This topic came up in the community forums a while back and it’s one that I see over and over again. As I settle into the New Year, I’m thinking about my upcoming (and some overdue) health check-ups—teeth, eyes, and, of course, the annual visit to my OB/GYN. The latter prompted this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic:
OB/GYN office walls plastered with baby photos
Given that this is so often the first of many stops on the fertility trail, and given that so many of us don’t have children, but wanted them, doesn’t this seem a tad insensitive?
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s under your skin this week?
Oh, yeah, The Walls of Babies. It is so insensitive I’ve been thinking for a long time about doing a survey of all the OB-GYN’s in my city to see how many have them. And to ask them why they do it and how they think it affects infertile women? (I see from a post I wrote – https://nokiddinginnz.blogspot.com/2014/08/those-walls-of-babies.html – that I’ve been thinking about it for over five years!!!)
It’s why I hate going! When I finally did go, the first room they put me in was PLASTERED with baby pics. I said wow, can I have another room please? The nurse was happy to find me a different room. She said I wasnt the first to ask for a different room. There should be separate waiting rooms and patient rooms for those of us without kids.
I told my doctor they needed two separate waiting rooms after suffering 45 minutes in the waiting room surrounded by pregnant women and women with newborns and parenting magazines and everything baby pamphlets etc. etc. Of course I had to wait so long because my appointment was delayed due to some pregnant lady. Now that I think about it they should have a separate office entirely!
I’m trying to come up with a worthy comment Lisa but this one is pretty painful and I can’t seem to word it just right. I’m sad for the reminders of what I’ll never have but still wish the excited pregnant ladies the best, while trying not to show how pained I am.
…same happens to me…
This is just what I was thinking last week while sitting in the waiting room at my GYN’s for half an hour and looking at a huge picture of a big pregnant belly – double of a life size. I was thinking – not only is it insensitive to childless-not-by-choice women, but is it really relevant? Isn’t a gynecologist’s job to make sure that all clients, whether mothers or not, are healthy at all phases of their lives, being pregnant or not? Shouldn’t there be rather pictures of women of all ages? Aren’t pictures of babies more relevant to a pediatriciant’s office? On the other hand, it should be noted that there is only one (although really huge) picture like that. On the opposite side of the room there is a (much smaller, although beautiful) picture of a desert with bright orange sand. So next time I should remember to sit facing THIS picure… (And hope that it is just an unfortunate coincidence and that they are not trying to suggest it is either being pregnant or living your life in a desert…)
I hate the walls of babies, I think it’s a ludicrous thing to have in a place where lots of women obviously have gynae problems! Ditto for (in)fertility clinics and their stupid bloody baby galleries. However I thought of something that might make people feel better. In Ireland there is no culture at all of an ‘annual OB/GYN’ health check-up. I asked about this at my thrice-yearly cervical smear (the only regular GYN appointment that most women here have), at a ‘Well Woman Clinic’ in the capital city. The doctor was quite bemused and said to me: “Most ladies in Ireland book an appointment when they have had symptoms for a while, like unusual bleeding. They wouldn’t really book an appointment for no reason… I’ve heard that Spanish ladies do this, and American ones, but we wouldn’t do that kind of thing here at all’. Aaarrgh. The only thing you can do is pay a GP, lie about some specific symptoms, and get referred to a consultant (takes up to a year or a more private, maybe two years public). It’s something I’m currently working out how to arrange. So honestly, I wouldn’t mind the baby pics if the OB/GYN health check-up wasn’t an alien concept to the medical profession here. That’s my whine!