“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.”
“She just scooped my baby up out of the isolette and walked fast down the hall way. I had to hobble after her. I said, in the hallway "can I come with you?" only a question in formality, I WAS GOING with my baby. She didn't give me an option for the treatment, didn't get INFORMED consent from me, didn't ask if I wanted to come with her, didn't ask if she could hold the baby, I could have held the baby myself and walked down the hallway.“
“Planned induction. Difficult birth, nurse went on break, needed forceps, break-nurse pushing down on top of my baby bump under my rib cage making my empty stomach gag a few times.”
