“I was in excruciating pain the entire time. It left me in extreme pain, I was in agony, when she finally stopped, she took a deep breath and immediately had the conversation with me that it doesn’t seem as if I’m moving along and because the baby showed distress recently, I cannot remember whether this was before the exam or after. After her exam I felt violated, i felt dirty, I felt like I was reliving a rape I had experienced in the past and all the emotions that came with it, I was in pain and next thing I know I hear the doctor say out loud to the nurse “no she’s just not moving along, I EVEN tried to manually break her water and it wouldn’t budge at all, and I tried hard!’“
“I was so confused and frustrated at the lack of communication between me and my OB during delivery. I was terrified when I ended up with her AGAIN with my second child, even after I had specifically picked a different OB for this time around (my OB was in a different hospital that night and my previous OB was the one on-call that night). I was plagued with anxiety and fear when she walked in. She once again broke my water for me, this time at least she gave me notice. It came out a greenish-brown color and without even making eye contact with me she said "Well that's not good, the baby has pooped inside the amniotic sac and could suffocate. We'll have to call in a pediatric surgeon." THEN SHE WALKED OUT OF THE ROOM.“
“I had not seen this nurse before and did not see her again. As she was completing the check, our eyes met and she touched me inappropriately- then she quickly left the room.”
“Before my discharge from the hospital I had at least three different providers warn me that I'm at a greater risk for postpartum mood disorders because of my traumatic birth experience. It's odd to hear someone else label your birth as traumatic, especially before you realize it for yourself. Where do they think the trauma comes from? The loss of my home birth plan? The prolonged, high intervention induction? The unplanned c-section? The complicated repair with significant blood loss? While not the outcomes I'd wanted, I can make peace with those events because I had the opportunity to make the informed choices that brought me there. Surely they didn't recognize that the greatest source of trauma were the moments where I was stripped of my autonomy, otherwise they should have seized the opportunity to prevent it.“
“The room I was in was big, and the doctor went to his desk to get Kleenex for my tears. The normal sized doctor, with normal sized arms, handed me the box of Kleenex and decided to lean on my legs that were hanging over the side of the examination table that I was on to hand the box to me.I felt his "hard on" press into my legs. I have not suffered abuse in my past so I wasn't upset. I just thought OH MY G*D, what a moron.”
