Nearly one in five pregnant women are being forced to wear a face mask during labour, according to research by the charity Pregnant Then Screwed. Some of these women have described the experience as the most terrifying of their lives. They were first seen by their children while masked. For months, a number of hospitals also banned the presence of birth partners for all but the hours of active labour. It is no wonder there was an increase in the number of pregnant women considering freebirth without a medical professional present in 2020. The Guardian has more.
Women described feeling unable to breathe, having panic attacks or even being sick during labour because they were made to wear a face covering [while in labour].
The research was carried out by the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, who surveyed 936 women who gave birth during December. It found that 160 of those who went into labour were made to wear a face covering. This goes against current joint U.K. guidance, published in July 2020 by the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
The guidance says that women should not be asked to wear a face covering of any kind during natural labour or during caesarean births because of the risk of harm and complications. Rosie, 39, from London, said she felt as if she was dying because she was in so much pain during advanced labour with her third child, born in December. Yet maternity staff instructed to keep on her face mask.
She told BBC News: “I was feeling claustrophobic and the mask was making me feel really nauseous and making me panic as well. I’m pushing my baby out, I have this mask on my face, and the feeling of claustrophobia is just massive.”
She said she couldn’t express herself because while struggling to breathe it was hard to talk and staff couldn’t see her whether or not her lips were moving. “I was frightened that amongst everything else that was happening I was then going to be sick inside the mask,” added Rosie, who has a condition called emetophobia, which is a fear of vomiting. At one point she ripped off the mask but was told to put it back on.
Natalie Titherington, from Oldham, says she was not aware of the guidance on face masks during labour when her baby girl was born last December. She said the birth was the most terrifying experience of her life. “I was gasping for air. I felt completely suffocated. I’m never going to be able to forget the feeling of not being able to breathe, and the fear and panic I felt while wearing a mask.”
Titherington says she was made to wear a face mask while she was in advanced labour, around 8cm dilated and having regular and very painful contractions.
“Someone put the mask on me and I said: ‘You can’t be serious,’ and she replied: ‘Yes,’ and then I remember having a contraction,” said Titherington, who has flashbacks of her traumatic birth and has been unable to wear a face covering since because it triggers the memory of struggling to breathe.
She ended up having an emergency caesarean and was told to wear the mask during the entire surgery, which goes against the official guidance.
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In my view anyone who tortures a woman during childbirth should pay for such an act with their life. I make no apologies for this.
I’m not for the death penalty, but there are some crimes that are so far gone, they make you wish for it. This is sick beyond belief.
And the government wanted us to applaud the NHS??? Dreadful, evil people, all of them.
Probably not, but the deafening silence from those inside the NHS who know what is going on (even though they might not be actively abusive) suggests their failure to report such acts, events and inhuman policies makes them at least complicit (and perhaps legally answerable under the Nuremberg Code).
Some even believe what they are doing is right. I queried a doctor I know recently about the ‘vaccinations’ being experimental etc etc and his reply, in a haughty tone, was that it is ‘unethical’ not to be vaccinated against the virus. What? I cried. Yes, he said, some may die who wouldn’t have on receiving the vaccine but it is worth it for the greater good.
I was so taken aback at his unreasoning stupidity that I just left it at that. The man’s obviously an idiot. And totally unethical.
At least his job’s secure, I guess, spouting that lunacy.
As Confucius might have said, “a few over-inflated A level results doth not a wise man or medic make”.
They know their jobs and promotion are at risk, their mortgages, children’s school fees, the food bills. Very easy to control people, must have happened even more easily in Hitler’s inflationary Germany.
It’s been noticeable since the start that those speaking out are self employed, or retired, or on career breaks.
Unfortunately there are reports that this pressure is also affecting the reporting of serious side effects to the Yellow Card and VAERS systems.
But that argument is simply untenable. Medical staff have an absolute supra-contractual ethical DUTY arising from the Hippocratic oath. This is further enshrined in the Nuremberg Code.
It’s not like they have any choice but to speak out – it’s a given that they must no matter how many conveniently wonky interpretations of ethical responsibility seem to be going around inside the NHS. The ‘scared of losing my job’ argument (the weakest of them all) certainly doesn’t wash, and they should have thought of that at the outset and maybe chosen a different career.
As for all those medical staff who have failed to speak out they deserve to be sanctioned severely when the reckoning comes, and it will.
“Dreadful, evil people, all of them”
This is far to serious for aimless ill-focused ranting. What you are seeing is the political perversion of an institution by this evil Tory government, using their control of management.
I suggest that you read the UK Column narration from a Trust board member to see what has happened.
Yes, before we are all tarred with the same brush, some of us in the NHS are actually more compassionate than your average person, and go out of our way to bend covid rules to make patients feel more comfortable and at ease.
Well done, you!
Well done you. However don’t you feel a duty to protest publicly about what’s going on?
Obviously if you were the only one breaking ranks, it would be dangerous & possibly useless.
Had I been an NHS worker, I’m quite sure I would have left & kicked up a fuss. It helps a lot that I’m 61 and at careers end. Not so easy for breadwinners,
I work in mental health so not in a position to be a whistleblower re what’s going on in our general hospitals. If I was witnessing the kinds of horrors this article is reporting, I would speak up, try to change things, and as a last resort, leave. As it is, I do what I can to open peoples’ eyes in my own little sphere, and rebel where I can without losing my job.
To reverse a point often made here before, I don’t think it’s just a Tory problem – Labour have been up to their necks in this as well.
We mustn’t misdiagnose the disease by focussing on only one political creed.
The disease is the politicians!
I’m far from convinced it’s got much to do with politicians and wholly to do with supranational actors. The Coronavirus Act (2020) gives the executive almost carte Blanche to do whatever they want. I would characterise UK as having suffered a technocratic coup around Mar 23, 2020 & control had flowed to a group of unelected, unaccountable anonymous people.
The Davos elite
Indeed, it goes far beyond politicians, who I think are merely unwitting actors in this. Certainly it goes far, far beyond party politics.
Think about the outrage in the media when Guantanamo were waterboarding their prisoners. Where’s the media outrage at our own citizens being ritually gagged while giving birth?
There won’t be any as the media is the mouth peace of the government
“piece” please!
Yes. I too have altered my views on capital punishment. What’s going on is no ordinary crime. It’s already mass murder.
Those forcing this on women should be given a custodial sentence
This is surely against your human rights and that of your baby. This is the sick, evil, inhumane agenda our caring billionaire Globalists are pushing out in the name of “health” and, um, our “safety!”
No, this is the choice some managers in the NHS are making.
Lets all clap the wonderful sodding NHS
Yes, let’s clap them.
In irons.
Throw the keys away.
I just want to escape from this country and go live with normal people. Health service is a disgrace.
Turkish Cyprus? That is where an innocent victim of the notorious family courts went with her children, and found care and understanding (according to the late, great Christopher Booker). I’ll warrant you’d be treated better there.
Indeed. And nothing much us being done to get the NHS back on its feet.
It’s still running cold. My default expectation is that it’s not going to return. Good luck if any of us fall ill.
Everything is a disgrace. I am 80, I remember what it used to be like.
I would rather die in pain and alone than have anything to do with the NHS now.
It seems once one is admitted to a hospital these days with anything remotely serious, the chances of coming out alive are becoming vanishingly small.
Ditto.
Sadly I don’t find this in the least bit surprising, having had 10 years of seeing the total disrespect with which our ‘Angels’ treat the elderly. I had rather hoped that perhaps the gerontological staff were those least suited to their profession – perhaps it’s easier to care in paediatrics or other areas – but it’s starting to strike me that there are a hell of a lot of NHS staff who shouldn’t be let near another human being. I don’t understand why people who work in these settings and believe that mothers giving birth should be forced to wear masks don’t question why they’re in their role and perhaps go and find another job more suited to their temperament.
They’re there because despite what the msm would have you believe they’re well paid with excellent pension contributions, generous holiday allowances and ludicrously generous sick pay that sees the majority get six months full pay then six months half pay in any twenty four month period. The same as teachers, civil servants and the rest of the public sector.
“find another job more suited to their temperament.”
Those jobs probably aren’t available, what with the lack of concentration camps…
‘What with the lack of concentration camps’ – well for now at least……
Not enough jobs available in concentration camps (yet)?
We’re being fast-tracked into a level of cruelty that I bet would even shock the North Koreans.
What the hell is WRONG with these people?! who would do that to a woman in labour?
Perhaps the same people who think it’s ok to inject pregnant women with an experimental gene therapy, with no data on long term effects for mum or baby.
https://www.ukmedfreedom.org/open-letters/ukmfa-open-letter-to-the-jcvi-re-advice-that-covid-19-vaccines-should-be-offered-to-all-pregnant-women
One of worst atrocities is that mendacious leaflet designed to mislead pregnant women to get vaccinated. It’s among the most shocking thing I’ve read during the event.
Exactly the same was done in France last year.
This is appalling behaviour by the NHS staff, tantamount to torture of these poor women, who were unable to fight back at all, and had no one else there to fight for them. It sounds akin to waterboarding, with added extreme pain.
Those involved should be personally sued, either the hospital management, or the individual staff members.
There was hell to pay when the apostate Widdecombe was handcuffing women to their beds, but this shameful cruelty is apparently okay, in the wonderful caring NHS. I’d hope that we, as a nation, had by now hit rock bottom in disgusting behaviour, but I doubt it.
This is so despicable! It tells you everything you need to know about “health care” today.
I never again want to see a UK politician preaching to a foreign nation about human rights – I will literally break my TV, and I don’t want to break my TV.
EDIT: and notice the choice of wording in that quotation. The ‘the presence of birth partners’ rather than a father. We’re living through the most fucked up times – Alice should feel more safe in Wonderland.
But if a woman isn’t in a relationship with the biological father of her child, her birth partner might be her best friend or her mother or her aunt or her gay male cousin who has always had a close relationship with her, etc etc. Sexual relationships are not the only close, supportive relationships that matter. The term ‘birth partners’ may be a thoughtful attempt to include this real-world variety rather than a dismissal of all the millions of good dads in our society.
I appreciate where you’re coming from. But I doubt this is an effort to include friends/supportive groups during birth. There’s no mention of fathers in the article.
For the last 20+ years, the UK public (and most of Europe) have been steadily conditioned to be more considerate of the minority than the majority. It’s a very deliberate act of undermining a strong society, because it literally inverts priorities. It’s extreme socialism, it’s called cultural Marxism.
This is not me attacking or belittling minority groups; my philosophy in life is to let people enjoy their lives in whichever way they like – but NOT to the detriment of others, least of all children and interference in their sexual maturing.
Political correctness is the psychological poison that has laid the foundations of the covid fraud we’re now living.
Go to university get your degree in Cultural Marxism to qualify for a job in the NHS!
And practically every other job in the public sector.
That’s a very good and fair point. Impossible to argue against I would say.
Can’t understand the downvote, so offset by my upvote.
At least Alice managed to chop the head off the Jabberwock. Heads should roll in the NHS for their outrageous conduct.
Put the TV in the attic, better for your mental health.
Just apalling. Shame on those who made these woman suffer.
And don’t forget the cherry on the cake! They get offered the Jabz while they are there.
I noticed on the NHS website it says, ‘it is preferable for you to have the Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine as these have been used more widely during pregnancy in other countries and have not caused any safety issues.”
A strike for Astra Zeneca, they kept that quiet!
Jabz for breast feeding mothers, from the market ticker:
“There are several assertions that we’ve heard and demand to be tested about these shots, particularly in light of the VAERS report of the wildly-atypical death of a breast-feeding infant within days after mom got the jab. The baby died of TTP which is extraordinarily rare (~5/million in infants of nursing age.)
The odds of that incident coinciding exactly within a couple of days of mom taking the jab is astronomical. That any particular person got a shot within a 2-day window is a one-in-a-million risk or less. Now add to this 5 in a million and you can see that we’re talking about an event about as likely to happen by random chance as one or two in a trillion”
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker-Nad&page=2
that,s disgusting, absolutely vile – surely this counts as assault; you have a lot to answer for, Boris, you and your Rasputin like advisers.
The happy clappy sheeple effectively gave Carte Blanche to thousands in the NHS to do as they will, unchallenged and unanswerable legally, ethically and socially. The occasional whistle-blowing nurse or (even less occasionally) doctor might come forward publicly – but given the sheer scale of this C19 lockdown & vaxx scam these numbers remain shamefully low.
We hear about institutionalised racism in the Police Force, but not much about institutionalised arrogance in the NHS. Too many NHS staff still believe themselves to be unanswerable to the common plebs (who are simply “carping” as one doctor put it recently), and if they do deign to speak out we should immediately shower them with unstinting praise in adoration, when they are simply doing their jobs and/or following the very ethical oath they are bound by.
The NHS system itself causes all staff to treat patients as supplicants not customers.
The corrosive effect on ethics is the one reason no other 1st world country would contemplate an NHS.
I wish I could refute this assertion but, after remembering the pain and suffering visited upon family and friends by appalling NHS decision making and treatment over the years, I won’t even try.
Don’t forget we must also demand they all have massive pay rises every few months
Nuremburg II can’t come quick enough in my opinion. This evil, that’s what it is, has to stop. To ‘do nothing’ now, is no longer an option.
They have my sympathies in each country bar the UK.
If you are about to give birth and cannot google and pronounce the words ‘I am exempt!’ despite bearing responsibility for you and your soon to be born child now, you are just an id*ot.
I’m not sure that’s very fair. These women are in an extremely vulnerable position where they are completely dependent on the medical professionals around them. Mothers have a hard enough time trying to get them to listen to the very basics of what they want and consent to. Childbirth already involves a whole plethora of interventions that women need to stay on top of and advocate for.
When you are in labour you are extremely vulnerable: in so much pain you can’t think, and probably frightened by what is happening to you, particularly if it is your first birth. In that state, you tend to just accept what you are told.
When I had my first son, several decisions were made which, with hindsight, I believe were not in my best interest (for example, I was told I couldn’t eat anything during a 24-hour labour). If I were to go through exactly the same experience again, I would have the confidence to advocate for myself, but at the time I didn’t know any better and so just accepted it.
Absolutely. Until you’ve been there no one understands how many totally crackers things you’re coerced into consenting to! And once you’ve consented to one thing you’ve then just started a whole chain reaction of other things you have to consent to.
Eg. Ok I consent you dating my pregnancy as this date even though I’m sure it’s ok. Ok I consent to an induction because you’re scaring me about stillbirths if it’s overdue. Ok I consent to try vaginal birth even though my own research says not to. Ok I consent to you putting your whole hand inside me to forcibly break my water. Ok I consent to the painful hormones because your clock is ticking now. Ok I consent to having to remain bedbound because you want to monitor HR now. Well I have to consent to you also monitoring my babies by screwing a wire into their scalp. Oh you want to scrape down scalp blood too to test their oxygen, ok I guess so. Well now I have to consent to forceps because you can’t get the baby out. No epidural because it’s a weekend well ok. Consent to an episiotomy, well why not. Consent to an emergency caesarean, yes of course, SAVE OUR LIVES!
There’s simply no place to advocate for yourself unless you’re very firm from the start and even then the bullying is relentless.
Where are the Human Rights Lawyers????
They are all raking in megabucks stopping the deportation of illegal immigrants at Stansted and Dover.
Appalling, disgusting, unspeakable, typical of the Notional Hell Service.
I’m hoping the government and Sage are among the 1000 they’ve predicted this time, unfortunately, they’ll probably be wrong again
Its time to fight back as much as we can, and stand up for our rights. If enough people do that worldwide, there will be no will to take us down.
Apart from the psychological and physical effects on the mother, this disgraceful practice will also inflict lower oxygen levels to the baby with the attendant, life long effects on the child.
Why don’t they organise? I think that at some point we have to realise we get what we deserve
This is just an extension of long-standing ineptitude and cruelty in the NHS. When I had my daughter nearly 18 years ago at the age of 23 in , I went into the early stages of labour 2 weeks past my due date, EVERYTHING went wrong – poor midwifery provision, an AWOL anesthetist, then 2 failed epidurals – until I was rushed to surgery for an emergency c-section. Myself and my baby both nearly died and, had it been a year later when they centralised surgical maternity services to a hospital over half an hour away, neither of us would have survived. The lowest blow though was, that despite being listed as my next of kin, my parents had to fight to be allowed access to the maternity unit and were only eventually allowed in some hours after the birth.I was 23, utterly terrified, about to undergo major surgery and all I wanted was my mum – but protocol did not allow it. This happened in what might be termed a ‘rural’ hospital – I dread to think what mums and families have gone through in larger, busier hospitals during the course of this ‘pandemic’. Despite the euphoric after-glow accounts of childbirth that we hear of and even when everything had gone to plan, be under no illusion – it is feckin’ TERRIFYING! To think that this has been allowed to happen to women in their most vulnerable moments makes me want to break furniture.
I concur. My 2 came into the world more easily than your experience, but the first in particular was terrifying (back labour, emergency hospital transfer, ventouse), I honestly thought I was dying. I wanted to die just to get it over with.
If anyone had come near me with a face mask I think I may well have willed myself to die.
So women lying on their backs to give birth is normal? Only since King what’s his face decreed it in order to have full view! Baby’s immune system enhanced by coming in contact with mother’s secretions…… but not her airway apparently….mad, stupid, human world!
Horrific. No other word.
My daughter was told to wear a mask during her emergency C-section. Despite being alone & unsupported because her partner was excluded “because of covid”, she had enough nous to politely but firmly where they could apply their masks. She also told them there was near as dammit no community caseload of the virus at the time. The staff didn’t force the issue, but their disinterest in her fear & suffering prior to & during the procedure has scarred her opinion about medical staff probably permanently.
When her baby was handed to her, they firmly placed a mask on her. So her newborn baby’s first gaze at mothers face was to be presented with a big blue face with most features obscured.
The idiots in the NHS were unaware that a person lacking symptoms of respiratory virus infection is most unlikely to represent a threat to others, asymptomatic transmission being pretty much a lie.
Worse, even if she’d been infected, those masks have NO impact on transmission. That’s another lie.
Anyone NOT seen the pattern yet? Every one of the half dozen or so central narrative points are lies. Some are deliberate exaggerations & others are plain lies. Nothing is real. Given the same lies are being told everywhere on the planet as far as I can determine, it’s definitely a conspiracy. Nothing theoretical about it.
Far too few people are prepared to accept that their own government and its advisors have been actively lying to them, in order to amplify fear, in turn with the goal of getting them to accept a toxic vaccine.
Until more people decide to suspend disbelief & look up one, core narrative point. If they did, they’d appreciate that whatever it is, it’s a lie. Once you catch your government lying to you on something fundamental to do with your health, why would you automatically believe that the rest is true?
Stupid women. Why are they not saying no?
Good question which goes to the root of the problem. A small minority in general are saying ‘No’. Those in the health service similarly.
They are mostly not wicked or evil. For that, you have to go up the chain to the originators, and then look at the way in which insane compliance has been induced.
The majority of people are victims, not conscious perpetrators; they really don’t understand. It’s also not related to professional expertise etc. Stupidity is distributed equally across all groups.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in hospital, and have had the leisure to watch the ‘automaton’ syndrome in operation. As I posted last week, drugs are normally prescribed and guarded with the utmost care, and come packaged with extensive information about dangers. Similarly procedures (for a routine procedure that I’ve had a dozen times, the consent form was a lot of closely printed script). Safety routines are complied with to a fault – necessarily, if irritatingly, so.
And yet … the whole population is being induced to suck up improperly tested snake oil for a moderate virus without any information or safeguards. The medication protocols are of the nature of a PR campaign for the pharmaceutical industry. See Derren Brown …..
The root of evil – it’s smiling banality – can be seen in that picture from last week of Johnson quaffing a pint inside a pub. Essentially (and figuratively) he was holding his out-of-control penis and laughing as he pisses over the population of the country – obviously not believing a word of the guff he’s been spouting on a regular basis.
That stupid came from a man.
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OK, I will explain, since you are young and find empathy difficult. Others may wonder the same.
In final labour, birthing, you are trapped and helpless. You find it hard to move. In hospitals, typically all independence is removed. You almost certainly lying down on a board, against all your instincts that gravity would help, because that position is best not for you, but NHS staff. You are surrounded by people, in masks and gowns, dehumanised people, giving instructions. If it is your first birth you are frightened, nothing like this has ever happened before. You are worried for the baby. I have never felt so lonely as in that room, surrounded by people.
You may even be being told off by the midwives – yes – in my second birth I was told to shut up by the midwife when I was screaming because I was experiencing a hyper rapid birth. The closest I can come to how it felt was that I was being eaten alive from the inside by a wild animal. You can’t get off the board and walk away.
That hyper rapid birth was caused by NHS negligence, by the way. They had accelerated the birth despite it being clearly well on its natural way. She apologised to me afterwards, perhaps to prevent a complaint, but it should have been unthinkable.
Not all NHS maternity units are bad. But some are Cuckoo’s Nests, with a team of Rachets. The masks here being forced on the mother are to “Protect the NHS” staff – not her. The lack of evidence based medicine in the maternity ward, and the resultant powerlessness of the mother has existed since wards began.
My advice to mothers is: don’t take the father to the birth, take a lawyer. Failing that, mention to the staff in early labour that the father is a lawyer.
Wicked beyond belief. How does a woman labour without being able to breathe unimpeded? It’s hard work, huge amount of energy required, for which cells must have oxygen. The mother is breathing for both her and her baby, so does the baby suffer from restricted oxygen or carbon dioxide build up? What about the balance between different affinities for oxygen between maternal haemoglobin and foetal haemoglobin?
The mother is doing the equivalent of running a marathon, no way is this activity enhanced by trying to breathe through a soggy mask. How is a woman expected to be able to breathe, pant, as required to deal with the contractions? Whoever thought this was a good idea should be gagged, tied up, and kicked in the groin every two minutes for 20 hours, then have a rugby ball inserted into a convenient orifice.
It’s utterly ridiculous as well, given that down at the business end all sorts of emissions are an inevitable part of giving birth. Breathing is trivial in comparison.