In the 1950s and 1960s, a cohort of foreign gynecologists working in Arabia’s burgeoning state hospitals published a series of studies documenting an alarming pattern they observed among local postpartum patients. Their medical concern was the prevalence of vaginal atresia, the obstruction or closure of the vagina. What made Arabian vaginas worthy of scientific consideration in international medical journals was the unusual cause of local women’s anatomical blockage. According to these doctors, while most cases of vaginal atresia around the world were congenital (a condition present from birth), acquired vaginal atresia was rare. But in Arabia, the doctors claimed, the usual ratio between congenital and acquired cases of vaginal atresia was reversed. In other words, for the foreign doctors and their scholarly audience, vaginal atresia in Arabia was distinct from similar cases elsewhere in the world—and thus worthy of comment in scientific writing for the global medical community—in that among Arabian women, it was an acquired condition rather than a birth defect. Why did acquired vaginal atresia generate a flurry of scientific articles? In the days following childbirth, the doctors learned, it was common for midwives or women relatives to place salt in the new mother’s vagina. This practice persisted into the mid-twentieth century as local women resisted the medicalization of childbirth in first missionary and then state hospitals. This presentation draws on these scientific studies to capture lived practices and biological experiences of postpartum women during the Gulf region’s transition to state medicine in the 1950s and 1960s. The presentation also integrates Arabic-language ethnographies and oral histories that address local practices of childbirth. It will trace how women pursued an assortment of health-seeking strategies even as various medical professionals clamored for control over childbirth in the modern Gulf.