That instrumental delivery should be banned?

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I know it’s the DM but this is shocking:

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6797199/As-doctors-midwives-finally-act-searing-expos-childbirths-shameful-secret.html

They say 10 percent of mums suffer from some sort of anal incontinence! Claims forceps are the biggest cause so why are they still used? AIBU to say they should be banned? Why couldn’t you just get a C-sec at that point?

Because it can be faster to deliver a baby this way and seconds matter also c-sections come with a large set of risks themselves!

don't you think becoming incontinent is worse than losing one's figure?

BestZebbie that’s basically what I said though. I’m wondering what these Section complications are that are worse than an awful birth injury.

I was incredibly confused as to how anyone could find my post offensive and then I saw it said “who” she was before not “how” she was before. That was a typo. Nonetheless even if it had not, my post in any case spoke of the feelings of women I had spoken to, it didn’t say anything about how anyone else should feel. I think your post was a bit off newaccount, particularly as I also acknowledge that “my perspective may be skewed by the experiences of people around me” and was interested to hear from other people about their experiences.

I can’t find where I said that the ideal is for a woman’s body to show no signs of giving birth - I’m covered in stretch marks and couldn’t give a shit - and obviously those who have sections are left with scars and often overhangs/pouches.

I am pleased your vagina has recovered well but mine hasn’t. I have a prolapse I feel genuinely distraught about it. I will require surgery that is to me far worse than having had a section in the first place. And incidentally my short term recovery after a forceps delivery was lengthier than is generally the case for a c-section. I couldn’t walk for 3 weeks. I still have awful pain in my episiotomy, but that doesn’t even bother me. Having a prolapse has upset me and ruined my self esteem in ways I can’t describe. I think you have no right to tell me I can’t want my vagina to be how it was before given the effect my birth injury has had on my life.

Perhaps you would be less dismissive of the effects a lot of women who have given birth vaginally are left with if you had ended up with forceps and ongoing functional problems yourself. I wish I had the luxury of being well enough recovered to be able to sit and say it’s “suspicious” to want your body to be how it was before giving birth.

Forceps saved my baby's life, however almost ended mine! I don't blame forceps for the outcome however I blame medical negligence and the fact I had about 4 different midwives and 3 doctors involved in my 14 hour labour!

Well, the absolute worst case scenario section complication is the increased risk of maternal mortality - but no one knows whether that's because caesarean sections are usually performed in pregnancies that are risky in some way. People like to say that these risks disappear if you look only at elective sections but

a) there still isn't much research that separates out maternal choice and medically necessary caesareans so the data on this is very spotty
b) currently in the UK women having fully elective C-sections are a self-selecting group who are more likely to be educated and affluent, so just like it's not fair to compare emergency sections and vaginal birth, nor is it fair to say that these women are representative of the risks that all women would face if maternal choice caesarean became much more common

I think decisions should be made between women and their medical professionals after careful analysis of the risks of each procedure not by random, uninformed Internet posters whose entire basis for information is derived from a single article in the daily mail.

grubby I'm sorry my post upset you, especially as we clearly had a misunderstanding over a typo. As I said, I found your post offensive, but that's because it didn't say what you meant to say!

I was very clear, and would like to be even more so here, that I wasn't talking about cases of birth trauma - of course you have every right to wish you hadn't suffered a severe injury. I do think that the idea that it's shameful to have a perfectly functional vagina that looks like it's delivered a child is a misogynistic one that runs through society and which hurts women - that's completely different to women who have suffered injuries that affect their lives in the way you describe. I didn't mean to be dismissive of that, and I'm sorry if what I said came across that way. You did ask for perspectives from women who hadn't suffered injuries, though!

My son was born by forceps. No, it wasn't pleasant, and I still have after effects of the episiotomy and delivery 10 years down the line.

Would I call for them to be banned? No. Without them my son wouldn't be here. His heart rate had dropped so much and he was already so far down the birth canal that a C-Section wasn't possible.

It's not as though they're done for fun, they're there for a reason and they carry risks the same as C-sections, ventouse and other interventions do.

Thanks newaccount and i do want to hear perspectives because the fact some women are apparently happy with having given birth vaginally is really interesting to me. Honestly, fair enough I’m talking about maybe 50 women I’ve ever had the conversation with so not exactly a peer reviewed study but it really is news to me that such women exist.

I don’t know where you got perfectly “functional vaginas that look like they’ve delivered a child” from though. I don’t think I mentioned what anyone’s vagina looks like. I have never discussed with anyone their vagina “looking” different, and wouldn’t any aesthetic change be internal anyway?

I actually feel the true misogyny is expecting women to just put up with changes to their body they would wish weren’t there. Some are inevitable - my stretch mark infused flabby belly for a start! That couldn’t be helped. But I could have avoided forceps and a prolapse if I had a section.

I hate the idea that because you’ve given birth you should expect your body to be different even if you don’t want it to be fuels the normalisation of women living with ongoing problems. The idea that if things aren’t the same as before - well, hey, you’ve given birth, deal with it. It’s great that you’ve not experienced any changes you are unhappy with but lots of women do and even if they are minor - eg not being able to use tampons, or sex feeling a bit different - these are big deals to lots of women. I think it’s the opposite of misogyny to think that we should strive to keep such issues to a minimum.

If women don’t want to have a vagina that doesn’t feel (as opposed to look) the same as before and would prefer a caesarean to prevent the risk of that then I think she should absolutely have that choice, and that the NHS should be honest with women about the potential longer term consequences of giving birth vaginally, rather than simply saying it’s better. it doesn’t turn out that way for so many women.

I appreciate that pregnancy and birth are phenomenal things women’s bodies do and it is wrong to put the expectation on women of “bouncing back” so I agree with you about that but not to the point I agree changes are something women should have to put up with. I suppose if a woman knows about them and wants to give birth vaginally anyway and take the risk as to whether she will recover well longer term that’s up to her but I honestly don’t think people are warned. I did NHS ante-natal classes and had a birth meeting with my midwife and it was never mentioned. I was consented for induction and it was never mentioned.

Men don’t have to live with permanent alterations to their body to become a birth parent so as far as possible nor should women, save insofar as they’re willing to take the risk. That’s my view, possibly because of my own experience.

What a silly ill informed thread.

I disagree. I am TTC and it is really useful to read about real women's birth experiences. It's a bit scary but this kind of information just isn't shared enough.

Lots of my friends have children and I don't really know anything about their birthing experiences because people don't really talk about it (or at least, not to their childless friends).

I had written absolutely no forceps on my birth plans. I'd have preferred EMCS.
As it happens I had two very straightforward although fairly swift natural births with no interventions or drugs.
However, despite only having a "graze" I am not the same down there at all. I have stress incontinence, I suspect I have a prolapse, sex just doesn't feel the same any more and as a result I have basically no sex life. And that's with a birth about as natural as it could be.

Tonight

Then surely you want to be well informed, not ill informed.
There are lots of threads on here to help you, pregnancy and birth stories are common here.

YABU. Forceps saved my son’s life. The alternative would have been a crash C section under general anaesthesia which would have been difficult due to his head being wedged way down in my pelvis.

I had a third degree tear and episiotomy and both healed by six weeks with no incontinence.

Then surely you want to be well informed, not ill informed.

I am informing myself as much as I can, but every woman's experience is worth listening to.

...you only need to look at all the advertisements of incontinence pads for women to realise that care for women during/after childbirth is dire...

I think it’s worth pointing out here that there are many different types of forceps used in delivery and some cause more problems than others. I’m not a medical professional, I just wanted to know why what happened to me happened, so I did some research. Not all forceps births are bad as evidenced here and so OP YABU when you say should they be banned. BuT some, like the high rotational forceps I experienced, cause a great deal of damage to the mother and baby and their use should be reconsidered. My repair took over 4 hours and was a major operation, I was lucky that the OBGYN who delivered my DC was experienced (he was an Israeli working in London) enough to have the confidence to do the job. I was conscious throughout the birth and remember exactly what happened before they put me to sleep for the repair. The forceps were inserted by a Registrar, I then started convulsing, she panicked and she removed them and the consultant then had to take over and replace them. The damage had been done by then but they had to get the baby out and try to save my life. I don’t understand posters on here criticising women for speaking out about injuries from instrumental births, it happened to me and I was offered no ongoing support what so ever. I have subsequently lived abroad and doctors treating my permanently damaged child are astonished when they hear what happened to us. I can’t change what happened to me but I just hope the NHS can make some positive changes in this area.

...you only need to look at all the advertisements of incontinence pads for women to realise that care for women during/after childbirth is dire...

There's no doubt that vaginal birth is a risk factor for incontinence, but women who have never given birth, or who have given birth via caesareans, do also sometimes develop incontinence (the latter more than the former). Not ever having a vaginal birth doesn't guarantee you won't develop pelvic floor problems, though it does make it less likely (and I completely understand why someone would want to lessen the chances in this way)

I’ve had 4 natural childbirths. I had stitches for the first one for a pretty bad tear, basically caused by my only midwife being a rabbit it the headlights student who insisted I pushed when I probably should have panted. It took several months t feel okay about sex after that.

However subsequent births have been fine, pelvic floor has been fine, no further stitches. I think I’ve recovered well after each birth.

I’ve never been induced, I’ve never had a labour last longer than 8 hours, I’ve always been able to walk around, get in the position I wanted etc, I’ve never had to push for more than about 30 minutes, I’ve never had forceps or ventouse, so I suppose I’ve been really fortunate to avoid all the risk factors for birth injury.

I had my last baby at home at 41. To be honest, if I’d known the risk factor for birth injury was 20% at over 40, as mentioned upthread, no way would I have had another child. I was lucky, I was fine, but women should be made aware of these kind of statistics.

Perhaps we should track and have targets to avoid forceps deliveries, particularly high rotational as these seem most damaging.

I don’t think targets are a good idea: medical decisions shouldn’t be determined by targets. We should look at what they do in other countries though, to see if we could make improvements to our practice.

My son wouldn't be here if it weren't for forceps delivery. As it was he was born with a possible shoulder fracture, apgar score of two and a pneumothorax. He was stuck. No c section would have managed to get him out

Queenunikitty

What would have prevented you getting to that stage though elle? A late pregnancy scan to check his position? An earlier decision to go for a section? What are they doing differently in countries with better outcomes?

My baby would have been dead without forceps. As it was he needed resuscitating after the delivery