How Baby

I was serious a few weeks ago when I mentioned that one of the things I was looking forward to with my child-free days was being able to go to doctor’s appointments again – my doctor doesn’t allow anyone other than the patient to be present, which has meant that a lot of health concerns of mine have kind of… uh… gone unexamined, for a while.

…but also. Going to the doctor as someone who’s given birth just… sucks.

It’s hard to explain the hopelessness of trying to get help for something that’s bothering you and just hearing ‘it’s not that bad’ or ‘this is normal for women your age’ or ‘this is how your body works now’. I feel completely demoralized, discouraged from seeking further care for actual things that are bothering me, because I’m so sick of being told there’s nothing that can be done, or that they only treat certain conditions after they get ‘really bad’, as if you’re not at the doctor because it already feels serious enough to overcome the mortifying ordeal of talking to a human being about your goddamn pelvic organs.

Did you know something like one third of people who’ve given birth have some sort of pelvic organ prolapse? Like, your meat is sloughing into your vagina, and it’s like, ‘no, come back when it’s BAD.’

ONE THIRD.

And to top it all off, my doctor’s metric for good pelvic health is apparently ‘can be used for sex’, like, fuck, that all that’s important is whether or not someone can put their dick in me?! Great! Feeling super great about that, honestly.

All in all, post-partum health is a fucking joke, even eight years out, and my experience being a person trying to interact with that system has completely discouraged me from continuing to seek care, and that fucking sucks, because it’s not like I can shop around to find a better fit – like many places, there’s a shortage of general practitioners here, so you’re lucky to find anywhere that will take you.

So I end up doing this – waiting until it’s ‘really bad’, overcoming existing barriers to care like childcare or sick leave or cost, going with a list of symptoms, and STILL getting told it’s nothing, or nothing can be done – wash, rinse, repeat; one more statistic in a system that ignores the health of people with bodies like mine.