Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
May
10
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Well, You’ll Just Have To Get Over It..”
“Well, you’ll just have to get over it. Women in Brazil are asking for cesarean sections to stay intact for their husbands.” -OB to a mother at her six week postpartum visit, when she expressed sadness over having an unplanned cesarean.
There are 34 comments to this post.
“Intact for their husbands”? How about keeping their abdominal cavities intact for themselves? Or allowing her to grieve the loss of her birth experience? Or just not being insensitive in general?
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The Deranged Housewife had this to say,
May 10, 2010 @ 4:56 am (Quote)
“Are we in Brazil? No. So STFU.”
How do you make a mad emoticon? 
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beth had this to say,
May 10, 2010 @ 5:09 am (Quote)
No. Women in Brazil are being conned into sections, much like in the US. Dr. Marsden Wagner discusses it in “Born in the USA,” I believe. An actual survey of women revealed many are unhappy with their surgery. The “honeymoon vagina” thing is bullshit.
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I think you add a greater-than carrot? >:-(
So let’s see — women in Brazil are choosing elective c-sections because they’re afraid their husbands will leave them if they suffer damage due to birthing the children sired by these men which decreases these male’s pleasure during intercourse.
And this fact affects this particular mother in what way…?
I think some doctors are so hung up on being the hero of the day that when a woman is grieving for her birth experience, they take it as a personal affront and need to shift her sadness away from themselves, so they blame the mom for being inadequate. Right here, in this sentence:
1) you’ll just have to get over it –> you’re upset about the wrong thing
2) women in Brazil are asking for cesarean sections –> ie, you got it without even having to ask and you’re ungrateful
3) to stay intact for their husbands –> you don’t care about your husband
Now the woman will leave the office afraid to talk about her feelings of grief because by talking about it she’ll only prove to others that she is broken in her mind and also ungrateful and doesn’t love her husband. The only thing the doctor didn’t add was “You have no right to complain because you got a healthy baby out of it.” :-b
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sunflowergrrl had this to say,
May 10, 2010 @ 5:17 am (Quote)
Besides being incredibly insensitive, that is so flippin’ SEXIST to be more concerned about the man’s sexual pleasure that the woman’s body and birth experience. Not to mention spreading the myth that birth destroys our vaginas. It’s nothin’ a little Kegels can’t fix 
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Untrue and so mean.
I am NOT a baby container, with an expiration date on top, on which you pop the cover an pull out the contents. I am a person, with feelings (ever hear of those, doc?), needs, wants, and thoughts.
Treat me that way.
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Jena Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 10:30 am (Quote)
*applause* Well put!
That would make an awesome unnecesarean protest sign.
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Heather Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 10:41 am (Quote)
Hear, hear! Interesting that you should put it that way, since this is what my first OB made me feel like (in my cesarean-ended pregnancy, no less):
http://xakana.deviantart.com/art/Incubator-40111277
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I had several people tell me something very similar after my first daughter was cut out of me (unnecessarily, I might add…), including the nurse in recovery. I had PTSD for nearly two years. This is just horrendous. I want to give the OP a huge hug. I hope she moved on to a more caring doctor. 
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As a c-section mom, I can tell you plainly that it did not keep me “intact”. A great rent across my abdomen from which they extracted my uterus whilst removing the baby, bruising my bladder such that I peed blood for days, and causing adhesions, loss of muscle tone in the abdomen, and great surgical incision requiring repair – not so much intact.
This doc should read “You should be grateful” by Gretchen Humphries.
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Michelle Potter Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 10:54 am (Quote)
Exactly. Not only was I ready for sex much sooner after my vaginal births than after my c-sections, but my c-section created a permanent sensitive spot across my abdomen that my husband cannot touch. If he even accidentally brushes his hand across the scar during sex, it tickles in a horrible-not-at-all-funny way and makes me jump. Then he feels like he has to apologize. Not to mention the “shelf” effect that prevents me from having a flat tummy — kind of ruins the lines of my lingerie. I’m sure my husband LOVES how “intact” I am after having had my abdomen sliced open.
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Now the woman will leave the office afraid to talk about her feelings of grief because by talking about it she’ll only prove to others that she is broken in her mind and also ungrateful and doesn’t love her husband.
Holy crap. It just hit me. This is cry-it-out obstetrics! “I’m not going to listen to you or respond to your needs or validate your feelings or sympathize with your pain, so just give it up already you big whiner.”
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Jane Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 10:58 am (Quote)
Maybe the big disconnect here is that obstetrics treats pregnancy as a serious medical condition verging on the diseased, whereas women treat maternity as a life-changing, life-giving, self-identifying journey.
The doctor’s office is not where I ordinarily seek someone to listen to me, validate my feelings or sympathize with my pain. I DO what respect in the doctor’s office. But maybe OBs simply aren’t equipped to offer any of the other stuff, whereas midwives are.
Look at it this way: doctors represent health. They symbolize it. Therefore the doctor has to set up himself as Other to the diseases he’s eradicating (using the male pronoun just for efficiency’s sake here.) Therefore a doctor who views pregnancy as a disease to be ended, or a serious medical condition to be remedied, sets himself up as the opposite of the disease in order to differentiate and be special and to be Other.
Pregnant women are emotional, therefore Doctor becomes rude.
Pregnant women are nurturing, therefore Doctor becomes curt.
Pregnant women are needy, therefore Doctor needs nothing at all.
Laboring women are working hard, therefore Doctor must work harder to prove he’s better than the disease he’s fighting.
And in the past, the patients were all female and the doctors all male, which cannot be overstated enough when you look at the dynamic. The whole thrust of obstetrics is to take birth away from the women. First from the midwives and second from the birthing mother.
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Well I’ve had two natural births and my husband doesn’t seem to mind a bit 
Oh, and we BOTH would prefer I had a natural birth over a cesarean thankyouverymuch.
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Cmat Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 12:47 pm (Quote)
Ditto.. with the exception of me only having one vaginal birth. My husband doesn’t seem to mind at all! Pretty sure he was more concerned with mine and baby’s well being rather than if I was “intact” after birth.
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Amy W. Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 6:24 pm (Quote)
Yeah, I just realized how insulting this comment is towards husbands- as if they care more about an “intact vagina” (which what the heck does that even mean anyway? Because mine is still in fine working order, it’s not like there is now something wrong with it.) than about his wife and baby’s well being. People need to start thinking before they speak!
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Cedar had this to say,
May 10, 2010 @ 4:01 pm (Quote)
Seriously! My husband can’t detect *any* difference between pre-baby and post-baby sex (except now it’s not quite as frequent–LOL!)
Hellooooo, Kegels?? I’m so sick of the implication that vaginas aren’t designed to push out babies, when they so clearly are.
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I can’t remember exactly how Ina May Gaskin states it but she says something to the effect that the male genitalia expands all the time and no one is worried that it won’t go back again. We’re talking major expansion for some guys, 3 or 4 times their normal size. Why do we think women will be permanently damaged if their genitalia does the same thing? Our bodies are made to do this, “Your body is not a lemon!”
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The Leaky B@@b had this to say,
May 18, 2010 @ 10:56 pm (Quote)
“Nope, not over it and not trusting that it should have happened at all now, thanks to you.
But I’ll tell you what I am over… you. You’re fired.”
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Well, doc move to Brazil. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
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