OK folks,...this is literally part of my job,...going to deliveries of babies. In all seriousness, the WORST comments,...by far,...will come out of the mouths of male obstetricians.
These are real. No joke.
1. The woman is in the heat of labor, the baby isn't moving because she's trying to push a watermelon out the hole the size of a lemon.
The baby is too big, so out come the episiotomy scissors,...he's going to have to cut the tissue between the vagina and the anus. Oh yeah,...this is a thing. Just before the "snip", out of his mouth he says,
"You might feel a little discomfort." Keep in mind,...there's no lidocaine injection to numb up the area,...no time for that,...the baby is in distress and needs to come out.
I looked at my team members standing at the infant warming bed,...we were waiting for the baby to be handed to us. Our eyes all got big like,...
"Did he actually say that?"
2. My own wife,...our second child. Epidural anesthetics failed x 2,...she's going to have to do this
au natural,...and "V-back",...vaginal delivery after a previous cesarian section (our first child). Keep in mind, there is an increased risk of uterine rupture doing V-back deliveries,...so this is in the back of my mind the whole time. At any rate,...the baby is coming,...of course, he's not able to move,...big kid. The first thing the OB doctor does is get out the lube,...fine,...but then he is massaging my wife down there,...while looking into my eyes in a real creepy way. Now,...things are moving along here, my wife is in distress, the baby is in distress,...and I am imagining myself doing some serious physical harm to this doctor. The baby gets stuck,...out come the scissors,...sure as anything,...
"You might feel a little discomfort" comes out of his mouth. (I swear, do they teach this phrase in medical school?). My wife, shortly later pushes out a full-grown English Bulldog,...I mean 11lb, 11oz/5.3kg baby,...his head was wider than it was tall,...felt like a heavy cement block compared to most babies I deal with. As any woman can imagine,...severe vaginal lacerations requiring over 2hrs worth of internal stitches to stop the bleeding. The whole time,...my wife never screamed,...never made any vocalizations,...just sucked it all up like no Navy Seal could ever manage to do. Another level of respect for her. The next day,...the doctor comes in,...my wife can barely move,...I cannot imagine the swelling and pain she was in.
"So, wasn't this better than a C-section?" I gave him a look like, WTH! If my wife had a jet pack on her back and could launch herself at that man's throat, she surely would have.
Keep in mind, this OB doctor had a reputation for being one of the best in the Grand Rapids area,...and after our little experience,...I made sure all my female co-workers knew otherwise.
Oh, and to top it off,...she had to have a full reconstructive surgery years later,...and to this day, her right sacral-iliac joint has not fused. She walks with a bit of limp and frequently has back pain. So,...as much as I am not a fan of C-sections, in general,...the babies generally have less respiratory difficulties after birth,...but they have their place. Hindsight is 20/20, but I think we would have went with a C-section had we known.
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