FYI:With Woman by
Gloria Lemay:To Suture or Not?. Question: "What is your experience with NOT
suturing second degree tears (at least not very deep ones)? What about labial
tears?"
Thoughts about suturing tears seem to change as time goes by.
Here are some things to think about:
- Having a foreign body (suture material) that the body has to
fight can interfere with proper healing and produce a lot of pain. Think about
having a splinter in your finger. Your finger gets swollen and inflamed in
order to surround and push the sliver out. Suture material is an irritant, so
consider that before making the decision that a tear needs stitches.
- The stitches don't fix the tear, they merely bring the two
edges together so the healing can happen—the tissue approximates and knits
itself together. I think about ear piercing—you have to wear earrings all the
time or the holes will heal over if left empty too long. Therefore, if you
have a tear that comes together in a nice match when the woman brings her
knees together, it will heal fine with bed rest.
- Blood is nature's repair agent for torn tissue, so don't be
washing and cleaning too much. Also, in Ayurvedic medicine, urine is used as a
treatment for skin abrasions. It could be that nature was pretty smart to make
our torn vulvas burn when urine passes over them. Usually that "burning during
peeing" only is there for the first 24 hours so the healing happens quite
quickly.
- If there is a tear where one flap of skin definitely goes off
in a direction that it shouldn't, crazy glue (Dermabond) can be used in minute
amounts to bring the flap to where it should be for 24 hours. Caution: don't
get it anywhere near the anus.
Midwifery teacher Gloria Lemay runs BirthLove's Doula Course. It
is free for all site members. See www.birthlove.com/glo_doula.html
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