Susan Burton

So it's also a surgery that a lot of people have.

So, you know, I get this email and it was so disturbing.

I thought, was this maybe a one-off?

I wrote back to the listener.

And then within 24 or maybe 48 hours, I had opened two more emails describing something really similar.

And that was the point where I was like, okay, is this a thing?

So I started talking to people about it, and I came to recognize that there were patterns in these experiences.

So, for example, feeling the surgery in a way that was just totally shocking.

Speaking up and after you've spoken up, being told that what you're feeling is just pressure.

So having your pain mischaracterized is something else.

And some of the really unsettling things were happening in the aftermath of the surgery, like experiences never being acknowledged, nobody apologizing, nobody explaining what had happened.

Sure.

So one of the women I spoke to, her name is Vanessa Lenner.

She was in her late 30s when she got pregnant.

She lives in Florida.

She works as a physician's assistant.

And her husband is an engineer who works in aerospace.

And she showed up at the hospital to give birth.

She had a scheduled induction, which is when you get drugs to start your labor.

She gets the drugs.