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Does Bath Water Enter The Vagina?

If you missed the segment about Orgasmic Birth, aired on ABC"s 20-20 on Jan. 2,
you can still catch the mini-segments:

Birth Orgasms: Women Speak Out - Is it possible to have an orgasm during childbirth?

Women Who Prefer Home Birth - For some, delivering a healthy child doesn"t involve a trip to the hospital.  [Note - the associated article says, "Modern medicine means not having to go through childbirth alone."  It"s more accurate to say "Responsible modern medicine means reserving risky interventions for when the benefits outweigh the risks." I know lots of responsible women who give birth at home with the perfect birth team . . . their partner, their midwife and their doula.  They are definitely not alone, and they have all the medical assistance they need, just like a woman giving birth with a midwife in a hospital!  Savvy people know the difference between midwife-assisted homebirth and unassisted birth.]

The Orgasmic Birth web site also has a lot of great information about birth in general:
Birth by the Numbers
The Director"s Blog
Birth Stories

by Peter Siegel, M.D.

Does bath water enter the vagina? [full text]
SIEGEL P.
Obstet Gynecol. 1960 May;15:660-1.

Does water make its way into the vagina during swimming or tub bathing? Women accustomed to the use of vaginal tampons know that it does not. On the other hand, their physicians generally are not so sure. During modern times, tub bathing in late pregnancy and early puerperium commonly has been, and continues to be, condemned. Because we fell that water does not enter the vagina at these times, a definitive experiment was devised to settle the matter.

Method

A simple method using the starch-iodine reaction was utilized. A previously starched and dried tampon was placed in the vagina of the woman to be tested, About 50 ml. Of saturated potassium iodide solution were added to the tub of water and the patient asked to take a bath lasting 20 minutes. She was encouraged to move about freely in the tub. The bath water was made lukewarm so as to avoid the evaporation of iodine, which occurs readily at higher temperatures. Following the bath, the patient was examined with the tampon still in the vagina. To prove the test was valid, the removed and non-reacting tampon was then dipped in the bath water used a few minutes before by the patient.
 

Results

10 women, 5 in the last two weeks of pregnancy and 5 in the first three days of the puerperium, were tested. In no instance was there the faintest suggestion of a positive iodine test when the tampon was inspected after the bath. In each of the 10 there was, on the contrary, a strongly positive iodine reaction when the removed tampon was dipped in the bath water. Figure 1 shows the tampon in place following the bath, and figure 2 shows the same tampon after it was dipped in the bath water. The histories of these 10

patients are summarized in table 1.

Table 1. Data from histories of patients tested

Pregnant (weeks)
Patient age
Patient parity
38
22
2
39
24
4
40
35
8
40
30
4
??
33
 8
Puerperal (hours)
Patient age
Patient parity
6
29
8
12
30
6
30
30
4
30
29
10
55
33
10

As can be seen, even women of high parity, tested only a few hours after delivery, failed to show a positive reaction. Since the results were so strikingly uniform, it was felt that the point was proved, and that carrying out the test on a series larger than 10 would merely be repetitious.

Thus, the fear that bath water may infect a pregnant or puerperal woman is not founded on fact, since normally no water enters the vagina. Therefore, restrictions on bathing during and after pregnancy are not warranted on this basis alone. Moreover, this teaching represents another classic example of error.

1853 W. Polk St.

Chicago, Ill
 
 

From the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the College of Medicine, University of Illinois, Chicago, Ill.

Presented before the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, District VI Junior Fellow Division, in Omaha, Neb. Oct. 15, 1959

This Web page is referenced from another page containing related information about Prelabor Rupture of Membranes - PROM

 


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