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MAMA-KANGAROO 236
I gave birth to my baby in 2008 in a Belgrade hospital “Zvezdara”. My water broke around 7am and we arrived at the hospital at 9am. That’s when it all started… The nurse at the admission was too-much-jewelry-wearing, obese, unpleasant person; the lady that was supposed to shave me, more like skinned me alive. The problems started when they realized that I wasn’t dilating. They made me get up, walk, tried to induce labor… Nothing helped, but this went on for (I am no longer sure how much exactly) about 15 HOURS. In the middle of the night, while I was in the labor ward, in my cubicle, all alone and in a lot of pain, I realized I was about to throw up. One of the midwives showed up, after I had been screaming for about five minutes, said: “Why are you making so much noise?”, gave me a bucket to throw up in and left. Just as I had finished vomiting, another midwife showed up and started yelling at me for removing the face mask. Apparently, I was supposed to throw up into it and choke or something. I passed out a number of times. At some point I asked for epidural, but they said there was no-one there to administer it, although I saw a woman getting it half an hour later. There was someone there to administer it, but the price is not 10000 dinars, as our beloved minister of health says, but 600euros plus 10000dinars. Of course, this is the unofficial price. I got it from some of the women that had paid for it. Sometime around dawn I no longer had any idea where I was or who I was, I was incredibly sore because I was examined by whomever happened to be there. Then the chief of OBGYN came in and told me I hadn’t dilated yet, but I would any time now. BTW, her examining me was the single roughest examination I have ever had and she treated me worse than anyone else, ever. Around 7am, some student nurses showed up, they asked me if I was OK, if I was in a lot of pain…They were the only ones that ever talked to me. One of them came up to me and said: “I saw your Mom, she’s so worried.” Of course, my family had phoned the hospital, but no-one ever answered that phone. My cell phone was taken away from me on the pretext that it interfered with the hospital machines, but the people in the other cubicle were talking on the phone like there was no tomorrow. My mother told me later that one of the midwives had asked her: “Would you prefer your daughter or your grandchild to live? What’s with the whining now?”. Mom’s friend took the midwife aside and told her that she would pluck her like a goose that she was if she ever said anything like that again. At 8am a doctor showed up, the same one that had admitted me the previous morning. His face turned pale when he saw I was still there. I couldn’t even speak any more, let alone do anything else. Around 11am I realized I wasn’t going to live unless I did something so I told them I wanted them to deliver the baby any way they knew how. The chief of OBGYN had me sign the consent form (even though, as I learned later, they were obliged to do the C-section if I hadn’t delivered naturally within 24 hours). I started to read the consent form when she snapped at me, saying I was only supposed to sign it, not read it. They left me outside the OR and told me to take care not the fall off the bed, or else… I woke up in intensive care, rested, as if a 100kg chip had been lifted off my shoulder. There were 8 or 9 of us in the room. They brought everyone else’s babies, but mine. Then I realized I was the only one without the name bracelet. At some point a pediatrician came in, called me by my number (I was still in shock so I hadn’t even realized that was me) and said: “Well, your baby’s not all that well, it swallowed a lot of water in the womb, the prognosis is not all that optimistic” and left! That’s where I had enough, I got to the phone, called my husband, he came over and asked the lady if she was retarded or something, giving such news to a woman just out of surgery. After that, I got reports every couple of hours. I wasn’t able to see my baby for 4 days, thanks to the fact that they made the delivery more difficult than necessary. When they moved me from intensive care to the maternity ward, the nurse asked me if I had seen my baby yet. When I said that I hadn’t, she immediately took me to see it. Nurses in the intensive care were extremely friendly, as was the doctor that delivered my baby. He was the only one that called me by my name and made me feel like a human being. When I was transferred to the maternity ward, I couldn’t believe the conditions there. When I asked the nurse to adjust the bed and make it slightly higher, she said she couldn’t because it was broken. Don’t ask how I got up. A couple of times, especially at night, I barely made it to the toilet because it took me around half un hour just to get up, trying not to hurt myself. Not to mention that two days later I, myself, managed to adjust the “broken” bed. There were three of us in the room, all with C-sections, and mine was the only adjustable bed. Other beds had springs sticking out of the mattresses so the new mothers had be very careful while trying to get up. The bathrooms were yet another problem: 3 showers for 30 women. I had to do, like, a million tests before I was about to give birth, and now the nurse tells me not to use the middle shower because a women with hepatitis had used it! Horrible! We didn’t get any food for three days, and when we did I realized we could have done without it. It was awful. The nurses and the doctors kept telling us not to drink yogurt while breastfeeding and yet, every day, we were given yogurt with at least one of the meals. The babies were brought to us 5 times a day to be breastfed, but most of the times they were already full and wouldn’t eat so we used the breast-pumps. One of the women got a fever and her breasts had swollen. One of the “normal” nurses brought us a small bottle of boric acid to use it on our breasts, but she told us not the tell anyone she gave it to us. Why, I have no idea. Maybe there is a rule of not helping the patients. I didn’t want to bribe anyone, I thought it was their job. I would do it differently now, even though it’s not right, but I would do it to protect my baby’s life. I still don’t know why they let me suffer for 27 straight hours. They nearly killed both me and my baby. My present doctor says there are worse things happening in that hospital but they are covered up. I wanted to sue the hospital but I realized there was no point because it’s a huge system going all the way up to the minister T.M. and there is nothing I can do about it. I only feel sorry for the women that have had or will have an even worse experience than mine, simply because somebody doesn’t care about doing their job or likes to play God.
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STORIES FROM MATERNITY WARDS Mama-Kangaroo 002
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