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Nov 12, 2018

Birth story part 3: the baby farm

I have thought for a while of doing this post like a story telling you exactly what happened during the birth my son, but every time I would get too into telling the story and I would start feeling horrible. I could never make it through the post and just deleted it.


I've decided instead to start with just telling a few off the awful things about the hospital where I gave birth. I really wish that I had given birth somewhere else, because I think my experience would have been the complete opposite. Instead I went with what was easy and what was easy to find.


I had been induced even though I didn't want to be induced, however I had agreed to it because I was two weeks past my due date. This is where things went wrong. This is where the hospital started making both mistakes and going against what they had previously told me.


For starters, they scheduled me to be induced so they chose the time, and it just so happened to coincide with three other women giving birth. That day all in all a total of seven women gave birth.  This seems kind of ridiculous considering they only have a total of three rooms for patients with individual rooms and two bedrooms meant to be shared.Birth story part 3: the baby farm photoThe three bedrooms for individuals were already occupied. In the contract that I had signed saying that I wanted to give birth there they told me that I would be able to have an individual room if it was available, if I paid more. What I didn't expect was to have to share the waiting room which was designed for one person the night before I gave birth, and then share a room for one person between three of us after the birth.


I barely got any sleep the night before on an awful bed trying to ignore the woman next to me in labor pains. Then the night after the birth, I stayed awake the entire night miserably hot in pain without my son feeling like I was suffocating in the stench of three women who were unshowered and covered in sweat from their own struggles through labor, still bleeding like you do after pushing a baby out.


This small clinic really should have let me wait a few more days instead of forcing my body into labor, especially since their were no signs of needing to get my son out immediately. This would have saved room for everyone to have a more comfortable birthing experience.


But I think the worst was saved for the birth itself. I was induced on a precarious table, too narrow to hold my American sized behind and so flimsy I literally would have toppled forward had I put too much weight on the front of the table.


The proper birthing chair, the only one in the facility, was occupied by another woman. If they had just delayed me from starting by an hour, I wouldn't have had to teeter for an hour and a half on this awful table. Instead, I had to wait while they cleared the other woman out (their phrasing, not mine).


Then, after the birth, unlike what they promised, I wasn't allowed to hold my son. I didn't even get a chance to touch him when they quickly set him beside me to snap a picture and whisk him away for testing and shots. Birth story part 3: the baby farm photoThey refused to let me see him through the night because they were too busy with the other women giving birth. One nurse lied to me saying that if I tried to breastfeed him now, I'd wear myself out.  Instead, I wore myself out worrying about him, worrying about myself and not being able to sleep. 


The next day they were luckily able to move me to an individual room because one of the other women went home. Birth story part 3: the baby farm photoI was able to continue my stay a bit more comfortably, but never shook the feeling that I gave birth to my son in a baby farm where women were treated like cattle and pushed along through their labor, assisted by medication, lied to to placate them, just so the hospital could get out as much as they could of the money the government provided for the women to give birth.

edthethe

edthethe

American step mom with beautiful Brazilian babies. Raising them in Japan. I'm a crafter too


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