Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 12,441 |
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And there are more stories like these – lots more. Two years ago a poster called Cyee started a thread on "birth injuries" on Mumsnet while she was lying in bed after surgical repair for a fistula. More than 1,395 posts have since been added. Under the veil of anonymity that web-chat allows, women pour out the pain, and tragedies, that they have hitherto suffered in silence: some tell how they can't bear to be touched, let alone have sex, a year and more on from the birth. Yet more tell of how they wouldn't – couldn't – contemplate a second child, so terrible was the physical fallout from the first.
Some of the women posting feel mothers-to-be need more information about birth injuries and how to avoid them; others say it is unfair to scare pregnant women, because injuries of the severity they are suffering are very rare. It is hard to pin down statistics, because no one collates them centrally: but Michelle Thornton, consultant colorectal surgeon for NHS Lanarkshire, says third- and fourth-degree tears happen in 3% of vaginal deliveries in countries such as the UK.
Not all these, of course, cause permanent or long-term damage: but some do, and what the Mumsnet posters agree on is that suffering a birth injury is a peculiarly lonely experience: outside of cyberspace, it's rarely mentioned.
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Thornton is convinced the incidence is far higher than is generally thought. "One study found that between 25 and 40% of patients will have a birth injury of some kind if you actually look for it," she says. "It's much more widespread than anyone believes."
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I felt the same way, but my pregnancy was a little happy accident.
My birth and labour were incredibly bloody painful, though thankfully quick and the physical effects were minor and short lived. I was lucky. The child it resulted in is one of the crowning achievements of my life. He WAS worth it, though I will admit that the whole process was traumatic enough (in my case mentally rather than physically) to essentially silence my biological clock.
I'm constantly asked when I'm having another. The answer every time is, never.
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Good article. Even though I am squirming now just imagining these injuries. I have been very ambivalent about childbirth (I am 37, married, and have been fiercely avoiding giving birth for the last decade). Now I am almost convinced I do not want to do it. However my question is - why are most men and women so passionately promoting childbirth ? What is driving them ? I keep getting these pitying or disapproving looks from people when I say I don't want children. They are trying to convince me that I am missing something very important in my life. ... Maybe "nature" made childbirth difficult so that all women do *not* reproduce ? Isn't that an interesting idea ?
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 683 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 16 years ago Posts: 2,348 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 12,441 |
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Banshee
I think childbirth is made difficult for a good reason.
To keep women from breeding like sex-crazed rabbits and destroying the planet as a result, too.eyes2
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Do inform your brother-in-law about the birth process of the spotted hyena. Birth canal a foot long with a hair-pin bend and they give birth through their clitoris. One in five die during their first birthing, and 60% of the cubs are lost. And it's all totally natural!
Where people get the idea that Nature is flawless, I'll never know...
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 683 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 12,441 |
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KitsNotKids
Wow...everybody hates hyenas, including nature, it seems! How bizarre.
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 12,447 |
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KitsNotKids
I cemented my CF decision the day I watched a lovely birthing video in sex education, I was 11 or 12. I look at it and thought "that is NOT right" and "No fucking way" and that was that. I never wanted kids but that gross video convinced me 100% never to. I have to say I only realised the extent of damage that is commonly done to a woman's vagina/vulva once I started going on CF sites, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise large object+small hole = tearing.
I feel awfully sorry for these women. I know they made their choice and all that but I do believe these issues should be made a bigger deal of. Too many people sleepwalk through life and that comes to their decisions regarding children.
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 683 |
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yurble
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KitsNotKids
Wow...everybody hates hyenas, including nature, it seems! How bizarre.
No, I'm sure the hyenas enjoy it.
Anonymous User
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 1,099 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 12,447 |
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ShimmyMuse
The irony is that our brains have grown so large (but you can hardly tell this in a lot of people) that passing the infant's head through the birth canal often became fatal for the mother. So much for "nature," since death is perfectly natural. Thanks to modern medicine, women in the West do not die in childbirth, as they formerly did in droves. Nature does not equal "nice"!
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 7,762 |
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yurble
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KitsNotKids
Wow...everybody hates hyenas, including nature, it seems! How bizarre.
No, I'm sure the hyenas enjoy it.
Re: Childbirth injuries December 11, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 599 |
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KitsNotKids
Wow...everybody hates hyenas, including nature, it seems! How bizarre.
Re: Childbirth injuries December 12, 2010 | Registered: 18 years ago Posts: 9,992 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 12, 2010 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 7,031 |
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kidlesskim
The FUGLY woman already had several kyds, although after the unveiling of her ENORMOUS, gray, and tattered twat, even an 8 year old could have figured that out. One particularly gross thing that I remember was her out of control pubic hair which began on and around her MASSIVE belly extending down into the baybee grove, out, across, and all down her thighs. I remember thinking that her entire twat region looked like an Orangutan's that I had recently seen at the zoo. Anyway, as if that visual hadn't been enough, it went on to show her with her legs scrunched up in the stirrups panting and grunting until it "crowned", which I thought was especially disgusting. Then the damned thing just gushed out with all of the entrail looking shit and the husband(or whatever) just dragged the gelatinous mess up across her hairy belly as it WAILED from it's gaping piehole and helped it latch onto an elongated, purple, engorged udder and it immediately began suckling.:gross
I was so disturbed by it that after 40 years, I still can't erase it from my memory.:smn
Re: Childbirth injuries December 12, 2010 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 7,031 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 12, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 894 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 12, 2010 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 12,447 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 12, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 599 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 12, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 1,843 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 13, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 12,441 |
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mr. neptune
I have read that even right after the woman has had the babee, that some fathers will come to visit the woman actually have sex with her right after she had the baby. As if they must be so sex mad they cannot control themselves? They cannot wait to makeher preggoo again?
Re: Childbirth injuries December 13, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 1,843 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 13, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 12,441 |
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mr. neptune
Then a guy like that must be pretty desperate and horny if he has to have sex at a time like that. If he can't trust her to use the birth control then why is he F'ing her at all?
Re: Childbirth injuries December 13, 2010 | Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 7,149 |
Re: Childbirth injuries December 13, 2010 | Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 6,607 |
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kidlesskim
One particularly gross thing that I remember was her out of control pubic hair which began on and around her MASSIVE belly extending down into the baybee grove, out, across, and all down her thighs....
I was so disturbed by it that after 40 years, I still can't erase it from my memory.:smn