Don't deny our experiences!

I want to talk about the importance of acknowledging experience.

And also acknowledge that the story I am about to tell you is based on the epitome of a first-world problem.

But I’m not telling you because I want to complain about the problem.

I want to use the story to illustrate what I think is an important principle.

One day, I went to a certain supermarket near my house. As a reward for doing my shopping there and letting it record details of what I buy, I get a free coffee when I visit. Which is a good marketing tool. Because, as I toddle around the aisles with my soy latte, I feel loved by the supermarket. Or something like that.

The procuring of my coffee wasn’t quite such a straightforward process on this particular day, though. The main coffee machine was being mended, so I couldn’t get coffee from the bakery counter. That was not a problem though, because I am a very regular customer of this supermarket. In fact, Chris and I usually get there so early on Saturday mornings that the bakery coffee machine hasn’t yet warmed up. So we happen to know that the deli counter can also make soy lattes. (I did make it clear that this was a first-world problem, right?!)

The coffee problem

I headed to the deli counter, said good morning and made my request.

To which the assistant immediately replied that she couldn’t make a soy latte at that counter.

“Oh”, I said, smiling very nicely. (I’m always nice to people who make me coffee. If what you want deviates from the norm as much as my half-strength-soy-latte-with-syrup-if-it’s Christmas-in-fact-please-take-a-good-coffee-and-turn-it-into-a-pudding-thanks request does, it’s only fair).

“Do you mean you can’t make one today, or has something changed?” I asked. “Because I do get them here normally, so I’m a bit confused.”

I didn’t say it, but the free coffee rules had been changing a lot. It was hard to keep up. And I wanted to understand what the problem was, so I could direct myself to a more appropriate counter in future visits.

“Soy lattes are never made at this counter, so you can’t have got one here in the past”, she replied. “You must be mistaken.”

Oh.

In two sentences, a minor inconvenience had turned into a blog post!

How do you defend experience?

What do you do when someone tells you that your experience is wrong? That you are mistaken in a belief that you hold about your own experience? On this occasion, I walked away, and my immediate thoughts were not of coffee, but of pregnant women. It is frustrating enough to be told that a service one thinks is available is inaccessible. And I’m thinking more of important services like midwifery-led units and pool rooms rather than unimportant things like complimentary coffee. But it is a particular kind of disempowering to have somebody imply that your memories and/or self-knowledge are incorrect and that their belief or knowledge is more valid than yours.

This happens more often than it should in the maternity services, and it’s not OK.

Arguing with women

I remember reading studies by sociologists such as Ann Oakley, who showed how medical professionals sometimes deny women’s personal knowledge. (Yes, it may have been inadvertent, and without understanding of the effect, but that doesn’t make it OK). One example that has always stayed in my mind is the doctor who argued with a woman about how many weeks pregnant she was. He mistakenly believed that her medical notes said something different. And only when he found that the medical notes agreed with her assessment did he accept that she was right.

It is easy and perhaps sometimes inevitable that we take short cuts or get used to authoritative knowledge being held in records or our own professional experiences. And people do get things wrong. Or infer a cause and effect relationship that isn’t likely to be true. But the impact of denying the personal experiences of others can be far more profound than we realise.

The decisions that we make about our pregnancy and childbirth journeys can shape our experiences, health and lives, as well as those of our families. But those decisions can be complex. This book is a guide to the different perspectives and approaches that exist, and it offers tips, tools and ways of thinking which will help you make the decisions that are right for you.

My own story had a (completely undeserved) happy ending. The nice man on the customer services desk had overheard the conversation. He arranged for an equally nice woman in the cafe to make me a soy latte. As he escorted me, he promised that he would look into the possibility that there might be a ‘training issue’ on the deli counter. Which I think was a euphemism for his acknowledgement that it’s not cool to tell people that they’re deluded.

If only women who had similar experiences in health and maternity care could always be assured of such prompt and good service.