1st Pregnancy: What No-One Tells You
Birth is the one medical event in which we say “your body, your choice, but be prepared to not be listened to and walk out on the other side traumatized, violated and broken. Good luck healing!”.
We have courses on how to be combative against nurses. We have entire accounts dedicated to taking your power back in the delivery room. Frankly, I am over this crap.
I am going to tell you the one thing that I wish someone would have told me before I walked into the delivery room:
If you have to walk in a room fighting,
you should not walk in that room to begin with.
Disclaimer: if you have not listened to my podcast episode with Giana Vasconcellos about Maternal Care Deserts, please do. Know that I understand the limited availability and privilege to good maternal and postpartum care. I know that you have to be realistic with time, transportation and financial resources. This instance is about my story and the fact that I had options, I knew what my gut was telling me to do and I didn’t listen. I thought I could walk into a hospital and demand everything I wanted, that it would go the way I expected and that I would be respected, or at least treated with dignity and respect. I knew in my heart this wouldn’t be the case and because I didn’t fight for my right to birth where I wanted to, in the beginning, me, my family and my baby suffered. My point is, start advocating for yourself before you even get pregnant, not when you walk into a hospital room to give birth.
Listen: nobody chooses except for you and your partner. The place in which you give birth is not determined by how many babies you have (or haven’t had), how any family member feels about it or if you’ve had a previous C-Section (or even 3). You are responsible for educating yourself or seeking a source to give you truly informed consent and then making your choice without any coercion or fear. Maybe you want to give birth at the hospital, that’s great. Maybe you’ve given birth at a hospital before and you want to give birth at home, but you had a c-section, you’re allowed to consider and seek birth support to give brith at home. Maybe you’re a first time mom and you know that what you want does not align with your local hospital and you want to give birth at home but people are telling you that you can’t because you don’t know how you’ll “handle birth”.. you’re allowed to give birth at home. For real. Nobody hands you a ticket after having your first baby at the hospital and says “you are now permitted to birth at home”. That’s not a thing. You have a body? You have a baby that you need to birth? You qualify.
If you don’t know this already, hear me when I say that you are fully in charge of where you choose to give birth and who is present for that event. And if anyone tells you that you just cannot (outside of a truly transverse baby, which can usually be avoided or fixed with a good chiropractor), that person is not giving you fully informed consent and support.
If at any time during your pregnancy you do not feel completely seen, heard, understood or respected by your provider, you are allowed to leave or request someone else. If you do not receive completely unbiased informed consent, without coercion, without the understanding that you have complete and total autonomy over your choices, you are allowed to leave. BUT… have a backup plan. You have to understand that if you are going to live a life where you take radical responsibility for your body, your birth and the choices you make about those two bodies, you are also have to take responsibility for the outcomes around the choices. If you choose to leave a provider at 39 weeks pregnant, expecting to get a midwife to take you on and they refuse to do so, AND you don’t wish to free-birth, you have to realize that you may end up in a hospital with an on-call OB. Most of us who care have thought these things through, but trust me when I say that it is better to have it figured out at the beginning of your pregnancy than be trying to figure it out all throughout and leading up to delivery.
I changed providers 4 times during my 1st full-term pregnancy. I go through all of the specifics in my birth story post, but really all that matters is that I was desperately searching for a care provider who truly cared about me and that respected my autonomy. I knew that I wanted a relationship with a provider, but with the circumstances I was given, especially given the fact that it was during 2020, I had to choose between a good relationship and a provider who would give me the best chance at the outcome I desired.
In the end, I walked into a hospital armed with a binder of information, several copies of a very detailed birth plan, a doula, a husband who was there to back me up and determination. I went in fighting. At least I thought I did.
What I did not realize as a first-time-mom is just how much you are not capable of advocating for yourself in active labor, transition and ESPECIALLY during pushing and the moments preceding the birth. In my case, my nurses, nor the midwife, cared about my birth plan. I’m not even sure if they glanced at it. In my case, my mind was not there. I was fully immersed in birth hormones, exhaustion and labor land. Unfortunately, the Certified Nurse Midwife did not care about getting my consent, listening to what had been communicated about what I did and did not consent to and it downward spiraled from there.
Just a note, there is a difference between a Certified Professional Midwife and a Certified Nurse Midwife. My experience with a CPM although in a home birth setting, was in all ways, 10,000% better. I believe that the general consensus is that CPM’s tend to be able to take more time to get to know you, care about your autonomy and have more education geared towards truly informed consent and the patience to respect your choices. That being said, not every CPM is like this. Not every CNM is the opposite either. In the past I have naively believed all of the above. Be conscious when choosing your birth team (OBGYN, CNM, CPM or Birthkeeper) to truly evaluate the compatibility of your beliefs around birth, your personalities, their outcome statistics and testimonials of past mothers.
I wish that as a first time mother I wouldn’t have been rushed into a decision to choose a provider. I rushed because I had early miscarriages and I thought I had to commit. Turns out, that is not the case. You can use an office, pregnancy center, a GP, or midwife to help you get early bloodwork done, especially if you have a history of loss or just want to confirm the pregnancy. After that, you can interview potential options and find your fit and a backup or two depending on the situation. In the case of my homebirth midwife, she had several backups that I would have trusted. In the case of my first birth with the hospital group, I didn’t have a choice. My midwife was whoever was on call. I know that practice and have met the other midwifes who were wonderful. I happened to draw the short stick that night and got one who did not care one iota about my desires or outcome. In fact, at my six week postpartum appointment, she admitted to panicking. But in the moment, when everyone had to leave my side for one reason or another, she left. She left me cold and naked alone on a table. I felt ashamed, I felt like I didn’t matter and that she was in control. She did not respect my body or my baby. She panicked, tried to take matters into her own hands and left me scarred.
Nobody could have prepared me for that experience. Nobody could have prepared me for the downward spiral. She planted the doubt in my mind when she chose to disregard my autonomy. She led me to doubt my intuition and that spiraled into a series of choices made because I was scared and being bullied by medical professionals.
Nobody could have prepared me to be traumatized. Nobody could prepare me for how it would feel to be physically separated from my child for the majority of the first three days of his life.
God can use anything and everything. I know that my story will not go to waste. I know that my pain was not in vain. I know that the hospital is where I ended up in this instance because that is how it was going to happen. I wish that it could have been different, but if I use my story to help encourage other women to truly consider their care options, before they walk into that situation, it’s worth it.
Nobody can truly prepare you for what will happen in your birth. But what I can tell you is that God will not leave you and that you are never truly alone. I can also tell you that He will give you guidance about who is supposed to be on your care team. Listen. Be willing to get creative. Be willing to look deeper into a medical group, a hospital, a practice, even a midwifery team. If there are red flags, do not write them off as hormones. Listen. Start researching before you ever get pregnant. Be aware and be on guard. And know, that if you have walked through trauma, it is not your fault. We shouldn’t HAVE to be vigilant when choosing a care team. This entire blog post should not have to exist. But we live in a broken world, with broken people.
I am always here to talk, help you explore options and truly identify what your desires are and how to assemble a birth team that will support you to the best of their ability. If you have experienced trauma, I am also here to talk, pray with you or help you process. I have healed in so many ways and I am thankful that God continues to heal my heart, even three years later.