My Story: Having My Morning Sickness Downplayed by a Male Doctor

MS speaks about her experience with doctors during her pregnancy.

Transcript: 

MS: There was one doctor, though, an older male doctor in the practice, who I felt didn’t really take me seriously when I talked about feeling morning sickness, and I was really, really sick as it turned out. I had something called hyperemesis which is sort of an extreme version of morning sickness, and he kind of, he did a couple things. Like he sort of was like okay kiddo, like he kind of used language that felt a little bit like he wasn’t taking me seriously, and he just kind of said like yeah you know women throw up when they’re pregnant, like that happens, but I was like really, really sick. And then I remember, finally, it was the nurse midwife, interestingly, who I was seeing, and I went in and I’m like, there’s something really wrong. And it turned out, I was completely dehydrated. I had to get hospitalized. They had to give me IV fluids. And so that was definitely a frustrating experience to feel like, and the fact that it happened to have been one of the male doctors, I just was feeling very much like he doesn’t know how terrible feels and he really didn’t, you know, he just didn’t take it seriously when he really should have, and so I’d say that was a negative experience, but overall, I would say, I had a positive experience with the practice in general. 

OBOS Today: Yeah, I’m sorry you had to go through that experience with that doctor, but I’m glad everything else went well. So, now, if you want to just, I guess kind of walk me through the child, the childbirth with twins’ experience. 

MS: So, um. So, I had already had one child, so I had one experience delivering in this particular hospital, and so I was familiar with the hospital, and I was still with the same practice, so I was familiar with all the doctors in the practice. But what was a little more complicated about the pregnancy with twins, and pregnancies with twins are kind of complicated to begin with, they watch you a lot more carefully, plus I was already, I think I was 34, and in the world of pregnancy that’s seen as older, and so they were watching me particularly carefully.