i am a person/this is my body

On Saturday, while my husband and baby squirrel cooked breakfast, I read a post that catapulted me back to my labor. The blog was shared with a trigger warning, which I now fully understand, because minutes after taking in what I had read, I was weeping in my husband's arms. I had a long, rough labor that was very painful. All of this is fine. It was hard, but I made it. There is one moment, though, that I haven't been able to move past, and until I read this article, I never felt validated in my feelings.

The entry was entitled Birthrape and the Doula. If you have a minute to read, I definitely recommend going straight to the source, but it explains what birth rape is and how doulas can help their clients who are experiencing it. Now I know that I mentioned the "R" word, which is a hard word to digest, and many of you will probably stop reading here. That's okay. It only means that you haven't been there, and I hope it never happens to you, but as a doula I witnessed this countless times and wish I had had the tools then to navigate those waters.

In her article, Amy Gilliland has this to say about using the word rape. "Some people feel that by using the term ‘rape’, I’m overdramatizing these situations or minimizing the experience of people who have been sexually violated. But I don’t think so. The patient has given over their trust, their body, their life, to a medical careprovider who has a sacred covenant to treat that person and honor them. When they act in a manner that is dismissive, painful or coercive, they violate that trust. The careprovider is touching the most intimate parts of the body – places that may only have been touched by one or two other people besides the careprovider! They have power over the patient and are treating their body like an object. The patient is often lying down and is unable to move or get away. When the patient says, “No” and “Stop”, to me, they are voluntarily retracting their consent."

"What I can tell you is that the careprovider has somehow forgotten they are treating a person, not just a body. The medical detachment they learned to protect themselves has gone haywire, and so much so that they’ve forgotten that a real person is inside the body, and it is the person, not simply a medical situation they are treating. There is no detachment for the patient – and everything is experienced wholistically, meaning it affects their psyche and their spirit as well as their physical selves. Maybe the medical careprovider never learned this or maybe this knowledge has gotten buried."

During one of my many visits with my midwife, I discussed with her how I had witnessed really rough vaginal exams, that not only left my clients screaming, crying, and begging for their doctors to stop, but also slowed down their labors, and in one case halted the labor for three days. I told her that I would need her to tell me what she intended to do before each exam and what I might feel. I can wrap my mind around something if I know what to expect. "This is going to be uncomfortable. There will be a sharp pain." This comes with exams, and I know the drill. At this time, I also told my midwife that if I asked her to stop doing something during an exam, I would need her to listen. My midwife reassured me that I had nothing to worry about.

Fast forward to my labor. My midwife and I have already had a few disagreements. She wanted me to continue to climb stairs to help get the baby into a better position, and I wanted to rest. I was beyond exhausted. I had been screaming at the top of my lungs for hours on end, and I couldn't do one more step. My midwife finally agreed to let me do my own thing while she went to take a nap, and I stayed with her assistant and slept completely naked (plus a diaper) on my bathroom floor in between contractions. It might not have seemed like the most productive use of time, but it was necessary, and shortly afterwards I was ready to push.

We also had a small tiff over the fact that I had to poop, and I wanted to sit on the toilet. She told me to poop in the lovely diaper I found myself in after my water broke. I then yelled, "No. I want to poop like a person poops. On the toilet!" This caused a lot of laughter from everyone. You never know what will come out of your mouth when you come face to face with your most primal self. I had labored sitting on the toilet earlier on in the day and she was trying to keep me away from there, because she felt like the position didn't help me progress. Which is understandable, but telling me, a grown adult, to poop in my pants was belittling. It's my toilet, and my poop. I can decide where to put it.

Both of these were very harmless disagreements, but what happened during my final exam before my daughter was born was not. I was lying flat on my back and my midwife determined that I was fully dilated. She said she wanted to keep her hand inside me through the next contraction to feel how I was pushing. All of this is acceptable and very routine, but it was excruciating for me to be on my back during my contractions. And by excruciating, it felt like my body was being sawed in half. As the contraction approached, my instinct was to move into a different position. Anything but flat on my back, but my midwife wanted to feel me push. I couldn't. Not in that position. It was impossible. Her hand hurt so much inside of me. I was launching my body backwards to get away. It was at this point that I pleaded with her to remove her hand, because it was too painful. My midwife refused, and decided instead to lecture me on running away from my labor. She also informed me that she wasn't going to remove her hand until I was able to push it out. I then screamed, "I feel like you're raping me!" She didn't budge. I was a frightened animal backed into a corner. I remember looking at my doula, and midwife's assistant, and then into my husband's terrified eyes. Why wasn't anyone helping me? Why were they letting this happen? That's the moment I shut off and went into survival mode. She wasn't going to get out of me until I pushed her out. So during the next contraction, I cried and screamed and pushed harder than I ever have in my life.

You would think that shouting, "I feel like you're raping me!" would cause someone to take a step back and think twice about what they are doing. There was no medical emergency. She wasn't saving my baby's life. She did want to make sure that I knew how to push, but this was not the way. My husband and I have spoken many times about this moment, and during our first conversation he said he saw a change in my face and felt like my midwife's words had motivated me and was what I needed to hear at the time. I told him it didn't motivate me. It forced me to survive, and I was doing everything in my power to get her to stop. It's all about perspective, though, and I can see and rationalize the situation from everyone's point of view including my midwife's, but isn't it the mother's perspective that should be protected and honored above all others?

Finally my midwife removed her hand, and I was broken. I collected myself and got into a different position. I was on my knees hanging my chest and arms over a yoga ball. It's where I stayed pushing for the next five and a half hours until we were able to have our final argument. She was placing a hot compress on my lady bits to keep me from tearing. "Oh that's way too hot," I said. "No it's not," she replied. "Yes it is!" I cried. Feeling the temperature of a wet rag with your hands is very different than feeling it with your sensitive perineum and stretching vaginal opening. My midwife's assistant came to my rescue, however, and said, "It's way too hot. I told you it was too hot." Thank you for listening. Thank you. The next thing I knew, I was holding my baby, and I was a mom, and I was busy, and I was recovering, and I had been raped in front of a group of people I trusted, and no one knew but me.