Thread is dying, but repeating this for emphasis.

I totally co-sign this. Definitely time to move on.

Astoundingly high numbers of doctors (and really, given that they’re DOCTORS, *one* would be an “astoundingly high number”) really have no idea what normal birth entails.

And are there really great OBs who understand how the female body works during labor and birth? Hell yes. But they’re the exception, not the rule, and it seems to me like generally they gain their knowledge by “outside study” and not in med school and in fact have to contradict or challenge a lot of what they learned in school to gain their understanding.

Astoundingly high numbers. OBs who understand the female body are the exception, not the rule. You’re making some really bold statements without backing them up. Yes, we sometimes do that with regard to fat here, but that’s because it’s primarily been a blog about fat, and there are links to sources for what we’re talking about all over the damned blog.

Here’s the thing: I agree with you. I’ve actually read quite a bit on the subject, and am extremely pro-midwifery and pissed off by what I’ve learned about the way women are often treated during labor and delivery in hospitals. But several people upthread, including me, have said, “Hey, I basically agree with you, but you’re generalizing way too much for comfort here” — and you act like we’re curtailing your freedom of speech.

It’s one thing to say that people in the medical community are frequently fatphobic, that finding a doctor who’s familiar with HAES is a challenge, and that both scientific research and reams of anecdotal experience point to a widespread problem with doctors treating fat patients disrespectfully. It’s another thing to basically be all, “It is impossible for fat people to find respectful doctors who will treat them like human beings! Doctors are ignorant jerks, period!” And what we’re saying is, that’s how you’re coming across, only on a different topic. No, it’s not exactly what you’re saying, and it may not be what you mean at all, but it’s how you’re coming across.

I asked you to let it go because I honestly believe you’ve made your point extremely clear — and since you didn’t respond well to other people saying, “Hey, you might want to consider how you’re coming across here,” I figured there was no point in trying that tactic again. If you just want to fight for your right to insist that the sky is falling, I’m not interested. If you want to attempt to keep talking on an almost-dead thread, maybe you should listen to the people who are bothering to respond to you, and are all somehow reading you differently than you apparently mean to be read.

How would you feel if someone denied your points about the treatment of fat people in much of the medical community by saying “There are a lot of shitty doctors, this is not simply an MD trait, and that really doesn’t mean that MDs are trained in medical school to not understand fatness and weight gain and to simply ignore fat bodies for their convenience”?

A major point of FA seems to revolve around exactly this idea: there’s a body of practice that accepts and perpetuates non-evidence-based medicine in favor of prejudice and “what everybody knows”. I don’t think pointing out that this phenomenon applies to birth is any more an overblown generalization than pointing out that it applies to fat people. I accept that this is not the place for a debate about birth if you say it isn’t, but it really stings being chastized for making basically the same kind of generalized argument people routinely make here.

There are a lot of shitty doctors, this is not simply an OB trait, and that really doesn’t mean that OBs are trained in medical school to not understand real birth and to simply manipulate female bodies for their convience. In fact, that’s probably something that develops over time with doctors who are taking on too many patients and stop caring.

It just sounds a lot like you’re saying, “I’m smarter and know more about pregnancy and birth than all OBgyns who went to medical school and have dedicated themselves to delivering babies. No OB could possibly understand pregnancy, even those who have experienced labour which is a lot since it’s a becoming a female dominated field of medicine. It’s just standard.”

I just think it’s a mistake to talk about “Standard,” because as we know because men have been telling us what’s standard female behavoir for years, there’s rarely if ever an actual standard of practice for anything when it comes to the behavoir and understanding of individuals.

Well, I believe you haven’t heard them, but that just means you’ve been lucky. They’re alive and well today. You can see some of them in action at the blog My OB Said What?!

The bottom line for me is that there are standard practices in obstetrics that aren’t evidence-based, which means they’re not coming from a place where doctors care to actually observe our bodies and learn (and teach) how they work.

Avoiding suffering was precisely why I refused to consider an epidural under any circumstance. It would have caused me more mental and emotional trauma to have to deal with a Real Live Phobia during labor than any pesky discomfort the contractions might have caused me.

THANKYOU for this. Seriously. Although I haven’t had any real kids yet, this is me. The idea of an epidural seriously terrifies me – way more than the thought of labour does! Of course everyone tells me that I will change my mind once I’m in labour, but needles in the spine? Not for me thanks! I can’t even have small ones in the arm without a topical anaesthetic, and I’ve only managed that much within the last year, after some intensive hypnotherapy.

You’ve helped me see that I do not have to even consider the possibility of an epidural if I don’t want to. And that makes the idea of birthing a whole lot less scary. I will be telling everyone that no-one is to so much as mention the word epidural near me while I’m giving birth! Hooray for choice!

I’ve also had three kids in the past four years. So I’ve been up-close-and-personal with modern obstetric medicine.

Like I said, I don’t disagree at all that there are still huge problems with the way women are treated by the medical establishment. However, I disagree that the fact that most births take place in a hospital setting is one of them.

I was raised by an OBGYN. I know a lot of them socially. The doc I see as a patient was my dad’s best student. I didn’t go to med school myself, but I took reproductive biology courses just because they were interesting. I’ve never heard *half* of these myths you claim have “wide traction in the OB world.” A bunch of the others I’ve heard in the context of medical-establishment-beliefs-circa-1970-and-weren’t-they ridiculous.