Memory lane: My horrific OB GYN

I was chatting with a girlfriend about male OB/GYNS and how some are so out of touch with what a woman needs. Some are downright mean and nasty. I'e had a few run ins with them. It reminded me of what I went through over 10 years ago (yiles! that long?).

I was 18 and having a miscarriage of my first 13 week pregnancy. Devastated, I had to go to a doctor because a miscarriage is where the midwife’s duty ends and you go to her backup

OB

(for the CMWs who deliver in the hospital anyway). I went to the backup doc who was this huge man. Maybe 7 foot tall and well over 300 pounds with these HUGE hands. HOW any woman could survive those hands for a whole pregnancy….

Well I’d been going thru the labor for several days and when I stood up from the car in the parking lot, I “delivered.” I was just a little girl of 18 ready to take on the world until the world took her on…what did I know?

It ended up in the toilet when I was trying to clean up and they were PISSED they had to fish it out. The nurses left me bleeding in a room for quite some time and I had to ASK for some kind of padding. They then left me sitting naked from the butt down on a blue pad.

My husband (high school sweetheart/mistake of my life) had missed work and had gone back so mom was with me. This doc was CRUEL. He told me mean things and said it was a waste to have testing done on the “thing.” I was sore inside from several days of labor pains and when he stuck his meaty hand in there I freaked. That bastard held me down by pushing on my stomach with his other and pretty much yelled at me.

Then we sat out in this more common area where patients and nurses were walking around and he’s asking me what my blood type is and what the father’s is. Do I even KNOW who the father is? Can I find him, etc… Mom is just looking really shocked, I’m freaked out and feel trapped. Of COURSE I knew who he was.

Ok. Granted I looked like I was 12, but come on, people….look at my chart!

Then he asks if I am going to be following up with (the midwife). The whole time he never spoke to ME, it was to my mom like I was mentally challenged (by all rights I must have been by default at that point!). He asked if we would be following up for birth control, “so this doesn’t happen again.”

Finally my mother realizes what he’s getting at and she freaks out and tells him to look at the ring on my finger and that when I WANT IT TO, it WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. And then of course he was shocked and calmed down, but the whole thing was completely unnecessary. I was still speechless. To this day I kick myself for being such a wallflower and allowing him to traumatize me.

You know, I am not into suing people, but if that were me TODAY? Oh yeah, I would have sued. And perhaps it would have never gotten that far. I mean look at the difference, some OB playing taps on my knees about 6 years later gets his head ripped off, but I was speechless with this guy.

But that’s not all! I no, no, I am not done.

10 months later,

T.

needs to come out. I have Toxemia and am being induced. The labor is 9 hours and going all wrong, his heart beat starts to dip, so we go into an emergency cesarean. GUESS who is still the back up for my midwife? So I have this jerk in the OR with me. I am fully awake having had a spinal and he’s loudly complaining that he was supposed to be on vacation at 9:30pm and I am keeping him! (T was born at 10:35pm).

He also told the kindly Dr. H. that he was taking too long to get me stitched up and “doing too good of a job.” Now the interesting part is, Dr. S. stitched my right side and Dr. H. my left. Interestingly I had pain around my right ovary and at the stitch site for YEARS afterward. Just on the right.

Dr. H. thought it might have been a line of scar tissue attached to my ovary, but what about the stitch site? Weird, huh?

He never came to see me in recovery either. And when I was in there having A. 3 years later, I heard Dr. S. out in the hallway just berating nurses and yelling.

Now the REALLY ironic part of this all… I’d heard the medical group dropped Dr. S. when he demanded a raise and he ended up being the doc on call for the local women's b

irthing center

. He was in the paper being quoted saying something about the experience a woman needs in childbirth. A whole touchy feely piece about how she needs gentleness and support. I could have DIED! I nearly called the birthing center right then to tell them what he did to me.

So there's my walk down memory lane. My three birthing experiences, though not ALL bad have left me with a huge desire to do it again, at home, the right way with little intervention and a lot of peace. I'm nuts.