What You Don't Know About Episiotomies Can Hurt You - NYTimes.com

What You Don't Know About Episiotomies Can Hurt You - NYTimes.com

 The reason for the episiotomy’s popularity in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, when my brothers and I were born, was that doctors believed that a clean downward cut on the laboring woman’s perineum was safer for the baby and better for the mother than letting a woman’s perineum tear during pushing. A straight cut was easier to stitch than a jagged tear, and doctors argued that a woman would feel less postpartum pain and have fewer future problems with pelvic-floor complications (like urinary incontinence).