Nearly everything about becoming a parent requires that you give up control.  When will baby be born?  How long will labor last?  What kind of labor will you get?  How much pain?  What kind of baby will you get?  How many times a day will baby breastfeed?  So many unknowns.

As humans, we like to quantify things and experiences.  We want to know how much and when because we want to be in control.  Surrendering to the process is difficult and challenging!  Numbers and data usually help us make judgments and sense out of situations.   But this isn’t always the case in labor.  Sometimes having numbers can complicate everything.

When I’m talking about numbers, I’m talking about cervical checks.  A cervical check means that a provider inserts two fingers into the vagina to examine the cervix.  The provider feels the cervix on each side for consistency, position, dilation and effacement.  Sometimes women want them before labor starts to make sure their bodies are getting ready–except the exams don’t tell you when labor will (or won’t) start.   During labor, sometimes women ask for them, and sometimes care providers want to do them to see if progress is being made–except the exam doesn’t always predict when a baby will be born.  A woman can go from 4 centimeters to having her baby in her arms in a couple of hours.  So what gives?

Here are two questions to ask yourself before you have a cervical exam:

1. What do I need to hear?  

2.  What will I do with the information that I get? 

I’ve lost track of how many times a mom asked for a cervical check during labor because she needed reassurance that her body was doing what it needed to do.  So I started asking, “What do you want to hear?”  Sometimes they had expectations that weren’t appropriate and we would talk about that.  Sometimes just the talk about progress and what that means would help her feel better and we didn’t need the exam.  But you (general you!) have to be prepared to hear information that you don’t want to hear, and how will that impact your labor?

If the information from the cervical exam helps you to get treatment for pre term labor, if you use that information to choose (or avoid!) pitocin or an epidural–great.  If you can use the information from the exam to make a decision,  there’s your reason to have an exam.  If you want to do it because you need reassurance, or you’re worried–let’s talk first.