Was there a specific thing at your pediatrician’s office that embarrassed you?

1. Sitting in the waiting room at 14-18 with only children's books as reading material.

2. Seeing the scale in the hall, knowing I would be weighed there in my undies.

3. Being ushered to an exam room and seeing another patient being weighed in his underwear

4. Once I was ushered to an exam room and the paper on the table had not been changed. The nurse made some loud sigh and muttered something about the room not being ready. She pulled the paper down and tore it off, then walked to the open door. She turned around, stated "everything off but your undies" while she was balling up that crinkly paper. I'm sure that got everyone's attention in the office.

Lots of things for me. The smell of alcohol. The thermometers were encased in a jar filled with alcohol, which had a strong smell. The alcohol would also be used to swab me when getting a penicillin injection. The rectal thermometer. There were 2 thermometers in each room, but the nurse always used the rectal one. You knew it was coming, but hoped they would opt for the oral, which they didn’t. 2 rooms had small tables, only big enough for kids up to about 9 or 10 years old. I rarely got these rooms as a teenager, but every once in a while it would happen. There was a sofa in each room, which parents sat on. When I got the small room and it was time for the nurse to take my temperature, she would ask my dad to get up. She would sit down and I would have to lie over her lap to get my temperature taken. If I needed a penicillin shot she would have me lie over my dad’s lap, and she would administer the shot. I was also embarrassed by the baby scale.

@Fontana I too recall that at the hospital the thermometers were encased in jars filled with some very smelly liquid (was it camphor alcohol?). In my case, rectal only but I was deemed old enough to be asked to insert the tip myself under the sheets, which preserved dignity.

The white butcher paper on the table takes it. Always had to hop off it for the hernia exam at the end, then sit back up on it waiting for nurse to come back for shots in my bottom I just had to lean right back over and drop the bottoms I had just dropped completely minutes before.

I remember having a doctor when I was around 10 that would dictate his notes as he examined and I always felt embarrassed when he would talk into a microphone like one of those old video call stalk microphones with a plastic base about my body and what he was seeing.

I didn’t know or understand exactly what he was talking about at the time but I do recall a lot of the things he said. “No evidence of breast development” and “bare pubic region no signs of change” made me very embarrassed.

There were a couple things for me. I started going in for annual checkups when I was in sixth grade, and by that time, body hair had mostly come in (chest hair wasn't a thing until high school), hormones were in full swing, and I was smack in the middle of that really awkward early teen phase. The pediatrician's office, however, was definitely geared to younger children--and that was a vibe that began in the waiting room and extended to the exam rooms. Think toys on the waiting room tables, parenting magazines, curtains with balloons or circus animal prints. And in the exam room, I remember there was always a basket of picture books, drawings that young patients had given staff members (the crayon stick figures)--stuff like that. And because I was on my parents' health insurance plan, this was the doctor I saw through college. So every time, I go in there--a sexually maturing human with intense sexual thoughts and feelings and popping boners--and I'm basically walking into a place that feels like a preschool. It was embarrassing and I always felt out of place.

The worst was when I had a physical that happened to fall on Halloween. My pediatrician was dressed up like a wizard--hat, fake beard, the works. Nothing weirder than a wizard sticking his hands down your pants and telling you to cough. 🤣

The other thing that embarrassed me was the exam table itself. It was a basic bench that was flush up against the wall, and there was a mirror that ran the length of the table. So for that part when I'd be stretched out to have my abdomen palpated, I'd essentially get two views of my own exam: Whatever I saw staring down at my own body and whatever I saw in the mirror--which turned me on because it felt objective, or more detached (or something like that.)

Procedurally: I made a fool of myself with tantrums fearing getting shots as a kid, so that was embarrassing.

In terms of decoration in the room as the OP asked for, my memory is hazy, but I think I remember some diagrams of human anatomy on the wall. It was one of those where the body is split down the middle, half showing the insides (circulatory system, internal organs, etc.) and half showing the outside, front and back, with labels pointing toward body parts of interest. The front-facing diagram was that of a male, so you could see half of a penis and scrotum. I thought that was unfair that girls would see that during their exams and know what male anatomy looked like.

For me it was for sure moment of undressing.

Not embarrassing, but my doctors surgery had a double tick clock. This would drive me mad, the doctor was elderly and slow, the clock tick raced along.

You didn’t make appointments, and the doctor would keep you waiting hours at times. Head in, look around the room choose the next patient.

I was usually waiting to be checked for a UTI.

Things that made me more embarrassed are the puberty development pictures on the wall in the waiting room. They had sepia faded graphics but are photos of real patients. They all depicted five male patients in the different Tanner stages.

One pister showed the front of their bodies from head to toe with details on anthropometric proportions. Another showed a detail photo taken on the genital area while laying on the examination table showing the area between perineum and the pubis. Expecially those were too intense for me during my wait for the exam.

When in the examination room what embarassed and frightened me more were syringes. Other things I dreaded so much are the surgical instruments cart, velcro straps on the table and surgical drape applied vertically on my abdomen to screen the operating area. Those are traumatic consequents of two surgeries (penile prepuce and meatal glans) I have to undergo without general anhestesia when very young.

Ehhh. Honestly nothing really. I didn't have much pride.

Different things. For example in Germany the scale isn't in the hallways, but often there is not in every examination room a scale. So sometimes the nurse came with another patient in "your" examination room for height and weight.

There were real examination tables and other tables in the room and a plastic floor were sweaty feet stick