Birthing mother abused for refusing male nurse

[sakura184]

This kind of crap is why I opted for homebirths

pjmedia.com/parenting/colorado-doula-and-assault-survivor-investigated-by-dhs-for-refusing-male-nurse-during-birth/

Sakura, I've just realised it's you. We used to talk a lot on MN a while ago, I had a different user name at the time, but yours hasn't changed that much! Welcome back, its lovely to see you here.

I agree you should start a new thread about whether birth should be female centric and what that means. If the thread title posed that as a question, I think you'd get a really interesting debate, with posters joining who might not join this thread.

Personally, I agree birth should be female centric - but I don't think that should mean the exclusion of men. I think the presence of men in the delivery room is a positive thing in many cases, and I suspect has contributed to men taking a more active parenting role than in the past.

And I realize that some women are fine with a man. I myself am not.

@TheBossOfMe

Hi I mentioned below that my husband was at both my births and I did regard this as a positive thing at the time. Women are different, and as a feminist I'm more interested in a woman's right to have a female professional in birth than in a man's right to have a job

Aaarrgghhh

We would just have more female professionals surely? Women are doing all kinds of shitwork for shitpay because men take the best jobs for themselves. We would just get more women into the profession

@sakura184

ob/gyn is becoming increasingly female dominated. I think something like over 85% of newly qualified ob/gyn docs in the US are female and that proportion grows every year... so if it continues then male ob/gyns really will become a dying breed. When you consider only a few decades ago it was male dominated this is very good progress.

@SweetMelodies

Thank you. Yes I do regard that as good progress. There needs to be a tipping point where there are enough women in the profession for the routine misogyny to be dismantle. For example there's no point having more women who carry on the misogynistic traditions, they need to respect the traditional knowledge of midwives, for example . I don't know how respected midwifery is in the US overall.

When I was pregnant in Japan my scan at 35 weeks said the baby was "too big". I told the midwife and she felt my womb and declared "no your baby is small." The midwife ended up being totally right and the scan was wrong. I think it was wrong because my daughter had longer than average legs and the leg bone is measured during he scan to predict overall weight.
Anyway that was just one example of where a midwife's knowledge trumped the ob/gyns technology

I think in an ideal world, every woman should have the right and the ability to choose who attends her in birth. It's a deeply personal time, and being surrounded by people you trust is critical. That is not always practical, though - I had a highly medicalised birth due to significant complications, and although my midwives were both female, the doctor who ultimately delivered my baby, along with the anaesthetist, the paeds doctor standing by to attend to my very ill baby, and the doctor (whose specialism I can't remember) who stopped me bleeding to death were all male. I'm not sure what would have happened had I insisted that they were all women. Possibly it would have been OK - I gave birth in a very large hospital, and female doctors may have been available. But I doubt that it would be practical in most circumstances.

Medicalised births (which are really the only ones in the UK at least which are attended by doctors) often involve teams of specialists from beyond ob/gyn. I don't see how it's possible to insist they are all women.

The US is, I appreciate, very different.

What, are we saying men can't work in childbirth settings now? how ridiculous. In an emergency, you don't fuss about the gender/sex of the person helping you. That isn't feminism. Sexism, yes, but for once it's the man who is the victim.

RedSheep73

As I said below. Why do people always use emergencies to justify men in obstetrics? Women can cope fine in emergencies too you know

TheBossOfMe

I'm sure they were very competent. I'm sure an all female team would've been just as competent.

I'm sure they would have been, Sakura - but surely you don't mean that any specialism that might need to attend a birth should be staffed only by women?

The extent to which midwifery can be practiced in the US varies by state. But to add to the complexity of this discussion, some midwives in the US are male.

The thing is situations defined as emergencies are very commonplace in birth, in fact they are everyday events so I do dislike the attitude that birthing women aren’t supposed to care about anything (men, women, students, no privacy or dignity and so on) because the situation was an emergency. I think respectful dignified care is important whatever the situation. Too many women are leaving hospital mentally damaged by their experience.

I do think the switch to maternity wards being female dr dominated is very welcome. The days of male drs dominating birth reflect the patriarchy perfectly don’t they- women give birth but of course male drs are the ones who make the decisions for her, get the baby there safely and have full access/control of her body.

TheBossOfMe,
I don't know for sure how many women don't want men around them during birth. I don't see what would be wrong with all female staff. I think it would be better for women, yes.

Sakura, those specialists have to deal with many situations beyond childbirth, they don't exclusively work in the labour ward (certainly in the UK). The only way to ensure all female staff would be to have women only hospitals. Which seems a retrograde step, IMO.

SweetMelodies

This idea of "we managed to get a healthy baby out of this carcass" and is misogynistic beyond compare.
Of course a healthy baby is important. But I have noticed that for midwives, a healthy mother is more important than a healthy baby whereas for male ob/gyns it's the opposite.
Ina May Gaskin gods through the diaries of midwives from centuries ago and although they rarely lost a mother they saw it as an utter tragedy if they did. They didn't regard losing the baby to be as bad.
Male ob/gyns for sure prize a healthy baby over the mother

@SweetMelodies sorry that wasn't directed at you, just in agreement with you

@TheBossOfMe

I think women only hospitals would be amazing! I bet women would be queuing up

I also suspect the number of women who want only women attending them in a medicalised birth is very, very small.

In the UK at least, the vast majority of women (think it's about 75%) give birth attended by midwives, not doctors. And a quick Google tells me that 99% of midwives in the UK are women. So for the majority of UK women, it's probably safe to say they experience a female-centric and female-led birth.

Once into consultant-led care, or medicalised births, it's a different story in the UK, depending on what specialisms attend the birth. I suspect in most cases, if your consultant-led care is planned, and not an emergency situation, if want a female consultant, you can request and have one. It's only when there is an emergency that the choice is less practical.

If my DDs birth had been delayed by even a few minutes, she would likely have died, and possibly so would I. Speed of availability rather than sex became the defining choice.

I think women only hospitals would be amazing! I bet women would be queuing up

I'm not sure that's true!

TheBossOfMe
The Uk seems a lot more female centric than the US. I'm not of course saying the choice should be a male consultant or no consultant in an emergency. I just think women should be the default in birth. I really don't know why men are in this field. You can never be sure if they're misogynists in it for the power over women in pain. Just like you can never be sure why a man has dressed up as a woman and is in the toilets with you. It might be benign, it might not. The fact we can't tell the good from the bad and don't know the real motivations is the issue for me

My birth was pretty straightforward with just a midwife ‘delivering’ my baby at the end. However halfway through there was a bit of a wobble and a team headed by a male dr suddenly appeared so I had a male stranger giving me a vaginal examination before everything resumed to normal and they left. I was first and foremost concerned about my baby but it did suck that I was in a situation where I felt like I had to just get on with it and let him do that- male presence, male hands, voice etc just felt uncomfortable and scary to me even though I’ve never been a victim of sexual assault.

When you consider the amount of women who have a past of sexual assault by a male, you realise a much higher number of women are going to be negatively effected by a male dr treating them intimately, particularly in a very vulnerable situation.

But I have noticed that for midwives, a healthy mother is more important than a healthy baby whereas for male ob/gyns it's the opposite.

Maybe as important, not more. But overall, yes I agree that midwives are far, far better at prioritising the needs of the mother. I wonder if it is a tendency amongst doctors to see the baby as the patient, not the mother. And lets face it, doctors can sometimes suffer a bit from a god complex. Midwives tend to see themselves more as part of a caring profession. Doctors I suspect think of themselves as a fixing profession. I'm not 100% convinced that works so well in a childbirth situation.

This is a very interesting discussion, Sakura - thanks for starting it. I'm popping out now, but will be back later. Hope the thread is still going then.

I mean what if your ob/gyn watches porn? How do you know he does or doesn't? Porn dehumanizes women, makes them "less than" as a class. Then he goes to work and has power over very vulnerable women

Coming at this from a completely different perspective - during my labour I had only females. The cruelty I experienced from them was unreal - including removing gas and air with no reasoning - and it took the male consultant to come in for them to treat me like a human in pain. He was kind and gentle, unlike the women.

More recent gynae issues meant I saw both male and female gynaecologists. I ended up raising a complaint against the female for negligence and, again, cruelty - I caught her mocking my pain with the large burst ovarian cyst with the (female) nurses. The man was the one that operated; the man squeezed my hand and told me he’d look after me under anaesthetic.

For these reasons, I’d hate a female-only gynae system.