S23 Ep11: The Moment That Everything Changed

Speaker 1 Six friends, one dinner, and then the bill. It's chaos.
Oysters for the table, cocktails that were basically water, the total Manhattan rent.

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Speaker 10 Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences. This season contains discussions of medical negligence, birth trauma, and infant loss, which may be upsetting for some listeners.

Speaker 10 For a full content warning, sources, and resources, please visit the episode notes.

Speaker 10 Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself, broken psycho media, and wondery.

Speaker 10 The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice.

Speaker 10 Origins birth and wellness owners and midwives, Caitlin Wages and Gina Thompson, have not responded to our requests for comment.

Speaker 10 Additionally, midwives Jennifer Crawford and Elizabeth Fuell have also not returned our request for comment.

Speaker 10 This season is dedicated with love to Malik.

Speaker 10 You don't know

Speaker 10 anybody

Speaker 10 until you don't

Speaker 10 come to

Speaker 10 someone.

Speaker 11 My baby was born at 10 o'clock that morning. With the history of what was going on, they called in some NICU personnel.
They did care for him he was born. He was not breathing.
I was terrified.

Speaker 11 Then also, it's like starting up this new massive amount of fear of like, what's ahead of us? My OB, she was the delivery OB, and then she was the one that followed up on me until I was discharged.

Speaker 11 I thought she was good during delivery. I had no concerns.
I actually felt quite comfortable and safe with her there.

Speaker 11 when I was being discharged from the hospital. My OB came in with my discharge paperwork to go over it.
I wanted to know where I was in terms of the spectrum of severity because I feel pretty torn up.

Speaker 11 She looked at me and she said, you did push for two and a half hours. That's kind of the max that we'll let people go to.
I mean, you're pretty bad.

Speaker 11 I was like, yeah, kind of rolling my eyes, plus the six hours I pushed at the birth center. She looked at me and she said, what do you mean you pushed at the birth center?

Speaker 11 And I said, I thought that was why my cervix was so swollen. Obviously, she wasn't given this information information by origins.
She was shocked.

Speaker 11 She said, you're not supposed to push until you're fully dilated, 10 centimeters. You weren't fully dilated when you got here.
So why were you pushing? She said, do you know what could have happened?

Speaker 11 You could have torn your cervix. And I later found out that if you tear a cervix, you can hemorrhage and bleed out.
I lost it.

Speaker 11 When she told me that, That was the moment that everything changed for the rest of my life.

Speaker 11 We went home Tuesday evening late. Those days following, I was unable to take deep breaths.
I could only take shallow breaths for days. It was terrifying.
It was like I was hyperventilating almost.

Speaker 11 And I brought that up to the OB and she said, Well, I would attribute to the fact that you probably have some swelling in your lungs. Your muscles are sore.
You fatigued your muscles.

Speaker 11 She said, I would not be surprised if you injured a lot more in your abdomen than you realize.

Speaker 11 Not only are my reproductive parts messed up, you expect those parts to be inflamed and swollen, beat up and bruised, but you wouldn't expect your lungs.

Speaker 11 Maybe that was naive of me, but I had never heard of anybody else that complained of having an elephant on their chest for several days post-birth.

Speaker 11 A few days after the birth happened, I felt like something was seriously wrong with the way that they treated us. So I actually had my husband go on to my portal and take screenshots of the notes.

Speaker 11 I just need a record of everything that happened.

Speaker 11 My husband downloaded these notes on the 16th of October and my baby was born the 10th, six days after I definitely felt like something was very much wrong.

Speaker 11 Ashlyn did reach out at one point to say, heard it wasn't great, would love to chat about it. Hope you and your son are doing well.
But I never responded to that text because I was so angry.

Speaker 11 Part of our contract was that two days after giving birth, we would have a visit from a home nurse that would come and check on mom and baby.

Speaker 11 I reached out and I said, hey, when do I expect the home nurse visit? And they said, oh, well, you have to come in to the birth center for your visit because you're out of bounds.

Speaker 11 Our nurse won't travel to you. I said, no, that's false.
I confirmed the fact that I was in bounds when I toured your facility when I was 20 weeks pregnant.

Speaker 11 I've paid that money because it's like a $200 nurse visit that's allegedly covered by insurance, but then of course we found out that it's not. It was just one thing after the other.

Speaker 11 I very firmly let them know that I was extremely unhappy and that I thought it was an injustice that they were doing this.

Speaker 11 I am not physically getting into my car after I'm torn up after this whole ordeal. Like it's not happening.
And eventually, back and forth, they sent her out. So I did get care from the home nurse.

Speaker 11 I think that she was even concerned about the care that I received and she encouraged me to reach out to the patient advocate and let them know basically how disgruntled I was.

Speaker 10 So did you contact the patient advocate?

Speaker 11 The home nurse contacted them and let them know. The patient advocate reached out to me and she said, hey, we heard you didn't have a great experience.

Speaker 11 We'd like you to come in and basically hash it out with the midwives and get some closure. I told her that I'd love to.
We had a date scheduled to come into Origins.

Speaker 11 in a couple weeks so I would have a little bit of time to heal, a little bit of time to come down from the emotion. During that time, however, I started having complications.

Speaker 11 About day 10, I suddenly lost the ability to pee.

Speaker 11 I had been urinating okay up to that point and slowly but surely I started noticing that my stream was becoming weaker and weaker even though my bladder was like super duper full and painfully full.

Speaker 11 I would sit on the toilet and try to get something out for minutes.

Speaker 11 I started freaking out, which of course is not great either because then you tense up and you really can't pee at that point, but I was constantly in the bathroom.

Speaker 11 I thought, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to start cathing myself. This is going to back up and become a kidney infection.
Like all these things are going through my head.

Speaker 11 My mom, who is a nurse, she was there at the time that this was happening, but I went to her and I, I can't pee, mom. What's going on? And she said, maybe you have a UTI.
You're so swollen.

Speaker 11 It could be that. You have a lot going on down there right now, but go get checked out.
So I went to a local minute clinic. She's like, yeah, it kind of looks cloudy.

Speaker 11 So my guess is you have a UTI, but it was a Friday. So she was going to send the culture in, but it wouldn't come back until Monday.
So she sent me with an antibiotic that I started taking that day.

Speaker 11 Who knows if it was the right antibiotic or not, but we started it. But I called my OB.
I wanted to keep her updated. She said, what do you mean you started an antibiotic today?

Speaker 11 You should have been on antibiotics since I discharged you. Why were you not taking your antibiotics? I was like, you didn't prescribe me antibiotics.

Speaker 11 I haven't been taking them because I was never prescribed them. I pulled out my discharge paperwork that she gave me and we went over that she marked on with her pen.

Speaker 11 And I said, there's an iron supplement on here and an ibuprofen recommendation. She claimed I was supposed to be on an antibiotic because I had an infection at birth.
That's what she said to me.

Speaker 11 That was not in my paperwork anywhere. So don't really know if she thought I was a different patient, but the antibiotic helped.
I was able to start peeing again a few days later. Thank God.

Speaker 11 I went in for my two-week visit with her then. already a little bit on edge because she acted like I was lying that there was no antibiotic mentioned in my paperwork.

Speaker 11 But I went in by myself because my husband was working and I got on the bed in the office. My OB comes in, her happy self, and takes a look down there.
You can't make this stuff up.

Speaker 11 And I have to laugh at it now. Otherwise, I just get angry.
But she looked down and pops up and she's like, well, there's been a separation of church and state down here.

Speaker 11 That's what she said to me. And those words stick out in my mind because it was just so nonchalant and to me, insensitive because I'm in pain.
I'm scared. I'm hurting.

Speaker 11 I don't know who's got my back and who doesn't because it seems like all these care providers are somehow just like skipping over important things.

Speaker 11 So when she said that, I thought, are you kidding me? That's what you're going to say to me after all this?

Speaker 11 I had a second degree tear at delivery that she stitched. She's like, well, it looks like your stitches failed.
Your tear's open. That doesn't sound great.
What are the implications of this thing?

Speaker 11 And so she told me that I would need to be put under to have it repaired.

Speaker 11 And the anesthesia meant that I would need to pump and dump and that it would prolong my recovery time, which also didn't sound great, but then being put under didn't sound wonderful. I'd had it.

Speaker 11 I don't want to see another hospital or doctor. I don't want to at this point.
I don't trust anybody.

Speaker 11 Why would I want to go under and have you operate on me when it seems like you've already failed me? Everything would be fine. We're just going to fix it.

Speaker 11 I went home and I remember walking in my door and my husband and my mom were there and I didn't even say a word. I just collapsed into my husband's arms and started bawling my eyes out.

Speaker 11 The thing that was so frustrating to me is that that visit was on a Friday because she claimed that she was going to get me on the schedule probably Friday at the earliest.

Speaker 11 So it was going to be another week or so. It might be a little bit longer, but I got to see if I can find us an operation room.

Speaker 11 I said that to my husband and my mom and and my mom was like, She needs to find you a time like tomorrow.

Speaker 11 And my husband called back and very kindly but firmly told them that they needed to find a room ASAP. So they called back and got a room the next day.
But in that time, I didn't trust them.

Speaker 11 So I went and got a second opinion from an OB in the office that I had started with at the very start of my pregnancy journey. It was a different OB.

Speaker 11 They had hired a new OB in the time that I was away. I went to this new OB, told her my story.
She took a look.

Speaker 11 and what she told me was that, yes, very swollen, you're healing, you do have a second degree tear, but what she didn't tell you was that you have granulation tissue forming already.

Speaker 11 And I don't, I didn't know what that meant, but I guess what granulation tissue is a sign of is that the open part of the tear is already healing.

Speaker 11 If my OB had put me under, the success rate of restitching it would only have been 50-50 because of the granulation tissue. I guess granulation tissue doesn't adhere well.

Speaker 11 There's a chance it could, but there's also the high chance that it might not. So she's like, the potential that you go under and encounter another surgery and it failing is pretty high.

Speaker 11 She said either that or her plan was to scrape off the granulation tissue, stitch you back up, and then that would probably be a more high success rate.

Speaker 11 But the thing is, then you're prolonging your healing even that much farther. Or your other option is just to let it go.
I'd have an unrepaired tear, but I could function. Basically, I'd be okay.

Speaker 11 And if in the future I decided that I wanted to go under and have it repaired, I could.

Speaker 11 She was the only one that extended compassion in that moment and said, you know what, I think you've been through enough already. I don't think it's a bad idea just to let it go.

Speaker 11 Reassess months from now, years from now, potentially. She's like, it's not going to inhibit you from all the things that probably people think of.
You just will have an unrepaired tear.

Speaker 11 And that's just the way it is. And I trusted her to this day.
It's unrepaired. And it did not pose issues with my second baby.

Speaker 11 I do have scar tissue there that I had to go through pelvic therapy PT for. I would have gone through anyways, but that scar tissue did pose some problems in the fact that it's a little more tender.

Speaker 11 We had a date scheduled to come into Origins the day that I was supposed to go in and meet with Origins. I went to go get the second opinion.
My head was spinning. I was like, time is of the essence.

Speaker 11 And so I canceled the meeting with Origins and said that I've had some complications come up. I'm not going to be able to meet with you guys today, but that I'd like to find another time.

Speaker 11 She said, no problem. We're here for you when you need us.
Reach back out when it's time and we'll put something on the books.

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Speaker 14 Six friends.

Speaker 15 One dinner.

Speaker 14 And then the bill.

Speaker 1 Suddenly, it's giving SAT math section.

Speaker 14 Someone forgot they ordered oysters for the table.

Speaker 1 Someone else swears their cocktail was just sparkling water with vibes.

Speaker 15 And now the check looks like rent in Manhattan.

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Speaker 11 I reached back out November 2nd and said I was interested, and I've never gotten a response to this day, which was probably a good thing, honestly, because knowing what I know now and having learned stuff, maybe it was for the best.

Speaker 11 I think that I could have been level-headed. I didn't want to go in and have them gaslight me, to be quite frank.

Speaker 11 I felt like it was definitely a meeting for them to tell me all the ways that my labor went wrong, cover their behinds. I have the strong hunch that that's what the meeting would have been.

Speaker 11 I have moved on since then and had another baby, but that nightmare of an experience still hangs on in my mind.

Speaker 11 I feel like I did not have full knowledge of what I was putting myself into and the danger that I was getting into.

Speaker 11 But really, I shouldn't have been in that danger because I was told something that wasn't actually true.

Speaker 11 I was putting my faith in people who obviously didn't have my best interests at heart, even though they claimed to.

Speaker 11 Was it more malicious negligence? Was it that we're money hungry and we have to do these things not to pass the patient over so that we don't get the full reimbursement? Like, I have no idea.

Speaker 11 I don't know. I can't propose to understand all of the implications.
The story is so convoluted.

Speaker 11 The ways that they tried to pull the wool over people's heads, it makes me think that it was just literally a scam to get money. That's all it feels like at the end of the day.

Speaker 11 Maybe they started with good intentions. They had women's best interests at heart, but power and money corrupt.

Speaker 11 And I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt in a way and say they were just lazy and didn't know what they were doing.

Speaker 11 But I don't understand why they're not forthcoming with providing us the refunds that were due and the apologies probably that were due our insurance was frauded technically they got paid double because i paid them and then my insurance paid them but they never refunded me the money that i paid that was covered by insurance if that makes sense because they charged us ahead of time they said they would refund us once insurance kicked in and my insurance kicked in and paid but i never got the money back i still have not gotten the refund that were owed i know there's there's a lot of women that paid a lot of money that are due a refund just as I was.

Speaker 11 Why are they withholding that stuff if they're not just out to make money off of us and move on?

Speaker 11 It literally says in our contract that they'll perform an audit and refund us the money that we're due if we're due any money.

Speaker 11 The trauma that I went through and processing it all, the last thing on my mind was going through my contract and reading that thing about the fact that they're supposed to do an audit.

Speaker 11 So I didn't even start thinking about that until someone brought it up and I was like, oh, no one ever audited my chart. No one ever audited my finances.

Speaker 11 And once I went through and pulled all of my insurance statements, I found a lot of money that I'm owed. I was in contact with them several months ago, the financial person.

Speaker 11 She was actually at the point of being willing to send me a refund check, which was still not the full refund that I was due, but it was a portion.

Speaker 11 And I was like, I'll take that portion, you know, and at least then fight for the rest later. I already knew that they were being a little hesitant about giving people their refunds.

Speaker 11 I also found an additional receipt that I hadn't tacked on to the refund amount that they actually owed me.

Speaker 11 And so then I emailed back and I said, here's the receipt for some more that I paid that I'm owed back per your contract. I never received correspondence from her from then on.

Speaker 11 That was my first experience with birth, the beauty of birth, that it was stolen from me. If the worst had happened, if I had torn, if I had hemorrhaged, would I have died at the birth center?

Speaker 11 It didn't happen, thank God, but my mind goes there sometimes. I was putting my life in their hands.
I was just drowning in anxiety, fear, feeling violated, and then feeling angry.

Speaker 11 I myself was a medical professional. I mean, I worked in the NICU.

Speaker 11 Why did I miss the red flags? Was I being oblivious? Was I being too proud and thinking like, well, I'm going to be just fine? Those emotions really ate at me.

Speaker 11 Some of it was the embarrassment that I had chosen to go there and that I had failed. It was like my body failed me, I failed me.
Those first few months are a blur to me.

Speaker 11 I think I blacked out a lot of those memories, honestly, because it was just such a dichotomy between the anger and the trauma.

Speaker 11 At the same time, having this cute, beautiful, amazing little thing that's like all mine that my body made.

Speaker 11 It was too much for my brain to handle. And it makes me so sad now looking back at pictures of him when he was little and being like, oh, I forgot that that happened.

Speaker 11 People talk about the glow you have as a first-time mom. I didn't have that.
I was just out of my brains. And I'll never get that time back.
I felt like that was stolen from me. They stole a lot.

Speaker 11 of time from me and they stole a lot of memories from me and they stole this piece of me that I never consented to them taking. It's like no one understood what we had gone through.

Speaker 11 Those months following were the hardest months of my life. I went several months feeling isolated, abandoned, forgotten, all of these negative thoughts that just swarm in your mind.

Speaker 11 I know that we're on edge all the time as first-time parents, but for me, after that had happened and after I realized how close we were to having something really devastating happen, or at least it seemed like it was that close, any little thing that happened to him, any little like snot in his nose, any little cry that he had, which he cried a lot because we found out later that he had a dairy protein allergy.

Speaker 11 I was eating dairy and breastfeeding and he was having a bad reaction to my milk.

Speaker 11 There was never a moment in time where really we had quiet except for the times when he was sleeping, which was rare because he was in pain a lot. And nursing, that was a challenge too.

Speaker 11 We struggled for four months nursing.

Speaker 11 i struggled with massive engorgement i mean i had clogs all the time it was the constant fear of mastitis but any little thing that happened to him my brain immediately went to oh my gosh he's gonna die that's so fatiguing for your brain to just never have a moment of rest it's constant fight or flight and never knowing who to go to.

Speaker 11 And I was afraid that people would think that I was freaking out. I have to get past that.
I can't hold on to that. And I'm trying.
It's sitting in that grief and I don't know how long that will take.

Speaker 11 I couldn't really talk to somebody. I couldn't really relate and I was no longer able to go out and be in community with people.
I withdrew from society. It didn't feel safe for me to leave my house.

Speaker 11 I'd go out to go run errands as needed, but I didn't want to interact with people. I was in my own bubble.
I was hurting so badly.

Speaker 11 I guess I didn't trust anybody and I didn't want to open up and just lay my heart out to somebody who wouldn't understand. It's almost like it would just re-hurt it.

Speaker 11 I suddenly found myself in my house with a guy that I had married a year before and had dated not that much longer before that. So he was kind of new to me too.

Speaker 11 We're learning this marriage thing and we're learning ourselves. I was a fish out of water, I realized.
I've never been so lonely in my life. It felt like there was nobody there.

Speaker 11 I felt like if I went back to my coworkers at the hospital and told them what happened, I feel like I would have had guilt from that too, because they would have sat there and wagged their finger and said, well, we told you, you should have known better.

Speaker 11 No one ever did that, but I've heard the comments made behind mom's backs when I had worked there. And so I anticipated that that's probably what would have been said.

Speaker 11 So I didn't feel like I could go to anybody. It affected my relationship with my kid, obviously.
It affected my relationship with me. I learned kind of to not like myself.

Speaker 11 It affected my relationship with my husband. He wanted to support me because he knew that was my dream to have the baby there and that I had given so much of myself.
He didn't want to disappoint me.

Speaker 11 He thought that he would have dashed my dreams. He is upset with himself that he didn't advocate for me.
He said he's never been so afraid in his life. His face is burned in my mind.

Speaker 11 The fear in his eyes. He was so helpless and no one's guiding him.
No one's telling him what's going on. He has no idea.
I had no idea.

Speaker 11 But I know that he carries a lot of hurt and a lot of shame and guilt. I mean, none of it's deserved.
My husband was also a victim.

Speaker 11 And I know that I was the one that everyone was scared about and my baby was the one that everyone was scared about in that moment.

Speaker 10 Each of you suffered your own kind of trauma.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 And I think that sometimes his is overlooked.

Speaker 11 He's had to deal with my emotional outbursts or all of the mess and the muck that has come of this because he, such a good man that he is, feels like I need to have my wounds healed first and my pain and my trauma needs to be addressed first because it's been so debilitating and he's put himself to the side.

Speaker 11 But he still carries it and yet no one's really asked him.

Speaker 11 It wasn't until May of 2023, seven months later, I finally had a point where I was like, I'm living in desolation. I am living in this black cloud that just surrounds my days.
I wake up in fear.

Speaker 11 I go to bed in tears. I literally don't recognize myself anymore.
I realized something had to be done, and that's when I reached out to a counselor. I also told myself I have to put myself out there.

Speaker 11 I started going to moms' groups through various churches, but then I met this new emotion when I would put myself out there: resentment of other moms, because I was so heated to realize what I missed out on.

Speaker 11 Birth is so lovely and it's beautiful and like your body was made to do this. I had so much resentment when I heard people talk about their good birth stories.

Speaker 11 I was happy for them, obviously, in one sense. I would wish nothing like what I had on anybody.
But then there was also this side of me that was so resentful. I didn't want to hear those stories.

Speaker 11 I didn't want to hear someone else rave about, especially a birth center birth or even a home birth, that those things worked out for somebody else, but not for me.

Speaker 11 I started counseling and was able to start talking about it. I literally, up until this point, for months, thought I was the only one that had gone through this at Origins.

Speaker 11 I was scrolling social media one day. At this time, I had already moved out of Texas.

Speaker 11 and saw a news report out of Texas that some women were gathering and they were going to be demonstrating outside of an Origins location.

Speaker 11 I clicked on the article and read it and sure enough, it was Origins Dallas. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not the only one.
In the article, it was Amanda who had been interviewed by the reporter.

Speaker 11 I was nervous reaching out to her, honestly. I didn't want to dredge up old memories, but I'm so glad I did.

Speaker 11 I reached out to Amanda online and I think it was via the Origins page because at the time Origins was still running. And I just simply said, hey, I saw this review.

Speaker 11 It sounds like you had a bad experience. I did too, but I didn't realize that other people were having bad experiences there.

Speaker 11 She said, oh, yep, there's been lots of bad things and we're starting to submit reports and we're going to get women together and we're going to let people know that there's something bad going on here.

Speaker 11 That's when I got added to the survivors page. Within the span of that month of talking to her, I realized how much had gone wrong.
I realized that someone had died under their care.

Speaker 11 I realized how many women had been transferring. I realized how much they had flubbed their transfer numbers.

Speaker 11 That's when I started getting involved with these women and started submitting reports to TDLR and to the Attorney General's office.

Speaker 11 When I got added to the group, the survivors group, I've only really heard bits and pieces of people's stories. Kristen's was the first story that I heard in detail.
It's shocking to me.

Speaker 11 All of the stuff that she went through was months prior to me.

Speaker 11 The time that her baby was born would have been right around the time that I actually started with Origins.

Speaker 11 That kind of hits me in a different way because it's like, had I known, oh, I would have run for the hills.

Speaker 11 And when she was reflecting on the fact that they tried to sell you their chiropractic packages and their Botox and their masseuse packages and the IV therapy, I had actually forgotten about all that stuff.

Speaker 11 But when she said that, I looked at my husband. I was like, yep, I remember all that stuff now.
Hearing Kristen's story, I'm just amazed at how strong she was.

Speaker 11 My mom, I sent her this podcast and she listened to the first couple episodes. She called me and she said, I listened to the first two episodes with Kristen's story.

Speaker 11 I think I understand why it's been so hard for you. She said, I think I get what you're feeling.
I knew it was hard. I knew it was scary.

Speaker 11 I knew it was bad what happened, but she said, I think I understand now why it's been so hard. And it's because you've had to be so strong through this.

Speaker 11 No one understands how strong you've had to be, even to get to this point and basically have powered through this.

Speaker 11 And to hear her say that, that she thought I was strong, because I feel like half of me thinks I've been strong. And then the other half of me thinks I'm just being a wimp.

Speaker 11 And so to hear her say that she thought I'd been strong was just really meaningful. I think it validated that piece of me that wants to give myself grace and yet hasn't been able to.

Speaker 11 I've realized that hearing the people that went through it, that had the same midwives, that were in that same building, that saw the same OB, their words that they speak when they reiterate their story and share it, it's what I feel.

Speaker 11 We really were treated extremely poorly and I need to stop excusing them. It's feeling comfort in the empathy from somebody else.

Speaker 11 I hate that they had to go through it, but it's like someone else went through it too and they're surviving and I'm going to also.

Speaker 11 It's not a misery loves company thing. It's just knowing that someone else can empathize.
I'm not lonely anymore.

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Speaker 11 I am in no way anti-midwifery. I still love the midwifery model.
And in fact, with my second baby, I went went with midwives. They were all CNMs.
They all delivered in a hospital setting.

Speaker 11 I don't regret that at all. They were amazing, lovely people who knew their stuff.
They absolutely came through for me. They did a great job with my second, but the trauma still came back.

Speaker 11 I really wanted to try to have a redemptive birth experience to prove to myself that my body could do it.

Speaker 11 There's also this reality that we have to confront, which is that we don't know how your body is going to react in any situation, really.

Speaker 11 The sad thing is, as much as I thought I had worked through that trauma, as the time got closer to having my second, I started having irrational thoughts.

Speaker 11 Like, I don't think I'm going to make it out the other side of this. I think I'm going to go into that hospital and be in labor and I'm going to die.

Speaker 11 And then once we were there at the hospital in labor, I wanted so desperately to try to do it all by myself.

Speaker 11 The contractions got so bad and I knew it was nearing that time and I thought, I can't do this again. I ultimately opted for an epidural again, and it was the greatest thing.

Speaker 11 It was amazing to come out of the hospital the second time and say, that's how birth is supposed to go. That's how you're supposed to be treated by the people that are caring for you.

Speaker 11 I wanted to share my story just to bring awareness, but also to try to bring justice to all the women that were wronged. by

Speaker 11 origins and the people that worked there such a vulnerable time, obviously, birth. And we put our full trust in the providers and in the system.

Speaker 11 The reason I wanted to talk about this was hopefully to bring some closure, but to encourage people to keep an open mind and to recognize the risks and the benefits of any decision.

Speaker 11 If I was telling somebody weighing their options, particularly in Texas, go into it with a clear knowledge of what the credentials mean.

Speaker 11 Also, understand and have the humility to realize that you can have a plan in mind and it can go completely wrong.

Speaker 11 And if they do go awry, you need to make sure that you trust the people that you're with and that you've vetted them.

Speaker 11 I have all the admiration and support for anyone who wants to go the birth center route or even a home birth. To my younger self, I would have said, weigh all the options.

Speaker 11 There's so many things you learn the first time you go through any experience.

Speaker 11 Why would you not want to be in a place where all of the modalities to keep you safe, the knowledge to keep you safe, all of that stuff is there if you need it?

Speaker 11 I don't want to find myself or my friends in a position, again, where we have no recourse, really. At the end of the day, you have to be confident in your choices.

Speaker 11 And you have to do what you think is best for you, but recognize that there are implications and I'm living proof.

Speaker 11 All the survivors are living proof that there are a lot bigger implications than just physical harm. There's psychological harm that's going to reverberate for a long time.

Speaker 11 One thing that Kristen said that stuck with me so deeply was that she talked about generational trauma. It cut me deeply.

Speaker 11 That is another point of guilt, honestly, that I carry with me is that my son didn't deserve that.

Speaker 11 He didn't deserve a mom that wasn't emotionally available, that was in tears all the time, that couldn't handle his screams, that couldn't love on him the way that he needed to be loved on.

Speaker 11 That pains me so much that that was, again, taken from me. That was something that was stolen.
I couldn't even look at my notes. The anxiety that I felt having to look at my notes was excruciating.

Speaker 11 It was overwhelming. It's a piece of paper with words on it.
Why does this matter to me so much?

Speaker 11 But I think I was afraid of reading the numbers, the words, and finding something else hidden in those words that was wrong that I hadn't caught before. Sharing the story was the same way.

Speaker 11 It was like, I don't want to relive those memories. I don't want to think about it.
I just want to put it in a box and walk away and just forget about it, but I couldn't.

Speaker 11 And part of me worries that when I share my story too much, it sounds like I'm complaining or whining. I'm a broken record.

Speaker 11 There's this big, yucky pit in my heart that's just like brimming with the emotion. I don't know how else to say it.
I'm searching for this salve from my heart, this big gaping wound in my heart.

Speaker 11 Sharing my story, it helps a little bit.

Speaker 10 I really admire so much your vulnerability and your bravery and your willingness to dig so deep and share so much because you are going to provide an enormous amount of validation for others who have been through similar experiences.

Speaker 10 And I hope that you found some for yourself.

Speaker 10 Coming up this season on Something Was Wrong.

Speaker 17 We have a video of the birth. Well, of part of it.

Speaker 18 And you can see when she gets panicked and she says, You have to get this baby out now. You need to stand up.
So I stand up in the tub. I put one leg up on the side.
His head's kind of crowning.

Speaker 18 And then she said something along the lines of, I'm going to have to help you. And she's got a scalpel in her hand.

Speaker 18 Part of me wishes she would have just given me the pesiotomy and helped me get him out. Whatever would have stopped the situation from happening.

Speaker 17 We V line it down to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. I don't understand the gravity of the situation at the time.
I walk into LD and there is a nurse pacing back and forth in the hall.

Speaker 17 I walk up to the desk and I say, hi, you know, I'm Barbie.

Speaker 11 I'm here checking in.

Speaker 17 And I look on her desk and it has my name written, big letters, Barbie-severe preeclampsia. And I'm like, why does she have that written? No one has brought it preeclampsia to me at this point.

Speaker 17 The nurse that was pacing, she comes over to me and she's like, come with me.

Speaker 17 I'm thinking in my mind, they must be a low census or something because she was just hanging out waiting for me, not realizing that I was in grave danger at the time.

Speaker 19 In sharing my story with people, I've had so many people, especially women, tell me about their own birth trauma. I've even had men tell me about their partner's birth trauma.

Speaker 11 When I had that conversation with Caitlin one week postpartum, I told her that I was going to be the voice for the moms that didn't feel like they could stand up for themselves.

Speaker 11 When me and Kristen and Markita started talking about all of this, we just wanted to save one mom and one baby. And

Speaker 11 I think we've done that. I think we've saved tons of moms and tons of babies already.

Speaker 11 Malik's Law, HB 4553,

Speaker 11 it was introduced into house in March.

Speaker 11 It's basically requiring for midwives to report outcomes related to transfer, mortality, morbidity rates, because the reporting that they do is within like a closed system.

Speaker 11 So it's not open to the public. The everyday consumer cannot view these statistics.

Speaker 21 Commissioners, my name is Kristen and I am a founding member of Moms Advocating for the Moms Alliance and a past client of licensed midwives in the state of Texas.

Speaker 20 I am here today because Texas mothers and babies are suffering, not because of chance, but because of a system that fails to protect them.

Speaker 21 TDLR claims to safeguard Texans, but I am alive today despite their lack of due diligence, not because of it.

Speaker 22 While I was at that birth center in Miami, Florida, called the International School of Midwifery, we made placenta pills for everybody who wanted them. It was extremely popular.

Speaker 22 There was actually a bust. A government agency showed up and took all the placenta pillow making stuff.

Speaker 11 As physicians, we get criticized all the time for dismissing patients. It also happens in McWeferi model of care, as it happened with the survivors of the season.

Speaker 11 Red flags develop, not in every pregnancy, but in a lot of them. I feel like the stories that I heard on this season was that they were being forced into that box where they were low risk.

Speaker 11 And even though red flags kept popping up, they weren't willing willing to acknowledge that they're starting to move out of that low risk box.

Speaker 10 Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, associate producers Amy B.

Speaker 10 Chesler, and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High.

Speaker 10 Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, and Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist.

Speaker 10 Thank you to Marissa, Travis, and our team at WME, Wondry, Jason and Jennifer, our cybersecurity team, Darkbox Security, and my lawyer, Alan.

Speaker 10 Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories. And thank you, each and every listener, for making our show possible with your support and listenership.

Speaker 10 Special shout out to Emily Wolf for covering Gladrag's original song, You Think You for Us This Season. For more music by Emily Wolf, check out the episode notes or your favorite music streaming app.

Speaker 10 Speaking of episode notes, there, every week you'll find episode-specific content warnings, sources, and resources. Until next time, stay safe, friends.

Speaker 1 Six friends, one dinner, and then the bill. It's chaos.
Oysters for the table, cocktails that were basically water.

Speaker 2 The total Manhattan rent.

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