Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
May
19
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“I Had To Cut An Episiotomy For The Placenta…”
“I had to cut an episiotomy for the placenta, otherwise it would not have come out because it is so big.” -OB to mother who had just delivered before the doctor could arrive.
There are 98 comments to this post.
Yeah, that big, boneless organ. That’s like cutting a hole in a jello mold so it can come out. Honestly, sometimes I think they just do things because they’re bored and they need to feel like there’s a purpose for their presence.
Not an acceptable reason. Unconscionable and hopefully actionable.
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When will they learn that they are life gaurds and their job is to sit there and look pretty. Do nothing unless someone is drowning.
Yeah that placenta had really big shoulders that might have gotten stuck on your perineum and caused and awful tear! JERK!
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If the doctor doesn’t catch, can s/he bill for the delivery?
But if s/he cuts an episiotomy for delivering the placenta, can s/he bill for the delivery?
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Jen Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 12:45 pm (Quote)
I had a surprise delivery at home and made the mistake of going to the hospital afterwards. They wound up charging my insurance $5k for labor/delivery even though I’m pretty sure the baby was out before we got there. 
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Jane Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 12:51 pm (Quote)
That’s when you call the insurance company and report them for insurance fraud. Insurance companies love followign up on complaints like that because they certainly don’t feel like paying five grand if they don’t have to.
You can also report them to your state’s state insurance commission and let them know that the hospital committed insurance fraud.
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Suzanne Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 2:25 pm (Quote)
Not surprising, but so silly. I wonder what definition they use for ‘labor’ and ‘delivery’ 
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Heather P Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 4:54 pm (Quote)
I hope you reported them for insurance fraud.
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Erin Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 6:38 pm (Quote)
Same here. Fees were still the same as with my older son, who was actually born at the hospital. When I questioned it, it was explained to me that I used to labor/delivery room, thus they can bill as a Labor and Delivery.
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Heather P Reply:
May 20th, 2010 at 7:08 am (Quote)
That doesn’t even make sense. With my first I went to the hospital twice before I actually had my baby. The first time was at 30 weeks and I spent about 8 hours in a labor room (early labor that they were able to stop) and I was not charged a delivery fee for its use. The second time I used the room for two hours (prodromal labor) before they kicked me out of the hospital. The only time I got billed a delivery fee was when I actually had the baby.
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Erin Reply:
May 20th, 2010 at 5:14 pm (Quote)
It was explained to me that I delivered the placenta there (it fell out when I got there) and was stitched in the L&D room, so even though I didn’t deliver a BABY there, they could still charge me as such. Next time? PLANNED home birth!
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Jen Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:26 am (Quote)
I was charged for L&D after sitting in a room for a couple of days with no labor at any point or delivery at the end. Over $10k that we have to pay because my insurance won’t pay twice for the same “birth”.
I guess it depends on the hospital.
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CCindy Reply:
July 7th, 2010 at 6:19 am (Quote)
I’d fight that one, if insurance won’t pay you should have to either! I’ve had multiple times when the billing was wrong on non-birth related medical and dental. The office manager or billing department can usally straighten it out. If all reason fails tell them I’m sorry that is your policy. I’m not paying. You will just have to write it off.
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Gasp!
The problem is, this was probably not done asking the mother’s consent. Dr. Cutter probably said something to the effect of, “Let me check you for tears” and then said this as he/she was cutting.
If the mother got the baby out just fine without cutting the placenta’ll be a breeze.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 7:31 am (Quote)
Consent? In a hospital? What’s that?
Even with the Patient’s Bill of Rights, labouring mothers don’t have consent. They’re considered “special.” Due to being emotionally labile (read: hormonally crazed) they can be ignored by staff and medical professionals if anything they request to be done or not done to them contradicts the wishes of the staff or the doctor, because it might harm the innocent baby struggling for life.
Judges can even temporarily assign legal custody of the mother to the hospital for the duration of the birth, to force her to have a c-section she refused consent for. It’s happened. Mothers have also had Child Protective Services sicced on them after the birth for refusing c-sections, or any other interventions or routines, if the birth wound up either being a stillbirth or with a baby that landed in the NICU. Or sometimes just for saying things like “no, I do not consent to erethromycin in the eyes, routine vitamin K and hepatitis vaccination, or removal of the baby from my presence for observation.”
That’s made the news, too. It also happened to me after my second birth. My OB and I had a little personality conflict, and I didn’t get along too well with a lot of the NICU nurses, either (for one thing, I saw no need for an apnea monitor, when there is no proof that those stupid things prevent SIDS or anything else) and I was a Medicaid patient, so it was easy to inconvenience my family in little ways like that.
I hate to be a killjoy and say “You have no real legal rights, you might as well just give up,” but the legal deck is stacked against pregnant women, labouring women, and new mothers. This is partly due to the standard of care that the ACOG cartel established in reaction to fear of malpractice suits, and partly due to the foetal rights movement (the right-to-life movement is often maladaptive, and this is very much in evidence when high-intervention policies are legally protected over low-intervention ones that would be healthier for mother and child alike).
It’s another reason I stay home now. I’ve grown very, very cynical in my old age.
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Heather P Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 7:37 am (Quote)
You’re preaching to the choir, Sarah. I birth at home too. The hospital concept of “consent” and my concept of it are too opposing. This comment makes my hair stand on end.
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Mom of 3 Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 1:42 pm (Quote)
had a social worker show up within the first hour after birthing my last when she was wisked away to the nicu. Didn’t even give me her name, just demanded to know who should be notified for the birth and where her father was. When I told her 3 times the same thing – he is in the NICU with her where I want to be – she finally got the hint and stormed out.
I think the fact that my drug tests were clean was the only reason why we were released 9 hours after I arrived.
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Kit Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 5:26 pm (Quote)
Hey, can I have some links to this stuff? (Not that I don’t believe you, I absolutely do. But my cousin wants more proof before she decides whether to have her next kiddo in hospital or in her own bed. She’s having a teensy little freak out over here.)
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 7:13 pm (Quote)
I get most of my scarier information from either the local newspaper, in which case I rarely remember enough about the circumstances (date, author of the article, forwarding agency, etc) to look it up on the web, or I get it from books, which last longer anyway, although they take a bit longer to read.
So. Books I think she ought to read ASAP:
_Pushed_ – Jennifer Block
_Open Season_ – Nancy Wainer Cohen
_Misconceptions_ – Naomi Wolf (also author of _The Beauty Myth_)
_Born In The USA_ – Dr Marsden Wagner
_Birth_ – Tina Cassidy (it’s fun and fast, mostly)
_The Thinking Woman’s Guide To A Better Birth_ – Henci Goer
and, for more cheerful reading to give her confidence in her ability to birth,
_Spiritual Midwifery_ and _Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth_ – Ina May Gaskin
_Baby Catcher_ – Penny Vincent (or is it Peggy?) I especially found the passage where her teenaged son mistook a placenta in the freezer for a pizza hilarious. I laughed so hard that tears were rolling down my cheeks after that chapter.
Videos to watch:
Pregnant In America: A Nation’s Miscarriage
The Business of Being Born
Orgasmic Birth (no, I’m not making this up)
All items should be available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
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Kit Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 7:06 pm (Quote)
Thanks much! Will pass along list.
and orgasmic birth? err… I’m all for easy birthing but no thanks… *blush*
I loaned her a book about “birthing from withen” that is pretty neat.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 23rd, 2010 at 6:08 am (Quote)
Yeah, I have _Birthing From Within_, too. I’m thinking of getting certified as a birth instructor one of these days. I’ve toyed with the idea of being a doula or a midwife, too, but I’m not the most tactful person in the world, and picking up on body language and subtle cues are an aspect of social behavior I particularly stink at, and I REALLY don’t want to show up here as a care provider being roasted – I prefer to be a frequent poster holding a barbeque fork, thanks. 
And when I was a grad student, I was told that I made a REALLY good lecturer and tutor. So childbirth education is probably a more logical channel for my interests.
“No thanks” to orgasmic birth? Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. I’m rather jealous of mothers whose labours last long enough for that to be a possibility. The endorphin rush must be amazing. Anyway, the video isn’t JUST “how to have a birth orgasm.” Actual orgasm is discussed, yes, but it takes up a small fraction of the video. This is not a Kama Sutra sort of presentation. Mostly it’s about the natural physiological process of birth, and how not to screw it up with unnecessary intervention. Lots of cameos from Ina May Gaskin, Sarah Buckley, Marsden Wagner, Michel Odent, and other big names in natural birthing. You really should give it a look.
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Sheva Reply:
May 23rd, 2010 at 7:20 am (Quote)
I’m just going to say that while the orgasmic part of the birth took me very much by surprise (especially since it was after my most intervention-full birth) it was a very welcome surprise after what I was going through.
And no one noticed, just me. I wasn’t even sure that that’s what it was! I mean, I knew what I felt, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea of ‘it’ happening there, during birth, and in front of all those people…
Then I read about it, but I still didn’t tell my husband about it until around 7 years later!
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How the he(( did this OB know IN ADVANCE that the placenta was some sort of mutant organ and would never fit without a cut? Seriously! That takes some real perspicacity to predict so accurately. S/he is saying that placenta weighed MORE than the baby that just slid out of mama’s yoni?
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 7:20 am (Quote)
And had more bones to get caught behind the pelvic outlet and cause dystocia, necessitating genital mutilation and manual traction, presumably.
Placenta: the amazing organ with invisible, unmentionable bones. You won’t find the bones in Grey’s Anatomy, because they’re a secret.
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Jane Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 7:51 am (Quote)
And that the placenta would suffer brain damage if it didn’t get out in time to breathe. :-b Isn’t that the excuse they normally give for an episiotomy?
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 10:26 am (Quote)
Well… in _Spiritual Midwifery_, Ina May Gaskin was talking about this one time she cut a large episiotomy because the breech-position baby was presenting BALLS FIRST and she didn’t want his testicles to get damaged. She gave the impression that that sort of thing only happens one time in a million, though.
All I can think is that the angle of exit must have been really awkward. That, and he must have really had huge oompa-loompas.
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Liz Chalmers had this to say,
May 19, 2010 @ 7:07 am (Quote)
I don’t think this was a billing issue…my understanding is that providers can bill full delivery fee as long as they are there in time to catch the placenta, even if they are too late for the baby.
So it’s either punitive or a doctor who simply can’t fathom an intact perineum. Either way, this is one of the most sickening things I’ve read on this site.
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Amy W. Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 11:34 am (Quote)
Thanks for the insight into the billing issue, Liz! I was actually wondering this myself. My last birth was a precipitous delivery (about 15 minutes after I arrived at the hospital) and there was no OB there, they pulled a doc from the ER…I guess just to have a doctor in the room? But my OB did arrive in time for the placenta. I called him when my water broke (about 1 1/2 hours before the actual birth) and he said that I didn’t need to call him back when we decided to go in to the hospital (things progressed A LOT faster than I thought!) because he was actually on call that day. I believe he would have been there in time for the birth, but the nurses did not call him when I arrived because they didn’t believe I was as far along as I said I was As for billing, I know we paid the hospital and my OB, but nothing was paid to the ER doc (that I know of). I was wondering how that worked!
And I totally agree- completely ridiculous and WRONG what this doctor did.
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The Deranged Housewife Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 12:16 pm (Quote)
Another reason why I was *this* close to having my last baby delivered by the local fire squad … they’re all volunteer, doing their jobs because they LOVE to, not because it’s lucrative. Plus they would have earned a fancy badge for it.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say,
May 19, 2010 @ 7:16 am (Quote)
My initial response was something along these lines:
“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!… Dumbass.” (The doctor, of course, not the mother.)
However, having briefly scrolled down the other comments, I can’t help but wonder if maybe there were other motivations – including punishing the mother for not holding back her baby until Doctor Ego could arrive in time to save the day and “deliver” it; or doing something surgical, anything, in order to have something else to add to the bill to be presented to the woman’s insurance company; or cutting because that’s what he has ALWAYS done, and it’s unthinkable to allow a woman to give birth without making a ritual mutilation (I wonder if he does “husband stitches,” too?)
Bleagh.
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Birth Unplugged had this to say,
May 19, 2010 @ 10:19 am (Quote)
I believe this wins as the most disgusting thing I’ve read on this site. Whatever the doctor’s reasons for cutting the woman, there’s no way you could justify it as a legitimately necessary episiotomy. Whoever the OP is, I’m sorry this happened to you. It is really just awful.
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Mama Mirage had this to say,
May 19, 2010 @ 1:22 pm (Quote)
Yeah this wins grand prize for most apalling comment ever made by an OB. I am just sitting here shaking my head with my mouth open because I can’t think of a thing to say through the overwhelming disgust!
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>;( The placenta was too big to come out??? Was the baby only the size of a banana? Did the (S)OB not show up until eight hours after the birth? Had momma’s vagina completely healed shut? S/he missed the birth BUT to get paid more the (S)OB cut her vaginal opening to catch the placenta!?????? This (S)OB performed genital mutilation for absolutely no reason! If the (s)ob was upset about missing the birth perhaps s/he shouldn’t have left the hospital…..or perhaps the nurses should have called him in sooner. I love how ACOG screams about the dangers of births and how fast things can change and become dire and blah blah blah but yet, the OBs themselves won’t even bother to stick around. A homebirth midwife wouldn’t leave a mother in active labor…the farthest she’ll go is the next room to sleep…..but homebirth is the more dangerous choice according ACOG….Riiiiight. Not from the sounds of this post. This mom went in like a good girl and did the whole “get on the monitors and behave yourself” thing… but how dare she have the audacity to birth her baby—without the (S)OB!
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 3:22 pm (Quote)
Well, homebirth is certainly more dangerous to ACOG. If all the women of America (and Canada) woke up to realize that
- they didn’t absolutely need epidurals to survive the pain of birth (which is a lot less unbearable when you don’t have starvation, forced bed rest, supine position due to continuous monitoring, pit drips, and other hospital routines that make pain five times worse than it ought to be; and when you have continuous support, the kind you won’t get in a hospital, often even if you chose a CNM over an OB)
- and weren’t automatically safer in a hospital setting just because hospitals are supposed to be safe when you’re injured or in a state of emergency (which birth usually isn’t, anyway)
then there would be a LOT of obstetricians out of a job.
Whoa! I think I may have typed the world’s longest run-on sentence. Sorry about that.
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9 weeks ago I gave birth, at home, to a 10lb, 1oz 22 1/2in long baby. I did feel the placenta when it came out and learned that even after a couple days in the fridge, it weighed 2lbs, 4oz (the cord was also an inch+ in diameter).. the average placenta weighs 1-1.5 lbs. The word my Midwife used was, “massive”. I had not even a tear, from my baby or my *massive* placenta.. and I have no elasticity.
This was completely uncalled for and is definitely grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit.
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VW Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 3:47 pm (Quote)
Hey, mine was 2.5 lbs, maybe we could start a website “MyplacentawasHUGE.com”
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Mistie Reply:
May 20th, 2010 at 12:00 am (Quote)
That would be cool. I wonder how many people there would be to contribute. My Midwife has assisted in over 450 babies and she used the word massive and had to grab it with the other hand as she pulled it out of the water. It’s so funny to see her face as I go back over the video.
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Becca Reply:
May 20th, 2010 at 7:29 am (Quote)
Mine was enormous, too. Almost 3 pounds. It actually slid out on it’s own. I remember the doc being surprised and telling me not to push. But it just came out. My awesome L&D nurse asked me if she could call in all of the students to come and look at it because it was “ginormous”.
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Bamff Reply:
May 20th, 2010 at 6:40 pm (Quote)
I have never thought to weigh mine. I will have to in a few months. (I am glad to know yours hung around for a little bit in the house too)
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Sheva Reply:
May 20th, 2010 at 7:50 pm (Quote)
I can’t remember where my friend read this, but she told me about a teaching hospital where a resident missed the birth but cut an episiotomy anyway, because “my superiors insist that we learn how and they’ll be angry if you don’t have one.” WTbleep??!
So, as horrible and disgusting and abusive as this is, I don’t think it’s as rare as we would wish it was.
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I seriously… have nothing to say… I’ve been thinking about this comment all day and still am at a loss for words… poor mama! I hope that it was a teenie tiny nick and healed well (not that that makes any difference but) Much love and many blessings
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Just curious…if they have to manually remove a placenta, would they have to cut an episiotomy?
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 4:50 pm (Quote)
No.
First of all, the vagina is stretchy enough to accomodate a speculum – or, for that matter, a fist, if sufficiently stretched. And that’s before the hormones of pregnancy make everything even stretchier and more athletic than before, or a head had just pushed through. There is almost never any need for episiotomies now that high and mid forceps procedures are almost never used to extract babies from the birth canals of unconscious, drugged women (despite seeming attempts to turn back the clock to the fifties in every other way).
Second, as I understand it, the way stubborn placentas are removed is to first use an aggressive dose of Pitocin, second attempt manual traction, and third (if necessary) do a D&C to scrape the inside of the uterus to make sure no fragments of afterbirth remain that might cause infection or haemorrage (I suspect I butchered the spelling on that).
None of these procedures require an artificial widening of the birth canal via cutting through the perineum.
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Stephanie - Home with the Kids had this to say,
May 19, 2010 @ 4:02 pm (Quote)
This one is just sickening. I cannot imagine that a placenta would be big enough to need an episiotomy. Sounds more like the doctor needed the cut to feel useful.
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mystic_eye had this to say,
May 19, 2010 @ 6:08 pm (Quote)
It doesn’t matter how big the placenta is, its no longer of any use at that point and you could cut it up if you had to
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LCCO Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 2:42 pm (Quote)
I think you might be confused… an episiotomy isn’t cutting up the placenta.
It’s an incision in the perineum to make the vaginal opening bigger. Historically it’s been used to prevent tearing due to delivery and recent studies have shown that it might not be as useful as previously believed (in some cases it can cause more harm. Many women elect not to have one for delivery.
The truly horrifying part of this is that this woman already delivered her baby successfully, so either she did not tear or tears large enough to accommodate a newborn’s head and shoulders were already there before this doofus showed up.
Unless it was some gargantuan, Guinness-World-Records-worth placenta, it would be smaller and more pliable than the baby, therefore, any further stress, tearing, or stretching of the vaginal opening would be minimal.
Basically, the doctor slit this woman’s vagina open without any sound medical (or logical) reason… if he wasn’t wearing a white coat and standing in a delivery room, he could be charged with assault.
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Anonymous Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:40 pm (Quote)
I believe she meant, if the placenta was really too big to pass, it would make more sense to cut the placenta into smaller chunks that were easier to expel than to cut the woman to make room for it…
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CCindy Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 8:43 am (Quote)
Anonymous, while your idea makes a certain amount of sense and might explain what mystic wrote. The doctor’s actions are indefensible. And yes he should have been arrested. He is probably quite lucky everyone in the room was too shocked to think about it. He is also quite lucky he didn’t pull that on the couple who were both cops and refused further vaginal exams after a stealth stripping of membranes. He could have been the one in shock as he was handcuffed and his scaple was bagged and tagged!
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JulietsButterfly had this to say,
May 19, 2010 @ 6:26 pm (Quote)
Wow, I could look at the picture of my placenta from my second child and I’m sure it was smaller than the baby I had just pushed out. That’s one of the most absurd things I’ve heard! It’s squishy, you barely feel it come out and I think I almost forgot to “deliver” it. I hope that mom sued the dr and the hospital for assault and battery.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 7:20 pm (Quote)
Me too – but even in a best case scenario, with the plaintiff actually getting to court (rather than being pressured into settling) and winning (with the deck stacked against her from the start because mothers are seen as less important than medical experts, so to win she needs an amazingly good lawyer) – even with all that, and even if the medical board were to discipline this ghastly doctor, and/or the hospital revoke his admitting privileges, she’d still be left with a perineum that needed reconstruction, and all that goes with it.
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Jane Reply:
May 20th, 2010 at 5:24 am (Quote)
That’s why I think filing assault charges would be better than medical malpractice, actually. The fact that it’s done by a doctor doesn’t make it any less an assault, and the police will take it more seriously than an attorney who’s looking for malpractice damages.
And the state licensing board would also investigate and would probably issue a sternly-worded reprimand to the doctor. :-b (“Dear Doctor: Stop, or we’ll say stop again.”) Actually, the one time I had to involve the state licensing board when a doctor was withholding medical records for two years, just the threat of involving them made the records turn up within three days.
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Anonymous Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:44 pm (Quote)
Sadly, I’m not sure this is true. I tried repprting a medical assault to the police a few years back, and they REFUSED to take a report because, according to them, a professional performing a medical procedure is not assault. Eventually I found a good lawyer, but it took a lot of searching and some dumb luck. And it settled out of court- malpractice attorneys can be pretty viscious.
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Sheva Reply:
May 23rd, 2010 at 7:14 am (Quote)
You are my hero for reporting the assault, and even more because you persevered when met with resistance.
I’m currently learning that there IS such a thing as medical assault – which is ANY treatment done without your consent that makes you afraid for your safety.
You were right, even though they tried to push you off.
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JulietsButterfly Reply:
May 25th, 2010 at 5:17 am (Quote)
That’s the thing. It’s not medical malpractice. That would probably be more like cutting and then the mom tears right down the cut and then some. Ooops. This was completely unnecessary. The baby was out, there was no emergency of getting the placenta out and if the baby made it out, then the placenta could get out as well. There was no reason to cut after the birth of a baby. Even the dumbest judge and jury out there could figure that out.
It’s not just assault. Assault is when someone threatens to cause harm to you. Assault and battery is when someone threatens AND actually harms you. Needing your perineum reconstructed should be proof enough that harm was done. I hope this dr is taken to court.
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Stacie Hogan Reply:
February 10th, 2011 at 6:13 pm (Quote)
Sadly I usually agree that the mother has very little to stand on when it comes to these type of lawsuits, i think this time she has a pretty solid case. The ONLY reason to do an epis is when the baby is in distress. There is NO risk of the placenta dying and for a dr to cut one for it to come out is just ridiculous.
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Hmmm…my 7lb 5oz baby boy was born unassisted, at home, with his placenta INTACT! I can assure you that I did NOT take a steak knife and give myself an episiotomy to get them out. As a matter of fact, I barely tore. (As in, maybe a 1mm tear.) How ridiculous.
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Forgot to add that i loved how the placenta felt coming out. Anyone else? It felt really soothing after the trauma in that area. How could someone possibly justify cutting for the placenta??
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Jane Reply:
May 23rd, 2010 at 6:33 am (Quote)
I *hated* the feel of the placenta coming out. It was disgusting and awful and I’d rather have given birth to another baby than that slippery awful horrible thing. YUCK.
I mean, I’m glad you loved that. I would hope I’m the only woman on earth who felt like vomiting when the thing came out. Maybe it’s some kind of sensory integration problem of mine, but I dreaded the feel of the stupid thing and it was just awful awful awful.
(Have I mentioned I didn’t like it?)
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:15 am (Quote)
The feeling of the placenta itself didn’t gross me out (I thought it was really cool when I looked at it, too). However, I wouldn’t say birthing it felt good. The cramps were almost as bad as the labour pains I experienced when birthing my daughter, and I was glad to get rid of them.
Of course, I still had afterpains for a couple of weeks.
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Personally, for me, the placenta was just a ‘afterthought’, kind of like the name ‘afterbirth’ suggests. It didn’t affect me one way or another, but I was fascinated by the thing that helped feed my baby. My midwife showed me how it works.
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In the middle of the night, I remembered this quote and realized what happened.
Long ago, this doctor delivered a baby without an episiotomy. After the birth, he applied traction to the cord to deliver the placenta, and the cord popped off the placenta (just for example, a velamentous insertion) and the mom began to bleed out.
The doctor was terribly shaken by this experience.
And then, instead of assuming that his traction to the cord was the problem (because that’s the only way he knows to deliver a placenta) he decided that if the woman had been cut wider, the placenta would have been easier to pull out and the cord wouldn’t have popped off. Therefore he cuts everyone because he doesn’t want to have that happen again.
It’s a “stupid human trick” of the worst kind: it’s fallacious logic and it’s cruel to the women, but it allows him to keep doing the other things he’s been doing.
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Add Your Comment.
And THAT is assault. It’s clearly punitive because the mother dared to deliver before the doctor showed up.
I hope the mom who submitted this filed charges and contacted the state licensing board.
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The Deranged Housewife Reply:
January 3rd, 2011 at 1:48 pm The Deranged Housewife(Quote)
Or because he simply had to feel “useful,” like he did something. Too late to deliver the baby? Well, how about this, then?
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