Carol Gomez88 said:Unfortunately, you get all kinds of people in this field—doctors included. Personally, I don't care if they're male or female—as long as they actually know what they're doing and have the expertise. My biggest issue hasn't been gender, though; it's more about how everyone seems to push their own personal diagnosis regardless of the facts. But that’s a whole other conversation for a different thread. 🤷
I can't get behind such a sweeping generalization. And it’s not just about expertise here—there’s something else at play.
Feeling. I don't know what you're trying to get at here. You haven't actually said anything.
Personal opinion.Personally, I’ve had much better luck with female gynecologists. Even though my private OBGYN during pregnancy was a man—actually, all my doctors through my private insurance were men—my primary doctor through Medicare who handled my referrals was always a woman.
That doctor—the one working at the public clinic—kept insisting on tests that my husband never even brought up. For instance, when I was pregnant, she started telling me we absolutely needed to do certain screenings...
4 targeted swabs. And when I suggested it to him—he just said there was no point.
When I went to...
Amniocentesis.So, I’m getting conflicting signals from the doctors here. One male attending walks into my room and says, "You're heading home today—you can get back to work tomorrow." Then, right after, a female doctor comes by and tells me the exact opposite: "No, an amniocentesis is invasive. The mother is sensitive, and the baby is even more so. Just take a week of medical leave and rest."
When I was...
Gave birth. At 27 weeks—and everyone knows my history with pregnancy loss—I was stuck in the hospital. During morning rounds, this male doctor just looks at me and says, "Alright, stay in bed through the end of the week, then get back to work on Monday."
After my rounds, a female attending physician popped into my room and told me:
Forget what men say—you can tell everything just by listening to them.She basically said—according to the textbooks and what all those male doctors claim—that women just get lumped into some broad statistic. It’s like they think every woman is exactly the same and every family follows the same script. Obviously, that's nonsense. No two women are alike, and no two families are the same.
Stay home and take care of yourself for those 40 days—you're in postpartum recovery regardless of whether the pregnancy was only 27 weeks. You had a baby, lady. Period.
When I asked her why she felt that way, she shot back with—god forbid you end up with an infection in your uterus, vagina, or ovaries. According to the textbooks, a simple inflammation might not seem like a huge deal, but the real danger is the scarring it leaves behind—and let me tell you, dealing with that later on is a nightmare. My take? You stay home for the full 40 days, period. It doesn't matter if the pregnancy didn't last the full 40 weeks.
A male doctor actually told her, "Ladies, you're focusing on extremes and outliers instead of the actual rule." Then he added—looking right at her—that she’s a strong, substantial woman who can clearly hold down a job. He even went as far as writing in her discharge papers that she is perfectly capable of working.
I went to see my regular OB-GYN—the one covered by Medicare who handles all my medical leave paperwork—and she was totally on the same page as the hospital specialist. Her take? "Just let it go." Honestly, why even bother fighting for an exception?
I wouldn't say this is strictly about medical expertise alone—it’s also about how one woman views another (especially if the OBGYN has actually gone through childbirth herself and has that firsthand perspective)—but at the end of the day, it comes down to what the textbooks say and what the medical statistics show.