Often, when my staff let me know that a patient is ready in an exam room, they add “and she’s refusing to undress until she talks with you.”  

That nearly always means there’s a patient who is a virgin and has made an appointment out of some dire need, terrified that I will somehow force her to have a pelvic examination.

So when a reader of this blog sent in a request for advice for women’s healthcare guidelines for virgins back in January, I immediately understood the need for this article and promised to have it out by the end of March, during my maternity leave.    Six months behind is not that bad…

Congratulations!  God willing, this marriage will be a blessing for both you and your spouse. 

But as the wedding day approaches, there are often unsettling questions that linger in the back of the mind of the bride-to-be.  I see a handful of patients a year who come in before they marry to ask questions and to talk about birth control and other  things.   Recently, someone was telling me how little they knew before they married and how confusing their first few days of marriage were, so I decided to put a few pieces of information here, for those of you who want to be able to discreetly look it up online.