That guy sounds fucking terrible, I'm so sorry.

Yeah there’s two different kinds of midwives — Nurse Midwives (RNs who have insanely high levels of education and training — need a masters+RN+a million hours of training—probably did your implant insertion) and Professional Midwives, whose training is much less rigorous. The first kind can do many more procedures.…

Uh, it’s not only “not feminist or whatever,” it's misogynist and self-hating.

This isn’t related to obstetrics, but we had an emergency a few years ago with my youngest daughter - she needed a bronchoscope procedure and they had to call in the on calls to do it because it was at like 9:00 or 10:00 pm. The whole team were women - surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurses, everyone. The surgeon and…

Well, aseptic technique in childbirth was discovered because of midwives. Once upon a time, childbed (Puerperal) fever was thought to be a normal event following childbirth. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis observed that women being delivered by doctors had 3 times the mortality rate of women delivered by midwives. The reason?…

She was clearly raised in a patriarchal version of Christianity. Brainwashing can take awhile to undo.

Gah! I’m so sorry that you went through this. Your experience is basically all the things I said I didn’t want in my birth plan. I also “poopied all over the doctor,” but because she was A DOCTOR, she didn’t care at all, because that’s part of normal childbirth.

That’s the fur of competence.

I wondered this too because it’s such a fucking weird thing to say. I thought maybe she had her babies in the ‘70’s. I looked her up and she’s been married for 14 years, so assuming she had her babies after that, it was very recent. So she’s only come to the realization that women are competent doctors in the last…

I had an all-women team when my tubes were tied. Female doctor/surgeon, female nurse, female anesthesiologist, female attending physician. Even the reception staff and nurses were female. I only got to choose my OB-GYN, but doubt I would have been nearly so relaxed if it hadn’t been that way.

...I don’t see the irony?

That guy sounds fucking awful. It’s all terrible professionalism, but I think the absolute worst was that he said ‘poopie’. Ugh.

And really, unless that baby comes shooting out of your vagina like a cannonball, I’m not sure what “reflexes” have to do with delivering babies.

Psssst! Your friend is not a feminist.

Good rule of thumb for anyone aspiring to deliver babies: be kind, a little witty, and listen to the mother-to-be. Whether you’re a midwife, or a woman doctor, or a man doctor, just make sure to do those things in addition to what methods your training prescribes.

I had a ghastly experience with my one birthing experience. The only OB in town had huge hands. Gigantic!!!! And he had pro life posters everywhere. He was cold and took forever to examine me.

The worst part of this, tbh, are the gorrilla forearms.

Semi-related: a close friend who is a feminist and all that good stuff? When she got married a few years ago she insisted on having a male officiant because a woman ‘just didn’t feel important or ceremonial enough, sorry if that’s not feminist or whatever.’ I just let it go but it still pisses me off - like if someone…

My health care network hires midwives to do run-of-the-mill gynecological things. My birth control implant was inserted by a midwife. It’s pretty cool.

When in the hell were you first pregnant, in the ‘40s?