Today I could read a true story that has left me the heart in a fist. It's about the story of Inés, a woman mother of two children who she gave birth to a girl at 23 weeks and two days of gestation that passed away soon after birth.
Three days after giving birth Inés was still in the hospital admitted and talking with the nurse told him: “You see, thinking of my two children, I have left them at home, and my dead daughter, what can I say after all? I think about them. And I'm here for nothing, all the time lost. My husband told me not to see the girl. ”
Ines was a month admitted without being able to move out of bed because she had contractions and her daughter was at risk.
Occasionally he had metrorrhagia, but one morning they were more abundant and She noticed that something was happening. He told the doctor who said there was no change, all normal for his condition.
At three or four hours Inés noticed that something was moving down. His sister lifted the sheet and saw purple legs of the baby sticking out of the vulva.
Ines was treated urgently: “I told them not to sleep, that I wanted to see her, but they ignored me. She was born alive, I felt her legs when I left, but I had already been told that I would live a few minutes if I was born… I wanted to have been with her those minutes of life. ”
He asked to see his dead daughter, days later, and the nurse transferred the wish to the supervisor who told him that "Here they have never been allowed to see it for their own good, they fall asleep when the child is going to leave and when he wakes up everything has happened."
In the end they managed to let him see his daughter. Agnes he needed to make his duel, understand the loss. In the wheelchair they gave her little girl, wrapped in sterile green cloths. He took her in his arms, crying, snuggled her, pressed her against his chest and kissed her.
“I don't see anything bad… I don't understand why the doctors didn't let me see her… She left alive, she was breathing, I noticed her. She is very pretty, don't you think? It is not so small, it was five months old. Now I feel better. ”
This is just a summary of the story. I recommend you read it completely, it is worth it. It is narrated in the first person by Alberto Gálvez Toro, the nurse who, living as a midwife, lived the event with Inés.
She asked to be awake, she wanted to see her, feel her and touch her at the time of birth. But nevertheless they slept it for their sake, so that everything happened without knowing.
Out of sight, out of mind? What kind of health professionals do we have (and are) that obviates a person's emotions that way? Why don't a mother's wishes be respected? Wanting to do something different is improper?
Inés listened to his body, felt that something was not going well and communicated it. She knew she was in labor but they didn't believe her. She knew it. The girl would have died equally, but the feeling for this mother would have been quite different if they had at least trusted her.
This is one of many reasons why women ask for a more humanized attention to childbirth (and society a treatment) by health professionals. The women who are going to give birth they are healthy people who ask for help in case something is wrong, however they are often treated as sick people and at the same time as if they were not: "Come on, don't complain so much, you're just going to give birth", "Be still or you it will hurt more ”,“ what are you in labor? Hahaha, first, sure ... ”
