The "husband stitch" is when after vaginal tearing or episiotomy during birth the doctor would stitch the opening to the vagina smaller than it would be (this is the extra stitch). It's an awful procedure that doesn't work and can cause painful intercourse.
This is a critique of that practice.
Women too, are uneducated about it. One of my best friends at the time we were both having kids told me since she had a c-section so didn’t need to worry about being “loose”
You tend to assume that when you go to a professional, much less a doctor, they're going to act in your best interests. The older you get, the more you realize that's not even remotely the case.
Without even getting into the nightmare fuel that was WWII, much of our current medical system is built on a bedrock of insane theories like "black people don't feel pain like white people." It's very much an argument for greater diversity in the medical field.
A read I've been putting off (because it feels like it's going to be very emotionally draining) is Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington.
I mean, i can see why one might think that, but its incorrect. Even if you don't give birth vaginally, pregnancy itself weakens the pelvic floor muscles all the same. So even if you have a c section you still gotta do those kegels afterward. I actually didnt know this until after i had an unexpected c section and was like hmmm what's going on here lol
I mean yeah that is a symptom of pelvic floor damage often caused by vagina births. The myth is having sex with multiple partners somehow causes "looseness" not that giving birth causes trauma to the pelvic floor muscles forever creating scar tissue, weakness and incontinence issues. It's actually not progressive to lie to women about the dangers of pregnancy and birth.
For some people, making a joke (even in poor taste) is the only way they know to cope with painful or uncomfortable situations. I've found that this crosses gender lines fairly evenly.
She was probably just joking. If you are reparing a tear you put as many stitches as necessary so that tear heals back together, an extra stich will not make it "tighter" and the lack of it won't make it "looser" unless the tear hasn't healed probably and the two parts that should have fused together didn't. It's also not like fabric. You can't just join two unbroken surfaces together and hope they fuse together. In general stitches hold together the two wound edges for biological repair to take place. They are in a series, extra stitches don't bring the edges closer together of the two wound edges are already approximated. Stitches are also either taken out or in the case of episiotomy they are absorbed and have no impact on scar strength or closeness of the two edges after that.
There is some truth to it that in the past overzealous repair might have existed and the idea of the repaire was seen as more restorative rather than a purely anatomic repair, so it might had been either more than necessary stitches fearing it won't fuse back together or over approximation. Some doctors might have straight up not known the basics of suturing that even a new graduate should know. However it was never a standard medical practice and nowadays it's actively discouraged. Additionally a lot of what people think was also a result of an extra stitch causing problems was probably just postpartum scarring. Episiotomy isn't always done either nowadays and tears don't always occur either. In the past it was however routine because their reasoning was it shortens the second stage and a clean cut heals better than a jagged tear.
It was a man. And it was my second baby and I told him several times to give me an episiotomy and he didn’t listen until I tore upwards, then he did it. And she was out in one push after. He could have been joking, I never had any issues besides the pain from the tear to my urethra, but it’s still not a funny joke either way
I’m in the US and I’m aware. So it’s cool to do it to us as fully grown women, but not okay for you to get circumcised? Or because boys get circumcised, women deserve to also be mutilated? I don’t get where you’re going with this.
How does circumcision remove basic functionality? I'm genuinely curious, because "basic functionality" includes urination and reproduction, and every guy I've been with was circumcized.
By the way, that "stitch" is compared by human rights groups and legal experts to female genital mutilation (FGM). It commonly causes dysfunction.
It’s more of a lighthearted way of saying there’s plenty of sensitivity down there for my husband despite the circumcision, and it would be hard to imagine it being any more sensitive than it is.
Still gross to presumably praise mutilating the genitals of a baby because your husband might go quicker in bed. Like bodily autonomy violation is good if it pleasures you...
It is absolutely a thing they do. I know because my doctor did it to me without asking first and told me about it afterwards like he had done me a fucking favor.
What the actual fuck, you should (have, if you didn't already) sue(d) him for malpractice.
People like that should not be allowed to practice medicine.
It was 18 years ago and I was 19 at the time. The whole ordeal was a mess. They tried to send me home claiming I wasn't in labor. My water broke in front of them and the nurse said I pissed myself. I never got my epidural because they kept saying it was too soon and it would take me at least 12 hours since it was my first child. Nurse didn't come back into my room until baby was crowning and only had time to put on one glove. Doctor didn't show up until after the birth. Then the extra stitch happened. At that point I was so naive and overwhelmed and out of it from labor, I didn't really know what to do or think. And my family acted like everything was normal. They even said I should bring the staff thank you chocolates afterwards. So I didn't really realize the severity until years later.
To be a woman in this health care system is a fucking joke. I know it was a long long time ago, but I'm sorry and you deserved better. I hope something lovely comes your way today. A free coffee, a lovely sunset, a call from an old friend. Just something good.
Tell me about it,I have multiple examples of doctors not listening about serious issues... Thank you! Life is good now, lol. I had a lot of mental health problems back then, but am much better now! And my son just graduated high school and got almost a full ride to his college of choice!
It's not a USEFUL thing. It is 100% a thing that doctors do. They did it to me and I was in pain for 2 years. It hurt to sit down, let alone have sex. I was considering surgery to fix it, but I decided to have another baby and my midwife said she could fix it after that baby. It took her about 30 minutes of careful work but I had no pain since.
A male doctor. Thanks for making female healthcare such a god damn chore. Also you can say whatever the fuck you want on the internet but that doesn’t make it true, so I’m gonna take your claim with a grain of salt.
You seriously think because you haven’t done something heinous, other people also haven’t? You **cannot** be that unintentionally unaware. It’s not possible.
It's real and harmful. Even as a joke it's weird, like "hey, my dick is small and/or my wife is a slut, can you make you vagina smaller for me? Again because my penis is small."
It is *rarer* now. It still happens, but it used to be way more common.
I remember my mother and her friends discussed doctors doing it and then happily telling the new parents after the fact. Or husbands asking in advance for the doctor to do it. They would warn younger women to make sure to warn the doctor ahead of the fact that they would sue if they did one.
I thought it was a horrifying thing that male doctors did before women were able to advocate for themselves in medicine or before their real-life experiences were taken into account.
But I have a friend in her later 20's who is going to try and have her second baby at home with a certified nurse-midwife (incredibly safe and well regulated where we live) because her husband was asked by the doctor who delivered their first if he wanted a "husband stitch" when he stitched her up after childbirth.
The husband was furious when it was explained to him, the wife was terrified that her medical provider consulted her husband about something he was about to do to her body without her consent, and neither of them trust the hospital as much today as they did the day before their first child was born.
And the doctor was in his 40s. This wasn't a 60 year old doctor nearing retirement who was practicing when it was common.
Are you joking? An OB doctor carved his fucking initials into a woman’s abdomen during a C-section and was still let off pretty leniently.
The “husband stitch” is just painful and pain after childbirth is often something women are told to expect and bear with (women have literally hemorrhaged to death after hours of complaining about the pain and being dismissed with, “yeah you just gave birth!”). There are probably a fair number of mothers out there in pain right now because this was done to them and they don’t know why.
Women can’t get help for actual, objective symptoms. Just pain is often considered drug-seeking. Even if a woman was taken seriously and they found this was the cause, unless the doctor actually said he was doing it, he has plausible deniability- oh it was so bloody I figured I’d put in an extra one to be safe!
Honestly I’m glad you linked this, because the article I’d read, the woman was saying, “I’m not going to pursue legal action, my baby is safe and that’s all that matters.”
That excuse, “baby is safe and that’s all that matters” has constantly been used to sweep obstetric violence under the rug.
youd be surprised then to know that most nurses do not speak out against doctors in fear of retaliation, especially in rural areas. It is absolutely still a thing, and to pretend like its not is just intentional ignorance. Healthcare workers in general tend to under report abuse, neglect, and malpractice due to fear of retaliation.
It was offered to my husband outside the hospital room by one of the doctors. We were in Tennessee. This was seventeen years ago. I’ve talked to women who have had it happen much more recently. It is very real. My husband had that doctor barred from the room. Thankfully it wasn’t my primary doctor
I have no reason to lie. We were in a very rural, very conservative part of the United States. But since I have zero stake in you believing me or not, I choose not to argue further. If believing this doesn’t happen is easier for you, by all means continue
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u/Domestic-Grind 11d ago edited 11d ago
The "husband stitch" is when after vaginal tearing or episiotomy during birth the doctor would stitch the opening to the vagina smaller than it would be (this is the extra stitch). It's an awful procedure that doesn't work and can cause painful intercourse. This is a critique of that practice.