Why does it seem everyone has a bad birth these days?

[Littleigloo]

Just doing my research (but I have a while to inform myself as we are only trying, at the moment). Out of all my friends and family who have had babies in the last 5-10 years, I would say all bar one or two of them had difficult births to the extent. Two needed debriefs and counselling. Inductions that fail and needed forceps, baby was injured as a result. I don’t know if this is just an unfortunate group of people or indicative of a larger sample. All different ages, some first and some second pregnancy, most of them were low risk.

This coupled with hearing that maternity services are struggling with poor staff and low ratings. How do you mitigate any risk to yourself? I understand it’s very much a how long is a piece of string situation and highly dependent on lots of variables but is it as bad as it seems or do the people with bad experiences just talk about it more?

Thanks

You are asking for anecdotal evidence and I'll admit one person's anecdotes are worth very little. Still: the four people I know who had bad births had them in England and India and were in their early to late thirties; the five who has easy births had them in mainland Europe in their late twenties to early thirties.

I am appalled at the NHS maternity stories that abound here.

It’s a really interesting question. In our NCT group of 7, only one had a spontaneous, unassisted vaginal birth. The rest were 2x forceps, 1x ventouse, 1 unplanned section, 1 planned section for medical reasons, and one induction. Group of women ranging from about 28-34. Only one overweight. Babies generally fairly averaged size - most around 7 to 8lb, none above 9lb.

For me your two points were connected. If staffing had been better and midwives not so stretched problems would have been picked up earlier and whilst I'd probably still have ended up with an EMCS (cord twice round neck) it probably wouldn't have been the frantic cat 1 extreme reduction in heart rate situation we ended up in, with infection in baby and me.

I think one reason is that induction is pushed rather heavily these days. With DC1 it was 41 weeks and with DC2 I was told I would be offered it as standard at 40 weeks. The majority of my friends who have had negative birth stories have all stemmed from traumatic first birth inductions. They were all incredibly fearful when they came to have second children of having to have an induction again. These are all generally healthy women with relatively low risk pregnancies. I don’t think it is made clear that an induction is an intervention, it’s often pitched as a way of getting natural birth started but in actual fact this is not really the case and I think it can escalate into an uncontrollable situation for a woman.

Well of my 3 best friends there were:
Me - 2 uncomplicated VB gas and air (age 28 & 30)
A- 1 home birth ( age 31)
B- 3 vaginal births a bit quick and 1x retained placenta (age 27,29 and 42)
C- 2 X vaginal births, 1 nasty tear, 2nd baby much better.( age 31 &33)

Just to add a good friend of mine who retrained as a midwife said to me she would only ever have an elective c-section after witnessing the horror of some induction births.

Ahh, but the joy of an uncomplicated vaginal birth cannot be underestimated, such a quick recovery, so much easier to breast feed.

Because books/internet/other women don;t like to talk about the horrific side of childbirth which is very, very common. I know of very few women who had that magical "easy" birth (just two women, in all my years of being female). Every single other birth is just natural birth in all its honesty - torn holes, torn skin, ruptured whatevers, hemorrhaging, shitting all over the birthing bed...that's what natural birth is.

Natural birth was horrific for me. Utterly horrific. Electives were the only way to go after that. I still have nightmares about it.

Oh I 100% agree. I think it’s probably because she’s seen the absolute worst end of the scale that it’s a hard one to not refer back to if you ever found yourself pregnant.

I’ve had a natural birth and a c-section and can definitely say they both had their beauty and they both had their extreme challenges!

I would echo @Naptrappedmummy and @Give0fecks posts. Some of the women we see delivering now would not have maintained a pregnancy 10 years ago. Complex pregnancies become increasingly complex but the expectation of a normal birth experience is the same. Expectations of birth are completely different than years ago. Services are extremely under resourced. Midwifery staff are generally more junior because the NHS is incapable of holding onto experienced staff which impacts on the care given. Lifestyle related morbidity is constantly rising. I had 2 inductions, 1 was awful but I was a first time mum with a huge baby facing the wrong way and had a massive bleed. My colleagues saved my life. I was traumatised. I asked for an induction second time around 2 weeks earlier than the first time around and it hurt like hell but was fast (usually is second time) and I had a much smaller haemorrhage. It was a much better experience and i was happy postnatally. Neither birth was like so many of the beautiful active births in hospital, home births or water births I have had the privilege to be present for as a midwife. The luck of my physiology and the size of my babies. I don't know what the answer is other than to be as healthy as possible, as active as possible, learn about all types of birth and what your wishes are in each. Acknowledge that you cannot guarantee a perfect birth experience and make sure you have a good birth partner with you who can advocate for you. Everyone I work with wants so much to provide the best possible care, I know there are so many stories of awful staff, but there are so many out there trying so hard to advocate for women and keep them safe while listening to their needs.

I had one bad birth and two good births. I tend to talk about the bad one more, simply because it was more eventful!

I had a very easy home birth with my second. I was 38 and obese (though not very obese) but nevertheless assessed as being low risk.

My first birth was also relatively easy. That was at hospital, and it was painful because back to back. But it was relatively quick (all over within 6 hours of the first contraction).

In both cases I didn't need anything other than gas and air.

Because of this This coupled with hearing that maternity services are struggling with poor staff and low ratings.

but also this Obesity, maternal age, more health issues, less active lifestyle, bigger babies due to gestational or type 2 diabetes, more twins due to IVF

my first was a problem free home-birth start to finish in 7 hours. My second was birth centre, haemorrhage, surgery and physio in the weeks after. 2 years difference in age, so not much. But 2 pounds difference in weight of the babies. I was underweight at the start of each pregnancy and sent to a nutritionist, so not maternal obesity either.

3 normal VB's in midwifery led units. All at 37-38 weeks. No stitches, no trauma, entonox only. This is a similar story to all of my mum friends who gave birth at around the same time ( late 1980,s early 1990's). We were all in our 20's, so younger than many new mums today.

Obesity? Maternal age?

And compared to what? I imagine people's expectations have risen, so it's logical that more people will fall below that expectation.

Induction is so commonplace now. It is NOT the same process as a natural labour but this is rarely communicated properly so a lot of pregnant women sign up without being fully aware of risks of complications. Apart from for medical reasons, inductions should not be happening for things like being ‘overdue’ (post 41 weeks now!) and believed big babies, but they are. Birth is medicalised often unnecessarily. Some women and babies do need assistance but it is now less than 50% of women who are going into labour naturally. Evolution hasn’t messed us up it’s modern medicine overstepping the mark.

I’ve had 3 babies, third was a home birth and by far the most positive experience of them all but none of them were complicated and I don’t tell anyone about them because not an exciting story 😂

Women having home births are all low risk ( in UK). They are also transferred to hospital if anything starts to go wrong/ look risky.

All of this means you can’t look at the stats of actual births at home, and compare them to other births and conclude that home births have fewer complications because they were at home. All that’s happened is the riskier/ complicated births are largely removed from the home birth sample.

Part of it might be that you’re more likely to hear the horror stories. Those of us who had lovely, uncomplicated birth experiences don’t necessarily talk about them much for fear of being seen as smug or superior or because- as PP said- they don’t make the most interesting stories to most people (interesting to me though!) I tend not to talk to pregnant women about my births because I’m worried they won’t be so lucky and they’ll think I missold the experience 😂

I can count on one hand the number of women that were induced and didn’t have to have a c section. Of those, all those who were induced had to have instrumental delivery which caused more trauma.

there’s LOTS of evidence and research on the impact or induction on babies and mothers - bottom line is you either wait for it all to start naturally or just go straight to c section… DON’T INDUCE

I think a lot of the time, a bad birth is due to NHS penny pinching/mismanagement.

Inductions for example, especially when a woman isn’t overdue. I know two women who needed comparatively early inductions who had horrific experiences ending in emergency c sections, primarily because their bodies weren’t quite ready to be kicked into labour. An elective section from the off would have been less horrific for all concerned.

I agree with this post 100%.

In my NCT group I felt somewhat guilty and/or shut down if I talked about my positive/straightforward birth. For context, I only spoke about my experience briefly just after giving birth when I was asked about it and/or the subject came up and sharing was appropriate (so not as though I was going on about it) and I was also conscious that I didn't want to rub salt into the wound for people who had totally different experiences. The people who had difficult births got much more air time (not an issue in itself, but... brings me on to my next point)... I feel it's really important to talk about difficult births and to get support, however I also think it's important to add equal value and validation to all experiences (with sensitivity where required, of course).

It's such a shame that stories about great births seem to be perceived as showing off and/or judging people who didn't have a straightforward birth. I sometimes get the impression that because I had a vaginal pool birth with just gas and air, people think I'll judge them for having loads of pain relief and/or a caesarean (etc. etc.), whereas that couldn't be further from the truth... I simply made my choice(s) because they were appropriate for me at the time and my body played ball (and of course, I was lucky to be able to make choices... some people don't even get the opportunity).

Cross posted with @Crepid, saying the same thing!

@MummyJ36 I'm interested to find out (if you don't mind adding clarification), was your friends comment regarding induction vs C-Section or vaginal birth vs C-Section?

This is purely anecdata so don’t ask for a peer reviewed study, but I think pregnancies go on for too long now due to inactivity and desk jobs. I remember reading the Yorkshire Shepherdess’s book, she worked all the way through her pregnancies on the farm, she never sat still. All her babies arrived between 34 and I think 38ish weeks, around 6lb, very fast labours.

My mother in law also says babies used to be smaller, in the 70s they were 6 or 7lb and a 9lb baby would’ve been seen as really unusually large. So they were easier to deliver.