Hilda suffered an obstetric fistula during childbirth as a teenager. Hear her story below.
Hilda’s Story: From Ashamed to Ambassador!
When Hilda was fifteen, she was married and soon fell pregnant.
After three days of labour, Hilda was in critical condition and her baby was stuck. She was taken to hospital where her baby was delivered stillborn.
Because of the three days with bub’s head pushing against her pelvis, the tissues of her birth canal and bladder died, leaving a hole, or fistula, in her bladder. She leaked urine continuously.
She went home, but her husband left her. Ashamed, she desperately visited local hospitals seeking help. Unfortunately, the surgeons were not trained, and Hilda’s condition never improved. Over the next ten years, she sought treatment at five different hospitals, but still remained unhealed.
“I had lost my dignity.”
Eventually Hilda heard about the hospital where they specifically treated women with ‘her problem’.
Dr Andrew Browning AM was able to operate on Hilda, but the amount of damage she had suffered internally over the years was immense. It took a number of painstaking surgeries, with Dr Browning having to completely reconstruct her urethra and birth canal.
Finally, Hilda was healed.
“I was so happy! It was like I had been in prison, [and now] I had my freedom.”
Hilda is now an ambassador for the fistula hospital where she was treated. She finds women with a fistula in communities, and convinces them to come to the hospital to receive treatment like she did.
“I tell them my story: I had a fistula, and now I am healed.”
How You Can Help
Donate today to help support more women like Hilda to receive the specialist treatment required to heal them of fistula injuries.
The Barbara May Foundation is working to prevent obstetric fistulas and heal women of this devastating condition, through providing safe maternity care throughout pregnancy and childbirth, and through specialist fistula surgeries.
