Antonia

** TRIGGER WARNING. THIS BLOG POST INCLUDES DISCUSSION OF TRAUMATIC AND DIFFICULT BIRTHING EXPERIENCES WHICH SOME READERS MAY FIND DISTRESSING **

My pregnancy was far from easy for many reasons, on e of them being my experience in and out of the hospital from the moment I found out I was pregnant. All of these experiences were nothing in comparison to my labour, everything was going so well until my midwife switched shifts.

As soon as the second midwife was on shift she just seemed to have one goal in mind and that was delivering my baby as soon as possible, she didn’t seem to care about easing any part of my pain or reassuring me for the many worries I had at the time – she rushed my labour along and as a result almost cost me my sons life.

When she came on shift I explained to her that the epidural wasn’t working and I requested many times that someone come and fix it as my contractions were becoming unbearable at this point. Instead of calling someone like I asked she began explaining that I wasn’t dilating fast enough and that she was going to place me on an oxytocin drip to increase the intensity and frequency of contractions in the hopes of speeding up my dilation process.

As soon as she placed me on the drip my sons heart rate spiked but she insisted everything was fine and that I had to stay on the drip to see if it would move things along. Against the advice of my first midwife and ignoring my concerns she manoeuvred me into a position she believed would help the dilation process and reduce my sons heart rate, this continued to distress my son to the point his heart rate reached a dangerously high number.

Most of what happened after that point is a bit of a blur, all I can remember is doctors, nurses and student midwives rushing in and out of my room inserting cannulas and taking blood, someone telling me they are taking me into theatre to perform an emergency c-section as they suspected an exposure to some infection and if they didn’t get my son out now he could die. More mistakes were made in the theatre, one of them being I started to have a reaction to the anaesthetic they administered.

After what seemed like an eternity on that operating table my son was finally delivered that morning, we were both placed on intravenous antibiotics and were discharged four days later.

Even though my family and I asked repeatedly about the type of infection I had the doctors and midwives did not give me any information, they put me on a short course of antibiotics and sent me home. It took 3, almost 4 weeks for my body to recover from the infections and in that time, I had to go back to the doctors for more antibiotics.

It wasn’t until a month later that I received a letter from my doctor explaining that after examining my placenta they realised what they thought was a mild infection was actually sepsis, a potentially life-threatening infection.

I often think if my concerns would have been listened to if I wasn’t a young black woman.