THE Missing Ingredient in Obstetric Training

(Picture found here.)

I have started reading a fabulous book by Carol Leonard who was a midwife who got her start in the 1970's by attending home births with a local OB.  The book is called "Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart" and I must say, it is SO STINKING GOOD.  Really.  You should go buy it HERE.


Anyhooo-

So I am reading tonight and I just start laughing uncontrollably and slapping my hand against the table.  My husband is like, "Say what?" and I read this too him:

(The author and midwife is talking to an OB she works with who she says is extremely gentle and kind to all his patients.  She asks him WHY he is so different than his peers.  He describes some of the women who trained him, Jamaican midwives and part of his "training.")

"Oh, it goes back to those Jamaican midwives in my residency, I guess.  They were set on humbling me, mostly because they could.  I want to think it was because they liked me.  They used to make me do nurses' work.  One day they said they wanted to teach me what it was like to be a woman patient.  They told me to go into the exam room and remove my pants and get up on the exam table with my feet in the stirrups.  I lay there for what seemed like an eternity, although it was probably twenty minutes or so.  Then a a beautiful female medical student came in , nodded to me briefly, snapped on a latex glove, and did a cursory rectal exam.  Then she said something unintelligible to me, distractedly patted my knee, and walked out of the room.  I lay there staring at the ceiling, my face burning with embarrassment.  Then I hear all the laughing outside in the hall.  They were right, those crazy women.  It was a lesson I will never forget."  

Ladies, if this isn't required to graduate as an OB, then gosh dang it, it SHOULD BE.

Hope that brightened your day.  It sure did mine.

Peace out-

(Carol Leonard did not pay me to write this blog post.  But if she wants to be my friend, I am all ears.)