Advocacy, smadvocacy

I've been trying to figure out where the trauma actually came from. I keep circling around in whenever I try to figure out and work through my feelings about advocacy. In nearly every birth story, I keep seeing that no matter what procedure was performed, induction, vaginal assisted deliveries, cesarean sections, episiotomies, or NICU stays, over and over again there's a comment about being unfairly treated. Is it possible that if we changed the way women were treated during labor that the procedures themselves wouldn't matter?



If doctors and midwives took advantage of their 12 prenatal office calls with each patient to discuss what their theory on birth was, and referred women who wanted a different experience to other providers, would that help? If they treated us with respect, and allowed us the opportunity to be true advocates for ourselves by making choices about our care would that help? I've talked to women who attempted home births with a midwife, who had midwifery care at a birth center, had midwifery care at a hospital, had a family practice doctor, or had an OB that suffered trauma. It doesn't seem to matter if your at home, or a hospital, or a birth center. It doesn't matter if it's a midwife or a doctor. You can have few interventions or many, and still be traumatized.



It seems like sometimes we focus on trying to control the procedures because we can't control the way we're treated. That seems to be one of the many problems. For a long time I wanted to blame the doctor for attempting to manually remove the placenta. It was concrete, and didn't take much effort to blame that procedure. After all, it was painful, scary, and horrific. However, that wasn't really the cause of the trauma. The real trauma, for me, came from being treated like an object, a future mal-practice suit, an imbecile, an over-demanding patient, a failure. If the doctor had asked permission and I had consented, I don't think I would have been traumatized. I wouldn't have enjoyed the experience. I might have had a few rough nights, but I wouldn't have been traumatized.



Maybe we should be advocating for true informed consent. Maybe we should be advocating for patients being treated with respect. Maybe we should advocate for patients being allowed the right to make their own choices. Maybe we should advocate for patients and doctors developing a relationship built on trust that would see us all through the ups and downs of birth.



I'm not talking about blind trust. I'm not talking about women believing that their doctor is a god - a know all, be all, decision-maker. I'm talking about having an open and honest relationship with their caregiver. I'm talking about having a caregiver that helps a women refine and build their birth plan at each pre-natal appointment. I'm talking about a relationship where if the doctor cannot provide the patient with an experience that they want they'll refer the patient to someone whose birth philosophy more clearly aligns with their patient. I'm talking about a relationship where the doctor actually educates their patients about birth, instead of leaving us to ferret it out of medical texts, baby books, home birth books, internet sites, or any other resource we can find.



I don't know, maybe it's off the wall. It's far easier to argue for no epidural, no pitocin, no episiotomy than it is to argue to be an equal partner in the relationship. It's easier to change procedures than it is to change attitudes, but it's the attitudes that caused my trauma.