In context, the implication of “do you want to cut?” to the father means the doctor gave no importance whatsoever to YOUR desire, but the father’s desire was important. Lovely.

Just some background on this birth.

It was a VBA2C, the first being an inverse T (woohoo!) As all my babies have been natural premature labour I asked if they’d let me try because they’d leave me until the last minute anyway, my own consultant was brilliant about it and I met some other brilliant doctors along the way – 12 weeks of irritable uterus. By the time the doctor first saw me it was into the evening shift and my team weren’t on, neither were any of the ones I’d met who were happy for me. They were determined to convert me but had been tied up in theatre and by the time they got to me it was too late for them to do it and I didn’t give them time to either. The consultant obviously unimpressed left his registrar (I don’t know the American equivalents) to look after me and she seemed to want to punish me or make this as difficult as possible. I won’t go into too much detail as I’ve already submitted it. Despite the fact that she never looked at the monitor (obviously with my rather increased risk I was continually monitored) she decided my baby was in distress, despite her being born with an APGAR of 9. The “distress” and my being 34 weeks was the reason she needed to cut the cord and not delay it.