Millions of Women Are Injured During Childbirth. Why Aren't Doctors Diagnosing Them?

RUBEN CHAMORRO

Cosmopolitan, July 2016

Childbirth is one of nature’s most wondrous but biologically brutal feats. For nine months, a woman’s muscles and bones bear the increasing weight of a baby that isn’t even slightly ergonomically positioned. During a vaginal birth, muscles and other tissues stretch and often tear as something the size of a cantaloupe is forced through an opening that is normally about the size of a carrot. According to a recent spate of studies, a disturbing number of women quietly endure incontinence, painful sex, back aches, and crippling pelvic pain for years after giving birth because of undiagnosed and untreated childbirth injuries.