What women dread

The husband stitch is often without consent

They take the baby so that they may fix me where they cut. They give me something that makes me sleepy, delivered through a mask pressed gently to my mouth and nose. My husband jokes around with the doctor as he holds my hand.

How much to get that extra stitch, he asks. You offer that, right? Please, I say to him. But it comes out slurred and twisted and possibly no more than a small moan. Neither man turns his head toward me.

The doctor chuckles. You aren't the first.

The Husband Stitch-Carmen Maria Machado.

Bhanupriya, 23, from Bengaluru, developed pain in the abdomen in the 36th week of pregnancy. "As I wore my gloves to examine if she was going into labour she wept, screamed and refused an internal examination," said Dr N. Sapna Lulla, lead consultant, obstetrics and gynaecology at Aster CMI Hospital, Bengaluru.

Bhanupriya was married to a sari merchant from Rajasthan. She said to Lulla that obstetricians like her are the reason for her trauma. "It was only then I comprehended what I was dealing with," said Lulla, who asked Bhanupriya to meet a psychiatrist.

Bhanupriya told the psychiatrist about the husband stitch, which was an additional stitch she was given following a vaginal birth. This was to enhance sexual pleasure for her husband. The tears that ran down Bhanupriya’s cheeks gave Lulla a peek into her emotional trauma. She refused a normal birth in fear of tightening the vagina to give her husband more pleasure during sex. It took a lot of effort and counselling and assurance to get her to agree to a normal vaginal birth,” the doctor said.