The Recovery

At 6 days post partum it was found that I had an infection in my c-section wound. I was then on antibiotics for most of the next 7 weeks, and having my wound dressed by the district nurses at my local GP surgery every few days.

I developed post natal depression, had trouble breast feeding Jack and found it virtually impossible to participate in the basic care of my new baby. I couldn't bend or kneel to change his nappies, couldn't lift him from the floor or his bouncer, couldn't get out of bed in the night to fetch him to me for feeding, couldn't lift him in his infant carrier or push a pram and couldn't take him out anywhere without help. It was hell and seriously interfered with my ability to bond with him.

Luckily, Andy had over 3 weeks off work so was able to help a lot during the worst of it. My mum then took over, visiting every day to take me to the nurse and help look after Jack.

We had trouble with BFing, mainly, I believe, because of the surgery. I wasn't able to hold him for several hours afterwards, we didn't get our immediate skin-to-skin, in fact it wasn't until the next day that I got this. We were advised to use nipple shields to help him latch on, so we used these for a couple of weeks, but they were a pain to use, had to be sterilised and were generally unpleasant and interfered with normal feeding. At about 2 weeks we cracked it, we ditched the shields and Jack managed to latch on on his own and from there on I was able to feed him normally. We did give him a few bottles of formula in those early weeks, but stopped when Jack was about 5 weeks old. We've been exclusively BFing since, Jack will be 19 weeks old tomorrow!

When my physical recovery took off I was almost immediately better able to bond with Jack, I could do more with him and began to enjoy being a parent. But the events of his birth continued to haunt me and although I had felt ok with each decision at the time I began to look back with deep regrets about our decisions to call the MWs so soon, consent to ARM and hospital transfer and the cascade of interventions we were coerced into accepting. I have since learned of many women who had extremely long latent labours (days long), who had posterior babies etc who gave birth naturally at home. I applied for my hospital notes and on examining them we found that there had been more progress than we had taken in at the time (at one point I was 5-6cms) and Jack was posterior, not transverse as predicted. Transverse babies can become lodged in the pelvis, but women give birth to posterior babies all the time with little more difficulty than anterior babies.

I believe now that the NHS MWs did not try hard enough to help me have a normal birth, protocols and misguided use of interventions led to the c-section. We have an appointment with an independent MW next Monday to go over the notes with an impartial 3rd party and I am keen to know what she thinks about what happened and what she may have advised differently had she been in attendance.

I have agreed with Andy that the only way I would consider having another child in the future is if we can hire an IM and shun the NHS. He agrees with me. A dear friend asked me why it matters what happened and I had to tell him that I feel I failed as a woman, I did not give birth to Jack, he was surgically removed from me and the experience of giving birth that I was very much looking forward to was stolen from me. It also has implications for Jack's health (c/s babies are higher risk of asthma and diabetes) and makes a normal birth in the future less likely. Hiring an IM goes some way to increasing the chances of me being able to give birth next time and there is no way I will trust the NHS to have my best interests at heart in future, they will have their arses as their top priority.

The NHS "Spine" and our children's fingerprints

This government just keeps pushing the boundaries of our privacy and democracy. As if the whole thing with ID cards wasn't bad enough, I have today learned that kids are being fingerprinted in school without parental consent (link) and our medical records are going to be held on another central database like the one for ID cards, i.e. just as insecure against hacking and abuse (link).

It's not just me is it? This is getting out of control. We are talking about massive abuses of power on the part of the government. Taking intimate physical details and storing them in an insecure way and even selling them to private businesses! Children's damn fingerprints will be held on file when they get a passport.... because...? Ok, it will help identify the odd John/Jane Doe. But the reasons we have been fed for the government wanting this information have nothing to do with identifying dead bodies.

They've tried to tell us it will prevent terrorism, experts from MI5 quickly denied that one; they've tried the ID theft line, but honestly, if all our details are held in one place one quick hack will make it nice and easy for anyone determined to steal IDs. So they go for the "if you've got nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about" line. *Cough splutter* Riiiight. So it's OK for our government to invade our privacy, sell our details and make us present our ID cards at every shop, bank and service we use???!! I don't think so. One small step towards bar codes on our hands that we have to swipe all over the place.

Anyway, my point, what the heck is going to be solved by having children's fingerprints on file? Of course, we all know that most terrorist acts are carried out by under 10s! Seriously, taking the prints without permission from the parents... which they are *already* doing ... is a gross violation of the trust of the public.

Then there's this thing with our medical records. Again, it will be vulnerable to hacks and abuse and information will probably be sold at a later date. What's worse is that after a certain period of time (this year) people will not be able to opt out. This is appalling. It's all very well for people with long-term conditions that may take them to hospital, but medical bracelets are a quick effective means of communicating this. One glance at a patients wrist tells the doctor not to use penicillin or whatever, rather than postponing treatment until looking the patient up on a database, whose information may or may not be correct depending on if their information has been hacked yet!!

We can't keep letting the government get away with this bollocks. They have gone too far and we have to show them that. If you think you live in a Labour "safe seat" area then talk to your neighbours and tell them your concerns, distribute leaflets, tell people what is going on because a lot of people don't realise. And vote for who you want to lead!! For goodness sake, tactical voting screws democracy over like nothing else, it is exactly how we have been stuck with Labour for this long, despite millions of people being deeply troubled by actions taken by them, from the Iraq invasion to ID cards.

Labour make the public think that they have been fairly elected, but this simply isn't true. The first past the post system means that at the last general election Labour only received less than a third of the votes and only a quarter of the possible vote (due to low turn out)! They do not represent the majority, despite what they claim. You can find out about other options for democracy here.

Anyway, please pass on the links above and talk about what is going on, this gradual theft of our democracy and liberty. I don't mean to sound so dramatic, but I do think it's a serious problem that is in danger of happening in our sleep.