Damage to your private parts by childbirth

[cloclo76]

According to "The best friends guide to pregnancy" by Vicky Iodine, it is the first vaginal birth that does all the "damage" to your private parts. Do you agree or do you think that successive births add to it?

Most damage done by 3rd.
No damage by Baby 2, tiny bit by Babies 1 & 4.
There are several things in The Best Friend's guide to PG that I don't really go along with, btw.
At the end of the day it's just one person's honest experience.

Thank you for your comments. Just to give you more background, according to the book, the author went to see her doctor during her 4th pregnancy and begged him to give her a C-Section as she was fed up of doing pelvic floor exercises. He explained that it was too late as the "damage was done" by the first vb and that subsequent vb were not going to make it any worse.

Sounds like rubbish to me. No long term change at all in my bits!

No change at all after 1st VB, it was the second that did it all for me, as DS1 came out stargazing with his hand still on his head (he was B2B). No further damage from 3rd VB, am just waiting for dc4 now.

I had exact same damage caused by both my DDs... slight grazing is all, DD1 6lb 13, DD2 7lb 12

with DD1 15 min 2nd stage
DD2 3 min 2nd stage

I am reading with interest.

DD was nearly 11lbs and gave me 2nd degree tear thats still giving me issues (not to mention my poor pelvic floor issues!) 2 years on.

Im somewhat scared of having another big one and more damage to my bladder and surrounding area.

I think it depends what you mean by damage.

I had an episiotomy (sp?) with my 1st which healed fine. I just have a very small neat scar so this doesn't concern me unduly.

I'm pregnant with my 2nd now so just hoping that I can come away with no worse this time...we'll see.

My women's health physio drew me a graph to show that on average the 1st birth does damage, the second adds to it and then subsequent births don't make much difference.

well in her case maybe the damage was done on her first birth

doesn't mean everyone's is does it:?

Haha! No!

No Damage with my first and fistula and prolapse with second.

Depends on position of baby and manner of delivery.

Totally opposite in my case

1st birth a tiny graze so no damage.
2nd birth backwards presentation baby with huuuge head leading to forceps and therefore episiotomy. Much more difficult to have a full bladder since forceps and more scar tissue.

Needed stiches with DD1. With DD2, the midwife went to pop my waters and cut me with the crochet hook thingy. I now have a lovely scar.

My name is rather appropriate for this thread. Hmm.

But that sounds like consultant (and book) talking about pelvic floor damage rather than ghastly genital trauma? It seems logical that your pelvic floor would be a once only deal (and can be equally impaired by pregnancy and EMCS actually), whilst trauma is more random and can happen on any birth.
But I'm not an expert, thank heavens.

My consultant has told me the only way to prevent further damage to pelvic floor/bladder/bowel is to have dc2 via c section....which im more than happy to go along with!

Ist time was sutured in theatre, 2nd time M/W said it would probably tear in the same place, it didn't, got parallell tear which GP decided to stitch, took hours, masses of local aneasthetic, and I don't think he could see what he was doing. This time (in a few weeks) I've asked for suturing in theatre, which the consultant had the cheek to say I was being pessimistic, a realist more like, and he made me feel as if I was concerned about the aesthetics of it all, not the underlying structure. I'll just have to wait and see what happens. I guess you just don't know, and everone / delivery is different

How can anyone possibly know. For a start, many continence issues and so on go unreported.

My personal experience is that DC1 caused the most damage at the time because I needed stitches to a 2nd degree tear. It took time for my pelvic floor to repair but by the time I had DC2 all felt normal to me, though I could not say without absolute certainty that my vagina and external genitalia were the exact same way as before. After DC4 I have absolutely no isses with bladder control, sensation, etc. so assume all is back to normal. I can see my suture scar if I look and feel it but try not to. The skin is all dark and flappy, but that is because I am 36 as far as I know.

This seems very inexact science - nobody observes their fadge in such great detail so as to be able to comment greatly do they? DO THEY?

My advice just don't look down for a few weeks afterwards.

A lot of damage is actually done in the pregnancy as well. so having C sections will not prevent all pelvic floor damage. Having a heavy baby pressing down in your pelvis and moving your pelvic organs around will definitely do some damage!

I completely agree with chocolatefudge in that a c section does not neccesarily mean no damage to your privates.
My beautiful DD was delivered by c section but the butter fingered consultant dropped a pair of giant surgical forceps onto my privates and the bruises were still there weeks later.