GRAZIA
Up to 40% of women find childbirth traumatic. Two-thirds of maternity units are unsafe. Ahead of Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week, we speak to mothers who feel failed by the system
SOME WORDS MAKE such an impact that they’re impossible to forget. In my case, they came from a nurse who was persuading me to be induced after my waters broke before my daughter Emilia’s birth, while I wanted to ask a doctor for a C-section. ‘The longer you wait, the more chance there is that your baby will die,’ she warned. With that, I felt I had no choice and agreed to be induced.
During the delivery, Emilia’s shoulders got stuck (shoulder dystocia) and they had five minutes to get her out – I was terrified we’d lose her. Thankfully, a manoeuvre worked quickly and she was born unharmed.
But when learning about shoulder dystocia later, I realised the only risk factor that applied to us was being induced. It felt like I’d made the wrong call and, five years on, I still carry that guilt.
I’m one of thousands of women who have a traumatic birth in the UK each year, women who are often left dealing with physical and mental scars. According to the Birth Trauma Association, up to 30,000 women a year develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after birth, and as many as 40% find part of birth traumatic, says Dr Rebecca Moore from Make Birth Better. Standards in maternity care seem to be slipping, with a report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) last November deeming two-thirds (67%) of maternity units in England unsafe compared with 55% the previous year.
‘Often, the main cause of trauma wasn’t what went wrong in the birth, but how women felt badly treated – their pain and suffering was minimised, they weren’t listened to and were sometimes even laughed at or shouted at,’ says Kim Thomas from the Birth Trauma Association.
Gabriela Rye, 40, knows this all too well. She got a third-degree tear during the birth of her son, now seven, which went unnoticed and left her with faecal incontinence. She had always wanted a water birth at home with no interventions, but ended up being induced in hospital and asking for an epidural. A doctor used forceps and she lost a lot of blood.
As a midwife stitched her up, Gabriela asked her how bad it was. ‘She said I had a second-degree tear. I asked her three times if she was sure and if she’d checked me thoroughly. I felt so unwell that, in my head, I said goodbye to everyone because I felt I was dying. Then, as I turned purple, they realised I’d lost a lot of blood and I had a blood transfusion. I’d lost two pints.’
Despite repeatedly raising concerns with midwives and GPs in the following days and weeks, it wasn’t until six months later that a doctor fi
