My daughter is the light of my life, but her birth could have killed me. I didn’t have an epidural, because thanks to years of writing Greys Anatomy, I was more fearful of complications than of labor pain.
My labor was considered normal, which is to say, I paced, doubled over, and vomited from agonizing pain every few minutes for 22 hours, then pushed with my entire body for four more hours. And still, I required a vacuum assist to get the baby out because her head was stuck on my pelvis. When my daughter finally emerged, healthy, I wept with relief, but my face was dry because I was too dehydrated to produce tears. That was the moment it quickly went from normal to terrifying as blood started pouring from my body and pooling on the hospital floor.
I didn’t bleed to death because the medical team had easy access to misoprostol—a drug that has now been taken off emergency carts in Louisiana because, although it’s incredibly effective at stopping post-partum hemorrhaging, it can also be used to induce abortion. I also required packing with sponges and gauze and nine stitches to stop the bleeding.
It took me months to fully recover from childbirth, partly because of blood loss, and partly because one of the sponges was forgotten inside of me. If you’re a Grey’s fan, you know that a left-behind sponge can lead to serious infection, illness, and death. I was lucky that I could feel that something was off and that the doctors believed me, searched, and found the rotting sponge while antibiotics could still treat the infection.
I’m telling you the grisly details of my child’s birth because women usually don’t. The same way that our culture has taught us to whisper about our periods and hide our tampons—despite the fact that our menstrual cycles perpetuate our species—new mothers are culturally guided to hide the more brutal details of childbirth. Our society focuses on beautiful, giggling babies. It ignores, through culturally perpetuated silence, the physical and emotional wounds that accompany the experience of pregnancy, miscarriage, labor, birth, and motherhood.
I believe it’s partly because of this silence—because we are made to feel that we are somehow betraying our breathtaking, beloved babies when we name the realities that lead to and accompany their existence—that we have allowed laws to be passed in the United States of America that force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. I believe it’s imperative that women start talking about what the term “reproductive rights” actually means—because it’s the only way to drive home the reality of how important it is that we all vote in this election.
