My heart goes out to the mother whose baby died of morphine poisoning...
But my feeling isn't how could this have happened, but why doesn't it  
happen more often?
In my community episiotomy is absolutely routine and after moving  
here I had to travel 2 hours away
for the birth of my last two children in order to avoid one...

I am happy for the women who only find their episiotomies to be  
"uncomfortable",
but women who get episiotomies are something like 6 times more likely  
to suffer a 4th degree tear than women who do not get one....
according to a double blinded randomized clinically controlled trial  
of episiotomy versus no episiotomy...

Women can suffer the worse pain of their lives for many months  
afterwards,
and intermittent pain can accompany intercourse or having a bowel  
movement for the rest of a woman's life...
The use of pain killers for 2 weeks is not uncommon following other  
serious injuries
  so it should come as no surprise that a terrible injury to the  
perineum and rectum
might create pain which drives a woman to take pain killers even  
while breastfeeding...

I wish the pain that accompanies needless episiotomies would get as  
much attention
as the breastfeeding angle of this story but it won't...
The frequency of episiotomy probably won't change a bit,
but there will be mothers with avoidable perineal injuries which  
require pain killers who will be afraid to breastfeed...

Jen O'Quinn
IBCLC private practice
Augusta, GA USA

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