Thoughts on sharing birth stories

I’ve seen a good few comments recently about how it’s great that we can talk more openly about our birthing experiences, but how we need to make sure to also emphasise that it isn’t always like this, that some people give birth in the dreamiest of ways and ‘bounce back’ in no time.

That’s true of course, and I get why the caveat is so often added – and yet I’m uncomfortable with the way in which it’s often framed.

Why?

Because we’re not the problem. I know most of the time, that’s not what’s implied, but hear me out. The stories we share of birth trauma, obstetric violence and difficult recoveries are real, and those of us who want to talk about our experiences must be allowed to do so without being made to feel as though the expectations of every future birthing person are our responsibility.

Approximately half of all those who give birth will develop pelvic organ prolapse. About 18% of those giving birth vaginally do serious damage to the anal sphincter. Incontinence is very common. The reality is that if a person fears birth and the various things that could possibly go wrong, the way to reassure her is not to silence those who have gone before her and pretend that she’s imagining the risks and it’s all in her head. That’s gaslighting. The way to reassure her is to make sure that the necessary support and care and services are there for her, should she need them. We’re not the problem – the persistently lacking funding, research, resources and care are.

There’s a tendency in many contexts to only really be receptive to the stories of those who’ve had difficult experiences and come out the other end – stories with happy endings. We’re not all that comfortable with brokenness, and we’re not very good at holding discomfort. But if we only share our experiences once we’ve healed and figured it all out, when we can breathe a sigh of relief and aren’t forced to scrutinise the health care system in general and maternity system in particular, then nothing’s ever going to change.

We need the discomfort, because that’s what’ll trigger action. We need to listen to those willing to speak out about their experiences – not in spite of what it might do to those hoping to give birth in the future, but because of how it might help them get the care they deserve.

There’s always a caveat, of course. Mine isn’t about those who choose to share their stories, but about those who don’t. Many of those of us who were part of the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution know that speaking out can be powerful and cathartic, but that it can also come at a high price and have a retraumatising effect.

This post is not, therefore, to say that talking is better or that anyone who’s had a particularly bad experience has a responsibility to share it – not at all. It’s to say that, when someone does, we all have a responsibility not to interject with caveats but to listen. Health care practitioners and legislators, more so than the rest of us, owe us that much.

This post was first shared on the Bits of Me podcast Instagram page.

How I cried my way to a free smear test

I started International Women’s Day by having a smear test. I guess insome twisted, far-fetched way, it is a form of self-care, after all.

In many ways, today was far from an ideal day for me to do this thing – not because it’s International Women’s Day, but because it’s my monthly deadline in work, a day I when I’m responsible for quality checking in excess of 120 pages of printed content, all while responding in a reasonably diplomatic way to more or less concerned emails from a number of other people invested in the content of said 120-plus pages. This monthly deadline, needless to say, is typically preceded by two or three equally full-on days, causing me to enter what one could refer to as print-deadline mode – a state that makes anyone who knows me run and hide. It is not, to be clear, the time for hanging around a GP surgery – but as you know if you’ve ever booked in for a smear, these things are best done at certain times of the month, and menstrual cycles don’t care about print deadlines.

This particular print deadline, as it happens, both my husband and my children had indeed run and hid, and I had a rare chance of an ever-so-slight lie-in – or I would’ve had, had it not been for this appointment to get a medical device similar to, but larger than, a garlic press shoved up my nether regions. I would’ve also had an entire evening to work on the aforementioned quality checking and maybe just chill with a bit of Netflix on my own for a while, had it not been for the fact that Virgin Media had just dropped off a new router, which apparently they do sometimes, causing the WiFi to go down and the smart TV with it – something I of course didn’t realise, because their service is so unreliable anyway, until after about an hour of phone tethering and desperately trying but failing to send huge files. This left me staring at the box with the new router, feeling like a bad, bad feminist, thinking that if I couldn’t get this thing working, then was it even International Women’s Day tomorrow at all? It was 10pm by the time I finally sat down, determined to watch something rather than going to bed, just for the hell of it and to celebrate my new status as good, self-sufficient feminist.

Back to the smear: in I went this morning, tired but armed with advice from my women’s health physiotherapist about the breathing I should be doing in advance of the procedure and the requests I should be making about the tools used and manners applied. To those who’ve had a smear test, this might sound a little excessive – but suffice to say I’ve had enough going on with my lady bits recently, and I wasn’t going to take the risk of causing further damage just to sample some tissue that would most likely end up getting lost on the way to the laboratory anyway.

I was brought in to a tiny room where a nurse took my details. “Say that again, sorry?” she said, staring confused at the screen. “Oh I’m sorry, you’re not actually due until the 16th, which is… oh that’s next Saturday! But you can just come back then, or if you want you can pay €50 and I’ll do it now?”

Take a week’s worth of stress, a dose of tiredness, nerves about the procedure itself, a bit of PMS and years’ worth of rage about the unacceptable state of our healthcare system, then add a few months of bad pelvic health news and a nurse asking me to come back during my period, after her colleague had specifically advised me not to book in for that particular time – and I lost it. I lost it, and I cried, and I knew it wasn’t her fault but it was the final straw: it was yet another piece of evidence of a broken system that fails women every day, one that failed women who are no longer with us, and their families, and every woman who has since lost faith in the system. It was the last tiny little poke that pushed me over the edge, and I was so angry I couldn’t even talk to her; I was angry about how I’d been dismissed the last time I’d been there, about how I’d been nervous for nothing, about the lie-in I didn’t get and the deep breathing I’d done in the waiting room – and I was raging over the absolute cheek of her to ask me for €50 when the smear test I’d had done three years previously might’ve never even had accurate results in the first place.

But just as I stood up and walked out, she said “Wait!” and she apologised and begged me to come back. “Let’s cheat the system. Sometimes you have to.”

The breathing was fine. The procedure was fine. It was all fine – bar the risk that the swab will be refused and I’ll have to go back for a repeat test in the summer – but I felt mortified. I had cried my way to a free smear test a week early, and it felt petty and unnecessary and deeply humiliating. “Oh, and if you don’t hear from us within three months, give me a call. These things have a tendency to go missing,” she said as I walked out the door.

Happy International Women’s Day, Mná na hÉireann.