I think it totally depends on the situation.

In a low risk labour, I am happy to do as few VEs as possible, and will avoid them completely if I can. You need to be confident that you can assess progress in labour in some other way though, you can't just blindly meander onwards. I usually build up a 'big picture' of what's going on taking into account many factors - the length, strength and frequency of contractions and how they are changing over time, mum's general behaviour during and between contractions, the position of the baby (are descent and rotation occurring?), physical signs of late first stage such as the purple line and the rhombus of michaelis, indicators of transition, etc etc etc.

However, not all labours are low risk and physiological, and in these cases you often need to do VEs to know that labour is porgressing. It is generally not a good idea to have someone with an epidural and syntocinon without knowing that their labour is progressing, and because many of the physiological signs of progress are masked or not present for these women, a VE becomes a bigger part of the picture.

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Love Dory xxx
Just keep swimmin', just keep swimmin'....

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