Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Nov
26
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“…Just Putting In An Extra Stitch. It Will Make Your Husband Really Happy.”
“I’m almost done, just putting in an extra stitch. It will make your husband really happy.” -OB during tear repair.
There are 54 comments to this post.
Mama Wrench had this to say,
Nov 26, 2010 @ 12:13 pm (Quote)
Actually, my husband feels the exact same way I do about personal autonomy. If it’s not medically necessary, will cause me pain, and is done without my consent, I’m pretty sure it will just make him get pissed off and contact a lawyer — and use that comment against you in court.
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molly had this to say,
Nov 26, 2010 @ 12:19 pm (Quote)
My husband doesn’t get off on me being in pain. And how is making sex painful for his wife supposed to please my husband? If anything, sex will be postponed even longer while we wait for that extra stitch to heal. And it’s not making the vagina smaller, just the opening. And my husband does not have a small penis. And I didn’t consent to this elective stitch. Ahhhgh this one really pisses me off!
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No, it won’t. It will make my husband really sad and angry, because that EXTRA STITCH caused sex to be excruciatingly painful for me until I gave birth to my nest child. Thank you, Dr. Stabby-Hands, for creating needless trauma and anxiety for both of us. He hates to see me in pain, and hates that your “help” ruined 19 months of our lives.
And, FWIW, oh lovely dr, my girly bits recovered perfectly after my next 6 babies without any extra help form your ilk. Childbirth and its aftermath ≠ ruined sex for men, if handles gently.
This was not mine, but could have been. My OB said this very same thing to me while repairing an unnecessary episiotomy after my first, except that he actually directed the comment to my DH, complete with a *nudge-and-wink*.
**ewww**
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Nope. I don’t think my OB did “the husband stitch” (as I’m naturally pretty small there) but I do wish he’d left at least one stitch off! I got tighter after each birth and after my second one, with the bad tear and stitches, I couldn’t have sex for 3 months because it hurt too much. It was almost a year before I stopped feeling the pull of that last stitch 
Not to mention that all penises are shaped differently with different width, so what’s ‘nice’ to one man may be TOO tight to another!
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I submitted this one. The woman had a fairly bad tear, and the lidocaine wasn’t really taking away her pain with the repair. She was furious that this is how he responded when she asked how much longer, because it hurt. I made sure that this doctor’s superior knew that he responded to her complaints of discomfort this way. Thankfully he’s a lot more sensitive about what he says now, and a lot more generous with the lidocaine.
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GranolaRN Reply:
November 26th, 2010 at 12:40 pm (Quote)
Also, luckily it really only was one last stitch and by the time I could think of a way to scold him without causing a huge scene in the room where this lovely family was trying to get to know their new baby, he was done and out the door.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
November 26th, 2010 at 3:10 pm (Quote)
I hope you reported the routine use of “husband stitches” as well…
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GranolaRN Reply:
November 27th, 2010 at 9:09 am (Quote)
Of course I reported that part. Sorry, I assumed that the fact I had a problem with him saying this also made it clear that I had a problem with him doing this in the first place. The entire exchange was shared with the department head. A lot has changed in this doctor’s practice since then.
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The Deranged Housewife Reply:
November 30th, 2010 at 4:52 am (Quote)
GranolaRN, how long ago was this?
It’s interesting that a lot of people think the ‘husband stitch’ is either no big deal or just a myth. Unfortunately – depending on when this comment was made – we see that it has not gone the way of enemas and pubic hair shaving just yet. 
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Well Rounded Birth Prep Reply:
December 1st, 2010 at 1:40 pm (Quote)
I’m really glad to hear that the OB truly did change his practice. I’m surprised by that.
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jaed Reply:
November 26th, 2010 at 3:37 pm (Quote)
What Sarah said. It’s good that your action resulted in his making fewer nasty cracks during surgical repair, and good that he now allows adequate anesthetic, but his doing this kind of deliberate damage during repair seems to be a worse problem. I hope he’s been made to stop that as well.
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Also, after my swelling went down and my stiches healed, I was pretty traumatized by how my lady parts had changed. It was something about the fact that they were “reconstructed,” and nothing was in the same place as it had been. And, as far as I know, the midwife didn’t do any “extra stiches” to make it even weirder.
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Brenda Reply:
November 26th, 2010 at 5:57 pm (Quote)
I felt the same way after my first birth. I tore my labia, but didn’t get any stitches to repair it. The birth itself went really well, but I still felt mutilated by it, and it took a while to get past that feeling.
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Sarah Reply:
November 27th, 2010 at 5:06 am (Quote)
I know what you mean about feeling “reconstructed”. I tore all over the place (and it was a natural birth, I was upright on a birth stool, directing my own pushing… looks like I’m just prone to tearing). I don’t fault my midwife for it, but it just looks scary down there now, to the point where I’ve thought about getting it fixed again (but probably never would as long it’s not causing pain or problems).
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say,
Nov 26, 2010 @ 3:23 pm (Quote)
Because, as we all know, there is nothing a husband hates more than a FLOPPY VAGINA. What a man wants, needs, is a vagina so tight that it feels like an arsehole, and small enough that he can pretend that he’s bonking up against a virginal hymen when he hits scar tissue.
Anything less simply won’t cut it.
And we all know that Kegels and general exercise and good nutrition are useless for preserving the pelvic floor and improving vaginal muscle tone. Nice wives (and probably not so nice wives) don’t keep up with their Kegels.
Nor do the really need to enjoy sexual intercourse – after all, they’re mothers now! – so the “husband stitch” that has been known to make women cry out in pain from sex years after the fact is no big deal. It’s just something nice for the husband, who probably won’t notice or care if sex hurts his wife, because they won’t have sex that often now that they’re a family, and when they do, it’ll only be for a minute or so until he gets his pleasure, and his wife can learn to fake happiness or at least fake lack of pain once he starts to complain that it’s been a few months, so shouldn’t she stop wincing and crying, now?…
Oh, and you know what husbands really, really, really love? Paying the bill for elective reconstructive surgery that, while it may not undo the damage a massive episiotomy has done to the clitoral nerves, will at least remove the damage of a “husband stitch.”
Excuse me. I have to go retch now.
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Serene Reply:
November 30th, 2010 at 3:18 am (Quote)
Ohhhh THIS!
Yeah baby. The best sex came AFTER having the 4* tear repair undone and redone PROPERLY and LOOSER! OMFG are these doctors dicks that small thats all they think about?!??
*swearing my way back down the hallway*
You have got to be kidding me
*hurl*
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This one makes me gag more than a little. My MIDWIFE gave me an extra stitch. I like to imagine it wasn’t intentional, but I don’t know. I do know that now, a year and a half later, we’re having serious trouble conceiving again because I can’t handle sex long enough for there to be ejaculate.
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Brie B. Reply:
November 26th, 2010 at 10:20 pm (Quote)
Not that this solves the actual problem, but you could try using the Instead cup method — there wouldn’t then be any vaginal intercourse required at all, just a few seconds of having your fingers up there to get the cup in.
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Lauren Reply:
November 27th, 2010 at 12:26 am (Quote)
I am so sorry that happened to you Jen. Maybe try massaging the scar tissue with EPO?
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Jen Reply:
November 30th, 2010 at 7:28 am (Quote)
I’ve tried this a bit, but the problem is that there is really minimal scar tissue. It’s not really a bulk of scar tissue so much as the fact that the stitching went into outer labial tissue causing the labia to heal together.
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THe Deranged Housewife Reply:
November 30th, 2010 at 4:56 am (Quote)
Jen, I am so sorry! Have you spoken to anyone at the practice about it? I do know someone who had a terrible vaginal delivery with a midwife that required reconstructive surgery on her bladder – needless to say the MW was fired and the mom elected to have a cesarean next time.
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Elsa Reply:
January 10th, 2011 at 5:54 am (Quote)
This comment is coming quite late, but I just saw what you posted and had to reply. Please consider seeing your provider! Sometimes even a perfect repair can lead to the nerves being overly sensitive, and it can be very painful. I had a series of “trigger point injections,” which were localized steroids administered with a local anesthetic, and it really did a lot for helping me to feel better! I was sure there was nothing that could be done, but my provider was able to do this treatment, and it was a huge help. It sounds like you might be able to benefit from the same thing, as your situation sounds very similar to mine.
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Gag. It took a year after our first child’s birth before we could have sex without me being in pain. My husband was not happy in the least. My OB blamed it on me breastfeeding.
After my second child’s birth where I got no stitches he was much happier. The first time we had sex after the birth he was extraordinarily careful, but I told him it didn’t hurt at all.
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I don’t get the whole “babies stretch your vagina out! Do you want a floppy vagina???” thing. As a friend told me about 5 weeks after having her first baby, “If you’re worrying about being ‘too loose’ after the baby, don’t: it’s like a balloon! It stretches and then it goes back!”
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As I’ve always said:
If having babies makes sex soooooo terrible for the man afterwards, how in the hell do Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have that many kids?
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
November 27th, 2010 at 11:41 am (Quote)
I have my opinions about them, too, but I don’t want to start a brush fire here.
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Knitted in the Womb had this to say,
Nov 28, 2010 @ 12:39 pm (Quote)
Has anyone ever seen a diagram of how a “husband stitch” is done? Because I just can’t imagine how it would work out. With a fabric tube, if you want to tighten it up you’d overlap it more and sew it. But that will not work with flesh.
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Knitted in the Womb Reply:
November 28th, 2010 at 1:06 pm (Quote)
Just did a bit of research on this on my own…and it is reinforcing my conclusion that the “husband stitch” is largely mythical. Check this link http://thewelltimedperiod.blogspot.com/2005/05/episiotomy-and-husband-stitch.html and ESPECIALLY click through to the links to the diagrams of episiotomy repair in Williams Obstetrics.
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Sheva Reply:
November 29th, 2010 at 5:42 am (Quote)
Instead of stitching the last stitch or two by bringing the sides of the tear or cut flush up against each other, you overlap them a bit, making the opening a bit tighter. It felt like that’s what was done to me.
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Knitted in the Womb Reply:
November 29th, 2010 at 7:10 am (Quote)
You can’t do that though and get proper healing. To get proper healing you need to have torn (interior) flesh against torn flesh. You can’t have a torn surface over lapped onto an “exterior” surface. When you do over lap in that manner, what ends up happening is that you have a “flap” of tissue that does not adhere down. You also risk having a pocket form where an infection can develop.
To try and visualize it, picture a tube of fabric that is closed with single sided velcro. If you rip it open, you must put it back “hooks to soft” to get it to stick. Though you can try to tighten up the tube by “over lapping” a bit, it will not stick properly, and some of the velcro will be left as a flap.
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I intend to tell my doctor that if they repair tears, they are to make me LOOSER than I currently am if they can, because I am currently so tight that my husband’s ED makes sex difficult. Maybe it won’t work, but at minimum that doc will remember that the “husband stitch” actually can make sex a lot worse.
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There doesnt have to be a lot of external scarring to be a decent amount of INTERNAL scarring. Its also possible that the scarring is stiff, needing some softening.
Having been through a 4* tear from an episiotomy/forceps/unconsciousness, I had some pretty nasty internal problems and very tender perineum, but almost no external scarring. I had a repair, and I swear it is the best thing I ever did.
I really do recommend you see a gynae plastics specialist and ask about it. They see alot of women every year with exactly what you are describing, and often fix up obstetrics mistakes.
I do wish you all the best with it. In the meantime, I used Bonjela (teething gel) on my sore parts, and it helped. Might be worth a try?
xxx
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jesus christ it’s a joke, I can name you a dozen OBs that say that crap and even my Midwife, it’s a sick way of saying “good as new”. Anyone who takes offense to the joke needs to get their head out of their butt, not everything is said/done to be rude/mean and no they aren’t serious. I’ve even heard husband’s joke and ask for an extra stitch and *GASP* women joke and ask for one too.
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Emma Reply:
January 20th, 2012 at 4:51 am (Quote)
Are you serious? Go back up and read the pink post. The mother was in pain and when she asked how much longer, rather than reassuring her, he thought it would be funny to make a joke about taking it upon himself to tighten up her vagina (without consent) for the benefit of her husband.
Ho ho, hilarious.
*GASP* some people value the concept of bodily autonomy and are right to be upset and offended at the idea of a medical professional interfering with their genitals – without consent – to make their spouse happy in bed. It doesn’t matter whether the intention was to be rude or not, or whether it was serious or ‘just a joke’. It’s a revolting thing to say to someone who is enduring a tear repair, and it’s revolting to defend it.
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yes, because all a woman’s vagina is good for is pleasuring a man’s penis. ffs >:-@
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