So this is going to be long, but after 4 months I feel like I need to get this off my chest.
I started my pregnancy journey with the Polyclinic after conceiving twins with the help of IVF. It was a long and arduous journey, but so worth it now that I get to hold my little boys.
I dreamt of a natural twin birth and joined a support group of other twin mamas who had come before me. Dr. Norland and I talked at length about my birth plan... She was sometimes resistant to my goals but I knew my rights as a birthing mama and hoped I would be supported at the hospital. She continued to tell me to trust her, that she had the best interest of me and my babies in mind.
Fast forward to my 38th week... I left the doctors office after an appointment and drove home. Halfway there I felt a tearing pain on my right side and had to pull over the pain was so intense. I became excited thinking I was in back labor and continued home to labor there and time the contractions. When I got home my mom called and we tried to time the contractions together but there was no rhyme or reason to my pain, so she came over and we called the doctor, she instructed us to come in. By the time I got there I was fainting and vomiting and in searing pain. They could tell that I was not having contractions and sent us to the hospital.
Once at the hospital things took a turn for the worse. We arrived in the afternoon and they ran test after test on my kidneys and gall bladder while I was thrashing around in pain. At one point, after a few hours and finding nothing, my husband heard a nurse ask if it was all in my head.
By midnight the doctor instructed me to try and get some sleep. She said that she was sure I had a kidney stone (even though every test had come back negative) and we would test again in the morning.
I laid down, but had this nagging feeling that something wasn't right. They hadn't found anything wrong with me... There had to be something wrong with the babies. I asked the nurse to get the doctor and demanded a c-section right then and there. They prepped me and we were in the ER within 30 minutes.
Just after beginning the procedure the doctor looked at my husband and I and said so calmly, "it's really good that we're doing this... Baby A has an abrupted placenta. If we would have waited until morning he could have been dead." At the time I was so relieved to no longer be in pain and was so excited to meet my little ones that I didn't think twice about the comment. It has taken me months to process everything that happened and to come to terms with it all. I heard baby A (Bodhi) cry once before he stopped. I looked over and I saw tubes and blood as they tried to get all of the blood he had swallowed out of his lungs. My husband and I kept asking what was wrong as they wheeled him off to the NICU. Baby B (River) was healthy and I was able to hold him. Bodhi was brought back to me within a few hours.
It was later, when I was clear headed and able to put the pieces together that I realized that incompetent doctors almost killed my son. I had been with those doctors since noon that day. Never once did anyone mention the words "abrupted placenta" as a possibility. If someone would have told me that there was the slightest chance that my babies lives were in danger... We would have gotten them out right there and then. My babies were almost 8 pounds each and I had reached 38 weeks. There was no reason to try and keep them in longer.
When asked later why it wasn't mentioned to us, the doctor became incredibly defensive and couldn't even own up to the mistake that had been made.
I have never felt more fearful of doctors than I do now. The woman who asked me to trust her with mine and my babies lives made an agregious error and showed absolutely no remorse.
I am writing this in the hopes that other mamas will read it and know to trust their mama instinct. These doctors (mine in particular) act as though they know everything, but you know your body... Trust it! read more