MIL thinks having c-section isn’t “giving birth”

[Newmum288]

Which offends me! I had a c-section. My daughter was born. She still has a birthday. If I didn’t birth her, how the heck is she here?!

YABU - a c-section isn’t “giving birth”
YANBU - a c-section is still “giving birth”

A live mother and baby after a safe birth is all that is needed. Any method the baby arrives by is giving birth . Some of the older generation have weird views on it, my own mil told my husband his cousin was probably upset because she had a second section. I'd say she was delighted she had given birth safely

Is your MIL Macbeth?!

Natural to me simply means happens spontaneously without intervention. Ie would have happened wherever and whoever was present. That's not a judgement, just a quick semantics analysis, as you queried what natural would mean (in terms of anything, not just birth).
Fwiw my friend who had two CS considers herself as not giving birth, and isn't a bit bothered about it BTW, whereas I had never considered anything but giving birth as I
just hadn't thought about it. I understand what she meant then tho but it still didn't change my view either. It is semantics for sure. I can say happyily I wouldn't let it bother me but I have another friend who had to have post birth counselling as she was so upset about her CS so I understand people vire it diferently. She told me afterwards she herself had subconsciously judged CS mums beforehand and this was a huge part of her feeling so down.. so we are judging ourselves more than anything sometimes. Enjoy your lovely baby OP.

Ask her if she thinks that the witches in Macbeth are a good source of gynaecological knowledge?

Your mil is a cow. I’ve had 3 vaginal deliveries, mostly because a c-section terrifies the fuck out of me. The recovery from a c-section is far longer. There are no heroics from giving birth vaginally, there are no medals. As long as mother and baby are well that’s all that matters.

maybe she’d prefer it if you’d both died attempting to give birth vaginally?

From medical dictionary:

Childbirth, also known as labour, parturition and delivery, is the completion of pregnancy where one or more babiesexits the internal environment of the mother via vaginal delivery or caesarean section.

[7] Martin E (2015). Concise Colour Medical l.p.Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 375. ISBN 978-0-19-968799-2.

DS was born via emergency c-section after an agonising 20 hour back to back labour that even an epidural didn’t completely numb. When MIL came to hospital to meet him the next day, she looked at me and said in quite a sneering way ‘oh, you didn’t have a proper birth then, I don’t know anyone who had to have one of those’.

Fortunately DH stood up for me and told her I’d been through the mill and he was really proud of me. I just cried.

I had an emergency section for twins, then was advised to have section for 3rd child due to VBac problems and probably because I was so ancient😁.

A registrar in my antintaal care said something along the lines ( can't remember exact words) about did I not want to experience the real thing to be like a proper woman😳

He was a foreign doctor and I sort of put it down to a cutural attitude, but maybe it wasnt!

So was I but I still don't feel like I gave birth. I was 9 cm at the time of the section too and I do think the feeling varies from person to person. I do feel like with the EMCS I had two birth experiences in one but I had a sense that things weren't brought to a completion and i felt that in my physical body for some time afterwards (I can't explain it). After I had my vaginal birth, something in my brain felt that the circuit had been closed.

I had an elective with my third and my priority was it being over as fast as possible as I didn't even think about whether I'd given birth or not as I didn't care.

As an aside, I do think that an EMCS after a long and painful labour can be very murky ground, where you don't know where you stand in terms of how to process the horror. I think that people need to sit with terminology which they relate to and which also gives them confidence in how they look back on how things went.

I have given birth both ways (well 2 out of the 3 I guess I have given birth vaginally and by EMCS - I have never had an ELCS).

I occasionally comment that dd could kill Macbeth. The thing is though - it was a trick played by the witches on Macbeth to make him think he couldn’t be killed. Birnham woods also didn’t actually move.

Clever chap was William Shakespeare- he understood that words can be twisted but that the thing that mattered was that Macduff was there and could chop off Macbeth’s head.

I think that the thing that matters is - is your mother in law saying it as a dig or because she is a bit of an annoying pedant. If it is a dig then I would just think “what an unpleasant person she is”. If it is the pedant then just roll your eyes and feel free to criticise her grammar for the rest of her life.

This reminds me a bit of a friend who asked me who delivered my dc and I said, v much smiling and light hearted but still making a point, 'I did!' 😃

Oh, stop it.

So her version of ‘real’ child birthing is that either the baby comes out of your vagina or else you (and possibly the baby as well) die trying?

And if not then she’s going to snidely insinuate that you’re less of a woman and not a proper mother because you didn’t really ‘give birth’?

Well she’s got her foot down hard on the cunt pedal, hasn’t she?

Giving birth is giving birth - you have created and literally birthed a child out of your body, no matter the exit strategy or degree of medical intervention.

And anyone who thinks otherwise should keep their ridiculous gate keeping fuckery to themselves. YANBU.

Yes there is unfortunately - very much along side breast feeding.

Going back to pain relief - so many social media accounts trying to convince women that it’s ‘all in the mind’ and pain relief is bad for the baby - usually flogging some kind of ‘special birthing comb’ that helps you through it 🙈

Yet we have mothers on the other side of the world with zero access to medical care who would love to make child birth less painful/traumatic

Well she’s wrong, your child was born, you gave birth to her. There are only 2 ways of being born as far as I’m aware and she was born via c-section, the same as I was and many, many other people.

If I hadn’t been born via c-section I wouldn’t have made it out alive so I think it’s a wonderful way to be born, certainly better than the alternative in my case!

Is she one of the witches in Macbeth?!

Did she co-write a famous Scottish play? 😀

I don't think my MIL fully grasps that my first (emergency) c section wasn't really a choice I made. "Oh, well I wouldn't have had one" was said a few times! Blew her mind when my second one was very much a choice I made!

I'm very bloody proud of having C-sections for my two children. Without the surgery they would both have died and possibly I would have too.

Anyone commenting on the way someone else gives birth has too much time on their hands.

Ignore, ignore ignore.

I always say "when DS was born" rather than when I birthed him because somehow it sounds less graphic haha. I wonder what this demented woman thinks the C section is - when DD was.... Extracted? She's weird, your DD was clearly born!

"Oh well, I wouldn't save my own life and that of my baby in an emergency situation"

Ok MIL, thanks for sharing.

Option C is not to worry about her opinion

I was in labour for nearly three days followed by an emergency section because we both had sepsis. If I didn't give birth to her then I'd like to know who bloody did.

(I had one "friend"who knew all of that tell me "Next time I'm doing it the easy way like you.")

The recovery from a c-section is far longer.

I dont know if thats helpful because its not always true. I know plenty of women whose vaginal birth recoveries were way harder than either of my emergency section recoveries. I'd definitely take my mild ache which didnt require pain relief over my sil's third degree tear for example. Took six months before she could sit comfortably.

I have a complicated relationship with my csections but I dont think I gave birth...despite the fact that I laboured with both and have actually spent longer in labour than most people I know who delivered vaginally because it took an awfully long time for the NHS to admit dc1 was stuck. Over 80 hours of back to back contractions, the first of which hurt as much as the last, even though the first came "naturally" and the last were on a drip augmenting labour turned up high. I reached full dilation, I pushed...he was stuck mid pelvis, forceps failed so emergency section.

I was a passenger from the first contraction though, the whole process was very much happening to me rather than something I could control. The same with dc2...I'd booked an elective, jumped through hoops to get an general anesthetic and promptly went into labour ahead of the date and ended up with an entirely different doctor, a spinal and watching her emerge from my body like a grumpy butterfly from a chrysalis.

Would I tell any future daughter in law that she hadnt given birth? No and I think the correct response to any emergency section is probably that said to me by a midwife when dc1 was 5 days old "you poor darling, you've basically given birth twice" even though I didnt see it that way.

But what is natural? Vaginal birth? No pain relief? Why as women do we look at other women and judge other women’s birthing experience? There is also a growing trend to avoid pain relief in birth? Why? would this be expected of men? I really doubt it!

I have recently given birth and found this! Women wanting a certificate because they “didn’t even have gas and air” when telling me their birthing stories (which I never asked for! What is with people doing that?). It is like needing an operation with local anaesthetic and responding with “no thanks. Think I’ll go without.” So bizarre! I knew straight away I wanted an epidural, sod feeling every contraction for 32 hours! Each to their own but no woman should be made to feel guilty for choosing their own path.