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

I do find myself reluctant to talk about my own textbook "natural" births. Also my easy, successful breastfeeding "journey". I feel myself hedging it about with caveats about me being lucky, "child bearing hips" and so on. If others are like me, then I'm not surprised that there aren't many good news stories.

I had 2 very straightforward and quick vaginal births, only a couple of stitches the first time.

But...

Both occasions I wasn't believed by midwives when I arrived at hospital to give birth. Both times I was given the sarcastic you'll probably be sent home speech and left waiting in a corridor for ages. Both times I was much further along than they thought. Then you see them start to panic.

That culture needs to change.

Personally I believe my difficult (first) birth was due to the NHS being afraid of letting me have a spontaneous vaginal delivery. And this has also been the case for many friends of mine.

It is fantastic that we live in a world where medical intervention is possible in emergency situations, but I do wish women were given confidence to believe in the natural process of birth.

My second birth was a spontaneous home birth and it was was calm, instinctive, natural and just felt so right!

I hope you have a good experience and get to do it the way that feels most safe for you

2 9 pounders. 2 easy births, akthough painful, as expected. Dc1 was 6 hours, dc2 2 hours.. Both with the help of gas and air and a few stitches. I was late 20s/ early 30s.

Mum and both grandmothers (who had many dc between them) had easy births too so I do think genetics plays a big part in it.

It's very important to get into a positive frame of mind prior to giving birth. Hypnobirthing helps with this massively.

This website contains a multitude of positive stories to get you into the right headspace:
https://thepositivebirthcompany.co.uk/blog

I had two fantastic vaginal births with no injuries and almost instant recovery, up and out with newborn the next day. I don't tend to talk about this because it sounds incredibly smug.

I think women being older having their first babies makes a huge difference, women in their teens/early 20s having their first baby generally tend to labour and birth fairly easily (relatively speaking)
Other medical issues such as obesity have an influence but also things such as very high induction and intervention rates (due to high rates of litigation) most birth professionals would not choose such interventions for themselves unless absolutely needed but are very aware of the risk of being sued if something goes wrong for not offering such interventions even if the smallest of increased risks

Didn't really hurt?! With no pain relief? I didn't know that was possible.

I was told similar, with number 1 the mw moaned that I wasn't due to be examined and couldn't possibly be wanting to push. Quickly followed by "oh, I can see a head'

With number 2, my waters broke early, so I ended up with continually monitoring, I was told I wasn't in labour, so I was packed off to the antenatal ward, barely made the bed warm before I went back to the labour suite.

The monitor said I wasn't in labour, just like Mum had been told in the 70's. We labour in our pelvic area which wasn't picked up on.

I think this is true. I'm very petite and my mum was gobsmacked my baby was nearly 8lb.

She's the same size as me and we were all 5 1/2 lb.

My DH is tall, but then again our population is taller now, so babies in general will be bigger/harder to deliver.

Induced at 40+6, back to back baby, no pain relief, active labour for 4 hours, 3 pushes and he was plopped on to my chest. Husband almost missed it because the end stage was so quick. Instant recovery, no tears, small graze. I wanted to do it all again immediately. I also had a great breastfeeding journey and continued for 3 years.

Not all births are negative experiences.

People are always happy to tell you their horror stories, they’ll rarely jump to tell you the good.
Just like in business and as people like to send in complaints but rarely send in compliments.

FWIW, I think many people would perceive my births as traumatic or bad or whatever, but I found them both wonderful and would happily repeat them over and over!

I agree OP, I think most women I know who have kids have had at least one really bad birth and its not all older or obese mothers either. I don't think its a new thing to have a bad experience giving birth up until recently it wasn't much spoken about and the thinking was that after the birth mum's were so happy to have a new baby that the trauma of the birth just faded away but we now know that isn't true and women are more vocal about the reality of it.

I think the truth is that for lots of women pregnancy and birth is difficult, painful and even life threatening and it can leave women with lasting injuries. I think we all just try not to dwell too much on such things as if we did we'd all be childfree!

I only had g&a for all 3. For 2 and 3 i didn't have it when pushing.

#2 was difficult due to the continual monitoring, but for various reasons I avoided other pain relief. #3 I actually asked if she had come out.

None were really that bad.

I agree OP! And the women I’m thinking of are all relatively young (32 and under), not overweight, fit and healthy. I’ve known 6 women in that category who’ve given birth over the last 2 years and they’ve all had births that have gone massively “wrong”, needing tons of intervention.

There is a hormone released that makes you forget the pain of labour once the baby is born, so I would take anyone saying it doesn't hurt with a pince of salt.

I distinctly remember thinking in labour that it was so painful it wasn't possible to survive the pain.

But now when I think back on my labours I just remember them being mild-moderate period cramps and I genuinely can't remember it being painful. I do remember having that thought tho, so it must have been more painful than I remember. Hormones are weird.

Not sure but I was asked about mine and when I said it was straight forward I was told I was bragging so I gave up

Both of mine popped out in a few hours, no bother. I don't talk about it a lot as insensitive to people who had a rough time.

I had no pain relief for either of my births- both very big babies and I was 37 and 41.

Not saying it didn't hurt though!

I think there is a lot of evidence to show delivering before 39 weeks is not ideal, those babies have more problems. Smaller babies also have worse health outcomes long term. No doubt being physically active is a positive thing but young women and 2nd time mothers don’t generally have a problem delivering their 8-9lb full term babies and haven’t seen older women get on better with smaller or earlier babies. If anything the smaller babies are less resilient so need faster earlier intervention as they struggle to cope with labour and any hitches that may occur

I had a positive birth (induced and then had an epidural on the Labour ward.) I think a lot of it, as other posters have said, is that there’s not such a dramatic / exciting story to tell!

I know there’s a range of views here but I did want to state that I had a very positive experience having been induced.

Here’s another thing which is narrated throughout this thread. Women are scared of having ‘big’ babies. Women think and are often told small babies are easier to birth. This is not necessarily the case and often has everything to do with how the women is able to move and position herself instinctively during the labour. Hospitals love beds and stirrups and frantic pushing but this doesn’t help babies position themselves and descend more easily

Another one here who's had two no fuss, low drama elective sections. The surgery and the recover was very easy and I have nothing but positive things to say.

There's so much anti-C-section rhetoric out there though that no one ever believes me when I say they were really easy and that I was never in any pain.

I actually just meant physically, because you don't have a scar on your abdomen, it's easeir to lift the baby up etc, no needing to be passed the baby to feed them.

I do think ELCS can be lovely too, but most midwives will say the recovery is harder.

I definitley agree that birthing horror stories can be over dramatised and are deemed more socially acceptable than being able to say you had a good birth. (Obviously i understand for alot of people it can genuinly be traumatising). I do think certain lifestyle factors come into it and also the mindset of the person. I was always terrified of the thought of giving birth when i was younger because id been told so many bad things/seen so many horror birthing scenes on the TV. When i realised i was ready to have a baby the thought of giving birth stopped being as scary but i still did have some people dishing out the scary stories. I chose to do a hypnobirthing course and it made me feel so much better and in control of the situation just from learning about the whole process and knowing i was allowed to ask for things or give my opinion rather than let everyone speak for me. I had a 13 hour labour all at home my waters broke just as i got to the maternity ward, i pushed for 2 hours then i needed the vontouse and an episiotomy and she came out on the first push! It was a looooong day and it was painful and i was nervous about needing the intervention but i remained calm and determined amd got through it. Whatever happens OP just no that you dont have to live in constant fear of giving birth. Find some positive stories on you tube or on a hypnobirthing course and if people keep being negative just ask them to stop.