It was a routine antenatal appointment. I’d done it twice before and knew the format. The obstetrician runs through the risks of an elective caesarean (ELCS). We agree a date, I sign the forms, then make a plea for adequate pain relief after the surgery, which I know will be ignored.
So I was blindsided by her opening gambit. ‘Why don’t we tie your tubes when we’ve got the baby out?’ she said, or something similar – I don’t recall the exact words, but I do remember the heat in my chest, the confusion and fear.
‘What?’
‘It’s your third child, isn’t it, so why don’t we tie your tubes at the same time?’
She wouldn’t drop it, ignoring my every assertion that I did not want this done to me. ‘It’s a very simple procedure when you’re open on the table,’ she said silkily. (I’ve since learnt that it isn’t.) I lost it after that, so she changed tack, offering to ‘pop in a Mirena coil at the same time’.
Again, a hard ‘no’ from me. At that stage I still thought we might have a fourth child. I was outraged at this unsolicited comment on the size of our family. I left in a terrible state, stressed and upset that they wanted to do this to me.
Then, shortly before I had my daughter, I met up with my friend Tess, who was booked in for an elective caesarian at a neighbouring NHS trust in London, due to placenta previa. We chatted about what it involved; her two older children had been natural births. ‘Can you believe,’ said Tess, ‘the first thing the consultant said to me was, “Now I understand this is your third child.
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