Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Nov
6
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Hold Still! I Only Have 5 Minutes To Sew You Up!”
“Hold still! I only have 5 minutes to sew you up.” – OB to mother after rushing her to push quicker than she had wanted to.
There are 24 comments to this post.
Well, then don’t even bother.
Wouldn’t want you to miss your flight to Maui, or whatever.
It’s it’s bad, send up a surgeon. Or someone with the time and patience to spend correctly repairing this tear/episiotomy. Instead of rushing through like you have somewhere better to be.
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Jessica had this to say,
Nov 6, 2011 @ 7:45 pm (Quote)
Even though birth is a marathon event for mothers, it isn’t a race. Eff this doctor’s time crunch. S/he should have adequate backup if there are other moms in labor at the same time. And I hope this rush to deliver isn’t due to tee time or vacation plans!
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Laura Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 8:12 pm (Quote)
Or even just a rush back to the office. My OB’s practice, the on-call doc has appointments (but not as many as the folks not on call) and maybe this person really wanted to not be late for an appointment they were almost gonna make.
I prefer my OB’s practice: if your appointment is with the on-call doc for the day, you run the risk of it being delayed, or being offered a chance to see someone else / come back another time / etc. Which, while not perfect, beats the heck out of thinking that somewhere a mother who is giving or has just given birth is being treated poorly because of a time crunch.
As I told my doctor when she was 30 minutes late to a recent appointment (I had been warned!), I’m happy with this approach because it means when *I* need her or whoever is on call, I know I will be their first priority.
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Eileen Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 8:40 pm (Quote)
At my former OBGYN’s office they were scheduled with a full set of appointments every day, and if a patient went into labor during office hours they got their regular OB. My second to last appointment my GYN was very late (more than 90 minutes), and I kept assuring her I didn’t mind because I’d rather her spend time with the mom who was in labor. This is why I bring a book to my appointments! Instead she left a mom who desperately wanted to push – TWICE – to come back to the office (which evidently took her 30 minutes from walking away to getting to me, so it wasn’t just dashing across the hall) because the mom wasn’t measuring fully dilated despite having a desperate urge to push. She sat down with me (the first time she headed over she had to turn around before she got to me), started to talk with me, and got called by the nurses there almost immediately. She was very frustrated and told them to check the woman to see if she was fully dilated since she hadn’t been when she left, and quickly did my exam while on hold. Her frustration with the mother for deviating from the norm and wanting to listen to her body is what made me decide I was not OK with having her deliver my future baby.
And honestly, what kind of a stupid policy is it that you will always be late for your appointments when one of your moms goes into labor during the day?
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Stephanie Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 8:55 pm (Quote)
I liked it the one time my first OB’s office had to cancel an appointment for me after he was already an hour late because he was stuck at the hospital. I’d far rather have an OB care for the woman who needs him for delivery than be on time for a routine checkup.
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Kasondra Reply:
November 7th, 2011 at 7:14 am (Quote)
When I saw an OB there was an appt where I was told “She’s at a birth. You can see someone else or you can reschedule.” I chose to reschedule (I *really* liked her) but I appreciated knowing that they weren’t going to freak out about time…
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Toni Reply:
November 7th, 2011 at 8:57 am (Quote)
At my provider’s office we had the option of seeing the nurse practitioner if our regular CNM or OB was attending a delivery (or rescheduling if you’d rather). If you are having a routine visit and have no major concerns or tons of questions I think it’s a wonderful option! More of them should do this.
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Jane Reply:
November 7th, 2011 at 8:59 am (Quote)
Given how most doctors really aren’t all that concerned by how much time patients spend waiting in the waiting room, I find it hard to believe this doctor wanted to rush back to the office to do prenatal appointments.
I’d guess it was something more like the doctor needed to pick up Grandpa from the airport. :-b
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I worked at an OBGYN office for a year. I cannot count the number of pregnant women would come in and get PISSED if “their” midwife or doc was at a delivery. The docs rotated “call”, which didn’t take effect until after office hours. If a woman went into labor during business hours the primary midwife or physician they’d seen throughout the pregnancy did the delivery. It was pretty rare that a midwife or physician would have to leave. We would reschedule patients to the other midwives as available, but sometimes girls had to wait, and we heard all about it. The answer we were trained to give was “Wouldn’t you want the (midwife/doc) to give you the same attention when you are in labor?” Which would normally calm them down. If you want one on one care, birth at home. Sorry, you’re not the only patient we have, and I’m sure you’d be pitching a bigger fit if you were in the hospital and the (midwife/doc) was seeing her patients rather than coming to the hospital.
Our office was only 150 yards from the hospital, the providers could go between in 2 minutes, walking, they were rarely gone more than 45 minutes for a delivery!!
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C.Pratt Reply:
November 7th, 2011 at 8:35 am (Quote)
You know, homebirth where I am in Oregon is becoming so popular you may not get that one on one attention. We have a new mega practice here, being built by an amazing team, and the demand is so high it’s insane. (All but one of the local hospitals have a VBAC ban– wonder what is driving this HB trend, huh? lol)
My point is just that even if you are planning a home birth, that doesn’t mean you should expect to have every prenatal with your midwife. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see the point of “choosing” a provider if I have a less than 50% chance of having them there when I deliver. That is when it’s go time, that is when I need to know I can count on the people around me. Everything else is pretty minor comparatively.
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Robyn Reply:
November 7th, 2011 at 12:46 pm (Quote)
Where I’m at, if my midwife was attending a birth, she cleared her schedule for the day. There were about 3 or 4 times during my most recent pregnancy where she called to reschedule because she was attending a birth. Since home birth midwives come to your house when you say you’re in active labor and stay until the birth is complete and all the post-partum care is done, the midwife can be at your house just long enough to clean up because they missed the birth or they can be there 24 hours or more. For a lot of women, the whole point of choosing a home birth midwife is to get more personalized attention at each appointment and during the birth.
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Kathy Reply:
November 7th, 2011 at 2:20 pm (Quote)
“My point is just that even if you are planning a home birth, that doesn’t mean you should expect to have every prenatal with your midwife.”
If you’re using a multi-midwife practice, maybe. But in my state, most homebirth midwives practice alone, with collaborative arrangements with other midwives only for if two women go into labor at the same time. My midwife only takes on five clients due in the same month, and if she’s at a birth, she reschedules her prenatal appointments.
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Knitted in the Womb Reply:
November 8th, 2011 at 5:53 am (Quote)
Some of the midwives in my area take up to a dozen clients per month. With my last baby my midwife attended two births the day before my daughter was born, and was at a birth when I went into active labor. She sent a back up midwife to my house, which was a good thing, because my daughter was born less than 20 minutes after the back up arrived–an hour before my midwife arrived.
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Kathy Reply:
November 9th, 2011 at 9:19 am (Quote)
When my midwife first started out she would take on a dozen a month. Then she realized she couldn’t keep up that pace while giving the women the care she wanted to, and that they deserved. I don’t think I could use a practice where there were 11 other women due around the same time as me, and I wouldn’t know if I’d get my midwife.
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Kristin Reply:
November 7th, 2011 at 9:28 pm (Quote)
My doctor’s office had nine OB’s. NONE of which were ever scheduled to do appointments AND be on call at the same time.
That being said, my last 4 appointments ended up with me sitting the in waiting room for almost an hour and a half and in the exam room for almost an hour. All that for my doctor to measure my belly, listen with a Doppler, and try to stick is fingers inside me while answering personal phone calls and refusing to even acknowledge my questions. They wanted to see me in July this year for my annual pap. I haven’t been back because I am so disgusted with them.
Next time? MIDWIFE.
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I specifically chose a solo practice OB because I wanted to know who would be delivering my baby and not just be a number in a large OB practice. It was great, but the down-side was appointments often did get delayed or rescheduled. The office was really good about being on top if it and it was only a very minor inconvenience for the wonderful one-on-one care I got (and, BTW, she spent 45 minutes sewing me up after DS was born and never did I feel rushed either during appointments or while in the hospital).
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OP here! Looks like today was my day (oh joy!). I had a wonderful natural friendly OB, who said he left standing orders to be called for all of his patients and wh I had seen earlier in the week and had promised me he would be there. My nurse REFUSED to call him, as in wasn’t specifically mentioned in my chart. Well, she said she would call him, and then when I told her I was feeling pushy and asked if she had called him yet, she very rudely informed me that it wasn’t going to happen. He was beyond upset. This OB was such a jerk, barely spoke to me except to yell at me, force me to have a catheter, and episiotomy to hurry things up, all while I am saying no no no but my labor was fast and intense and I was having trouble taking up for myself. I know had I not gotten him out in under 30 minutes (and I’m a ftm) we would have gone straight to the vaccum and I was terrified. I would have had to run out and have him in the parking lot. What he was in such a hurry for was a scheduled C-Section. I gave birth at 7:38 and he had to get to that at 8. He also ripped out my placenta very roughly. I definitely feel like I was punished for not having drugs like a good patient. Praying for another healthy pregnancy so I can have a homebirth!!
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Heather Reply:
November 8th, 2011 at 10:42 am (Quote)
What a freaking nightmare 
That’s probably why my OB always told us to call his office and find out where he was before going in and to never go in without knowing he was there if we could help it. He must have had a backup asshole like this!
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I’m sorry OP. This happened to me too. But instead of making me push faster and then hold still, she busted out the forceps after 40 minutes and knocked me out with stadol to get on her way to her other three deliveries that day. There is something wrong with that system.
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Melissa Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 6:58 pm Melissa(Quote)
I also had a similar experience. My OB told me to stop shrieking. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten to inject the lidocaine or something…except he had. He cut an episiotomy against my wishes without anesthetic and also started to sew it up after the delivery sans lido. Such a horrible experience. So sorry someone else had to experience something similar.
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