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As a not-wealthy woman living in the 21st century, I often find that some people think I simply don’t count my blessings enough. After all, I can work and own property and vote. I don’t have to wear a burkha. My husband is not my owner, and I can divorce him if I want, or charge him with a crime if he beats me. And of course I’m grateful for all that. So much so that the whole premise of the Meg Ryan movie, Kate & Leopold, filled me with rage. I mean, Meg Ryan kind of has that effect on me anyway, but any woman with half a brain would hopefully know that traveling back in time for good would not only mean becoming chattel again, but also losing out on things like penicillin and vaccinations that let you live to a nice old age. Hope Kate never got breast cancer.

Anyway, yes. I am grateful to be living when and where I do. Hooray for progress! But you see, my right to vote is not a “gift” given to me by my government or the patriarchy or humanity in general. It is my right, which I deserve, as a human being. At least as much as any human being deserves that right. And when I am grateful, it is in the “phew! dodged that bullet!” sense, not the “thank you, o great male overlords, for your benificence” sense. It’s easy to confuse the two.

You see, it’s not uncommon for a woman to complain that, say, she gets whistled at and threatened by jerkwads on the street, and then to be told “Hey, at least you don’t live in Afghanistan!” Well, yes, but isnt’ that setting the bar a little low, fellas?

The thing is, the struggle for equality isn’t finished yet. We’ve made progress, but there’s still a lot that needs fixing in the ways we treat and perceive men and women in this culture (or in any culture on this planet). Several thousand years of oppression aren’t going to vanish in a few decades. Old destructive ways of thinking take time to root out. And it’s the job of people who believe in equality to keep that process going. We don’t have time to sit around marveling at how good we have it compared to great-grandma; we have work to do so that our great-grandchildren will be better off than we are.

What I hate about the constant exhortations to be glad I don’t live under the Taliban is that there is also a sort of implied threat. The threat that if you keep complaining, hey, you just might lose the rights you already have. It’s a diversionary tactic, designed to make you think that the rights you have now are fragile and could be easily lost, making you like Those People, and you don’t want that. Better not rock the boat!

But sometimes, the shit needs stirring. No matter how much it annoys people or makes you look ungrateful, sometimes you have to keep reminding people that hey, the world still contains injustice and suckitude, and somebody needs to do something about it. Or we might lose the ground we’ve already gained.

I’m having my normal Sunday night insomnia…I can never sleep Sunday night, even if I’m not working the next day. Leftover from years of late nights rushing to complete school assignments, maybe.

Anyway, I am spending the time crusing around the internet, and started remembering how I would spend similar nights when I was pregnant Googling “birth story”. And how I would never read the c-section ones, out of superstition (oh the irony). Or the medical-emergency ones. Always the happy ones, about homebirths or hospital births that went well and everyone was healthy. Though I do remember always finding more homebirth stories than hospital birth stories. That may just mean homebirthers are more avid bloggers though.

I can smile at myself now, that person looking so hard for reassurance that it was all going to be ok. I had no one to talk to who knew my experience…a few online people, but no one close to me. I know I blogged about that at the time, and it helped, but still. I was too alone. It made me vulnerable, and it got me in trouble. Maybe I’d do better now, having done it before, but really, I’d scramble like mad to get more support around me if I had to do it again. And I’d tell any woman who asked me, don’t do this alone if you have any alternative. A laboring woman needs to be able to be relaxed and confident and feel safe, and she needs her surroundings to be comforting and her supporters to be there to make that happen.

The logical support for a laboring woman is her mother, but I belong to a generation of women whose mothers had the twilight sleep births, the ones where they knocked you out and dragged out the baby (leaving marks on both in the process) and you don’t remember anything about it. What advice could my mother give me when she had nothing to remember of her own births? She was robbed, and by extension so was I, by a medical establishment that saw itself as the white knight rescuing women from pain, and not overly careful about the side effects.

But I’ve said all that before.

Anyway, I found myself Googling “birth story” again, but then surfing elsewhere. That information doesn’t apply to me right now, and might never again. I feel the tug of wanting another baby pretty often, and if circumstances were better, I might follow it through. But they’re not, right now, and I don’t want to put any more strain on us or on the ones who are helping us get through this period. And this period may last longer than the time I have left to try again. The family I already have has to come first.

It’s hard to remember the person I was just six months ago, so full of hope and fear. No, not fear, terror. I still can’t read those blog entries yet, knowing what happened to her, the thing she feared would happen, and a few more things besides. I’m safe now on the other side, scarred but alive, but that doesn’t mean I can go back and relive it all in detail. I have to choose what memories I can stand to look at on any given day. But I’m so grateful to have those entries there anyway, because I will need to weave all of what happened into my life at some point. It’s the only way to keep it from taking me over.

Just thought I’d share it with ya’ll. I’m sending it out Monday. It seems fitting that I had to get up at 5am to write this…seems like that’s the time of day I wake up to deal with ALL my birth issues…

Park Slope Midwives
(address)

Dear (names);

It’s been just about six months since my son was born at Park Slope Methodist. He’s healthy, and I’m grateful for that, as any mother would be. But every time I think of his birth, I remain troubled and sad, and that’s a shame. I will have a difficult story to tell him when he’s old enough to ask. Because what should have been a joyous beginning to his life was marked by a tremendous amount of trauma, depression, and pain for me, and that can never be changed.

When I came to your clinic, it was after leaving my original OBGYN because he was so dictatorial and unsympathetic to my wish for a natural, drug free birth. I chose midwives because I believed natural childbirth was part of their mission. And in my appointments with you, that’s an idea I repeated several times.

From what I’ve learned since, my mistake was not in believing it was possible to have that kind of birth with your practice–if my birth had been in a more “acceptable” range. If I had not gone past my accepted due date, if I had been able to labor quickly enough.

My mistake was in believing that I would have your support and help with the birth I wanted once I had left that acceptable range. It was as if a switch had flipped–I went past my due date, and suddenly Pitocin was mandatory. Even though, the morning I was due to be induced, my water broke before I got there. You should have sent me home, and let me labor as long as I could. You should have honored my requests to eat and drink to keep up my strength, and to have the Pitocin either delayed completely or turned down so I could go and use the shower to manage my pain. I asked for all these things, and was denied. Consequently, when I did run out of strength to handle the pain, weak, hungry, and discouraged, it was inevitable that I need an epidural. And not surprising that I ended up with a c-section.

As I told my husband, I might have been better off staying with my OBGYN. At least I would have had no illusions about what awaited me.

And it was not simply the fact that I ended up with a c-section. They are a useful tool for saving lives. It’s possible I would have needed one no matter how I labored. But I will never know for sure if it was necessary, or simply the outcome of the lack of support I received in birth. Except for examinations, I don’t think the two midwives (names) who were with me touched me much at all. I needed someone to encourage me through that pain and fear, to be in my face, to just believe in me. Instead I felt abandoned. I had my husband and doula, but it was the midwives I really looked to, the professionals who had been through most of my pregnancy with me. And you guys just stood there, watching me, most of the time, with concerned frowns. Do you know how unnerving that was? It gave me the impression that I was a problem case, that you doubted my ability to do this. And being a first time mom, it wasn’t like I wasn’t terrified already. You didn’t believe in me, and so I didn’t believe in myself. And so I gave up sooner.

Of course, I take responsibility for being so timid, so worried about making you mad that I came to the hospital before I wanted to. I didn’t know about EMTALA then, didn’t know my rights, didn’t really believe the warnings I’d heard about how even having a midwife didn’t change the way hospitals pressure laboring women. But then, you let them take advantage of my fear. What first time mom isn’t afraid and extremely suggestible to interventions?

The next thing that troubles me is why you are affiliated with this hospital–especially if my postpartum experience is any indication of its quality. Because I have never been treated as badly as I was there. Once I went into the c-section, things went downhill rapidly.The surgeon attempted 2 times to start cutting on me before I was fully numb. It was only my screams and my husband’s that made him stop. Perhaps I was making him late for his golf game.

At any rate, as they pulled my baby out, after such a frightening labor and a terrifying beginning, I really thought I was going to die. I know that c-sections do not have to be that way! I was treated like a piece of meat and barely spoken to. Once Nathan was born, they barely let me see him and I never got to put him to my breast. It was hours before I did see him and they had given him a bottle of sugar water in the meantime. My husband valiantly tried to stop them, and nearly got into a physical altercation when they would not listen to our wishes for even a few precious moments with our son. What kind of a hospital is that??

And then of course the no-visitors policy. What kind of system expects an exhausted mother who’s just had major abdominal surgery to care for and struggle with breastfeeding a newborn? Why was I expected to haul myself out of bed alone and lift my baby to my breast and struggle to get him to latch on when I could barely sit up?? By the time I could have called a nurse, the baby would have been so distressed he wouldn’t have been able to eat.

My milk never did come in. Exactly two weeks postpartum, I experienced sudden unexplained hemorrhaging that put me in the hospital. Once again, as they put me in the ambulance, I believed I was going to die. I think that surgeon, the one who was in such a hurry to carve me up, didn’t get all of the placenta out, and my body had to finish the job itself.

And when I couldn’t breastfeed my son on top of all that, the intense depression I suffered is hardly just a matter of hormones. It wasn’t just PPD. It was also post-traumatic stress. When you offered me anti-depressants, I refused–mostly because I felt like you were just trying to shut me up. I was angry (still am) and I didn’t trust your practice anymore. I preferred to suffer in my depression than accept any help from the people I believed were part of the cause of it.

Again, my experience cannot be unique–you have to have known. Why would you affiliate yourself with them? And even if you felt you had to, why would you not prepare your clients for what awaited them, or help them fight for a better experience? I have to assume the answer is money. And that’s a damn shame too.

When I expressed some of my feelings to you (the ones that I could bear to even talk about) I was basically patted on the head, told brightly that I could VBAC, maybe even homebirth, next time, and that I should of course write the hospital a letter.

Now that was just insult to injury. First of all, you undoubtedly know that many hospitals make it very hard to VBAC. That there are pitifully few homebirth midwives, especially for VBACs. And that unless I was actually suing, that stupid hospital most probably won’t change a thing. Why should they, when they’ve got people like you to keep funneling them clients??

The system is broken. And I don’t expect your practice to fix it, but I do expect you to care enough about your patients to help them fight it in whatever ways they can. As it is, I felt like just another insurance check.

I still have occasional bleeding, by the way. I still have numbness and pain in my scar. And I still know that the hemorrhage I experienced two weeks postpartum was caused by my rushed c-section. If I ever attempt birth again, I will not only have to worry about normal complications but about additional dangers caused by adhesions and my scar and god forbid, anything else that surgeon may have damaged.

I’m sorry to have to have written this letter. I’m even sorrier that I’m cynical enough to think it won’t have any effect. But I’m writing it for myself, not for you. I hope that your practice can become part of the solution instead of part of the problem someday.

Sincerely,
(my name)

It’s shorter than I originally intended, but I didn’t want to give them an excuse to skim it (supposing they even give it much of a read). If, as I expect, I get an ass-covering condolence letter from them (expressing regret, explaining why they couldn’t possibly have acted differently, possibly even casting some doubt on my own actions during labor) I will retype it and share it here with all ya’ll. For posterity.

thanks for all the support…so strange that it took me six months to be able to write this. But I had to be healed enough to look at it head on. Not that I’m not writing this with tears running down my face, of course.

stupid midwives.

Next up: the hospital from hell. That’ll be even more fun.

“Why aren’t women just more sensible?” he asked in frustration. “I mean, she had to know she shouldn’t have been in that place, doing what she was doing, dressed like that. ”

LADIES NIGHT!! Free drinks till 10!

“Hey, I’M not a rapist. Why are you so suspicious of men? I’m a nice guy!! It’s not fair to make me have to be so careful because other men have been such dicks.”

C’mon dude! Don’t be a pussy! You know you want a piece of that! Go over and get it! Don’t you have any balls?

“I think ‘feminism’ is too narrow. It sounds like you think women should be better than men. Why not be into ‘humanism’? You know, more men would get on board with equality if you feminists weren’t so shrill.”

Hey ladies, c’mon in! We’re having a Hot Bikini contest–win 500 bucks!

“Hey baby, shake that fine ass for me! Oh, come on, you know you want some. What’s the matter bitch–you a lesbian? Maybe you just need a good fuck!”

Hospitals employ a lot of women and that tends to attract, well, predators. That’s why we have a service to take you to your car. It’s reduced assaults by 90% since it was instituted.

“Yeah, her presentation was ok. She’s hot too. I’d hit it.”

Our plastic surgeons can empower you to reach your dreams, by giving you the body you’ve always wanted!

“Everybody knows that women can get sex whenever they want. Even ugly women can get laid if they find a guy desperate enough. Men have it much worse.”

When you’re out at night, keep your eyes on your drinks at all times. “I must’ve looked away for just a minute,” says Laura S. “After I took a drink, I started to feel woozy. Then nothing. I woke up the next day naked in that guy’s apartment. I was ashamed to tell anyone I’d been so stupid. But he seemed nice, you know?”

“God, she’s such a slut. She’ll sleep with anyone.”

I think feminism has stopped being useful. Things are much better for women now. They don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore.

*all quotes true, and heard or read by me.

As I might have mentioned, I just spent a few weeks working for a hospital’s nursing education department. The last few days I was there was the time of the hospital’s skills fair. Basically, nurses, techs, and some secretaries had to come in and demonstrate that they knew basic hospital policy and whatever techniques applied to them (reading EKGs, etc.) by taking a multiple choice test. That we let them retake if they failed. And they could consult with each other to figure out answers. So it was dead easy, which didn’t stop everyone from complaining about it.

But anyway, while manning the sign-in table, I overheard a conversation between two nurses that went something like this:

Nurse A: My friend Loretta just got back from rock climbing on vacation and she had a massive hematoma right over her hip! She didn’t want to go to the doctor! She fell right down the cliff!

Nurse B: She has to go in, because (rattles off a list of medical complications that Loretta could suffer but that I can’t remember. Basically, internal bleeding was involved and serious injury..possibly death). With an injury like that, you have to go in.

Nurse A: I told her that, but she says she doesn’t have health insurance.

(pause in conversation)

Nurse B: Well, I bet it’s just getting worse if she just treating it with ice and Tylenol.

Now, that pause, that very significant pause, caught my attention. Because it illustrates in a few awkward moments the state of healthcare in the U.S. and what it’s costing us. These two nurses knew that the woman in question might die from her injuries, or suffer other complications. But when faced with the reality–that she had no money for treatment–they didn’t know what to say.

The obvious thing to say would be “well that’s why we need some national fucking healthcare.” But nurses, who you would think would know this as well as anyone, are just as scared to say it because it’s politically unpopular. National healthcare still equals Communism, still is somehow aligned with Bad Things. For some reason, using your taxes to start wars of convenience is ok, but using them to give all U.S. citizens access to basic healthcare is not. Much better to let us go bankrupt giving our cash to insurance companies that are free to refuse us treatment, or drop our coverage, whenever they want.

Well, obviously, I’m a liberal, and if you think the preceding paragraph is nonsensical, you’re not going to listen to me. That’s fine. So let’s talk numbers. Let’s talk a recent study that showed that even controlling for as many factors as possible, our lack of national healthcare shortens our lives and makes us sicker than those of citizens in other industrialized nations. Oh, and it’s costing us more too. (via Washington Monthly; emphasis added).

The researchers studied health outcomes in both countries and controlled for age by comparing only people aged 55-64. They controlled for race by studying only non-Hispanic whites. They controlled for obesity. They controlled for income. They controlled for education. They controlled for everything they could think of. Here’s what they found:

So here’s the deal: under the British system, you don’t have to worry about which doctors your HMO allows you to see. You don’t have to worry about losing coverage if you get laid off. You don’t have to worry about being unable to get a new job because you have a pre-existing condition. You don’t have to worry about being bankrupted if you contract a serious chronic illness. And large corporations don’t have to worry about going out of business because of spiraling healthcare obligations.

So there it is. It helps more people, for less money out of those people’s pockets (I won’t dispute the fact that it will take money out of the insurance industry’s pockets. Though I will bet you that they find a way to survive). It will even help businesses like GM which are going bankrupt due to making crappy cars, but also because they can’t afford their employee healthcare benefits. It will help small businesses which can’t afford employee healthcare and thus can’t attract good people. It will increase entrepreneurship, as people who have great ideas can go ahead and start up new businesses instead of staying where they are so their kids can afford to go to the doctor. It will increase personal freedom, as people who stay in crappy soulless jobs can now take a chance doing what they love without worrying about losing their coverage.

It’s not perfect, it’s not without problems, but it’s better than what we have, and cheaper. Since I was talking about GM earlier, let’s put it this way: our current system is a crappy, polluting, gas-guzzling, chrome-laden beater that requires massive amounts of oil and still tends to crap out and leave you stranded on the roadside. National healthcare, if we aren’t complete morons about it, can be like a Honda; dependable, not glamorous, maybe not as sexy as we’d like, but cheaper, and it gets you where you need to go almost every time.

Back in the 70s, there was a massive outcry about buying Japanese, just like there is an outcry today about creating national healthcare. It’s unpatriotic, say opponents. Not the American way. But 30 years later, how many of us drive fuel-efficient foreign cars and prefer it?

No matter what the diehards say, a few years of even the most basic healthcare coverage would make converts of most Americans, because rhetoric would give way to reality. And once we had it, we’d never give it up again. The insurance companies know this, and the politicians in their pocket know it too. That’s why they’re howling so loudly. After all, they can afford all the healthcare they need. They will never have to debate whether to pay rent or take their child to the ER, or whether to let a massive hematoma go untreated. The rest of us live in a different reality. And we’ve gotten so used to it that we let the anti-healthcare contingent tell us horror stories about how awful it would be if things changed, stories that aren’t backed up by facts or common sense. Sort of a national case of Battered Wife Syndrome.

I think we’ll wake up eventually, but I’m hoping it’s sooner rather than later. For Nathan’s sake, for my aging parents’ sake, and for my sake.

Matt maintains that Nathan is saying “Bahb,” but it’s really “Bahbahbah,” all run together. It’s his first consonant, B, and he’s really working it hard. He’s very pleased with himself.

It’s so strange, to watch all the traditional baby things and realize that kids do all this developing without much help from you. They talk and start rolling and eventually crawling and walking, and you didn’t teach them any of that. I think if you read enough parenting books, you come to believe that if you aren’t interacting with your child at Every Moment, they will simply lie there, like potatoes, and not develop at all.

Of course, you can retard them by neglecting them or not letting them have space to practice, and they always learn faster if they have you down with them, talking and playing along. But they will learn an amazing amount all on their own, which is probably good or neglectful parenting might have wiped out the human race altogether. I’m grateful for Nathan’s genetic programming that tells him when to grow and learn without relying on me to do more than feed, shelter, and encourage him. And it helps to remind me that he’s going to become his own thing no matter what I do.