Labour related question! What does this mean? Any midwifes know the answer?

[NoThankss]

When I had DD, I had an episiotomy. They had to get her out extremely quickly as her heart rate had almost stopped. Thankfully she was fine afterwards.

Anyway, I asked the consultant how many stitches I'd had and he just said "it was one continuous stitch". I'm pretty sure there were quite a lot of stitches but I really don't understand what he meant by that. Does anyone know what that means? I should have asked him to explain but was obviously preoccupied with my newborn.

Thanks for your help.

I’m not a midwife but I work in theatres.

There a several ways of suturing. The main ones are interrupted which are the individual ones you get when they are usually needing to be removed. Rarely used in theatres and obstetrics.

Usually when they use absorbable sutures like in the case of internal sutures like a tear in labour, they use a continuous suture which is basically just a big continuous stitch like if you were sewing two bits of fabric together. Then the knot it at each end and usually hide the ends under the skin. It’s an absorbable suture so no needs to find the ends for removal. It’s the most common suture used in surgery for skin now.

Hope that helps.

from google

"A midwife or doctor will stitch the episiotomy or second‐degree tear in three layers (vagina, perineal muscle and skin).

Traditionally the vagina is stitched using a continuous locking stitch and the perineal muscles and skin are repaired using approximately three or four individual stitches, each needing to be knotted separately to prevent them from dislodging.
Researchers have been suggesting for more than 70 years that the 'continuous non‐locking stitching method' is better than 'traditional interrupted methods'"

so I guess like a chain of stitches ,like you get from a sewing machine ?

Hope you're ok and recovered ?

Sorry I’m talking about top layers of skin btw. Interrupted is used for lower layers but you need a knowledge of surgery to get it really so trying to explain a bit more simply. So yeah you would have had some interrupted in the muscle layers too.

I'm a midwife.

It basically means it was just one long piece of thread that stayed attached to the needle going in and out of the episiotomy, through the different layers and then tied off in a knot. We don't count how many times the needle goes in and out of the tissues (think most people would count that as 'how many stitches?') if that makes sense, we just keep repairing until it's back together.

When people ask 'how many stitches?' I think they're thinking that it's repaired by individual ones rather than a thread that's stayed together. Some doctors/midwives don't really go in to detail and just pluck a number out of thin air- I've heard that before! Which is why you may hear some women say they had 30/10/50 stitches.

Hope that helps.

I'm an ex midwife. We used to, and I guess it still happens, repair the muscle layer with individual stiches, typically 3 - 5 depending on how many it takes to stop bleeding and ensure the muscle is closed with no gaps or gaping. Then the skin layer is stictched with one continuous stich, very similar to a blanket stitch, starting at the top of the vaginal wall.