"I felt unsupported and coerced into treatments..."

I had my baby at Kings last year. I had a straight forward pregnancy with no health complications with either myself or my baby. Now that I am expecting my second baby I have realised quite how traumatic the whole experience was and I have been referred for birth trauma counselling. This starts with the receptionist at midwives house who doesn’t look up when you speak to her, to the midwives I met during my antenatal care who could at times, be condescending and threatened by questions I asked regarding your care. Now that I have moved to West Sussex I realise what midwifery care should be.. midwife means ‘with woman’, I feel the midwives at King’s are very much the henchmen of the obstetricians, pushing their agenda rather than listening to your wishes and trying to implement them.

My pregnancy went past 40 weeks and the pressure for me to consent to interventions was immense. I feel like I was undermined from far earlier in the pregnancy and the stress and pressure grew as time went on. When I expressed a wish to use the birth centre I was discouraged, when I said I had be practising hypnobirthing I was told “well it’s still going to hurt”. At 41 weeks I was left on my own as I was told that the unless I consented to a sweep I was no longer under midwifery care but I did not have any appointments made with an obstetrician or doctors. When I took myself in and questioned why in France at 41 weeks I would not even been considered as overdue whereas in London I was being advised into a whole course of action I didn’t want I was told “people in France are healthier than you”. I was also told at that appointment “perhaps you’ve never seen a dead baby but it’s not nice”. I was so stressed that I ended up turning up at the labour ward in tears on Monday evening as I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep because I was so worried. After a very long failed induction I ended up with an emergency Caesarean section on Friday morning. I feel that I ‘caved in’ rather than consenting to my treatment.

Whilst I was at King’s I met MANY different midwives both during my antenatal and postnatal care, some were very kind and empathetic, I feel that, probably due to the amount of patients they have, they are not able to work to support women in they way that they would like. I felt that others had a chip on their shoulder about various issues or were beaten down and disengaged. I felt that I had to battle to keep my birth mine, this meant asking to be informed about the pros and cons of each step of the procedure so that I could make the decision, although some doctors were willing this was also met with “why do you imagine you’re in control?” and “it’s not all about what you want”. I felt like the whole experience would be totally violating if I didn’t feel part of it. The doctors got on board with this eventually but I fear for less assertive women in this situation. By the time it came to the c section I felt totally spent, emotionally, physically, mentally.