It’s a culture that doesn’t seem to ever shift, even after you’ve given birth. After my c section when I asked for more pain relief the midwives were still stalling, even though I’d just had surgery. I was getting grief for not moving enough, “work through the pain”. A few weeks later I was on a different ward after an operation and the nurses there were falling over themselves to give me painkillers, and giving me grief for getting out of bed.
This seems really cruel. I wouldn’t have thought much about this before we had our daughter but I can’t imagine the anxiety and stress caused by being sent home constantly in labour
My wife’s waters broke so they kind of had to do a c-section so guess that’s a bit of luck…
My Mum would’ve died with my brother if she didn’t get C-section. Meaning I would never have existed. I also had to get born by C-section.
C-section is as a natural birth as any birth. Stop with all the “all-natural hippie bullshit” women giving birth are already on a number of painkillers and drugs, in hospital, and many have gotten assistant to getting pregnant to begin with.
So either everything is natural about it (which I think it is) or nothing is natural at all. Stop glorifying mothers, into an A-Team or B-Team.
Women also do that outside of Hospital themselves. The cringe comments I’ve heard from women who’re proudly announcing across a restaurant that *”they had a natural birth and not C-section”* can F* right off.
My wife made sure to state constantly during pregnancy that her mother had pre-eclampsia and that she would need a C Section to be safe.
Luckily she did but still the care in the ward was awful. My son was not interested in breastfeeding at all and my wife suffers from anxiety and depression.
It didn’t help having nurses telling her “her baby would not thrive” and other things while she’s struggling as a new mother.
A few weeks later we were in A&E because our son would not sleep, he kept crying and crying, and as first time parents you worry about everything. They actually put a wrist band on my wife and admitted her under psychiatric care before seeing the baby properly.
We certainly weren’t mentally well as a couple at the time but they really didn’t do much to help.
Fast forward 2 years, our son is healthy and well, still doesn’t sleep well but hey, most kids don’t.
Employees who can’t do their job to a basic level of competence because of some pig headed “I suffered so you should have to too” mentality, need to be banned from their profession. In any other industry they would be.
I asked for a consultation due to tokophobia. They (very reluctantly) put it on my file but I’m not hopeful.
Is it a cultural thing, or a medical thing? We are talking the common behaviours of Doctors, Midwifes and other trained medical professionals right?
I can back this up. I overheard an argument between a midwife and a doctor, that pushed me to phone the hospital directly. Midwife essentially lied to me about what was available and when. Midlife told me lies about how early we could induce. Fortunately we overuled her and all ended up well, but I can well imagine huge numbers are blind to all this.
Midwives are strikingly anti-medicine for working in the medical field.
I dont know anything about this but i have also heard the opposite, that women are pushed into unnecessary C sections. Which side is right?
My sister in law has anxiety and PTSD after suffering through sexual abuse as a child. Naturally, she’s not very comfortable with situations where people look at or touch her genitals, even under medical circumstances. So when she was pregnant, she asked them if she could have a C-section. Nope, no elective C-sections on the NHS. She was upset about it for weeks. When she finally got comfortable enough to explain her reasons, one of the nurses implied she may be using this “just to get her way”. In the end, she got a C-section and years later when she applied to be a foster parent she found out someone had put in her chart that she suffered from “pregancy-related anxiety and depression”
This might not be a popular opinion – but I feel like pregnant women – and midwives – sometimes have *too much* say in birthing. I mean – it’s not like you would get to make the choice to have any other major medical operation *at home* – so why is it acceptable that there’s not as much regulation around child birth.
It’s a very serious, sometimes deadly, process and should absolutely be done in hospital with highly trained medical professionals nearby should something go wrong.
Midwives can also be intolerable. There is so much shame around birth, breastfeeding, care. With my first child they made me feel absolutely stupid and weak and that I was a horrible mother for *not being able to breastfeed*. If I have a second child I can’t wait to tell them to get fucked because I know what I’m doing.
Is this postcode thing? We can’t relate to any of these maternity horror stories at all. The care we received at Sunderland Royal was amazing, especially as my son needed an emergency c section… The type of emergency when the midwife calmly asks you to press the emergency bell and 20 people descend on the room… No time for scrubs sir, you wait here.
I hope other areas sort this out, perhaps take some lessons from the North East?
Shocking but as a mother of 3 I’m not surprised. The whole not being believed when you are in labour extremely common.
As for the reluctance to perform c-sections, this was the case with my son. They expected him to be a big baby 10.7. I wanted a cesarean I also have pins in my back so not possible for me to have a quick spinal epidural so it needed to be planned. The Dr we discussed it with had my husband convinced that if I had a cesarean I would die lol.
Well I had my cesarean and glad I did. You hear stories of bigger baby’s getting stuck and needing an emergency csection. So much safer fir it to be planned. Don’t get me wrong cesareans are nit fun to recover from and I ended up with adisions that I just had removed. It should be a choice.
I was removed not birthed is the best flex I have on people
if people want a 100% natural birth then they better get themselves off and away from painkillers and everything
Having gone through the NCT course I couldnt believe how hard they push breastfeeding and how anti c-section they are.
At one point the instructor told us that certain pain reliefs would cause the baby to become addicted to them.
To be honest I have zero knowledge on medical practices but wife and I don’t wanna have our kids in the UK just because of this, and every single person that we had discussed this with regardless of where they from are as astonished as us that cesareans aren’t standard practice here.
In fact just having to deal with a midwife instead of an actual doctor is beyond me, in most places you have the same doctor in every appointment from day one and if you are having your second or third or whatever you are served by the same doctor, here you have to pray to fall in good hands and next review might be some other person looking after you, so it doesn’t inspire much confidence in the whole process.
During the birth of my second child, my partner attended a birthing clinic led by a senior midwife that was outright hostile towards doctors and nurses. She walked out mid-session when the midwife started a PowerPoint presentation which asserted that no woman should ever give birth lying on her back.
Oh and for reddit UK is a shiny beacon of medical care.
Not having a c-section has left me permanently disabled.
I guess the consolation is my kid is alive, autistics, but alive.
A few observations from a clinical negligence lawyer who has plenty of experience of seeing things go wrong:
(1) Midwives are generally pretty useless. CTG interpretation is very poor, causing delayed response when the fetal heart rate pattern becomes concerning.
(2) C-section carries less risk of major harm (e.g. fetal hypoxia/brain injury) but more risk of minor/moderate harm to mum (e.g. wound infection).
(3) C-section costs way more and uses far more medical resource. Can we afford it? I’m not so sure.
(4) Midwives, Doctors – they are all doing their best but the system is beyond capacity, which means there’s no room for mistakes – and we all make mistakes.
The whole ‘natural birth’ concept is very worrying. It’s the underlying belief that natural is better. It is not. And the ideas surrounding the term ‘natural birth’ leads to women feeling like they have ‘failed’ or feeling as though they would fail if they deliver by C-section.
The amount of times I have had to correct people in the medical progression to refer to it as ‘vaginal’ and ‘c-section’ birth…
The whole ‘too posh to pushI’ is another whole issue! And makes me so very angry!
The dangerous obsession is actually with not listening to the women and respecting their decisions. If a woman wants a c-section she should be given one. She should be given all the facts to make an informed choice. C-sections are more dangerous than natural birth, for some like me with blood clotting disorders etc, even more dangerous than the average person. Yet in a circumstance where the birth path has gone that way, it’s a medical intervention that is necessary. Women need to be trusted and respected to make choices about their own bodies without people coming along and judging them for it or scaring them into something that isn’t right for them.
Midwives are not doctors and not surgeons. Go to an OBGYN physician if you want adequate care not someone who got a degree online and delivered 5 babies to become certified. She should have done more research. Who’s baby is she holding anyway?
25 comments
It’s a culture that doesn’t seem to ever shift, even after you’ve given birth. After my c section when I asked for more pain relief the midwives were still stalling, even though I’d just had surgery. I was getting grief for not moving enough, “work through the pain”. A few weeks later I was on a different ward after an operation and the nurses there were falling over themselves to give me painkillers, and giving me grief for getting out of bed.
This seems really cruel. I wouldn’t have thought much about this before we had our daughter but I can’t imagine the anxiety and stress caused by being sent home constantly in labour
My wife’s waters broke so they kind of had to do a c-section so guess that’s a bit of luck…
My Mum would’ve died with my brother if she didn’t get C-section. Meaning I would never have existed. I also had to get born by C-section.
C-section is as a natural birth as any birth. Stop with all the “all-natural hippie bullshit” women giving birth are already on a number of painkillers and drugs, in hospital, and many have gotten assistant to getting pregnant to begin with.
So either everything is natural about it (which I think it is) or nothing is natural at all. Stop glorifying mothers, into an A-Team or B-Team.
Women also do that outside of Hospital themselves. The cringe comments I’ve heard from women who’re proudly announcing across a restaurant that *”they had a natural birth and not C-section”* can F* right off.
My wife made sure to state constantly during pregnancy that her mother had pre-eclampsia and that she would need a C Section to be safe.
Luckily she did but still the care in the ward was awful. My son was not interested in breastfeeding at all and my wife suffers from anxiety and depression.
It didn’t help having nurses telling her “her baby would not thrive” and other things while she’s struggling as a new mother.
A few weeks later we were in A&E because our son would not sleep, he kept crying and crying, and as first time parents you worry about everything. They actually put a wrist band on my wife and admitted her under psychiatric care before seeing the baby properly.
We certainly weren’t mentally well as a couple at the time but they really didn’t do much to help.
Fast forward 2 years, our son is healthy and well, still doesn’t sleep well but hey, most kids don’t.
Employees who can’t do their job to a basic level of competence because of some pig headed “I suffered so you should have to too” mentality, need to be banned from their profession. In any other industry they would be.
I asked for a consultation due to tokophobia. They (very reluctantly) put it on my file but I’m not hopeful.
Is it a cultural thing, or a medical thing? We are talking the common behaviours of Doctors, Midwifes and other trained medical professionals right?
I can back this up. I overheard an argument between a midwife and a doctor, that pushed me to phone the hospital directly. Midwife essentially lied to me about what was available and when. Midlife told me lies about how early we could induce. Fortunately we overuled her and all ended up well, but I can well imagine huge numbers are blind to all this.
Midwives are strikingly anti-medicine for working in the medical field.
I dont know anything about this but i have also heard the opposite, that women are pushed into unnecessary C sections. Which side is right?
My sister in law has anxiety and PTSD after suffering through sexual abuse as a child. Naturally, she’s not very comfortable with situations where people look at or touch her genitals, even under medical circumstances. So when she was pregnant, she asked them if she could have a C-section. Nope, no elective C-sections on the NHS. She was upset about it for weeks. When she finally got comfortable enough to explain her reasons, one of the nurses implied she may be using this “just to get her way”. In the end, she got a C-section and years later when she applied to be a foster parent she found out someone had put in her chart that she suffered from “pregancy-related anxiety and depression”
This might not be a popular opinion – but I feel like pregnant women – and midwives – sometimes have *too much* say in birthing. I mean – it’s not like you would get to make the choice to have any other major medical operation *at home* – so why is it acceptable that there’s not as much regulation around child birth.
It’s a very serious, sometimes deadly, process and should absolutely be done in hospital with highly trained medical professionals nearby should something go wrong.
Midwives can also be intolerable. There is so much shame around birth, breastfeeding, care. With my first child they made me feel absolutely stupid and weak and that I was a horrible mother for *not being able to breastfeed*. If I have a second child I can’t wait to tell them to get fucked because I know what I’m doing.
Is this postcode thing? We can’t relate to any of these maternity horror stories at all. The care we received at Sunderland Royal was amazing, especially as my son needed an emergency c section… The type of emergency when the midwife calmly asks you to press the emergency bell and 20 people descend on the room… No time for scrubs sir, you wait here.
I hope other areas sort this out, perhaps take some lessons from the North East?
Shocking but as a mother of 3 I’m not surprised. The whole not being believed when you are in labour extremely common.
As for the reluctance to perform c-sections, this was the case with my son. They expected him to be a big baby 10.7. I wanted a cesarean I also have pins in my back so not possible for me to have a quick spinal epidural so it needed to be planned. The Dr we discussed it with had my husband convinced that if I had a cesarean I would die lol.
Well I had my cesarean and glad I did. You hear stories of bigger baby’s getting stuck and needing an emergency csection. So much safer fir it to be planned. Don’t get me wrong cesareans are nit fun to recover from and I ended up with adisions that I just had removed. It should be a choice.
I was removed not birthed is the best flex I have on people
if people want a 100% natural birth then they better get themselves off and away from painkillers and everything
Having gone through the NCT course I couldnt believe how hard they push breastfeeding and how anti c-section they are.
At one point the instructor told us that certain pain reliefs would cause the baby to become addicted to them.
To be honest I have zero knowledge on medical practices but wife and I don’t wanna have our kids in the UK just because of this, and every single person that we had discussed this with regardless of where they from are as astonished as us that cesareans aren’t standard practice here.
In fact just having to deal with a midwife instead of an actual doctor is beyond me, in most places you have the same doctor in every appointment from day one and if you are having your second or third or whatever you are served by the same doctor, here you have to pray to fall in good hands and next review might be some other person looking after you, so it doesn’t inspire much confidence in the whole process.
During the birth of my second child, my partner attended a birthing clinic led by a senior midwife that was outright hostile towards doctors and nurses. She walked out mid-session when the midwife started a PowerPoint presentation which asserted that no woman should ever give birth lying on her back.
Oh and for reddit UK is a shiny beacon of medical care.
Not having a c-section has left me permanently disabled.
I guess the consolation is my kid is alive, autistics, but alive.
A few observations from a clinical negligence lawyer who has plenty of experience of seeing things go wrong:
(1) Midwives are generally pretty useless. CTG interpretation is very poor, causing delayed response when the fetal heart rate pattern becomes concerning.
(2) C-section carries less risk of major harm (e.g. fetal hypoxia/brain injury) but more risk of minor/moderate harm to mum (e.g. wound infection).
(3) C-section costs way more and uses far more medical resource. Can we afford it? I’m not so sure.
(4) Midwives, Doctors – they are all doing their best but the system is beyond capacity, which means there’s no room for mistakes – and we all make mistakes.
The whole ‘natural birth’ concept is very worrying. It’s the underlying belief that natural is better. It is not. And the ideas surrounding the term ‘natural birth’ leads to women feeling like they have ‘failed’ or feeling as though they would fail if they deliver by C-section.
The amount of times I have had to correct people in the medical progression to refer to it as ‘vaginal’ and ‘c-section’ birth…
The whole ‘too posh to pushI’ is another whole issue! And makes me so very angry!
The dangerous obsession is actually with not listening to the women and respecting their decisions. If a woman wants a c-section she should be given one. She should be given all the facts to make an informed choice. C-sections are more dangerous than natural birth, for some like me with blood clotting disorders etc, even more dangerous than the average person. Yet in a circumstance where the birth path has gone that way, it’s a medical intervention that is necessary. Women need to be trusted and respected to make choices about their own bodies without people coming along and judging them for it or scaring them into something that isn’t right for them.
Midwives are not doctors and not surgeons. Go to an OBGYN physician if you want adequate care not someone who got a degree online and delivered 5 babies to become certified. She should have done more research. Who’s baby is she holding anyway?