Bleeding During Perineal Massage? Prob.TMI

[momneedssupport]

I had a bad tear, upward and around my urethra with my first. 9 days early and only 6.5lb, started to tear up again with #2 and my ob snipped my perineum. Now im obviously worried about #3, but this will be a hm. So i thought about massaging........not sure about bleeding though:/

[birdinhand]

I used to work at a hospital-based midwifery practice with incredibly gentle, hands-off midwives. There were mixed ideas even between the 5 of them about PM. Two thought it couldn't hurt and gave hand-outs about it, 3 (and me, as the patient educator) disagreed and felt the body does what the body does -- just like the tissue fans open to allow the baby through the birth canal, we felt it was more about the factors that can be controlled (positioning, hydration, no purple-pushing). For a while we seemed to be getting a lot of women commenting about bleeding during their attempts at PM. At that point we reevaluated the hand-out and decided there really wasn't enough information or evidence to do anything more than suggest it as you might suggest EPO in the last 6 weeks, etc.

Here is something from last month that essentially says, the longer you do PM the less effective it is, and that it is only "helpful" with first-time vaginal-birthers: http://givingbirthwithconfidence.org...-the-evidence/