Obstetric Violence: A Black Nurse Saved My Life During Labor

Source: AC Jacobs / AC Jacobs

There are times as a mother when I’m folding my babies’ clothes and I smile, warmly remembering when I first put certain outfits on my little boys. Then there are other times when my daze is interrupted with a flashback to the trauma I went through to bring these little lives into the world. After months of sitting with this unexplainable nightmare, I have finally found the words to describe what so many fellow mothers have been through: Obstetric Violence.

Although there is no law in America using this term, other countries are putting a name to the horror stories being birthed in the labor and delivery rooms, along with the babies.

For a little over 6 months I have tried to define the reality of my second labor and delivery. In the beginning, the weight of the “what could have happened” was too heavy so I focused more on, “at least we are alive and healthy.” But when I’m honest and vulnerable, I can say there was nothing normal about my laboring experience with my second child.

After 6 days of “latent phase labor” (when the cervix is dilated 0 to 3 cm) , the time had come when I would not take “no” for an answer. I would not leave the hospital one more time to “labor at home”, I would not hear one more nurse tell my husband that my smile needed to be gone before it was “time.” I would not accept the medical advice to take Benadryl and Tylenol to ease the excruciating pain that put me closer to my Creator than ever before in life.

Something was wrong. I knew it and my doctor knew it. Roughly 36 hours prior, my doctor ran all the labs she could looking for medical reason to perform an emergency c-section for the safety of me and my baby. Prior to this time, we were all set for a natural birth. But something was going wrong, and we needed to find it. With all my lab results returning normal, there was nothing she could argue. So instead, she urged me to listen to my body and take the necessary precautions in the days to come. She would not be there.

I was afraid. I did not want anyone else to deliver my child. After coming in to save the life of my first born—literally—I only felt comfortable with her. But there was nothing we could do. I had to wait for my body to do what it was created to do and trust God to get me through.

And that’s exactly all I could do.

After being in triage for 6 hours, it took one nurse—a black nurse to whom I am forever indebted—to find a different doctor than the one who had been performing my checks to have me admitted. Although I told them I felt like pushing when I arrived to Labor and Delivery, because my water had not broken and I was only 3 centimeters dilated, they would not admit me. For six hours, I waited. I yelled. I screamed. I cried. I asked God to please make me dilate so they could admit me. I asked God to take the pain away. Because they couldn’t see my pain.

I had just been through a labor not even a full 2 years prior. I knew when it was time to go.

“And I know every delivery is different, and I know these people are trained medical professionals. But I also knew that whatever I was feeling in this time frame was going to kill me.”

And because I did not meet the checklist for admitting a patient, I was going to be sent home where me and my baby would have died.

Immediately after receiving the epidural, before the nurse could administer the Pitocin, my water bag ruptured. With the amniotic fluid went my baby’s heartbeat. Very calmly but seriously, my angel of a nurse told me a team would be rushing in the room because they’d lost his heart beat.

The team of doctors was not foreign to me. In fact, it was too familiar. With the birth of my first son, my doctor had to call this team because he, too, was in distress and had she not arrived after 22 hours of labor and taken matters into her own hands, I could have lost him too. As the doctors flip me from side to side to see if his heartbeat would return, they began explaining the process and necessity of a cesarean section. I can only nod in agreement. In my peripheral I see my husband and my mother standing—stuck—unsure of what was going on or what to do next. In a matter of seconds I’m being wheeled out to the Operating Room. I am only able to ask one question: “Will my husband be able to be with me?”, to which they responded, “we probably won’t have that time.”

Alone and afraid, I prayed only that God would save my baby.

“We need you to take three slow breaths,” one doctor said. As I obeyed, another said, “the heart rate is back but he’s been down 7 minutes.”

I recall nothing else.

Now, my baby is healthy and we are both doing well. I thought for some time that sharing this story would sound like I was ungrateful or whatever else people want to call it.

But after reading this article, I had to share. Black women in particular are so familiar to trauma—of all sorts—we either don’t acknowledge it or know when to call it exactly what it is. And while my experience lies more on the scale of what I believe to be neglect, the truth of the matter is that we lie on the extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to the mishandling of our bodies and babies during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. As more and more people, like Serena Williams and everyday Black women share their stories, the reality or the maternal mortality rate no longer seems inconceivable.

We go through it.

And we carry so much more trauma than the world will ever be able to measure. Passed down from generation to generation and multiplied by our own experiences, Black women need a place to share their stories. Had it not been for my Black doctor—who had the foresight to have my labs done in case of an emergency—and my Black nurse who would not let me go home, I could be gone—me and my baby.

I give God all the praise for sparing our lives because it was so close to being over.

Maybe you have experienced a traumatic birthing experience and have not been able to bring those feelings together. Perhaps, like the women in the article, your experience was a bit more forced, physical, and hands on when you wanted them to step back. In any case, we want to hear from you. We can only begin to heal that which we are willing to have opened up. Let’s heal together.

To share your story, email us at: kkelly@ionedigital.com

Read more from AC Jacobs at her blog here.

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Surviving Obstetric Violence: A Black Nurse Saved My Life During Labor was originally published on hellobeautiful.com