CEDAW/C/75/D/138/2018
2.6 Within seconds of the birth, the author ’s daughter was taken away and the author
was told that she would not be able to see her until noon the next day. The daughter
was taken to the neonatal unit with a temperature of 38.8°C, caused by E. coli
bacteria. As has been emphasized by scientific studies that warn against excessive
digital vaginal examinations, contamination of this kind was probably the result of
the 10 examinations to which the author was subjected, which carried bacteria from
her vagina into the amniotic sac. The author was in a sta te of shock while her
episiotomy was stitched up and the placenta was removed. Manual removal of the
placenta can damage the mother ’s pelvic floor and internal organs, and should
therefore be performed no less than 30 minutes after birth, and only when the placenta
is not delivered naturally and after assistive measures have been attempted. In the
author’s case, the required 30 minutes had not elapsed and assistive measures had not
been tried.
2.7 The daughter remained in the neonatal unit for seven days to receive antibiotics
that could have been administered without her being separated from her mother.
During this time, the author was allowed to be with her daughter for only 15 minutes
every three hours, and the father was allowed to be with the baby for o nly two
30-minute periods per day. In addition, the baby was bottle-fed without the permission
of the mother, who wanted to breastfeed her daughter but was not allowed to do so
because “mothers ringing the bell are a nuisance”.
2.8 These events gave the author post-traumatic stress disorder, for which she has
had to have psychological therapy. In particular, her separation from her daughter
after the birth severely damaged the relationship between the baby and her parents.
The father declared during the hearing that “after eight days, we arrived home with
our daughter, and she and the two of us were strangers. We hadn ’t bonded”. As the
author stated in court, “going into hospital was like going into a car wash or onto an
assembly line; everyone does things to you in a mechanical way. The woman does
nothing, but she comes out of the car wash with a baby. Although the same thing
happens in other types of medical assistance, like, for example, a heart operation,
where the patient doesn’t have to do anything and is prepared for passivity, in
childbirth a woman is physically and psychologically prepared to give birth, not for
others to deliver the baby for her. I felt disempowered, with no self -esteem. I had to
create the bond with my daughter the hard way, rationally, without the help of the
complex natural neurological and hormonal mechanisms that make mothers fall in
love with their newborn children.” The psychological report states that it took the
parents a year to work through the feeling of not having bonded with their daughter
at birth. The events that occurred interfere with and impair the author ’s ability to
function in all areas of her life, as she suffers from anxiety, insomnia and repeated
memories of scenes experienced during labour.
2.9 The author also needed specialized physiotherapy to rehabilitate her pelvic floor
and repair the damage caused by the episiotomy, which made it impossible for her to
have sexual relations for two years.
2.10 The author characterizes the events described as “obstetric violence”. She
defines obstetric violence as the serious human rights violations suffered by women
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