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From: jill%cirrusl@oliveb.atc.olivetti.COM (Jill Wilker)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: "Scholarly objective evaluations of AA."
Message-ID: <9103140151.AA01647@ss130.CIRRUSLOGIC.uucp>
Date: 14 Mar 91 21:17:55 GMT
Organization: Cirrus Logic Inc.
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> Someone else wrote:  [I didn't save the name]
>I just gave birth 5 months ago, and I think I'd have tried to walk out
>of the delivery room if my attending nurse had been male!  My husband
>is male and was present, and my OB was male and present for the birth,
>but the OB nurses were women.
>....
>It was also pleasant to have at least one person present in the room
>who'd actually given birth, so the situation wasn't theoretical for
>her.  Obviously, not all females have given birth; but no male has, at
>least to my knowledge.

I gave birth last August.  My husband was present, as was a wonderful
woman friend.  My husband was my focus (breathing,etc ) but my friend
was my moral support.  The OB nurse (during the majority of my labor,
I had the same one - this is rare I am told.)  was a white woman who
had had children.  My OB-GYN is also a woman.

I was very lucky.  I had two very close friends (husband and Barb) who
were there to help me and talk to me.

Your point about what to do if the OB nurse is not "right" for you...
that is a good one.  Any patient in a hospital should have the right
to refuse treatment in a non-emergency from anyone that they do not
get "along with".  This works fine if other help is available (in a
larger hospital, this should be fine), and the request is not based on
preformed ideas about race, sex, etc.  Now this sounds fine in theory
but I personally don't know if I would have appreciated any OB nurse
(male, black, white, female, red, alien) who had not given birth
before.  Trying to imagine if my OB nurse was male - that is
difficult... I really don't know what I would have done in that
situation.  I most likely would have told him off a couple of times
since I knew that he obviously had no way of knowing what I was going
through.  My husband (a wonderfully empathetic and caring and etc and
etc MALE) can only guess - only someone who has given birth can REALLY
know.

Now, do I think that a male OB nurse can do an adequate job of helping
a laboring woman... well... the suggestions that my nurse gave as far
as changing position, moving around, checking the baby, etc.  - these
things take experience on the job and mostly can be "learned"...

Knowing that my nurse and my friend had "been" there before proved to
be a big psychological boost that just having my husband there could
not be.

By the way, during my labor, my baby had breathed a lot of meconimum
and needed a peditrician there - the baby doctor that we (my husband
and I) had picked was not available that evening and the doctor on
call was a jerk.  Not only was he a jerk but he was trying to
interfere with the relationship between my OB and myself.  We were
discussing episiomety (spelling ??) and if I would rather tear a
little versus getting cut a little.  He interfered during this and
tried to dominate as a male and as a doctor.  My woman friend (Barb)
almost straggled him (not really)... she eventually told him to "shut
up".  Basically, he was trying to get me to be this "good little girl"
and obey my doctor because my OB should know what's best for me...  (I
am not that young - 26yrs.) I find it interesting that his tone of
voice and speech were really trying to conjure up this "I am the
knowing and experienced doctor, you are a meek little girl" stuff.
Needless to say, we (my husband, Barb, and myself) did not buy into
his theory.  My doctor basically ignored him.  I wonder how many
parents of his patients buy into his crap - "don't question me, I KNOW
better" stuff.

Also it sounds as if you labored in one room and delivered in another.
I was again lucky in that the small hospital that I had access to had
LDR (Labor-Delivery-Recovery) rooms.  No changing rooms in the middle!
Is this option more prevalent on the coasts?

Also, I was wondering about a theory that I have heard about
childbirth and women.  Basically, I have heard that childbirth was
mostly in the hands of women (through mother/daughter, midwives, etc)
until the American Medical Association came along and started making
it illegal and "countrified" not to have a baby in the hospital.  Also
about that time abortion was made illegal... up until that time, it
was considered okay for women to have an abortion until she felt a
quickening (movement).  This was wrapped up in the theory that men
wanted to control the reproductive freedom of women and when and how
they gave birth. I read Mary Daley's book "GynEcology" some time again
and I think that is where this "idea" was brought up.  Is there any
more information about this?  Have I dreamed this up?

Jill