04/08/2024
This!
I didn't want to have any vaginal checks for a few reasons. Firstly, because I wanted to believe in my body's ability to birth, and I didn't want someone else's assessment of my 'progress' to affect how I felt things were going.
I didn't want to risk being made to feel I was 'only' xxcm dilated, as if that was bad and I was somehow failing - and I had read about how cervical dilation can change very quickly - both ways!
It's not an indicator of how long labour might carry on for, and therefore isn't something I wanted to know.
People checking your cervix doesn't benefit you - it doesn't change your birth - it doesn't affect how long it takes (apart from maybe making it take longer!). It's something that hospitals do for their own benefit, so they can put you in a box and make educated guesses about how far along you are.
But different people can get different measurements. Two midwives might get a totally different figure, and if a hospital says you 'can't' do something until you are xxcm dilated then that could really mess up your flow.
I don't think people are meant to put their hands inside us while we're birthing. It is uncomfortable, it inhibits your natural movement, it disrupts oxytocin flow, it means you have to lay down or try to stay still, and it introduces infection risk. Maggie was in NICU for 11 days after aspirating meconium just before birth - they believe due to her getting an infection after we'd transferred to hospital - *after* I'd had vaginal exams.
Essentially it gets in the way of physiological birth, and doesn't actually help you at all 🩷
Having these interventions and uncomfortable procedures is something we want to make sure *we* want - not just accept as standard.
My birth with Rosie is a brilliant example of how no-one can tell you how 'far along' you are. They were just about to deliver her surgically with no idea she'd be born ten minutes later!
Hospitals want to plot you on a graph, but birth doesn't work like that. It doesn't progress along a straight line in predictable patterns. You can make an informed choice 🩷
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