Is wanting a natrual birth unrealistic? Is it all down to luck?

[digggers]

my own experience and the experience of friends really makes me wonder about this. There's no ryhme or reason, it's just so random.

Are people who prepare for and experience the birth they want just lucky? Is childbirth something you can prepare for and influence? Or is an open mind and a thankfulness that in our country we have medical help on hand the best approach? Or should all medical help be viewed with distrust!

So sorry for those who had an outcome that wasn't what they hoped for.

One childbirth teacher gave me the analogy that birth is a hand of cards and you control how you play it. I think that's a really good one.

I personally use this...

If you took ease of birth on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being the baby pops out easily, no matter what is happening to 10 being the baby cannot be born vaginally at all, you'll find women all along the scale. Those people with 9s and 10s will probably need caesareans. Those people with 1s and 2s will sail through a natural delivery. Most of us fit somewhere in the middle. That is, we can have a natural birth if we want but we might have to work for it. This is why childbirth preparation is a really good idea.

There are plenty of carefully researched and tested methods to increase your chances of a natural birth - hiring a doula makes a huge difference, being at home or a familiar, comfortable environment ups your chances massively, avoiding stress such as unnecessary medical intervention, monitoring etc. also increases the chances of natural birth. Breathing techniques and positioning are important. Self-hypnosis can help.

For women with an ongoing birth at the 10 end of the scale, none of this will help. For women at the 1 end, it won't make much difference. For the rest of us, these techniques can make a difference between a natural birth and a C-Section.

I don't think it's luck and I don't think it's preparation. I think it's that we are very lucky to live in a rich country, where we have access to free medical care and we are educated. I worked for a year for a health organisation in one of the world's poorest countries, where giving birth is a question of survival (maternal mortality 190 per 100,000) and we are ALL lucky to be able to give birth with a very good chance that we and the baby will be fine. I think that it's the women who have access to emergency medical care who are lucky. I have seen women giving birth in terrible conditions. We are all lucky

good post carmen

Definitely luck HOWEVER - if you are going to be lucky and be able to have a natural, intervention free, birth it's best to be prepared.

For a metaphor - if you're going to run a marathon, you train, eat the right food, look after yourself and prepare for your marathon however - if at the last minute you get flu or sprain your ankle it's not going to go according to plan but at least you will be better prepared than sitting around smoking fags and watching tv (you can even choose not to run the marathon - alas an option not open to pg women).

HOWEVER AGAIN my midwives always said the 16 year olds who smoked and ate burgers through their pgs always had better births than the 35 year old guardian readers who read ina may gaskin - but as the later - I think I did ok and was lucky (actually it was the best experience of my life). Good luck OP - yoga was best thing for me.

blueberry pancake - yes. thanks for that. very very bloody lucky.

I did limited 'preperation', involving knowing the different pain relief options and a half page birth plan that pretty much said 'what will be will be but please help me and my baby be happy and healthy'.

In the end I had a very nice () home birth with only G&A.

It is my view that this was total luck as I did not prepare for it. Oh and by the way I went into labour at 6am, MWs arrived at 10am and left at 6pm. I 'timed' if perfectly for their shift (how considerate am I?). All this without ANY preperation. I don't think so: Total luck!

I have so many family/friends who had intervention and to suggest that they were not prepared enough I would see as totaly insulting!

Good post carmen.

starlight I know you didn't actually say that I just have real difficulties with the concept that there are things you can do in labour which mean X.Y or Z wont happen ergo if you don't do them you are in someway to blame.

There are undoubtedly many people feel like that (you hear it all the time on these sorts of threads) and it angers me. Not because it is particularly personal to me (I lost my DS2 due to circumstances way beyond anyones control and I have had a birth that I am practically evangelical about) but because I feel so so sad for the thousands of woman who are made to feel that they could have done better.

It seems (and I have said this before) that woman get it both ends: the Drs who refer to incompetent cervixes and failure to progress on one side and the "if only you had tried harder" natural birthers on the other.

Only a fraction of woman come out of that sort of scrutiny and judgement unscathed and it is a great shame.

I got the natural-ish birth (MWL birth center, tens, gas & air, pool, no interventions) I pretty much prepared for. I wasn't expecting 35 hours of contractions though. Nor was I expecting DD to then glide out without any major pushing on my part.

I've got my fingers crossed for the same this time around, but with faster dilation please.

I found the birth preparation/relaxation CD I used a huge help in dealing with any fear I had. Letting go of that fear was very helpful for me.

Carmen san Diego and blueberry pancake, brilliant posts. Thank you. This thread is very helpful and definately increasing the chances I will try and have a baby again.

So Complication free natural labour is only going to happen for a few? What about the stories you read about how African women just labour in the field and carry on working? What about monkeys? Are these misleading. We don't hear stories of african women dying in the field. Do we? And how many monkeys die in childbirth?

So does it follow that the fact that childbirth is inherently dangerous for many natrual selection at work? Only the best genetics are guaranteed to survive? This why people in the past chose their wives because they were good breeding stock, or had "child bearing hips?" Contentious questions I know, but what?

Is

Carmen - What a bloody great analogy.

If you are a skilled card player, you can make the best of a bad hand and might be able to swing it for a good result. But sometimes you just don't have the cards...

Also, sometimes you think you have all the cards, but part way through the game it becomes clear that things are not all they seemed. In that situation, all that preparation can do is help you make the best of it.

What annoys me sometimes is the implication that you have total control over these things - as if you got to pick the cards out of the deck rather than just play then and manipulate them from your personal starting point.

Carmen's post is exactly how I feel, I love the hand-of-cards analogy.

To be honest, I think that the labouring in the fields thing is a bit of a red herring. The bible was written a long time before male OBs forced women to labour on their backs so that they could get a good view, and it still talks about childbirth being difficult and painful as Eve's punishment. And monkeys don't really count as a comparison because they don't walk on two legs, so they have a very different pelvis.

Also, let's not forget that getting the baby out alive and well is only half the equation. There's also the health of the mother to take into account. There used to be an awful lot of women who had "women's troubles" and just kept quiet and got on with it, in dreadful circumstances - and without C sections or epidurals available, they had no choice but to have a "natural" delivery!

I spoke to a women who survived a self-administered c- section. She cut her own tummy open, got the baby out, and somehow survived. That was in Guatemala in 2006 - she had been in labour for 5 days and the baby survived as well.

I was well prepared for birth of both my sons, in good physical shape, I am well educated and have seen/assisted at least 70 births (and a few C secs) but I ended up 12 days overdue, induced, long labour, epidural, pushed for 2 hours and baby got in distress, emcs. Second time around full on natural labour, pushed for 1.5 hours, baby got stuck, another emcs...

I would say it is down to genetic luck to a degree. It stands to reason that you may well inherit a body type/shape that lends itself to birth etc. Amongst my friends it seems that many who had fast, easy births had mothers who experienced the same. Of course there is much more to it than this I agree. I do think it is a factor though.

Luck plays a big part.
If the baby is malpositioned you're unlikely to get a natural delivery.

It's luck - you can influence your chances a bit, but that's all. I was lucky: I had a birth that pretty much matched my (half page) birth plan, in the local MLU with water and gas and air for pain relief. But my preparations had included talking to the anaesthetist, because I was very aware that it might not go to plan and I might need a Caesarean. The only bit of my birth plan I was prepared to die in a ditch over was the bit saying "no pethidine in any circumstances". I'd done the prep, and I was physically fit - but what it boils down to is that I was very fortunate that I had an uncomplicated labour that progressed well, and I could get the baby out without intervention. I also had one-to-one midwife care from an experienced midwife who knew what she was doing, and in the current state of NHS maternity services that's probably the biggest piece of luck of all.

Of my NCT group, more than half have had Caesareans. We all did much the same preparation and hoped to have natural deliveries. I don't see that I was more deserving than any of the others.

I don't think it is unrealistic to aim for the most straightforward birth.
I was very very very very worried about the whole thing (having past history of sexual abuse) the idea of being vunerable scared the shit out of me.

I attended ante-natal yoga from 16 weeks and it totally helped me. it gave me confidence in my body and confidence to listen to what it was telling me.
I believe that because I wasn't frightened of what was to come I managed to get a long way through labour just on the adrenalin my body was giving me.
and then being in the water after 5cm made me feel confident that I wasn't exposed or vunerable and allowed me to just focus on giving birth.

However, my lovely friend had an emergency section because her little chap was trying to come out shoulder first. If that had been my little boy I too would have had a section, it isn't about being able to "handle it" most of the time.

Of course women died in the fields. The reason every single culture perpetrated by women gives the idea that birth is a bit unpleasant and dangerous is that, well, it's unpleasant and dangerous.

The reason women dying in the fields is not documented is that the lives of labouring women, poor women, are not considered worth documenting. Yes, slave women have given birth and carried on doing slave labour. This does not necessarily count as a Good Thing.

I did. Nobody believed her at first but she had a fresh scar only a couple of days old and a baby to prove it. The doctors had to do a surgery to try and repair her bladder, which is why she was rushed to the hospital! She was on telly and everything.

Other stories are too horrible to tell but the level of ignorance is just incredible. Childbirth is so taboo that most women who have their first baby don't even know how it's going to happen. Traditionally, the childbirth takes place in the home, on dirt floor, with the husband sitting on a chair with his legs open, and the woman crouching down facing the husband and supporting herself on his legs. They keep all their clothes on. The first time I saw this I was in shock. Statistically, in Guatemala, 1 in every 71 women who becomes pregnant during her lifetime dies from causes associated with pregnancy, delivery and the postpartum. The thing is, the culture is very much to blame for this. A child who is born in hospital, or worst by c section, is viewed by the family as evil, or has the 'evil eye' looking at him. It is bad luck. This is very much enhanced by rumours that babies are kidnapped by westerners in hospitals.

Guatemala had the highest rate of intermational adoption in the world (don't know if this is still true).

Anyway, this has nothing to do with the subject... sorry sorry sorry

Actually it does, I think, have to do with the subject because people go on about 'traditional cultures' (ie poor people with black or brown skins) where babies are so triffically naturally born, rather ignoring the realities.

TBH people who want easier births ought to get on and have children in their late teens and early 20s. So many of us leave it rather late, biologically speaking. That can make it harder.

Carmen's post was excellent, btw.

I was totally prepared, birth plan written, books read, hypnobirthing CDs, husband prepped etc etc. Baby was perfectly positioned, engaged etc...until about half way through labour (got to 8cms dilated with no pain relief, not even gas and air) when she moved and her head ended up in a dodgy position. Labour more or less stalled and she became very distressed.

As such, all the preparation, education etc etc in the world couldn't have prevented the end result...a drug heavy (pethidine and heavy epidural) forceps birth narrowly avoiding an EMCS.

Really enjoying this thread, thank you x

Starlight

What I meant was people who are told intervention is likely to be the best for their baby, baby is in distress etc, but hold off because they want a 'natural' birth.

Admittedly I have only seen this on baby programmes, so I imagine these situations are highly sensationalised in the name of television, and it is possibly just not like that in real life.

My DD was born using forceps in the end, and whilst I would have preferred for neither of us to have to go through this, she was in distress and needed to come out.

Keep an open mind. That's the best way to prepare yourself. Learn about what your body will do in labour so that it doesn't overwhelm you. Accept that it will hurt ...A LOT! But that's OK. If it's too much, that's OK too. You can't 'do it wrong' as it's your labour and your body. Everyone else is there to help you to your goal - that is their role.

Good luck!

Don't be afraid. It's a fantastic adventure that will change you life forever, no matter how you acheive it.