Caesarean = Failure? Article in the Times...

[SweetyDarling]

Times article about feelings of failure after ceasarean birth
Interesting comments and countering article as well.

Nooka - I also meant to add, i had dd at Kingston. I have always been surprised by what a high rate of c-sec they have.

Having said that, I can't fault them at all in their handling of my pregnancy and dd's delivery and amongst my antenatal friends, out of 11 people, 3 of us had c-secs and the other 2 were because of breech babies and in my case, they did do everything they could to avoid a c-sec (but that was just after they'd published really high c-sec figures so maybe they were just desperate .

But very few people chose (or would chose) to have a c-section. Although those people that do, do seem (in general) to find it a more positive experience. I think that what people mourn is not necessarily the means of delivery, but the loss of control that often goes with an emergency c-section. The ideal of managing the birth, and having a positive (even empowering) experience goes completely out of the window, to be replaced by a memory of pain, fear and loss of control. Not exactly the best start to your relationship with your child, and beginning of motherhood And the sad thing is that this is an increasingly common experience judging from the stats.

"Pregnancy lasts 40 weeks"

It is supposed to....but what happens when your body lets you down? I got pre eclampsia & had to have a sc-section at 36 weeks. I was induced & dd became too distressed for a natural birth.

"My friend felt like her baby wasnt hers, she had emergency csec and so one minute she was pregnant, the next she woke up to find a baby"

That could have been me, only I had no baby for another 12 hours as she was in SCBU, she was only 4lb 4oz.

Feeling of guilt aren't irrational & being told "at least she is ok/safe/here now" doesn't really do much to lift that sense of failure. It is something I have now come to terms with & no longer feel guilty about the way she came into this world. I do however feel guilty that my body failed her, because she wasn't getting everything she needed from me to thrive.

Could be - high section rates are considered a bad thing in health service circles (expensive as well as bad practice)

Margo, I think to some extent we are. The media doesn't help though, imo. Every article I read about increases in C-sections implies that all mothers who have them have done so out of "lifestyle choice" or some such that the author clearly disapproves of. Then everyone who has a CS does feel they have to explain it for fear of disapproval.

and I bloody hate "too posh to push"

I can sort of understand where she is coming from. I had a vaginal delivery for dd but an emergency c-section for ds.

I didn't feel like a failure but I did /do feel that I missed out. I am in Spain and things are still abit behind the times here.

1. Dh not allowed in, so missed it
2. baby whisked away and not seen again for about 5 hours by either of us
3. I was whisked into recovery, I only saw my baby for about 1 minute. Although a kind nurse let me kiss him which was extremely difficult as I was pretty much strapped down and surrounded by loads of people. I stayed in recovery for 4 hours.

1. The first milk my baby had wasn't mine, they also gave him sugar water.

5.My milk also took a long time to come in and they would slip in a formula feed whenever they could. took me a long to time to establish breastfeeding and I still now mix feed. Very different to my experience with dd.

1. I was so zonked with drugs I can't really remember very much from my baby's first day. Again very different to dd.

Luckily I bonded well with ds and I love him more than anything but I am really pleased that I haveexperienced a vaginal birth, it just seemed more complete somehow.

Sorry for ranting ds is 15 weeks old so I am still a little raw. I do not feel like a failure though.

Your birth experience should be Reassuring, Intimate and informed, Tender and Empowering. In all the areas that matter to you. You should have the RITE birth for you.

Of course this is not always the case, but as long as you are realistic and prepared to accept that plans may change due to circumstances beyond your control.

women should all have the RITE to experience birth the way they want it.

Cx

"convenience" sections don't happen as often as the press would like us to believe.Most women who plan sections have a very reasonable fear of what is going to happen to them and their baby during a labour process. There really isn't enough money in the nhs kitty to help women fit their section in between appointments or their husbands ( tic)

meant their husbands appointments .. sorry

A couple of the younger girls in my office think that they would have an elective c-section. I just wonder if they would feel the same when it comes to the crunch, I am sure they will be more informed after approx 9 months of pg

So do women ever feel "guilt" about having conceived using IVF? Another medically assisted "unnatural" part of a pregnancy, but not one you tend to hear women complaining about.
I guess because they are prepared in advance for the idea that that is how they are going to go about having their baby it is not so traumatic? Shows how much a little preperation could improve the perception of the result.

Sorry - that sounds a little antagonistic - didn't mean it that way.

back to what we consider to be natural or unnatural and expectations..

some women do feel guilt about having a baby via ivf, and still have the same preg worries on top oh this. conceiving via ivf is a hugely emotional rollercoaster and sometimes after it all, when finally preg, women can they wonder 'why' they did it and what now. the couselling ppl recieve during ivf doesnt prepare women for childbirth at all.

and the emotion around children and childbirth that can never quite be rationalised or anticipated.so why do we try so hard to do so?

From a purely biological point of view, women's bodies have evolved to conceive, grow and give birth to babies. If you are unable to do any of these things I think it is quite natural to feel, if not exactly guilt, but disappointment and (perhaps) a sense of failure. Logically most people realise that there is far, far more to being a parent than how they came into this world, but logic doesn't always come into it and your feelings can't just be rationalised away.

I read some of the article, but I couldn't face reading it all.
I had an emergency c section, through no fault of my own. My waters broke at 6am, I stayed at home until around 2.30pm coping with contractions. I went to hospital when I was 3 mins apart.
When I got there they sensed a problem and from that minute on nobody spoke to me. I was in a room full of people around me looking and pointing and poking me about.

I had only gas and air, I was told I wasn't 'allowed'anything else. To cut a long story short, ds was in distress and his heart beat was extremely low and my blood pressure shot through the roof.

I ended up having lots of drugs pumped into me which I have no idea what they were. I passed out and ended up having a c section.

Ds was breech. I had no idea.

I had a different midwife every time I went to my appointments.

I don't feel a failure and I am sorry that women do that don't have the birth they expected. Ds is ok and that is all that counts to me.
I must say that it isn't the birth that is the thing which upsets me when I look back - but the care I had before the birth. It was basically rubbish. But how do I know how it is meant to be?

Stupid woman. More clap trap from the chattering classes who've read far too many Shiela Kitzinger books. Why doesn't she focus on the fact that she's got a healthy baby who's been safely delivered? Where do these people get off on dwelling in the past. She should focus on being the best mother she can possibly be to her child and get over it! She should be careful - her negative energy might curdle her breast milk!

She's clearly one of these women who's always searching for the holy grail; the perfect husband, the perfect career, the perfect orgasm, the perfect birth, the perfect baby.

No doubt the poor child will also end up being a huge disappointment to her if it's not fluent in 5 languages, able to give classical piano recitals and and do quadratic equations by the time it's 18 months old.

Good god - do totally self absorbed people like this woman really exist anywhere other than in the pages of weekend newspaper supplements and the more salubrious areas of north London?

Although I believe some of what you say is true squeeze, I also had some of those feelings post emergency c-section, despite the facts that a) I was relieved that dd was fine in the end and b) I would not class myself as such a perfectionist in life.

I think that it is natural to have feelings like this, even if not rational. After all it is unnatural to have a c-section, hence rather disruptive to the system - I guess that with any operation there are psychological as well as physical scars - even if the outcome is positive...

I did feel down for a while after the birth of dd, but who knows how much of this was the result of her being a c-section, prem, the trauma of a seemingly fine baby suddenly developing having pneumonia for a couple of days and having to be taken to special care for a couple of days and having to hang around hospital for 2 weeks in total - pre and post birth....or just post-natal hormone crash...difficult to separate out all the variables.

The important thing is that none of these feelings are lasting for me...it's important to allow yourself to experience these feelings and then move on...now I couldn't love my dd more.

just read the article and i feel sorry for this woman, these are HER feelings, HER emotions.

sqeezeddonna,

I'm not quite sure who the "chattering classes who have read far to many sheila kitzinger books" are ????????????

every woman will/does feel differently about their babies birth, just because she feels so "differently" in the eyes of you, does not mean her feelings are any less valid.

Cannot understand why people feel like a failure for having an elective c-section. I intend to have one as I do not want to give birth vaginally, simple as that.

ok but at the same time why would anyone want to spend hours and hours in agony and risk incontinence/tearing etc when they can have a relatively quick operation?