Caesarean for "stupid" reasons?

[GloriaInEleusis]

Following on from this thread, I just wondered how many people have caesareans for stupid reasons?

I've had two, one crash and one planned. Neither was for a stupid reason.

Who is saying it? Well, your earlier comments with references to praying to the birth goddess and women who achieve natural birth as 'crowing'were pretty dismissive!

Sorry that last post was in response to chibi's question

i don;t think i can actually carry on a debate with a poster who thinks that a vaginal birth is 'poncey'

Camilla - I agree - it's a very strange and sad concept isn't it that Vaginal birth = poncey.

Or 'fluffy'

The only thing that makes me sad about having a section is mothers who have not had one, who look at me in a type of failure way.

Yes I had a section. It may not be for a reason that everybody else agrees with. I tried other routes with the breech position, I was open for "turning" of the baby, but weighed up the facts - possibly emergency section, a relatively high % of failure, distress to the baby. I also considered that I got signed off with high blood pressure in Aug (due in Oct) and was being monitored for pre-eclampsia (which they describe as borderline - did have it but remained stable and did not get much worse).

I chose a section on the advise of mothers who had been there (including my own) the advise of my MW and my consultant. I chose the safest route for my child (knowing the risks of a section). If they told me they could get her out in the safest way if they tore off my left arm, I would have said yes.

I am besotted with my daughter. How she got her does not bother me until women frown for the fact I did not try a natural birth.

I want another in the future and I am open to any route of them being delivered, so long as the safest way for them given the circumstances

btw I am breastfeeding and doing blw. I also coslept. After starting off with such a tremendous deficit, do I get enough points for these to validate myself as a mother? What would you suggest?

wow, I get NO points at all then!

I wanted drugs for childbirth and pouted when they said I couldn't have them
I didn't breastfeed
I didn't co sleep
DS had his own room from 3 weeks
I went back to work before DS was 4 months old
I still keep DS in nursery even though I'm not working this month
I don't feed DS organic veg
I DO feed him crisps
I havn't taken him to a single 'educational' class yet (ie music tots, baby yoga, baby sign)

do I get an award for being a consistantly crap mother?

ok, "poncey" was tongue in cheek. I was just pointing out how section mums feel when they are insulted for their choices. So I turned it around. But I don't really think a vaginal birth is poncey -- and neither is a casarean for that matter.

Vaginal birth has plenty of risks and I for one am not prepared to take them. I think a section is safer. And that's my choice.

Other people prefer a vaginal birth for a wide variety of reasons and that's great (for them).

What I support is the freedom of choice.

ELF - I too had a csection for breech. It was a bit of a shock to the system as I didn't know DS2 was breech until I was in labour and 8cm dilated!

Amidst the panic I was still given a choice, which was put to me as:
'you can try and give birth vaginally, but it will be very traumatic for you and the baby, or you can have a section'.

I have since heard it said that breech position is not necessarily a medical reason for a section, which tbh did leave me (irrationally) feeling I failed somehow.

But I'm glad I had the section as I didn't feel the hospital were confident about trying to deliver a breech baby vaginally.

When DS2 was born weighing 8lb 130z I was especially glad !

if i had posted saying, 'i think c.s birth is poncey' i would have got hauled across the coals. i don;t think this is the time for tongu e in cheek. but there you go. thank you for the clarification, but i have tried really , really hard to measure my words so as not to cause offence inadvertently to anyone about their birth choice.

But ELF and Gloria WHO are these women who 'frown' and 'look at you in a failure type of way'? As I say, I've had both natural birth and c section. No one ever made me feel in any way inferior when I had my section. My OWN feelings (which after all are the only thing that matters) is that it was a totally medicalised procedure and felt like an operation rather than giving birth (which it was!) and that it was medically necessary given the circumstances. I also felt that it was a procedure which I had done to me rather than my natural births where I felt I was the one who was 'doing'. My natural births were far more painful than the CS, but gave a huge feeling of exhiliaration/empowerment. That's MY story. Every other woman will have her own story. I just object to the fact that some of these posts have suggested that a natural birth is 'poncey' and that I shouldn't be allowed to feel pleased that I achieved it.

camilla why dont you clamber down off that big ole cross. someone said "poncey" jest. you are highly sensitised to contrary views. o and please cut and paste me if u wish

oh forget it

i am not martyring myself

i feel really strongly about this, but have tried to be sensitive. if that same sensitivity will not be accorded, then i won;t waste my time

i don;t think a debate like this needs tongue in cheek. or humour. becasue it is too important.

but hey, that;s just my opinion, and you don;t see my sticking the knife in to other people who i disagree with.

why just pick on what i say, scottishmummy, i am not the only voice disagreeing with the use of the word?

you;ve actually really upset me

no doubt that is my fault for being too senstive

btw, the wink does not make it less mean

Having read a lot of threads on this subject on here, and having gone through the process of accepting that I'd have to have a CS myself, I would tend to agree with inthegutter... No-one has ever judged me (not to my face, anyway) for having a section with DD1 (not even people to whom I haven't explained that it was necessary for life-saving reasons). I certain did feel bad about it for a while when I was first told I'd need a CS. I felt that power was being taken out of my hands. And I felt sad that my baby would be delivered by a surgeon, rather than me delivering her myself. But I am 100% confident that my CS was necessary and the right thing to do in the circumstances and before my dd was even born I had accepted that my CS was not a 'failure to deliver my baby myself' but a successful delivery of my baby, and that that was all that mattered. She was held up for me to see straight from the womb and I was able to hold her on my chest within a few seconds of her being born (she was just wrapped up a bit first as she was tiny and a bit cold). It was 7.5 years ago, but the elation of that moment is still with me.

Despite having had such a positive experience of a CS, I still elected to have a VBAC with dd2. Not because I think that it's 'stupid' to have a CS, nor because women who do elect to have a CS are 'failures'. I elected for a VBAC because I wanted a shorter hospital stay (was in for 12 hours and straight home) and because there was absolutely no medical reason to justify a CS in my second pregnancy. I could have asked for another CS, but it would have felt unnecessary. My vaginal birth was also really positive. Partly I was 'just lucky' and didn't end up with any complications, and I don't underestimate the role of 'luck' in determining whether a birth is 'easy' or 'complicated'. But I am also very thankful to have had good advice of the sort frequently posted on here by Camillathechicken and others (I didn't actually get the advice from them, as this was Before I Discovered Mumsnet, but it was advice in a similar vein), which I am sure empowered me and made me able to make informed decisions about my own labour and my own care. I was 100% prepared to go along with having another CS if I was told at any point that it was medically necessary. It wasn't. Personally I wouldn't have a medical procedure that wasn't really necessary. To me, it'd be a bit like asking the doctor to take my daughter's tonsils out even though they're not giving her any bother... just in case she gets tonsillitis next year.

Mind you, no-one who's met me would think that I'd had an elective section at 36 weeks just to keep my figure!

Camilla. I disagree with your position that it is not an unrealistic expectation to have a natural vaginal birth in a nice environment. It is realistic if you can do it and I aspire to doing it, but I think that that position needs to be metered by the fact that many, many people cannot do it. Even if they want to. I do think that there is an aspect of competitive birthing here - but you guys who had a wonderful natural birth were, not to take too much awway from your efforts, also extremely lucky. Please don't imagine that your experience is reproducible for everyone else. That is the point i am making- we are all individuals with very different abilities, bodies and attitudes and we know how much someone's mental well-being can influence their birth experience. That is why, IMHO, it is perfectly ok to be proud of your natural birth, but it is pretty insensitive to shove it down other's throats when they have not had the same experience. I hope that if i manage it, i will be sensitive enough to preface any birthing description with 'i was very lucky'.

I also see the huge advantages of a c esction and have absolutely no problem with people who choose to go down that route. If that makes their birthing experience a more positive one, and they can bond with their baby, sort out childcare, whatever, it is not for me to judge and i like to think i can appreciate their point of view. Even if i wouldn't choose this myself. I would certainly rather an elective CS than an emergency one.

I am not taking part in this thread (not qualified to, really).
My impression of the other thread, before people started getting sad, was that it was sociologically quite interesting - why do women opt for cs when it's so removed from nature.
I think that's an interesting question and worth talking about. I would never judge anyone for the choices they made in giving birth but I am fascinated by the trends in our culture that lead people towards their choices.

Agree with Gloria and Scottishmummy.

From What to Expect (the first year):

"A century ago, when all deliveries were "natural" women were grateful just to survive childbirth. Today, safe deliveries are so routine that they're almost taken for granted. And many women have come to expect even demand in addition to a good physical outcome, certain emotional rewards. When they don't end up getting them they experience a sense of letdown and failure".

I think that part of midwives/doula training should be devoted to the history of childbirth, dealing with facts and figures. It was not something that our forebears looked forward to. In fact, the literate ones used to regularly write farewell letters to their existing children before going into labour.

We are soooo lucky to have doctors, hospitals, medicine, epidurals and most of all (for both the sake of women and babies) Caesareans. This applies just as much for women who feel strongly about natural births, because they have the comfort of a safety net.

further down this thread someone tells the harrowing story of a friend whose baby sadly died after a VB. Sobering and harrowing, and reiterating the point a live birth is the aim.

Rosetip, I am reading extensively on the subject and what you say doesn't really represent the true picture of childbirth (sorry).
If you want a coruscating read on the state of the figures and assumed facts, read Marjorie Tew, "Safer Childbirth?"
She was a statistician who set her students a task, to show that hospitalisation and medicalisation had made childbirth safer. To her shock, she found exactly the opposite result. In fact she found that with the available data (Britain has good records as it happens), on every measurable point, homebirth and giving birth in GP units was safer than being hospitalised, for low, medium, and high risk births.
Once we had got nutrition and healthcare sorted to an appreciable degree, the health of mothers improved such that childbirth became much safer than it had been when hygiene, communicable disease and above all poor health were the main factors in maternal and perinatal death.

What she found was that had mass hospitalisation not been assumed (never proved) to be a laudable and safe goal, fewer mothers and babies would have died in the 20th century.
It's a fucking disgrace, tbh, and one that we as women ought to be very angry about. Feminism hasn't had much to say about this in general which has been a great failure imo.
What to Expect - read Misconceptions by naomi Klein about how it is used in the US to misinform women.

THis is not some hippie with an axe to grind btw
She was a statistician not even working in maternity services
FWIW I am not a hippie with an axe to grin either, nor am I opposed to the very fact of CS or hospitals.
I have got my dh (an academic who knows his onions when it comes to stats) analysing sentences in this book every evening (wot larks in the Pruni household).

thank you prunie, You are right those quotes from -what to expect' are not right at all!

the fact is believe it or not vaginal birth is safer.

also of course midwives are taught about the history of childbirth in their training.

It isn't a competition, theres no need for everyone that has had ceaareans for medical reasons to state their case.

The fact remains, birth is a natural act, which we are females were designed to do vaginally.

society and the medicalisation of childbirth has turned this natural act into one of supposed 'extrme risks' and fear.

yes sometimes there are complications and emergencies, that is life I'm afriad.

however a lot of these c-sections are a result of increased intervention in the first place.

the 'cascade of intervention' as it is called.