First-time moms often have no idea what to expect when it comes to giving birth, but by the time one mom was going to welcome her fourth child into the world, she thought she pretty much knew what to expect from the experience.
While pregnant with her fourth child, Caroline Malatesta found out that a local hospital had opened up a women’s center that was set up to allow mothers to choose what kind of birth they preferred, including increasingly popular natural births. Caroline had given birth to her first three kids in the hospital with medication, but when she heard a doctor talking about the potential benefits of a natural birth, she decided it was what she wanted for her baby.
“It was all about comfort and choice. It was about getting whatever you want out of your birthing plan. That’s what first drew me in and eventually convinced me to leave my longtime ob-gyn to birth at this hospital,” said Caroline, who met with a doctor and decided to give birth at the Brookwood Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama.
By the time Caroline went into labor, all the details of her birth had been worked out. She planned to have wireless monitoring so she could be mobile and was planning on giving birth while on hands and knees. However, when Caroline got to the hospital, the nurses started going against all of her decisions.
I told her that my doctor said I’d have wireless monitoring and that I would be able to be mobile, but the nurse said my doctor wasn’t on call. From that point on, it became a back-and-forth of ‘But my doctor said I could’ and ‘But you don’t get to.’ The nurse treated me like a disobedient child! I kept asking, ‘Why? Why?’ but the nurse wasn’t answering me. She ignored me, acting almost annoyed with me. As we went back and forth — me asking questions and telling her this was more painful for me, and her getting increasingly irritated — it became very clear that this wasn’t about health or safety. It was a power struggle.”
“Then, suddenly, I felt a big contraction coming on and I jumped onto my hands and knees, and told them that I couldn’t be on my back. My water broke and the baby’s head started crowning. The nurse told me to get on my back. I stayed on my hands and knees and breathed, trying to relax, as that is what came naturally to me. But the nurse pulled my wrist out from under me and flipped me over on to my back! Then another nurse held my baby’s head into my vagina to prevent him from being delivered,” Caroline said.
For six minutes, the nurse pushed Caroline’s baby back into her, and only let go when the doctor finally strolled in, and baby Jack was fully delivered within a minute. However, those six minutes of trauma were enough to cause permanent and extremely painful nerve damage called pudendal neuralgia and even PTSD, and Caroline was forced to sue the hospital when they refused to answer any of her questions about what happened for months.
“The hospital made it very clear they were uninterested in settling. I don’t think they took me seriously. I think a lot of times hospitals think it’s just ‘silly women’ who want their ‘silly birth experience.’ But it’s more than that,” Caroline said. “These women that are making these choices are making real, medical decisions!” And the courts seemed to agree when they finally made a decision this month and awarded Caroline $16 million since her birth experience was not only unacceptable but was also a result of misrepresentation by Brookwood since they advertise birth options the hospital has not even been set up for.
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[Featured image: Caroline Dumas Malatesta]
Mom Gets $16 Million After Nurses Push Baby Back In During Labor is an article from: LifeDaily