Judgement
Posted by realityrounds on June 29, 2009
A woman comes to the unit in full labor. Out of control. Screaming. Drug addicted. A repeat offender. She delivers her baby in a chaotic environment of wails, expletives and panic. The baby is brought to the nursery to monitor for drug withdrawal.
“What a bitch. She needs to be sterilized. How can she continue to have so many babies? Lock her up and throw away the key.” Comments from “medical professionals” during their daily routines.
Mom’s with substance abuse issues are the most vulnerable patients we care for. We don’t know their back stories and we really don’t care. We are very good at the dirty looks, the impatience, and the judgment. I am guilty as charged. How ironic. Delivery a baby is often the only time these women enter into the health system. Instead of offering kindness, and empathy, and HOPE, we offer scorn.
Awhile back I wrote about pregnant convicts being shackled during their labor. The original newspaper article included comments from readers that were less than kind to these women. They were downright ignorant and misogynistic. It was eye opening.
What was even more eye opening was a comment left on my post regarding pregnant inmates. Please read the comment below left by a reader. Hopefully it will make you think twice about how you view and treat all women.
bamafanonly said
10 years ago I was 6 weeks pregnant and sentenced to 150 months (12 1/2 years) in Federal Prison on a Drug Conspiracy charge. I was told by the pretrial officer that even though this was my first offense, I would most likely be allowed 12 hours with my baby when he was born and would be shackled, due to the length of my sentence, during the birth. Thank God that I had a Case Mngr. that fought tooth and nail for me and I was entered into the MINT Program. (Mothers and Infants Together). As I researched this program and the Justice system, I realized that I was one of the first Female Inmates with a sentence over 10 years to be accepted into this program. As soon as I gave birth and got to spend 3 months with my son, take him home to be placed, self reported (again) to the Federal Facility, my sentence was reduced to 5 years thanks to a co-defendent. What if I had been catoragized as the ‘MONSTER’, ‘BAD PERSON’ etc… society is so convinced we are? I would not have had the results with my beautiful son that I had. He is much better today at 10, I truly believe, because he got that binding time with me.
Now, let me tell you what one piece of hope can do for a person who has ultimately lost all hope. In the 5 years that I did not see him, my ultimate goal was to better his life than the way it began. I earned 2 business degrees while incarcerated, 48 self help certificates and awards, self worth that I had never had, and went through pretrial, 5 years in prison, 3 years parole worked 3 jobs after my release and rode the City Transit system to all 3 jobs, never late, met all meeting requirements-never late and all throughout this process I never recieved a negative mark on my record. I vowed that it I got a second chance and a little hope I would never let him feel the pain I felt for the way I brought him into this world.
Today, 5 years after my release, I’m close to a six figure income and have full custody of a well adjusted son. He is 10 now.
All women and men in prison aren’t what society has envisioned. A conspiracy charge is the charge they don’t have to prove. In my case, I wasn’t innocent in that my lifestyle was not one of a good contributing member of society. I was messed up, addicted and was being swallowed up by a lifestyle that I truly didn’t know how to get away from. Going to prison was the 2nd chance I needed to get back on track.
So, please, before anyone puts all inmates who are pregnant, think about what hope and prayer could do for them!
This is REALITY.
RR
Amy Romano said
I’m starting my Monday morning with tears in my eyes. Thank you. Those first days and months with a baby are so important – there’s science to support this! Even just a brief period of skin-to-skin time right after birth has an enduring effect on maternal-infant attachment behavior a year or more later. Imagine what keeping mothers and babies together even longer could do. Society has a lot to gain from programs like this commenter describes.
realityrounds said
Amy,
I agree. It seems like a fabulous program. I was truly amazed at this woman’s story.
R. May said
Sometimes I think it’s hard to see past what is in front of you. And as humans we are hard-wired biologically to make judgements based on what we see – kept our tuckus’ alive in the dark ages. Which as an aside – I learned in a Sensation and Perception class years ago. Interesting class.
Sometimes I wonder if society is becoming nastier and nastier. Or maybe just more open about it. I’m no saint but I try very hard to not be just plain mean.
realityrounds said
It can be really hard not to judge. Nurses, like myself, see the worst of society day in and day out. We get jaded. It takes a woman like the one profiled above to snap us back to reality.
takingheart said
This is a reminder to me that as a nurse… I have a small window of time to reach through to someone… show an act of kindess to someone who’s life story thus far may be beyond anything I could comprehend.
Part of giving of yourself as a service provider… is to accept that we can’t reach everyone… and they very well may never be reachable… but, that is a risk we take when we care for all people. It is not about us. It is about them.
Another reason I believe nursing is a call to service… and I hope and pray that it never becomes just a job to me.
Thank you for this post.
Akiko said
Glad she got it together. But for every woman who does get clean and make a new start there is one like my cousin. She has given birth to 6 children in the past 10 years or so. She has custody of none of them. Two she abandoned at the hospital, one was taken from her after birth and the other three were removed one by one not long after they were born, one because she left it with a babysitter and never came back. Two of the children were conceived while she was in rehab which the court ordered her to do. Does she still love her children? I have no idea. I do know her addiction was bigger than any love she could have had for any of them. She is now sterilized thanks to a clear thinking judge who said “the taxpayers cannot support anymore of your children.”
realityrounds said
It is heartbreaking when women can not be cured of addiction, and even more so when they bring children into the world. Another blog I read posted a story about a program that pays addicted women for long term birth control: http://womantowomancbe.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/paying-addicts-to-get-long-term-birth-control/
It is very hard for me to get behind this. I just feel their has to be a better way to treat drug addicted women. Maybe I am being naive.
man-nurse said
I can’t really get behind the idea of treating women like animals even when they’re being reprehensibly irresponsible.
mamamia said
What about the men that impregnate these addicted women? Do we demand they get snipped when they use hookers, or trade a dose for a lay? Do we demand they take responsibility for these unfortunate babies that are born, because they don’t use a condom? Granted, the moms might not know who the daddy is, but the men still impregnated them and should be held accountable if they are known.
bamafanonly said
When I read comments like these to my story, it helps when I look at my wonderful son and know that for all I gaIned, there are still those women in prison who are facing it and they too can strive for a better life for themselves and their children. I have written a couple of poems and stories on my blog that gives more insight into my life as a felon then and now….
Also,I can’t find the words that justify the great, unconditional care and treatment the OBGYN and her staff gave me during my process of prenatal care and post natal care. They were so far above what I had envisioned they would be! I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like without these caring medical professionals. They never get enough credit!!
Thanks so much!!
man-nurse said
I think it’s crazy that the general idea behind psychiatric medicine is to not judge the patient, even if they caused their own problems, and to understand that these people may take several attempts to ‘cure’ themselves, or they may never be cured…but obstetric patients with the same psychiatric problems (be it inborn illness or an acquired one like drug addiction) are open targets.
Vinnie Kowalski said
Bamafanonly’s story is amazing – you have truly accomplished a lot and I wish you the best.
However, some additional context for the 1st half of this post would be helpful. There are times in my day where particularly exasperating patients or patient situations create stress that can often be relieved by venting. Alternatively, a stressful week (or month or year or millenia…) can manifest itself as snippy comments.
In other words, I have had these thoughts about my patients, and even vocalized them, but NEVER in front of the patient nor in ear shot. Sometimes we need to dehumanize our patients to make sure that we’re emotionally intact, which then helps us to re-engage with that same patient and humanize them again. The broken ones are those who can’t complete the cycle.
But some of us can and do while fighting on behalf of our patients like you every day.
Thanks for an interesting blog post!
Jul said
Oh, please, what a tear jerker! May be this woman is as good of a mother as she says she is, or may be she just says it. People do lie, you know. Especially former convicts. Especially when they “reminisce’ about the harsh penetentiary system and how they persevered “despite”.
And what was that blip about the legal-penetentiary system – “a conspiracy charge is the one they dont’ have to prove”? What bull. Who are the “they”? They the bad people that put the good people behind bars for no apparent reason? Any criminal charge is broken into elements and in criminal proceedings prosecution must prove all elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. I could lay out the elements of conspiracy here, but anyone can google it.
Additionally, some inmates do get pregnant on purpose. The purpose being – relaxed sentencing, earlier scheduling/qualification for parole board hearings etc. I do not presume to know whether these inmate actually develop feelings for these purpose-ful children, but there is always a question in my mind.
The bottom line of my response is only that – please do not disregard the human potential to lie and embelish themselves. Other than that, i do find it unfair, on the personal level, that mothers and infants are not given more opportunities to interact in the penetentiary system. At the same time, on the professional level, I also know, that the penetentiary system exists for a reason, and these mother-infant interactions place logistical-financial constraints on the system as well. As a tax-payer, well, you know where that one is going.
bamafanonly said
Jul, I totally understand your ‘half glass empty’ opinion on this..hell, it took me almost a year before I would walk in a Wal-Mart or grocery store or mall because I felt like I had FELON written across my forehead! I was raised better and I had the brains and talent to do better-never in a million years imagining going to prison-PREGNANT!! My white picket fence turned into a chain link razor wire fence. Believe me, at 34 going to prison pregnant was anything BUT planned. And, just for your knowledge, there is no early parole in Federal Prison or scheduling time for being pregnant at sentencing. They treated me no different that any of the others in our case. My total of co-conspirators was 36 other people. I knew 8 of them and only 6 close.
If you will read in my post, I never indicated that the line ‘the crime they don’t have to prove’ meant, by any means, that I was living a good moral life during that time. I believe I stated that I was thankful for it because I got a second chance. I can see where it sounds like I could’ve meant I wasn’t by the wording. Although, I accepted my sentencing and admitted my guilt by association from the start.
It was 2 years from the first time the feds paid my house a visit to the time I received my sentencing papers and I had already started trying to turn things around, but, I was very careless when it came to birthcontrol. I had been clean for almost 2yrs. at that time (its been 13 now), and within 2 weeks I discovered I was pregnant and going to sentencing. The 2 agents that stood up for me in court on my behalf told the judge that they had not heard my name under a rock in 2 yrs. and would like to see leniency. The prosecutor recommended 3 yrs. the judge gave me 12 1/2 first and 1 year later reduced it to 5 yrs. Believe me when I tell you….I know where my blessings come from. One day I thought my son would be almost a teenager before I saw him again and the next thing I know he is going to be 5. Seven yrs. of my sons life back….there are no words to describe how it feels to have him laying here beside me on the couch on a cloudy day and his 11th b-day is in 3 days. I’m sure I’m not the best parent in the world, but, I can say honestly…I give 100% every day with him and it shows…
When his grandmother brought him to see me again when he was 4 yrs. old…he ran across the prison yard, and out of 20-25 women, he ran straight to me. I truly attribute that to the 3 months I got with him in the M.I.N.T. program.
The last sentence in your post talks about the taxpayers paying for that, and I realize that was my opinion also for a long time. But, here’s the thing, I got time with my son, I tru;y believe the M.I.N.T. program and the lifeskills I got there, will help prevent a cycle of him going or me going back and then it seems to become a repeated cycle for many generations and a lifestyle for many. And guess who is paying for it anyway?? So, since the repeatitiveness is so common, why not put some more emphasis on these already available programs and the monies allocated for them, and only pay for it once? I think it is important to teach these women that they don’t need a quick fix, they need a life fix!! I truly believe if they were aware of more options, they would much rather have the picket fence.!
Just to end this, yes, convicts do lie, so do politicians, business ceo’s, lawyers, senators, preachers, and moms and dads…but, why would I be anything but honest about something like this since I worked my ass off to get to where I am today? I can’t see where that would help anyone. I don’t have all of the answers, but, speaking from experience and seeing it with my own eyes, who better to ask, since I am a taxpaying citizen also.
Thanks….