I just learned about the “Husband Stitch” a few days ago and i’m still fucking mortified. Women’s bodies do not exist for the pleasure of their boyfriends or husbands.
Doctors who perform this procedure without the consent of the pregnant person are evil misogynists, undeserving of the privilege of working with pregnant women and other people.
Oh my god, nooooo.
If this is done incorrectly (and yes, I know someone this was done incorrectly to) it makes sex really uncomfortable, like realllly uncomfortable, and can require follow-up surgery to fix. The person I know who this was done to ended up with the, uh, outside getting the ‘husband stitch’ but the inside… not? So she ended up with a little ‘lip’ of tissue that would get seriously irritated during sex, and over a decade later had to have another doctor go back in and snip that ‘extra stitch’ open.
Yes, it was that bad.
I would recommend reading this article and then reading Carmen Maria Machado’s The Husband Stich.
An excerpt from the above article:
I was first introduced to the husband stitch in 2014, when a friend in medical school told me about a birth her classmate observed. After the baby was delivered, the doctor said to the woman’s husband, “Don’t worry, I’ll sew her up nice and tight for you,” and the two men laughed while the woman lay between them, covered in her own and her baby’s blood and feces. The story terrified me, the laughter in particular, signaling some understanding of wrongdoing, some sheepishness in doing it anyway. The helplessness of the woman, her body being altered without her consent by two people she has to trust: her partner, her doctor.
So many people don’t even know what this is. The Wikipedia article on the husband stitch was published this month.
Just adding my voice that this is indeed real and it was done to me. I haven’t enjoyed sex since I had my son and honestly I’m concerned about having a second child because I was so “small” the first time around I ended up with 3rd degree tearing.
Yes I have that same lip and the only reason I never went back to get it fixed is the conception/birth was so traumatic I couldn’t bring myself to be touched like that by doctors for years.
Just, be aware and let someone advocate for you when you’re in labor. Ask your OBGYN their thoughts on this and choose carefully.
Bitch wha?!!!??
After 18 and a half hours of labor with my son, an episiotomy, I finally gave birth to my baby. I passed out from exhaustion minutes after meeting my son. I woke up some time later with this stitch. My doctor asked my (now ex) husband and he decided that I should have it. I was never asked. The stitch was done correctly but now I have to take a lot longer to ‘warm up’ for sex or it hurts. It could’ve been so much worse but just the feeling of being having that decision taken from me and having the most private area of my body altered like that after such a traumatic experience is something that to this day haunts me.
I don’t think I’ve ever read something on this site before now that actually made me feel like I was going to be sick
