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Mara R.O.

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Apr 6 • 12 tweets • 5 min read

#WordOfTheDay #lithotomy in Spanish #litotomía or as I prefer to call it “the most absurd position to give birth in”

Lithotomy is referred to this position. And although now I’m every picture and movie is generally understood as a position of birth. It is relatively modern and now questioned by people like me. But hey there is a man in the picture and not a birthing woman.

Lithotomy from Greek for "lithos" (stone) and "tomos" (cut), is a surgical method for removal of calculi, stones formed inside certain organs, such as the urinary tract (kidney stones), bladder (bladder stones), and gallbladder (gallstones)

So that was the position used in the surgery to remove kidney stones, but how did then evolve into birth. Birth positions have always always been upright because it made instinctive, anatomical and gravitational sense

In Europe until about 1550, #midwives were the only attendants at births. When Pare, surgeon-obstetrician,practiced medicine (1517?-1590),barber-surgeons began to compete with midwives for #obstetric cases. To begin with these surgeons were poorly trained; socially they rank with

Guillemeau (the pupil and son-in-law of Pare) had advocated reclining bed birthing in 1598, supposedly for women's comfort and to facilitate labour

But what about the story of the position being demanded by the pervert Louis XIV to watch the birth properly

Well…I don’t buy it. I think it is more to do with the fact that he granted favors to a well-known lithotomist Frere Jaques ( born Jaques Beaulieuin) a friar who of course became famous in the French nursery rhyme

Frere Jacques performed the lithotomy op- erations at the same Hotel Dieu during the time period in which the new birth position was instituted. They both started at the same time and place in France s. XVII Unfortunately this became trend without asking a simple question

The best position for spontaneous birth still should be “whichever one the woman chooses” and gravity still works the same way. For complicated births that need intervention lithotomy makes sense as the control and trust (not the decision making) passes to the obstetrician.

@mamaresiliente

With thanks to @mamaresiliente for the inspiration 😉💜

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More from @Maravillandome

Mara R.O.

@Maravillandome

Apr 7

Today we are talking about a couple of things, first of all the #uterus or #womb in Spanish #útero or #matriz an inverted pear-shaped muscular organ of the female reproductive system, located between the bladder and the rectum. The uterus grows during puberty and shrinks after

menopause. But as a rule of thumb we say that your uterus is the size of your fist. In Spanish the synonym “matriz” in English now archaic (for this particular) “Matrix” comes from the Latin for Mater-Mother Matrix -Breeding female and in late Middle English Matrix-Uterus And now

the word “womb” in English comes from the proto-Germanic wambō for stomach or belly. In the uterus we find the #cervix in Spanish “cérvix” o “cuello uterino”= uterine neck.And that’s why you will find the word cervical referring to the vertebrae on your neck. Spanish: cervicales

Read 12 tweets

Mara R.O.

@Maravillandome

Apr 5

One common misconception around obstetrical terms is with the word #caesarean as in Caesarean section or C-section in Spanish “cesárea”. Because most people assume it comes from, obviously

And yes it does come from Caesar but not in the way it is generally thought, which is that it’s called that way because that is how he was born.But historically that will not make sense. At that time that kind of surgery was practiced but still not as well as it is done nowadays

which meant that an operation to get the baby out of the mother was performed when the mother was dead or dying. We know from historical records that Julius Caesars’ mother, Aurelia, lived beyond his birth