Almost 10 years ago, journalist Hillary Frank was pregnant and planning to give birth without medication or surgery — but things didn't go according to her plan.
Instead, Frank experienced a prolonged and difficult labor that left her with a traumatic injury — chronic pain from an episiotomy that didn't heal as expected, and had to be redone. For months she was unable to walk, sit or easily hold or nurse her newborn daughter, and didn't fully recover for three years. To make matters worse, beyond the physical injury, she felt she couldn't talk openly about what had happened to her.
"There is a general sense in our society that it's not proper to talk about these kinds of injuries," Frank says. "If I had gotten injured that severely on any other part of my body, of course I would have been talking about it with my friends. ... But because it was in a private part of my body I couldn't."
To hear the podcast interview by Terry Gross or to read the transcript click HERE
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