I Kinda Miss My Gynecologist

Postpartum care, or lack thereof

The other day as I was folding my white sweatshirt with a huge screen print of Dolly Parton emblazoned across it, I had a thought. “I should text Sarah.”

Sarah is the name of the midwife who works in my OB-GYN’s office.

I wore that shirt I was folding on the day early last spring that I woke up bleeding and thought I may be miscarrying. The receptionist at the doctor’s office told me to come in that day, but the earliest they could see me was that afternoon. My husband wasn’t allowed in with me due to COVID protocols, and so it was Sarah who both performed the ultrasound that confirmed that everything was fine and Sarah who comforted me when I was terrified and helped me navigate my relief. After she was done, I thanked her for helping me through it.

“Well,” she said, “thank you for wearing that Dolly Parton sweatshirt.”

Sarah is not only good at her job, she is funny and cool.

I can’t text Sarah. I don’t have Sarah’s number, nor do I have the numbers of any of the rest of the staff at my OB-GYN’s practice. It feels strange, after they saw so much of me during pregnancy, that I don’t see any of them anymore.

During most of 2021, I saw more of the staff at my OB-GYN’s office than I saw any of my friends. (That’s both a testament to how often doctors want to see their pregnant patients even during pregnancies where everything goes smoothly and how lazy I am about making plans). I saw them once every four weeks, then once every two weeks, and then once a week and then once every other day, until I gave birth. My doctor checked in on me about 24 hours after Juniper’s arrival, and then I didn’t see her again for a month.

When I showed up for my follow up appointment in December, I felt a little bit like a 20-year-old hanging out in my high school’s parking lot wearing an old letter jacket. I’d graduated. I felt out of place. It was familiar but different. The receptionist had changed her hair.

I received a quick exam. Sarah told me my scrambled reproductive organs looked great, considering a baby had only recently come out of them, and that I could exercise and/or have sex in a few short weeks (in retrospect– lol). Sarah left the room, I put my pants back on, and I was on my way. I haven’t seen any of them since.

I know that it’s a good thing that I’m not spending time every week memorizing the wallpaper in the exam room or familiarizing myself with which chair is “the comfy one” in the lobby of my OB-GYN’s office. Healthy people don’t need to go to the doctor. But there’s something that feels odd about the fact that this group of women (the staff there is all women) was witness to something so life-changing and intimate in my life and the lives of all of their patients and we no longer speak. I witnessed my doctor put her entire hand into my body to pull my placenta out in the minutes after Juniper was born like a grizzly pulling a salmon from the rapids. That’s intimacy! That’s like, sixth base.

While I have no complaints about the quality of care I’ve received from my OB-GYN (something I realize is lucky, considering how much trauma so many people have around experiences in gynecologists' offices), like many things about the US medical system, typical after-care provided to mothers is lacking. Sarah the midwife saw me four weeks after giving birth; the standard in the US for a follow-up visit is six weeks.

Those six weeks after giving birth are some of the most physically and emotionally vulnerable in many women’s lives. So many things can go wrong during that time– infections, pelvic floor issues, bleeding, re-injury, mastitis, mental health issues that are a danger to both mother and baby, something called postpartum preeclampsia, which is an actual medical emergency that can and does kill people. The list goes on. It seems wrong that mothers must patchwork a sufficient support system for whatever problems they might have out of whoever might be around them during that time rather than utilize an existing system designed for the purpose of supporting postpartum women.

After the birth, Juniper saw a doctor three times before I saw mine even once. Josh once asked the baby’s pediatrician about a problem I was having, and the pediatrician gave him a blank look. I jumped in during the awkward silence and reminded him that the pediatrician was there for the baby, not for the mom.

“Who’s there for the mom, then?” he asked me on the way home from the appointment. Answer: her doctor, in theory, but in practice: nobody, actually. For all of the hand-holding expecting mothers with access to prenatal care get during pregnancy, the mainstream medical community expects us to navigate recovery virtually alone.

I bet the phlebotomist who tamed my violent fear of needles wonders about her patients, and the doctor thinks about what kind of little people the babies she delivers are turning into. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t be strange or annoying for a patient to get in touch with staffers at her OB-GYN’s office and see how they’re doing and catch up. But in reality, medical professionals probably have no time; they’re navigating a broken system, too. They’re there to do a job, and, like a contestant on The Bachelor, not here to make friends.

But I kind of miss them.

Maybe I’ll send them a card, just to say hi. That wouldn’t be weird, right?

Image via Shutterstock