The Consequences of Fat-phobia
It's important that we recognise the great influence that bias and prejudice have on the care we receive when pregnant. Aicha's story illustrates the dangers of fat-phobic beliefs. It nearly cost her her life, health and that of her son.
Aicha Martin
3/18/20242 min read
Hello everyone! My name is Aicha and I’m pregnant with my 2nd baby. I want to take this time to share the birth story of my first.
At 38 weeks my waters started leaking and as per hospital protocol I had to get induced (I didn't know any better). I made it to 2cm and the staff recommended I get an epidural to speed up labour. Little did I know, the epidural does not speed up labour, if anything it slows it down especially when you're just in early labour. One of the memories that I still find painful to this day is the number of failed attempts to insert a cannula. It may seem as something small but it still affects me to this day. Imagine being in labour (induced to be precised, which is more painful) and having people repeatedly fail to insert a cannula. Not fun I'll tell you that.
Anyway, the anaesthesist that inserted my epidural chose a bigger than normal needle because of his fat-phobic beliefs. He also inserted the needle far too deep which led to me falling unconscious for about 30 minutes. As you can imagine, this significantly affected the blood flow to my baby. When I became conscious again the same doctor offered to attempt the epidural insertion again...myself and my husband were both perplexed and surprised. We vehemently refused!
Long story short, I ended up with an emergency c-section (not a surprise) after which I found out that my baby had severe respiratory distress and nearly died (I assume this was due to me falling unconscious). Due to the amount of drugs pumped into me, my baby's condition and the trauma breastfeeding was a disaster.
This time I want to do things right. I understand that I don't have full control over everything but I want to take different steps. This time around I want to birth in the safety of my home with the people I love and a midwife I trust. I want this birth to be a rebirth of myself as a mother that has healed.
*Since homebirth care is not integrated into the Spanish system families have to seek private care and must pay for this. Unfortunately, this creates a barrier between those who can afford and those who can't...which is something I don't stand for. Here is Aicha's gofundme page that she made to help raise the funds needed to avail of the homebirth service.*