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I recently went back to school to get a Nursing degree. Guess what we are doing this semester... Yep, we are doing labor and delivery. I have been bombarded with power points, hand outs, text book assignments and actual clinical experience with laboring mothers and newborns. I have had to stand there in those birthing suites that look like 5 star hotel rooms with all the family and staff that congratulate the new mother when the baby is laid on her chest. I can't help but to think back to when I had my baby. They wheeled me into a very cold, non descript OR even though it was a natural birth. My Granny was the only one with me and they weren't going to let her come back at first. I threatened to cross my legs and hold the baby in if they didn't let me have my Granny. I was ready to push by the time they gave in and they had a sterile drape over me. When I saw my Granny I reached out to her and a nurse smacked my hand away from her and told me not to contaminate the sterile field. As soon as my son was born they ran him out of the room. I heard him take his first breath and cry for just a second. After it was over they put me in a med-surg room and left me alone. I have since learned that in the 1st 24 hours a new mom should be assessed at least 10 times. I was assessed 2 times and it was just to check my fundus and amount of bleeding. There were 5 other assessment that were never done. All that was almost 20 years ago now. Watching a birth today brought it all back like yesterday. I was having a hard time dealing with the new mom because I was jealous of her and I felt like I hated her. Isn't that rediculous? Intellectually, I knew I was wrong to feel like that but emotionally I was just so pi$$ed off. I took the clinical instructor aside and told her my story after that. I asked that in the future if there was a mother who was placing for adoption that I be allowed to take care of her. My instructor said she would keep it in mind on the next clinical. Thank you for reading this story and letting me vent. I was laying in bed staring at the ceiling fan for the longest time and couldn't sleep. I hope that since I got all this off my chest I can finally get some rest.
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Your story broke my heart. I hate that you were treated that way. I am glad that you will be a nurse that will know that a patient should be treated with dignity and kindness no matter what. I think your feelings are totally natural. I am so glad you talked to your instructor, I think that should a mother thinking about placing come in, it would mean a lot to her to have someone there who honestly does understand the storms of feelings she will have. I am so sorry you were treated that way and I am so sorry you had to go through that heartach and pain.
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Gwen,When I was an undergrad premed student (early 1980s), I worked my way through school as a scrub tech in the OR and Labor and Delivery at a major hospital in the Southwest. When I first started working in L & D, I got triggered like you wouldn't believe, especially when the mom was relinquishing her baby. The nurses still were treating these young women like crap, so things hadn't changed all that much since the early 1970's. I couldn't believe the things they were saying at the nursing station. So I went to the head nurse and asked if I could implement some type of educational program to help these morons be more compassionate and understanding of their patients. My head nurse not only gave me the green light, she also left standing orders that I was to be assigned to all cases involving adoption. The OB/GYNs eventually started coming to me for advice in dealing with their patients who planned on placing their babies, especially the teenagers. One great thing that happened as far as my own personal comfort level was concerned is that the nurses quit bad-mouthing the patients, at least within my earshot.I, too, remember feeling jealous of the single moms who got to keep their babies. There were so many societal changes between the early-'70s and the mid-'80s. For one, "unwed mothers" became known as "single mothers," a huge step forward. The stigma became much, much less than it had been at the time of my son's birth (early 1972). I rarely, if ever, heard the term illegitimate being used in the 1980's. During my pregnancy, my baby being referred to as illegitimate was considered polite...because most people still used the word bastard.The thing I noticed the most during my days in L & D was how young, single women who kept their babies were treated much more respectfully by nursing and medical staff than women who were placing their babies for adoption. It was very pointed and very disconcerting.I sometimes have a recurring nightmare of this one delivery I assisted in that involved a teenage mom who was giving the baby up. It was a difficult delivery, and the OB got carried away with the forceps....and ended up severing the baby's ear. Do you know what they did? They just sewed the baby's ear back on and never put it into the record. I was sternly ordered not to say a word to anybody about what I had seen. The obstetrician said no one would ever know or care because, after all, the baby was "just an adoption baby". Oh, yeah...the mom never knew either...they knocked her out before she could see the baby.ETA: Gwen, I think all of us who go into nursing or medicine get triggered the first time we work in a Labor and Delivery unit. The memories come gushing up in us...and all the feelings that go along with them. This will eventually stop...it just takes some time. The best thing to do is exactly what you're doing. Explore the memories and acknowledge the feelings---in other words, do your grief work. What happened to you is unconscionable---no human being should be made to suffer like you did while giving birth. It's okay to feel angry about how you were treated...and then use that anger to help other women.
My daughter was born in 1971 ireturned to nursing school that same year.and. Perhaps because it was 1971 none of the single moms where I trained kept their babies during my L&D rotation. I would have been jellous too. I do remember being upset by remarks some of the nurses were making within hearing range of a young single teen-age girl while she was in labor. On the bright side- I expected the newborn nursery to be my undoing. However I found it suprisingly soothing. Keep your courage up and good luck! Patty
