An Unforeseen Complication: A Birth Story

It was August 8th, 2008 when my mom’s back pain began. After waiting almost two weeks past my brother’s due date, she finally went into labor, preparing to give birth to her third child. She had given birth to me at age twenty, and six years later she gave birth to my 10 lb 7 oz sister; she was no stranger to the pain of labor. As the doctors prepared for my little brother, they went to give my mom the epidural shot she had requested and used in both of her past labors. They’re supposed to make the pain you’re in more bearable. The last complication my mother expected was one from an epidural shot. The OBGYNs should be able to do that with their eyes closed; yet, as they inserted the needle into my mom’s back, she felt slightly uncomfortable,

To this day, she still experiences severe back pain that causes her to take herbal supplements not covered under insurance and drugstore lidocaine patches. Not only is this inconvenient and inexpensive, but whenever my mom exerts herself, it ends in a trip to the emergency room. This is where I began to notice how passively my mom would be treated. After sitting in the uncomfortable chairs in the E.R. waiting room, likely worsening the pain she was in, my mom and I would finally be directed to a more private room, or at least a bed. Sweet, sensitive nurses would come in and chat about my mom’s history of back pain and where it all started. Many of them were sympathetic towards her and left the room claiming that they would ask the doctor to visit us soon. The waiting game began again, and once the doctor finally came in to see us, he would study his clipboard instead of his patient and ask questions without hearing the answers. These visits usually ended in x-rays or MRI’s that came up clean with no questions asked, or no scans at all and just a few pain pills. This was...frustrating. Why did the doctors look over my mom and dismiss her so easily when she was clearly in loads of pain? What made them give up so easily? This curiosity sent me to

One example is an advertisement for Estroven: a menopause medication. The commercial’s main hook is “Can you say this about menopause?” as women hold up signs of what taking the medication has done for them like: “My bed doesn’t feel like a wet sponge,” or “I didn’t forget what I was going to say.” Of course, these are positive benefits that the medicine provides for women and reasons for people to use their medication. But, what some of the other signs read are red flags: “My husband isn’t afraid of me anymore,” (the opening line) or “I don’t take my clothes off at the office,” have a sexist connotation to them. Menopause is worse for the woman experiencing it than it is for anyone else that observes them experiencing it, and a medicine that is specifically made for a women’s health should not aim first to appeal to men. And, honestly, if a lady’s husband is afraid of a little menopause, that’s the husband’s problem to deal with. Not only that, but a woman should not, under any circumstances, be taking any type of medicine in order to please someone else, whether it be her husband or her coworkers in the office. It’s solely her own