The Retrievals · Serial Productions & The New York Times

S02 Episode 2: The Speech

July 10, 2025·45 min·2 clips

Jennifer says weeks after birth she heard her screams in her head and could not wash her incision.

Heather had been asked to prepare a speech on pain during C-sections for a major national conference, and at first she planned to keep it focused on technical tips. Then Clara's C-section happened, and the talk no longer felt like a simple how-to. At conferences, Heather had sat through plenty of lectures on topics like the optimal drugs to put in a spinal, and she respected that expertise, but it also seemed to leave something out. The episode sits in that gap: in many ORs, patients are in pain, yet the subject has long been treated as something nobody says out loud. Heather wants to name what everyone in the room already knows in a quieter way, and the conference becomes the place where that honesty has to hold up.

As heard by us

A conference talk becomes a direct look at how pain during C-sections is often left unspoken.

At a medical conference, Heather starts with technical advice about pain during C-sections, then turns sharper after Clara's surgery. The room is the strongest part: careful professional language, people circling the issue, and a topic that has long been treated as something to…

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Why you'd press play

When you want a conference talk about pain during C-sections that turns frank, press play.

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