Day-time. Spoke to Midwife ****** as he found me clutching the wall on the way back from the shower in agony. Asked him if it was normal for the area around the tear to be “hot and hard” and said I was in agony, especially when going to the toilet and sitting down. He said that it was my “perception” of the pain and that the hardness and heat was from things knitting together. He asked if I wanted him to examine me but as he had dismissed my concerns I didn’t feel comfortable. I was incontinent faecally by this point and told someone but can’t remember who. I think overnight a Midwife called ******* was on duty (or could have been the next morning) and I told her that I was now incontinent and I remember being surprised that she did not know I was – I knew I had told someone and wondered why it hadn’t been mentioned on handover. She examined my stitches and said they were healing fine but would get someone to come and look at me.
Sometime over the next few days I was in agony going to the toilet to pass faeces. I had to be helped from the toilet and someone pulled the emergency buzzer for me. I was extremely distressed and told one midwife who came to see me not long after I had spoken to male midwife **** (possibly that night or the next morning as I refused to see him since he was a man and I was naked in the shower), that there was faeces coming from somewhere and I didn’t know where. I was in severe pain sitting down and trying to breast feed and express. A blood clot also burst when I was on the toilet and I was in great pain. It was quite frightening because I knew something was wrong with my body and I did not know what, and I began to dread going to the toilet because of the pain.
