Hello,
I had a beautiful baby 5 weeks ago and the birth was pretty horrendous. The hospital didn't think I sounded far enough along when I phoned to go in when I was in labour so told me to stay home and call back after an hour or two. Basically, I was a lot further along than they expected and an hour later I was pushing. Baby ended up being delivered at home - my husband did most of the hard work before a midwife arrived as the baby's head was beginning to crown. I do need to say, I don't mean to talk ill of the midwife, she delivered my healthy baby boy and for that I'll always be grateful. It wasn't her fault that I was delivering at home, however she didn't have half her kit on her and she kept leaving through the actual delivery to go to look for things in her car, so it wasn't great.
Anyway, baby's head was on an angle so he wasn't moving very much through the birth canal. The midwife kept checking his heart rate and it was quite elevated so we knew I had to get him out. Really it should have been an assisted delivery or a c-section, but since we were at home those options weren't available! She said she would do an episiotomy but then realised she didn't have her scissors on her so I had to tear naturally. She was really tired and clearly just wanted to go home - everything was very rushed and she made it clear she wanted to leave once the baby was out (she even gave him a bottle of formula milk as he didn't latch on my breast straight away). She said I had a second degree perineal tear and she would suture it there and then, which she did. She finished up and went off on her way, and that was that. Except it wasn't...
I was in a lot of pain for days after the birth and kept being told by the midwives who came to the house in the following days that that's normal. They did have a look but I was so swollen that they couldn't really see much. Then about a week after birth, a midwife checked and sent me to the hospital to be seen. A consultant saw me who told me that the tear was actually very bad, and that the stitches had come undone. She told me I had a clitoral tear and my labia had also quite badly torn. The perineum tear also extended into my bum (sorry, TMI!). I was put on antibiotics as where it was all exposed it had become infected. When she was having a look she asked if I'd been admitted to hospital straight after birth so I explained that the midwife had sutured at home. She asked if I had refused admission and I said the midwife didn't even mention going to hospital, she just sewed me up and left. The consultant told me that I should have been admitted as I would have likely needed surgery. She said to take the antibiotics and to go back in two weeks so she could see the extent of the tears once the infection had gone. She said it was likely I'd need to be resutured as nothing was being held together anymore. She arranged for me to be regularly seen by midwives in the interim so that they could keep an eye on it.
However I didn't see a midwife then for over a week as my son was admitted to hospital and I was staying with him. I did phone the midwifery team to tell them and asked if I could be seen as they were in the same hospital but nobody turned up. I then asked to be seen once we were back home and a midwife came out to have a look at how things were healing. She wasn't happy with it so I was sent back into hospital where I saw another consultant. He had a look and told me that I had a fourth degree tear and that it was very severe, but because of the time that had passed it would cause more damage to resuture and it would be best to leave it. He told me if they resutured it would probably come apart again anyway and that it would cause even worse scarring. Basically I was told to leave it, see how it heals over the coming months and if it is causing problems months down the line they would review whether it needed to be 'refashioned'.
I was ok with that as I was told chances were it would heal naturally as I am young, however I've just had a look at it for the first time and I'm an absolute mess...again, sorry, TMI! The tear is so far apart and there are no stitches holding anything together so I don't see how it's going to heal and join back together. I'm not so concerned about the perineal tear, I'm more worried about the clitoral and labia tears. I don't see things ever going back together down there. It has started to heal apart already and I can't even tell what used to be where ☹😳 even though it is starting to heal I'm still in a lot of pain and am still bleeding. I have no idea how the tears are going to affect me in the future but I don't imagine my sex life will be the same. The damage to my clitoris is so extensive I'm not sure what that will be like in the future. I feel so unattractive now and so ashamed of how I look.
Has anybody had a similar experience or healed from a severe clitoral or labia tear when it hasn't been sutured together? How long did healing take?
If you've made it this far, thank you so much for keeping reading!! I'm really hoping there will be somebody who has had a similar experience with a positive outcome 🤞🤞
Thank you! X
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Childbirth
Advice for a desperate new mum - Perineum, clitoral and labia tear - will it ever get better?
BeaRuss · 01/09/2018 15:41
No advice (ELCS here), but sympathy, that sounds horrendous. You need to be really strong and vocal and fight to get all this repaired, you need to see a consultant obstetrician ASAP surely?
I’m a HCP myself so wouldn’t advise complaining normally but in this case I think you have to to protect other women.
Not quite the same, but I had an episiotomy and the stitches got infected and "healed open" whilst I was treated. They couldn't restitch because of the infection. It just looked like a gaping hole for a while, but it sort of builds tissue from the bottom of the wound up and fills the wound hole... hard to describe exactly. 9 months later, I don't have much perineum left, but it doesn't hurt and no longer looks too weird.
My labial tear hurt for ages when I wiped after the loo (TMI) and still sometimes hurts during sex 
that was only one stitch too, so god knows why it feels so bad.
Can't comment on the clitoris.
Absolutely do not accept them doing nothing after a 4th degree tear, as a minimum you should have a scan to check the damage, as 4th degree means you have torn all the way to your bottom and this may affect your bowels. You may also have significant damage to your pelvis floor without knowing it. I couldn't feel the extent of the damage to mine until all my cuts and tears healed. You need a referral to a urogynaecologist and then on to a specialist women's health physio to assess your pelvic floor function.
It's a long journey, but you're not alone.x
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