ANGER: I Wanted to Throat Punch Her
My Response to a Midwife’s Thoughtless Comments
“Giving birth and being born brings us into the essence of creation, where the human spirit is courageous and bold and the body, a miracle of wisdom.”
– Harriette Hartigan
So my daughter gave birth 3 January 2019.
She gave birth to a darling little boy who was in intensive care for three days before being moved to the special care nursery and then discharged. He is doing fine.
The midwives in the actual birthing suite were wonderful. I cannot speak highly enough about them. Sympathetic, caring, nurturing, encouraging, the epitome of what you imagine a woman being who is trained to help another woman during one of the most vulnerable and often painful times of her life.
Except for one. Much earlier in the day. Twelve hours before him being born.
“I bet you weren’t thinking about this when you were fooling around 9 months ago”
WTF……are you serious? Are you kidding me?
Did you say THAT?
My daughter and her partner have been together for ten years since she was 15 years old. They had been planning for and then trying for a baby for a year before they conceived.
Being diagnosed with the polycystic ovarian syndrome (POS) disorder when she was 16 years old, she had been told by the family GP that she probably would not conceive naturally and may need help to become pregnant. With this in mind, she had seen a GP a few months before conceiving, who had advised her to become about ten percent underweight as it may increase her chances of conceiving naturally. She had done this. She fell pregnant within four months.
This little boy was a very wanted and very much loved child even in utero.
He was also posterior in presentation, and once her labor commenced he did not rotate. His spine pressing against her spine led to much slower and much more painful labor than usual.
The apex of his little head was not pressed hard against her cervix helping her dilate, but rather his forehead was pressing down, giving less pressure and causing everything to happen more slowly.
His spine against her spine meant all her nerve endings were compressed and the pain shooting through her back and into her pelvis was on a level unexpected and panic-inducing.
“My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt.”~William Blake
After 12 hours of being in labor, and with her contractions all over the place, in intensity and duration with little space in between for resting or catching her breath, an examination revealed she was only 4cm dilated.
She nearly wept in fear, frustration, and sheer exhaustion. She had taken 6 hours to dilate another 2 cm from her last examination, and she had been sucking on the nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to enable her to cope and get through one at a time as the waves of pain engulfed her body.
Her husband and I were by her side as supporters, emotionally and physically holding space for her, and with her, as she was experiencing this momentous event. We were all waiting for life to emerge, and willing her to have confidence in her body’s ability to handle this, and in her ability to ride along with it, to surrender and work in harmony with the forces of nature as they pummeled her.
“Pregnancy is a process that invites you to surrender to the unseen force behind all life.”~ Judy Ford
Her waters broke.
The waters were stained with meconium from the baby passing his first bowel motion inside the uterus instead of outside. It was a sign that the baby was probably distressed, and it also increased the chances of him swallowing the meconium and inhaling it in his lungs before his actual delivery.
The intensity of her labor and contractions increased substantially after her waters broke. She was struggling to cope with the pain and started to cry out at times as she experienced each contraction. It is interesting that studies have shown that screaming or making noise is a way of the body to block or cope better with pain.
A lot of pregnant women find themselves crying out or grunting with powerful contractions during labor.
The same nurse that had said, “I bet you weren’t thinking about this when you were fooling around nine months ago,” came into the room, and instead of offering assistance pointedly stood at the foot of the bed and told my daughter, “Stop making this noise and just be quiet.” She then said to my son-in-law, “You should be taking control, you should be ME when I am not in the room.”
As my son-in-law had been wiping my daughter’s forehead with a wet cloth as she was profusely sweating, and I had been massaging her lower back firmly to help with the pain, we both were astounded. Fortunately, my daughter was in too much pain to hear or remember anything she said.
The unkind (and definitely unhelpful) midwife walked out again.
In any other circumstances, I would have told her what I felt, but my energy was focused on helping my daughter and son-in-law, and she had left the room, so we no longer had to deal with her unhelpful comments anymore.
The shift change for nurses came and went, and the other midwives were amazingly supportive and helpful. They provided both practical and emotional support over the next 12 hours until our grandson was born. Unfortunately, he needed intensive care support for a few days, but he fully recovered and is home now.
But, these unhelpful comments will remain with me.
It doesn’t take much to say a few words, or even without words, by a look or touch offer emotional support.
Emotional support was demonstrated by all the midwives on the ward over those 24 hours, except for this one.
It also only takes a few words or sentences to destroy someone’s self-esteem and confidence and express such judgment, which is what this midwife did by her words.
Fortunately, my daughter had a support team to shield her and support her, and she doesn’t remember this lady, but what if she had been a single woman on her own? What if the baby was a result of rape? Or what if the laboring woman had a traumatic background and little support in her current life? The comments of someone like this could be devastating to her.
It reminded me so much of the importance of kindness especially as we don’t know people’s circumstances and what they might be going through or experiencing in their lives.
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” ~ Lao Tzu
In the hours and days after his birth, when everything was a bit of a blur, and I moved around in a fog of tiredness my anger arose as I thought about this midwife. Writing about it has helped.
I allowed myself to feel the anger.
Then, I focused my attention on remembering the midwives who did assist and who were amazingly supportive. This woman and her comments faded into the background.
I wondered what lack of empathy and powerlessness this woman must have experienced in her own life and background to have made her so cold-hearted and so unable to render assistance or give compassion to another woman who was in pain?
I was able to see her as deficient in her compassion (for herself and others) and felt sorry for her along with also feeling righteous anger.
I am so glad that myself and my daughter’s partner were able to be there for my daughter to assist her at this momentous time in her life.
A new life has begun — a new chapter in our family.
A small insignificant moment in the world but a momentous life-changing event in our family. The circle of life.
