Age 26 – Torn Cervix

This photo is from a 26 year old woman who has had one vaginal birth, 19 months before this photo was taken. The recovery from the birth of her 9 1/2 pound baby girl seemed slow as she bled for 2 months postpartum and experienced much pressure and pain in her pelvis.

Since she was breastfeeding, she did not ovulate for 14 months after her son was born (lactational amenorrhea). She began ovulating and getting her period again 14 months postpartum. She noticed that, depending on her cervix’s position during different days of her cycle, her cervix felt very tender after intercourse with her husband. She felt deep ridges in her cervix with her finger and started asking questions.

When she looked at her cervix using a speculum, she thought it looked “torn.” It is uncommon for a cervix to tear during labor and birth, but her midwife and doctor confirmed that is what her cervix looks like.

Here is a little about the birth story. She planned to have a home waterbirth with a midwife in attendance. She dilated to 3cm and remained there for 9 hours with no progression. Her contractions were 1 min to 1 1/2 min apart for this entire time. Her midwife did a vaginal exam and discovered that she had a posterior, asynclitic baby (posterior means that the baby’s position is back-to-back with the mother – or face-up – and ascynclitic means that the head coming down at an angle and is not evenly applied to the cervix). The midwife used a Rebozo technique (a Mexican tradition for rotating babies using a large sarong-like cloth wrapped around the mama to ‘rock’ the baby into a better position) and internally used her fingers to rotate the baby’s head into a more favorable position. Within 45 minutes the mother was checked again, this time completely dilated to 10 cm.  She pushed for 3 1/2 hours to finally deliver a 9 1/2 baby with a slight shoulder dystocia. Her awesome midwife jumped into the birthing pool to get her shoulders free.