Just Relax
Posted by realityrounds on May 31, 2009
A young pregnant woman is lying in a hospital bed. She is draped in a hospital gown, naked underneath. She is flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her heart is racing. Body tense. She is anxious, and loud, and uncooperative.
“Just relax. We need to check your cervix to see how far along you are. Miss, please calm down. You need to open your legs so we can examine you. RELAX! This will not hurt. It will only take a second. Please, just RELAX! If you think this is painful wait until you start pushing. Calm down.”
Nurses’ Station: Idle chatter by doctors, residents, nurses, med students, secretaries, etc. “Can you believe that lady?” “You would think she was a virgin.” “How did she get pregnant in the first place?” “Yeah, like my finger is the only thing that’s ever been inside her! ha ha ha!.” “What until she starts crowning. We will have to put her in leather restraints!”
Chatter ends in the diet coke, coffee strewn nurses station. The staff go about their lives. Admitting the next patient, planning for the weekend, moving forward.
Hospital Room: A young pregnant woman is lying curled up on her side. She is scared, and quiet, and submissive. She is now the child told to be quiet, told not to tell. She is the young woman in the dorm room, who said no. She is the woman left to die in the alley. She is the cut woman bleeding on the dirt floor of her hut. She is moving backwards.
Just Relax
RR
Jill said
A moment of silence for her.
Thank you for this.
realityrounds said
Your welcome Jill. It was hard to write, but it even harder to witness in real life.
sirus said
i say, this is good.
thank you
Amy Romano said
The first birth I ever attended in nursing school was a woman with a known history of childhood sexual abuse and she was talked to and talked about just as you describe here, and when it was time to birth her 33 week premie, her legs were held by two strangers, the masked doctor cut her and pulled her baby out with a vacuum, and her baby was taken away to the NICU, and the woman herself completely disassociated. I know some in the medical field think “birth rape” is a very loaded word, but I know that is what I witnessed that day. Even if interventions are warranted, we can do them far more humanely and with the actual CONSENT and PARTICIPATION of the woman.
Here is a great resource for women who have experienced their birth as trauma: http://solaceformothers.org/
Thanks for posting this.
realityrounds said
Amy,
Thanks for the link. I will bring this resource to work with me.
pinky said
Can you see why this woman may opt for a C-section at the get go?
realityrounds said
Hi Pinky,
I try and respect all women’s choices. This woman choose to have a vaginal delivery. It is interesting that sometimes the very first time a woman enters a hospital or is seen by a doctor, is when she is ready to deliver. And then her first experience can end up like this. It sucks.
pinky said
Many male Docs I know will ask me to do the SVE if the woman is uncomfortable with male Doctors. Any woman can request that a nurse check her cervix or a midwife. Maybe some women don’t know that.
Also if sve’s are hard, we can put in an epidural and then check a cervix. Sometimes that helps a lot.
I always ask women if it is alright if I check their cervix. But in the past I have forgotten to ask. Sometimes we just get caught up thinking where the baby is, what the plan is and what to do, that we forget to be polite. That is not an excuse.
It is far easier on them to have me sit in the room with them for a few hours and then check a cervix. Many of the Docs know this and will just let me do it.
Jeff said
Wow, what a terrible situation, I am so glad there are strong nurses like you to deal with it every day, becuase I don’t think I could.
Aron said
In my doula training we were taught specifically to avoid the word “relax” as much as humanly possible for just this reason. It’s such a loaded word with all kinds of unknown history. Stories like this are why I think Penny Simkin’s book “When Survivors Give Birth” should be mandatory reading for every single person working in L&D. Check out the link:
http://www.amazon.com/When-Survivors-Give-Birth-Understanding/dp/1594040222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244827834&sr=1-1
realityrounds said
Thanks for the link. I was reading a post on an ER blog where the writer was very casual about pelvic exams. The post was called “Suck it Up,” and basically it was about patients being babies when it came to such benign procedures as IV starts, blood draws and pelvic exams. Some of the women commentors stated they would kick a doctor who told them to “relax” during a pelvic exam. It is so condescending.
R. May said
Ugh – I read alot of medical blogs bitching about the way patients are behaving. The fact is – you don’t know- you have just met this person, or seen them for 5 minutes. You don’t know their history – don’t know their life.
I don’t care if they’ve been your patient for 10 years – you seeing them periodically for 15 minutes does not their best friend make.
I really want to slap some of them.
Grand Rounds, Vol. 5.47 - Cost Containment In Healthcare : The Covert Rationing Blog said
[...] Reality Rounds reminds us that patients may often have had experiences in their past that put them in a far different place than we might think. It’s one of the reasons that when doctors and nurses simply follow the script as directed, we might not elicit the cost-reducing, guideline-specified response from the patient that the system demands. [...]
Am Ang Zhang said
Found your site via Grand Rounds. Thanks.
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