‘I felt isolated and uncared for. I needed a friendly face’
Alone in the labour ward, just half an hour after giving birth, Karen Luckhurst wondered what had happened to her. The midwife had gone off duty and she would not see another health professional again.
‘I had my baby, and he was fine, but I felt very faint and dizzy,’ she recalled. ‘The heat in my room was intolerable – it was June – and I couldn’t sleep because all around me the other women giving birth were screaming.
‘The pain was strong because I’d had stitches, but there was no one I could ask for painkillers, or even to help me put Mateen back in his cot, because I thought I would fall over if I walked across the room.’
Abandoned, Luckhurst ended up discharging herself from Hillingdon Hospital in Middlesex six hours after giving birth. ‘I felt isolated and uncared for. It was my third child, so I didn’t want to be fussed over, but all I needed was a friendly face and a bit of help.’
As she walked out, there was no one to whom she could even say goodbye. ‘It was such a deflating experience,’ Luckhurst, who works in the media, said. ‘Childbirth is an intense and incredibly personal experience, but to me it felt like I was walking off a conveyor belt.’
Full: guardian.co.uk
Barbaric male-dominant childbirth practices in the ‘civilized world’ speak profoundly to the loss of female power and female solidarity, and to how far off the track we are. Human culture rose in the first place for the purpose of nurturance and protection of the young. Obviously, nobody is safe at the hands of ones who would create and sustain such an anti-human system.