To think our expectations of childbirth are too high?

[RimmersLoveMonster]

Just that really. It’s inherently agonisingly painful and dangerous, but a lot of posters seem to be surprised that it is and feel traumatised afterwards. I think our expectations around birth are unrealistic and that women are being sold a fantasy by ‘positive birth’ companies and pictures of pools with twinkly lights etc. This then leads to disappointment when their experience doesn’t go that way. AIBU?

I think women can put too much pressure on themselves to have the perfect birth experience, no drugs, all natural etc. But no, I don't think women are expecting too much care wise, I was really frightened before having my DD because there were a lot if horror stories and with modern medicine it really shouldn't be that way!

I put no pressure on myself, I didn't care whether she came on the cat flap or the sun roof! Just wanted her here safely and hoping for minimal pain for me! It turned out to be a very positive experience for me, failed induction and then ELCS. I had little to no pain from start to finish and was very well cared for, the midwives were amazing and I healed very quickly. Unfortunately my experience seems to be less common than the more traumatic births, no, it shouldn't be like that and I honestly believe if men were having the babies it wouldn't!

I feel completely the reverse. Women have been told giving birth is horrendous. Birth has been over medicalised in recent decades and much of that is for ease of doctors (who up until fairly recently would all have been men) and not in the interest of the woman.
Because of the chain of interventions, many more births are traumatic. It all starts with a sweep / induction and continues with unnatural hospital wards and machines sounds of other women giving birth and unnecessary internal examinations. Often ends with more medication and a failure to progress.
For many women it really doesn’t need to be like this and I feel they have been failed.

In my experience it was neglect and lack of care that lead to any bad experience. Both times in hospital. The other two were calm and relaxed and needed less pain relief or intervention because of this.

Also the need for others to share horror stories leads to people expecting the worst, it heightens the nerves and is the opposite of the relaxed mindset you need.

I was expecting all sorts of hell, but I had two wonderful experiences. Gas and air was enough for me to ride them out. But most importantly, I have a freaky cervix that stretches out during labour, which facilitated two very quick births without requiring to do the dance of dilation. I don't think I'd have felt the same if the labour went on for ages, or if there were issues with the babies.

What is interesting is that statistically home births are safer and require less intervention than mid wife led units and hospitals and hospitals have the highest instances of interventions and emergency c sections. I think that should be questioned rather than the suggestion that all births will be hell with poor outcomes for mental health.

Childbirth is a lottery and every single birth is different. I’ve had good ones and horrendous ones.

I agree birth is over-medicalised and western midwifery often has a cascade of interventions that have been proven to result in yet more interventions, higher maternal injuries and low maternal satisfaction in birth. It starts with vaginal exams, goes to sweeps and on and on. Each one carrying risk that then requires another intervention to correct a problem the initial one has caused.

The OP saying that our expectations are too high is wrong. No one is expecting to birth a baby like a hen popping out an egg or in a magical orgasmic experience.

We just want to not be treated like a cow on an assembly line in a calf factory. This idea our expectations are too high as being the problem or even part of the problem of being treated inhumanely is disgusting. Do you tell a rape victim her PTSD is due to her expectations of sex being too high? It’s the same with childbirth. Many childbirths are needlessly traumatic as violations of our consent does happen. I was vulnerable, I was not wholly here and an assistant midwife got all controlling and stream rolled me…doing things I refused to consent to. That’s what made my most traumatic birth traumatic. It was by pain level and length the easiest birth, but it was the callous treatment & assault of a assistant midwife that I could not physically fight off that haunts me still today. My birth that was five times longer and a hundred times more painful and had a baby with a cord wrapped round their neck and were a bit touch and go…was less traumatic because I was not treated like a cow to have a calf just yanked out of her any old way like I was nothing.

I agree with this. Don't agree with the culture of fear surrounding birth at all. I think negative experiences are often a result of an environment where women are disempowered and feel not heard. Less emphasis on plan (how can anyone plan the totally unknown?!) and more on support and encouragement would help women. I don't think hearing horror stories makes anyone have a better experience at birth. Feeling safe and well-cared for does.

@Poppins2016

You hear lots of horror stories because it makes better stories

Jeeze.

Or maybe you hear lots of horror stories because some births are actually horrific and women are left genuinely traumatised? How mean to suggest it's made up for effect.

Should women who weren't lucky enough to not have a horrific time keep quiet? Should they lie?

Childbirth remains one of the biggest killers of women, globally. I think minimising that in favour of suggesting you just have to choose not to have a terrible experience is incredibly dangerous at best

Also, gas and air is equivalent in terms of analgesic effect to about 10mg of morphine. Its very effective pain relief.

There are huge issues with maternity care in the UK. That needs addressing, no doubt. But even perfect care won't minimising how dangerous childbirth can be for woman and baby. Pretending that's not the case isn't doing anyone any favours and only encourages this belief that women are to blame if things go badly

If you run for health minister you'd get my vote.

I completely agree with this. Our expectations aren’t too high, it’s the provision that’s inadequate.

Also, women are constantly persuaded to have “natural” births and to avoid pain relief unless absolutely a last resort. We’re made to feel bad if we need a c-section or an epidural. It makes absolutely no sense and it’s misogyny at its worst.

I loved my hypnobirthing course and it helped me so much in my 16 hour labour. For it to work though you need to be fully invested and if it gets to the point you need a c-section then it won't help then. sorry if I misunderstood this @MadameDe but it sounds a little tone deaf. Not everyone gets a relatively short 16 hour labour. It’s easy to be invested if everything goes quickly and smoothly.

@AutumnScream surely that’s because high risk births don’t usually happen in home settings. Of course there is likely to be more intervention in hospital when the risks are higher.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. What's positive about hypnobirthing is that it gives women confidence that they can make decisions about their own bodies and are prepared for all scenarios.
But NHS is on its knees. I had to wait for hours for a labour ward bed and I only got it once the baby was almost born. I was offered only gas&air, but thankfully it worked for me. In the end my labour was fine. But it could have been this very positive experience if the hospital wasn't so understaffed. And my postnatal care was just awful.
So I think many women are failed and deserve better care and being listened to.

This is because only low risk births tend to take place at home. You’re not comparing like for like at all.

If you are an older woman, have had a complex pregnancy, are having twins etc etc you will be discouraged from having a home birth.

It's interesting, at the moment ELCS is like a dirty word and women have to jump through hoops to get one most of the time. It was only relatively straightforward for me because I met a really good consultant who recognised immediately how severe my tokophobia is.

I wonder if at some point it will flip completely the other way and ELCS will become encouraged due to them being able to schedule it in, less chance of complications after etc. Nor that that would be right, but bizarrely I could imagine that happening. Women should be supported to make the right decision for themself and their own circumstances as far as medically possible.

Me and Dsis 1 and Dsis 2 were having none of the natural birth sing song. I had an epidural because I didn't want any more scars on my abdomen - lots of previous op scars and dsis 1 and 2 had elective C sections by choice - they don't live in the UK.
None of us have birth trauma.

I don't think anyone goes into childbirth expecting it to be pain free.
But they expect to be listened to, believed, treat like a human being.

They don't expect to be sexually assaulted by midwives performing non consensual sweeps.

They don't expect to be neglected after birth when they're at their most vulnerable.

They don't expect decisions to be made for them while they're in the very same room.

That's what is traumatic, the absolute total lack of power, the fact you turn into nothing but a vessel for another life and no longer human.

I was traumatised because of the dreadful care I received during birth and the 5 days I was in recovery on the ward. I was treated horrendously and a major factor was the exhausting ongoing fight to get adequate pain relief, as well as the midwives being utterly horrific people. It had nothing to do with unrealistic expectations of birth.

But I see the tiresome bingo card phrases are already out: 'cascade of interventions' 'over medicalised' etc. I do think that whole narrative that runs through a lot of pregnancy prep is damaging and dangerous. In our NCT the leader told us we could feel smug listening to the other women scream as they had 'lost control', unlike us who had done our prep, so wouldn't lose control. Such a horrible ideology and one that hides a nasty strain of misogyny beneath a facade of 'female empowerment'. The issue isn't the 'medicalisation' of birth, but inadequate and poor quality medical care.

In my experience no one is unrealistic going into birth, but I think people turn to the fantasy you mentioned OP as they are often scared and want to feel in control, which is understandable. They don't want to be the screaming woman you see in films/TV etc. I think its impossible to guess how birth will go for you, even from one birth to the next for the same person.

I was open minded with my first, I wasn’t expecting all the intervention I needed which I put down to the fact that I was told off every time I moved from lying on my back because it affected the monitor.
with my second I wanted a home birth but had reduced movements so all the intervention and movement restrictions (for me) happened again. I felt I had no option but to go along with what I was told. In hindsight I question if some of the interventions was because it was taking too long and they wanted beds because of the state of the NHS.

Mine was agonisingly painful, it was fine, had worse toothache. Nor was it dangerous - it's a natural process for the majority.

Statistically it's safer in your late teens and twenties, that's part of the issue. Its also more dangerous if you are overweight.

I had no pain relief and no stitches, 6 hour labour

Wasn't*

Agree. In my experience the rise of hypnobirthing is dangerous more than positive. I know so many people who had off expectations due to hypnobirthing and they said afterwards they wish they hadn’t gone in naive.

All this bullshit rhetoric around the ‘over medicalisation’ of childbirth is dangerous too. Why are we choosing to reject modern medicine in childbirth?? Why is this seen as a positives?
I remember reading about how women had been squatting in caves to give birth for millennia as though it was something to aim for, yeah and most of them suffered horrific injuries, died or the baby died.

YANBU. I went to two natural birth/ yoga type classes. Both sold the message that birth is an empowering, bonding experience, that it’s the best start for you and baby, and if you don’t have this experience, it’s all the fault of ‘intervention’ that you should reject at every turn. Even simple life saving ‘interventions’ like vit K must be rejected.
Two of the women in my classes became hysterical, wailing about how they now knew more than the doctors did and they were terrified of ‘intervention’.

This stuff is not harmless. The low intervention/ low c-section rate at Telford hospitals is what led to high rates of baby deaths.

I was hospitalised with severe preeclampsia from week 29 and gave birth via c-section at week 33. The hospitalisation was great but the birth was a pretty horrible experience - because of the medical danger I was pumped full of magnesium and had a catheter, and through the c section there was an anaesthetist trying to get an artery line in my wrist just in case anything went wrong. My baby was whisked away from me the minute he was born by the NICU team (I heard just the tiniest cry which at least was a relief!). What they didn't explain was that I would be stuck in my bed with the magnesium and catheter for a day and a half and it would make me so sick that I couldn't even think of seeing my baby. I was so, so sick and confused: I knew that I had given birth but I couldn't even understand how nobody was helping me to see my baby. I also looked a total mess with a full arm of bruises from the arterial line. At the end of the second day I just lied to them about how I felt and made them take me to the NICU.

All was great eventually (both of us v healthy), but I felt that I was extra traumatised by simply not having had the realistic expectations discussed with me beforehand. Literally every image of childbirth was a "good" full-term birth, with skin-to-skin and breastfeeding afterwards. My prenatal teacher told all of us to do all we could to avoid (God forbid!) a premature birth. It took me a long time to accept that this was my pregnancy and birth story, as I felt like I missed out on nearly everything that was "normal" - I didn't even really have a visible bump, I didn't;t get to feel contractions or to hold my newborn. I think that if we (meaning prenatal classes, medical staff etc) were more open about the full range of experiences, it would be really helpful to those of us who are totally off the "normal" scale of birth experiences.

@gogohmm Mine wasn’t agonisingly painful, it was fine, had worse toothache. Nor was it dangerous - it's a natural process for the majority.

Thats amazing for you but I can tell you that absolutely isn’t the case for anyone I know. Not one single person said it wasn’t that painful and as actually “fine” so I don’t understand your statement that it’s a natural process for the majority as a follow on. It might be a natural process, I mean so is having a heart attack, but it actually isn’t fine and not painful for the majority of women. A majority of women (60% in the UK) use some form of aesthetic for pain relief and I would imagine more so with at least gas and air.

I think from hearing so many horror stories from friends and family, I psyched myself up for it to be the most horrific thing any human could ever endure. Don’t get me wrong, it’s agonisingly painful, but it wasn’t what I was expecting.
The whole experience outside of the physiology of the birth itself was horrendous first time around - the hospital environment, the way I was treated and not listened to by my care providers and the blatant violation of my bodily autonomy during what was actually a textbook, straightforward birth is what made it horrific.
Second and third babies, I decided that I coped with the pain last time, so I could do it again, but would be doing it on my terms. So chose home births, and dug my heels in deep that everything (barring dire medical emergency) would be happening entirely on my terms. The experiences of my hospital and home births couldn’t be further apart - my home births made me realise that when birth is straightforward and uncomplicated, it can be quite a chilled, calm experience regardless of the inevitable physical pain.