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When I was married several years back, I experienced a miscarriage and since I had never been pregnant before, I didn’t know what was happening so my employer (I worked at a doctor’s office at the time) sent me to an ob/gyn just down the street (because I was bleeding heavily and they knew I was pregnant). Upon arrival at the ob/gyn, they recognized it immediately and sent me to get a UA done first and when he came to the room and confirmed my loss, I sort of mentally blanked out and did not realize until about an hour later that not only had I walked out of the office without getting the bloodwork done but I had driven approximately 3.5 miles before realizing I was even in a vehicle.Fastforward a few years….I’m pregnant and I walk into the ob/gyn office on the other side of town, turns out it was the same office and they had only relocated. The nurse calls me back to the examining room and while perusing my file, casually says, “oh, I see you’re a frequent flyer”… 😳. At first I was confused, as I had not been to an ob/gyn since my first pregnancy and once I realized this was the same obstatrician’s office that sent me a cumulative bill for a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage and then had a mouthy nurse comment (inconsiderately and inaccurately) on my current pregnancy, I immediately requested a new nurse and for her not to return to my room. I’m not usually a rude person but she had pushed me over the edge.I’m sure this post will be met with all kinds of scruples since I operated a vehicle after mentally snapping or perhaps my response to the nurse with an attitude was not appropriate but it is what happened.

I’m not an OB/GYN (yet) so these happened during my student and intern rotations.A 13-year-old girl was brought in to the delivery room, hemorrhaging and about to deliver. Both baby and mother were saved. The next morning the girl’s father announced:“I’m leaving now with my daughter, and we are not taking the baby.”Turned out the baby’s father was actually her 17-year-old brother, who had raped her since the age of 9. The police were called, and I’m not sure what happened (likely nothing at all). But the baby got a happy ending: one of the policemen who came in had been trying for years to have a baby; his wife was apparently infertile. The little boy was adopted into a loving home.The next story was of a couple who had spent 15 years trying to conceive, countless miscarriages, a stillbirth and the last baby had died of an unknown cause at 1 week old.They had finally had another baby, a little boy this time. Everything looked good, but because of the previous tragedies, we wanted to keep him in hospital to run tests and monitor him closely for the first week. The father refused. They took him home the following day without any tests. The look in that mother’s eyes I can’t even describe; she had suffered so much that in her mind he was already dead. Her eyes were completely lifeless.I know the pain of losing a rainbow baby, so that was particularly heart-breaking to watch.

My mother had a OB/gyn she really liked and trusted.I was not having any problems with my periods, and I wasn’t sexually active, but when I was a senior in high school, my mother made me an appoint to see her OB/gyn, just to talk. I wasn’t going to have a PAP smear, or anything, unless I wanted to experience one with someone I knew. I was just going to talk, and get an introduction to what OB/gyns did (among other things, I was shown a speculum, and told what it was for, but it was not used on me, and the mechanics and purpose of PAP smears was explained), and also get shown (by a female nurse) the proper way to do a breast self-exam.My mother wasn’t comfortable herself with coming out and saying “When you decide to be sexually active, which will probably be soon, since you are about to start college, get yourself to either a gynecologist, or a Planned Parenthood clinic, and also, make your potential partner get tested for HIV (it was 1984). If you need to get tested yourself as a good-faith act, do it.” But I got that lecture, very calmly and gently from the doctor, and I took it to heart.I have always made a new partner get tested, and I never once had sex without using birth control, except when my husband and I were actually trying to conceive.I never had an unplanned pregnancy, and I am HIV negative, even though I first became sexually active during a very dangerous time in the country’s history.I also have always faithfully done my self-exams, and gotten my PAP tests done regularly. That Q&A my mother arranged for me started me on some good habits, and succeeded in what she primarily set out to do— made me not afraid of gynecologists.I realize that not every woman has a doctor she likes and trusts, but if she does, and can afford an appointment that is probably not covered by insurance, this is a very good thing to do for a daughter.ETA: I just thought for the record, I’d add a little bit more about this OB/gyn. My mother first connected with him in the early 1970s, and he wasn’t the doctor who delivered me (she wasn’t crazy about that doctor), but he was the doctor who had delivered my brother. He was a strong supporter of breastfeeding in the early 70s, which was a rare creature, and also of legal abortion. Yes, he was a man, but finding a woman OB/gyn at that time, even in New York, was a challenge, and he had very empowered nurses. According to my mother, the nurses called him by his first name, it wasn’t a workplace where they called him “Dr.,” while he called them by their first names. And in the early 1970s, he had the savvy to ask patients if they wanted a female nurse present at an exam for their comfort.My mother stayed with this doctor for as long as she lived in New York. When she moved to Maine after my father died, her new gyn was a woman, but she always thought this man was great at his job. When he died, she sent flowers.Personally, I have always sought out women OB/gyns, and women PCPs as well, but I did like this man when I had this initial consult.