Thursday
May132010
There Are Cesareans... And Then There's Everything Else
Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 4:31PM
Just when you finished rolling your eyes at newspaper editors who insist on calling vaginal birth, “traditional” or “natural” birth while readers wonder if they should acknowledge the 800 pound vagina in the room, there’s a new surgery normative term in town.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen the vaginal birth column in a spreadsheet labeled “Non C-Section Deliveries.” It’s right up there with having patients sign waivers for “attempting” an “elective vaginal delivery.”
Reader Comments (20)
You can imagine my shock and horror when our HEALTH department sent that spreadsheet to me!
That's like calling NOT using a colostomy bag "attempted rectal elimination."
And sex "attempted non-artificial insemination".
Ha! I know, right?
Oh. Em. GEE!
Aww, come on ladies, maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they wanted a generic category to include all those cases where the baby is birthed out of other orifices, like anuses, nostrils and mouths? ;-)
That's disgusting. I'm beginning to get so mad when I read your posts that I might have to stop reading them. It makes me go off on rants and want to break things. Like a doctor's face.
In our little Manage Comments box, I can only see the first line of comments. When I saw yours, B, I thought you were pointing out that it was probably just an unconscious error (with a somewhat telling bias) or just someone who felt that it was gross to type "vaginal" in their spreadsheet.
Then I read the part about nasal birth...
Tiffany, the whole situation is multifactorial. You'd have a lot of different faces of all different professions to break, so perhaps you can channel that hulksmash feeling into something productive. :)
Hopefully my winky face indicated the sarcasm of my post. It is very telling that someone would label a category "non-c-section deliveries". I'd be laughing if the categories were "vaginal deliveries' and "non-vaginal deliveries", because that isn't accurate either (see orifice comments ;-)) It is so simple to be accurate - there is vaginal birth and c-section birth.
Oh, I laughed. Mostly because I didn't expect it.