Lee Franzen
Appearances
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I learned very early on that we were doing things we were not supposed to be doing. We were using the vacuum, for example, to assist deliveries, and we did not write it down. It did not go in the chart, and we didn't talk about it openly. So if you wanted to tell another student what happened, you might say something like, well, she had to eat some fruit.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
Some people have heard me talk about this and have said, well, why didn't you get out of there all I can say is that it felt like we were doing something good. It felt like we were breaking the law for all the right reasons. I learned how to make placenta pills. Placenta pills are where you take a woman's pieces off of it, put it into a dehydrator, and then you grind it up into a powder.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
And then you take that powder, you put it into capsules, and you give them these capsules and tell them to swallow them. We made placenta pills for everybody who wanted them. It was extremely popular. This was in the early to mid 2000s. Probably 80% or more of our clients took their placenta pills.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
There was actually a bust where they came in and they took all of the placenta pill making equipment. And when I say they, I don't remember exactly which government agency it was, but it was a government agency that showed up and took all the placenta pill making stuff.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
It came to light at that point that the hygiene practices at this birth center were pretty abysmal. The fact that we used to have multiple different women's placentas drying in the same dehydrator at the same time. The fact that sometimes you would mix up whose placenta was whose.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I remember that one time I was cleaning out the grinder and I was really trying to get it clean because I was going from one person's placenta to the next person. me and she was like, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm cleaning out the grinder between placentas. And she kind of laughed and rolled her eyes. And she was like, we don't do that. You go straight from one placenta to the next.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
It was one of those things. I was just part of the culture. I thought to myself, well, what's the point of me being so fastidious if no one else is? I found out that was not the only thing that was happening at that birth center. That was not legal. We were allowed to start IVs, but there were things going into those IVs that shouldn't have been going in there according to the law.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
Sometimes we would give someone an herbal supplement, and I'm putting herbal supplements in quotes because it wasn't actually an herbal supplement. It was Cytotec, which is a medication that's used to induce labor. But she was not being informed that she was given Cytotec.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
There were women that were being told that evening primrose oil was being inserted vaginally when in fact the midwife was inserting Cytotec. The midwives would crush up Cytotec and put it in their tea and say, I'm giving you some herbal tea to help you get some more energy. I don't know how often it happened, but it happened.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I witnessed it a few times myself, and I know it happened other times as well. I wasn't happy about that. I remember I had to get myself to calm down and tell myself, you're so close to graduating. You're almost done here. Just put your head down. Keep doing what you need to do to graduate. And when you leave here, you can do things better. You can make sure that people have informed consent.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I just kind of hung on to that. And I did what I had to do to graduate and get out of there. I was in the school for three years. In that time, I managed 50 births and I attended 75 more. When I say managed, I had caught 50 babies, as we say, and it felt like an impressive number. Everyone I told seemed to think, oh, wow, that's a lot.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
So I felt pretty well prepared to get out there and start being a midwife.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
Insurance was paying us well. People were paying us a lot of cash. There was never an issue.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
There was no requirement for malpractice insurance for a licensed midwife. As a birth center, we were required to have what was called professional liability insurance. I remember that we were concerned that this would be really expensive. It was not very expensive. It was definitely not cost prohibitive.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I don't know the exact transport rate for our facility. And honestly, I don't even know the transport rate for the other midwives. What I can tell you is that my transport rate for first-time moms was about 25%. And at the time, I thought that that was way too high. I thought that it was a sign that I was doing something wrong.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
Now, when I look back and I think about how I transported 25% of my first time moms, I'm actually so glad that I did because When you're being compassionate and taking someone to the hospital for pain relief because they're having a long, difficult labor, that should not be seen as a flaw. In Florida, our transport rate was like 5%. It was very low.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
You would expect it to be higher, but we were kind of cheating. We were using Pitocin and we were using peewee vacuums and we were getting those babies out one way or the other instead of transporting. I mean, there's no real accountability. Nobody is checking to see if the rate I'm advertising or telling people is accurate. So you're completely taking my word for it. I remember this one birth.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
It was another midwife's client. And this young woman had been in labor for a very, very long time. And she was really suffering. I was in the break room and I could hear her just crying and begging to go to the hospital. I could overhear the midwives talking her out of it saying, if you go to the hospital, They're not even going to do anything for you.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
It's going to be hours of just waiting, telling her all the reasons she doesn't want to go to the hospital and what a bad experience she'll have if she goes to the hospital. And I'm overhearing this thinking they're lying to her. And it made me so angry. I remember when the other midwives came into the break room, I snapped at them like she's begging to go. Why aren't you taking her?
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
And they were shocked that I would speak to them this way. And one of them says to me, why are you even here? Meaning like, why was I at the birth center? Why was I a midwife at all? And I remember just saying, I'm here because it's the woman's choice to be here and to do this. And she's telling you this isn't her choice anymore. I think that was the beginning of the end for me.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I did not get along well with the other midwives and we had a lot of disagreements. Some of them were about issues of safety and we butted heads enough times. And at some point they decided to get rid of me. And so the three of them voted me out. I felt like I should be upset about being voted out, and yet I mostly felt relief.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
The only part that I hated was that I had numerous clients that were due to give birth at the birth center. When I was forced out of the birth center that I had founded with three partners, the first thing I did was figure out how to go finish my bachelor's degree. I had attended a couple years of community college and then I had gone to midwifery school and gotten my associates in midwifery.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I went back to school and once I was out of that world, I was able to be a little bit more honest with myself about how I felt and thought about my experiences, the more I thought about it, the more I was just really, really glad that I was out of there and doing something else. So I stopped attending births right away and never really looked back.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
When I graduated from midwifery school, I knew that I wanted to open my own birth center. I was researching and trying to put together a solid plan. I ran across a blog on the internet that was critical of home birth midwifery and It talked a lot about the dangers of giving birth at home. And I had never seen this kind of information before. I had just graduated. I had big plans.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
And yet this information was not something that I felt I could ignore. So I started reading it and I decided that I was going to use it to make me a safer practitioner. I do think it made me a safer practitioner, but it wasn't enough to make me want to quit. It was enough to make me want to be better. When I was forced out, I already had a lot of knowledge about what was going on.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
In school, I decided to do a deeper dive. I was studying psychology. And I was very interested in how people evaluate evidence and make decisions for themselves and their healthcare. So I used that as inspiration for my honors thesis. I wrote what basically amounted to a short book about my experiences and about my developing understanding
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
of why people choose to have their babies at home with midwives and why midwives do what they do. Once I had written all of that, I tried to connect with other like-minded people and I was able to find people online that were supportive and were able to guide me and suggested that I turn that project into a blog.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
When I left the birth center in 2013, within several months of my leaving, there were three babies that died at that birth center. And I did find out after the fact that there was at least one more death associated with that birth center, but it had occurred at a home birth. where the woman had received her prenatal care at the birth center. That was not really shared and didn't make the news.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
So there was actually a minimum of four babies whose deaths are associated with that birth center. This had a big impact on me because even though I wasn't there, I knew that I had had a huge hand in starting that birth center. And that was really disturbing and heavy for me.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I knew at that point that I had an obligation to share what I knew about what had most likely led to the death of those babies, which was that we were offering substandard care.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I don't know of any civil repercussions, and I know there was never any criminal repercussions. One of the births where the baby died led to a coroner's inquest, which I attended. The coroner's inquest was 2015. The finding from that coroner's inquest would determine
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
whether the death was natural accidental or homicide and it was ruled a homicide so yes the death was a homicide but no the midwife was not prosecuted in any way and as far as i know continues to practice with no repercussion i was not required to be there i attended because It happened at the birth center that I started, and I wanted to be able to document what had happened.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
I did post a three-part series on my blog about that coroner's inquest. It goes into great detail as to what occurred at that birth, and I put my commentary along the way talks about what was testified and then gives my reaction to it. The sad thing is that everything that happened at that birth sounded so familiar to me.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E16: Money Will Take Over (FINALE)
And there were several major missteps that were made that I've seen made over and over and over again. They just don't usually result in the death of a baby. Usually with birth, everything works out. despite mistakes, despite carelessness. But in this case, it all caught up with them.