to think that so many women have traumatic damage during childbirth, and why can you not have a CS on demand?

[GetOrfMoiLand]

No I know this is probably a contentious point, and financially there would be a hell of a burden, but it seems that a woman's body is not brilliantly well designed for childbirth, and so many women have had terrible vaginal damage caused by birth, you only have to look at the threads on here.

I was only thinking this because SIL went to A&E on christmas day due to severe rectal damage, she was in utter agony and couldn't go to the loo. And one of her friends who gae birth at the same time had terriblt third degree tears also.

Disclaimer - I know bugger all about anything, but childbirth can cause such trauma, there is a perfectly good alternative which would reduce these incidents of damage (yes, I do know that a CS is major abdominal surgery, I have had abdominal surgery myself and although painful, I wouldn't say it was as painful as my poor SIL's injuries, not by a long shot)

thanks tatty!! sunroof...i like that!!

well i dont know then...i have had 5 biggish babies,last one was biggest at 10 3! all vaginally with no stitches/tears/trauma etc and er,no pain really. but must be awful for those who have suffered.....and maybe i'll suffer in later years with incontinence or something.

I personally had a brilliant birth experience. DD was reasonably small, it took an hour and a half, it didn't hurt and I didn't tear.

So all worked wonderfully for me, but (sorry for sharing) I have never been free from awful piles ever since, and was slightly incontinent for ages afterwards.

I wouldn't want that again, in fact the thought of giving birth with piles would make me shudder. If i was to have another child I would much prefer to have a CS tbh. And I had a brilliant birth experience in itself, just afterwards was traumatic.

My ppor SIL is in such agony, and she is a toughie normally, and her first two labours were textbook affairs. But her third has complelety floored her

yabu. Womens body is designed for that. They were doing that since forever and i dont see nothing wrong with that!

I dont actually agree that the womans body is not well designed for childbirth I think we have medicanalised birth so much that we are not allowed to do what comes natural to us/ I have given birth 4 times the 2 where I was left to do what came natural to me i had less/no tearing and recovered so much easier afterwards. the 2 where I was in hospital (planned and unplanned) I tore more and recovery was a lot more.

Prolapses can happen during pregnancy as well not just during childbirth and incontinence again can occur due to pregnancy but it can also occur simply because we do not exercise that area enough. (pelciv floor excersises anyone?)

I would far rahter see more money go into the NHS Midwifery service to ensure that the midwifes are well looked after and there for able to be WITH WOMAN when they birth. In Wales they have had a trial going where they did one to one midwifery with pregnant women (meaning they see the same midwife through their pregnancy and are introduced to a small team of midwifes and one of those midwifes will be with the woman during delivery aka not a stranger) the rise in homebirths and midwifery lead units was huge over this period as was the decline in assisted deliveries and post delivery trauma IMO it showed clearly that this is where the money should be placed so the woman is supported and feels happy with her delivery. (this doesn't mean she gets her dream delivery it means she feels she was listened to and she understood what went on during her delivery and even if she ends up with a outcome far from her ideal she felt she understood why and felt comfortable with this)

I do not think saying " you can have a c sec on demand" is the right way to go imo money needs to be spend but it is not on c sections.

Yabu

And yes I was as high as a kite after the birth, it was a wonderful feeling.

But 3765 bottles of preparation H later....hmmmm.

I didn't consider the breastfeeding aspect of it to be honest, I can see that would be so hard to establish if you have a scar, and walking about after surgery would be hard. But (sorry to come back to SIL again) she EBF her first two until 9 months, no problem, but she is in such agony she can barely sit down to feed, so they are mixed feeding (the baby is 4 weeks) and SIL is feeling very low about not EBF like her other two.

I just hope she is going to be OK, bless her.

Actually it can, and it should, be all about what's best for the mother.

I will be no part of any medical procedure where my wellbeing is not the paramount consideration.

Once the baby is out and safe there are "two people to consider", before that there is me and a foetus. I hope we both make it, but if there's a choice pick me.

i think most of us hope and pray we will have a first birth that is more normal, ie not loads of tearing, prolapsing.

Mine was shit. Ruined my body/vagina even tho she was tiny, the midwife i was seeing said by looking at me she was huge. Bollocks.

So many variables. Hospital time, knowledge, midwife.

op, its a toughie. I wanted to do it naturally. Nothing would have dissuaded me. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Yes, sorry i didn't really mean 'bodies are not designed for childbirth' or whatever I said up thread.

I don'tt hink our bodies are perfect thoughm by any means, i think it is established that out birth canals are painfully narrow due to the fact that our pelvises are load bearing.

The female body is not "perfectly designed" for anything. Have we actually got ID believers on this thread?

Evolution doesn't end in perfect designs, just whatever's worked best so far.

YABU. It would cost too much money, and if they put that money into providing better maternity care you wouldn't even be thinking this. The problem is that births are often mismanged, not that women can't demand surgery because they feel like it.

I think my SIL was a good candidate for an emergency section. God knows why they didn't take her to theatre. He turns 18 in a few days (that birth) so it was a long time ago but she had frikkin high forceps and everything and when he came out he was practically dead (MIL's words) and she didn't think they'd recuscitate him...SIL was absolutely butchered down there...why they didn't just get him out earlier, who knows.

I think perhaps rather than it being a case of human bodies not being well designed for it, I suspect our more sedentary lifestyles in modern times are less well suited to things like foetal positioning and labour times which can make such a difference. Posterior vs anterior - people will say giving birth to their anterior facing babies with proper brow presentation was far easier than birthing much smaller badly positioned posterior babies.

It think this issue has a lot to do with what kind of birth you have, perhaps more than foetal size and all that.

I think there should be a bit more flexibility regarding things like water births too. I know a lot of people who have wanted to give birth in water who haven't been able to simply because there is one pool at their hospital and it happened to be in use (or not even the pool but the room it was in!) etc. There is plenty of evidence to back up a decrease in things like tearing for water birth so I do feel if someone WANTS one, the NHS should be able to accomodate them - yes I know its a funding thing and not their fault but this kind of thing could be given more priority, I feel, to reduce these problems in women who genuinely want to give birth naturally in such a way that is said to reduce the risk of these sorts of problems after.

It's very rare that the female body grows a baby that they can't birth. Our pelvis is mostly big enough - or would be if we had faith in our ability to do so. I firmly believe that many obstetric issues are caused by intervention not by nature. That's not universally the case of course but the more you medicalise birth - the more birth becomes medicalised.

Yep our evolution has meant that we're fairly poorly designed for childbirth compared to most other animals - most mammals can give birth unassisted without even having hands!
I guess enough of us managed to do so succesfully enough to grow the human race, but that has come at the cost of a staggeringly massive maternal mortality rate through the millenia.

Tatty - I don't think high forceps deliveries are standard now at all - c-section instead.

i'm not sure what i think of natural vs. cs since i've only ever had cs (and warned to not get pregnant again lest i don't see my own little ones grow up) so i'm probably biased from that

i do think, however, that there is a crushing silence when it comes to admitting the RISKS of childbirth in popular culture

DH had no idea of any of the things that could go wrong, and it was only by chatting to friends (talking helped alleviate worries, in my exp) that we realised just HOW common tears requring surgery to fix, emergency CS delayed due to hospital staff incompetance (not my experience i hasten to add, wonderful treatment i got).... but in the media, in birthing circles, all they ever talked about was pain relief

it's almost like people won't admit that "ok you're going to get a baby out of this, but to be honest you might end up doubly incontinent for the rest of your life at 27".... oh no that's not popular to warn people about, is it? it doesn't fit with the rosy tint of new motherhood!

Maternal mortality is inflated by infection and post birth bleeding - both issues that a c-section wouldn't help with. Very few women die - have ever died - because a baby is actually stuck. In that sort of critical situation birth assistants have taken action to try to preserve the mother.

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/10/torn-apart-by-childbirth

this article adddresses some of the absolute silence i mentioned, my SIL forwarded it to me, and some parts of the journalist's article really rang true

maybe we should start being slightly more honest towards couples about the risks of each option, then they could have a true choice about what they're dealing with

i think that's the hardest thing for me to understand - why not warn people? there are risks associated with everything, but an informed decision is the best one imho.

Yes, I think through evolution childbirth developed as a series of compromises, not that the body is perfectly designed.

See there are far cleverer mumsnetters on this thread who are ariculating my thoughts better.

evolutionarily there is a trade-off between huge brain ergo big head and being bi-pedal with necessarily narrow pelvis

[non-scientific opinion]

I think though (and have seen it on MN) that there is tendency not to be too truthful about the horrible aspects of birth in ordfer not to bloody terrify pregnant women.

So, I have been on a thread and proclaimed loudly about my pain free birth, bit kep silent about the fact taht I mainlined senokot for years because it was too agonising to go to the loo without it.

"Very few women die - have ever died - because a baby is actually stuck"

no but there are hundreds of thousands of women each year becoming disabled and outcast due to the effects of obstetric fistula. again, not something i'd even heard about until after my pregnancies. there's even charities set up to help repair women in the third world which i've given to. why isn't this more widely acknowledged? it seems crazy to me that women aren't given more information on the risks of what options they choose.

If the female body was so well designed for giving birth we would be able to do it on our own like other animals and there wouldn't be such a high maternal mortality rate in places where there isn't proper medical care. I think it's our disproportionately large heads that cause the problem...

I've had both & I would chose a C section every time.
My recovery time after my C section was much quicker than after my Vbirth which was pretty uneventful but hurt like hell & he was a big baby - nuff said!

Just to reiterate a point made earlier in the thread; the process of labour prepares the foetus for birth and the transition to living outside the mother. The compression caused by uterine contractions helps prepare the organs for functioning independently, especially lungs for breathing air, and clears them of amniotic fluid. The hormones released during labour also affect and prepare the foetus for outside life. Obviously babies can and do adapt to newborn life after an operative delivery, but uncomplicated labour and vaginal delivery are the best start possible. Best start possible for the woman also, come to that.

I second the point made about breastfeeding being more difficult following operative delivery too.

As for the OP - YABU - the cost to the NHS, which is already at breaking point, would be prohibitive and impossible to justify. Offering sections on demand or as a matter of course would also be unethical based on current reseach.