Jan 4

“You Are A Sadomasochist, No?”

“You are a sadomasochist, no?” – Midwife to mother who was having extreme nipple pain and struggling to nurse her 2 day old baby.

59 people dislike these words.

There are 13 comments to this post.

Kristy had this to say, Jan 4, 2012 @ 7:36 am (Quote)

You are supportive of your patients? No.

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Jadzia had this to say, Jan 4, 2012 @ 8:05 am (Quote)

The backstory is that this took place in a rural French hospital around 3 a.m. We moved here from the US a few months before, and my grasp on the language is tenuous. I was also pretty stressed out trying not to scream from the pain, because I had a (very nice) roommate and didn’t want to wake her or HER baby up (because then we would have two crying newborns).

This particular sage-femme had, upon our first meeting the night before, urged me not to have any more kids, because five is too many as it is. By the time she accused me of getting my S&M freak on with the baby, she was clearly COMPLETELY sick of dealing with me.

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Jadzia Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 8:07 am Jadzia(Quote)

The funny thing is that she interpreted the shocked look on my face to mean that I didn’t understand the word “sadomasochiste” — so she called another nurse in to explain it to me!

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Jane Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 8:13 am Jane(Quote)

Whoa. Were you getting flack from her because you spoke English? That’s heinous. Did the other nurse she called in go along with her assessment?

Did you ever get actual help to find out why nursing was so painful?

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jadzia Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 8:20 am jadzia(Quote)

I think the English was irritating her (I actually spoke French to her, but it’s easier for me to understand if the other person speaks slooowly) because it was a holiday weekend, about a zillion women all went into labor at once, and the ward was packed. The other nurse looked a little embarrassed. I never did find out the problem (but it’s probably a shallow latch), ended up just pumping for six weeks, and went back to regular nursing yesterday; it’s going a little better probably because all the pumping toughened me up a bit.

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Kristy Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 8:53 am Kristy(Quote)

I’ve had two of my five babes like that… couldn’t latch well early on but did fine after a couple weeks of pumping. The latest one actually had a slight ‘tongue tie’ that we went ahead and clipped… so I suspect the other had the same problem to a lesser degree that just loosened up as her mouth began to grow.

It was definitely humbling! I thought I was a ‘pro’ at nursing. My daughter really set me straight and showed me why some moms give up. Fortunately by that point I was stubborn enough to keep going… if it had happened with my first I would have just formula fed.

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jadzia Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 10:01 am jadzia(Quote)

It does seem to get easier when their mouths are bigger. I don’t really have much of a dog in the formula-versus-nursing fight, as I formula fed my first two boys and they turned out pretty much the same as the younger ones. : ) What kept me going through this ridiculousness was sheer stubbornness.

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Julie had this to say, Jan 4, 2012 @ 8:15 am (Quote)

*eyeroll* she’s not even using the right term…

Sorry you had such an idiot sage-femme

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Tracy Reply:
January 4th, 2012 at 10:24 am Tracy(Quote)

I was going to say the same thing lol. Sadism and masochism are two things.

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Nica had this to say, Jan 4, 2012 @ 11:23 am (Quote)

I’m actually more surprised by her comment on the number of children you have. I lived in France for a while and my experience was that mothers of “familles nombreuses” were kind of French folk heros! Seems the gov’t was always encouraging more children since the birth rate dropped so much in the 90′s.

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abba12 had this to say, Jan 4, 2012 @ 2:22 pm (Quote)

wow… I actually AM a masochist, and I also experienced pain during breastfeeding that resulted in me going to formula due to no support (was posted about a month back, where I was told motherhood hurts, get over it)

I am so absolutely offended by a comment like this. Firstly, she used the broader term refering to the activity not the people, which includes about 50% of people who do not enjoy pain, second of all, most masochists do not enjoy all pain, just pain under certain circumstances and stimuli, we still yell if we stub our toe! and third of all, to use a sexual term when refering to the breastfeeding of my baby is absolutely disgusting!

What was she suggesting, you just ‘get off’ to the pain your baby was causing? That’s called child sexual abuse, no question about it. You should have reported her to child services for encouraging the sexual abuse of babies. Yeah, nothings happening to the child yet, but you’re still using a child in a sexual manner, and if someone starts like that it can lead to worse things.

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perfectionist Reply:
January 5th, 2012 at 4:15 pm perfectionist(Quote)

I’m a masochist, too, and pain was one of the reasons I stopped breastfeeding. My sexuality doesn’t include my child, thankyouverymuch.
I totally agree that its disgusting to use sexual lingo when referring to children, especially when referring something as decidedly non-sexual as breastfeeding.

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