My role in the process

In the last few years before I moved to Ireland, I ran my own business renting out birthing pools to expecting couples who chose to have a home/water birth. When my youngest daughter was expected, I did a course called "Hypnobirthing (by Marie Mongan)" and implemented this when she was born. Even though the course gave me some help when it came to the birth, I didn't feel like it was enough and it didn't meet my expectations completely.

I had already started studying hypnotherapy and I wanted to work on my own course of Hypnotic birth to give women more than what I had gotten out of my course.
It was the moment when I realized I needed to do more, so I enrolled in an 'official' course in Belgium to study hypnotherapy and NLP.
I believe it was one of the best things I could have done for myself and future clients, as I learned a lot. Not only about hypnosis but also about myself.
But that's a story for another time.

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While I was studying, we had to write an essay about a subject we were passionate about and write out different scenarios and the plan on how to address this with hypnosis.
Because natural birth was something I was passionate about and also because I wanted to implement hypnotic birth in my daily business, I had no problems making this subject my own.
I ended up developing my own course, using the experience I had with hypnobirthing and what I learned during my studies.

Not long after I became certified, I started offering this to women, whether they leased a pool or not. I also offered help to overcome any birth trauma they had experienced, to make way for a new and better experience.
For a long time, I did this for free, and sometimes even used NLP or hypnotic suggestions without them really knowing.
I can hear the objections rumbling up... I'll explain this one: Of course we have to tell a client if we are using or going to use hypnosis on them. We need consent. It's like the age old Spiderman saying: "With great power comes great responsibility."
Trust me - I take this kind of work very seriously and would never do anything that could possibly harm the person or others. But just using positive suggestions and empowering words works and is also considered hypnotic suggestion. So, now that we're clear about that. I never harmed anyone. But I've seen the power it had and it was great!

Some women even told me that it felt like I took their worries away from them when I left, and even though it was great for them, I sure felt like I actually did most of the time. One time, I left a client's home (I delivered the pools myself and did 'house-calls' for hypnotherapy) only to find myself sobbing in the driver's seat of my car for the good part of 30 minutes before I managed to recollect myself for the drive home. Tears always ran freely after some of the talks and maybe it was my way of releasing their pain that I somehow seemed to take with me when I left their homes.

Sometimes, I would speak to a woman who had experienced birth trauma during an earlier birth, and her pain and often times her fear, would stop her from having a good and calm experience during pregnancy. I don't think I have to explain to anyone how important that is.
Stress, anger, sadness and most importantly fear have no place in a pregnancy or birth and should be avoided at all times. In regards to that the medical hospital setting is probably one of the worst things for healthy pregnancies and natural birth and for mother and child.
I won't wind out too much about that, because I could write three books about it, but let me keep it simple by saying that the reason for that is that hospital staff doesn't really have any of that in mind when they 'help' a woman give birth.
The main objective for them is the outcome. Their jobs depend on it. And even that depends on the job description.

I know, I know, you can probably smell the sarcasm coming with my words here and I would be lying if I said that I don't favour a natural home birth over one in the hospital. But I will never judge anyone for the choices they make, in good trust. And that's where the problem lies:

Their trust.

There is not one woman who goes into the hospital to give birth, who doesn't put some kind of trust into the hands of the staff who are taking care of her. And the reason why I am a bit biased when I compare hospital birth to home birth is because with nearly every woman I spoke to, there was at least one horror story to accompany her, if she went to the hospital during or after the birth. And with 'almost every woman' I mean: 9 out of 10.
I think I spoke to about 70 women each year, with each of them some kind of horror story.

Source: www.pixabay.com

I remember

Every single one of them. Most of their names and most of their children's names. One glance at their names that I still have on file and I see their faces.
I developed a great relationship with most of the women and their partners, based on mutual respect.
Some have even become friends.
Now, I am certain that most women and their children are living happy lives, without implications.
But I have also seen something else. I have seen deep pain and anger, rooted in the fact that the people they trusted when they entered the hospital had abused their power, treated them unkindly or otherwise disturbed the natural birth process in an unsettling way.

Baby Liam and his grandmother's story about his birth

I was delivering a birthing pool close to my own house, in the city where I lived. When the door opened, I was greeted by the happiest young couple you could imagine. They were both in their early twenties, but seemed very grounded and you could feel the love they had for each other, as soon as you entered the room.
It was one of the most pleasant visits I had done to date. It was going to be their first child and they were both equally excited about the soon-to-arrive new addition to their happy home. Their happiness rubbed off on me and I left their house with a big smile on my face.

About two weeks later, I listened to my voicemail to hear that their baby boy Liam was born and that his grandmother (who happened to live in my street) would drop the pool back to me.
When she came, I immediately asked her how the happy couple and their son were doing, still buzzing with excitement and remembering how happy they were.
Her face turned cold and I saw tears welling up in her eyes.
These were her words: "It was horrible! They butchered her."
I still remember the shock that struck me and I felt that the woman needed someone to tell her story to, because she probably didn't have anyone else at this moment. I invited her in for coffee and just listened.
She told me that her daughter's labour began quietly. Too quietly in the eyes of her midwife, who referred her to the hospital after a few hours of quiet labour at home. In this case, I think the midwife could have used better judgement, because a quiet labour usually means just that: it's quiet.
If there is no distress, there should be no problem.
There wasn't.

Source: www.mediaset.it

But midwives have to adhere to certain rules and protocol, so when labour 'stagnates' their next step usually means referral to a hospital. In their case, they probably could have postponed this if they had insisted, but because this couple was trusting the midwives' better judgement, they did what they were told to do.

The woman's mother, her husband and her 15 year old sister were going to be her birth partners, so they all moved to the hospital after the midwife insisted. Not long after their arrival, the woman's membranes were broken and after no progress for another 20 minutes, she was injected with the synthetic form of oxytocin, Picotin, to 'speed up' labour.
And it sure did.
Most women who get Picotin tell stories of contraction 'storms', one after the other, with no time to breathe.
It wasn't any different for this poor woman.
Her mother told me that at some stage, her daughter was screaming in pain, grasping for air during the 'breaks' that only lasted mere seconds, only to go on to the next huge, painful contraction.

After hours of this and no progress, the doctor came in to inform them that they were planning a C-section.
Now, this couple might have been new to the birthing business, but her mother was not.
She questioned the reasons for this planned C-section and because there were no real reasons for it, other than that it was late in the day, the couple declined.
"I could see in his face how annoyed he was by their response," the grandmother recalled, "it was quite clear to me that he didn't like to hear "No" and the fact that someone questioned his advice." She let go of that thought because her daughter needed her. In tears, she told the rest of the story:
They upped her dose of pecotin and the horrors became worse.
Then everything went very quickly and before they knew it, the new mother to be was told her baby was close to being born and the last stage of labour had started.
This seemed to take too long too and not long after, the same doctor came into the room, had a quick look at the charts and listened to the baby's heart rate. According to the grandmother, he didn't even look at them when he said: "I am going to use a vacuum because the baby seems to be stuck." The grandmother told me: "But this was weird now that I think of it. Because there seemed to be nothing wrong with Liam according to the monitor. There was no panic in the room." Just a doctor who decided the baby was 'stuck' and needed to be extracted with a vacuum. After three failed attempts, the baby's heart rate did go down and he seemed to be in distress. Personally, I think I can tell you why there was sign of distress...
All of a sudden things came into motion quickly, the doctor told the woman that the baby needed to come out now, as if it was her fault. The grandmother said:
"He told the nurse to call in the intern to assist him. When he came, he was ordered to push on her stomach while he pulled out the baby." At this point, she felt she was witnessing butchers at work. She even yelled at them that they didn't need to be so rough, but no one listened.

Liam was born black and blue. Not because of lack of oxygen, but because of the brutal way he came into this world. he had bruises on his head and face.
The grandmother told me that he cried most of the day. Her daughter was a mess.
She had bruises on her stomach area too. Later, when the parents demanded answers and asked for their file it read:
"Parents refused C-section, after which vacuum extraction was attempted unsuccessfully. Baby showed signs of distress.
Vacuum extraction successful."
No mention of how exactly this last vacuum attempt was successful. Nothing about how one man was pulling the helpless baby's head with vacuum while the other was brutally pushing his fists into the woman's stomach.
It would have been their words against the words of medical professionals and their legal team.
I'm not sure if they pursued legal action in the end.
However, I did speak to the grandmother a few times after that.
She told me that her 15 year old daughter, who had been at the hospital the whole time, said that she never wanted to have children.
And the one thing I will never forget was when she said this: "They always said that they wanted 3 or 4 children, now they will only have Liam. She's too scared to ever do this again."

Source: www.pixabay.com

Conclusion

The thing that bothers me the most about this story is that they didn't write everything that happened in the file. They made it look like it was the parent's fault for letting it come this far. If there would have been lasting damage to the child or worse, I wonder who they would blame. I wouldn't put it past them that they would have blamed it on them and involved child protection. I've heard those kind of stories too. Fortunately for them, this is where it ended.
But nevertheless, the parents were loaded with guilt about the whole ordeal. I'm sure both would have asked themselves if it was their fault for not letting them perform a C-section when the doctor told them to.
What also strikes me was that there seemed to be an urgency in the beginning even though there was no signs of distress. It wouldn't be the first time something like this happens because the doctor or midwife in question is going towards the end of their shift.
State workers like child protection seem to only step in when there is suspicion of abuse by one of the family members of a child, however, when someone in the medical profession, especially a doctor, makes a mistake or badly hurts a child, it is waved off like it was a necessity. They are rarely held accountable.

This family's life is forever altered. Both the parents and the child have endured trauma that will have an effect on all of them later on. The younger sister and grandmother both have witnessed brutality during something that should have been a beautiful experience. And now the sister is afraid to ever have kids. What would possibly have been a large, happy family, will probably be a one-child family. The 'what ifs' keep rolling off the screen...

Thank you for reading this.
I will share more of these stories in the coming time, so if you liked this article, please keep an eye out for my blog for more.

Failure to protect vulnerable children at birth - a life-time trauma for both parents and child

My role in the process

Their trust.

I remember

Baby Liam and his grandmother's story about his birth

Conclusion