What do you do with all the anger?

It is almost 10 here and I am done- but had to respond to this quickly. Isn't it crazy to go through what you have been through and come out on the other end? To start out trusting your doctor and end up trusting yourself. I think that is what you do with the anger. You learn to trust yourself. You discover you know more about your own body than anyone else could and you are just thankful for the lesson. Well at least that is what I do with it.
Birth is in such a crisis in our country. Dr. Phil is doing a sensational show about the horrors of home-birth. The AMA is trying to pass legislation to make home-birth with a midwife illegal. Women who choose to have an unassisted childbirth can be reported to CPS for medical neglect (even though it is totally legal).
Recently I was involved in producing "Birth" the play by Karen Brody in my community. This was such a growing experience for me. The play is 8 different birth stories from planned C-section to home-birth and the different emotions each woman felt throughout. It felt empowering to be part of the education of my community about birth. We donated our proceeds to ICAN (international cesarian awareness network) with the knowledge that they will "pay it forward" and continue the education of those in the maternity field and men and women.
you take your anger and you harness it and then you use it to help others. Your daughters, your friends, your doctor. You raise your children to trust completely in their own instincts about their bodies and walk them through the fear that the medical model puts into pregnancy and childbirth. You learn to stand up for yourself and not be a "good girl" when it doesn't feel right to you.
You support the natural birth movement in your own community and you keep your finger on the pulse of the nation and oppose bills that limit the rights of pregnant and birthing women.
and you don't let anyone tell you "well at least you had a healthy baby" like your child is some consolation prize for the total disrespect you went through.

Hi Sarah

Well, I think you have opened a can of worms here! And a very good place to do it for the sake of venting your rage. There are some things that DH's cannot really understand what we are on about, and expressing it to them only upsets you both even more. But it is real.

Sarah, you certainly are not the only woman who has experienced this degree of abominable treatment, and you are not the only woman to realise that the trust she had in the doctor and/or hospital system was misplaced, albeit in 'good' faith (don't know that this is the right phrase). You are not the only woman to have been bullied during labour and birth, or the only woman who had not been told what was happening, or had midwives who were not doing their job properly. There are so many ways childbirth can go wrong.

I still think "what if" about the labour and birth of my first baby back in 1982, whether I could have done something differently to stop the sudden rise in blood pressure that put me in bedrest in hospital for a week, then the pre-eclampsia treatment that meant induction by breaking of waters, a heavy epidural, paraplegia for the duration of the labour, delivery on my back with legs in stirrups, forceps and a big episiotomy, that set the stage for my POP's. Fortunately my second and third labours went actively and smoothly but there were other factors in my second pregnancy that may have been unnecessary as well. I blame myself a little, still, after all this time, but it is all water under the bridge now I have my POP's behaving themselves.

*And* I have three lovely grown up kids who survived birth along with me. A hundred years ago my first child and I would probably have ended up six feet under and my husband would probably have been widowed in his late 20's.

I now know more about the way doctors are so heroic in their efforts to preserve life, and the way it induces fear in patients, who then go along with their decision to intervene, simply out of blind trust. As non-medical people we are not in a position to do anything else if we give birth in a hospital setting. In a homebirth setting we have to place trust in our midwives, though no doubt the decision-making process is far more collaborative.

I guess your rage was bound to surface at some point. I feel sure it is about the grief that you feel for precious experiences lost to the hospital system, and for your changed and damaged body. All those thoughts, "Why me?" "It was my fault for trusting them" "If only..." "It was the doctor/hospital's fault" "I'll Kegal every day for the rest of my life and it will go away" "I have lost so much" and many others will surface, or have already as part of the process of accepting that these things have happened. They cannot be undone. It is not the end of the world. You can manage this body you have and enjoy it.

It may take a while. I would encourage you to write this rage out of you, express it all until you are all written out. Write letters to the individuals involved, then lock them away safely so you cannot post them. You may have other ways that you would like to express this rage. You will also need to allow yourself to feel and accept the regrets and the sadness. Eventually you won't blame yourself or the hospital or the doctor very much. Then you can just get on with living your life, no longer stuck in the bad experience.

Keep calling back.

Cheers

Louise

Hi Sarah

I must have been posting at the same time as Alemama. She is absolutely right about the consolation prize. Very wise comment. I think you are also right that healthy baby doesn't have to be the exclusive aim of assisted/managed birth. It is a grey subject cos we never really know what would have been the alternative outcome, and I still think that pioneer graveyards tell a chilling story about the risks to mother and baby of childbirth (even if they did deliver flat on their backs like in the movies, which I doubt).

Funny that. The movie industry can't even bring itself to portray active birth by an energised labouring woman, surely one of the most powerful human images possible, up there with lovers being reunited, and killing the bad guys once and for all. I remember that boundless energy like it was yesterday (now 21 years ago). Labouring women are always portrayed as being exhausted, disshevelled and in terrible pain, spread out, looking helpless, horizontally on a bed, whether of straw or linen, being 'delivered of' their child. Is the image of a restless, energetic, labouring woman too much for the sensibilities of cinema-goers?

Re kegels. My comment about kegels was not really about kegels. It was about the 'bargaining' stage of the grief where the grieving person will make a bargain with themselves or God or some other being that if they work hard, or accomplish certain tasks, or experience a different sort of pain, the suffering they are experiencing will somehow diminish. It is just one of the things that grieving people do as part of the process of coming through grief.

Kegels can be very useful, done properly, for re-developing continence, but only because they get the muscles moving again. I think their best everyday use is in drawing awareness and control to the pelvic area, which is great sexually. It is the rotation of the pelvic bones around the sacroiliac joint that makes taut the muscles of the pelvic floor, both front to back and side to side (see STWW, ed 2), not pumping iron with them. That rotation comes from up higher in the spine and separates the ischial spine from each other, and lifts the coccyx away from the pubic bone making the back pelvic diaphragm larger, stretching the pelvic muscles taut like a drum skin, rather than draping them like a floppy shade sail across that diaphragm, stabilising the pelvic organs, but with a little give to absorb a little intraabdominal pressure and rebound again like a drum skin. Then, and only then, can they do their work properly.

Kegels increase the resilience of the elastic. If there is too much elastsic in the top of your knickers, the resilience of the elastic is not used. Your knickers will still fall down. It is getting the length of the elastic right in the first place that allows the resilience of the elastic to do its work! This is what Wholewoman posture is all about! does this make any sense to you?

Cheers

Louise

sarah

it took me YEARS and two homebirths to overcome (most of) my anger surrounding my first birth.
and yes, I had my healthy baby, and couldn't understand why that wasn't enough for me. (love your 'consolation prize' comment, alemama). well, if my baby's life depending on me delivering her flat on my back with my legs up in stirrups, purple pushing, then yeah I'd do it with no regrets or anger. but she would've been just fine with the doctors and nurses taking better care of my perineum. so the anger is plenty justified.

I dealt with my anger by turning it into an information seeking obsession. I no longer trusted the medical community, and started reading everything I could get my hands on. I took my health into my own hands. I mean, we still have doctors, but I only call on them when I can't keep myself (or my kids) healthy. I feel empowered now, not bullied. my ped will ask if my toddler is still breastfeeding, he disapproves as ds has fallen in percentile, but I don't care. I know my child is healthy and thriving, I am now confident in what I know, that my bf is good for him and that the dr does not know it all.
my GP rolls his eyes at my supplement regimen. I don't care. He recommended anti-seizure meds for my neuralgia and I got rid of it with chiro and vitamins.
I began to put the mismanagement of my hospital births into a different category. I began to see it as impetus for change. If not for the anger, would I have had the nerve to try a homebirth? doubtful. and my homebirths are the two most awesome events in my entire life. wouldn't trade them for anything, not even a perfect vagina.

but the anger is so so real. and it seems like it will never go away. I still get worked up when talking about my first birth. I hope you find a way to turn the anger into something that will bring you passionate joy, a sense of empowerment, a sense that you can overcome the wrongs that were done to you and make things better for others (be it other women, your children, whomever). for me, that is healing.

{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}