Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jan
23
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Poor Baby, Your Mother Put You Through A Very Traumatic Birth.”
“Poor baby, your mother put you through a very traumatic birth.” – Pediatrician to baby who had been born during a breech vaginal birth.
There are 23 comments to this post.
PetraStrider had this to say,
Jan 23, 2012 @ 3:40 pm (Quote)
I hate that passive aggressive tactic of criticing someone’s parenting decisions by talking to the baby. But I found calling people out on that leaves them feeling tongue-tied and stupid.
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Samantha had this to say,
Jan 23, 2012 @ 3:40 pm (Quote)
This isn’t part of my earlier breech. I transferred to the hospital and opted for the csection.
This totally pisses me off as it does hit close to home. If I hadn’t grown impatient and had my midwife check me when I did, we would not have known my son was breech till I was pushing him out. Maybe this mother found herself in that position, maybe she choose to have a vaginal birth despite the baby being breech. It’s none of your business doctor. The mother made the best decision for her and her baby. If I had known my son was breech i would have traveled to a doctor that would have supported my breech VBAC. More often than not a vaginal birth is better for baby and for mama.
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Louisa Reply:
January 25th, 2012 at 4:31 am (Quote)
sorry it didn’t work out for you.
I have a friend going for a known breech VBAC in a couple of weeks (orginal C/s was for breech ironically) and she has found a supportive midwife but is fighting her way through the hospital red tape atm. Very stressful
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samantha Reply:
January 26th, 2012 at 9:30 am (Quote)
Thank you Louisa, but I am so proud of my labor and my son’s birth. If I had known he was breech, I would have had a vaginal birth, but I was 7 cm and hitting transition when we discovered it. The little research I had done, said that if your care provider wasn’t experienced with breech birth, than c-section was safer, and I already knew my midwife wasn’t experienced and wasn’t comfortable with a breech HBAC. My labor was amazing though, and it really healed the pain of my bad labor with my first son.
Fingers crossed for your girlfriend. I hope her breech VBAC rocks!!!
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Really? So a baby won’t remember having its foreskin cut off so it’s okay to do it without anesthesia but if a mother makes an informed decision to have a breech vaginal birth, which is the way that humans have developed to give birth and has pronounced benefits for mother and child over a C-section, it’s traumatic for the child?
(Not meant to be a judgement of c-sections or circumcision, but a comment on how some medical practicioners choose what they minimize and what they emphasize based on their preferences, not evidence)
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Channa Leah had this to say,
Jan 23, 2012 @ 4:12 pm (Quote)
mine again! the beginning of this story is earlier when talking about having no choice in a gtt test. my dr supported me in finding a vaginal breech practitioner because he knew a C could be very risky for me. I found Dr amazing in another state and had an AMAZING natural birth. (with a crazy ditzy nurse- see earlier) the baby was born but with suspected hip trama typical of breech babies (not even breech vaginal deliveries but ALL breech babies her legs were STRAIGHT up… they would not go down at all. her vagina was purple and swollen from the “crowning” She was deemed 100% ok with no breaks and no dislocations at the hospital before we left but I was still feeling pretty bad as a mother seeing her black and blue like that…
this was NOT our usual ped but someone int he practice.
She told me SHE had a chance for a vaginal breech but would NEVER put her baby through that trama/risk. (saying this while my baby is right in front of us and I am hormonal pp etc…
She then looked at my child’s genitalia and said this quote 
She wanted my to go straight to a ped orthopedist because it looked really bad… I was almost in tears. I closed my childs diaper and walked out wanting to schedule the follow up appt with out regular ped. When I tried the REFUSED and told me I needed to see the other dr again. The next day I requested our records and both of my children switched practices.
On aa slightly better note. The main dr in the practice when he saw the request for records called me and asked if everything was okay. he wanted details of what happened.. i gave them to him and he apologized over and over. he also said he is not saying I SHOULD or NEED to go back but if I ever choose to I was welcome back with no hurt feelings and i NEVER had to see that ladies face again ever.
it all worked out for the best I found an AMAZING ped literally 2 mins from my house (the other one was 45 mins away!) new ped saw dd 2 days after 1st lady.. said dd’s legs looked AMAZING and no other testing was needed and she did NOT need to see an orthopedist. He also asked for the name of the dr who delivered her to tell another patient of his trying to avoid a c.
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Rachel T Reply:
January 23rd, 2012 at 4:22 pm (Quote)
FYI – that is a “Frank Breech” position. It seems like you encountered some bad practioners but also some awesome ones. Just goes to show that it takes all types!
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Melissa Reply:
January 23rd, 2012 at 6:09 pm (Quote)
Hoping to make another mom of a breech baby feel better:
Mine was a surprise! breech at my 41wk NST. At 41 weeks and 91/2 lbs (and little me, no previous deliveries, etc.) there was no way anything other than a c-section was the best call. So I don’t have any regrets on that score.
But as far as the “encouraging” part I mentioned: my boy, who *was* delivered by c-section (a nice, gentle non-traumatic one at that) and not a vaginal delivery had the same possible problem with his hip and the same horrible bruising and swelling. Poor baby was black and blue back and front where he’d been wedged deep in my pelvis the past two weeks.
And he is, just like your beautiful daughter, completely and totally fine.
So there, jerk! (to the ped. you mention)
OP, you did just right for your girl, as I did for my boy. Moms usually do when they can, I think.
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Noira Reply:
January 23rd, 2012 at 10:25 pm (Quote)
You know, my daughter was born vaginally, was not breech, but she had a lot of bruising on her head and face from the birth and no one ever made me feel like that was my fault. I cannot believe people can be so ignorant and hateful.
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Jane Reply:
January 25th, 2012 at 5:25 am (Quote)
It sounds as if the doctor felt threatened by your decision to have a vaginal breech delivery (and the lengths you went to in order to have it) and needed to make herself feel better for her own decision.
I wish people could just live with the idea that there are many different parenting decisions to make and it’s okay to make them. Wouldn’t that be a nice idea? :-b
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Channa Leah had this to say,
Jan 23, 2012 @ 4:12 pm (Quote)
I am just not doing well with the pinking link thing today!
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If you want to get into the nitty gritty of it, I’m sure ANY birth would be traumatic if you thought of it through the eyes of a person as completely aware as you or I, with memory functioning to keep it intact. We all were squeezed out of a nether orifice or cut out of a human that many of us love a lot.
But how many of us remember that? And how many times do doctors use the “They won’t remember” line to do all kinds of crazy, uncomfortable, painful, and traumatic things to newborns? This is just such a silly thing to give a crap about, when you think of it.
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Seems kinda lame after reading the pink, but Having had a breech and having gotten the c-section, I just got say My Son Put Me Through a Very Tramatic Birth. He is the one who couldn’t figure the difference between Up, Down and Sideways! I didn’t tell him to stick his head in my liver and his butt over my left hip with absolutely nothing presenting! There I’ve said it, now back to the regularly scheduled program.
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Add Your Comment.
And that would be the last time I ever saw that particular pediatrician.
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Jane Reply:
January 23rd, 2012 at 2:46 pm Jane(Quote)
1) criticizing the mother’s parenting decisions directly to the child
2) pretending to care more about the baby than the mother does
3) implying that s/he the pediatrician knows more about birth than the obstetrician or midwife who oversaw the birth
4) implying that c-sections are never traumatic births for the baby
5) saying this was a “very traumatic” birth in the absence of evidence of trauma (I assume — I figure this is a continuation of the breech birth story we saw earlier today)
6) implying that the baby’s birth was somehow unnecessary and the mother “put him through” birth without good reason (as if she could have beamed the baby out of her belly)
Did I miss anything?
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Stephanie Reply:
January 23rd, 2012 at 3:54 pm Stephanie(Quote)
Well, you know that any mother who REALLY cared about her baby would time travel and keep that baby in there until beaming it out became a possibility rather than give breech birth. I mean really, what kind of mother wouldn’t?
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annie Reply:
January 23rd, 2012 at 7:38 pm annie(Quote)
Funny thing about point #4 – I was burned with the cauterizing iron when I was born. 26 years later I still have a massive scar on my back. They thought I had spina bifida. Yeah, doc, C-sections can absolutely be traumatic. Geez, what a goon.
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Tara Rose Reply:
January 25th, 2012 at 7:50 am Tara Rose(Quote)
I think you got it covered, except for the “Passive aggressive talking to baby instead of mom” technique.
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