The night before my due date I was so fearful that I wouldn't go into labor and would have to be transferred out of home birth midwifery care and into OBGYN care to my midwife’s backup OB 1 hour from my home, so I went to get ‘acupuncture to try to naturally induce’
I called my mom that evening and I said
“Mom, can you please pray that when I go into labor, my water doesn’t break until the last minute”
I knew what happens if you’re a vbac at home, and your water breaks before labor even starts. You have no chance if labor doesn’t promptly begin then, and you’re on the clock. Then you get transferred, and who knows how that will end.
At 5am the next morning, my water broke. My labor didn’t start until 5 hours later at 10am.
My worst nightmare.
This was my first birth all over again. Everything I feared was coming true.
By 2pm, I knew my midwife would be coming soon to check my progress, and I started to panic. I called my doula and told her that I need her. I wasn’t in active labor and if I didn’t do something to stimulate stronger and closer-together contractions, I was afraid I would have to be transferred.
My doula relayed to me her frustrations
that school pick up time was coming up at her kids, she’d have to arrange that and also get the tub from her house
Me thinking: WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS?!
As a professional birth worker, you know NEVER TO talk to a client in labor about your own personal life problems when your client needs you in labor. This is a huge violation of holding space for your client.
And then my doula completely abandoned and stripped down all my security with saying:
if you’re not even in active labor, by the time you do get to active labor,
I may be completely exhausted and unable to support you for active labor,
so you have to choose if you want me there now or labor,
I can’t do both.
And I thought “but what if I never get to active labor if you don’t come help me with spinning babies or rebozo or something else to strengthen my contractions?”
And then I thought, she clearly doesn’t want to be here, why would I push someone to come who doesn’t want to be here. So I told her not to come.
Don’t come.
By 5pm, my midwife arrived and checked me and I was only 3cm dilated, but worse, I wasn’t anywhere near active labor. My contractions were weak, erratic. She told me she already called her backup OBGYN who told her she needed to transfer me.
Laboring for at least 24 hours at home prior to transfer went out the window. She never told me that if my waters were ruptured prior to active labor, I would get cut down to 12 hours at home.
My midwife failed to communicate what ultimately took my power away
And so here I was, driving to a city an hour away, to a hospital I had never set foot in and I was put in a really gross room in Triage that looked as old and destroyed as if it had not been repainted or repaired since 1960, with a cold and rude nurse who didn’t care about the fact that I was barely holding on emotionally.
She didn’t care that my first birth was extremely traumatizing.
This was suppose to be my redemption, a healing experience.
The nurse painfully checked me for dilation.
I was left in Triage for hours alone, without being told any information
I felt like a prisoner who was meant to be subdued through lack of communication into a state of fear and lack of voice.
I kept asking the nurse any time she would walk by the room when I would get to speak with the doctor.
I wanted to know if I could move around, if I could continue to try to labor.
The nurse had no answer for me.
The nurse did not know where my doctor was
The nurse said she did not know when he would come to see me.
After hours in Triage, once I was in the room, the OBGYN called me on the phone,
This was my first and only interaction with the OBGYN before the birth of my child. This cold, impersonal phone call.
The doctor began explaining there was a situation, he was needed at another hospital that night to be on call for incoming VBACs, for his own patients, and he gave me the option, he said I could have a c/section now, or sign an “against medical recommendation” form that released them of any liability if my baby or I died as a result of me turning down a c/section now.
I was horrified.
To me then, to me now, whether this was me or another woman, this was not a choice. This was barbaric. A trick to fool patients.
I said to him: “If I am understanding correctly, if I don’t consent to a c/section right now, I have to sign this form, and then if my baby’s heart decels or gets stuck, no one will come to deliver or help me?”
He responded with: “That’s correct”
I agreed to the c/section.
Then I finally called my doula, to come pick up my 3 year old and take her to my parents house. I thought this is the least she could do since she did nothing else. She did not even communicate with me at any stage to know what was happening between the transfer to the hospital.
My doula arrived and said something to the effect of: at least you are being given a choice and it is your choice to make.
I scoffed. That was no choice.
Once out of the operating room, they pumped so many drugs in me (never telling me which or even asking me) and I felt paralyzed and my eyes shut despite me fighting for my life to keep them open. I was in a feeling of desperation, I needed my baby and my husband, but no nurse bothered to stop by my bed, I was trying to call out by the drugs inhibited my voice. I didn’t know what time it was, I couldn’t see anything because I didn’t know where my glasses were and my vision is so bad without them. I wasn’t even seeing a single nurse passing by my bed to stop a nurse and ask questions. No one checked on me.
I didn’t even know how much time passed by with me paralyzed in this bed. Then suddenly as the drugs wore off, I called out for a nurse, begged her to find my husband.
A very long time passed and she returned to say they couldn’t find him.
I never felt so alone and abandoned in my life and I just wanted to see and touch my baby.
I’ll say it loud and clear ^ that was North Shore Medical Center in Miami August 2015.
Finally when they FOUND my husband, who had fallen asleep in a waiting room (he was awake with me for 24 hours) they brought him to me, but he said they didn’t have a room for me, the baby was stuck in the nursery, and I couldn’t get out of bed, the North Shore Medical Center nurses refused to bring the baby to me.
An absolutely disorganized and destructive system at this hospital
Finally my outrageous ‘recovery time’ plus their administrational ‘shift change’ ended and the nurses FOUND me a room
I saw my baby for the first time after EIGHT HOURS.
