"C section mums are brave"

[GuiltyAsAGirlCanBe]

Just saw this post on FB and it brought a tear to my eye - I had a cs for breech, and I was upset at the time I didn't get my perfect birth.
www.cordmama.com/blog/2015/4/8/three-truths-about-c-section-mamas

This is the boy that got me:

She know that in this moment, this is what is best for her child, even though â??whatâ??s bestâ?? means a major surgery with real wounds and scars. Even though â??whatâ??s bestâ?? means letting go of a dream or a vision of birth that sheâ??s been building up for the last nine months.

Brave? Er, no don't think so (3 x cs here). Birth is inevitable, whichever way it occurs. It isn't like a bungee jump or something. You can't say 'ooh no am not brave enough, I think I'll give this birth malarkey a miss'.

I am with SignoraStronza on this one.

Also the endless use of the word "mamas" in an article aimed at adults made me want to vom. I realise that probably says far more about me than the article of course.

I dont feel proud that I had dd1 with just G&A . I was probally just very lucky and didn't have a clue what was going on!

If I start shouting I'm proud I had a natural birth with just G&A it does insinuate that if anybody else didn't have it that way - it was wrong,weaker,failure. A birth is a birth. It doesn't matter how it happened.

If you choose to suffer any birth with out any kind of pain relief then I think your bonkers.

Also I don't like that in the article C-section mommas let go of their pride ? Really. I thought the pride was in holding your baby after a safe birth?

These articles are shit on each end and only serve to make mothers feel shit about anything

I saw 2 of my Facebook friends had shared the link to this article on Facebook. Due to the fact that the title says 'C section mamas' I purposely didn't read it.
Mamas? .
I still haven't read it, I don't need to - all mums and births are 'brave'.

I don't know. I think we allow ourselves overthink it. I think birth is immensely brave and is and always has been. Even with all our privileges and we have so many in the developed world, it's still a very risky time for mother and child in many ways, and I am sure we all know women who have had close encounters or experienced grievous loss coming out of nowhere. I have three close women friends who had truly life shattering experiences, but none of them had any idea prior to going in to deliver. One was a planned cs, the others weren't.

The fact that we are lucky enough to have mainly safe and clean births here doesn't make it less brave that we face these risks out of our desire to bring life into the world.

Is this a stiff-upper lip Engish thing I don't get, culturally? I wonder if there might be some issue with this notion of being brave, or at least self-identifying as brave? I tell my kids that being brave is doing what needs to be done even when you're terrified of it. I think this is applicable to childbirth as any other potential risks in life.

I think culturally there's an idea of a c section being an easy option. The tabloids had a lot of 'too posh to push' headlines about the rise in sections. Those were the types of comments I'd get anyway. It's an odd view as in some countries it's the norm to have a section, but in the UK its usually for medical reasons and so not really in the pregnant woman's control.

Anyway I think anyone that goes through pregnancy (whatever the outcome) and / or birth (whatever the method) is amazing. It's all bloody hard work!

I liked the article, I've had one elcs (for breech) and one vbac. For me the elcs was easily the most terrifying thing I've done - the vbac I found much less traumatic (I was lucky it was straightforward). I agree that all of us are brave, however it happens - but I don't think anyone can begrudge those who've had c sections a bit of empathy. It's generally accepted that vaginal birth, assisted deliveries etc are 'brave' (with good reason - I have endless admiration for people who cope and recover from traumatic births) but not everyone understands how a mum having a c section feels. I had 'oh you're so lucky you didn't even have to go through labour' so many times - no, but I had to walk into an operating theatre and let a complete stranger cut my baby out of me while I was wide awake, and lie there paralysed and helpless while every person in the room got to see her before I did. For me, personally, that was far worse than the pain of the vbac.
I hate the use of the word 'mamas' too though!

Oh thanks for explaining soupdragon. Gosh you're cross aren't you?

Childbirth is the process by which a baby leaves a woman's body, it's not a metaphor for life.

There's too much focus on the process rather than the outcome.

Emotive words like "brave" and "redemptive", " strong" and "powerful" don't really have a place in describing a biological process over which ultimately we have very little control.

I completely agree with you plummyjam.

I think its brave to be confronted with and deal with a birth that you weren't expecting and aren't mentally prepared for.

That covers homebirths that end up in hospital. It covers EMCS. It covers everything in between.

plummyjam is right though, and I do agree with Soupdragon to a point. Emotive words are problematic.

Plummy jam neither does "failed" or "natural" (as opposed to what? unnatural?)

Well said plummyjam
Most people get pregnant because they want to have a child!

The 'double standards' you mention soupdragon are because unmedicated vaginal births are held up as the ideal and lionised, while sections and more complex vaginal births are not. The difference in attitudes is a direct consequence of double standards in the way that births are seen, or ranked if you like, and wouldn't exist if unmedicated vaginal birth were not presented as some kind of gold standard.

Fwiw I've had both VB and EMCS, and didn't find the poem to be reflective of my own experiences at all.

I appreciated the article as I have been made to feel 'less than' in the past for having a cs. It was an emcs after labour started naturally, and I will be having a 2nd planned cs in 3 weeks time. I've been told I 'didn't give birth' that I 'wasn't too posh to push but too lazy' that it was a 'child removal' all under the guise of jokes from natural vb mums. Yes, the language used in the article was a bit twee and saccharine but it did actually give me somewhat of a boost of the whole thing.

about the whole thing*

I also appreciate the article. I think anyone who gives birth by whichever means is brave and strong. But this is the first time I've seen someone articulate what it feels like to be lying on the operating table waiting for it to start while all sorts of people you've never met bustle around you, knowing you have a matter of minutes before your baby's distress turns into something worse, and not knowing if you'll be able to hold your baby when it's born. I'm not trying to compare that to anyone else's experience, but it's a fair and welcome acknowledgement of how it feels.

I think of brave as being scared of something and choosing to do it anyway. So I'm not sure it is brave to give birth, as it's the inevitable end to your pregnancy.
I was grateful for my EMCS because it resulted in my baby being born safely with minimal pain (during and after childbirth) for me. I don't feel any guilt for having an easy labour resulting in a healthy baby.
I really struggle to understand why people feel guilty about not giving birth in the "right" way and especially why people feel the need to make judgements about how other people give birth.