GynoFiles

Position in labor and pushing has been thought to be able to speed things up for mom, so lots of research and engineering design has been devoted to making this happen. In 2004 Gupta and Hofmer published a study looking at being sitting in the 30 degree position vs laying flat on your back to push the baby out, and yes, sitting was better: by 4 minutes...so baby's birth was sped up roughly the amount of time it takes for one extra contraction. Other gynos have looked at other factors such as mom's comfort, the health of the baby, the amount of bleeding after delivery, and again it's confusing. Squatting can bring the baby faster, but in some studies the mom's had more nerve injuries of their pelvic floor because of squatting. So for less stress and strain, delivering in a tub may solve many of those issues. For the term pregnant mom water immersion for laboring and delivery can be done in a variety of positions and venues. In your lap pool when your contractions are...

The celebration of medical firsts, a rather obscure topic I'll admit, is fraught with a likelihood that we just didn't have the facts. First performing a technique, and eventually claiming that technique or publishing that technique was much like the invention of words. A new word is just a silly slip of the mouth until we all are spouting that same nonsense! So knowing really when a first occurred, might be difficult. Especially since in the prior times the female midwives did the deliveries and the male obstetricians documented them! One of the obstetrical masters of his day was one Fielding Ould, who practiced in the Rotunda hospital in Dublin in the late 1700s. He wrote the famous Treatise on Midwifery in 1742, and is credited with the first description of a cut to help a woman deliver her baby if her perineal tissues were too rigid: it was a mediolateral episiotomy. The cut was thought to be so valuable an aid to delivery the great DrLee recommended that every person sh...

Labor used to be laborious, but we actually have changed that for many women. This is affecting how your obstetrician interprets how you are progressing in your labor. On any given day in the labor wards of hospitals all over the US are mothers smiling as they labor. Of course they are smiling because their beautiful babies to be may have his smile, or mom's eyes, or grandpa's mischievous bent; but more than one or two of the moms are blissfully laboring with the benefit of modern management. Epidurals , birthing Jacuzzis, trigger point massage, beds that will go into any position but a physical flip and pretty much an array of  comforts that 50 years ago no one even dreamed of. So the Consortium For Safe Labor began to think, with all these changes, are the normal labor progress standards still accurate, or do they need a bit of modernizing as well? Your gyno will be checking her watch if this is your first baby and you are not moving a full 1.2 cm per hour in that active ...

Most women who have had a delivery know the word episiotomy, we never had to learn it for scrabble, pretty much too many letters, but we had to learn it for birthing. It's the cut between the vagina and rectum that makes more room for the baby. And most know that the cut can be made straight towards the rectum, essentially at the "6:00 o'clock" position, and it's a risk for a major rectal tear, but on the other hand can make a lot of room. The other option is to go towards the edge or your leg, and sort of towards the butt, and not straight down in sort of a "8:00 o'clock" slant. It's even a bigger cut, but it does tend to avoid cutting into the rectum. It's more likely to heal a bit worse (in many studies, not all) so we tend to cut down. But then there are those that do the J. They cut down and then do a bit of a right turn to avoid the rectum. Sort of looks like a change of course. But then again, perhaps it's a just in time miss th...

Natural labor is best.