Sometimes when I remember the feeling, a physical - 3 Jun 2026 - (556 words) - Jaynes Baby Bank
Sometimes when I remember the feeling, a physical shudder comes over my body.
I think anyone does when I tell them the story.
We first met Megan, 36 weeks pregnant and preparing for her second child.
Three years ago she gave birth to her son Roman.
It was a low-risk pregnancy.
That changed when she went into labour.
I can still remember the feeling of his head reaching, like crowning.
And I just got this huge, my body did it for me, urge to just push.
And I did.
And I can remember the feeling of the tear from my, like from the start of the vagina all the way down to my perineum.
And I remember the feeling of it actually ripping open and screaming.
But the midwives didn't say anything.
They didn't say, stop or they weren't coaching me.
They just were there, ready to catch him.
Megan has suffered a third degree tear.
They usually require surgical repair and follow-up care to restore continence.
It's still relatively rare in childbirth but is becoming more common.
Around one in 35 women or 2.9% who gave birth in England in the last year had a third or fourth degree tear.
Compared with one in 43 or 2.3% in 2021, that's an increase of 25%.
Higher rates of tearing are associated with birth instruments like forceps.
In 2024, one in every 15 births in England, around 6.7%, was assisted with forceps compared with 1.2% or one in every 85% in Norway.
And rates of third and fourth degree tears are 70% higher in England.
The childbirth injury charity Mazic estimates one of the most severe types of tears costs £50,654, which includes things like health care, counselling and loss of earnings for mothers and their partners.
When taking legal claims into account, this figure rises to £464,000 per injured woman.
I wasn't told about how to recover from such a surgery and a tear.
So I did a lot of my own research in the end.
When I got back from the hospital and realised what I needed to do, I self-referred to the physio to try and get my pelvic floor back in tax, which eventually I did.
But it took months, like up to nine months, to feel physically back to normal.
I feel like I missed out on the newborn stage with my son because I was so sad and so traumatised and in so much pain with what had happened.
A recent NHS report found tears were wrongly categorised in 58% of cases, with women who'd suffered severe third or fourth degree tears being initially diagnosed with lower grade tears.
The Chief Midwifery Officer for NHS England, Kate Brintworth, has told Sky News, the NHS is taking action to transform care for pregnant women and their babies, including introducing new clinical standards to reduce avoidable harm, targeted support for services that need to improve and work to tackle unacceptable inequalities in care and outcomes.
It can be really lonely and really traumatising and just to have that humanity and somebody just ask if you're okay and, you know, and what they can do for you next and explain what's happening to you at the time.
This is actually somebody's life.
This is going to change somebody's life forever.
They're going to remember this day forever.
So it would be really nice just to be treated like a human.
I think anyone does when I tell them the story.
We first met Megan, 36 weeks pregnant and preparing for her second child.
Three years ago she gave birth to her son Roman.
It was a low-risk pregnancy.
That changed when she went into labour.
I can still remember the feeling of his head reaching, like crowning.
And I just got this huge, my body did it for me, urge to just push.
And I did.
And I can remember the feeling of the tear from my, like from the start of the vagina all the way down to my perineum.
And I remember the feeling of it actually ripping open and screaming.
But the midwives didn't say anything.
They didn't say, stop or they weren't coaching me.
They just were there, ready to catch him.
Megan has suffered a third degree tear.
They usually require surgical repair and follow-up care to restore continence.
It's still relatively rare in childbirth but is becoming more common.
Around one in 35 women or 2.9% who gave birth in England in the last year had a third or fourth degree tear.
Compared with one in 43 or 2.3% in 2021, that's an increase of 25%.
Higher rates of tearing are associated with birth instruments like forceps.
In 2024, one in every 15 births in England, around 6.7%, was assisted with forceps compared with 1.2% or one in every 85% in Norway.
And rates of third and fourth degree tears are 70% higher in England.
The childbirth injury charity Mazic estimates one of the most severe types of tears costs £50,654, which includes things like health care, counselling and loss of earnings for mothers and their partners.
When taking legal claims into account, this figure rises to £464,000 per injured woman.
I wasn't told about how to recover from such a surgery and a tear.
So I did a lot of my own research in the end.
When I got back from the hospital and realised what I needed to do, I self-referred to the physio to try and get my pelvic floor back in tax, which eventually I did.
But it took months, like up to nine months, to feel physically back to normal.
I feel like I missed out on the newborn stage with my son because I was so sad and so traumatised and in so much pain with what had happened.
A recent NHS report found tears were wrongly categorised in 58% of cases, with women who'd suffered severe third or fourth degree tears being initially diagnosed with lower grade tears.
The Chief Midwifery Officer for NHS England, Kate Brintworth, has told Sky News, the NHS is taking action to transform care for pregnant women and their babies, including introducing new clinical standards to reduce avoidable harm, targeted support for services that need to improve and work to tackle unacceptable inequalities in care and outcomes.
It can be really lonely and really traumatising and just to have that humanity and somebody just ask if you're okay and, you know, and what they can do for you next and explain what's happening to you at the time.
This is actually somebody's life.
This is going to change somebody's life forever.
They're going to remember this day forever.
So it would be really nice just to be treated like a human.