“You should be glad you didn’t crack” – this is what the gynecologist I found when I moved back to Bucharest from Belgium in 2016 answered me. I told her about the pregnancy I had lost at 20 weeks, at the beginning of that year in Belgium, and the traumas related to the way in which the miscarriage was carried out.
Alina Girbea Photo: Personal archive
When, two years later, I became pregnant again, I had already changed gynecologists and was now going to a private clinic. I asked, of course, what would happen if the scenario of 2016 were to be repeated, and he replied that in private they do not admit unless the birth occurs after 24 months and I should go to emergency services at public hospitals until I find a free place to be admitted. For clarification, during a spontaneous abortion of the type I had in January 2016 in Belgium you can die of septicemia, but still in 2018 in the capital of Romania it was explained to me, a privileged woman by all possible standards, that I should to look for a free place at a state hospital or clinic under such conditions. A woman with less privileges than me (economic, social and educational capital) is not offered even that much. I understood better now that “you should be grateful that you didn’t crack” and I decided, because I could afford it, not to take this risk and go to give birth in Belgium.
The story I told above is just one in a sea of such stories. Since we have been organizing workshops on reproductive health as part of the “Women in Politics” project together with the Association of Independent Midwives, we have heard countless traumatic stories. There is almost no woman who has given birth in Romania and who has not gone through one form or another of obstetric violence. Those discussions, although political, often end in tears, because there is no time when you are physically and mentally more fragile as a woman than around pregnancy.
“Women don’t go to war” – this is one of the general lines you get when you campaign, as I do, for equal opportunities for women. After talking to countless women about the experience of giving birth in Romania, my answer is: maybe women don’t go to war, but Romania sends them to give birth in the trenches. When Alexandra died in the maternity hospital in Botoșani last summer, the wave of indignation and revolt was also linked to the fact that we all knew that any of us could have been in her place.
Not a few mothers suffer from post-traumatic shock when they return from the hospital because the state does not care how they give birth, and this can be seen in medical figures – for example, we have an unjustifiably high percentage of cesarean sections, but also many invasive practices such as pushing the belly in during childbirth, episiotomies (operations involving an incision in the lower part of the vagina and in the muscles of the perineum) without notice and prior consent. It can also be seen in small gestures of psychological support that are missing from the birth protocol: for example, in most European states the father is allowed to assist at the birth (not in our public system) and you have the opportunity to draw up a birth plan that to communicate it to the medical staff before the birth. For example, my second birth in Belgium took place in the hospital without major problems, with the two midwives present at the birth and my husband, the gynecologist arriving after the baby was expelled.
The Romanian state does not even care how the mothers return from the hospital: there is no post-natal recovery offered or settled by the state, the midwifery profession is not recognized and therefore we have fewer and fewer midwives in Romania. Although we are informed daily on television that breastfeeding up to six months is essential for the baby’s health, in the absence of midwives we are not helped in the difficult process of learning to breastfeed for the first time. There is no psychological follow-up of mothers to detect and treat post-partum problems, a problem periodically brought into the spotlight when mothers commit suicide and/or kill their children. How many more innocent people must die before the state allocates funds for mothers: re-recognizing the midwifery profession and providing post-natal programs for the physical and mental health of mothers? I recently attended a debate in which one of the participants rightly pointed out that from this point of view the situation was better in communist Romania, when young mothers at least received periodic home visits from nurses.
In these conditions, is anyone still surprised that women are afraid to give birth in Romania? Although men do not often participate in this kind of discussion, we all have friends who have gone through complicated births, in which they felt abandoned or abused by what should be their main support – the medical system. The Association of Independent Midwives recently conducted a survey that shows that many mothers who have given birth in the public system say they do not want a second pregnancy for fear of going through similar birth experiences again.
There is no greater hypocrisy at the level of collective mentality in Romania than the pedestal society places on mothers, the expectation that a woman’s noblest purpose is to become a mother, and the way they are treated in reality. Twenty-five years in which Romania was governed predominantly by men who showed themselves extremely concerned with increasing the birth rate and preserving the “traditional” family have produced pitiful results for those who continue to overwhelmingly deal with family and household chores.
How about asking mothers what they want?
This, although it would be relatively simple to provide better conditions for motherhood and for an increase in the birth rate, and the first step to do this is a very simple one – to ask the mothers and women in Romania what they want.
Many Romanian women who have lived abroad or who have friends who have lived and given birth there wish only to be offered in Romania the conditions for giving birth that women have in other countries: the presence of the partner or someone else from the family at birth , the possibility to give birth naturally if a cesarean birth is not mandatory, the possibility to opt or not for epidural anesthesia, the right to keep their baby next to them in the first days of life (if he does not suffer from medical problems), support in the first weeks after birth in adapting to life with a newborn, for which no one can prepare you beforehand. – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro
