Episiotomy is a surgical cut made at the opening of the vagina during childbirth, to aid a difficult delivery and prevent a burst suddenly of tissues. This is one of the procedures of interventions during labor, but generally during the second stage of labor, to fast expand the vaginal canal to assist the baby to pass through it. If the heart rate of your baby significantly decreases or increases before birth, it is fetal distress. At this point, your midwife may recommend an episiotomy that doctors today successfully practice all over the world. Here we researched and shown Episiotomy Procedures – Advantages and Complications.
Reasons Why You May Need an Episiotomy
A reason you may need to accept using episiotomy is making ample space in your vaginal opening to allow your baby and instruments used in assisted delivery such as forceps or ventouse suction to help both your baby and you. If your baby is in the breech position, meaning bottom-down position, or if you are now exhausted after trying to give birth for several hours, then you may need an episiotomy. On the other hand, if you have any serious health issues such as heart disease, your doctor will recommend completing the delivery within the shortest possible time, where episiotomy can help. Other causes may include your baby’s having shoulder dystocia, an abnormal heart rate pattern during delivery, etcetera.
The Procedure of an Episiotomy
The doctors will do a simple surgical operation to cut the young muscles between your vagina and anus, using local anesthesia around your vagina to numb the area unless you feel pain. They will make a small diagonal cut from the back of your vagina down to the anus or/and a side with scissors and stitch the cuts together with dissolved stitches after birthing. Episiotomy helps muscular and connective tissues support the pelvic floor, while natural tears during childbirth are more extensive that require a longer time to heal.
How to Recover from the Cuts of an Episiotomy
A midwife or obstetrician will stitch your incision within 1 hour of the episiotomy. You may lose a lot of blood at the beginning. However, they are most likely to stop it with pressure and stitches. Most probably, they may use dissolved stitches so that you will not need to go back to the hospital to get them removed. Healing your stitches may need around one month, and so you will need to take suggestions from them about your movement during your healing period. You may feel pain around the cut till 14 to 21 days after the episiotomy, especially sting during passing urine, and pain during walking and sitting. Using anesthesia in the episiotomy will give you comfort during the operation, but the recovery will take a longer period. The midline or medial incision is tough to recover if it has to extend more to the anus. On the other hand, a mediolateral incision protects your anus, but the recovery is also difficult and painful. That can be same for surrogacy motherhood or maternita surrogata.
Episiotomy May Cause Problems Having Sex
Statistics show that many women have experienced pain during sexual intercourse with their husbands even after 18 months of episiotomy. They reported a lack of lubrication in their vaginas, with no problem with arousal and orgasm. This is because of their cuts from the vagina to the anus.
Once upon a time, episiotomy was a regular part of the birthing process, but today doctors recommend it just in some particular situations. Especially in the case of vaginal delivery, an incision or two in the skin and tissue of the perineum between the vaginal opening and anus and in the posterior vaginal wall may be an option required. A midwife or obstetrician uses local anesthesia close to the vagina, this is one of the most common surgical procedures for women.
