Suturing and the fun begins!

Our midwifery groupies came prepared to learn the art of suturing this week. In midwifery, we believe and have seen the results of helping women to maintain an intact perineum. Women are meant to stretch and blossom open to let their babies slide on through. We have learned that an open mouth and throat have a synergestic relationship with an open cervix and open bottom.  It is hard to relax your bottom when your face is all scruntched up.  Women want their perineums to stay whole. We as midwives understand that women are also created to allow things to give in the right places at the right time if the baby needs them too.  Episiotomies that create an opening by cutting the perienum is perhapes easier to sew but much more difficult to heal from. There is more pain and discomfort for a woman for sometimes months afterwards.

When a woman's own body lets a small separation occur, it has given it's self the ability to heal back together better. Sometimes these saperations need a little anchor to help them stay in place until the body can knit the tissue back together again. Yes there may not be a perfect straight line to sew back together. In fact that perfect straight line is harder for the body to keep in one place so that it heals.  And all too often a cut becomes a bigger tear.

So as midwives we learn to approximate tissue back to it's normal place. We anchor it with suturing thread and we give numbing medication to the area if needed to help with discomfort.

The midwifery students are practicing on roasts using sutures and instruments with sterile fields and yes even head lamps. We cut a hole out to simulate a yoni and asked them to do interrupted, basting, and figure 8s. The week before we did knot tying with instruments and yarn.

Nothing can replace the actual experience of a womans yoni and the real thing but this helps eveyone to get familiar with the feel of the instruments and the mechanics of suturing without having to do it the first time on a freshly birthed mom.

Apprenticeship is still the art of midwifery. Sisterhood among students and midwives and among the midwifery community as a whole, is the heart of the midwifery.