Shownotes Transcript
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This season contains discussions of medical negligence, birth trauma, and infant loss, which may be upsetting for some listeners. For a full content warning, sources, and resources, please visit the episode notes.
Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, and Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice.
Origins Birth and Wellness owners and midwives Caitlin Wages and Gina Thompson have not responded to our requests for comment. Additionally, midwives Jennifer Crawford and Elizabeth Fuel have also not returned our request for comment. This season is dedicated with love to Malik. You're making on me, you don't You don't Until you don't
Hi, I'm Brianna. I was married in 21. I got pregnant about three months after we were married. We were excited to start our family, anticipating that this baby would come kind of around the one-year anniversary mark. I gave birth to my baby at Origins in 2022. During that time was also obviously fallout from COVID and the pandemic.
I am a dietician by trade. I had been working in the hospital in the NICU and the children's hospital nearby. So I was seeing the dynamics of COVID and hospital dynamics and all of the perfect storm that was happening at the time. I would describe myself as a little more holistic in my approach. I think Western medicine is an amazing miracle. It saves people's lives, but I also value the holistic side of health.
I would say I'm scrunchy. I'm somewhat crunchy. I was hoping for less of maybe a clinical setting to bring my baby into for that first pregnancy.
We had tried going with an OB initially. I didn't necessarily know anything different. I had been going there for my well-woman visits, not specifically with the OB group, but with the family practice that was there under that same roof. When I met with that OB in the first 20 weeks of my pregnancy, those various visits, I felt that she was just so in and out the door. My first pregnancy, you know, I'm scared of what's going on. I'm scared of what's to come. I'm also really excited and want to share that emotion.
She came in, she was totally cold. And I just remember being like, I have so many questions and she's out the door.
I felt bad because I felt like she was in such a rush and had to get to the next person. Ultimately, the thing that kind of tipped us over the edge was I told her there were two tests that I was willing to let her run. And then when we finally got the results, there had been like a bajillion tests run genetically that I did not care to have. And also when we got the bill, it was like hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And we had not anticipated that. I was really furious. And that's what ultimately pushed me to finding a birth center.
I personally was not comfortable going the home birth route. I totally respect people who do that. I admire their strength and their courage.
I thought the birth center would be a happy medium between the hospital setting and the home birth setting. I wanted the expertise and care of midwives. I thought they brought in a medical perspective. I think I felt more comfort knowing that and hoping that if I went to a birth center, I'd be able to build the relationship with my midwives and they would know me on the day that labor came and they would know my preferences and know my husband and all those dynamics.
I toured several birth centers in part because obviously I wanted to see the setting itself, but I also wanted to meet the people that would be traveling with me through pregnancy and birth. I did the tour at Origins Dallas.
I wanted to know how close we were to the nearest hospital and how fast it would be to get there if things went awry. They assured us of that during the tour, you know, that we were a three-minute ambulance ride to Baylor. They showed us the stats on their percentage of transfers. I want to say at the time it was 10%, which to me, having seen other birth center transfer rates, it was average.
That gave me confidence because I didn't want them to be too low because for whatever reason in my mind, that told me that they were too risky, that they didn't want to transfer, that they kept you too long. But then on the other end, I didn't want them to be like, let's just send her to the hospital right away. I wanted to know that they were not afraid to send me, but also would try their best to do all that they could do to help me have my baby there. They basically told me that they were not afraid to call in help if needed. And that's what I wanted to hear.
They had good reviews. I went to the Yelp reviews. I went to the Google reviews. Even my husband's chiropractor, through work, his wife was very much involved in the birth world. I asked her for recommendations of birth centers, and Origins was one of them.
So it was personal and public reviews, I would say, that I got. I selected Origins because everybody knew about them. And I just figured that a place that was so well-known couldn't be bad. I felt that the fact that they had a good name, from what I was hearing, spoke to how upright they were. They had a CNM on staff at the time. I thought that that meant that they were more medically minded. I knew that they had several CPMs, but they also had a CNM.
I knew that there was a difference between a CPM and a CNM. My sister-in-law is a CNM. She has a master's degree. I knew that a CNM required her to have her nursing degree. I guess I didn't know necessarily the implications of what a CPM meant. I knew that they had a certain amount of hours under their belt and because Origins had been around so long and they had good
good reviews. I felt like they could have been picky and choosy about which CPMs they hired. It wasn't just like the newbies fresh out of training. I figured that they would have been more established. The fact that Origins took my insurance, I thought that that meant that they were on the up and up. You have to jump through a lot of hoops to have insurance cover you. Origins was the only one that took insurance, if I remember correctly. A lot of the other ones, had they blown me away,
I think I would have considered paying the extra money to go there, but all things considered, I was actually quite impressed with Origins. I really thought that I had vetted Origins.
I actually didn't transfer into Origins until 20 weeks. So I was halfway through my pregnancy. Because I worked in Fort Worth, I preferred actually the Fort Worth location. But at the time that my baby was due, the Fort Worth location was too full. They told me that there were openings in Dallas for my delivery month. So I went there. It was a bit of a drive.
My parents were 12 hours away from where we lived, as were my husband's parents. Both of those sets of parents are in Colorado. So my mom had planned to be there after he was born. She took the approach that I think you guys are going to be fine. You're in good hands. You guys should have your time as a family, like your own little family for a few days. And then I'm happy to come and help out. But of course, she was like, if anything bad happens, call me, I'll be there.
She was supportive of my decision, but she was probably a little nervous. My grandma was, I think, very much against it, but she never really told me that. I assumed that she was very much against it because my cousin does home births and she really is against that. My grandma was a labor and delivery nurse back in her day. So she always says like, you don't know what can happen to your baby within seconds.
One of the nurses that I worked with in the NICU, we were pretty close like co-workers. She had been there for several years and she was a grandma, the sweetest lady ever. But she was so nervous about me going there and she really tried to dissuade me. She was the one that really vehemently was like, do not do this. I've seen such bad things happen. Babies that end up in this NICU. But another one of my co-workers, also a dietician, she was super supportive and she had done all of her three births out of her center.
So you go to your first appointment at Origins and I believe you saw Rachel? Yes. My husband did come the first visit with Origins. So we did meet with Rachel that very first visit.
I only met with her once. I remember her being very warm and inviting. And I think I made the comment to my husband after the fact that I was like, this is good. She took time to speak to my husband and ask him, you know, what he does and learn who he is. It was a very different experience from our OB visits. And I remember thinking that that was a breath of fresh air. It was like, okay, we're in the right place. Nothing invasive as far as testing or anything. She, you know, heard the baby's heartbeat on her monitor.
Yeah, that's what I remember the first visit. But Rachel left after that. The next person they hired on was a CNM. Ashlyn was a CNM. And so when she was hired on, I felt good again. Maybe the last couple months of my pregnancy, Ashlyn was on board. So I did see Ashlyn a couple times. I always looked forward to my visits with Ashlyn because I was like, okay, this is the type of midwife I want. I do remember seeing Elizabeth a lot and I was kind of bummed by that.
She seemed nice enough. I didn't feel the same warmth, I guess, from her as maybe I did with the others. I just didn't click with her. It seemed like she had been there quite a while from what I had gathered. Her experience level made me feel a little more comfortable with her. I do remember thinking in the back of my mind at the time of my birth, I hope that she's not the one on call. I was really hoping for Ashley to
I saw Elizabeth the most. Ashlyn probably was a close second. I think I saw Jen just once or twice. My perception of Jennifer when I was there, I thought she had been a midwife for years. She acted like she knew everything. She totally acted like she ran the show. And I felt super confident in her because she acted like that.
I was blessed to have a good first pregnancy. I did not have crazy morning sickness. The second trimester is always seemingly the easiest. I was very fatigued my first trimester and that shook me because no one ever talked about that. I had low iron at one point. Instead of just giving you like an iron supplement, at least for me, they had a regimen, which is why people go there. They have a more holistic regimen.
I was on chlorophyll and sesame seed oil and various other random supplements that a traditional OB would never probably put you on. Per my lab results, it actually did help. I could see with my own eyes the numbers. It made me believe that they knew what they were doing. It affirmed my trust and that you could have the same effect health-wise doing it that way versus doing like a more pharmaceutical approach.
My pregnancy was low risk and there were a lot of things going on. It was easy stuff like testing the baby's heart rate or I can feel the head over here and the feet here. It seemed to corroborate what I was feeling as far as kicks or where the pressure was or stuff like that. So it was quote unquote easy stuff like that. There was never anything that would have tested more in-depth knowledge per se.
I really had an uneventful pregnancy. The bigness at the end, I wanted to cry every evening that he didn't come over 40 weeks because I was like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I feel so heavy and I can't breathe and I can't sleep. Those are minor complaints compared to what a lot of people have. They ask you all of the permissions, your birth plan, all that stuff before you even show up the day of your labor and delivery. And they at one point asked me if it was OK to have a student observe.
several months of care with origins, I said no to that question. And I honestly really just don't know why, but they go through that birth plan every time you go in. And it was the last week or two, Elizabeth asked me the student question again, are you sure you don't want a student there? And I was like,
If it's going to help them learn, I'm open to that. But I distinctly remember telling Elizabeth that I was okay with having a student there to strictly observe, literally do nothing other than just be a fly on the wall. And she's like, yep, that's totally fine. I'll put for observe only. That's it. Great. Move on. Did they have you register at a hospital just in case interventions were needed? No. Hindsight's 20-20. That would have been a smart thing to do.
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My baby was not head down. That was the big thing towards the end was, is he going to turn in time to be able to have a birth center birth? They talked about doing the aversions. They recommended all the spinning babies techniques and the stretches and the chiropractics. He didn't flip until very, very near the end. So I got pretty nervous, but he eventually did and he stayed head down.
I knew that this baby had to come before 42 weeks. That was always the topic was what can we do to kickstart labor? You can start doing red raspberry leaf tea and vaginal suppositories of like primrose oil. I never actually got to that point.
I went into labor on Saturday the 8th. I remember waking up around like 11 at night. I woke my husband up and I was like, something's happening. I had been having Braxton Hicks and I was like, these are strong. So maybe this is it. But I was able to sleep through it. I remember going to church the next day. So Sunday morning, this is how I knew I was in labor because we went to church and I could hardly stand up. The contractions would hit and I tried to power through. I
I would grip the rail in front of me as it would happen. And I was like, I can do it. I can do it. There were times that I had to sit down. The contraction was just so bad. Our next door neighbor went to the same church. And I remember her coming up to us at the start of the mass. And she was like, do you want to bring the gifts up? And my husband, he was like, today would not be a good day. She's in labor right now. And she looked at me. She was like, oh, okay. And her face was just in shock. I think she's probably like, why are you here? Yeah.
I just remember that it was like, power through that hour of math.
We called the on-call midwife, told her what I was experiencing. And she said, it's possible this is false labor. We just want to make sure that this is the real thing happening. But go take a bath. If it goes away, then we'll just wait for real labor to start. I went and took a bath. The contractions did seem to go away. I started feeling a little bit better. So I thought, okay, that was false labor. Kind of bummed out by it, honestly. But it was like temporary relief for a few hours, which was nice. But then they hit with a vengeance that late afternoon slash evening.
It was the worst contractions that I had felt. It was going to get much worse. They were excruciatingly painful. The pain was making me sick. People say they get nauseous when they go into labor, so I'm sure part of it was that too. But I had puked everything out. I couldn't keep a thing down.
We did call Elizabeth and it was 6.30 that Sunday evening. So I had been in labor for nearing 24 hours by that point. He called Elizabeth, had her on speakerphone, and he was like, Elizabeth, I think that this is it. What do we do? And Elizabeth nonchalantly was like, do you really think so? I don't know. What's the time between contractions? He told her what it was. I got the sense from that call hearing her that she was really skeptical of the fact that we thought that I was actually in labor and ready to go. She
She kind of kept pushing back. At eight days overdue? Yeah. And I remember screaming at that point. I was like, this is so painful. I cannot take this anymore. And that's when she was like, well, yeah, I think she's in labor. So how about you guys come in? I remember arriving to the birth center around like 630, 645-ish. And I can actually probably pull up my notes at this point. We arrived 1825. So that would have been right around 630 that evening.
The birth center had two stories. They put me in one of the bedrooms upstairs. And the first thing that I remember is they had me go labor on the toilet. So they had me sit backwards. There was a pillow on the back of the toilet tank. They piled up pillows so I could put my face in there.
They said that was one of the techniques. So I was fine with it. But the thing that really made me nervous was that when you're sitting on the toilet too long, your legs start falling asleep. And so they specifically said when we're like practicing these positions, even during like birth class, you need to have your feet up on stools. They had me go sit on the toilet and there was no stools. And so Elizabeth is like, well, we need to get stools for your feet.
They were running around the birth center trying to find stools. They couldn't find stools for me to put my feet on. So my legs are like dying as I'm dying in pain, laboring on a hard toilet, having contractions. My husband's like rubbing my back and they finally gave up, didn't know where the stools were. And they got a plastic sleeve of pads or maybe like adult diapers and shoved those underneath my feet. And of course, they squished down because they're like cotton. So that didn't help at all.
And I finally got irritated. They were filling up the tub. I don't even remember when I got into the tub. Oh yeah, here it says patient ambulated from toilet to tub without assistance. That was at 1938. So that's like an hour-ish I was on the toilet. That was the first thing that really tipped me off. Meanwhile, I'm still very nauseous. You know, I had my vomit bag with me.
Elizabeth was not with me most of the time. When I got to the tub initially, I heard the lady in the other room screaming in pain, laboring, and Ashlyn was with her. But then very soon on, Ashlyn came into my room and was with me while I was laboring. And Elizabeth went to that other lady and delivered that baby from my understanding and did all of the newborn care and stuff.
I labored in the tub. It was the student and Ashlyn. The student was always there. Ashlyn would sometimes pop out to go check on the other lady since that baby had come already, but then she'd come back in to watch me and be with me. During this time, of course, they do the Doppler to listen to the fetal heart rate. My understanding from speaking with my sister-in-law who's a CNM, you're supposed to monitor fetal tones before, during, and after contractions.
There's some time points when they monitored it that they write measured 60 seconds before, during, and after contractions. But then there's other time points where they write like 60 seconds before contractions and there's no during and after. There's other times where it's 60 seconds during and after, so no before. My understanding is that you have to do it before, during, and after so that you can get like a good picture of what's happening before.
While the contraction's happening, you want to know what the baby's doing before. And then like while everything's being scrunched, is he losing his heart rate? And then like after, is he recovering? They obviously weren't monitoring his heart rate as they should have. There was never any consistency. It was never with every contraction. So who knows what was happening to him in the meantime.
I remember hanging over the tub. My husband was there rubbing my arm and trying to, you know, give me affirmations. And I just remember being in so much pain and terrified every time a contraction was starting. I remember the towel was getting so wet. And as the towel gets wet, you know, it gets cold. And I was like, I just want to be warm and I want to be comfortable. I'm wet and I'm in pain and like nobody's helping and I don't know what to do. It doesn't seem like anything's happening and no one's directing me.
They write that I was on my hands and my knees in the water at 2126. So that would have been about 930. I remember it being three hours that we were at the birth center that I suddenly had this weird feeling that I hadn't felt before, which was kind of like this rhythmic downward motion that my body seems to do out of nowhere. And I was like, oh, maybe my body's telling me I need to start pushing. Maybe that was a push.
Does my body naturally start pushing when it's ready? I told my husband that. He had his little alarm bell clicker. She was like, whenever she starts pushing, click this thing and I'll come in. So he clicked it. He said, hey, she wants to push. What do we do? Ashlyn said, follow your body. Your body knows what to do.
21-27 is when the student wrote start of pushing and then 21-27 Ashlyn put another comment in there discussed benefits of cervical exam patient declines at this time father of baby alerted midwife via call button was bearing down with contractions midwife Ashlyn present and acting as primary provider while midwife Elizabeth managed the second stage of patient CP next door.
After the fact, they added this in that patient grunting with contractions told to listen to her body. No coached pushing at this time. And this was added later after the fact? Yes. And do you know how much later? So the original edited notes we downloaded on the 16th, a few days after my baby was born. The screenshots I took, it was about a month later.
Their notes say that I had the urge to push at 9.30 around that time, but their edited notes, the added parts say they encouraged me not to. It says that I claimed that I no longer felt the urge to push and Ashlyn encouraged me to rest and not push unless I had the urge to. They should have been explicitly telling me not to push because I was definitely pushing with literally every contraction. They told me to call on my body, so I did.
That note about having offered a cervical exam, she did offer a cervical exam. They told us so much of the time through like birth training, cervical exams are risky because of infection. So they try to limit them as much as possible. Of course, that went out of my brain at the time that I'm in labor in excruciating pain. Ashlyn offered the cervical exam. And I remember her telling me like, it just tells us how far along you are. She never said that there was a risk of pushing if you're not far along enough.
And I thought, well, what's the point of risking an infection if you're telling me to listen to my body? It seems like that's an unnecessary risk to take. So I declined. It did say that patients feeling the urge to push will offer VE again. So I guess vaginal exam if progress isn't made. So that note was put in there.
At 22, 26, so that would have been about 1030 at night, I transitioned to the bed. I was just feeling like things weren't happening in the tub. Right after I got on the bed, Ashlyn offered another cervical exam. And at that point, I felt like things were not progressing. I kept asking people like, is this normal? Is this the way it's supposed to be? I feel like we're not getting anywhere. And so I let her check my cervix then at that time.
The original note says just midwife Ashton checking cervix. That was a note from the student. The edited notes adds that she reports bulging bag of water. And then an additional comment that was added later said encouraged to breathe through contractions and listen to her body.
The edited notes say, patient requests something to make it go by faster. Midwife Ashlyn discussing risks and benefits of AROM. That's breaking water, so rupture of membranes. She said, we can try to wait and see if it'll break naturally. I remember worrying just always about the infection risk that they talked about. And so I probably turned it down for that reason, hoping that it would do it naturally and also trying to avoid this infection that they kept talking about.
But I do remember at that time, she said I was really close, but I had an interior lip. I had no idea what that meant. I honestly don't recall that she ever explained that to me, other than the fact that she said there's a little bit of your cervix left, and that's probably what the baby's catching on. So we need to wait for that.
I don't know how I missed this in the birth classes, but somehow I missed the fact that your cervix needs to be 10 centimeters dilated before you start pushing. So when she said anterior lip and there's a little bit of cervix left, it didn't register in my head. My cervix is not fully dilated yet. So I just kept pushing.
But also, why didn't she as the medical professional in that circumstance say, hey, wait, you're not fully dilated. Don't push. They never explicitly told me not to push. They never told me the risks of pushing on an undilated cervix ever. I would have absolutely listened to them had they said that because I'm very risk averse.
Elizabeth came in after Ashlyn checked me. She gave me this homeopathic medicine, like the pellets that they put under your tongue, and said it was supposed to melt the rest of my cervix. And of course, I'm like, I don't know what that means. I don't know what this is, but give me anything that's going to help me. That did not have an effect.
I was trying to take sips of water. I remember my husband had like fruit snacks and he kept trying to give them to me because he's like, you need galleries. I literally had nothing in my system. No IV, nothing. They tried doing, I don't even know what it's called, but how they shake your hips or something. And they have all those different techniques and we were trying those things. Then at 2316, so 1115, so 45 minutes of being on the bed, laboring, pushing,
She did break my water at that point, it looks like, because she notes rupture of membranes. I had been pushing for so long and in so much pain. I was like, I can't do this much longer. So let's get things rolling. So I agree to rupture of membranes. It was midwife Ashlyn that broke my water.
The comment that they added later on was, "Aussultated after AROM with reactive fetal heart tone." So I guess that's a good thing. I think from my understanding that means that the baby was reacting to them pushing on me or doing whatever they were doing to make sure that he was okay after they ruptured my membranes. Ashlyn noted meconium status to assistant to chart.
So per the midwife's observation, I had thin meconium in my water at 11:15. They did not notify me of this. My husband also doesn't recall hearing her say that to the student. And I will note that having been in the NICU, I was fully aware of what meconium in water meant. So had I heard that, I would have transferred at that point. But I was kept in the dark.
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Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Cat early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. How close together have your contractions been throughout this? I mean, they were pretty regular. I continued pushing at that point.
Ashlyn's at the bedside. I moved back to the tub. With your broken membranes? Yes. They did not instruct you that that could cause an infection? No. 2319 is when they note kneeling in water. So I moved back to the bath at 1119. So three minutes after she broke my water. And then 1119 is when they note that I stated I no longer felt the urge to push. This was added later.
A minute later, 11.20, the note is report given to midwife Elizabeth at bedside. Care relinquished to her as primary provider at this time. Ashlyn signed off. She had been with me the vast majority of that time, even though she was like in and out. She hands over care at 11.20 p.m. to Elizabeth, but she wasn't with me all the time. She'd check in every now and again. I recall laying in the tub and thinking I was going to die.
We moved to the birthstool. Elizabeth thought that having a few contractions on the birthstool would help open up my cervix more. Those were the most painful contractions ever because you're like squatty potty. I had been pushing since 930. Elizabeth was there the whole time I was on the birthstool. So that was one time when I was in labor that she was at the bedside, which was a comfort, but also kind of frustrating now that she was like there listening to me push, having contractions and not telling me not to.
We did that birth stool for a few contractions. It was too painful. I was like, I'm done. I need to get back in the bed. So they helped me back in. Got a heat pack going on my back and continued on the bed. She'd have me do
various positions. I remember at one point she had me lie on my right side with my leg hanging over the side and she would shimmy my hip and that was supposed to turn the baby because she thought that maybe he was turned the wrong direction. I don't know, trying to get his head in a position where he could engage better. Does Elizabeth seem concerned at this point? No, I never felt concerned for her. I recall at that time feeling so glad that
That was the longest stretch of time she had been with me. And I thought, okay, great. If anything's going awry, she would know because she's been here a while actually observing it herself. There was this growing concern in the back of my mind as every minute passed. This mounting anxiety of like, when is this ending? Is there an end in sight? 48 hours ago, I was pregnant laying on my couch and I felt fine. Will I ever...
feel like a normal person again? Will I ever not be in this pain ever again? It's an irrational fear at that moment, but I remember thinking, I can't even fathom being on the other side of this.
Who's in the room with you at this point and what is their mood? The only people that were there were my husband and Elizabeth and the student midwife. I told the student midwife that I didn't think I could do it. I told Elizabeth that, but it was always like, if you feel like you can't, okay. But like, I think you can, you're getting really close. During your tour and during your birth classes, they always say women will say like, I can't do this, I'm done. They claim that that's their sign that they know you're close. I don't know if that was what was going on in their heads, but...
I was nowhere close. Without them being in terror over what was happening to me, I just thought, okay, maybe I'm overreacting. So let's just stick it out a little bit longer. I don't want to give up. I wish I would have advocated better for myself in that moment, but I was in labor. So I didn't advocate for myself and my husband didn't know what to do. He was more concerned about me and the pain that I was in.
I tend to be someone who's extremely hard on myself. I wanted to have birth there. I had researched the place. You know, we had invested our money. My husband and I had been trained to get here. We went to the birth classes. We did all the things. I mean, that was our plan. That was my dream to give birth there. I knew other people had had good experiences and I thought, why couldn't I have that same good experience? Why was I going to be the minority who had to go to the hospital and transfer? And after I had invested so much time in labor, what
What's another two hours? Without the student or the midwife expressing any concern whatsoever, I thought, well, they're watching out. And if things are okay, then we're just going to keep going. That's why I powered through.
If they told me that things were bad, I would have listened. And you're trusting that they're not worried, that this is typical. This is your first birth and not theirs. Yeah. I remember at around that two in the morning time frame, I looked over at my husband and I said, I'm going to die on this bed. I don't think this baby's coming. I'm bleeding. I cannot stop pushing.
It was so painful not to push. The pushing almost became involuntary because it was like my body's reaction to shield me from a little bit of the pain, like it'll take a little bit of the edge off.
These contractions are killing me. I couldn't fathom getting out of that house. I didn't think it was going to happen. Was it reaching the point of absolute exhaustion? I think that combined with, I got my hopes up when she broke my water. I got my hopes up when she was doing the sideline techniques. The fact that we had done all those interventions and it was still two hours later and nothing progressing...
I do not know what gave me the energy to say I gotta go but at two whatever stroke of something hit me and I said I cannot do this and I said get me checked and I want to go to the hospital
224, Elizabeth came in, she checked, and in the notes, the comment says, midwife explaining to patient that her cervix is very swollen. It is important that she does not continue to push until the cervix can be allowed to return to normal. Discuss that physician intervention would be best at this time. Patient agrees and expresses a desire to go to Bumsey. And I do recall when she told me my cervix was swollen and that it probably would be a good idea to go to the hospital. I remember...
Looking at her and being like, yeah, we're going. I'm going. No discussion. I told her I couldn't stop pushing. She just said to breathe through it as best as possible. You need to stop pushing. What did you feel when they told you that? Terror. I mean, it was like, what do I do? What am I doing to my baby? She never offered me an ambulance. I thought, putting my trust in them, that if it was bad enough where they thought I needed an ambulance service, they would 100% jump to the ambulance service without question.
The fact that she was saying, okay, the student midwife's going to lead you to the hospital, you're going to get in your car and drive, I thought must not be a dire situation. It's going to hurt like hell walking to the car, but she must not be that concerned about
So at that point, I was very much confident I wanted to transfer. Elizabeth said, okay, well, I have to write up your notes and send them over to Bumpsy and let them know you're coming. So I'm going to step out, get all that stuff together. You guys pack up your bags, get out to the car, the student midwife, follow her. But wait in your car until I'm done with the notes because I got to make sure they're over there. Elizabeth left the room.
The student midwife sat me up on the bed. I'm on like pads and stuff sitting on the bed. So we have to get my underwear on totally unprepared because we didn't anticipate having to get dressed with my innards falling out. They got me like an adult diaper quick and threw that on and threw my shorts on.
We have tons of bags of stuff. So my husband, you know, packed up all the bags, threw them in the car, came up and got me. And the student midwife's there. I mean, I couldn't walk. So I crawled hands and knees out the bedroom to the foot of the stairs. I tried my best to walk, but it just was not happening. The student midwife's kind of there just, I feel like she just didn't know what to do.
I never considered that I could end up on the second floor and need to get down to the first floor and that they didn't have an elevator in that place. But in this scenario where things don't work out and you end up on the second floor, suddenly an elevator becomes really necessary. People have brought that up to me and they're like, how is that even acceptable for like ADA purposes?
I got to the top of the stairs and I was like, well, I can't crawl hands and knees down the stairs. So what do I do? I tried standing and walking down the stairs. It wasn't happening. So I scooted on my butt one step at a time down the steps. So my open area is on this nasty ground separated only by an adult diaper. Once we got to the bottom of the steps, I realized that I didn't know where my phone was. That was kind of important. My husband ran upstairs to try to find it. The
They found it, came back to me. And then somehow, by God's grace, I was able to walk to the car, which is out on the curb. My husband was accompanying me, obviously, leaning heavily on him. But I did walk that stretch. We're sitting there for a few minutes because we're waiting on Elizabeth. And I remember at one point we were like, how long does it take to write up notes and notify people? Like, we've got to go. I'm in the car puking and pushing, right?
So my husband got out of the car to go get Elizabeth, trying to figure out where she was. I'm by myself in the car, unsupervised, unaccompanied. What could have happened? And no one would have been there to know. Finally, she comes out with him and get the go ahead. And so we take off and we're following the student midwife to Baylor. That was an excruciating ride, as you can imagine. Every little crack in the asphalt I felt.
Was the student still with you? She was not. There's the intersection where the hospital L&D corner is. There's like a circle drive that brings you up to the doors. And so that's where we pulled in, but she just continued on. And so we probably hadn't even stopped our car by the time she was gone. She probably went back to the birth center is my guess.
It was my husband and me. That was it. But we do get there, thank God, and pulled up to the emergency L&D and, again, couldn't walk. At this point, I did crawl hands and knees on the concrete to the doors. As I rolled out of the car, my husband ran in to grab somebody to notify him that we were there. So there's like two double doors. I hand-pulled
I hands and knees crawled in through the first set of doors onto like the nasty huge rug they have in the foyer. My husband was inside getting somebody and I felt a contraction coming on.
i tried to stall it i tried to breathe through it and i couldn't and i remember sitting and i i laugh at it now because it's just unbelievable but i rolled over onto my butt knees in the air and i had a contraction and pushed right on that rug in the middle of public i mean nobody was there it was 2 30 in the morning but looking back i mean it was fight or flight mode i was in survival
And then I heard someone yelling and screaming, running with a wheelchair. And they got me into the wheelchair and got me then inside. The nurse is rushing me back to the room. I was in such pain. And I remember screaming through the hallways, get me an epidural. I need an epidural now. But as they're rushing me back to the room, they're like, wait, we need your social security. And I just yelled it. I was like, here's my social security number. You need it to get me the epidural. Let's do it.
It says in my notes, I arrived at Baylor at around three o'clock. I'm freaking out this whole time that I'm like killing my baby somehow or causing brain damage because I'm ramming his head against my swollen cervix. All these bad scenarios are going through my head. I was like, y'all just get me the epidural because it'll help me stop pushing. Did they have to give you a cervical check before they gave you the epidural or get you on an IV or anything like that?
This stuff is blurry. I'm sure that I had to have IVs in. I know that they checked my blood pressure and all the stuff, the vitals, and had to get things in order to get the epidural in place. So yeah, I mean, that stuff just takes time. They had to call the anesthesiologist. They had to make sure that whatever boxes were checked. What time do you think you get your epidural after you get checked in and everything?
I do know it was about a half an hour after we were there. It was around 3.30. I remember how terrifying it was having it placed, not only because it's a huge needle, but also because I was still having contractions and pushing through those contractions. When you have an epidural place, you have to be super still. And I was so worried that because my contractions were so close together, it was like, okay, one ended, let's do it, go before it happens again, because I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to hold still before the next one hit.
So that was also a pretty terrifying predicament, but everything was fine. We got it in place. As soon as that thing started kicking in and really doing its work, I was a different person.
The nurse that took me in when I first showed up, she kind of laughed because I was terrified before that epidural was placed. And then after it was placed, I was on a high. I was laughing. I was joking. I was just like raring to go. The adrenaline, I felt amazing. I wasn't pushing anymore. Are you able to get a little bit of rest with your husband before you end up pushing? How does your progress go from here?
I was. I was able to get some rest, probably a little bit of sleep. By 7.30 that morning, I was 10 centimeters and the medical team all came in. This is the other thing that makes me irate looking back, but we didn't know at the time. My husband and I did not realize, A, the danger that we were in and B, how awful the midwifery care was that we were receiving. Elizabeth told us that we needed to notify her when I was fully dilated and ready to push.
I have theories as to why she had to be there, and I don't think it was just all because she was an altruistic, loving person. We actually still trusted her at that point. So at 7.30, my husband called her saying that I was 10 centimeters and we were ready to start pushing. So Elizabeth actually showed up. She arrived at 8.30.
She asked if we wanted her to take pictures because I didn't have like a birth photographer or anything, but she was willing to take pictures and document. So we let her do that. I pushed from 730 to 10 a.m. So two and a half hours of pushing at the hospital after pushing at the birth center.
My baby was born at 10 o'clock that morning. But the history of what was going on, what they knew had happened, they called in some NICU personnel. They did care for him after he was born. He was especially black and blue and purple and not breathing and didn't breathe for several minutes. I was terrified.
I knew, having worked in the NICU, that babies should cry pretty soon after birth. And I remember looking at my husband, who was standing by me, holding me, as they're working on me down below. It's like, is he crying yet? Is he alive? Everybody heard me with my worries and they were trying to calm me down. But I think that there was a general understanding that there was some fear in the room.
I don't know what they did in terms of bagging and resuscitating and all that stuff, but definitely a little bit more so than what would be considered normal. Yeah.
His APGARs, the first one was a five. Not great from my understanding. He was brought to the radiant warmer, suctioned and stimulated. No respiratory effort. PPV started. Infant began to have improved color and spontaneous respirations and crying prior to five minutes of life. PPV CPAP removed. So he did improve, obviously, within the time of major concern. Are you just completely exhausted at this point?
Oh yeah, absolutely. Also, this massive amount of fear that this moment would never come escaped. But then also it's like starting up this new massive amount of fear of like, what just happened? What's ahead of us? Because he wasn't crying. Why was my cervix swollen? What's the implications of that? Why were there so many people called into this room? Why was the NICU team here?
After the flurry of all that, we've stabilized him. The craziness had died down. Elizabeth was chatting with us and we were being cordial. I remember she was like, well, I'm going to go grab myself a coffee and then I'll be back. But I'm going to go grab a coffee. I need some caffeine. Immediately after my 48 hour shift here, I'm going on my 10 day vacation.
She let us know that she doesn't usually do 48-hour shifts, but she needed to get her time in before going on vacation. So that was definitely not something we wanted to hear because is that why you're checked out? What if she had delivered babies all day for the past 24 hours? I don't know how their workload was. And so then I came in and she's already tired maybe. Like, I have no idea where we were on that 48-hour spectrum. So that didn't feel great. How long did she stay after your delivery? I don't think very long.
I think that she stayed around and probably asked us if there was anything else she could do. Then it was like, we'll be reaching out, whatever. That was kind of it. I don't remember much after that. I stayed in that room for a little while. They don't keep you in there that long, maybe a couple hours or so, and then they transfer you to the antenatal floor. And so we went there fairly soon after that.
We get moved to the antenatal room in pain, swollen, all the things that you don't have any way to prepare for when it's your first baby. You just have no idea.
trying to figure out nursing, trying to figure out every three-hour feeds and changing the diapers and just all the things. I mean, so much going on. Zero rest whatsoever. You don't really sleep well in the hospital. You know, people are constantly in your room and out your room and checking the baby and checking you and all that stuff. So exhausted, brain fog from everything, trying to recoup on energy and calories and fluid.
In discussions with the nurse, who was so amazing, after hearing that we came from origins and our story and all that stuff, she said, honestly, we get a lot of transfers from origins. There's a lot more transfers from origins than I'd like to admit. That did not sound great. So that started putting us on edge a bit.
My OB, she was the delivery OB, and then she was the one that followed up on me until I was discharged. I thought she was good during delivery. I had no concerns. I actually felt quite comfortable and safe with her there when I was being discharged from the hospital. My OB came in with my discharge paperwork to go over it, sat down, went through everything, and
I had a second degree tear. She stitched it up in the delivery room. I said to her, this is my first baby. I have no idea what's normal. I'm a worrier and an anxious person. I just had to know for my own sanity, my level of anxiety.
swelling and injury and bleeding, like everything down there, I wanted to know where I was in terms of the spectrum of severity because I feel pretty torn up. I feel like I'm sitting on a bowling ball. 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. I was like, yeah, kind of rolling my eyes. Plus the six hours I pushed at the birth center.
I kind of said that as an aside, like I thought that was normal. And she stopped and looked at me and I'll never forget that look. She just was like, wait, what? She looked at me and she said, what do you mean you pushed at the birth center? And I said, I thought that was why my cervix was so swollen.
Obviously, she wasn't given this information by Origins, but at the moment that she spoke it to me, I almost took it in a way that she was angry at me. I know she wasn't. She was shocked. 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? I was like, are you kidding me? I had no idea. She said, didn't they check you? And I said, well, I opted not to because she said there was an infection risk. She said,
Do you know what could have happened? You could have torn your cervix. And I later found out that if you tear a cervix, you can hemorrhage and bleed out. That's an emergent surgery. I lost it. When she told me that, I took it kind of as a reprimand, but it was the gravity of how much Elizabeth had just let us go.
And Ashlyn, why was I told to follow my body? Why was this message not relayed from Ashlyn to Elizabeth, eventually to this OB that I'd been pushing this long? And she was like, if I had known that when you came in, you wouldn't have been having a vaginal birth. I can't even describe the emotion I felt, the fire and the fury in me and the tears. And I screamed, like I've never felt that emotion before in my life. I was so terrified and angry and
I think it shocked the OB. She tried calming me down. I mean, I just realized that I literally put my life and my baby's life in danger. That was the moment that everything changed for the rest of my life, to be quite frank.
After I got over that emotion and was able to calm down, I was like, okay, what do we do from this point? And she said that the concern now is that we don't know what future pregnancies will bring. If there's future pregnancies, will I be able to carry a child? Do I have uterine prolapse? Are there going to be structural problems because I pushed so hard?
I looked into what the future could hold. Every little thing that I found out, I mean, it was the concern about HIE, which was never mentioned by the NICU team or anything. Are you sure he didn't have meconium aspiration? Are you sure that they checked him for oxygen deprivation during all that time? Like, I didn't realize all of this could have happened. We have no idea. And so then, of course, it was the worry about my son.
Things can show up later on. Did he have some sort of brain damage? Is he going to have developmental delay? Is there something lurking that we haven't quite found yet? What else was missing in my chart that would have alluded to another problem that was a direct result of their poor care? It's just this ballooning anxiety that
Because there was so much unknown. There was so much miscommunication. There was so much hidden. Either Elizabeth knowingly hid that information or she was so clueless because she didn't realize I was pushing the whole time because they claimed that they thought that I was not pushing. And they went back and changed the notes once they realized that I said I was pushing the whole time. I was angry at Origins. I was angry at them for not providing that information to the OB team.
I didn't blame her at all. She was not at fault because she wasn't given the information. Something broke in me, I think, at that moment. My ability to trust other people, my ability to trust my own choices. The guilt came and swarmed me. And they obviously were hiding something from me.
We stayed in that antenatal unit for a couple days. I don't think we stayed the full 48 hours. Typically, they keep you there 48 hours. All I know is I just wanted to get home. I liked being in the hospital for the care after everything that had happened, but I also just was dead tired and we had been away from home for two days since we had gone in Sunday. I believe we went home Tuesday evening late.
The trip home the first time, walking in the doors, my poor husband has to carry the baby in and then also go back and get me because I can hardly move. We were starving. I don't think we had had dinner at the hospital. It was just so much of the discharge stuff that was happening that takes forever. It's
So many things happening that you forget to eat and take care of yourself. And so he started making dinner and I called my mom. She wanted to know when we made it home. I hadn't talked to her except for maybe when we first moved to the antiparty unit. She asked how it went.
It was like this flood of emotions just overcame me and I could hardly speak through my tears just letting her know what I had found out and the horror of everything that had happened and what the OB had said. She was in utter horror and shock as well. She as a nurse couldn't believe it.
My mom, she had gotten like a cold or something at the time. So she had originally planned on not coming out for like a week. She wanted to give us more time as a new family, but she was going to fly down after that week and be with us and help me. But when this happened, it kind of was like, oh, I need to get down there sooner, but I'm sick and I don't want to get your baby sick. And so...
It was just me and my husband for a few days until my mom finally recovered and was able to come down. But she probably was appalled for several days and I'm sure very concerned about how we were doing in that time. I think she felt helpless. You're watching your child be in pain and you can do nothing about it. That's a helpless feeling. Next time on Something Was Wrong. I went in for my two-week visit with her. Already a little bit on edge.
My OB comes in, her happy self, and takes a look down there. You can't make this stuff up. And she's like, well, there's been a separation of church and state down here. 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. It seems like all these care providers are somehow skipping over important things. That's what you're going to say to me after all this.
Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, associate producers Amy B. Chesler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High. Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, and Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist.
Thank you to Marissa, Travis, and our team at WME, Wondery, Jason, and Jennifer, our cybersecurity team, Darkbox Security, and my lawyer, Alan. 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.
Special shout out to Emily Wolfe for covering Gladrag's original song, You Think You, for us this season. For more music by Emily Wolfe, check out the episode notes or your favorite music streaming app. Speaking of episode notes, there every week you'll find episode specific content warnings, sources and resources. Until next time, stay safe, friends.
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