Healing My Relationship With The Conventional Medical System - Part 2, Childbirth
Teaching Yoga to MDs and others in Healthcare
When I became pregnant with my first daughter (I never knew the sex of any of my 4 daughters before they were born) I believed I was in the care of the best OB/GYN group in Miami. My GYN had come highly recommended by a mentor and romantic partner of mine before I was married. I encountered an aura of excellence each time I had a visit with my debonaire MD and his colleagues. The office ran like clockwork, was clean and aesthetically appealing. It never occurred to me that I was not in the absolute best medical practice in Miami. I had met all the MDs that attend births and felt a rapport with each one. I felt safe.
I read the typical birthing books like What To Expect When You’re Expecting, which was my main pregnancy/birthing reference book. I also read lots of Mothering and Baby Magazines. I felt very comfortable and informed about giving birth. I had no fears or doubts. I was excited to meet my firstborn and finally become a mother at age 30! This was a lifelong dream of mine, since I was prepubescent. I used to help my maternal grandmother take care of my younger cousins when I was a preteen. I adored caring for babies and still do. I babysit for several of my neighbors when they want to go out.
I loved being pregnant after the first few weeks, which was a bit challenging due to all the changes taking place in my body. At first, I thought I had a stomach flu and felt so uncomfortable, that I gave myself an enema (TMI). After the first few weeks it was smooth sailing with a hardy appetite and plenty of energy. I was still working as an office manager and continued to work through my 8th month. I then stopped working and starting nesting to prepare my home for the baby. I recall taking long afternoon naps and preparing elaborate meals for my husband and I every night for dinner. I had too much time on my hands, since I was no longer working a full-time job and had no baby to care for yet.
One Friday the 3rd week in February 1990, Hilda, my mother’s amazing Cuban house cleaner I hired to clean my home, looked at me and declared that I’d be giving birth that weekend. She said she could tell by my face. My due date was March 4th and we were in the last week of February, but after eating at a Mexican restaurant with my then husband, a dear friend and her husband, I started having what I thought were contractions in the movie theater we went to after dinner. I also thought it could have been the Mexican food. I was advised to eat spicy food to get my labor going, something I would later come to regret while in labor.
After the theater, we arrived at home and I continued having contractions, so I thought I was in labor. They were Braxton Hicks contractions that start to prepare the uterus for birth. I waited a while and then started packing a bag for the hospital. I was so excited and thought I was officially in labor. After an hour of contractions, I decided it was time to go the hospital. Once we arrived and filled out the paperwork, I was taken to a room to start laboring. The nurses checked my cervix and I was only 1cm dilated but one of my OB’s came in to see how I was progressing and instructed the labor nurse to PIT me. If I recall correctly, they had an emergency C-section to tend to and I guess they were short on time because I later learned that giving Pitocin when only 1cm dilated is medically contraindicated, unless there is an emergency or you are past your due date. There was no emergency and I was about a week early from my due date (which is always an estimate). I was neither consulted about whether or not I wanted this intervention nor told about the many dangers this drug that is used to induce labor causes. I had always envisioned a natural birth without any medications. I had prepared my body to give birth, physically, mentally and spiritually.
Once the Pitocin kicked in, I felt such violent contractions that I almost jumped off the hospital bed I was sitting on. The contractions were that overwhelming and overpowering! Before I knew it the nurses were scrambling around the room with all kinds of monitors, saying that the baby was in fetal distress and that they needed to put an internal monitor into her scalp. I was in such emotional and physical distress from how I was feeling from the abnormally strong contractions that I later learned can rupture the uterus, even killing both the baby and the mother, that I didn’t question what they were about to do to my firstborn.
I am so angry writing these words. This situation was purely the result of medical error, actually medical malpractice, and could have ended tragically for my firstborn, me, or both of us. We were both injured as a result of this medically contraindicted intervention. I had terrible headaches and full length spinal backaches for more than two years after giving birth and my firstborn daughter was later found to have an AVM, which they claimed was genetic, like they do when they want to cover up their medical mistakes. Two and a half decades later, when my firstborn daughter was diagnosed with an AVM, I read that babies in Israel given Pitocin often had brain injuries and even hemorrhages in their eyes! When I stated this to the top Neurologists at Jackson Memorial, a University of Miami hospital, the blood drained from their faces. I mentioned it to several them. Here’s some information on the dangers of Pitocin. I had done my research to learn this. I am also incredibly intuitive and had the visceral reaction that they were lying. They couldn’t even look me straight in the eyes and one walked out of the room. I also said this to the top AVM specialist in the world as well as to his assistant when we took our daughter to Pittsburgh to have a procedure done for the AVM. The expert AVM MD denied it and walked out of the room. I wonder how they sleep at night knowing all the harm they cause their patients.
They then prepared me for an epidural to temper the horrendous effects of the Pitocin and sent my husband (former) out of the room. This is total BS, and I would not recommend it to any couple. They told him it would be about 15 minutes. Why would he have to leave? In case they killed me by placing the needle in the wrong part of my spine? There are also risks with epidurals. You can read about them here. They ended up giving me several epidurals and taking much longer than 15 minutes as they had told my now former husband. He said it was about 45 minutes before they let him back into the room. Once I had the epidurals I felt paralyzed from the waist down. I told them I had zero sensations in my pelvis and legs.
The placed me on my back, the most dangerous position for giving birth because it constricts blood vessels that can restrict blood and oxygen to mother and baby, and then told me I needed to start pushing. I couldn’t believe their words! I felt nothing, so there was no way I could push something I could not feel! They then instructed me to push with my upper body, which ended up blowing my face up like a ballon and ruptured several surface blood vessels. I looked monstrous. At one point they decided I needed an episiotomy, a barbaric practice that entails cutting a woman like a chicken, from the vagina to the anus. They have to anesthetize the area to do this, so more needles and medication in mine and my baby’s system. I was distraught throughout the entire ordeal at this point. I had family members waiting to see me and the baby in the hospital waiting room and I asked my then husband to please send them home. At this point I was crying and feeling horrible from all the drugs and interventions. Without exaggeration, I felt like I was dying. I also felt violated, physically and emotionally abused, and butchered, because I was!
After 15 hours of brutal laboring with multiple toxic interventions, my first daughter was finally born. I was surrounded by 2 of my MDs who were cheering me on, telling me what a champ I was and what a great job I had done. It was the worst ordeal I have ever experienced and instead of feeling joy and an immediate desire to bond with my firstborn daughter, I was barely able to enjoy her. She was crying and in so much distress that they came and took her away so I could rest. In the meantime, my breasts were engorging with the first milk letdown, which made them rock hard so she could not suckle. They later brought her back with a pacifier in her mouth and told me they had given her some sugar water to calm her down. They never asked for my permission to do this and who knows what else they did to her. I will tell you that these interventions they do to mother and baby, greatly impair the birthing and bonding experience, which is one of the most important first experiences for both mother and baby. Hospitals ruin a natural and organic experience that has taken place for 5000 years. It is completely counterintuitive and done on purpose. Watch the documentary The Business of Being Born, if you doubt me.
The breastfeeding became incredibly difficult because they had introduced my daughter to a bottle first. My breasts were in horrific pain as was my perineum from the episiotomy and I had what felt like a migraine and massive nasal congestion, from the medications. It was one of the most difficult nights of my life. I asked for some painkiller and it took them hours to bring me two Tylenol. They refused to give me anything to help with my congestion, so I had to mouth breathe. A horrendous experience all around, from start to finish. To add insult to injury, I was famished and the nurses were too busy to bring me food, and my then husband left me in the hospital alone and went home to sleep. So after all I had been through, I had to force myself to go find a cafeteria with something to eat. I could barely walk. A traumatic occurrence to say the least.
The breast and perineum pain lasted for close to a month once I got home. I also had severe night sweats and would have to change my pajamas once or twice per night. I believe the medical interventions exacerbated the night sweats because this did not happen with my 3 subsequent drugless births. After a month at home, I finally started to feel relief from the birth and started to greatly enjoy my baby daughter.
I vowed after that birth ordeal, that no MD would ever touch me or my babies again! I was ready to birth on my own if need be and intuitively knew that what they did not only endangered me and my baby, but was the antithesis of what birth is supposed to be like. I ended up having 3 more daughters, without MDs or medications. With the 2nd daughter I squatted in the shower while washing my waist length hair and when I emerged, I was already 9cm. dilated! Water is a wonderful gift during labor. The nurse midwife then ruined the labor by not allowing me to have the baby the way my body was intuitively guiding me to do. She put my legs in stirrups and broke my water which resulted in agonizing pain and also not ideal. At least no MD ever entered the room, because they were NOT needed! My last two daughters were born at home with lay midwives and zero interventions. I was close to 41 when I gave birth to the youngest and played competitive club tennis until I was 8 months pregnant.
My sincere desire is that no woman or infant ever have to experience the harrowing ordeal I went through with my first birth. I completed a Pregnancy Health Coaching certification with the Dr. Sears Institute last year as well as several prenatal and postnatal yoga trainings. For more information on my passion to protect and guide women wholistically from preconception to postpartum, you can visit my website www.bloomwellnourished.com
My 4 birth stories are in a Prenatal Yoga book by Sue Elkind, an advanced yoga teacher that also teaches prenatal yoga. I lost my copy when the home I had it in developed a serious mold issue. I need to order a new copy. My 3rd home-birth story was also published on the MindBodyGreen website a few years ago when I submitted it.
Part 3 coming soon.
What a story Miriam. ONE more thing providing evidence of allopathic healthcare's harm to women; implications for everyone. Makes me angry too hearing about this Pitocin and how it was used so cavalierly for the MD's convenience.
I am glad to hear your children ended up normal despite the fools in white smocks.
I enjoyed reading this Myriam. It took me back to my first pregnancy 30 years ago. My son turns 30 in a few months. Not the same challenges as you, but problems arose. I ended up with a C-section- my son was transverse. My MD told me my uterus was heart shaped- which caused my son to lie in the only position he could- as if in a hammock! a couple years later it was found I actually had a septum interfering with the shape of my uterus. That contributed to 2 subsequent pregnancy losses and my having the septum resected. My first born was so fortunate to have made it in the situation he was in and a few early complications. My 2nd born pregnancy experiences were much more disheartening and frustrating. Despite the uterine repair, he was breach and pretty "stuck", so another C-section. (Both sons were 8#11 oz!)I recall feeling so alone during that chapter of my life. So many scary moments. I so cherish the time with my first born solo during those tough times, and support groups! Bless you for sharing your challenges and learning through your experience. Hugs!