One of the main studies of Jo’s PhD is to observe the impact of how well the pelvic floor stretches during pregnancy and what happens during the birth. For example, we hypothesise that a pelvic floor that does not stretch well by the end of pregnancy which may increase a women’s risk of prolonged first or second stage of labour, their risk of needing an instrumental birth like forceps, and their risk of needed an emergency c-section.

 

There are a wide number of variables that impact birth, for example, size of the baby, position the women births in, how old the mother is, how fearful she is and how supported she is during labour and more. The more variables that can impact something the more participants you need in research to make sure the research is robust. Therefore we are aiming to recruit 600 women! We are doing well so far with 135 only 465 to go! Luckily our team is amazing, the women with work with are amazing and we have amazing colleagues all around the country helping us collect data. 

 

Why this study will be great:

• We will have a huge number of participants 

• We will have participants birthing in many different locations from home birth to private hospitals and everything in between

• We will have participants scanning metropolitan and regional and rural parts of the country 

 

Hopefully this means we will be able to generate solid conclusions about how influential the pelvic floor is during pregnancy on birth outcomes. Then we can get on with showing how to treat a pelvic floor that does not move well in pregnancy to help improve birth outcomes.

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If you are pregnant with your first baby any want to help out with our study please get in touch with us! We want to get as many women as possible.