WHO not IT

[Southernurse]

i must admit first that i am not starting a roe v. wade argument here. i want to be very clear about that. what i want to know, is why we nurses and the ob/gyn's all refer to babies as "it". when i was pregnant with my 3 kids, they were all referred to as "who". "who" am i having not "what" am i having. people looked at me with very perplexed expressions. is there a reason for this semantic? is it a way to depersonalize the pregnancy if complications arise? again, i am not trying to start any wars here, the psychology is confusing to me. has anyone ever had this brought up in training? i'm just curious. thank you ahead of time for keeping this from being an argumentative thread.

[Smokey9283]

I think that the reason that patients are referred to according to their complications, is because (and I know this is true of me) we associate patient's with the problems they have. If I were to go to my charge nurse, "Joe Shmoe is having severe chest pain now." She would say, "who is that." I would have to reply, "the gentleman that came in with +3 pitting edema in bilateral legs." I think it is a coping mechanism for when people don't really know the patient. It shows that they at least know what is happening with that patient.

[HeartsOpenWide, RN]

I am doing a preceptorship at a rual hospital that is pretty holistic, they say "Your baby's hear rate"...

[crysobrn]

I dont' think I've ever heard a nurse refer to a baby as "it" If I don't know the sex of the baby I say "the baby" if I'm giving report I'll say "the baseline is 135" Never "it's heart rate is 135"

I'm pregnant now and we decided to NOT find out what we're having (we did with our other two) I had called the baby a "she" for the first half the pregnancy but started to feel guilty thinking if the baby is a boy then I'll give him a complex lol... So, I have slipped on occasion and said "it" rather than the baby... I guess if you're looking for a pronoun without gender it's the one that seems to come out.

[psalm, RN]

I too wish people would say "the baby's heartrate is xyz" instead of "it's". Kind of bugs me.

People do it in adult care. Charge Nurse (Me) speakign to nurse: You're getting an admission in 533-2. Nurse: What is it? Me: It is not an it but a human being injured in a motorcycle accident. That's always bugged me that 99% of the the time when I tell someone their getting a patient they answer "what is it?",

I will ask, "What are they in for?" of my admit, and then we laugh, as it sounds like jail talk.

[CEG]

I try to say he or she but it is so hard to remember sometimes if I have a couple of laboring patients so I will often say "your baby" or "the baby." I am also 27 weeks pregnant and do not know what we are having and I often say "it" and cringe a little each time. In my mind I am positive it is a girl so I think "her" in my head but my husband thinks I am crazy for being so sure it's a girl so I can't let a "her" slip out. Sometimes he calls her "him" just to mess with me;)