If you are a boy and get uncomfortable around vagina talk, better avert your eyes now.<\/p>\n
Somebody asked me recently how to do a perineal massage (because she wants to avoid an episiotomy, which is literally cutting the vagina with scissors during labor….) I explained what I remembered the midwife doing, but this paragraph from the September 2006 issue of Health<\/em> (page 82) explains it better.<\/p>\n The blurb is titled, “The DIY trick that makes giving birth easier.”<\/p>\n “…A new research review says [perineal] massage can reduce the need for [an episiotomy] by 15 percent. The technique also reduces tearing during birth and pelvic pain for 3 months afterward. Here’s how to do it: Put a water-based lubricant on your thumbs and insert them into your vagina. Press downward, toward your butt, and then stretch the sides, moving in a U shape. It may hurt a little at first, but it gets easier as the tissues expand. Do it for 10 minutes a day, at bedtime or in the tub, for the last 4 weeks of pregnancy.”<\/p>\n For the record, I did not have an episiotomy and I did not tear – or only very tiny lateral tears that did not need stitches. And this is after a doctor told me point blank, “All Asian women have to have an episiotomy.” As if.<\/p>\n (and an interesting factoid from the same magazine: ” 71 percent of people in a British study were willing to trade their office-computer password for a candy bar.”)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you are a boy and get uncomfortable around vagina talk, better avert your eyes now. Somebody asked me recently how to do a perineal massage (because she wants to avoid an episiotomy, which is literally cutting the vagina with … Continue reading