On 20th of April 2009 – ironically it was one of the biggest Christian holidays – Easter (hence the name Vela *Note: Easter in Bulgarian in called Velikden*), I went to the Veliko Turnovo’s maternity ward, so I can give birth to my little daughter and to finally embrace and kiss her. It never came to pass…
I had a very easy pregnancy and no indications for a caesarean. In fact, the doctor told me that the baby is big but she would try to deliver it vaginally and only if that didn’t work out, she would consider a caesarean.
Everything was going well, labour started quickly and came easily, but the problem happened in the very last moment when I was in the delivery suite… My actual delivery lasted about one and a half hours. It turned out there was a problem – the baby wasn’t coming out. They started pushing on my abdomen. Horrible cutting was taking place(episiotomy) and still the baby couldn’t come out. At this point I had no strength left. But I was told there’s no going back and the baby needs to come out “one way or another”. Even the midwife was flouting and telling the doctors not to intervene, as after all “birth is a natural physiological process”. However, in the end two doctors simultaneously jumped on my abdomen and the little one shot out just like a cork.
She was taken off somewhere and I wasn’t told anything about her. I just heard that she cried very softly, but not immediately after she was born. In the mean time I was in seventh heaven, I was so happy I had given birth. Later on it turned out that it was then my darkest days had begun. For 6 hours, nobody bothered to give me any information about my child. I asked the midwife, which at some point decided to bestow her presence on me, how my baby is and why I can’t have her with me. She replied in a cold-blooded manner, that she isn’t authorised to give me any details regarding this!
Eventually, one of the one of the neonatal doctors showed up and told me that my daughter was in a critical condition. I was told she had pneumonia, serious neurological problems and cephalohematomas all over her head. Then she declared that I could go and visit my child only the following day, because visits were only allowed within certain times.
In the end, as it turned out, Vela wasn’t able to move her limbs, she didn’t have any swallowing or suckling reflexes, her breathing was very shallow and laboured and because of that she was plugged into a ventilator with oxygen. We were never given a diagnosis, but we were told that the outlooks for her life were very grim. That she probably had a broken skull, which resulted in damage to her brain function.
My daughter was called VELA and I gave birth to her in the Veliko Turnovo Hospital with Dr. Panyova. I WAS a mother for 5 weeks only – my little daughter died as a result of birth trauma… There are many other cases where children are disabled both physically and mentally after a normal birth and they suffer for the rest of their lives. In those cases doctors recommend that the child is given away to an institution where it can be raised… The other option is that you receive training in how to dedicate your life to a disabled and hopeless life… In our case they told us that what happened was the best outcome for both the child and us… How could they see anything good and beneficial in having to bury your child?!
