Vaginal Tear Is ‘Common’ In Childbirth, Yet No One Ever Speaks Of It While Glorifying Motherhood!

The possibility of a vaginal tear and stitches came to me as a shock, as I realized that there is still so much that I am not aware of about my own body!

I have a confession to make. I am 27 years old ‘unmarried’ woman and I had no idea about what a Vaginal Tear is, until few months ago when my friends were discussing it.

Listening to the conversation, my ears refused to believe what they had just heard. It was a shock, and I had never heard of it before.

If you happen to be someone like me, let me describe what vaginal tear is, which according to the internet, where I immediately did a frantic search, are “common” during childbirth. Yet nobody bothered to talk about such a “common” complication women experience during delivery.

There are various reasons for vaginal tears, which might include, being a first time mother, or if the baby is bigger than the maximum the vagina can stretch, or has weight on higher side etc. According to the information I read, this is a tear that cuts across vaginal tissue and can go in any direction, and often during labour the woman is given a cut there so it can be controlled!

And the mother needs to get stitches to close the perineal tear! I never knew that a normal delivery included stitches too!

Why don’t we care enough to educate young women about things like a vaginal tear?!

Well, I have never planned to have a kid. I am anyway going to lead a child-free life. But what if in a parallel universe, I want a child? Who was going to educate me about stuff like that? And at what stage?

We all talk about periods, PMSing, PCOD/PCOS etc. Then why did I never hear anybody talking about complications during and after pregnancy?

As far as I remember, we had nothing about pregnancy and deliveries in our school textbooks, and thereafter, nobody actually cared to educate about things like that.

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What people actually care about is- “When are you getting married?” “When are you going to have children?” without bothering to replace that “when” with “Why” or “How”. “How are you going to have children?” Are you aware of all the procedures, all the possibilities, all the complications, before getting pregnant and announcing the ‘happy news’ to society?

There are initiatives all around the world for sex education. But what about the education for “what happens after sex if you choose to have a baby”?

Vaginal tears and stitches came to me as a shock because I realized that there is still so much that I am not aware of about my own body! Moreover, I know that I am not the only one. Fortunately, I have access to the resources from where I can learn these things but what about the women who are kept in dark just because “in our society, we do not talk about things like that”?

Image source: Sanjasy on pixabay

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Shuchi Sharma

Civil Engineer by profession. Artist by choice. read more...

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