Preparing for the birth of her third child, Crystal Yellowhair was already a little nervous.
A previous delivery had led to complications, and the 31-year-old was no fan of the only maternity ward in her corner of eastern Arizona, a two-hour drive from home.
Then, on the day itself, her regular OB-GYN was unavailable, and a locum doctor in his sixties from out of state was called in at the last minute.
Still, hours later, cradling her third healthy baby boy, she allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.
‘Congrats, you barely tore, I just needed to put in one stitch,’ Yellowhair said the stand-in told her.
But that story changed, she claimed, when he came back to check on her a few hours later.
‘He was like, “Oh, well, yeah, but I gave you an extra stitch to make you more taut,”‘ she recalled to the Daily Mail. ‘And then he looked at my husband and smiled at him.’
The new mom said she was too exhausted and rattled from labor to challenge him in the moment, though the comment left her stunned.
Crystal Yellowhair, 31, who said a doctor gave her a ‘daddy stitch’ without her consent after giving birth in May 2025
The mother-of-three, with her husband, Tanner, and two of their children
She had heard of the so-called ‘husband stitch’ before – an extra, unwanted suture added without consent purely to tighten a woman’s opening for her husband’s sexual pleasure.
But she always assumed it was an urban myth. Like other women who say they’ve been given one without consent, she claimed she soon discovered just how real, and damaging, it could be.
What followed the May 2025 birth, she said, was months of agonizing pain, unexplained bleeding and a corrective surgery that left her feeling violated all over again.
Yellowhair described one particularly brutal cauterization procedure during which she said she ‘felt every little nerve being torched.’
In an exclusive interview, the mother-of-three said the experience has left her feeling mangled and gaslit, and she is now raising money online to help fund a potential lawsuit.
‘I’ve felt violated, mutilated, ignored and been through excruciating pain all because my doctor behaved and acted in an inappropriate manner,’ she said.
The ‘daddy stitch’ – also dubbed the ‘husband stitch’ – is linked to the era when when doctors routinely cut the tissue between a woman’s vagina and anus to ease childbirth, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s.
Once the baby arrived and doctors went to repair that incision, some would quietly add an extra stitch purely to tighten the opening for the male partner’s benefit.
Today, doctors are taught to only cut when medically necessary, meaning most women only need stitches if they tear naturally during labor.
Yet patients across the US say it continues to go on.
Numerous women have come forward with similar stories to Yellowhair’s, recounting how doctors, usually male, told their partners the ‘bonus stitch’ would make them tighter, treating the moment like a private joke between men.
That casual attitude is precisely what horrified Yellowhair most, the notion that even now a new mother’s autonomy can be brushed aside for her husband’s pleasure.
‘It’s crazy to be seen this way right after giving birth, which is a divine task,’ said Yellowhair, who runs a traditional jewelry business alongside her husband, Tanner, 32.
Yellowhair sits with her husband and their baby in a hospital bed after giving birth
‘Just after creating another human, our doctors see us as sexual objects, altering us without our consent so we’re more pleasurable for our husbands.’
Yellowhair told the Daily Mail she had almost no choice of maternity care where she lived, and that she was forced to drive more than two hours to reach the nearest delivery clinic.
She gave birth to her third child there on May 1, 2025, with the doctor, whom she had not met previously, overseeing the delivery.
Reliable statistics remain scarce, though the Journal of Gender-Based Violence has documented hundreds of suspected cases of unapproved extra stitches across both the US and Europe in recent years.
A 2025 study in Belgium found roughly six percent of new mothers received an unnecessary suture, with that figure climbing to 13 percent in more remote hospitals.
Medical experts are now unanimous that the procedure offers no benefit to the mother and does nothing to improve the muscles responsible for sexual sensation.
A campaign group called the US End FGM/C Network has described ‘daddy stitches’ as an ‘underrecognized form of female genital mutilation/cutting.’
Women who receive extra or improperly tight stitches can suffer serious long-term consequences, including painful intercourse, vaginal prolapse and lasting psychological trauma.
Instead of enhancing intimacy, the stitching often destroys it entirely, leaving patients in physical pain during what should be tender moments.
Performing any medical procedure without a patient’s informed consent is illegal in the US and can form the basis of a malpractice claim.
Yellowhair and her husband, who run a traditional jewelry business
Yellowhair moved her family out of state after losing faith in its medics
Yellowhair initially assumed her doctor’s comment was some outdated joke rather than an actual medical decision, until the pain steadily worsened over the following weeks.
She alleged that when she went back to the hospital, staff members – including a nurse practitioner who she said yanked out a stitch without offering any pain relief – dismissed her concerns entirely.
Months of unresolved pain eventually led to a corrective surgery in April 2026, and a terrifying bleeding complication requiring emergency cauterization without anesthetic.
Yellowhair has since filed formal complaints against the hospital and lodged reports with medical licensing boards in both Arizona and Missouri, where the doctor resides.
Neither the hospital nor the doctor responded to the Daily Mail’s requests for comment on her allegations regarding the birth and its aftermath.
A letter sent by the hospital to Yellowhair in response to her complaint confirms she suffered genuine medical complications, but disputes her explanation for what caused them. They also noted that the doctor was not their employee.
The hospital maintained her injuries stemmed from her body’s natural reaction to the sutures used, rather than from any additional, medically unnecessary stitch.
‘The records clearly show no causal relationship between the delivery of your most recent child and the complications you suffered afterward,’ the letter read.
According to that letter, the doctor also ‘unequivocally’ denied ever adding an extra stitch.
Instead, the hospital said he recalled the discussion differently, claiming Tanner had jokingly requested an extra stitch himself and it was all understood to be a joke in the room – the couple has strongly denied this.
Yellowhair said she remains determined to hold the hospital accountable, though several lawyers have so far declined to take her case for insurance-related reasons.
She has raised roughly $9,000 through an online fundraiser intended to help cover legal costs and support her family during recovery.
The family has since moved to St George, Utah, to live close to better healthcare facilities
The family has since relocated to St George, Utah, partly because they no longer trusted the only hospital available near their previous home.
‘I can’t raise my kids somewhere where the medical facility has failed me tremendously,’ she said.
Yellowhair said she is committed to holding the hospital publicly accountable and warning other pregnant women about what to watch for during delivery.
She has amassed more than 64,000 followers across social media platforms, with her most popular videos drawing over half a million views apiece.
She described the public response as overwhelming, with dozens of women sharing eerily similar stories, and several nurses and midwives publicly condemning the practice as deeply unethical.
A small number of commenters have pushed back, suggesting the mom may be mistaken and that her pain likely stems from ordinary nerve damage rather than any deliberate extra stitch.
A handful of other mothers even said, remarkably, that they would have welcomed being stitched tighter themselves after childbirth.
Regardless of whether her case ever reaches a courtroom, Yellowhair said she has already achieved one goal: making sure other women know what to do if it happens to them.
Dr Daniel Niku, an OB-GYN based in Los Angeles, offered straightforward advice for any woman who encounters a similar situation in the delivery room.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, he urged patients to report any mention of an unauthorized extra stitch to authorities immediately, rather than staying silent out of confusion or shame.
‘The truth is,’ he explained, ‘after childbirth, the vagina heals quite well on its own with the standard repairs we perform for any tears.’
‘I just want women to know they’re not crazy,’ Yellowhair told the Daily Mail. ‘What they’re feeling is valid, and what was done to them, if it was done without consent, is wrong.’