How to handle a negative experience
Prefacing that I do NOT regret my homebirth. I still very much support homebirth and would choose homebirth again. Just not with this midwife.
My midwife, who has been in practice for a long time without any negative reviews, really let me down on multiple fronts after I felt we had such a great relationship develop during pregnancy. I replay what happened in the birth and now months postpartum don't think about it as much, but it's still painful. It gave me some really hard nights in the early days. Her errors added up to this. I should not have trusted her. My husband caught our baby.
After the birth, she was wrong again and again on several issues though they didn't have consequences because I had decided to let her do her postpartum visits but ignore her advice. The second to last visit she stank so bad of some fragrance that I had to clean the baby off when she left and wash my couch, and then at the last visit she smelled like she hadn't bathed and had dirt under her nails. I steam cleaned the chair she sat in and didn't let her touch the baby other than a stethoscope over clothes.
I need to process this with someone who is in the field because I need to walk through what happened. I want to write a review but the community in my area feels so insular and protective I don't want to feel more exposed than I already did. I don't know who I can talk to who will have the expertise to say, no, she shouldn't have missed x y z, but is also bound by confidentiality. I can't anonymous post because the salient details are pretty specific.
I just don't know what to do. This is in the US. Any resources or thoughts are appreciated. I want to protect other mothers and process this fully.