So I lost my job and stayed on public assistance for a while longer, until our family circumstances changed for the better.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Also that I would have to return to the call centre in my postpartum condition because I was the primary wage earner, my husband was a stay at home dad at the time (eventually he graduated from college, after I finished putting him through, and got a government job, and we joined the ranks of the lower middle class and got off public assistance; but at that time, he was the stay at home parent and that was the reality of our situation, and Arsehole Obstetrician was fully aware of that, also).

There are so many ways you can punish a mother for not treating you like a reproductive deity.

What an abusive jerk. I shudder to think how that doctor treats his wife/partner.

It reminds me of how I was punished for “forcing” my OB to attend the short-notice VBAC of my premature daughter (I didn’t know I was in labour, or I would have just stayed home; I thought the gut cramps from the gastroenteritis that I’d contracted were merely reaching a dangerous level and wanted somebody to look at me and make sure the baby was OK, and I was actually offended when the ambulance crew took me directly to the maternity ward – turns out I was just coming out of transition). After yelling at me for “making” him do something he had no intention of taking part in (thanks, I always knew you’d planned a repeat C) he had my daughter whisked away out of my arms. I wasn’t allowed to touch her or hold her or anything because she was too medically fragile – respiratory distress syndrome, which was “my fault” because I gave birth eight weeks early, probably due to drinking or drugs because after all, I was a Medicaid patient at the time – and I was “too dirty and germy,” a “danger to my baby.”

She was kept in a plastic box at the nurses station for a few hours until it was convenient for an ambulance to transport her to a hospital with a Level III NICU. I was not offered a bed in the same hospital, although I *was* kicked out of my hospital bed the next morning after about twelve hours total time spent in the hospital, still with gut cramps and diarrhoea. At least they let my husband call his parents to arrange a ride because we didn’t have enough bus fare to get home.

She got a septic workup without my consent. Also formula added to the colostrum and preemie milk I pumped, to make it “more nutritious.”

And we got a visit from Children’s Protective Services soon after she finally came home with us a few weeks later – the social worker and “certain staff” were concerned that I lacked the skills and inclination to care for a medically fragile infant.

There are many ways to punish a “patient” for non-cooperation. I tried complaining to the state medical board. My case was not considered worth serious consideration. The medical board takes care of its own.

My next baby after that was born at home, and barring a genuine emergency, so will the child we’re expecting in August. I learn from experience.

Would you believe the OB I’d been seeing was an osteopath, not an MD, and had been described as a “wannabe hippie” (grew up in California and everything) who would let his “patients” stand on their heads if they wanted to give birth that way? A DO! Usually they don’t act like, well, jerks. Maybe it was just a personality conflict. You know, the kind that occurs when a poor charity patient turns out to have brains, a master’s degree from Oxford, a lot of willpower, and a birth library with Henci Goer and Ina May Gaskin on the top shelf?

I have since had two homebirth vbacs.

A “bolus” dose simply means that it is a one time dose rather than a continuous dose. Use of that word doesn’t indicate how heavy or light the dose was…could have been quite heavy or very light. Since I don’t know anything about the doses, I can’t comment on that even if you were to tell me what meds and how much of them were in the epidural mix.

Before the OB forced me into having a “light” epidural that stopped my labor (she wrote in the records she’d had the anesthesiologist provide a “bolus” dose – not the light one I’d agreed to under duress), she had written in my records that IF I had had a vaginal delivery – she planned on intentionally cutting a FOURTH degree episiotomy. It is right there in my hospital record. This OB has since lost her license for abusing patients, after 15 years in the business.

Intentionally cutting someone non-necessarily is abuse and is against the law. The episiotomy rate might be justified at 4 or 5 %, but I think that actual rates top 60%.