I have discovered that one of the most emotionally charged and a labile moment for a woman is immediately after childbirth. Probably a sense of accomplishment or an acknowledgement of responsibility of adulthood emboldens even the shy and timid to become eloquent. Women often reveal very personal information during cesareans or normal deliveries when we are suturing them.
For my part, I sense that having helped them to deliver their facsimile, further promotes our patient-doctor relationship. At these times, they pour out their innermost insecurities and feelings.
As the staff involved in a normal delivery is less than in a Caesar and the patient is not under anesthetic influence, the tete-a-tete is more direct. As I deliver the placenta and prepare to suture them, to keep some conversation going I often ask -“So, will you be going to stay with your mother?” Of course, I know that our girls go to their mother’s and stay there for up to nine months after delivery. My question is most often meant to be a light banter.
However, the responses to this simple question always give me an insight into the kind of life this woman may be living in a man’s world. Answering this innocuous question, they reveal more about themselves than they could ever guess.
And so goes the conversation and my assessment.
“So, will you be going to stay with your mother?”
“Yes doctor. I shall stay there for the next nine months.” The mother and child will be cared for well here. She comes from a close- knit family. A family that will accept her and her newborn girl and probably will not tolerate the in-laws if they grumble and accuse her of not having delivered a baby boy.
“Yes. But not for long.” It could be that her absence from her husband’s home will be missed- probably as the loss of a helping hand. Or, there must be that first-born who had to be cared for too. A responsible woman, struggling to cope up with family pressures.
“No. But my mother is coming here to help me out.” A responsible, older woman (the mother) valiantly coping up with extended pressures even when her children have begun their own families. This young woman will learn to appreciate the sacrifices of her mother and probably will emulate the same in years to come.
“No. I may have to manage alone. My husband is busy.” The wistful sigh of the young girl who married against her parents wishes. No parents, no in-laws to turn to. This just out of teens is prone to disregard her health. The initial physical attraction in their marriage is already on the wane and in a few months, she will have the first real exposure to her husband’s character. I hope it will be a pleasant one!
“No. My in-laws will not hear of it. They have had a row with my parents.” A great tension…most often for lack of dowry and a clash of egos. The poor lady will have to make a lot of compromises and if it is a female child, her other problems have just begun.
But the irony of it all is that that the most startling answers are given out in a feeling-less voice. The pain of the memory becomes temporarily camouflaged by the recent even of labor and a sympathetic ear at such times will get its earful!
“My mother stays with us, doctor. My father married again when I was born.” What was her mother’s fault? Delivering a girl baby! No wonder this young woman had such low perception of self-worth.
“I don’t have one, madam. She is dead….committed suicide when I was young.” Fifteen years of solitude as an orphan…No mother to braid her hair or pack her lunch- box or confide about her heavy period…Becoming, and playing the role of a mother will be a challenge to this woman and she needs a lot of family support.
And finally, one evening, as I was doing her skin and popped the question, a patient said:
“Doctor, my mother ran away.” A flat statement... I looked at her from my seat...dry eyes and a wry smile.
I halt midway the second suture. Did I hear her right?
“What did you say?.... When?”
“My mother ran away. Four days ago. She doesn’t know I have delivered.” A woman runs away at that age? And where to? This lady was 28 years and her mother could be in her sixth decade. Running away at 55?Eloping? Can’t be.
“But…why?”
“My father tortures her.” The bitterness in that voice haunts me even to this day.
What do you call a man who abuses his wife even after the grandchildren are around? And how much of an abuse it must have been for the poor elderly woman to abandon a place she believed was her home and a man whom she had served for over forty years? Where could she have gone-talking along, suffering her depression, arthritis and all? It could probably be to anyone of her relatives’ houses...or to end up as a statistics on a railway track or float on a god-forsaken pond four days hence.
“She might come back...when she learns you have delivered...” I tried to put off that vision.
“No madam. Not this time...She has had far too much...We’ve lost her...” Now the new mother was crying. It was yet another moment of helplessness in my profession. I could neither continue the conversation nor look into those sorrowful eyes. And what consolation should I give this wretched woman?
They taught me history-taking, examination and surgery in Medical Colleges; preaching Medicine was an inexact science...but no one had warned me that I could often be stumped by such emotional tempests....
As I ripped off my gloves, I realized again that Medicine is very finite...
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