i've been thinking, WHY THE FUCK did i allow my midwife to neglect my care like she did?
i'm not stupid. i know some stuff about nutrition, health...even pregnancy, labor, and delivery. i observed things about my pregnancy (important things) and let her convince me i was wrong. i let her convince me i was only following the antiquated protocol of evil obstetrics. i let myself emotionally and physically fall to shit...i mean, i had prenatal care; everything was going to be fine in the end. she was checking all the important stuff, right? my only concern was not getting another c-section.
when i look back on it now, i can't believe how many ways i was neglected by my caregiver. i understand that her belief is that no intervention is best, the body knows what it's doing, everything will be fine...(like i think coggy said,) IN A PERFECTLY HEALTHY WOMAN. the signs were there. she never ever should have taken me on as a client. in trying to prove (i guess) that no matter what, you always get a baby when you let nature take it's course, she let my baby die. to quote my ob, she also put my life in danger. and you know what??? KNOWING I WASN'T A CANDIDATE WAS NOT MY JOB. IT WAS HERS.
so, was it just blindness? was it blindness to the fact that i wasn't a candidate because i wanted a homebirth so badly? i read all the studies on uterine rupture and felt my risk was minimal. i felt confident about having a vbac, even at home (i have a master's degree in public health, for the love of god; i know how to read medical literature). but the real problems were lurking underneath all of that; the real problem was that she treated everything else about my case the same exact way she would have any other run-of-the-mill perfectly healthy pregnant woman. AND IT WASN'T MY JOB TO KNOW I WASN'T.
it also scared the shit out of me to learn (after my baby was dead) that her back-up plan SUCKS. there was absolutely NOTHING in place...she has no doctor liaisons at the hospitals, and her "medical advisor" is such in name only. once i was in the ER with a dead baby in my belly, she had nothing else to offer...no referrals, no NOTHING. i fell into the lap of the ob on call, and i was fortunate enough to get a really, really caring one. if not? fuck me, i guess.
it's not like i would have expected her to continue my care. i know, with a full-term dead baby inside me, i was out of the scope of her practice. but HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT, what if i was in labor at home, and had a real, time-sensitive emergency??? i know that there are risks in homebirth, especially a vbac at home. the general rule is, no farther than 15 minutes from a hospital. no problem, i'm 10. but...and this is a huge BUT...once you get there, then what? the ultrasound tech on call lived an HOUR away. the ob on call was also sleeping in his bed. if anything went wrong during labor or delivery, we BOTH would have been dead.
i asked her about her backup plan a couple of weeks after i was no longer with child. she told me that what happens is she calls hospitals in the area to assess which is better staffed and then we transfer to the chosen hospital. is it me, or does that not seem good enough? and why in FUCK didn't i know about that while i was still pregnant?
so many questions. so many questions. the first answer, to me, is I MUST BE STUPID. i must be an ignorant, naive, daisies growing out of my head IDIOT. how could i risk so much, through blind ignorance, just because i wanted something a certain way? how could i trust my midwife, not ever having had the important conversations?
my genius of a therapist said a week ago, "doesn't the midwife remind you of your mother?"
it wasn't a pitch darkness to light brightness kind of lightbulb, but a slower, dimmer-switch kind of one that is increasing in brightness day by day. i felt comfortable being left to my own devices, felt comfortable being neglected, felt comfortable trusting someone so narcissistic, because that's what i'm accustomed to in a caregiver.
this whole thing is getting bigger and bigger, like a wet stain on a california king sized bedsheet. my baby died, and now i'm finding out i have no fucking idea who i was. my baby died, and now i'm finding out i had no idea who everyone else is either. having a dead baby is becoming the easiest part of this whole mess to figure out...she was here, she died, i love her and wish so fucking bad she was here, but she's not. but the rest? HOLY SHIT. i'm just gonna keep going, day by day, until the wet circle stops growing (maybe never).
someone said (maybe kalakly) that even her name means "messenger." still not buying anything remotely resembling *this happened for a reason* but i do know that having her is changing my life. my job, at this point, is to rise up and live it.
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Oh man, I feel for you so much. You're absolutely right, it's NOT your job. Because people get very sucked into the idea that what they're doing MUST WORK (whether it be cancer treatment, or back pain, or childbirth), and it is the responsibility of the caregiver to say, You know? I know you want this very very badly. But my limitations are x, y, and z, and given what happened in the past, and what you're experiencing now, I believe it's best you go see someone else. It takes a big person to admit that, because it takes them recognizing that homebirth, homeopathy, chiropracticy, whatever their ideology is, WILL NOT BE ENOUGH in certain circumstances.
I had a run-in with a woman in my extremely crunchy neck of the woods (homebirth here probably outnumbers hospital, really) who poo-poo'd my AMNIO (really, everything will be fine!) and my choice of birth hospital (big with many experts over her small and cozy just get 'em out naturally with nary a problem), and you know, I haven't spoken to her but I'm willing to bet she blames my care. You can't win, here. I had everything at my disposal, and we still didn't know.
"having a dead baby is becoming the easiest part of this whole mess to figure out...she was here, she died"
Ain't that the truth.
I found you yesterday through links from "a little pregnant" to "i won't fear love" and now here. I read every word and want to say 2 things.
1. I am so very very sorry for what you have gone through and continue to go through.
2. You are not fat.
They say hindsight is 20/20, and it's true. It's always easier to see how things happened after you know the ending. But please, don't blame yourself for not knowing -- you were doing the best you could at the time. And you're doing now what needs to be done: learning from the past and using it to make better decision for the next time.
We want to believe we know our bodies and its capabilities better than anyone. We want to believe we can wish our way to a result we desire. We want to believe that nothing bad will happen to us. We want to believe that those we entrust with the care of our bodies, the care of our babies, would never, ever, do anything to harm us.
No one wants to believe they could ever possibly have a dead baby. No one wants to believe that someone could so blatently disregard a known standard of care. That someone would ever be capable of mismanaging the care of a baby that it would actually cause that baby to die.
Who would ever believe those things could happen? How could you possibly, ever, in a million years, ever have known that she would do this? You TRUSTED her. She was the supossed 'expert' not you. There is NO WAY you can ever be at all responsible for what SHE DID, or in her case, what SHE DID NOT DO.
You were trying to do what you thought was right for you. SHe ws trying to do what was easy for her and would keep you as a patient. That's on HER, not you. Regardless of what brought you to her, what similarities she had with your mom, what relationship/power/control issues reared their ugly heads in your decision to trust her, SHE is the one with a duty of care owed you.
I get why you want to look at the caregiver aspect of it, but always, always remember, no matter what brought you to her, she is the one who fucked up you and Paige. Not you. She is the one who had to know better, not you. Losing Paige, that is not on you. It's ALL her.
I'm mystified how the midwife didn't seem to even consider the possibility of things going very, very wrong. I mean, most pregnancies work out just fine, but, as we all have found out, a certain percentage of them, well, don't. I wonder if she's changed her back-up "plan" (in quotation marks because it really wasn't much of a plan) now.
The mind truly boggles. I don't understand where such arrogance comes from. Working with vulnerable people, with babies in the statistically most dangerous part of their existence for crying out loud, how could someone be so freaking reckless and arrogant? Let me repeat what you and everyone else has said-- it wasn't on you to know, and she did so very wrong by you there aren't even words.
As for Paige changing your life? I think all our children change our lives. It's a cliche society is very comfortable with when the subject is live babies, but not so much for the dead ones. What? Society? Inconsistent? Impossible!
I don't think you can blame yourself at all. We are all trained to believe everything from the "expert" of whatever variety that we have guiding us through these things. Anyone else would have done the same.
That being said, you should definitely kick her in the shins if you see her again. Physical violence is rarely called for, but here it really is.
I think that your midwife was a complete idiot. And I'm so damn sorry about that.
I've had a really hard time with this. My husband has it. He keeps saying that it was my OB's responsibility to followup on the bleeding I had given my history. I just let him tell me it was okay adn that I was overreacting. It was his responsiblity to realize I was leaking amniotic fluid and not just blow me off and tell me a lot of women get confused.
Great now I'm mad again.
You are so right! The oh fuck moment is, if I am this person now, who the fuck was I then? And how I thought the world worked ...doesn't ..now what?
I guess I'm a little confused by the specifics about P@ige's death and are you thinking it could have been prevented? Did she die during labor? Or is it that you would have had a c-section a week earlier and she would have been alive?
So many what-if's to resolve.
My doctor asked me 1.5 weeks before my due date if I wanted to be induced because she was going to a conference that weekend.....there was no reason to, so I said No, I'll wait. That conversation used to haunt me!
the more details i hear the angrier i get on your behalf. you did everything right and still got screwed. and it sounds like you've been getting screwed (your mother) for years. it just pisses me off.
why can't people just be what they are supposed to be?
i wish i had something helpful to add.
You are remarkable and don't ever forget that.
oh god, i really feel your hurt. I am having lots of WHAT IF moments regarding Noah and I too feel bloody stupid. Its a horrible feeling.
Somewhere along the lines, we learn that we should just trust doctors and medical care people. For most people, they never learn anything different. For people like us, we become the difficult patient after shit like this. I am not sure if it's because of the care (or lack thereof) you received from your mother, I feel like society teaches us this trust. But all things contribute, so her treatment of you certainly didn't help. It probably taught you not to speak up for yourself, because really, what was the use? (just like your midwife). People, especially medical professionals, need to stop sometimes and admit that they do not have all the answers and seek help.
I wish I had trusted my instincts and pushed more too. I wish what I loved about my OB - that he was laid back - wasn't something I regret now. I was not a normal pregnant woman and should have never been treated as such. So many conversations with him replay in my head, followed by What IF!?
I am so sorry I have not been checking in here lately. This is such a familiar conversation I've had with myself...the "why didn't I demand better care?" talk. It's so difficult. We want to blame ourselves and punish ourselves because we feel like we have failed in our most important job--protecting our children. But you didn't fail P@ige. You did the best you could with the experiences and information you had at the time. Would you go back and change it? Of course you would. Did you ever do anything with the intention of harming your baby? Of course you didn't. You are blameless. And you are not a bad person for having had dreams of how you wanted this birth to be. Even those of us who have had infertility or losses are allowed to dream once in awhile, right?
I think that's a really interesting connection between the midwife and your mother. Worth exploring, probably. I also don't buy the "this happened for a reason" thing...but I do believe that when terrible things happen, sometimes all we have left to do is to gather what's valuable from it as a way to salvage something.
It wasn't your job. You were failed by someone you trusted at the time. I'm so sorry.
I don't know the protocol here, if I can tell you stories about myself, since it was a positive outcome - or if I shouldn't. Tell you what, I'll tell and you can either tell me to fuck off or that I should keep it to myself or whatever.
When I was 39 weeks, I went in for my normal weekly with my OB. I actually had been put on bedrest 2 weeks prior due to high blood pressure and I was getting 2 NST and u/s per week to ensure everything on the inside was okay too. On a thursday, my OB suddenly told me I was to go to hospital tonight and he'd induce the next day. I SO didn't want an induction, I wanted it all naturally too. When asking why, he said ~"Your placenta is becoming rapidly past mature. It could rupture without you knowing it and by the time you'd get to the hospital, it would be too late". Even though I took his advice and got everything done, it still didn't strike me how serious this really was until reading your post just right now.
I just don't know what to say about that midwife. I'm so sorry you were on the other side of the statistics.
Reading about how she failed you, makes me angry too. It was her job to look after you...and it makes me livid that she didn't do her job. At all. You aren't to blame. Not even a tiny bit.
Oh.... I have dealt with very similar feelings regarding my OB. I have so many regrets that I didn't see a perinatologist for my twin pregnancy. I let me OB convince me that given my history I was an excellent candidate to carry twins. He never once suggested I see a specialist. And yet, he also never treated me any differently than he would have treated a woman carrying one baby. I now know that wasn't right. And, maybe, with the right extra care... things would have been different.
And yet, for a very long time... well, right up until this very moment. I have never been able to blame him for anything. In fact, he is still my OB. But after my last appointment I came home and told my husband, "I don't think I can see him anymore." And he answered, "It's about time. I don't know why you have stayed with him." I still can't bring myself to actually blame him, but maybe I will finally give myself permission to be mad at him.
All of this is a long way of telling you that I admire your anger and ability to place the blame right where it belongs. You are right. It was NOT your job. And, you have given me the courage to start doing the same thing. Thank you.
(I'm still at work so I can't email a reply - but wanted to answer your comment. The guy had my chart memorized. He knew details I hadn't bothered to remember so definitely relevant.)
I'm not sure what else I can even add. The idea that babies used to die all the time because the right tests and technology did not exist is all I can think about. And this woman, your midwife, had access to all of this. Your GD could have been accurately diagnosed and treated. P@ige did not have to die. I don't even know how this woman sleeps peacefully at night. How she even took you on as a client KNOWING you had risk factors at all is shocking to me. Does it come down to money? I'm sorry I don't know the system there (I don't really know the system here either as I've never used a midwife here). I don't know, charmed. I don't even know what to say.
As for this experience changing your life, I get that. I hope you do great things for P@ige. Do you mind if I say that? XO.
it is astounding that she had no real back-up plan, no connections, no nothing. it takes a great deal of strength to recognize your limitations, as tash said, and it's pretty f'd up that she couldn't even consider this.
as kalakly said, we want to believe so badly. who would think such a thing could happen? you're right, that was HER job, not yours. so sorry you have to deal with all this now. ~luna
I don't know what to say, it's horrifying considering all the reasons why the baby might have died. I think the worst part of miscarriage and stillbirth is wondering if you had just done something different maybe the baby wouldn't have died.. Since I lost Sophie I've been asking myself the same thing. Could I have done something differently that would have kept her alive? I think you're doing the right thing taking legal action here, she shouldn't be allowed to continue practice if she's putting women at risk.
You are not responsible for your own medical care, and you had no way of knowing what would happen, and no way of knowing that your midwife should've done things differently.
You need to forgive yourself hon. I hope you find peace. Really.
Unfortunately there are some people out there that should have the licences or whatever taken away. I mean you assume that these people have your best interest at hand, but really when it comes down to it, they all just wanna make a buck.
How you were raised has a huge deal to do with the kind of people that you trust, you look for something familiar to what you are used to, it's the "norm" for you, unfortunately it takes a lot of work to figure this all out.
I have an N mother as well. What fun.
And I am so very sorry for your loss.
xoxoxoxoxo
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