Stem Cell Therapy and Laser

Body: 

I gave birth last year in an American hospital. I have heard that the worst place to give birth is in an American hospital and now I completely agree. My labor was sped up through aggressive coached pushing on my back. Ideally all the pushing should be the done by the uterus alone since it results in no injury to mother and baby. However in American hospitals they coerce you to use abdominal pushing which is subject to voluntary control of the abdominal muscles. Yes, it is more convenient for the staff since they are done with you faster however you ruin your vagina for life and you might even injure the baby. Also in American hospitals they cut the cord before the placenta delivers so they increase your risk of haemmorrhage and injury. Ideally the cord should be cut after both baby and placenta deliver and the cord clamps on its own instead of clamping it forcefully.

Long story short I sustained severe genital tract trauma due to being forced to push before full dilation: torn cervix, torn vagina, torn perineum, forced delivery of the placenta, lost two liters of bloood within first 24 hours. The midwife was running for the door to go home immediately after she stitched my perineum (incompetently). This is American eficiency for you. If I had delivered in the car or in the bushes in accordance with the laws of nature instead of forced interventions in a hospital setting I would be healthy today.

I have bladder and uterine prolapse 2 grade, rectocele, issues with urination and defecation. The whole posterior vaginal wall has collapsed due to the injuries and lots of of scar tissue since I was forced to push on my back. I bled for two months after the delivery from the injuries and I was spending the days in bed mainly for the first two months.

I have a question for you in regards to your knowledge of stem cell therapy for the injured tissues and also use of the Femilift laser procedure which claims to promote the healing of connective tissues.

Please let me know whether you have experience with any of those methods and your opinions of them.

Hi Lorillia - as you may have noticed, this forum and website are dedicated to Whole Woman natural solutions to prolapse management. You can use the search feature to look for discussions on these topics. Christine herself has had plenty to say on the subject of laser therapy, and it isn't going to be what you want to hear. You won't find many on this site who will have direct experience with these procedures, but if there are any I hope they will speak up. Meanwhile you might go to the home page of the site and watch the overview video there. Prolapse has a number of contributing causes, of which an aggressively-managed birth is but one. - Surviving

I would also like to add that yours was not a typical or universal American hospital-birth experience. I had two managed hospital births myself, and yes, I was pushing on my back. But I was not allowed to push until the staff determined I was fully dilated, and then only with the contractions. I had episiotomies and won't ever know if these were for the better, or if they only contributed to my later prolapse. All this was 30 years ago, before we all used the internet and back when we had no one but our doctors, friends and family to get information from. Moms have many more resources available nowadays to help them manage their birth experiences. - Surviving

Thank you for the Survivng60 for the speedy response. Episiotomies are never for the better. Anything that damages the body is never for the better. If you were truly fully dialated in your hospital births the pushing happens on its own, you cannot manage it. It is called the fetal ejection reflex or the Ferguson reflex. Also if nature is allowed to take its course naturally it is very unlikely for the vagina to tear. Most likely your vagina became looser after the hospital managed births which is the beginning of prolapse. Once you get into menopause and estrogen declines the organs will collapse into the vagina. Anything that makes the vagina loose (in other words tears in the vaginal walls, not only childbirth causes this obviously) will contribute to prolapse. Your injuries from the hospital births were small so it took years for prolapse to occur. Mine were so severe it occurred immediately.

Hi Lorillia, your experience sounds horrible and while I do agree with you that american hospitals (esp for birth) are pretty bad, you seem to have gotten an even worse experience than is normal.
I've given birth in 2 american hospitals - what I wish I knew beforehand....
first off - a LOT of how you birth is down to your obgyn. They kinda run the show and the hospital works with them. the hospital staff (midwives, nurses etc) they kinda follow hospital protocall, but the overall vibe is based off the obgyn. If you've got an episiotomy happy one, a c-section happy one - you'll end up with those things regardless of the hospital you're in.
From what I gather talking with mom's form other countries, the main thing US hospitals fail at is the overuse of c-sections, the forced pushing, the birthing on ones back, and the overuse of epidurals (as well as not knowing how to do them correctly - some way overdo it where you're basically paralyzed). Also immediate IV - i don't know why they're so IV happy but as soon as you're in the door you've got an iv in your arm.
however, i've not heard of anyplace not waiting for full dilation - so that was a complete mess up on their part.
also, at my last birth, they didn't cut the cord until the placenta was out (they did however use pitocin to get that placenta out faster so there's another problem - the overuse of pitocin after the birth).
It's rare to find a place that uses gas and air - all they offer is epidural. And I've yet to see or hear where you can push anyway you want (my first birth let me do side pushing, and there was no holding of legs whereas my 2nd birth and the births of many of my friends - legs were being held up by your ears)

so yeah, in general, the american hospitals are doing everything to speed up, manage, and control the birth to avoid any future lawsuits.... this makes birthing naturally difficult if not impossible.
not sure how it is in other countries but i've heard that they use gas and air, you can birth moving around and a lot of times they suggest hands and knees.
also, for my pushing they coached me to push like i was having a bowel movement not pushing with abs - i cringe now to think of how hard i pushed like that and what damage that can cause.

however, even with the 'perfect' birth - you can still end up with prolapse. Women on here had gentle home births, no births, births many years ago - and here we all are.

I wanted to ask you about your 'collapsed wall' because I feel like this is me....
basically, I don't feel any bulges anymore (i used to feel a distinct cystocele that i could push up and out of the way but that's been gone for a long time). Then I thought I've got slouchy vaginal walls, since everything feels sort of saggy in there now. But the last time I explored down there, I feel like the front and back wall are just collapsed onto each other.
now, the vagina is *supposed* to be a closed, flat, airless space when we're in proper natural posture, and mine is now... so I don't know how much of this is proper posture and this is how a vagina is supposed to be, how much is prolapse and the walls caving in, how much of this is just a normal vagina nearing 40 that had 2 babies come through it (rather recently) with lots of tearing. (i had a 3rd degree and then a 4th degree with my 2nd). but i feel like the front and back are just squished together now in there.
i don't remember what things were like pre kids - i think similar but just more firm... i've always had flesh coming together from front and back but it seemed a bit firmer on each side whereas now it feels just more soft and fleshy.
in any event, I don't know anything about lasers or stem cell therapy - I've been following Christine's work since I discovered this and it's all about returning to natural form and resolving these issues in a natural, non invasive way. That's the way I'd prefer to do it as I don't trust any of the procedures currently offered...

Hi Typicalme,

In my case the uterus is securely attached to the top of the vagina, but the whole vagina has collapsed onto itself, severely on the posterior side. My cervix is peaking through the vaginal opening with a part of the top of the posterior vaginal wall showing too.

Also in my case nothing else but the botched childbirth caused the injuries. I know that people ( both men and women) can get various prolapses from various injuries to the body: straining on the toilet, weird sex practices, lifting heavy, hormonal disturbances, poor posture and so forth, the list is endless. In my case it was only and solely botched childbirth that caused it. I was forced to push so hard that my maternal heart rate was in the 200s from the exertion during the pushes. It took monumental effort and hours of forced pushing to push the baby out and lacerate the vagina. These structures are so strong.

All of us here have prolapse, and for a multitude of reasons. There is no cure as such, there is only management. We manage prolapse by training our organs to be held forward in the hollow of the rounded lower belly, pinned in place by correct posture/gravity/breathing. And Christine offers many tools and exercises to help reinforce this return to natural posture, which was so hard for so many of us after a lifetime of holding our tummies in tight.

You have found the Whole Woman site, now don't fail to take advantage of the wisdom here. You can continue to regret your unfortunate birthing experience or you can do something about it. If you have all your organs and have not had any other surgeries or damaging laser treatments, there is no reason it can't work for you as well as it has for thousands of others. This is the WW site, so we can reasonably expect that you came here for the WW perspective on your story. There are many such stories here. We know that we have the solution, but it is up to each one of us to embrace the possibilities. - Surviving

Thank you very much for your comments. I searched through old posts regarding laser therapy and I really appreciated Christine’s description of laser as a scalpel. Her description of the process really makes sense to me, if I understood her comment correctly. Essentially laser creates more scar tissue by heating and thus is supposed to tighten the structures down there. I have more than enough scar tissue, I do not need any more. The way the doctor described laser therapy to me was that it gives extra energy to the body to self heal itself. But now this seems to me false and misinformed. Didn’t all the Kardashian women use laser to tighten their vaginas after giving birth? I guess it is just another too good to be true hype.