I just got back from my 39w appointment and since I started having contractions today 6 minutes apart all day I decided to have them check my cervix for the first time. Well the midwife starts putting her hand in my vagina, and I said "could you just give me a few seconds please?" and she said "well I'm already up here" and RAMMED her hand so fast up my vagina and felt like she had a knife blade on my cervix. She told me i was 1 cm and about 90% effaced. It was more pain than I've ever felt and I couldn't help but start crying and breathing hard. She didn't remove her hand and said "what about this hurts?" and I said "my cervix. It feels like you're pinching it". She eventually removed her hand and I was really crying hard at this point because the pain quite honestly had been shocking. She didn't apologize. Just started lecturing me. She asked me what my pain mangament plans were and I told her I wanted to do it without pain meds and she said "well you need to start doing some mind games with yourself then because you weren't even contracting during that check so it shouldn't have been difficult". I told her I can absolutely do "mind games" as I've gone through the Hypnobabies course, practice hypnosis daily and have been a regular meditator for years. I told her I would have done fine but she was just too quick and I needed just a few seconds to prepare. And she said "well in labor it's going to be lightening fast so you need to be one step ahead of me always".

Personally I think the way she handled the entire thing start to finish was appalling. I absolutely feel VIOLATED. I can think of no reason why she would have any excuse tp flat out refuse to give me 5 seconds before jamming her hand so violently up my vagina. I don't think it would have been nearly as excruciating if she had been gentle, which she was not at all. And I really resent the fact that she purposely shook my confidence (or at least did all she could to do so) in my natural birth plans. I feel terrified to give birth with these midwives (have had horrible experiences the whole way but unfortunately waited too long to switch And now no one will take me), I feel that my son and I are not safe. If she can't give me 5 seconds of breathing when I request it, how the hell can i expect her to abide by any of my other birth preferences once labor comes? Has anyone else been in a similar situation? My doula says what the midwife said is full of shit and that I shouldn't be worried about my ability to handle birth. I was handling everything so well, feeling so confident in my body and handling the contractions so well until this midwife violated me. I know getting your mind right is more than half the battle of getting through labor, and now I don't know how to abandon fear when I was treated so horribly. I advocated for myself and I STILL got violated.