male obs/midwives

[violet59]

For reasons I wont' bore you with, I really want to avoid any men (apart from DP) being involved during labour (proper emergency aside). I know people say you won't care, but I think i WILL. On shows like OBEM it seem all the doctors are male. why? I truly believe that having any men involved would be traumatic for me and that it would affect me emotionally afterwards and I really want to be there 100% for my baby in a healthy state of mind. Do midwives make an effort to find you female doctors or will they just find it easier to tell you there aren't any women available and fob you off? If you refuse are they obligated to find a woman? And I dont' want to have to tell a bunch of strangers repeatedly (various midwives, doctors) why I feel this way!

Not only would I be scared of male OBs (sorry no offense but its just how I feel) but I worry that if I had to be treated by one, afterward memories would in get in the way of being there for baby.

You have every right to refuse a male obs or mw. You do not have to give an indepth reason why, but you must stress the consequences of them not listening to your request.

However please be prepared that there may only me male Obs on shift when you are in hospital. I'm not sure if/how that can be overcome.

Actually I really believe that if you are faced with anything during labour that requires attention,the person you will want is the best one for the job.I thought I would only want women dealing with me,but some of the kindest and gentlest people who did deal with me were men.I had some great women too,but overall the men were kinder.I understand you have good reasons to feel this,but so did I,and that changed.I would express your feelings though,as they may be able to work around it,and I would also consider having a doula.Best of luck.

It would probably involve a lot of delays, especially at night/weekends when there aren't extra staff around that could be asked to come to the delivery suite. Eg. when I was rushed in with PE there was only 1 anaethetist on at the time.

Have you talked to the Supervisor of Midwives at your hospital?

given the labour shortage in the NHS, you may not have a choice, or you may have to wait a long time and this might not be safe for you and your baby. I think the only way to guarantee an all female team is to go private. On the NHS you will need to make do with who is around I am afraid. Sorry - this is probably not what you want to hear but at least it gives you time to get used to the idea. Also, I don't think it will necessary overshadow the birth, what is more likely to overshadow the birth experience is if something goes wrong and you don't get the help you and baby need quick enough - in these circumstances it is unimportant if doctors etc are male or female IMO. By the way, I had an all female NHS team, they were all arguing with each other and at each other's throat. Sure it is not representative but it was not nice and did not inspire any confidence at all. When I told midwife that gas and air was not working, she just said keep trying, later I read in my notes that the tank had been empty all along. So don't think that women necessarily listen better to you, some do, some don't, pot luck if you ask me. Good luck with your birth and hope you will be happy with how it goes.

Hi

There are very few male midwives so the chances if you being allocated one would be very slim. If you object to care by a male mw I don't think it would be unreasonable to substitute a female instead. However when it comes to obs (or paed drs for that matter) it may not be possible to get a lady instead of a man. There will be no fobbing off if the only staff are male - we cannot bring a lady dr in when she is not working if it is the weekend or middle of the night. It also depends on how many drs are around at your hospital- most will have a reg and consultant. If they both happen to be male and it is the middle of a
weekday then there may be a women that could be called upon but tbh I would say the chances would, unfortunately be slim.

I had issues with it and it was in my birthplan that I wanted all female staff if possible (I recognised that it may not be). The anaethatist (I can't be bothered to look up correct spelling) was male which I wasn't bothered with but I did have a female doctor.

I have to say I found her very abrupt anyway and wasn't keen. It was an emergency and DS had to come out quickly so I just didn't care who was there. There wouldn't have been time to call anyone else anyway so I would have had to make do with whoever was on duty at the time.

You can certainly specify it but you must be prepared for that fact that you are going to have to have whoever is available if they need to get a doctor in and it is a male. Hopefully you won't need to have a doctor anyway if you have a straight forward birth, pnly the MW, who would more than likely be female and it would be easier to request that you don't have a male MW.

I always try and see female doctors etc still but honestly, when it comes down to the safety of you and your baby, it really won't matter.

Hope it goes well for you.

Hi
To be completely honest with you, it isn't possible for you to dictate the gender of the healthcare staff looking after you - or their race, or their religion, etc etc.

It's extremely unlikely that your midwife will be a man but quite likely (more than 50% chance) that your obstetrician and/or anaesthetist will be male.

I'm sorry - as NHS staff, we try to accommodate reasonable requests but at any one time, there is a named anaesthetist and a named obstetrician for labour ward with associated juniors of either gender. To substitute any of these individuals means massive rota reshuffling and another area will go short if requests like this are honoured. Outside the hours of 8-5, staff are even scarcer and the staff on call from home are only called in for an absolute dire emergency (two simultaneous Cat 1 sections, high risk section, difficult airway, etc)

I don't mean to belittle your request as I can tell it's important to you but if you really feel strongly about it, the only way to guarantee is to arrange for a private female obstetrician and specify all-female staff (even then, however, the female obs may not work with a female anaes in a private capacity, and so on).

Hi I thought I would say as I am a childhood abuse victim most medical staff offer to make appointments with female only staff (as it happens I am perfectly fine with male staff and say to treat me like normal). But during labor there was no way to guarantee female only even if I had wanted it. IME if you have a reason why you dont want male staff they will try to help but you will have to have a good reason and have it on your notes.

On OBEM on Monday there was a lovely male midwife. I'd have him over any of the female ones I had during labour with DC1. He was really positive, encouraging and caring. (not that femals always aren't, just not the ones I had with DC1).

With DD I had a femal midwife, but a male Paedratician and then a male anaethatist and consultant.
With DS I had a femal midwife, registrar, paedratician, anaesthatist, however the consultant was an oncall one as it was sunday morning and he was a male, took a while for him to arrive too.

I didn't have straightforward births with either of mine so I can't comment.
However I do know my sister has had 4 children and never required anyone other than a midwife in the room.

I am not vertain how it works but might be worth asking if you can have females only present at birth where possible on your notes.

Hope everything goes okay for you.

I had two male midwives - both were absolutely lovely, one was an African student midwife who did postnatal with DD1, and a lovely Spanish one at the Rosie with DD2, (think he's been mentioned before on posts).

I also had a male consultant all the way through my pregnancy with DD1, after seeing DS1 born dead at 17 weeks he was my best chance at getting through another pregnancy- didn't care what gender he was! Also another male consultant delivered DD2 (who's first wee on the planet landed straight on his shoes)- considering not many men in the business I seemed to find them all

Echo what everyone else has said, particularly Hellymelly. I found that the male medical staff involved with my labour were much kinder and far more patient than the females.

I went in thinking how uncomfortable I'd be if men ended up being involved, as it turned out there ended up being many people involved (5 men and 6 women were in the room at the point of delivery!) and the men had much more empathy.

If you feel that you have very strong reasons then you should raise it in advance, but ultimately the best person available will be there. Once you're holding your safely delivered healthy baby most other things will become insignificant. If you really don't feel this will be the case then you you should look into paying for private care.

I suppose it depends what hospital you're at. Where I work in the evenings and at weekends there is only one Ob registrar and one Ob SHO in the hospital. The SHO is likely to be a GP trainee and not used for much apart from cannulation and prescriptions. So if you were in labour and there is only one registrar in the hospital and you need a registrar if its a bloke who's on then you're stuck. Our hospital the ratio of men/women Drs is about 50/50 but obviously no way of knowing who is on when you're in labour. So the staff couldn't find you a female Dr if there isn't one there.

even during hte week there is one named Dr per shift for labour ward. Though its more likely that a female Dr would be in the hospital and could be found. Though they'd have to be pulled away from clinic or even Gynae theatre and in an emergency that isn't feasible.

I have known a woman transfer her care to a bigger hospital where she had more chance of a female Dr being available.

You need to talk to the hospital where you're booked and see what the situation is there.