Amy Klobuchar was kicked out of the hospital 24 hours after giving birth. Outrage fueled her rise.

[RandySF]

Amy Klobuchar was exhausted, exhilarated, shaken by a dizzying mindstorm of joy and pain. She’d been in labor for 18 hours, hadn’t slept in two nights, and now she’d given birth to Abigail and life was everything it could ever be. The baby “had all her fingers and toes and seemed quite healthy, except for some mucus in her throat,” Klobuchar recalled.

The new mother called her parents, filled out forms and finally dozed off.

Before long, someone woke her up: “Suddenly the nurse comes in and says ‘She can’t swallow. Everything comes out her nose,’” said Klobuchar, then a 35-year-old lawyer in Minneapolis, now a 59-year-old senator running for president. “And so from that moment on, it was like a disaster."

The pediatrician on-call had news: “We think she needs emergency surgery."

In her first day of life, Abigail was rushed into intensive care, subjected to a battery of scans and tests, and put under anesthesia so doctors could peer down her throat.

As that first day ended, though, a nurse plopped Klobuchar into a wheelchair and her husband, John, rolled her out of the building.

“Your time is up,” a nurse told her.

“And I go, ‘What?’” Klobuchar recalled. “And they said, ‘There’s just no way we can waive it.’”

In 1995, many American mothers faced that same arbitrary deadline: Insurance companies and hospitals, eager to trim costs, were sending women home after a maximum 24-hour stay, even when their babies required further treatment. Opponents of the practice called them “drive-through deliveries."

Twenty-five years later, Klobuchar traces her political awakening to that moment, when the most fundamental fear any parent can face transformed her into a determined activist.

“I was obsessed with it, reading up on it,” she recalled. “I saw it as injustice for moms. I thought if men had babies, this would never happen. It was one of those one-size-fits-all policies that just didn’t allow for any humanity. You’ve been up for 48 hours, you’re a brand-new mom and you have no idea what you’re doing, and they kick you out. You don’t know if your child’s going to live."



https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/31/klobuchar-birth-baby-political-rise/?arc404=true

[cry baby]

1. Exact same thing happened to me when my newborn got sick.

I threw a fit, then I begged, all to no avail.

So glad it motivated her!

[Iliyah]

2. WOW

[CTyankee]

3. And this, dear friends, is why we need A WOMAN PRESIDENT!

Sorry about the all caps shout but if this doesn't itself shout about injustice to new moms and their newborns, nothin' does!

Damn, that makes me livid .

[rusty quoin]

8. Not just any woman, but the right kind of woman.

I like Amy, though I’m further left.

My two things are healthcare for all Americans and saving life on earth. I remember at work, accused of not thinking about the big picture. That was cooperate thinking in the 90s.

I think now I am a big picture thinker.

Amy is talking about it as are all Democrats. We should cover everyone at the same time as doing
everything we can do to lessen the harm on our children and their children.

It seems simple to me. Treat sick people, and do things to prevent them getting sick. That’s up front.

And then you save life on this planet. I might just have it backwards.

[Volaris]

4. Hospitals are not necessarily good places to have babies...

My little sister decided to have her first one at the natural birthing clinic up the street from her house. She was in labor for 22 hours with NO DRUGS.

Now, her husband is a cop; all the job training in his head is (understandably) 'if it can go wrong, IT WILL', and he was a hilarious wreck for about 6 months:

'Ohhh, no babe...you need to be at a hospital, with doctors and nurses and emergency rooms and drugs and needles and scanners and machines and etc, etc, etc..'

'Fuck THAT; we've been doing this for millions of years without any of THAT nonsense I'll be FINE '

At one point, baby was gonna be breech birth. Those midwives had her get on her hands n knees on the bed, and went back n forth over her belly with a satin sash until baby was turned the right way to prevent THAT.

It was kinda amazing to watch the witchcraft those women knew haha!!

[Warpy]

7. Yes, we've been doing it that long

and the death rates for girls and women between the ages of 13 and 26 were appalling. Some interventions have made a great difference in maternal mortality. Dive thru delivery is not one of them, and combined with lack of access to prenatal screening, undoubtedly drive the dismal maternal and infant mortality statistics in the US.

[redqueen]

5. Happened to me too with my first one.

She was a month premature and they were ready to send me home. I had had preeclampsia, though, so my doctor was able to get me an extra day. So frightening and stressful.

[Midnight Writer]

6. My High School friend walked out of the hospital 2 hours after giving birth.

She was not insured and she wasn't going to pay a dime more than she had to.

[judeling]

9. The hearings at the Captial were awesome

Legislators wending their way through an invasion of strollers and baby carriages just to get to hearing rooms. A panel of the most pregnant women she could find with the rooms filled with others.

The experts didn't have a chance.