Some interesting facts about the vagina...

[ResistanceIsNecessary]

Inspired by this thread on twitter which had some good vagina info. It's amazing how many people know so little about the female anatomy so here are some more interesting facts!

• The walls are very elastic to allow it to stretch and then shrink back again after vaginal childbirth delivery. It does not require manual dilation to keep it open or maintain its shape, unless as a result of side effects from other medical procedures (such as some female-occurring cancer treatments).

• It is self-cleaning and has a naturally acidic environment until the time around ovulation, when the PH changes to make it more accommodating for sperm, to promote fertilisation. It does not require daily artificial cleaning products or lubricant to keep it healthy.

• The walls of the vagina (the vaginal vault) are made up of two layers of muscle tissue, which allow for expansion and contraction - which can often be felt as 'ridges', which lessen with age or post- vaginal delivery childbirth. The walls contain no glands.

Feel free to add your own facts

Oh Aran I'd love to see that but my home internet settings wont let me .

Super thread, I read Ima May's Guide to Childbirth when pregnant, written by a midwife in the US south. She talked about how she'd seen women one up one another with their tales of terrible labour and suffering.

To counter this, 2/3 of the book was simply accounts of straightforward labours she'd attended as a home midwife... "as I got there she was still ironing, gave birth ten minutes later etc. " I don't know if this book is easy to get here, but would be a super read for anyone pregnant. My favourite part was her saying, "Men have no problem with the way their parts expand in size, why should we?"!

On some thread here, there was a link to something about how wide your vagina gets to give birth. I haven’t been able to look at a bagel in the same way since

jamrollyolly Ina May Gaskin's book "Spiritual Midwifery" was quite revolutionary in the US. The Farm midwives in Tennessee were forefront in reclaiming birth as empowering for women. Midwives had by then been mostly eliminated by the medical establishment, and homebirth was considered backwards, dangerous and irresponsible, etc... Ina May and her collaborators called labor contractions "rushes". All this was quite fringe in the 70's and 80's. The ideas were sparked by British doctor Grantly Dick-Read's book "Childbirth Without Fear"
Here is a Ted Talk she gave in 2013:

Thanks for this thread, as it has brought me round to the positive, amazing, miraculous power of women.

Sign wow thanks for posting that, it was great to see!

Orchid I remember visualising an expanding donut when in labour!

Beautiful thread, celebrating the amazingness of womens bodies-love it! Am reading bits out to the family who are equally awed.

I had 2 induced births so they were tough, not natural at all, but the result was worth it.

I want a poster of that clitoris image! Why is that not in biology books, like the beautiful flower image of breast feeding ducts?

jamrollyolly arranbubonicplague posted this;

and you can get the cutters here;
bakerlogy.com/collections/cookie-cutter-medical-collection

Inabriati just wow, made my day!!

orchidoptic - this image? Absolutely love it and made me feel really powerful.

We truly are amazing!

Who else thought the black hole image looks like a cervix in early labor?

I loved this thread. Our bodies are amazing. We can grow a whole new person inside our bodies, and then feed our baby from our own bodies, with milk that changes as the baby grows. The womb is amazing too. It expands enormously, and then shrinks back again.

I’ve been using what our bodies do to grow a child to explain why the guy sitting next to me at work should not moan to me about his missus.

“She was so grumpy to me when I got home”
“She’s pregnant, right, yes?”
“Yes, but she should ignore her hormones”
“Are you nuts? Worship her. Do you not appreciate what her body is doing?”

I love this thread. Have you all seen this beautiful vulva artwork by Jacqueline Secor? instagram.com/jacquelinesecorart?igshid=1tai46o73rxst

feed our baby from our own bodies, with milk that changes as the baby grows.

So many mothers are curious about the change in milk that the Parenting Science Gang had the milk analysed...

We organised a mass milk-in. As mentioned in number 11, our breastfeeding groups REALLY wanted to know what was in breastmilk for children over 2 years old. So we designed an experiment with Dr Natalie Shenker of Hearts Milk Bank and Dr Simon Cameron of Imperial College. We got 130 breastfeeding mums (feeding a range of nurslings from under six months to over four years) to come to Charing Cross hospital in London, and express breastmilk. [Read from 14 onwards]

parentingsciencegang.org.uk/news/21-things-we-learned-running-a-citizen-science-project-about-parenting/