Dec
12
“Well, That Was Stupid, Wasn’t It?”
“Is this a planned repeat cesarean section?” -Anesthesiologist to mother being prepped for surgery.
“No, I was trying for a home birth after cesarean, but needed to transfer.”-Mother
“Well, that was stupid wasn’t it?” -Anesthesiologist to mother while patting her cheek patronizingly.
There are 19 comments to this post.
local yokal had this to say,
Dec 12, 2009 @ 8:01 pm (Quote)
Micah, I hear ya! I would love to start having the responses that the moms, hubbies, or partners have given, posted along with the original comments. I’m starting to lose hope in my gender if no one is responding to these jerks at the time it’s being said…although I realize the comments being made are said during a very vulnerable time- I would still love to start hearing some rather snappy and sassy comebacks
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Jane Reply:
December 13th, 2009 at 5:48 am (Quote)
Part of the reason these statements on this site are so horrifying is that they’re said to a woman by someone who is in control of her at the moment (sorry,but in obstetrics there’s basically no informed consent. They do what they want, and if you disagree, they tell you they have to do whatever it is for the sake of the baby or because it’s an emergency, like the doctor who told me when I was 7 months pregnant and not in labor that I definitely needed an episiotomy.)
So you have a woman who’s physically vulnerable and then you throw in the emotional blackmail of “you want what’s best for your BABY,don’t you?” with the implication that you’re a bad mother if you decide something different from the doctor or the hospital, plus a hospital that has instituted procedures for its own benefit and lawyers who have instituted different procedures for their benefit, and nurses who are slinging nonsense at first-time moms who don’t have the knowledge yet to counter them.
Plus, when you encounter a doctor who’s especially patronizing, you’re not going to be able to change his mind.I walked into my first postpartum visit with three books about NFP and lactational amenorrhea, and when I started asking questions the doctor couldn’t answer, he brushed me off with “You’ll be pregnant in six weeks.” So I changed practices, changed insurances, and got away from that doctor.
So faced with a scenario in which you’re vulnerable and you know it won’t do any good to protest, most people probably don’t. But we leave the practice and we talk to other mothers, and at the end of the day, overcoming attitudes like this makes us stronger, more convicted mothers who are better-armed to take on other people when we aren’t vulnerable and when it will help.
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Sheva Reply:
December 13th, 2009 at 5:55 am (Quote)
So true. But it’s not just obstetrics – all doctors do it. I once switched from a pediatrician because he tackled my son into allowing a physical exam that my son was protesting. It happened too fast for me to say anything, but I was stunned afterward.
When I tried to explain to the doc why I switched, he protested that he had told my son what he was going to do. He couldn’t seem to understand that ‘telling’ my son wasn’t the same thing as getting my son’s consent, which I insist on.
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Jane Reply:
December 13th, 2009 at 8:33 am (Quote)
To quote Birth As A Right Of Passage, imagine if we called it “informed decision-making” rather than “informed consent.”
My grandmother was bullied by a cardiac surgeon into consenting to an operation that, in the outcome, killed her. The doctor knew my mother would have told my grandmother not to do it because of the possible complications (stroke, for one) and so the doctor came to my grandmother’s room at ten o’clock at night and badgered her until she signed the consent form. He didn’t tell her the possible complications. He didn’t tell her that of the last eight people he’d done this procedure on, seven had died.
Doctors in many specialties do this. Some fail to understand that just because they went to medical school and can form an opinion that it doesn’t invalidate the opinions of the people who have hired them to protect their health.
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Michelle Potter Reply:
December 13th, 2009 at 10:45 am (Quote)
You are SO right, it’s not just OBs who do this. I had one pediatrician try to badger me into giving my (about 8yo) daughter a vaccination, and told me that the fact that she’s ALLERGIC to one of the ingredients was no good reason for her not to have it. Another pediatrician called CPS because I refused an x-ray on my three month old — he wanted to x-ray a birthmark! CPS let us get a second opinion. The second doctor’s “unofficial” opinion was that the first doctor was just mad at us for not taking his advice. 
I also had a very bad experience once when I was hospitalized for DVT. (I was 12 weeks pregnant at the time, but none of the staff I dealt with were in obstetrics until I threw a hissy fit and the end of my stay and got moved to maternity.) I had to deal with a nurse bringing me the wrong medication and then insisting I take it, a doctor flat out lying to me and then refusing to come back and see me to clarify, several different nurses who were supposed to be monitoring the baby and didn’t even REALIZE that they were doing it wrong and writing MY heart rate on the chart (hence my hissy fit), the hospital administrator I called to my room so I could lodge a complaint trying to threaten me into just going along, and more.
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Guggie Daly had this to say,
Dec 12, 2009 @ 8:10 pm (Quote)
Hmm, clearly meant to be patronizing…but I wonder if there was a hint of double meaning behind that statement, too? Perhaps he is referencing the abuse she will now endure since they know she is a transfer?
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Jean Reply:
December 12th, 2009 at 8:28 pm (Quote)
My twins were a homebirth-turned-hospital-birth since I was abandoned by my midwives less than a day before they were born. Thankfully there was no “abuse” – I was treated respectfully and left alone after a natural labor and vaginal delivery.
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Banana Peel had this to say,
Dec 14, 2009 @ 5:48 am (Quote)
So I’m the mother in this story. I’m sorry to disappoint you all but I didn’t say anything. While at the time it did offend me greatly and had I not been exhausted and been in my normal frame of mind I would have clocked him in the nose. But I was not in that place. I was scared, alone, vulnerable and just wishing that it (the surgery) would all be over.
He is lucky though that he said that to me before they let my husband in because there definitely would have been some fireworks then.
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Michelle Potter Reply:
December 14th, 2009 at 4:24 pm (Quote)
You are NOT disappointing me! I’ve never managed to make a snappy, smart comeback to any of the rude things doctors or nurses have said to me. (The one time that I actually had any response — not even a funny one — was saying I’d call the police, and that was only because I HAD to say SOMETHING, and because I had a few minutes to think about it.) Most of the time, I was too shocked to say anything at all. Several times I just waited until I was alone and cried.
I don’t think anyone can be expected to think up a clever response on the spur of the moment when you are tired, vulnerable, and your supposed caregiver utters the most ridiculous or rude comment you never could have imagined. That said, it’s hard not to wish someone who IS that clever would verbally smack the jerk upside the head.
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You didn’t disappoint me!
And I’m so glad that you are OK.
I just wish you didn’t have to go through being disrespected like that. You didn’t deserve it.
And he knows it. That’s why he said it when he knew you wouldn’t have the strength to answer him. I know I wouldn’t have had the strength, either. I didn’t have the strength to stand up for myself when this type of thing happened to me, either.
Sometimes it’s fun to fantasize about what it would have been nice to say, if we could have. Hindsight’s 20-20, you know…
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In my son’s NICU records (in NICU due to severe MecAsp and complications secondary to it, which had nothing to do with where or how we gave birth) the doctor wrote “despite a home birth parents seem to have a normal interest in son’s health and progress”
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Michelle Potter Reply:
December 14th, 2009 at 4:26 pm (Quote)
OMG! And to think, the doc probably thought that was a COMPLIMENT!
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Oh I would have been livid!
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