Episiotomy, oh, Episiotomy How I Dread Thee

I bought Terry a book entitled So, You're going to Be a Dad. I thought it would be nice for him to get a comical view fatherhood from a man's perspective. Before I sent it off, I decided that I would read it so I wouldn't be a hypocrite. You know, telling him he should be doing something when I didn't. So, I read it. Well, kind of. I read most of it. Until I got to the labor and birth part.

With my growing belly comes growing anxiety about childbirth. I try not to think about it because there is nothing I can do about it. But sometimes that doesn't cut it and I get nervous. I am pretty good with pain so I don't stress over my ability to handle the pain part too much and if I can't handle it there always is the blessed epidural. Knowing that my body was designed to give birth and that women have been birthing babes for eons makes me a little less nervous. But every day closer to my due date the anxiety about the whole hospital situation mounts. Especially, what is going to become of my vagina? I happen to like my vagina and would like it to stay intact.

In this book, he said that his wife needed 57 stitches for her episiotomy. Nightmares!!! Nightmares for days on reading that. An episiotomy is a procedure where they cut the vagina to make the opening bigger and prevent tearing. If you cut off your finger I don't think you would need 57 stitches. I am going to pretend that the author said that just to freak the males out. Or give them some kind of perspective on the pain. Because honestly, I think you could remove my entire vagina with 57 stitches. Again, just thinking about it will give me nightmares for days.

I am hoping and praying that my endorphins kick in and I don't remember the pain part. When I see parents running around with 2, 3, 5 kids I reassure myself that they chose to do this more than once. If it was really that bad, wouldn't they have stopped at one?! At this point, I will tell myself anything to get me through.