Why I Stopped Returning My OB’s Phone Calls

I was eight weeks post-partum. My abdomen still ached where the c-section scar was slowly forming. My head was throbbing from an exhaustion-induced headache. I was pretty sure I had washed my hair recently but for some reason my scalp itched. I sat fidgeting on the exam table while my daughter slept in her pink carseat on the chair beside me. My doctor looked at me as if she misunderstood me. “What did you say, Rachel?” she asked. “Birth control. I would like to get on some form of birth control that you would recommend.” I continued to stare at my shoes. My husband was in the waiting room. He knew I was notoriously unable to communicate with my obstetrician, so I wanted to be able to tell him that I had asked about birth control. It would be the first thing he asked when we left.

She stared at me. “You don’t need birth control. Just get pregnant again, come to me, we will do another c-section”, she said making notes in her paper files. She wasn’t kidding. I prodded one more time, tentatively, to make sure this wasn’t sarcasm. I knew it wasn’t, but I was desperately trying to speak aloud my needs and concerns. “I mean, I just don’t think we want to have another child so quick” I responded. “Nonsense. You are both getting older. Why wait? Start now. No, I won’t prescribe it. Why go on any medication?”

I remember walking out of the office, clutching the carseat carrier like an exhausted relay runner. I wanted to pass this baton-baby to my husband so I could examine what went wrong in that encounter. Why did I not stick up for myself? Why did I defer to what someone else thought was best for me? I was college-educated, with a masters to boot. I came from a comfortable family and my husband was the dark and handsome intellectual I always had wanted to marry. Why, why was someone like me unable to make her own medical decisions? What about pregnancy had taken away my voice?

My husband looked over at me in the car, and I could feel his question floating in the silence. “I don’t want to talk about it” I said, feeling the weight of my inabilities lay firmly on my shoulder. “But you should,” he said, “and next time I will be in the exam room with you”. But I had decided there wouldn’t be a next time. I thought back to this long pregnancy journey and my misplaced trust in my obstetrician. I thought to myself, no, I am not going back. I will find another doctor.

I had brushed off some red flags. When I became pregnant, I was confident in my obstetrician preferences. I wanted a practice that had no more than two or three doctors. I wanted a woman to be my primary OB, and I wanted it within a 10 mile drive of my house. On paper, this doctor fit the bill. Plus she was covered by my extremely sparse insurance! When I arrived at her office, I noticed that I was the only one in the waiting room and that the waiting room was dark. She kept the lights off! Later, I would read online in reviews that she cut corners in any way she could, the power bill being one of them. When she took me back, she confirmed my pregnancy and then laid down the ground rules. First among them was no more gym time. I had became quite a weightlifter over the past two years and this broke my heart. I was under the impression that you could work out all throughout pregnancy unless you had a serious problem. That wasn’t the worst part. Secondly, she insisted we have no sex. As in none, no excitement, don’t pass go, don’t collect $200.

But surely you had a precondition, right Rachel? Nope. My pregnancy was pretty run of the mill right up until a week before I delivered. There was absolutely nothing to preclude me from two activities that are very well known to be safe in pregnancy. But she laid these rules down with the caveat, “the baby comes first”.

The baby also came before my mental health apparently. I suffer from a case of mild depression that I would describe as “creeping”. It sneaks up on me, coloring my actions in a subtle gray cast, until I don’t even notice the change in the color of my perception. When I was about 4 months pregnant, I had asked her if there were any safe anti-depressants during pregnancy. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind anymore. After all I was no longer working out, having sex, or anything else that could be construed as positive for your mental health. She replied “No, just watch happy movies. Think happy thoughts.” Later, I found out that on a few different occasions, my mother and husband had pulled her aside asking about my mental health. She had replied with dismissive overtones to them as well.

But why didn’t I change practices? No one liked her. Not my mother. Not my husband. Not even my boss. I guess I felt locked in. I had made this choice and by the time I started really feeling a certain type of way, I was almost halfway through my pregnancy. There’s also the fact that this was my first pregnancy. I didn’t know what was normal. My insurance hadn’t really allowed me to visit doctors too often, so I hadn’t had any practice in standing up for myself against a medical professional. Maybe every woman has second thoughts in choosing their OB, I would think to myself.

Now, just to clear up any assumptions, despite refusing me antidepressants or birth control post-partum, this doctor was not anti-medication. She happily prescribed me an expensive multivitamin along with nausea pills. After several years of introspection, I have come to the conclusion that she assumed women (with the exception of herself) are less intelligent and less deserving of truth. When my ultrasound revealed I was having a girl, something I relished wholeheartedly, she put her hand on my shoulder, gave me a sullen smile, and told me that maybe next time it would be a boy.

One of the most horrifying incidents post-partum included removing my staples from my c-section scar. I was laying flat, and I turned to ask her to let me know when she started, so I could practice a bit of meditation to get my mind off of what was happening. I had never had surgery before and for some reason the idea of removing staples kept grossing me out. “Sure,” she said, making eye contact with my husband. She was examining the area and I started to feel a tug. “Have you started?” I asked. “No” she said tersely, giving him a stern look, willing him to keep his mouth shut. “Yes, sweetie, she started” he said, giving me a truth that she thought I didn’t need to know. There she was, at work on my body, speaking to my husband instead of me.

The United States of America has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world. While we can attribute that rapidly rising statistic to our burgeoning waistlines, persistent biases against pain reported by women, or overworked medical practitioners, something must be said for the distance at which we hold our physicians. They have gone to school for years, and yes, they are the medical professional in the room. You probably don’t have lupus and most of the tests you think you need…you don’t. Defer to their judgement in most cases. However, as women, we have to start standing up for ourselves, especially in childbirth.

Ironically, it’s this very statistic that plays in to my birth story. At 36 weeks, I started to develop a nagging headache. Not a migraine, not even something that pre-pregnancy would merit medication. Just a run of the mill headache, but constant, always behind my eyes. I mentioned it to my OB. “You spend too much time in front of the computer” she suggested. She took my blood pressure, which had never been amazing. It was slightly more elevated than usual. Being a worrywart, I already knew the symptoms of pre-eclampsia. I asked her if she was concerned. She shook her head and sent me off to work. But I guess, something stuck with her. She called before I had even gotten on the expressway. She told me, just to be on the safe side, to go to the hospital and get checked out. Yup, certifiable, protein in my urine, pre-eclampsia. I was put on medication immediately. I spent the next few days in and out of the hospital, getting monitored, getting sent at home. Asking for me to come back, sending me home again. I guess out of sheer frustration from multiple ultrasounds, my water broke at the end of the week (kidding about the frustration) and Vicky was born that day. However, I often wonder what would’ve happened if I didn’t push as hard as I did when speaking about my headache and my blood pressure.

We don’t owe my OB any money. Our account is settled. After the birth control fiasco I stopped picking up her office phone calls. Then she started leaving messages on my husband’s phone. And then my mother’s. Then she started calling my cell phone from blocked numbers, private calls, leaving voicemails asking when I would be coming in for my annual. I try not to think of her. I don’t answer unknown calls anymore. I also try not to cloud my heart with discontent, as this women did bring my lovely Vicky into this world. I cannot truly hate someone who did that. But it’s a long road to understanding how I played such a passive role in one of the most important events of my life. I have a long way to go before I feel comfortable with medical professionals again on a personal level. Yet, next time, if there is a next time, I will find my voice. I will raise my voice. And I won’t let decisions about my very own life be made by someone else.

I hope you do the same.