I'm fuming right now, so I apologize in advance. I know this will come out more like a rant than anything I've ever written before.
When a hospital administrator decided to override my doctor's and my decision to VBAC and thought it'd be better (for him) if I had an arbitrary major surgery I was understandably upset. But I understand he was just trying to protect himself from legal parasites who suck the life and health from women and doctors in this country for their own personal gain. I was upset, but I'm okay with that (now). What really took months to recover from was my own guilt that I hadn't stuck to my guns, told the man to step off, and did what I instinctively knew was best for me and my family.
When I say it took "months" to recover from that, what I really mean is that I finally came to terms with my decision to give up, and its consequences, about a week ago. I can finally think about the birth of my son without bursting into tears or curling up in a ball somewhere in a dark closet until the sickening wave of guilt passes. I know it may sound stupid to those of you who haven't experienced it--especially to those of you who have experienced traumatic births yourselves and think what I went through was nothing because my baby and I are both physically fine--but after months of lurking on support forums, I now know that many (and probably most) women in my position felt the exact way I did. Our trauma was real, but it was also internal--practically invisible. The worst part is having to lie to everyone later, knowing that not only would they not understand, but would ridicule my pain, diminish it with assurances that "it could have been worse," even think I was making it up to get attention.
But that's all in the past now. One thing I gained from this experience is a new understanding of courage. I now know that courage is fearing the consequences of inaction more than the consequences of action, or even failure. And though that insight could never negate the pain I experienced, if it brings me success in the future, it will be worth it.
By the way, this experience is part of the reason I don't I don't silently bite my tongue out of politeness anymore. If I've said something rude to you, I apologize, but it was only because I would rather risk losing you as a friend, than allow you to experience what I did when opening my mouth could have saved you the pain.
Since I finally feel better about myself and my future childbearing prospects, I've been seriously looking into options that don't involve the medical establishment that so mistreated me. I checked out a number of books from the library. I just finished a very informative book by Dr. Bradley, and this evening proceed to the next book in my pile: Natural Childbirth After Cesarean by Karis Crawford, PhD and Johanne C. Walters, BSN, RN (the same ladies who run The Childbirth Connection). I'm only 36 pages into it and I had to stop. I knew I would never be able to sleep until I got this off my chest. I'm still fuming. When I learned that someone removed from my medical care made a critical medical decision for me, I was upset, but I wasn't really angry. Now, anger doesn't even begin to describe what I'm feeling.
I. Am. Pissed.
The kind of anger that makes my hands shake and my heart pump dangerously hard and fast.
I know I went into my first pregnancy knowing virtually nothing about childbirth. I trusted my doctors to tell me what I needed to know when I needed to know it. That was my first and critical mistake. I know now my care was critically mishandled, and I consented to things without a full understanding of the risks and other possible medical options, but I just figured it was mostly a misunderstanding on my part. I knew I could probably only name about ten internal body parts, so between my doctor’s vast expanse of medical knowledge and expertise and my relative ignorance on the matter, I figured the gap wasn’t entirely closeable. I trusted my doctor had my best interest at heart. Even before my second son was surgically removed, I figured my doctor knew what he was doing and wouldn’t take excessive risks unnecessarily.
Boy was I mistaken. The risks of VBAC and benefits of cesarean that I was presented with on my “consent” form seemed to be near the range of numbers I had discovered independently, so I didn’t think anything of the slight differences. Turns out those differences weren’t slight at all.
They LIED.
You know the penultimate card doctors always play on VBACs? That whole uterine rupture thing? A lie. Flat out. Sure the numbers they showed me were basically correct (though I remember they rounded up quite a bit), but they lied about what those numbers actually meant. Yes, uterine rupture happens, but the number they provided me with (1%, though it’s really closer to .5%) represents not only uterine rupture, but very slight separation (not particularly dangerous) and even mere thinning. What the number also fails to reveal is how that compares with non-VBAC groups. Did you know that 75% of uterine ruptures occur in women who have never had uterine surgery (a cesarean)? Even in the remaining 25% of women with uterine scars, much of the time, the rupture doesn’t even happen on the old scar! It USED to be a problem when cesareans were done with a classical incision—practically unheard of today—but not in women with low transverse incisions (90% of cesarean incisions).
As for the ultimate “dead baby” card obstetricians like to play, turns out the risk of a baby dying from uterine rupture (which we’ve already established has little to do with a previous cesarean) is at most 1 in 1000 (since 1950), and that includes women with classical scars, powerful labor inducing drugs, and forceps used during birth (all of which are known to dramatically increase the risk of a catastrophic rupture). “If you look only at the most recent medical studies in North America, excluding developing countries, the risk of infant death in VBAC seems to be less than 1 in 5000” (Natural Birth After Cesarean, p. 33).
And to top it all off, did you know that “hemorrhage during cesarean leads to hysterectomy 10 times more often than scar rupture in VBAC does” (Cesarean p. 36)?
Can you understand my anger just a little? I was given bad information that could have (and still might) result in hysterectomy or even my death, in order to make a decision I was legally obliged to make, with only one actually available option. All on bad data!
Okay, I just deleted some unladylike language from this space; I think that means it’s time for me to wrap up.
Now I come to the begging point of this rant: please. Please. Please don’t go to a hospital unless you are sick or dying, or you suspect your unborn baby might be dying. American hospitals are very good at saving dying people. That’s what they’re for. What they’re not good at is saving perfectly healthy pregnant people and their perfectly healthy babies. As a matter of fact, they suck at it. In fact, they have a very disturbing tendency to make things worse—otherwise they couldn’t convince you that they made things better.
