Rachel Abrams

And presumably you did talk to a lot of doctors, right, about what they were experiencing in these ORs.

So tell us what they told you this is like from their perspective.

Okay, so doctors that you talk to sound like they are aware of cases like Vanessa's, at least, even if they haven't experienced them themselves.

Do they have any idea why the pain meds are failing these women?

Right, because by now we know this is happening, but there's been no real effort to quantify it.

Exactly.

I can't believe we're talking about 21st century medicine right now.

That is a huge difference, right?

Because if you think about how many women have this procedure, if I'm understanding you correctly, what you're saying is that if somebody goes to the hospital and they want to have a vaginal birth, they get an epidural, and then for whatever reason they have to go into the OR, maybe they have to have an emergency unplanned C-section, they are more likely to have pain.

Okay, so now that we have this study that is more comprehensive, and now that we know how prevalent this issue is of having so much pain during a C-section, does anybody have an idea of what happens next, what the solutions might be, where we go from here?

The solution is literally talk to the patients more.

Throughout this whole conversation, I have been wondering about kind of a more essential question here, which is, what is the appropriate amount of pain that a woman should feel during childbirth?

And who gets to decide that level of pain?

Oh, my God, I'm tearing up thinking about my own mother.

Like when you say like women are just used to like doing a million different things for the sake of their child, including not thinking about their own pain.

I mean, that's like almost a metaphor for the experience of motherhood.

She never complained about it.

Your reporting was the first time I ever actually asked her what her C-section was like.

And she was just very matter of fact, like I did it.

I had to.