GynoFiles

The 1970s brought us talking about sex (talking about sex to each other and going for contraception and STD testing), in the 1980s we took over family centered childbirth (birthing rooms, father coaching, sibling births, VBAC s), in the 1990s women began to make cancer screening visible (mammograms, ultrasounds, CA 125 blood tests), in the first decade after 2000 it was 'let me google' that symptom, and now top trend in patient driven health trends: there is an app for that! Hyster Sisters is a popular hysterectomy patient form. They have now added an app for women thinking about, having, and who have had a hysterectomy. It is free, you can join or just peek around. The information is very topical, extensive and mostly extremely informative. The information spans from the very technical, such as aspects of the type of hysterectomy, to the practical: such as how to set up your room. There are definitions that do not have accompanying diagrams or photographs, and mostly are re...

Birth spacing studies in the USA are a bit hard to find, and mostly they find women have healthy next pregnancies, regardless of the interval. between popping out the next kiddo. Yet some studies say moms really should give their bodies time to heal before embarking on another pregnancy. Of course your previous baby needs to be breastfed and you need to resume ovulation before you get pregnant, and mom's really should be getting proper exercise, normalizing their weight, optimizing their nutrition (like rebuilding your calcium and iron stores), and a bit of sleep to prepare for the next pregnancy. But what if you had a c-section, should you wait longer than the 6-12 months most gynos recommend for birth spacing?  Multiple research studies have now concluded that after a prior c-section, a inter-delivery interval less than 18 months is associated with an increased rate of rupture. Rupture rates are relatively small, and limited by the fact that closer birth spacing is als...

There are lots of terms for doing things, "quickly". Remember the "clean up your room, honey" when you were a kid, and our, "sure Mom, right away ," response? Well, gynos have a whole different vocabulary, rhetoric, patois, argot, maybe some outright cant, when it comes to "right away". This problem of getting the start to a c-section Quick, Quicker and Quickest has been flummoxing gynos and their hospital administrators to no end. We have committee meetings that have been renaming these same terms for literally decades. And you think I jest. I do not.In fact who carries the watch, you got it, kind of like carrying that big stick. And for those hospitals that cannot get the quickest starts to their operative approaches to birth, the end result, women have not been given the chance to VBAC . So clear this right up, what goes on here. We have an entire vocabulary of terms that apply to getting your c-section started when it's determined that...

No one in the US, ok not no one. But over 92% of patients sampled across the country were not being offered VBACs by one recent check. So if you have had a C/S and want to try to have a vaginal delivery, plan ahead and have a heart to heart talk with your ob provider about what you can do to improve your chances of not being one of the crowd. Your gyno will review your risk factors, any risk factors in the baby and realistically talk to you about the benefits of a vaginal birth. One of the important factors is whether you go into labor on your own, or have to have labor induced. In a new study in the January 2012 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology it was shown that induced labor, especially if your cervix begins without being dilated at all, is very slightly more risky, with respect to uterine rupture, than if your cervix is softer and somewhat open. Longer labors, which may occur because of induction, were also shown to be more of a risk factor for a ruptu...