By Wond PregNo! Except in some very rare emergency cases, episiotomies should never be performed. If your doctor performs routine or frequent episiotomies, then he may not be practicing up-to-date medicine. We have known since the mid-1980s that episiotomies are harmful and unnecessary except in a handful of rare emergencies, such as severe shoulder dystocia.
This doesn’t mean that you might not tear, but however badly you might tear, an episiotomy likely would have made things much worse.