach this whole meeting. I want to get rid of the stupid power dynamic, and talk person to person, not doctor to patient, or head doctor to volunteer. I wonder if I can. Tact and diplomacy are NOT my strongest points. To say the least.
Then my head is full of the story of a little boy from Babanet (a mommy-baby community portal). I've been a member of an online community on that portal since I got pregnant with Zsuzsi, nearly 5 years ago now. This community, the community of 2005 fall babies, is still going strong to this day. We check in regularly, and still get together several times a year. We learned last week that one of the 2005 fall "babies" had an accident. The little boy (same age as Zsuzsi now - nearly 4 years old) fell into the deep end of a pool at a public bath in a vacation town. He was apparently not with his parents, but with his grandmother and cousins at this bath. Apparently he was not wearing any floaties. Apparently there was no lifeguard on duty. Apparently there were 200 people at that bath that day, and no one heard him cry out. Apparently, strangers pulled him from the water and waited in vain for the management to find someone to resuscitate him. Apparently, he spent a week in a coma at some hospital before they determined there was no brain activity left and turned off the machine.
I can't believe this happened to one of us. Which is totally irrational, because tragedies don't just happen to others, they happen to everyone, including "us" and "them" and I'm well aware of this fact. But I can't help but think, every time I look at the girls, how it just takes a few seconds or minutes to rip your life apart. My mind keeps going back to try to imagine now what it is like for those parents, who trusted their boy to someone else, who used to have a little boy they loved and raised for 4 years, and now he's dead. I think I would lose my mind if one of the girls died before I did. Which leads me to thinking about parents dying, which is not much easier to contemplate (either my own death or the death of my parents), but at least it doesn't strike me as so totally unnatural as to lose a child. Or a grandchild. What must it be like for that grandmother who was entrusted with watching the boy?
And I've noticed the older the girls become, the more of a worry-wart I become. I never thought I'd be a "para-mami" (a Hungarian term for a mother who is unduly worried all of the time), because I tend to think I'm laid back almost to the point of irresponsibility sometimes. But I do worry about them more now than I did when they were babies. Does this mean I won't let them out of my sight when they're old enough to be getting married?
And back again to professional questions... and the question of numbers and time going by. If you attend enough births, you will encounter tragedies. That's a fact. As a doula, I will inevitably have a client somewhere down the line, if I attend enough births, whose baby doesn't make it, or whose baby is sick or has a birth defect. And I am already attending births where mothers are damaged - that seems to be an accepted and uncontested "necessity" at hospital births. Attending hospital births is a crucible in its own right; trying to support mothers through a process which feels most akin to accompanying sheep to the slaughterhouse. YOU (the doula) KNOW that unnecessary, damaging procedures will be done to them. THEY are hoping against all odds and against all rationality, that somehow they will be the exception, and that procedures which have been proven pointless and harmful will only be done to them "if necessary," but which procedures in fact are hospital routine and WILL be done unless they are lucky enough to somehow be in the minority who escape them. Okay, strong words. Because this slaughterhouse experience happens in the name of safety. And oh boy, safety. I could talk your ears off about safety; statistics that show how hospital births are LESS SAFE than home births, but apparently this is of no interest when people KNOW that hospitals are safer. Kind of like how people KNEW the earth was flat. Who cares about numbers anyway? *grinding teeth*
And home births. I'm reading a book now called Birth Models That Work. This book spends the introduction detailing models that DON'T work. And one of the models that don't work is the one where home birth midwives FEAR transporting a client to a hospital when necessary for fear of retribution. And this is exactly what's happening in this country. If you take the above fact, that given enough births, you WILL encounter a tragedy, it follows that if you attend enough home births, you WILL encounter a tragedy during a home birth. And this worries me, too. Because if I'm at a home birth when it happens, I think I can be prosecuted, too. I don't know. But I wonder.
I feel that I've found my calling with birth. This is what I want to do. But I don't know if I'm brave enough to take on the system, a system that appears determined to make birth a traumatic and dangerous event. If I attend home births, I'd like to do so with good hospital backup. Maybe that's why I want to talk to my ob-gyn. To lay the foundations - hopefully - for a good working relationship in the future.
And then I haven't even started getting into the drama around the midwife whose practice I'm ... in? Not in? Sort of in? That's another can of worms, but I think I'll leave that for another post.