Moms-to-be you need to know that your obstetricians will keep telling you that the most important thing is the health of your baby, as if you don't already know that. That's their key weapon--your guilt. As in: How dare you think of your own health when the health of your baby is also at stake?

The thing is, there is no reason to believe that the health of your baby is at any particular risk with a vaginal birth. That's how babies are born! Obstetricians like Dr. Claudia Holland will try to make you believe you are high risk, because what they are really worried about is their malpractice record. (See my birth story in an earlier post.) Why else would she burst into the operating room shouting, "I don't want to be charged with assault!!!!!"

Until she said that, while I was strapped on the operating table, I didn't even know you could charge a surgeon with assault! My mind was racing on that o.r. table as I tried to answer her and digest this alien concept.

But it certainly felt like assault. And coercion. She coerced me into an unnecessary surgery because of her schedule. [Addendum: Because of some later comments from readers, it's clear that this paragraph has created some confusion about when the coercion took place. Please read my original post for greater accuracy.] Furthermore, the operation was so violent, my body was slammed up and down on the table and I felt pain even under the effects of the epidural. She had some medical data to support her actions, of course, such as the fact that my water had been broken for 24 hours.

But in other countries, such as Britain, where I suppose doctors are not so lawsuit-sensitive, the standard is for women to go up to 72 hours after their waters break before a cesarean is considered.

I relive Dr. Holland snapping over the phone that I had to have the c/section because I was "already scheduled to be in the O.R." and later shouting in the o.r. that she had to miss her "blind mother's (4 p.m.) doctor's appointment." And it's clear to me that I had unnecessary major abdominal surgery for no reason other than her schedule. It's also pretty clear that she forgot to extract the cord blood that we had intended to store for our baby. No one I've spoken to seems to understand the meaning of her explanation for failing to extract the cord blood: "The cord was too boggy."

All my baby needed was time to come. If I had been with a midwife, I wouldn't have undergone this trauma and still be living with pain. My baby would probably have been born on Halloween. I sometimes catch myself telling people she was born in November.

Since this has happened to me, I've read other women's accounts of their VBACs and other births online and spoken to women who have said that they were being coerced-- sometimes because their doctor was about to go on vacation--and they switched doctors at the last minute. I didn't know you could do that. It may seem obvious, but I've never had to consider it in the past.

My current obstetrician laughed when I told her that Dr. Holland said that I HAD to have the cesarean right then because I was already scheduled and the "o.r. might not be available" if we waited until that evening. She said, "No available o.r.? Of course there's always an o.r.! You don't have someone come in with gunshot wounds only to hear, Oh, there's no available o.r.!"

I am so angry with myself for falling for her stupid tricks and pressure. But another point is, one's obstetrician should not be acting and saying the things Dr. Holland did to me, her patient.