Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Oct
24
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“I Don’t Have A Good Feeling About You.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about you.” – OB to mother when asked about the possibility of the mother having a successful VBAC.
There are 20 comments to this post.
first time mommy had this to say,
Oct 24, 2011 @ 10:56 am (Quote)
right back at ya!
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This one is mine. When I asked the dr her thoughts about vbac she told me that she didn’t have a good feeling about me meaning she didn’t think I’d have a successful vbac based off of her feeling on the subject. No real medical reason, she just thought based off of my reason for a c-section (which she caused IMO) she didn’t think I’d vbac. No trial of labor, no attempt. She just didn’t have a good feeling about it.
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Lisa in Texas Reply:
October 24th, 2011 at 1:35 pm (Quote)
Were you able to have a VBAC with a different doctor?
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Jane Reply:
October 24th, 2011 at 1:58 pm (Quote)
Oy. No statistics, no reports, no nothing, just a “feeling” that conveniently allows the doctor to perform surgery on you that nets her three times more than a vaginal birth and she gets to schedule during daylight hours at her convenience?
I hope you were able to find a different care provider.
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Dreamy Reply:
October 24th, 2011 at 3:42 pm (Quote)
Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? She didn’t have a good feeling about you the first time, so she went ahead and made that a self-fulfilling prophecy. Her “feelings” haven’t changed in the meantime.
Ugh– I’m so sorry.
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Cara Reply:
October 24th, 2011 at 4:58 pm (Quote)
I did switch providers (to another ob who sucked just as much) and have decided that I will go with a midwife. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get pregnant since my son was born. I do have a great feeling about my body and my ability to vbac 
Just need to find the right person who will support me. The funny thing is I went with this dr with my first child because she not only supported a vbac for my aunt, but she support and delivered a vbac that was with a classical incision! I guess she changed her mind over 10 years about vbacs
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Dreamy Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 10:38 am (Quote)
Actually, that is REALLY telling and goes toward confirming my suspicion that since the ACOG started officially discouraging VBACs in the 1990s, many doctors who knew better– who KNEW that was only about liability and not science– slowly became convinced (out of habit of not attending VBACs) that VBACs were actually untenably dangerous. KWIM? For most, it was probably a slow and subtle subconscious shift over years, but basically they had to realign themselves, ethically, to the fact that they were doing something injurious and not supported by science, by, on some level, telling themselves that it was actually beneficial and science-based… until they actually believed it.
What’s sort of bizarre now, but makes “sense” if the above is true, is that now that the ACOG has somewhat “reversed” its position in the past ~2 years, lots of these SAME doctors are still saying it’s too dangerous, because they’ve sort of brainwashed themselves into believing it is, based on habit, practice, ego-saving, avoidance of cognitive dissonance, etc. Nothing changed in the past 20-25 years, in terms of evidence. All that happened was that the ACOG made a liability-based statement that VBACs were too dangerous, doctors stopped doing them, and then the ACOG turned around and mostly reversed its position. Those position changes weren’t based on new scientific information. Yet after the first anti statement, VBACs dropped so dramatically that after a while, docs had to tell themselves VBACs MUST be dangerous or else they’d be attending them. And the new ACOG statement can’t reverse that (or not quickly) because the belief has become so entrenched. Even though, in reality, it was based on nothing.
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I spoke with a woman once who said that her doctor said that same thing to her. Here’s the weird thing- this doctor is known as being the most “birth-friendly” doctor in the city; he delivers on average, over 1 baby every day. He performed a c-section on her for her first baby at 43 weeks with NO INDUCTION- just did a c-section, then told her that she wasn’t a good candidate for a VBAC because “he just had a feeling that she would rupture, and usually he was right”.
Weird…I just tried to encourage her to do her own research and go with what made her most comfortable, instead of listening to his instincts, to listen to her own!
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Jane Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 11:52 am (Quote)
See, now I think instincts are good in medicine if doctors could accurately listen to them. If the doctor had an instinct that something was wrong, then the doctor should have done a little more checking and some observation to figure out what it was. NST, maybe, maybe a stress-test, maybe staying with the mom through early labor.
When instinct leads people to do further investigation, sometimes they find the evidence that their subconscious mind picked up on. And sometimes they realize when they investigate that they’re unconsciously picking up on something that has nothing to do with the actual risks (ie, this doctor’s last rupture was also a very tall blond woman and he’s a little gunshy right now.)
But evidence. Evidence is good. We like evidence.
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