anyone used elastolabo or something like it?

[utopian99]

I've just seen an ad for it in pregnancy magazine, so looked up online and if it works it sounds like a great thing, (clinical research that I can find sounds good,) but costs £25 which is a lot for something that I can't find much info on.

Has anyone used anything like it or for the same purposes? It's for perineal massage,.to increase skin elasticity and reduce tearing likelihood...

I was intrigued so did a google and it looks interesting as you say. Bumping because I'm now waiting for responses too! It looks like it may be a prescription item, where did you find you could buy it?

Talk to your midwife - I had an antenatal class this week with experienced midwife and she said perineal massage makes very little difference to outcomes! But no harm in trying...

I saw this at the baby show recently and was intrigued. Got the hard sell for about 10 minutes from a woman who was a bit narked when I explained i already had 2 kids and wouldn't be doing massage as if it got any stretchier down there I could probably use it as a parachute. Seriously, I looked closely at the ingredients, nothing remarkable in there, except for the "new amazing ingredient" which, like most new beauty products has a technical and fantastic name which means nothing and has no sound basis in science. I reckOned you would need 4 tubes to get you to labour from 34 weeks, which is a lot of dosh to fork out for a product with dubious scientific backing.

Haha Rogersmelley that parachute bit made me laugh!

My midwife said finger massage and olive oil were my best bet if I wanted to try it, I didn't in the end and to be honest the biggest difference for me was that my mum (who delivered dd) lifted her head as she crowned otherwise she would have torn me because I was on my back so her head would have pressed against my perineum. If you have a hands off midwife then staying upright is your best bet, it keeps the pressure even.

I did my perineal massage religiously from about 34 weeks. Made no difference, had to have an episiotomy

Won't be bothering for DC2, although at least it made me feel like I'd tried to do something!