When childbirth goes wrong…

childbirth goes wrong
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When I gave birth to my first and only child, I was almost blissfully ignorant of all the things that could have potentially have gone wrong in childbirth – although we had some hairy moments during birth, we made it ok in the end.

However one of the things that have struck me since I created this blog and in all my conversations with so many of the incredible mums my path has crossed during this time is just how many things can go wrong in childbirth – and the fact that birth complications are more common than in a woman’s pregnancy.

In childbirth, while we place trust in our bodies, we also put trust in the medical professionals who by and large do a fantastic job and when things don’t go according to plan, it’s then more than ever that our faith is placed in the hands of our maternity team. Even little things like delayed cord clamping practice can make the biggest of differences.

The sad fact is that sometimes, birth complications and conditions can be missed or misdiagnosed providing an incredibly rocky start to parenthood for some parents. Although incredibly overwhelming, in my opinion it is within a parent’s basic rights to seek answers to these traumatic and potentially life changing events, fight back and hold someone responsible and sites like Slater Gordon can be a starting point to help you on this journey.

Did you have a traumatic childbirth? Have you ever thought taking action for something that wrong in your childbirth? And if so, how did you go about it?

*This is a collaborative post 

 

3 comments

  1. Omg where do I start? Surely the scans should have shown there was no way our son’s head was ever going to make it out of me without some assistance? Instead they made me try for almost three days. And in other coubtries it’s the NORM to check vitamin levels pre-conception even. If mine had been checked my vitamin D deficiency would have been picked up and maybe our son wouldn’t have been born partially sighted in one eye. On top of that there was the hest infection I developed whilst in hospital I am SURE due to the last minute rush to find a gas and air machine. I remember at the time someone calling out they had found one and wheeling it over and me thinking through the pain ‘They haven’t had time to clean it’. The birth itself ended up in an emergency c-section after three shots of pethidine (they sent me home after the first shot – the amount of pain I was in should have been a warning), god knows how much gas and air, a spinal block etc. After the birth I started feeling unwell
    They told me there was nothing wrong with me. I told them I was getting a chest infection. The doctor vame and checked me and said I was fine but I could feel the watery feeling inside my chest. The next day I spiked a high fever and they had to put me on anitbiotics. They moved me to a dirty private room where the cleaner used to come in and stand in the bathroom on the toilet. They forgot about me there. Our son lost weight steadily because I was so out of it I had no idea what was going on. He also had a then undiagnosed tongue tie. When I tried to breast feed and couldn’t the nurse on night duty pinched my nipple and said ‘What do you expect? Of course it’s going to hurt!’. This for me, a mum who had been so looking forward to becoming a mum. The child I had wanted all my life. I was healthy and fit. Weight-training until 7 months and swimming thereafter. And the post natal aftercare was awful. My c-section scar became infected because our son kept kicking me in the wound as no one had explained about breast feeding positions for c-section mums. I oozed a bright green discharge from my nether regions for months and the gynae at the local hospital insisted I was fine. I’m so sad that our beautiful boy didn’t have the best of me when I he was little although I ran myself into the ground trying to make sure he was happy, entertained and educated in the years that followed. The misplaced guilt from not having been a healthy mum in the early months still has the power to make me cry.

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