..to not give a flying **** about having a 'natural' birth

[somewherewest]

OK I can understand the desire to avoid intervention if possible but I really really don't get the ideological fervour which some people seem to invest in 'natural' birth. I've been just been going through the handouts from the NCT antenatal course the DH and I are doing and the message basically seems to be "Your choices are important...but if you don't chose to have a 'natural' homebirth sustained only by breathing exercises and whale music and to breastfeed the DS until he's old enough to be bringing girlfriends home then YOUR CHOICES ARE BAD". I really, really do not get this horror of 'intervention'. Is it just that decades of organic yoghurt adverts have conditioned us to think that 'natural' must equal 'better' in every bloody situation, or am I being totally unreasonable?

bollox hasn't derailed me. orgasms are worthless when you're dead :).

I don't know I am on the fence with this one(intervention or no intervention) it's good and useful it is there, but saying that, it can be very intrusive and sometimes unnecessary.
I never filled any of the "birth plan" papers, because I didn't want to jinx anything, and everything went very well, had DD in almost record time(total labour lasting just over two hours) standing up, never lay on the bad and never needed midwife exam, everything perfect until DD was out.
Rapid birth and DD size cause massive internal tear, and I lost three pints of blood, put it this way if this was happening at home, in their words "I could have died" so YNBU, medical intervention has it's place, when unplanned happens.

How many women know that if you have a caesarean, your orgasms may be massively affected for quite a long time afterwards, sometimes forever?

....and if you use your vag the baby bores a hole the size of the Channel Tunnel :o

What you gain on the swingers....

Sleepyspaniel I'm not trying to derail women who are considering a caesarean, I've got no vested interest in how someone else delivers their child, I just thought it was worth mentioning as for me, it's important and it may be for other people. I also don't think it is that rare, when I mentioned it to my GP he cheerfully said "oh yes, that's quite common". My instant (stunned) thought was "oh, it would have been nice if someone had told me that beforehand". Like I said, it wouldn't have made any difference to me, because it was a life saving op for me as well, but I was quite shocked that no-one thought this quite important side effect, wasn't really worth mentioning. Why not? Because they think we'll be "de-railed" by being given information?

And of course there are disadvantages to vaginal births as well and women should know about them too - we need all the information we can get to make informed choices. Different people will find different bits of information more important than others and will follow up the bits that they personally find interesting and important - if they don't think one person's experience is particularly relevant for them, they will ignore it.

I would have loved to be able to opt for elective Caesarean with DS, again due to the his size, he was born on forceps, now that is a one procedure I wouldn't wish upon anybody, I have a very high pain trash hold, but that hurt and I did scream, my skin crawls even now when I think about it, in that instance Caesarean would have been better.
As for down there never being the same, after two nine and a bit pounder babies, well it is not the same, it is loose and baggy, and it will never be the same, knowing what I know now, I would have prefered Caesarean

LOL whatmeworry, quite. Swings and roundabouts and all that.

Titty - for the record I have an auto immune blood condition and without the medical advances of the last ten years my chance of carrying a baby to term would still be at 20 percent. I'll take induction, monitoring, flat on my back trussed up like a chicken over that any day!

Swings and roundabouts with the c-section thing. I would take my pain-free planned section (second birth) over my horrendous and long winded first birth any day. Never had muffled orgasms, but I would have taken them over a third degree tear, too! A less pleasurable orgasm is more appealing than having my fanj ripped back to my arsehole

Working9, do you think the hypno helped you cope better with that awful situation? It certainly helped me in mine, and this is my point. Telling people something they can't avoid is going to be bloody awful but oh well you'll have a lovely baby at the end? That is soul-destroying and irresponsible. We already have plenty of negative images about childbirth in this country; women don't need any more. What we do need is proper support to help us get through it in the best way that we can, no matter what happens in the birthing room.

"Those who champion natural births do so with the conscious and subconscious knowledge that they ALWAYS have the back up of a medicalised birth. That's what annoys me most."

What a very stupid point.

People don't want to be cut open or have needles stuck in them if they don't need them.

If you need medical help you don't resent these things because - well YOU NEED THEM!

Are you saying that the 'right thinking' way is to opt for giving birth in stirrups, forceps, drips etc, even if you can have a healthy birth without them?

In God's name - why?

"Those who are disparaging about CSs, epidurals, even monitoring ("I fought the midwife, there was no way she was getting the trace on me "

Well - maybe once you know that continuous monitoring when there is no clinical indication for it is linked to higher rates of c/s but no decrease in fetal compromise........ Even the NICE guidelines say it shouldn't be offered. But it is, quite a lot - because of poor standards of care and inadequate staffing. Who is the sheep here?

Women in developing countries just want good antenatal care and help from a midwife in labour. I'm sure many of them would bite your right arm off for the chance of a homebirth with a qualified midwife and the chance of emergency access to a hospital if things went wrong. I very much they'd be battering down the door of the hospital begging for epidurals and elective c/s.

Whatmeworry your wiki stats are completely meaningless without detailed information about what caused the deaths of both groups of women. Do you have this information?

For example, the only woman I know to have died in childbirth did so in an intervention-happy Western country called the USA, where C-sections are dished out like cups of tea.

I've had one vaginal and one CS and I absolutely didn't care either way. But does not mean that some other woman is BU for caring. We are all different. Some care about one thing, some about another. Surely their feelings are as valid as mine? (and mine as valid as theirs, for that matter)

TheBolter - I had a similar experience to you - relaxed, calm, joking around - with both births. Used only G&A, felt the pain keenly but was able to master it. So it's not only people who use pain relief meds that have a calm atmosphere during labour.

Some people are assuming that if you use hypnobirthing you'll feel no pain. This is nonsense. Yes, you feel the pain. But it generally doesn't derail you, IME, because you have the tools to master it and let your body's endorphins kick in and help relieve the pain. And IME when things go wrong you still feel relaxed and in control.

I am absolutely petrified of an epidural or CS! Not because I've been brainwashed into natural birth but because I have always felt uncomfortable with medical procedures, needles, knives (surgical or not). But of course if we the choice was live or die I would take the CS.

I remember begging for an epidural during labour and not being given one. I'm glad I didn't get it. Everything was ok and I managed to feel my legs ( the thought of not feeling them freaks me out!).

You know what, sleepyspaniel, I haven't seen anyone being disparaging of intervention on this convo. What I have seen is criticism of the way it's used.

I've also seen a lot of creative interpretation of people's posts!

I was always a crunchy natural birther. Had first three, including 2 at home virtually unmedicated (G&A for 2, nothing for 3rd). When it came down to it, I was extremely happy for DD3 to come out through the sunroof. Having waited for her for 6 years, the fact that she would not be here now had it not been for that CS means that it was very easy to rationalise. These are the extremes of the spectrum.

Where it becomes harder is in the greyer areas- where medical staff make calls and issue advice based on statistics rather than what they are actually seeing (eg accelerating labour rather than using watchful waiting), and embarking on the whole "cascade of intervention" scenario according to hospital protocol without much stopping to consider whether it's entirely necessary in this particular case.

Also I think that birth injuries caused by intervention are sometimes harder to absorb psychologically by the woman than ones caused by nature- she was actively injured by medical staff rather than injured passively by a natural process.

^Whatmeworry your wiki stats are completely meaningless without detailed information about what caused the deaths of both groups of women. Do you have this information

For example, the only woman I know to have died in childbirth did so in an intervention-happy Western country called the USA, where C-sections are dished out like cups of tea.^

The aren't "my" wiki stats, they are those on the Wikipedia article on the subject, feel free to read it anytime you like and follow the links therein. The article argues that modern western medicine has reduced dmaternal death rates from what went before by c 2 orders of magnitude.

I believe that, you may feel free not to, but I think nearly every datapoint is against you from anecdote through records to gravestones

Btw are you instead arguing that naturally occurring maternal deaths, without any modern medical intervention, would actually be similar to modern US maternal death rates because of your one CS datapoint?

I had my 1st child by C-section and my 2nd by natural and I am afraid that as much as c-section is positiveon the no pain sector I would now rec. a natural birth. Not only am I closer to my child but I don't have to spend days cooped up at some ward.

C-section - 7 days hospitalisation,(left after 5), Natural = Labour, hospital, Check up 6hrs - home same day; Didn't even go to Ward.

I did refuse to go up to the Ward though in favour of home.
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If I could do my 1st again I would have had natural birth as the feelings you have for you child lying on you and breastfeeding for the 1st time are different from a c-section esp. if you have an emergency c-cetion and wake up not knowing where you are, or if you have even given birth, that initial feeling is gone. I also bottle fed my 1st born and for a few days that was hard.

With my natural born breast feeding, whilst not a breeze seemed like the best option and the differnce is very noticable.

Royal jelly - did you suffer from pnd with your first? It sounds more like something like that was at play re bonding tbh as it sounds quite severe.

I haven't read one post that says medical care/ intervinience (sp?) should be eliminated and that we should be giving birth under a tree next to a cow. So what's the big argument about?

Sorry to hear that you had such rough time, royaljelly; it sounds really hard. But these things aren't going to apply to everybody.

I had an emergency caesarian, but had no difficulties with either bonding or breastfeeding- in fact, I found breastfeeding much easier than after my natural birth. And I was able to have skin to skin contact after the caesarian.

Not saying I would have chosen a caesarian. But it didn't seem to create any problems either. Makes me realise how lucky I've been.

7 days hospitalisation doesn't sound normal to me - unless you had further complications. I was out 2 days after the CS both times, and from what I've been told that's how it's usually done

re establishing bfeeding. In fairness it was much harder getting DD3 to feed, but she was sick and sleepy and in NICU. She was being fed my milk through a naso-gastric tube on the dot of every three hours, and had a glucose drip and had no interest or motivation in feeding at all. Thankfully her wonderful Paed told the nicu nurses to take her off the glucose drip, so that she'd get hungry. The nurses were on the verge (goodness only knows why) of giving her formula or that parenteral stuff even though I was producing easily enough milk. They discharged us even though she wasn't feeding all that well and had lost a tad more than 10% body weight and she started feeding within a few hours of getting home, at a week old. Can only thank the paediatrician and the hospital's baby-friendly policy that made sure I got loads of help with establishing breastfeeding (although the nicu nurses were a little trickier). It could so easily have gone the other way.

pommedechoclat I think it was maybe my age at the time and the fact that I had an emergency C-section and missed the 1st 48 hours of my son's birth When I came round I didn't even realise that the baby next to me was my child.. My firrst was 1998 - and my DD is 2009 - quite a big age gap I know

Pregancy was great but giving birth was somthing I was terrified about, with my 2nd,2009, I elected to have a C-section on 30th evening but my DD decided she was going to make her appearence in the morning.

As scary as it was at the time I did not have a choice in when she came it was a quick labour and no time to get a bottle.

As soon as she 'emerged' she was straight up to breast milk (if I liked it or not) and since I had thrown off my nightgown' we spent the first few hours just skin to skin. We definately have a bond from the first 6mths of breastfeeding + birth.

You don't even remember the pain, just the euphoria.

For me, by initially aiming for a natural birth (twice) I was able to avoid medicalisation. I was strongly pressured towards induction with DD2 for the statistical reason of age. I felt ok in myself, and refused. I had a fast "natural" birth ( gas and air) - which may not have been the case had I gone down the doctors route.

Without the desire for a natural birth, if possible, I could have experienced a cascade of interventions completely unnecessarily by simply going along with the doctor and his "increased risk" statistics.

But to focus on "natural" by all means, without option should things not go well is foolish. Thank goodness for both women and babies, that we have a full range if services and options available,