I knew childbirth would change my life – I didn’t expect this level of trauma

When my husband told me he could see our baby’s arms I knew I had done it. 

I had birthed my daughter, my second child, at home in an inflatable pool squashed into the corner of our living room in October 2020.

Against all the odds – the pandemic restrictions, the vomiting, the weekly Covid tests, the iron deficiency anaemia – I had done it. 

The sense of achievement was indescribable. As I held her in my arms, having caught her myself, having brought her into this world all by myself, I couldn’t believe it. I felt invincible. 

My elation didn’t last too long, though, as the midwives swept over – wearing full PPE, face masks and visors to protect them from us – telling me that I had to get out of the pool. What ensued was far from the golden hours of birth I had been promised by my community midwife.

Little did I know that my problems were only just beginning, and four years on, I’m still fighting to heal.

While my newborn baby cried on the sodden T-shirt no one would help me remove, the midwives had my husband use his phone torch to illuminate my vulva while they poked and prodded and decided what to do with the first-degree tear that had formed there.

I don’t remember them ever asking me for permission. They certainly never stopped to explain the benefits and risks of stitches versus leaving it to self-heal. 

No one took the time to explain anything, not that – depending on circumstance – often first-degree tears can be left safely alone to heal without suturing, or even what that would entail. I was simply given stitches without my informed consent.

As a result, my body is no longer the same, and I’ve never physically recovered from the trauma of my postpartum care. 

But bizarrely, I have been discharged from my local obstetric and gynaecology department three times now, and have never been referred on to secondary care.

Despite still having stitches and being in pain, I was initially discharged at my 10-day postpartum appointment. When it still hurt at week three, I grew concerned but it took a further five weeks to finally be brave enough to look at the scar and seek help from my GP.

Initially they told me that the searing pain I was experiencing was probably just thrush or a UTI. But I believed something more serious was happening, so I fought for a referral.

At 11 months postpartum, I finally received surgery to cut away scar tissue and attempt to repair the 6mm hole, which had now formed just next to my clitoris. After that, I was immediately discharged for the second time.

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However, my labial tear opened up for a second time and required another surgery.

Once again, I was discharged without any follow up and the gynaecologist said there was nothing they could do about the pain I was now experiencing in my vulva, womb and general pelvic area. 

All the trauma and the prodding, the back and forth, the endless waiting, and the pain have led to a hypertonic – or overly tight – pelvic floor.

I’m left with a constant ache that never fully leaves. I’m unable to run or move my body in the ways I enjoyed pre-pregnancy. I can’t have pain-free sex, or even a full night’s sleep without waking for the toilet.

All because of a first-degree tear, just a break in a small piece of skin, that I believe could have just as easily been left to heal itself.  

This wasn’t the first time I had a bad experience. Around 11 years ago, when my first child was born, I was bullied by my midwife into lying on my back on a hospital bed to endure a routine vaginal exam I did not want. 

I was never allowed to get back up and birthed my first child on my back, having completely dissociated. 

Ultimately, it was the events of that first birth – alongside the pandemic of course – that made me so desperately want to birth my second baby at home. I had dreamt it would be a different experience. 

But just as I have no way of knowing what position I would have birthed my first baby in given the choice, or whether I would have torn regardless, it’s impossible to know what my life would be like now had my tear been left to heal on its own.

What I do know, beyond a doubt, is that the trauma I have experienced was born out of a lack of choice. 

It was born from midwives doing what they felt best for my body, denying me my agency, taking away any control I had and refusing to listen and respect my wishes. It was born from a model of postpartum care, which only prioritises the baby and often leaves the mother without access to adequate care and support.  

I am privileged enough to be able to afford time with a private pelvic health physiotherapist – they at least help me to understand what the issue is – but accessing longer term care through the NHS (which I need to be able to heal) feels like an impossible web of referrals I can’t seem to find my way through. 

At this point, I’m honestly not sure if I would get better if I received secondary care and could see a pelvic health physio – I hope so.

I knew childbirth would change things. But I didn’t know it would come with all this trauma. The impact of which has changed my life forever. 

All because of a lack of choice. 

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