Trigger warning: please note that Lucy*’s story below includes mentions of coercion and birth trauma.
Lucy*
Lucy* has had two babies and two very different birth experiences. Here in her own words, she talks about the coercion she experienced with her first baby:
“With my first baby the coercion tactics started in pregnancy. From my very first appointment at the hospital I was warned they would want me to have a caesarean or an induction of labour because of my ‘high risk’ label. ”
“I had the high risk label because I live with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) but that wasn’t what they were concerned about. They were overwhelmingly more worried about my high BMI. My SLE was well managed and considered mild, I was in the care of my specialist throughout and it had no negative effects on my pregnancy at all. In fact, I got lucky in that the pregnancy suppressed my lupus, so my bloods were the best they’d been in years, and I felt the best I had felt in years.”
“At every appointment I had to argue and fight for my rights, had to bring proof/data/evidence for why I wanted a physiological labour and birth.”
“In the end, I agreed a plan to give birth in the Midwife Led Unit (MLU), with the Labour Ward being up just one flight of stairs. After fighting off inductions, including sweeps, constantly near the end of my pregnancy, I went into labour spontaneously at home the day before my due date.
“I had sporadic light contractions in the night then first thing in the morning my waters broke and not long after I was in established labour. The plan was always to stay home as long as possible. When we felt it was time to head in, we called the MLU and were immediately met with hostility. We were told off as though we were naughty kids with the woman on the phone repeatedly telling us we should’ve come in the second my waters broke. Every time my husband asked why when my waters were clear, I was coping fine & I wasn’t having vaginal exams done anyway she kept telling us that’s just the rules and that I “have to” be checked over immediately because my waters had gone. She kept saying what if there’s something wrong with baby, which felt like more coercion.
“When we arrived at the hospital we were met with the same person from the phone. I had made it clear in my birth plan I wanted to be left in the zone and that everyone could talk to my husband first, so I stayed out of the way but she went out of her way to make sure I heard and understood that she was not going to let me into the MLU because of my ‘high risk’ label. All the letters in my notes from consultants and consultant midwives and the matron herself “signing off” on my birth plan meant nothing in the moment.
“I was told since I wasn’t having a vaginal exam and there was no way to know how far along I was, I should go up and wait in the maternity day unit waiting room. With all the crowds of parents. In a heatwave. With no windows. Ages away in the hospital. In established labour. I refused. The MLU was shut down due to ‘staffing issues’, so I ended up labouring in the car park for two hours. When my husband went and asked for a room again the midwife came outside to me and said she couldn’t give me a room because it would be unsafe for me to give birth there. I replied: “More unsafe than me giving birth here in the carpark?!” She agreed and then told me to go back to the day unit again and when I replied saying I was getting in my car and going home, as if by magic, suddenly a room was available. It was on the labour ward but it had a pool like I wanted and a MLU midwife and I was promised my birth plan would be respected so we agreed.
“The midwife responsible for my care kept grilling me about every decision on my birth plan, asking why I wanted those things and trying to defend certain things, for example trying to convince me that CTGs were great and that vaginal exams are vital.
“Later, an obstetrician came into the room and immediately, loudly, made it clear that she was not happy that I was in the birth pool and was mentioning my high BMI and how I shouldn’t “be here”. She also allowed her students to touch and examine me without my consent. Then she told me she was going to do a VE instead of asking me if she could do one and my husband and I both do not remember me giving any consent for it to be done. I was screaming in pain. I was shouting at her to stop and she wouldn’t, so I tried my best to just get away from her in the pool. It was horrific.
“What followed felt like a cascade of interventions, from more painful VEs (including one that made me bleed really badly) to relentless coercion trying to force me into having a caesarean. Reasons given included: that my pelvis was the wrong shape, my cervix was not fully out the way, the baby was too big, my muscles were too strong, the baby’s head was swollen, and then finally ‘the baby’s in distress’. I eventually agreed to try a forceps delivery. When my baby was born they were limp and so whisked away from me immediately with no explanation. I didn’t need one in the sense that I could see what they had done to baby. Baby was black and blue, bleeding from their face and head in multiple places and with a dent in their skull.
“My husband and I both believe that had I been left alone to labour naturally, my baby would have been born without intervention.
“While my baby was being given some help to breathe, I discovered that the obstetrician had performed an episiotomy, again without my knowledge or consent, botched it and then was sewing me up. It turns out she sewed me up too tight too and I am still in pain where the scar is nearly three years later. Nine months later when I got our notes i also found out that she then stuck her hand up inside my vagina more than once at this point. All without my consent. All without my knowledge. I, unfortunately, have been the victim of a sexual assault in the past and I can tell you from experience that what this obstetrician did to me throughout my labour, feels no different to me. The effect it’s had on me is the same, the trauma is the same, the violation is the same.
“We had a birth debrief with the hospital and were advised to take legal action which we had already started the process of but nothing will ever undo what they did. In our notes, it states very clearly that baby was NEVER in any distress. The obstetrician even put in her notes that baby’s heartrate was perfect and signed it right before coercing me into the forceps delivery. However, she put that the reason I “had to” go to theatre was because of “failure to progress”- an outdated useless term and policy that isn’t fit for purpose, means nothing really medically and is directly contradicted in the same notes that say baby is progressing.”
Lucy’s second birth was a home birth, entirely intervention free. “The sheer joy was overwhelming and honestly it stayed like that for the whole postpartum period. I never had any “baby blues” on the day 3 mark or at all. Neither of us ever had to set foot in a hospital. We had midwives come to do checks on us at home and baby girl never lost any weight after birth she just kept putting it on, breastfeeding was going perfectly. We were in perfect health because of that home birth that I fought so hard for and it was worth every second! It was the birth that healed us. It made me truly realise for the final time that it was never me or my body that “just couldn’t do it”. My BMI was never an issue. I coped perfectly throughout with less pain relief than the first time.
“And I implore the NHS to fix this entire system through and through because the coercive, defensive, non-evidence based practices need to be stopped immediately. They need to start caring more about the wellbeing of women and babies and less about their fear of litigation, imaginary time limits, money and what makes their staff most comfortable.”
* name has been changed to preserve anonymity.
Read our report ‘End Coercion in Maternity Care in the UK’You can access our FREE human rights information factsheets here, and find further resources around coercion via the button above.