Pregnancy is a beautiful journey, an experience that leaves you speechless for the rest of your life, words can’t perfectly describe the joy, excitement and of cos anxiety that pregnancy brings.
As the pregnancy progresses , the one thing on your mind is your day of delivery, so many questions , especially for a first time mom to be ,you are wondering how the delivery will be , and if you are having a vagina delivery , the fear of having a tear down there or getting an EPISIOTOMY must be giving you sleepless nights.
I remember when I was pregnant with my first, and I kept hearing all these birth stories and how some women suffer 2 to 3 degree tear during delivery, I was so scared that I read every article there is about EPISIOTOMY and vaginal delivery that I could find online, I couldn’t bear the thought of having a major tear down there that might potentially change the way that place feels forever.
EPISIOTOMY is, simply put an incision made between the vagina to the rectum during delivery. This procedure is done to help facilitate delivery in circumstances where the mother is unable to push her baby completely , or when the baby is big ,or there is a risk to the baby if not delivered quickly which means leaving the mother to continue to push will only endanger the child.
You can get this procedure done when your doctor or midwife discovers that it will be best to give you a cut rather than allow your vaginal tissues tear on their own during delivery which might be more dangerous to you.
I have delivered three kids all through vaginal delivery and didn’t have a single tear or EPISIOTOMY done , and no my kids were not small , from a 3kg , 3.5kg and 3.8kg respectively.
During my first pregnancy I did a lot of research and I asked my doctor a lot of questions too which helped me with avoiding getting an EPISIOTOMY.
HOW TO PREVENT AN EPISIOTOMY
1) One of the major reasons this procedure is done is because the baby is big , if you put your food and calorie intake into consideration and only eat what you and your baby actually need , you would be doing yourself a great deal of favor, because the bigger the baby , the higher your chances of getting an EPISIOTOMY.
2) Another tip that can help you avoid this is a perineum and VAGINAL wall massage, you can do this yourself or ask your partner to do it for you, and it helps to stretch the vaginal wall in preparation for birth and can be very effective in preventing a tear.
3) The frequency of sexual intercourse with your partner also helps, I know you must have heard that you still need sex during pregnancy, this is one of the reasons, and it’s been discovered over time that the more sexual encounter you have during your last trimester the easier delivery will be on your body.
4) This last tip is very important, please during delivery, and work with your midwife, yes the pain is unbearable, yes you just want to push and be free, but this could because you so much harm if you are not full dilated. Push only when your midwife says so, they are trained and there to help you, so work with them and try to do as you are told. The midwives know how best to assist you, during my first delivery the midwife used olive oil to massage my vaginal wall while the baby was crowning and this was so helpful.
All these tips are what I have used three times and once you can have your first without a cut or tear, you are pretty much safe, cos now your body will know what to do during another delivery and am sure it will help you too, delivery is nothing short of a miracle but we too can play a part in that miracle.
Thank you so much for reading and please leave me you questions as regards delivery or pregnancy and I will be glad to answer them. See you in my next post Xoxo.
