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?

Probably could have carried on the 1st time but support in hospital was lousy and I was naive.

Boomerang al the things you didn't want, but if it is an emergency then it doesn't matter what I want or not.
The child needs to be delivered safely. And I was told at noon that I would have a c-section at 6pm.
And I had plenty of time to take a bath even, be shaved and have my hair and make-up done and take pictures with the family and then I was picked up at 6pm and at 7pm my child was delivered.
And at 8pm we were all together and she was already on my breast...

To me this is a birth experience as wonderful as it can get.

My scar is barely visible, right above my crotch hidden under my pubic hair and 4 inches long and as thin as you can imagine.

designerbaby - After reading your post i know i'm BU to agree with the OP. Your experiences sound very traumatic indeed.

I'm just bitter as i know i'm not mentally well enough to be a mother yet; i think that is clouding my judgement actually.
Also i'm not getting any younger; so i panicking that i'll soon be too old to be a mother (i'm 36); & that i won't get well enough to be a mother.

In reality i would have a high probability of PND so it's not the type of birth that would worry me; it's the mental health issues that i might get afterwards & the implications of that.

Obviously it's different for everyone what their priorities & worries are.

designerbaby, read my previous comment as well, maybe?

And I am so glad we live in a place where this was possible or she would have died for sure, and what would have happened to me, I don't know.

1944 As life goes on I have found there are more things to get upset about than the way you gave birth

Seriously, well said. I never cared about how others give birth or how I should have done it etc.
I was happy, we are well, that's it.

And I'm not sure I display anything like the attitude you are suggesting. (I have MH problems too. It's shit.)

Ive had 2 vaginal and 1 EMCS births, ok last one fairly traumatic because of the circumstances but at the end of the day Ive got 3 healthy boys, and I rarely think of their births these days. Im firmly in the camp that birth is only a means to an end and thats that. I feel sorry for Mums who feel they have somehow failed or their body has let them down because of the unnecessary guilt and misery these feelings can bring - I dont understand it myself but I do get that others can feel like this, I just think its pointless.

Other peoples attitudes dont help at these times such as the pretty strong views you can get (that Ive seen on threads here) that CSs are cheating and unless youve gave birth with no pain relief whatsoever listening to whale music, sniffing aromatherapy oils and singing a chorus of Kumbayah etc tehn youa re not a "real" Mum, Crap.

Yep that is crap.

As I het further along in pg I am wondering if going for a vbac will be an unnecessary risk, the only reason i have a choice in the matter is due to incompetant cervix other wise it would be an elcs

YANBU I feel just the same even though I too did desperately want natural births at the time on both dc. It is such a heated debate though and it always makes me cringe and feel a bit cross that women who had c sections somehow feel they have to explain themselves to anyone but especially on public forums like this. You see it all the time, I had a section but... ya da ya da.

I understand that statistically it is safer to try and give birth vaginally if you can. I also think you have huge natural instincts which prompt you to want a natural birth and to breast feed etc BUT in reality, they only got maternal mortality under control in the 1940s. The 1940s! We are so so lucky to be able to largely get pregnant and have our babies without feeling unduly worried that we or our babies won't survive the experience.

Two women died after childbirth here in Ireland recently in the same week. It was national news as that hospital had only lost 5 women in the previous 11 years. It was extremely sobering news.

Yes, the medics often go for the section when the birth would PROBABLY have turned out ok. (And they are even more gung ho for c sections here than in the UK) But what is at stake is literally vital and for those struggling with their section, it is so important to remember that. The hormones and instinct fade but you and your baby are safe.

See, I don't get how it's necessary to feel you have "achieved something" as a lot of people have said on this thread.

In my opinion (and I get that some people won't understand this) having had years of infertility, adopting two and then being very ill when pregnant with ds2, my only wish was to have a baby.

I genuinely didn't (and don't) care how they arrive.

But 1944 girl is right. The birth "experience" is at most a couple of days out of your life with your child. In fact even the whole "pregnancy and birth" experience is so irrelevant later.

I think the real shame is that women are made to feel guilty for somehow "failing" in the way they give birth which can affect how they manage (mentally and physically) with their baby.

I think more emphasis should be place on the fact that needing medical intervention is not a failure, any more than it is a failure to have asthma.

And a successful birth should be one where both mother and baby come out of it unscathed, whatever the method.

Latara, I really feel for you - I remember feeling very upset when friends worried about childbirth and bonding and things that seemed so unimportant to me, when all I wanted was to be a mother.

badtime I did. But it doesn't change the implications of your second post, does it? That we have the luxury of debating this, does not lessen the reality of the struggles that people have. MH issues, and that's what we're talking about, really, just aren't a 'first world problem'. And the attitude that they are, and that we should just all be grateful for what we have, are both scarily prevalent and very damaging.

Someone close to me (although not any more, unsurprisingly) said that very thing to me when I was deep in the grips of devastating PND. "You ought to be grateful you're not living in Africa. At least you both survived and you have a lovely, healthy baby. You have nothing to be depressed about."

So when I see that view peddalled, especially on a forum like this, where there are possibly many, many women struggling in this way, well, it makes me see red.

Latara I'm sorry to hear that. MH issues have far reaching consequences, as I well know. 36 is not old! Really hope you feel better soon, that you're getting the help and support you need and that you end up with the child you hope for, one way or another. And that you're free of PND...

db
xx

Re: 'First World' & 'Third World' problems -

A friend of mine from an ex-USSR Republic who lives here in the UK was very scared about telling her GP here that she was depressed.
It was obvious that she was depressed but she refused to get help - until i worked out why she was so scared.

In her 'home' country any woman with depression gets put into an 'Asylum' type place... no mental healthcare there unless you are very rich.

So many women do suffer PND & PTSD etc in 'Third World' countries; it definitely is not just a 'First World' problem.

The difference is that women here get far more help than in poorer countries for their mental health problems (although it could be even better tbh). And it's free help, on the NHS (so far).

Sadly many women are too scared to admit they are unwell in certain countries; as they are scared they will be locked up. So they have to 'sink or swim' & suffer their MH problems in silence - how awful. :(

I don't feel old at 36; it's just all those articles i see in the press that make me worry about fertility at my age; i know i should ignore them.

MaryZed And a successful birth should be one where both mother and baby come out of it unscathed, whatever the method.

Totally agree ^^^^

I had an EMCS following:

Pre-eclampsia, diagnosed on my due date
2 days in hospital waiting for a free delivery room so they could induce me
Induction
24 hrs of labour

And because my daughter had turned her head the wrong way:

Failed forceps
Failed ventouse
Failed last-ditch reach-in-and-turn-her-manually (she just kept turning her head back to the way she liked it)

By the time I was in recoverery I was quite literally exhausted and traumatised. She's 5 months old and my last counselling appointment is this afternoon.

BUT

Do I wish I'd given birth vaginally? Not really. Because in spite of everything:

Her APGARs were 10, 10, 10
We had skin to skin
The surgical team were wonderful and did everything we asked, eg my husband getting to announce the sex and cutting the cord, which was delayed
I was mobile 6 hours after going to recovery
She did the breast crawl and latched on as we were being wheeled round to recovery
I had little to no pain and beautiful sutures
Breastfeeding was no problem; my milk came in as normal and I have even been able to donate. Indeed, my daughter became a minor celebrity having put on 2ozs at 5 days old - no loss at all!

I don't care what anyone says - there is no way in which I did not give birth to my daughter. However, I did feel really let down by the NCT - their leaflet on Caesareans was full of scaremongering claptrap and may as well have just said "if you have a c-section you are a failure in all respects of birth".

And if you feel my daughter's birth was an "unnecessarean" I'd love to know how the fuck you got hold of my notes in order to make that value judgement.

I only felt terrible and a failure after having a c section because other women made me feel that way. yes how i feel was sort of my control but having sat through weeks of pro natural birth NCT classes and received hundreds of texts from husbands desribing their magnificents wives achievements, women boasting about thier 24 hour labours wihtout pain killers ad nauseum, etc its hard not to feel that way. there's a fair few posts on this thread which are testament to this - women who feel that giving birth is some sort of uber human achievement. what b)llocks.

4 years later, i realise that the REAL achievement is having a wonderful, happy, healthy little girl and being the best possible mother to her. how i gave birth is totally irrelevant to this outcome.

so yes, OP, YANBU. but thats the way society makes you feel.

worldcitizen

Yes, but 'unscathed' ought to encompass mental wellbeing as well as physical. It can have equally far-reaching, and sometimes life-threatening consequences.

For me wanting a vaginal birth was so that I could feel I really achieved something

This is exactly what I dont get - why is vaginal birth seen as an achievement and CS not then consequently? No-one gets a prize for the biggest "achievement" in labour, all we want are healthy babies.

It wasn't that long ago that C-section simply wasn't an option for the majority of women, and them and/or their babies would have died. The coming of the NHS gave us these choices and opportunities.

As others have said, a lot of it is down to language and expectation. 'Natural' childbirth being the obvious example. My mother was a bit of a natural birth hippy nazi. She had all her kids without any painkillers (including gas and air), as her philosophy was that this was the only way to be a 'real' mother. So I always felt under huge pressure to have my kids 'naturally'.

As it was both were born by CS, my DD as she was 6 weeks early, my waters broke and she was in breech position. DS because I was pushing for 24 hours and not dilating. So thank god for CS as far as they were concerned. I'm just glad I have two healthy children. But I do feel a little sadness that I will never have the experience of a vaginal birth, especially when I hear people extolling how wonderful it was to have their babies at home.

As for BF, I fed both of mine until they were over 12 months old, and I'd never heard there were any potential problems BF after a CS.

Vaginal delivery of a baby without pain relief is a fabulous human experience! That's why it's important!

designerbaby, the common usage of 'first world problem' notwithstanding, this is literally a problem of the first world (and I mean literally, literally).
As many people have pointed out, it is only comparatively recently and in certain regions that the care is sufficient to get both mother and child through the birth process reliably. It is only when the medical care is reliable enough to provide options that this debate can arise. I do not know how you interpreted my comment as you did.

I would be grateful if you could point out to me where I implied that mental health issues only affected people in the first world. The only time I mentioned mental health issues was when I was criticising people who have a go at people who have elective caesarians, even though the people involved may have mh problems, such as PTSD from an earlier bad experience. I am truly struggling to understand why you think I think mental health problems:
a) are unimportant; or
b) only affect people in affluent countries.

I thought the OP was about 'why a vaginal birth is so important to some people', not the prevalence of mental health conditions in relation to GDP.

I know my friend who had a caesarian due to a breech baby felt hugely disappointed. She had really hoped for a normal delivery and it took her some time to come to terms with it.

Doesn't mean she wasn't hugely appreciative of the care she received - and that her baby was delivered without danger.