Oh? So you’ve passed a watermelon through your penis? Good to know. I’ll be sure to look you up in the World Record Book.

Well, there’s the obvious fact that this OB is a man, so he couldn’t possibly know exactly how this woman feels. But even if it was a female doctor, this statement would be beyond aggravating and inappropriate! Nobody knows exactly how another person feels! Each labor is different and everyone handles labor differently. Some women need to scream their way through labor and that’s just fine! Unless the way they are laboring is cutting off oxygen to the baby or somehow harming the child, leave them alone! A doctor or midwife’s job is to guide a woman through labor, not to dictate it!

And then there is the obvious thought… “Oh, male doctor, until you push a human being out of your vagina, you need to shut up!”

*Grabs doctor’s testicles and twists them, then ties them in a knot*

Please stop screaming, I know exactly how this feels too!

Until YOU have given birth NO you don’t know how I feel!!!!!

Wow! We have Betazoids practicing medicine here on Earth? I had no idea.

At least he said “please stop” and not “shut up.”

Sounds to me like the resident was still new to assisting with unmedicated labor and couldn’t think of what to say to magically make it all better. I can forgive benign confusion. It’s still laughable and shouldn’t have been said, but he may have been overwhelmed because he’d never dealt with a screaming woman before.

I think this is hilarious. Obviously, it would not be hilarious in the moment, but the very idea that a man could claim to have ANY idea of how labor feels just makes me fall over laughing.

I had a dude say to me, “I don’t think a Mom really earns the baby if she just gets an epidural. She has to go through the pain at least once, and then she can have epidurals for any other babies.” I was completely stunned. The man had three kids, so I was quick to point out that he hadn’t earned any of them, and that shut him up real nice.

I laughed so hard that I cried & now my tummy muscles hurt! I probably would’ve laughed even harder if I’d actually heard someone say this, rather than just reading it!

I REALLY hope this was just a terrible attempt at a joke, because otherwise this is just… wow!

I have MS & a rare condition called trigeminal neuralgia. It’s widely called the worst chronic pain disease known to man, and nicknamed “the suicide disease.” I have had doctors & nurses try to tell me they know how I feel too many times to count. Have you been repeatedly struck by lightening in the face? Then no, you don’t know how I feel.

When I was pregnant with my youngest, I expressed to a nurse my concern that the TN would flare up during labor. “That’s what epidurals are for,” I was told. @@

Let’s fix this.

MOM: aaaaAAAAAARRRRRGHuh!
OB: Can you point to where it hurts the most?
MOM: *flaps hand, all circuits busy* . . . back . . .
OB: Does your back hurt? *flips through mental checklist of normal and abnormal labor pain* Very low down, and really badly when you are in mid-contraction?
MOM: yEAHowOWWW.
OB: Here, let’s try a position change. It might help. Or maybe would getting up help, do you think?
MOM: NoooOWWWWcontractionstoostrongggg–
OB: So I’ll try a position change. Let me know if this helps. *pillow, pillow, gently shift* Doula/spouse/nurse, can you come over here? OK, if you want, he/she will rub your back now.
MOM: Nnnngh. Lower. Yeahh. Better.
OB: OK, just let him/her know if you want more pressure or less or if you would like to switch to a hot pad or a cold pack. And please do let me know if there is a sudden change in what you’re feeling, OK? I’m going to get the fetoscope and see how the baby’s doing.

See, doc, what the average laboring woman needs from you most is not direction, instruction, or intervention. It’s patience.