Notes on period obstetrics

[bunnyjadwiga]

The first recorded case of a C-Section operation survived by the mother appears to have been in Germany in 1500, performed by the desperate father-- Jacob Nufer, a pig gelder.

Rectovaginal fistulas (which is one of the complications that episiotomies were developed to combat) were common and long-term complications of birth in the 19th century. Between 1845 and 1850, James Marion Sims came up with a speculum that allowed repairs to be made and perfected a method by operating on a number of African-American slave women who had such fistulas. He later made his fortune performing the surgery on upper-class women who also demanded the now-fashionable anesthesia for the operation.

The 16th century Rosegarden for Pregnant Women and Midwives recommends that overweight women deliver in a hands and knees position that is widely mentioned in the current delivery/midwifery literature as a method for reducing shoulder dystochia (where the child is trapped in the birth canal because the posterior shoulder cannot be delivered). This manuever, however, is not easily executed in a modern standard delivery room due to the presence of monitoring equipment.

Comments

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Oh, "Quality of Life" is one of those medical terms that mean "how much does it suck to be you" and as far as I can tell, in women with gestational diabetes the idea that running 'em around for all this testing might make their lives difficult and maybe even not be worth the stress level hasn't even been considered. Heck, the idea that the misery of induction, NICU, etc. might at all weigh against possibility of shoulder dystochia doesn't show up in the literature. (As far as I can tell, they'd really like to transplant every baby whose mother has GDM into an automatic womb device they could control completely.)