Why do women do this to women?

This happened some years ago but I couldn’t open up about it until now and try to summarize: I had a normal, healthy pregnancy. First time mom, did prenatal care at Sutter Health, a major health network in California, because they said they supported low intervention labor and natural childbirth. I trusted them. But the moment I stepped into their hospital for labor and delivery they were all about interventions and speeding labor up, even though I was fine and baby was fine. At some point I was told to push even though I did not have the urge to push. The midwife said there was no reason to wait… she refused to look at my birth plan when I tried to discuss it with her, she seemed rushed, left the room saying she needed to help other patients, came back, left again…leaving me with a nurse who seemed completely clueless and overwhelmed about what to do. So no meaningful pushing…all of a sudden an OB came in telling me they wanted to do a c-section now…I was shocked and said no, asked what what going on, begged them for allowing me to push my baby out, I told them I was full of energy to do so and so on… But her answer was “2 hours are up”… There was no emergency, which was later confirmed. Had somebody told me that they had a 2 hour limit for pushing, I would’ve tried to delay the start of it since I had no urge to push when they told me to do so. Long story short…the OB left the room for a while, someone came in to do an ultrasound, I thought I would then be allowed to push my baby out… but instead the OB returned with a group of people, I was held down, I said no I don’t want this, they ignored me…and an instrumental delivery was performed on me… This was years ago and I still feel the terror I felt back then… The postpartum nurse said they were super busy…don’t know whether that was the reason why they did what they did because there was no emergency and baby was fine. But the experience has traumatized me. Cannot think of any other situation in healthcare where something like this is possible… The healthcare providers mentioned here were all women… Why do women do this to women?

Posted Aug 21, 2026, 2:38 AM UTC

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