MIL thinks having c-section isn’t “giving birth”

Well she’s wrong, your child was born, you gave birth to her. There are only 2 ways of being born as far as I’m aware and she was born via c-section, the same as I was and many, many other people.

If I hadn’t been born via c-section I wouldn’t have made it out alive so I think it’s a wonderful way to be born, certainly better than the alternative in my case!

Yes there is unfortunately - very much along side breast feeding.

Going back to pain relief - so many social media accounts trying to convince women that it’s ‘all in the mind’ and pain relief is bad for the baby - usually flogging some kind of ‘special birthing comb’ that helps you through it 🙈

Yet we have mothers on the other side of the world with zero access to medical care who would love to make child birth less painful/traumatic

So her version of ‘real’ child birthing is that either the baby comes out of your vagina or else you (and possibly the baby as well) die trying?

And if not then she’s going to snidely insinuate that you’re less of a woman and not a proper mother because you didn’t really ‘give birth’?

Well she’s got her foot down hard on the cunt pedal, hasn’t she?

Giving birth is giving birth - you have created and literally birthed a child out of your body, no matter the exit strategy or degree of medical intervention.

And anyone who thinks otherwise should keep their ridiculous gate keeping fuckery to themselves. YANBU.

Oh, stop it.

This reminds me a bit of a friend who asked me who delivered my dc and I said, v much smiling and light hearted but still making a point, 'I did!' 😃

I have given birth both ways (well 2 out of the 3 I guess I have given birth vaginally and by EMCS - I have never had an ELCS).

I occasionally comment that dd could kill Macbeth. The thing is though - it was a trick played by the witches on Macbeth to make him think he couldn’t be killed. Birnham woods also didn’t actually move.

Clever chap was William Shakespeare- he understood that words can be twisted but that the thing that mattered was that Macduff was there and could chop off Macbeth’s head.

I think that the thing that matters is - is your mother in law saying it as a dig or because she is a bit of an annoying pedant. If it is a dig then I would just think “what an unpleasant person she is”. If it is the pedant then just roll your eyes and feel free to criticise her grammar for the rest of her life.

So was I but I still don't feel like I gave birth. I was 9 cm at the time of the section too and I do think the feeling varies from person to person. I do feel like with the EMCS I had two birth experiences in one but I had a sense that things weren't brought to a completion and i felt that in my physical body for some time afterwards (I can't explain it). After I had my vaginal birth, something in my brain felt that the circuit had been closed.

I had an elective with my third and my priority was it being over as fast as possible as I didn't even think about whether I'd given birth or not as I didn't care.

As an aside, I do think that an EMCS after a long and painful labour can be very murky ground, where you don't know where you stand in terms of how to process the horror. I think that people need to sit with terminology which they relate to and which also gives them confidence in how they look back on how things went.

I had an emergency section for twins, then was advised to have section for 3rd child due to VBac problems and probably because I was so ancient😁.

A registrar in my antintaal care said something along the lines ( can't remember exact words) about did I not want to experience the real thing to be like a proper woman😳

He was a foreign doctor and I sort of put it down to a cutural attitude, but maybe it wasnt!

DS was born via emergency c-section after an agonising 20 hour back to back labour that even an epidural didn’t completely numb. When MIL came to hospital to meet him the next day, she looked at me and said in quite a sneering way ‘oh, you didn’t have a proper birth then, I don’t know anyone who had to have one of those’.

Fortunately DH stood up for me and told her I’d been through the mill and he was really proud of me. I just cried.

From medical dictionary:

Childbirth, also known as labour, parturition and delivery, is the completion of pregnancy where one or more babiesexits the internal environment of the mother via vaginal delivery or caesarean section.

[7] Martin E (2015). Concise Colour Medical l.p.Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 375. ISBN 978-0-19-968799-2.

Your mil is a cow. I’ve had 3 vaginal deliveries, mostly because a c-section terrifies the fuck out of me. The recovery from a c-section is far longer. There are no heroics from giving birth vaginally, there are no medals. As long as mother and baby are well that’s all that matters.

maybe she’d prefer it if you’d both died attempting to give birth vaginally?

Ask her if she thinks that the witches in Macbeth are a good source of gynaecological knowledge?

Natural to me simply means happens spontaneously without intervention. Ie would have happened wherever and whoever was present. That's not a judgement, just a quick semantics analysis, as you queried what natural would mean (in terms of anything, not just birth).
Fwiw my friend who had two CS considers herself as not giving birth, and isn't a bit bothered about it BTW, whereas I had never considered anything but giving birth as I
just hadn't thought about it. I understand what she meant then tho but it still didn't change my view either. It is semantics for sure. I can say happyily I wouldn't let it bother me but I have another friend who had to have post birth counselling as she was so upset about her CS so I understand people vire it diferently. She told me afterwards she herself had subconsciously judged CS mums beforehand and this was a huge part of her feeling so down.. so we are judging ourselves more than anything sometimes. Enjoy your lovely baby OP.

Is your MIL Macbeth?!

A live mother and baby after a safe birth is all that is needed. Any method the baby arrives by is giving birth . Some of the older generation have weird views on it, my own mil told my husband his cousin was probably upset because she had a second section. I'd say she was delighted she had given birth safely

Bullshit. I was a labour for 2 days before my EMCS.

Why as women do we look at other women and judge other women’s birthing experience? There is also a growing trend to avoid pain relief in birth?

This is what I don't understand. Firstly, I don't give a crap how another woman gives birth, it makes no difference to me and makes me think no differently of them whatsoever.

Secondly, why are people so competitive over pain relief? Again, I really don't care what type of pain relief another woman had, just in the same way I don't care what pain relief they use for headaches or period cramps.

Is there some secret competition we don't know about? 😄

I bought a birth hypnosis set when I was Pg. It used to always send me to sleep without fail (and I was a poor sleeper). It wasn't worth a jot to me when I went into labour. It was induction in short order. They rather fucked me over with that but that's done now.

If it were me and she'd said it more than once I'd let her know she's upsetting and offending me and nullifying a traumatic experience and undermining you as your child's mother. Then tell her to fuck herself.

How many times is she actually saying it though? If it was once I would ignore. If, for some peculiar reason, she keeps saying it I would give her a puzzled look "Yeah, you've said that already" or perhaps "well she' (the baby) is not still in there, is she?"

If you're feeling a bit snappish "for heavens sake, can you stop repeating yourself you daft mare" 😁

Although to add, I did labour and push, but it was suddenly realised my baby was poorly and not coping, and I was deteriorating too. Is it giving birth if you do all of the painful part and then still have to have major surgery? This has triggered something in me 😂

Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude at all. I'm just surprised by the 'gave birth' thing in general on thread. Obviously just something I was unaware of. Learn something new every day I suppose 😄

I've had a section and would say it is giving birth. Giving birth in my mind is not just the act of labouring and pushing out a baby. You made your baby with your partner and grown them inside you. Whether it was elective or emergency, a choice or not, your baby was born, therefore has been given birth, and for lack of a better word, you were the vessel! Therefore, you have given birth.

Does she think it isn't giving birth if they're pulled out by ventouse or forceps as well? Or pulled out if their shoulder gets stuck? Does the term "giving birth" rely on it being a completely unassisted vaginal birth? Because if so, a large portion of women with babies haven't given birth, but their babies were born and have birthdays. Weird that.

This actually highlights the stigma around C-Sections. Some of the comments on this thread show that it’s engrained that its not a ‘natural birth’

And it’s a particular issue amongst women.

It can really create feelings of shame and disappointment that the birth wasn’t ’natural’ and that the mother doesn’t get to experience that ‘magical’ moment of a vaginal birth.

The birth trauma sites are full of women who have had horrific vaginal births, a vaginal birth really doesn’t mean you will have that life changing, earth mother experience that catapults you in to true motherhood and earns you a badge of honour.

I’ve had both and I’d pick the C-section every time. Down below was an absolute mess after my vaginal birth and took nearly a year to recover and it’s still not the same.

But what is natural? Vaginal birth? No pain relief? Why as women do we look at other women and judge other women’s birthing experience? There is also a growing trend to avoid pain relief in birth? Why? would this be expected of men? I really doubt it!

I never had children but this gives me the feckin' RAGE.

Whatever she thinks - what does she think she's doing, making judgemental comments like this? I often think MiLs get a hard time on here but this one? The OP's DH needs to tell her to STFU.