GP displaying family photos, children's pictures dedicated to 'daddy' or 'mummy'

[Ilovepastafortea]

I'm lucky in that I've only had 2 miscarriages.

A friend of mine's DIL has now just had her 5th. Friend went to GP with her & was upset to see GP had pictures of their children & pictures obviously done by their children with annotations saying things like 'I love you daddy'.

This is all rather cute & lovely, but my friend thought rather insensitive when her DIL had recently lost a much wanted 5th PG. She also had concerns about women who are seeking fertility treatment - do they really need to be reminded how fertile their GP is?

We had a long discussion: we considered that on the plus side it shows that the GP is a family person with children & the inference is that they understand the problems of having a family. We considered that people who work in banks, in Boots, therapists, the supermarket, the Jobcentre could argue the same point. They don't display their children's photos.

I agree with her, family photos & personal pictures have no place in a GP's consulting room.

So AINBU thinking the family photos have no place in GP consulting rooms?

I have experienced pregnancy loss and I would love it if my GP did this. It would actually make me feel like he got what I was going through even more, because he clearly recognised the importance of family.

Surely having five miscarriages would make anyone a bit oversensitive? You'd have to be pretty cold to not be bothered by it.

Your DIL needs to look away or find another GP if she can.
Isnt a GPs job hard enough without tiptoeing around sensititivities?

I'm more surprised that someone got a face to face appointment.

So far 92% think YABU and I do too. It’s bizarre to think anyone should have to pretend to not have a family, no matter who they are. (Except perhaps a fertility/miscarriage clinician would be careful, but even then, it’s none of the patients business what they choose to have in their work environment really).

Totally over sensitive and really rather ridiculous.

well you have to navigate the world full of pregnant women, babies, children etc etc etc

Even if you have had a miscarriage, let alone multiple, people still have their lives. They can't all adjust the world because of that, hard as it may be to accept.

I had 2 failed IVF cycles and day in the same waiting room as the ante natal clinic
That's insensitive

I think the offended lady probably needs to talk over her feelings of disappointment and sadness with a therapist of some sort. I don't mean that flippantly, it's a big issue to come to terms with.

GPs need to seem approachable to anyone who walks in their room within a couple of minutes. A couple of kids paintings and a photo of GP at the local petting zoo is a world away from when Dr's maintained a God complex and people died of embarrassment rather than mention impolite symptoms.

Sorry it's not your DIL. There are a confusing number of DILs in this post.
Anyway regardless, my answer is the same. Get over it.

Please don't shoot me down, I'm just canvassing opinions.

It's a genuine is my friend being unreasonable question & I said we will meet next week & I will tell her what the MN community thinks.

If she's upset by the GP being a parent why would the opinions of posters on a site that is predominantly posted on by parents be any more palatable to her?

Also there's an assumption that those 3 children are the only pregnancies for that GP. They might well have suffered their own losses

In all honesty this is the sort of thing that would have pissed me off after the deaths of my children.

Not because its a reasonable thing to be pissed off about, but because its something tangible to focus on rather than just the unfairness of what's happened.

It's unreasonable, but I get it.

No. No. No

The world does not rotate around individuals, even those who sad things happen to.

They will have to experience and cope with the difficulties around the hard life events that we all go through.

There is so much criticism of parents who prevent their children experiencing any difficulties/wrap them in cotton wool.

No-one can expect others to smooth their path through life or sanitise their lives to minimise any risk of them being caused distress.

But reminders and actual physical evidence of children and of course children themselves are everywhere. Should an amputee (for example) feel the same about photos of the GP standing on two legs? If the GP only dealt with fertility issues or amputees then it would be insensitive but otherwise I'm afraid it's a part of life.

Even in fertility clinics it’s not always hidden - I was under a recurrent miscarriage and there was a pin board of thank you cards in there some of which had babies pictures on.

What if the Doctor were pregnant?
what if you met a new Mum in the waiting room with her new baby?

Infertility must be awful but it’s crazy to think that the rest of the world has to walk on egg shells.

I've battled 14 very long years of infertility, I won't go into the details but it's been heartbreaking, and I've not got a happy ending, I'll never have a family.

It's completely ridiculous to be upset about seeing family photos on a doctor's desk - I think that's lovely, they obviously cherish their kids!

It's so self involved and selfish to expect the world to edit itself around you. Your friend has no grounds to be offended.

You are being absurdly unreasonable. Shit happens to people every day. I really think the country is circling a drain with its over sensitivity and rather pathetic lack of backbone. My mate got divorced last year, should I take my wedding photo off the wall in case it triggers her.

Come on OP, sort it out.

Insanely, ridiculously precious. People have to go into the GP’s office who are suffering worse things than infertility — terminal illness, for example — so your DIL needs to get her head straight and realise that upsetting as it is, there’s nothing wrong with a few personal pictures that make a GP seem like a human being. She needs to be desensitised to this stuff as she will come across it every day, not try to change the world around her.

Maybe we should stop children being seen in public at all, just in case it upsets someone because of their own medical / personal history?

I work in mental health and wouldn’t display photos of my dc (or acknowledge that I have dc) so the photos make me uncomfortable for a different reason.

Edited to add: colleagues have had their families targeted by some very poorly people.

Classic mumsnet to frame being ‘emotional’ and ‘sensitive’ as bad things. The horror!

I'm so sorry for your loses. I can't imagine how painful that must have been for you. 😘

I’m sorry but nobody can expect other people, whether it’s a GP or anyone else, to hide pictures of/by their kids at work. It’s part of normal daily life. People who can’t conceive or who have suffered miscarriages have to see evidence of other people‘s children; it’s hard but it’s just normal life. Just as people who have lost a spouse have to see evidence of other people’s lives as couples.