This is the longest shortest time I'm Hillary Frank. I've talked on this show before about

my childbirth injury. Basically, I had a traumatic vaginal delivery that ended with an

appeasie otomy. That's where they cut your vaginal tissue to help get the baby out.

It left me in pain for three years. I saw six different doctors who tried to help me

sort of. They told me everything from things look totally fine. There's nothing wrong.

All the way to urine pain because you're a redhead. The only thing that will help is plastic

surgery to graft some skin from the inside of your vagina to the outside, like to bulk things

up a bit, I guess. That, thankfully, wound up not being true. When I finally found a doctor

who could help me, it turned out my problem was one of the most basic problems you can

have after surgery. Actually, with surgery on any part of your body, I had nerve damage.

I just needed a specialist to treat that damage. Plus some pelvic floor physical therapy

to get that part of my body back in shape. Of course, I've spent a lot of time questioning

whether I should have just had a C-section and avoided all the pain and all the seeking

of answers. It didn't episode about that. It's number 27. Childbirth injuries, ranging from

mild to severe, happen in 50 to 80 percent of vaginal births. That's more than half of

vaginal births. It's a lot, right? I've learned from doing this podcast that, like me, lots

of women here, strained in wrong diagnoses from their doctors, but not everybody finds

a specialist who can help them, or even a gynecologist who takes them seriously in the

first place. Lots of women just give up, live with the pain.

This month, there's an article in Mother Jones about all of this. It's called The Scary

Truth About Childbirth. But Kira Butler, the author of the article, says, don't let that

word scary scare you. This article, she says, is meant to empower you, to prepare you,

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