Providers and hospitals claim that VBAC bans are for the safety of mothers and babies. And recently, we’ve begun to learn that women can transfer trauma to their babies in the womb. Often, this can cause a downward spiral of medical interventions to keep labor going artificially—with Cesarean section as the inevitable outcome if the body does not respond as expected or the fetus is sent into distress because of the drugs. However, because we are socialized to both expect trustworthy and professional behavior in the hospital setting and to be ‘compliant’ with medical directives, these behaviors are seldom recognized and interpreted as abuse. However, for many women, especially those in rural areas, it is financially or logistically impossible to include a long drive and indefinite hotel stay with her childbirth plans. Soon we were chatting about the struggles of no longer being able to sleep on our backs, the best pregnancy pillow to buy and the importance of foot rubs from our partners. Being a new parent would be a fantastic experience in your life. But here, munching on banana bread baked by the midwives, we quickly discovered how much the experience of pregnancy gave us in common.
At Improving Birth, we frequently hear from women who report that their care providers gave them inaccurate information and were unsupportive of their decisions. KidsHealth has information about health, behavior and development from before birth through the teen year. The goal is to achieve a labour and birth that meets the woman’s needs and ensures confidentiality while she and staff remain safe. We tend to feel helpless, so we rationalize and accept these behaviors while denying our experience of them. Most of us would recognize these as abusive behaviors in just about any other setting. Verbal abuse includes behaviors akin to threatening, scolding, ridiculing, shaming, coercing, yelling, belittling, lying, manipulating, mocking, dismissing, and refusing to acknowledge—behaviors that undermine the recipient’s self-esteem while enhancing the abuser’s sense of power, typical of bullying. Furthermore, staff and doctors are the authorities in the hospital, while the pregnant and laboring woman is merely a ‘patient.’ Such a huge power imbalance allows, even encourages, bullying and abuse. “Abuse in the hospital-based birth setting may not seem the same as domestic abuse and violence, but it is no less harmful.
Susan Hodges states in “Abuse in Hospital-Based Birth Settings? Have you seen what Improving Birth is up to? In other words, take one of the most intimate chapters in a couple’s life and have them experience it with a bunch of strangers. However women who have a repeat cesarean are actually 3 times more likely to die, and are much more likely to experience complications. ” It can be crucial to note that, as we speak, Cesarean surgery is the most frequent operating room procedure in America, with 1 in 3 women giving birth surgically—a rate many times higher than what optimal care suggests is best. To add insult to injury, many women are told, “Thank goodness you were in the hospital since you needed a cesarean! Some people may find it easy to assume that women can use a different hospital that doesn’t have a VBAC ban. But when, at my first prenatal visit at Northwestern Medicine, midwife Carol Hirschfield told me the practice happened to be launching its first CenteringPregnancy group, I figured it might be a good way to meet people.
No comments:
Post a Comment