An Icelandic Woman Went Back to Work In a Diaper After a Premature Birth. Her Experience With the US Healthcare System Made Her Want to Move Back Home
She called the experience "cruel" and "inhumane."
Dagbjört (@absolutelynot19), a woman from Iceland, shared her experience giving birth in the United States on social media. After a decade in the US, she said that her brush with the healthcare system encouraged her to move back home.
“When I tell Icelandic people of my experience from having given birth here in the States, they usually don’t even believe how bad it is. It is inhumane how pregnant women are treated here,” Dagbjört told TikTok. She believes that her horrific childbirth experiences would have never happened in Iceland.
“If you don’t live in the US… Is that in America, health insurance is privatized. And without it, you have no access to healthcare,” she added. Dagbjört clarified that while people will still be treated at the emergency room, having no health insurance means losing access to primary care and regular treatment. Depending on income and socioeconomic status, some people can qualify for Medicaid. However, Dagbjört claimed those who fall squarely into the middle class may not have access to assistance if they earn more than the limit.
Dagbjört said that she has health insurance, describing it as a “ticket” to see a doctor. But she also claimed that health insurance did not entirely cover her medical bill. Despite being afforded privileges in the US healthcare system, she alleged that she still struggled through pregnancy and giving birth in the country.
She had to work through her pregnancy
“I, at 19 weeks pregnant, was diagnosed with preeclampsia,” Dagbjört said. It was an early diagnosis, but her blood pressure was 165/98, and her situation was out of control. She said her OBGYN advised her to stay in bed to rest. However, Dagbjört said she was unable to do so.
“In the United States, when you’re pregnant, if you’re lucky enough, you might qualify for something called FMLA,” she said. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) affords 12 workweeks of leave for medical reasons. Childbirth and caring for a newborn child within one year of birth are included under FMLA. Dagbjört described it as “protected time away” from work, during which employers can’t fire or revoke employee benefits due to their absence. Despite experiencing a complication, Dagbjört said she couldn’t take the leave.
“I would have used up every single day that I had, that I was planning to use after giving birth to spend time at home with my baby, just to lie in bed,” she said. If she used her leave at that moment, she would have had to go back to work earlier.
“My health insurance depended on me having that job. If I do not have health insurance, that would have meant that I simply do not have a doctor anymore,” Dagbjört expounded. After weighing her options, she decided to go back to work, even though she was advised to rest.
A premature birth
“I worked throughout my pregnancy, and I was induced prematurely,” she said. Dagbjört claimed that her blood pressure spiked to 195/68 and that she had to have an emergency induction. She gave birth to a premature baby. Although they both survived, her child had to be sent to the NICU.
“By the time that this happened, I had missed out on so much work that almost all of my twelve weeks were used up,” Dagbjört continued. She alleged that she was not paid for the twelve weeks she went on leave. But she said she returned to work anyway, wearing a diaper after having given birth prematurely.
“This would never [expletive] happen in Iceland,” she said, appalled by how pregnant women are treated in the country. Dagbjört added, “And it’s shocking to me that Americans allow it to happen.” While Dagbjört plans to move back to Iceland, some women’s issues with the US healthcare system aren’t limited to insurance. In the case of this woman from Las Vegas, an OBGYN allegedly conducted an inappropriate and unnecessary exam on her five-week-old fetus.
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