Trigger warning: please note that Megan’s story below includes mentions of coercion and birth trauma.
Megan
Megan is a mother of five. Here she looks back at her experiences of coercion during maternity and labour:
“With my first child I was 25 years old and looking back I was incredibly unprepared for what I was about to go through. I knew nothing of my rights as a pregnant birthing person and was very naïve throughout the whole process.
The pregnancy started off difficultly, because I suffered badly with Hyperemesis Gravidarum and was in and out of hospital several times on anti-sickness medication. I then had a bleed from a haematoma at six weeks as well which was a scary experience.
Approximately halfway through my pregnancy, I experienced some shortness of breath, mentioned this at a routine midwife appointment and was then sent straight to the hospital for scans on my legs for Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) and two scans on my chest as well as blood results to test my oestrogen levels in case of DVT.
I spent all day in hospital waiting around for results to come back which did show an increase in oestrogen levels which I remember the Doctor saying would normally be considered high but not when pregnant. However, they did not want to discharge me and wanted me to come back the following day first thing for another scan. Even though I’d already had a chest x-ray.
Fast forward to approximately 37 weeks pregnant and I developed a slow trickle leak in my waters. Later that night, I was told to go into hospital. I was sent to the Labour ward and told I needed to be examined by a midwife and to go to the bathroom, remove my lower clothing and then get on the bed with a sheet of paper over me.
“I was very nervous about this, I wasn’t told what was about to happen fully, was not asked for consent I was just told it was happening. This was for a vaginal exam. The midwife was very brash, she was frustrated as she said I was barely 1cm dilated and could not get her finger through my cervix. I was in excruciating pain, it felt as though I had been stabbed repeatedly with a wire coat hanger.”
The following day I got a call on Sunday afternoon and told to go into the day unit. I was then in there for several hours before being moved up to the antenatal ward. By this time my waters were completely gushing, and I was soaking through sanitary pad after sanitary pad. I was told I would be taken to Labour ward when there was room and left on the antenatal ward.
I eventually ran out of sanitary pads, didn’t think I was allowed to leave and at the time finances were very tight. I was told by one midwife that I could use the maternity pads on the ward and kept having to change them as I was soaking through them so quickly. The bed I was on was also soaked with my waters and nobody changed this either, so I was very uncomfortable. After shift change when I went to go and get a maternity towel to change I was reprimanded by a different midwife who told me I should have brought enough. She was intimidating and patronising and I felt as though I was in trouble. This then caused me to be too afraid to go and get any fresh maternity towels and I instead used the bed sheets to soak up my waters.
“This went on until tea time on the Monday 09/09/2013 when I was eventually taken up to the Labour ward. I was told I was been put on a drip of “oxytocin” – it was always referred to as oxytocin it was never referred to sintocin or Pitocin etc. And this was to start my labour. Again at no point was I asked for consent for this, I didn’t know this was an induction; I wasn’t told anything other than this was what was happening.
The contractions were straight away very intense, I couldn’t handle them and all I could think about was the pain of the vaginal exam I’d had on the Saturday, and I panicked and eventually asked for an epidural as the gas and air was making me feel sick. I was then given an epidural and fell asleep.
The next thing I know I can feel the epidural wearing off and I started to wake up. This is when things became a little hazy. It was the early hours of the morning and I remember glancing over to the CTG machine, I could see the decels and I remember a doctor and lots of what I think were students coming into the room and standing at the end of the bed. The doctor was cross that I was left as long as I was between my waters going and the induction, he was cross this wasn’t done in 24 hours and then he left again. Then after this one of the midwives looked at the decels on the CTG machine and said the baby was in distress, they did another vaginal exam but I had not dilated at all and was told I was still at 1-2 cm.
“Again I was not asked for consent, this was just done to me as routine at the end of the bed whilst I could not feel anything due to the epidural.”
I was then rushed into theatre for an emergency caesarean section. I was told my baby had got stuck and her head was caught on my pubic bone, her nose was all squashed to the side because of this and she was unable to move into the birth canal. She had then squashed her cord between her forehead and my pelvis which is what caused her to go into distress.
They also cut the side of her head with the scalpel during the caesarean, luckily the scar was behind her hairline as the baby of the lady opposite me in the recovery room had his entire cheek sliced by the scalpel.”
Megan’s second birth at age 31
“After six years of being unable to fall pregnant I discovered I had developed endometriosis in my caesarean scar; this was a consequence I was not informed could occur from a caesarean.”
“I was a little bit older and more experienced this time around. I had a positive appointment early in the pregnancy with a community midwife who told me what a vaginal birth after caesarean (VBAC).
“I had an appointment in the VBAC clinic with a VBAC midwife who provided me with a lot of positive statistics about VBAC and I felt at that point supported.
“I ended up developing quite severe pelvic girdle pain however and was struggling to walk from about halfway through my second trimester. I had an appointment with a maternity physio who gave me some exercises and also some crutches as well and that was it.
“It was towards the end of the 2nd trimester and the beginning of my 3rd trimester where things started to go wrong. I went for a routine midwife appointment and they measured my fundal height. They then decided I needed to go to the hospital straight away for an emergency scan because of static growth. She was very panicky about it and made me an appointment straight away for that day.
“Once at the hospital we were the very last to be called through and I had the scan. The sonographer was very blunt and not pleased that he had this last minute “emergency” scan and couldn’t understand why we had been sent. He asked me why the appointment was made quite abruptly and then afterwards he said that it was all fine I could go and that was it.
“At some point after this I had an appointment with a hospital consultant. He told me that I wouldn’t be able to give birth and needed a caesarean and booked me in for the earliest he could, which was 37 weeks exactly. He then sent me on my way. I thought wrongly that because of the pelvic girdle pain that meant I wasn’t able to birth naturally as this is what he made me believe so I went along with it. I was not given any risk factors of a repeat caesarean or presented with any options at all I was just told “You cannot give birth; this is when your caesarean is scheduled for,” and that was that.
“The caesarean went ahead at exactly 37 weeks but was not exactly smooth either. The surgeons struggled to get the spinal in my back and made several attempts in which to do so and the Dr who placed the Cannula in my hand misplaced this by placing it too close to where the vein branches off which resulted in my vein blowing and my hand swelling up like a balloon and lots of blood. It then took them several attempts to place a cannula in my other hand and I felt very much like a human pincushion.
“I was discharged after a day and left to it.”
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.