I felt bullied into a drug-free birth and I'm still traumatised

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Published Sep 4, 2017

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THE editor of Grazia magazine has told how she still feels traumatised three years after suffering an agonising natural birth. 

Natasha Pearlman, 35, said antenatal classes had left her in fear of intervention and the midwives assumed she would want to give birth naturally. 

She said she begged a doctor on her knees in a hospital corridor for pain relief during a 33-hour labour before her baby was delivered using forceps. 

The birth of daughter Rose in March 2014 had changed her ‘psychologically and physically' – and she has never felt the same again. 

Writing in The Times, Pearlman said: ‘It seemed as if they had made the decision, without consulting me, to push me to the absolute limit to deliver the baby naturally.' She added: ‘I tore. I was cut. I was stitched up. I couldn't sit down without a rubber ring supporting me (so utterly humiliating) for at least four weeks. 

‘I had haemorrhoids. I bled. I hurt for months. Physically and emotionally. I wasn't depressed. I was in shock. I felt, I suppose, like a failure. I also felt I had been failed.' It comes a month after the Royal College of Midwives announced it was dropping its decade-long campaign for ‘normal birth' – admitting that it made women feel like failures if they needed medical intervention. While pregnant, Pearlman took six weeks of National Childbirth Trust (NCT) classes at a cost of £300.

But she said they were so biased in favour of natural birth that she was ‘left fearing all intervention' – despite initially believing she wanted an epidural. She branded the classes as  ‘fundamentally no longer fit for  purpose', adding that although she could have been more inquiring, her decision to go natural was fuelled by ‘in part because of fear'. 

Sarah McMullen, head of knowledge at the NCT, said: ‘It's not acceptable that someone should leave an antenatal class feeling uninformed and fearful of birth, and our practitioners would never intend for this to happen.' 

She added that the majority of the 50,000 parents surveyed last year rated the NCT classes highly. 

© Daily Mail

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