To not get why a vaginal birth is so important to some people?

[Liketochat1]

Some mothers talk of the trauma and disappointment of not giving birth vaginally. Some say they don't feel like a proper woman or that their body failed them. For many this sounds very traumatic, for others moaning.
AIBU to not 'get' why this is so important to them? I've had 2 c sections and was only intensely grateful that I live in a country and in an age where there are gifted surgeons and resources available to perform these life saving operations. In other parts of the world women are dying in childbirth as they don't have access to these.
Am I so unreasonable to think this?

Yanbu. giving birth is not a competition.

I think I could be one of those women you talk about, I had a very straightforward natural birth with very little recovery time afterwards. I think of myself as very lucky and blessed to have had such a healthy baby in such a natural straight forward way.

If my second labour didn't go this way too I think I'd be sad about it.

I would never dream of questioning other people's birthing choices. It is deeply personal and luckily most women have a choice.

That said, the fascination other women have with other people's births makes me sick, if I don't fancy it, that's my choice too.

I think it is down to competitiveness like most of these things.

I live in a us style medical system and for me personally they can medicalise away. I don't believe it makes you more clever to give birth without intervention or less to have an elective CS. I am not a natural type of person, I like drugs and anything tat stops pain.

Because we have bought into a myth that some births are better than others and that there is some mythical hierarchy of births with natural at the top, epidural in the middle and c- section at the bottom. This narrative is everywhere in pregnancy and leaves some women feeling inadequate and I think can contribute to pnd. It is a stick women seem to have invented to beat one another with. Although I can see its a reaction to a perceived medical patriarchy which over medicalises birth but instead of empowering women this story about some births being 'better' than others disempowers women further. We need a balanced view where we avoid unnecessary medical intervention but remember without necessary medical intervention 30% of us wouldn't have the luxury of reviewing our birth choices (as we'd be dead). It makes me so sad to hear women saying they don't feel like a real mother due to c section. We as women need to take control of this issue and stop perpetuating this unhelpful narrative.

After I had my first I wished I had had a section, it was awful, my second was wonderful though, and I'm glad I didn't insist on one. This time I'd rather have a vb like my second, but if I thought for a second I was going to have a birth like my first one I would be fighting for a section.
It's probably quite similar to the infertility thing, we are told that our bodies are designed to get pregnant and give birth but when it comes to it and your own body won't cooperate, it can leave you feeling as if there is something not right with you that you can't do this apparently natural thing. Like bf though I think it's significance fades with time, ask someone with a 6 week old baby how they feel if they had a section or didn't manage to bf, and you will get a very different answer to if you asked the same woman 10 years later

I had an amazingly straightforward vaginal delivery (no drugs, no stitches, 2 hours from admission to delivery etc) BUT DS was premature and was whisked away almost immediately and spent a week in SCBU. I might have had a "better" birth, but lying on the post natal ward without my baby, surrounded by everyone else's babies, I definitely did not feel superior to anyone in the motherhood stakes.

With DD, well, she is adopted, so a very long and pretty painful process for her to come into our lives but rather different!

So I am pretty relaxed about how babies come into the world (ie whatever is best for the mother and the baby) and incredibly grateful that we live in a time and place where very few of our partners will be asked by the doctor "mother or baby?". And I agree with rogersmelly that as time goes by, things like method of delivery and early feeding fade in importance compared to getting on with parenting and wider life

bissy I think you're right. Although not all of us have bought into the myth .

My personal feeling is that birth is the means of getting the baby outside the body and it doesn't matter how that happens as long as mother and baby are both well.

As I said upthread, I had a VB the first time and EMCS the second time. Maybe it was just because I was so ill throughout the pregnancy and then nearly lost DD at the end, but I didn't care how they got her out, I just wanted a live baby to take home with me.

I didn't feel like a failure then, I don't feel like a failure now. And it has never occurred to me that I might!

YABU.

I had a natural birth for DS1 and I found it a very satisfying and rewarding experience. I liked the experience of labour and pushing him out, although it was incredibly painful. For me, I just don't want a CS for this next baby because I then won't have that experience. I will do everything I can to have another natural birth but if medical circumstances require an ECS then I will have it but I know i will disappointed if that happens. Surely there is nothing wrong with feeling disappointed??

and I don't think anyone is saying a CS is the easy option. In fact for me, I don't want one precisely because the recovery time is longer and harder. Exactly why I don't want one because I hate being stuck in a hospital bed. I was grateful I could go home 6 hours after my DS1 was born.

Just because I want a natural birth doesn't mean I judge anyone for choosing to have a CS. I couldn't care less what others choose. But I know what I want and surely there is nothing wrong with that.

bissy - where did you get the 30% maternal death rate figure from?

Even today in Afghanistan, which has the worst maternal mortality rate in the world, the lifetime figure is about 1 in 10, and that's in a country where women have a huge number of pregnancies, where women are having babies at 13, where there is no access to even basic midwifery care for many, and where many unsafe and illegal abortions take place.

In the UK the maternal mortality rate in the 1950's was only a miniscule fraction of this, and that's with a c-section rate of 2%.

As far as the UK today goes, the emergency c/s rate for healthy women who opt to have their babies outside of a CLU (ie, in a birth centre or at home), the c/s rate is about 6%. For second time mums it's even lower than that.

I personally think it's very sad that instead of focusing on the really important issues in maternity care - which are how we can improve the health of women and babies in childbirth - there is a cultural focus on 'the right way to give birth' debate.

I can't imagine any other sector of the NHS where high levels of avoidable surgery on healthy patients would be tolerated in the way we tolerate it in relation to maternity care.

And it's really sad that those women who are drawing attention to the rapidly rising rates of avoidable intervention are being accused of birth facism.
It's absolutely unacceptable that healthy women in UK hospitals are starting their lives as mothers with such high levels of avoidable injuries, when we know the simple, effective things (namely improving access to low tech birth environments for healthy women, and improving access to one to one midwifery care) that can be done which have an impact on birth outcomes.

holdme, I too bought the birthball, made a rice sock and arnica and borrowed a tens machine! Glad to get rid of the lot.

It is fantastic when genetics or luck allows you to have an easy natural birth. But for my second (where I did have the choice of a cs), I did not feel I wanted to tempt fate after what other friends of mine went through. As my SIL said, who had a traumatic first birth, why risk mangling your bits when you don't have to.

SIL went on to have a straightforward vb for her second child. I am really happy for her

Panda, I agree about a baby's early days and experiences being fetished. Most of us here are parents just trying to do our best in the circumstances. It is hardly child abuse to ff or have an elective cs or practise CIO. I did the whole attachment parenting thing for my first child and was more matter-of-fact with my second. What good I managed to do then is now all being undone by my dodgy parenting.

Think about the sugar fest at children's birthday parties and then think about the virgin gut of babies. Hmmmmm, I cannot get excited about the bf/ff debate!

bissy, very wise contribution.

Responding to a few tings down thread: formula is NOT harmful- whether or not it is less good than human milk is the debate. Not feeding a baby is harmful. Feeding a baby evaporated milk straight from the tin is better than not feeding it.

CS/vaginal birth: I've done both and feel no sense of superiority whatever about the vaginal births. If I could have had a complication-free CS each time, I would have (with the wonderful gift of hindsight).

I think there is one other factor you need to take into account, Shagmund. By the 50s there was contraception available. High risk women could be advised to avoid a second pregnancy altogether. I was a known high risk after my first pregnancy and me and my doctors discussed the risks and implications of a second pregnancy at great length. When we finally decided it would be safe, it was with the knowledge that I would be closely monitored and experienced surgeons would be at hand at any time. I spoke to another woman who had had eclamptic fits on the delivery table during her first labour and gone on to a second pregnancy.

If the two of us had lived in the 50s, neither of us would had swelled the statistics of maternal death during second pregnancy: we would simply have decided not to have another baby. No statistics would have shown our grief and disappointment over this.

I had an EC followed by a VB and am one of those women who then wished my first had been a VB - she suffers so much more in the way of chest infections, allergies, bordering on asthmatic - so I can see the benefits of VB for the child ..... I didn't feel a failure or anything though, just felt that my eldest may be a more healthy child if she had been VB....

Charlieandlola 'the rest' ie mental side effects also matters, colossally. This is true however a woman gives birth. Getting mum and baby through safe is of course the most important thing, but it also matters a great deal if the mother has flashbacks, trauma, is too frightened to have more children. It sounds like you don't suffer from any mental side effects following your births: this is good, and exactly how it should be. Many others do.

Tinydanza I agree about your cottage industry point, but please don't dismiss all the 'natural' (I hate that description- can't see why electric currents are more natural than plant derived pain relief such as opiates, and I had both!) pain relief methods as crapola. Some of them help some women. I found the tens machine very helpful in the early stages of labour. It doesn't work for everyone, but I'd suggest to any woman who's going to have a VB and who hasn't tried a tens before to at least give it a go.

And lastly, I wish we'd all stop judging each other. Comments about pristine fanjos and others not being able to understand the hormone rush following a VB are not helpful. Especially as things are so different for all of us. I didn't feel much of a helpful hormone rush following my VB. And personally I feel that VB improved my fanjo: I am fortunate enough to be without perineal scars, and am glad to be a little looser than I was previously. My chuff was tighter than is ideal prior to the birth, and one can have too much of a good thing. My experiences are no more or less valid than those who feel pride in a vagina that has not been affected by VB, and who feel they had helpful hormone rushes following their VBs.

I think all women should be able to take pride in how they gave birth, however it was. Personally, I take great pride in having been able to endure back to back labour with no effective pain relief when things really kicked in, having gone from 1 to 9cm forced to lie on my back with wires and shit hanging out of me, and birth by venteuse with no epidural as it was too late. I fucking shouldn't have had to put up with most of that, mind. But as I did and I came out the other side, I am proud. If I'd had a section, I'd have had to deal with looking after my new baby whilst recovering from major surgery, which I would also have been damn proud of as it's one of the most difficult things a human can do! All of us are great successes. All of us were triumphant.

"formula is NOT harmful"

It is for SOME babies!

Hospital admissions for infections, respiratory disease and gastric illness are higher for fully and partially ff babies than they are for breastfed babies. SIDS is higher in babies who are not breastfed. NEC is higher in preterm babies who are not breastfed. And NEC sometimes kills babies.

If babies are deprived of the protective elements of breastmilk they ARE going to be more vulnerable to illness. The added immunity they get from their mother's milk isn't 'extra' - it's there to compensate for the fact that babies are born with an immune system which is undeveloped compared to older children and adults. Babies who do not have this will be more vulnerable to infection.

Cory - in the 1950's average family size was much higher than it is now. It was before the days of the pill. It was during the time of unsafe abortion.

Yes, women were younger and thinner when they had their first baby, and I'm sure that makes a big difference. Doesn't take away from the fact that for HEALTHY women in the UK today, (giving birth outside of CLU's) the emergency c/s rate is about 1 in 20. To me that seems pretty good.

BLUESHOES - it's really unhelpful to imply that the views that ff is 'child abuse', and that c/s is 'wrong' are common currency.

They are not.

If you challenge the view that formula feeding is harmless, and that the rising rate of emergency c/s is not something to be celebrated, you shouldn't be accused of believing that ff is 'evil' or 'abusive', or that c/s births are not equally as special and important as vaginal births.

And yet that's what people do in these debates all the time. They try and polarise the issue in the most unhelpful way possible. Constantly using straw man arguments.

"there is some mythical hierarchy of births with natural at the top, epidural in the middle and c- section at the bottom."

But in medical terms there IS a hierarchy, with the 'best' births being the ones that end with the healthiest mother and baby. And by 'healthy' I include emotional and psychological health in that equation.

On a personal note - I have never had a completely uncomplicated birth. My 'best birth' was the one which resulted in me feeling best afterwards, and with a baby in very good condition. The birth which involved lots of injury to me and my baby (my forceps birth), and difficult breastfeeding was not as happy an experience as the other, though that doesn't mean I love my dd any the less, or that her birth was less important to me than the births of my other children. I'm sick of people trivialising birth injuries. I have only given birth three times in my life and they were the three most exciting, life-changing days I will ever have. I will remember them until the day I die. I think EVERYTHING should be done to optimise the experience of childbirth, to make it as safe and healthy and satisfying as possible.

"It is fantastic when genetics or luck allows you to have an easy natural birth"

As someone who had 'high risk' pregnancies (involving cerclage, huge babies and gestational diabetes) I can tell you that what made my labours safe and bearable wasn't 'luck' or 'genetics', but a fucking fantastic midwife who I knew and trusted, and brilliant care. Which, as I have pointed out on this thread and which people seem determined to ignore, are often the things which are missing from people's experience of vaginal birth.

On a tour of our hospital before my second birth (which was a planned CS) the mw said "now you're having a cs... anyone else know they are?" The other women in the room looked at me like I was dirt. I thought it was my pg hormones making me sensitive but dh picked up on it too. We got to the op theatre on the tour and mw shouted "right where's my twin mum then?" and you could hear people muttering "oh right that's why" - I am a confident person but someone less confident would have felt rubbish.

My cs was due to twins being breech but I was down for cs before even getting pregnant due to the 32 stitches I had with dd1 and the horrific lack of care that meant I had no trust of the mws. But that is me - having experienced both I would opt for CS every time, but everyone is different and if I hadn't experienced natural birth I would probably feel different.

Pregnancy hormones do crazy things too - I was so tough on myself struggling to bf twins, feeling that dd was bf so I should do the twins too as it wasn't their fault they were born at the same time. I would never have judged someone for not bfing but when I came to me I was far too tough on myself. My logical brain new it but I couldn't help how I felt.

I don't believe the cs caused problems with feeding but I did find the twin who was handed to me immediately fed much better than dtd1 who was rushed to SCBU as she stopped breathing.

I'm expecting my first and my priority above everything else is a live baby. If everything goes well I will have a VB, as that would be my first choice, but if it doesn't I am very very grateful that I have the option of a caesarian. Choice is a luxury, we should be grateful that we have options, and not hold ourselves as superior because we had one not the other.

"but please don't dismiss all the 'natural' (I hate that description- can't see why electric currents are more natural than plant derived pain relief such as opiates, and I had both!) pain relief methods as crapola."

Low risk women who give birth in environments where epidural is not immediately available are more likely to be satisfied with their birth experience than similar mums who opt to give birth in CLU's.

And that's even if you include all the mums who transfer into CLU's from MLU's in labour in the 'MLU' (midwife led unit) cohort.

Waterbirth is linked to high rates of maternal satisfaction and lower rates of complications.

As is homebirth.

As is doula care.

As are hypnosis techniques.

You can be as cynical as you like, but the evidence is there. In fact some of it has been incorporated into the NICE guidance on best practice in maternity care!

"and not hold ourselves as superior because we had one not the other"

I think you'll find that most women who have a straightforward vaginal birth feel lucky rather than superior.

Princess, are you sure they weren't looking at you with envy, given the inevitability of the group containing at least a handful of women who were very, very frightened about having to go through labour?

Shagmund I'm not really sure what your post at 9.47 has to do with the post of mine that you quoted? It absolutely is artificial to designate some things as natural and others as not, especially when some of the 'natural' methods involve electricity and artificial fibres not found in nature. I speak as someone who found 'natural' methods helpful for many hours, and would use a tens machine for future births even though it isn't remotely natural.