In a specially created public, women share what they had to go through while giving birth to children.
Not so long ago, a flash mob with the hashtag #violence in childbirth swept across the network. Mothers talked frankly about what they had to face in the hospital: rudeness, unjustified interference in the course of childbirth, humiliation. Women are not always told what and why they are doing with them. Let’s make a reservation: there are situations when there is simply no time to talk about the upcoming intervention and take consent for it. But emergencies during normal childbirth are not so common.
So, what a woman has the right to do in any maternity hospital:
– Physicians should carry out all examinations and procedures, first explaining to the woman what and why they are going to do, and having obtained her consent – in writing.
– Rudeness, irony, derogatory remarks are unacceptable.
– During contractions, you can behave as it is convenient: walk, sing, dance, eat or drink.
– It should be possible to give birth in the presence of a husband / mother / doula – anyone whom the expectant mother trusts.
– Pressing on the stomach was prohibited by order of the Ministry of Health back in 1992. And an episiotomy should never be done without the consent of the woman in labor.
– You can give birth not only lying down, but also in any comfortable position.
In addition, Russia supported the WHO provisions:
– The baby is handed over to the mother immediately after birth (unless he or she needs emergency medical attention).
– It is impossible to sew up tears and cuts without anesthesia.
– While the woman is in the hospital, they help her to establish breastfeeding.
Sometimes mommy herself is not able to make a decision – the situation is still stressful for her. Therefore, it is so important to have a loved one nearby. And one more important point: a woman can choose a doctor who will manage the pregnancy and deliver, and a medical facility in which she will give birth.
If you are fundamentally against vaccinations, epidural anesthesia or anything else, you need to write a statement about this in advance. This paper must be taken with you to the hospital and submitted to the head of the department. The application must be accepted together with your requirements. If they refuse: feel free to complain to the head physician and further down the levels: from the local health department to the prosecutor’s office.
It seems that all these are obvious things. So when we stumbled across the #Violence_in_gender group on social media, we were amazed how many women tell pretty scary stories of their childbirth every day. We publish some of them.
1.
“Only now, looking back, I begin to understand what is happening with women there. What nasty things they say to them, how rudely they are treated, how they are hated. How mothers are shoved with formula, because nurses are told to feed by the hour, instead of holding the babies on their chest. And we believe this, because they are people in white coats, we are used to trusting them. Arrogant pediatricians come to the examinations and begin: “What will you do if your child does not gain weight? What will you do if you don’t have milk? ”And I see those frightened eyes of young girls who now have a grain of doubt about their perfection and confidence as a young mother. The doubts that this soulless woman sowed. This is a wild conveyor belt of women in labor who are Caesarean on schedule, regardless of whether you have an indication for it or not. It’s easier for them to cut you open, sew you up like a stuffed bag and get rid of you as soon as possible.
2.
“3 years of trying, half a year of preparing for pregnancy. Doctors, tests, husband with all the certificates. For the third month, 2 strips. 7 weeks. Bleeding, ambulance, intravenous drip, medicine bag in hand, emergency room. They put me in the waiting room in a chair, a mirror, I hope for a miracle, but I see how the doctor’s face is distorted with disgust, and she jumps away from me. Blood is pouring on the white floor – a miscarriage. “Get dressed, it’s all right,” she says, throwing the mirror, and exits. On the floor, my long-awaited … Desired … I control myself in the hope of erupting outside the walls of the hospital. Send for an ultrasound scan. The girl at the table asks for documents. I hand her the papers, everything floats in my eyes. “I don’t need everything! Are you blind? Give only direction! And what is this man (my husband) doing here? Come out! “The husband takes the documents in silence, leafs through what she needs, and stays behind. We are being taken to the gynecological department. They take me by the hand and say that there will be another examination. I stay in one white home T-shirt and socks. “Does Novocaine work for you?” – “No.” “We will try, the anesthesiologists are asleep.” They tie my legs to the chair, and what is happening begins to dawn on me. I beg you for anesthesia – refusal. Pain, sweat floods, I hear through the veil: “Relax!”. We finished. They hit me on the cheeks and tell me to go to the ward. I get up. They give them jeans, shoes, bloody underwear. I walk on cotton feet from the operating room. Barefoot on the tiles in the hallway. The nurse follows me and wipes the blood off the floor. A pale husband meets me. Lay on the bed, ice on the stomach. In the morning, another inspection, very rough. I was afraid of peasants for another two months. Now I think if I really want children. “
3.
“Tongs are the worst thing I’ve seen in my life. They seemed to come from the XNUMXth century, it was wild. The doctor began to tell the midwife that she had made the wrong incision and told me how to do it correctly, not at all embarrassed by me. The baby did not take the breast well after the local bottles with huge holes, and when the milk came, the breast became stone, and the son simply refused to take it at all. Each midwife scolded my small breasts as if I had chosen one on purpose. Finally I found the strength to say enough. I went home, met with a GV consultant, the child immediately took the breast, feeling my calmness and her confident hand, and a new life began. “
4.
“From the very beginning, I decided that I would give birth in a maternity hospital in a neighboring city, there are a lot of bad reviews about our local maternity hospital. And the conditions are terrible: one toilet per floor, and that one without a door, no shower, no resuscitation. I informed the doctor with whom I was registered. This was the main mistake. At first, the doctor simply discouraged me. Then it came to threats: “We call the orderlies, we knit her and take her to the hospital, why talk to her, we’ll do a cop and that’s all.” They came up with a bunch of diagnoses for me – a doctor in another clinic looked at them, and did not understand where they got it from.
As a result, the doctor from the ZhK wrote a statement to me in social protection that the allegedly negligent mother did not want to give birth, but the deadlines had passed, and in general she wanted to kill the child. They found my relatives, with whom I had not communicated for more than 20 years. They filed for me on the wanted list. The police took out the door at our house, took away my things, my husband was arrested. When I came with a lawyer to the department, I read a statement from my mother: “My daughter left the house and did not return, presumably drowning the child in the bathroom.” And I’m pregnant. I cried, suffered enough. And the doctor said: “All this could have been avoided if you had come to give birth to our hospital.”
5.
“I remember the ceiling as they drove me naked, vulnerable and defenseless. I remember the operating room, how the anesthesiologist screamed where the surgeon was. She was told that she was drinking tea and would not take care of me until she finished. I remember how, after the operation, I was rolled onto a bed in the ward, and ice was thrown onto my stomach. How the pain reliever was denied. And the next morning, when I woke up, I ran away. I had a goal to leave this terrible place. I respect doctors and mid-level staff, among my friends there are amazing and talented people who have dedicated their lives to saving other people’s lives. I would never have thought that there are people like that in the world who, out of hatred, go to medicine. Soon there will be a year from that story. I am afraid of getting pregnant, so that again the machine of gynecologists and obstetricians who have burnt out at work will chew me up and spit me out like waste material.
A woman is not meat, she is alive, she is defenseless and she needs not only medical, but also psychological help and support. A woman is not an incubator for a fetus, a child, call it what you want. Every woman is a person, a person. She came for help. Please stop this inhuman conveyor of pain and humiliation. “
Fortunately, such cases are still not a system, and most mothers leave the hospital happy.
0.
“I arrived at the hospital at night, the contractions were already very strong. The sleepy midwife began to shape me. I was twisted and thrown into a sweat at every fight, but I answered the questions. Although she was kneeling on the floor, and elbows on the seat of a chair. The midwife did not care at all, and in general she was very nice. In the rodblock there were a couple of girls who had already given birth and no one else. Therefore, all delivery rooms and all CTGs were mine, go to bed – I don’t want to! CTG is a real torture in fights. Attempts also began on my head. Some new midwife came in and I told her about the attempts. She put her hand in me and said that, they say, it was not surprising, because the disclosure is already 8 cm, and now we will go to give birth. These were some of the sweetest words I have ever heard in my life! The midwife unbuckled me and we went to give birth. I climbed into a chair and waited for instructions from this lovely woman. I thought about it every other time, because everything did not go smoothly right away – I had to hold onto some handles and pull them towards myself, but I wanted to push off from them.
At some point, the angel-like midwife said “come on, come on, I already have half my head,” which surprised me extremely, because I did not feel anything at all. But I “gave”, and then I felt some relief. I realized that the head was born, which means that 80% of the work is done. Another push, and the culprit was raised, shown to me and laid on my stomach. She was mauve, waving her arms and legs, squeaking. And here a surprise awaited me. At this point, everyone usually writes that the music started playing, butterflies fluttered and unicorns galloped over the rainbow. So, figurines. I listened to myself and felt absolutely nothing. I just wanted to eat and sleep, and my daughter felt like a big slippery frog on her stomach. I couldn’t believe that I had given birth to such a big, slippery man. “Calm down, everything is all right, can’t you believe it?” – “I can’t”. Then they put my little bag to me, and here I spread! Because the kulechek looked straight at me, as it seemed to me then, straight into my eyes, without blinking, and just read right through me. Alien! She was amazing! And even when we were already taken to the ward, I did not sleep all night and all day – I just looked at her, how beautiful she is. Much prettier than most children, of course, how could it be otherwise. “
“Cases when a woman is faced with the rudeness or unprofessionalism of doctors are more the exception than the rule. But it is customary for us to demonize doctors. Medical mistakes, moments when a specialist fell through (perhaps due to banal fatigue) – they are picked up by the media and replicated. Only one hashtag “killer doctors” is worth something. Few people think that not all of these stories are true. In fact, it often turns out that the mother, who accused the doctors of rudeness, almost ruined her child herself, trying to give birth at home, in the presence of some midwife, in the hospital refuses the operation, and it is necessary to save not the child, but herself. And it is fortunate that she managed to preserve all the organs. There are practically no publications that the doctor once again saved someone. Even if, in an emergency, he becomes a blood donor for the person he is operating on. After all, he just did his job, ”says Elena Staminova, a doctor, obstetrician-gynecologist with surgical experience.
Not everyone agrees with the doctor’s opinion. Here is what they wrote in one of the online discussions devoted to the attitude towards women in maternity hospitals: “Every family has a story when a woman was almost ditched in a maternity hospital. Everyone was shouted at in the hospital. They tried to intimidate each of them with unknown diagnoses, each was prescribed drugs “just in case”, without really understanding the analyzes. And you say that this is not a system? “