Cesarean Birth Statistics

[iknowitsmadbutiwantit]

Hi.
I am not currently pregnant (unfortunately)(dd and ds already), but my sister is and we have had some interesting conversations recently. One of these concerned the alarming figures I read somewhere that 1 in 4 women in America have cesareans. Imagine our suprise, when we checked out the national birth statistics in Great Britain! A 25% cesarean rate is not uncommon in this country either! My local hospital, Colchester General, has cesarean statistics of 25 - 28% depending on where you research. I personally know of someone who was told she would have to have a cesarean if the maternity ward was short staffed!
Do these figures worry anyone else? or is it just us? Id be interested to hear other peoples opinions. x

I suppose that women survived in 1960s who would have died in the past. They are now becoming granmothers. Natural selection would have prevented. The daughters of these women are also genetically prepositioned to find labour hard. Also there are more obsese and older women giving birth

However 25% is still a staggering high rate. The US has a high rate of infant and maternal mortality compared to many developed countries.

www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_bir_by_cae_sec-health-births-by-caesarean-section

Italy has a higher rate of infant mortality than Holland inspite of having more C-sections.

www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_inf_mor_rat-health-infant-mortality-rate

I am not obese nor overweight - BMI of 19 - dont you think that as birth weights increase it makes natural labour more difficult particularly in a first birth? Nothing to do with natural selection??

oh and I was 25 when I gave birth to DS hardly old?

reallytired I was born in the 70s and my mother had no scans. I had no external symptoms of placenta previa and it was only found on ultrasound. I would have bled to death, no question.

Anyway

I was wondering about the fact that there are lots of us with sit down office jobs these days. Might it contribute to awkward positioning of the baby? Leading to difficult labours, then tired mums and babies, then distress and emergency sections?

I cannot comment on your labour I know nothing about it.

There is no doult that stastically women are getting fatter.

Actually I think birth weight has little do with the difficulty of labour. The mothers of premature babies often have very difficult labours.

From personal experience, the postioning of the baby is far more important than size. It makes a big difference whether a baby is posterior (back to back) or anterior. In the past women spend more time scrubbing floors and doing physical work. Slouching over a PC at work does not encourage a good position for the fetus.

I have a friend who gave birth to an 11lb 12oz baby with nothing more than a whiff of gas and air. I took 33 hours to give birth to my son who was only 5lb 1oz!

well I am not fat and position of baby had nothing to do with it. Size of baby, however did. Lots of people have bigger babies than me and usually have larger frames than me - how tall was your friend?. Was your friends 11lb baby a first birth?? I doubt it. And that makes a difference.

My labour was "short" but the crucial bit - the pushing stage - was 3.5 hours - its meant to be 1.5 - 2 hrs max for a first birth and 20 mins to 1 hr for subsequent - so saying " m y labour was 33 hours" is meaningless really - its the pushing stage that indicates a problem.

"I cannot comment on your labour I know nothing about it." - Exactley! You know nothing about other womens pregnancies, only them and the health professionals that look after them do and thus the decision should be left to them.

Apparantly statistics show that European women are also getting taller, which would equate with weight going up exponentially.

and just as an aside (as as we are using personal expereince as example here) every single person I have known in recent years who has been obese/overweight (around 205 women - I work in a large female dominated office as well as have several friends who are overweight) have had NO PROBLEM giving birth to their babies - and generally have had smaller babies. In contrast - the women I know with a similar build to me (some would consider underweight) have had larger babies than most and have had difficult births and more intervention.

oops 25 not 205 LOL

reallytired "I cannot comment on your labour I know nothing about it."
Except you did comment "you would not have died". And there was no labour. Thanks to scans and a scalpel!

I also think people say they have had a "difficult birth" when labour is long but IM not talking about length of labour Im talking about a birth htat leaves you physically and emotionally damaged for months and in my case years afterwards. How is a C section worse than that?

im sorry reallytired im sure you have your reasons for your opinions but it makes me really angry that people assume that c sections are the soft option if you look at research most women hope to have a natural birth most women arent lazy fat or soft as many people seem to imply when talking about too posh to push. The reasons c sections have increased are perfectly valid and reacting to statistics with a knee jerk of saying "oh well we must bring down the rates of sections" is just really ridiculous IMHO. there are REASONS for the increase.

It is impossible to comment on an individual experience. That is nothing more than judgemental and possibly nasty.

All you can do is look at the statistics for a whole hospital or a country. There is little point in going on anyone's antedotes.

If hospital X has a C section rate of 27% and hospital Y has a rate of 15% its interesting to ask what is different. Especially if the two groups of mothers are very similar. It is good to find out which hospital has the best outcomes and why.

The 'best outcomes' are the ones that leave mothers and babies safe and happy!

And to those being slightly sneering and superior about women who have to have emcs be very careful. I too was once just so smug and despite having a very active pregnancy - cycling 10 miles a day til 7 months, swimming and yoga right up to the day I went into labour, I became a stat for an op that I had previously equated with being for women too posh to push and too out of shape to have an active birth. Pride comes before a fall and all that... quite how you can be too posh to push but not too posh for a catheter escapes me anyway

reallytired - "It is impossible to comment on an individual experience. That is nothing more than judgemental and possibly nasty." BUT YOU commented on your personal experiences (your own birth and your friends 11lb baby birth) that is the reason I brought in my own experiences!! Hardly nasty!

I think it is nasty to presume that the sole reasons for increased c sections are because women are overweight/sedentary! I am neither! I run, horse ride and (when not PG ) am slim bordering on thin! So how does that figure!?

Statistics as I know (having a back ground in a subject that uses statistics) are notoriously tricky!! hospital X may have lower rates because they force women who really should have a c section for their future well being into a "natural" birth and hospital Y doesnt!! Plus we all know how easily figures and stats can be massaged (i work in a government agency and it happens without fail.

53% of statistics are made up.

i dont think reallytired is attacking anyone personally for having an elective cs, rather the system that means so many women do have it. i'm pg with my first and really worried about an emergency cs, you hear so much about them and so many women on 'one born every minute' ended up having one, i can see the appeal of at least planning one in advance. i would feel much better about the upcoming birth if i knew i would have a midwife with me. though i hope to have a natural birth i'm certainly not smug more scared!

Reallytired - my mother nearly died in childbirth during the 1960s and her best friend - there is a lovely photograph of her holding me when I was a baby and she was pregnant - did die in childbirth.

As for birthweight having nothing to do with maternal safety then, admittedly, any individual birth might go well or badly whether or not the baby is large or small, but it is an established biological fact that human beings have more difficult and more dangerous births because our brain (and hence head) size has grown out of proportion (relative to other species) to the female pelvis and birth canal. My own family has a particular problem with large babies and difficult births - something that nearly led to the death of my mother.

And I agree with others that I have heard far more traumatic VB stories than ELCS stories. The latter is, of course, major surgery (although not usually under general anaesthetic, unlike the tonsillectomy I had as a child of the wisdom teeth removal in my 20s - both of which I have now been told by doctor friends were risky and probably unnecessary operations). If you wish to keep down NHS costs there are far easier targets in the form of injured drunk drivers, the obese, smokers and so forth (all of which are separate debates).

Finally, in no way did I have 2 ELCSs in order to stay 'honeymoon fresh' - I would tell anyone contemplating such a thing that you still get the exhaustion of small children and the post-pregnancy jellybelly (oh and mysteriously fatter upper arms and all the rest of it). It was rather less trivial on-going problems that put me off, and encouraged a female GP (who said she had seen too many women with incontinence and other problems) to support me. The C&W where I had my first section, has more older mothers and a very cautious policy on forceps use.

raraavis - i had that opinion of reallytireds posts - thats why I said "Im sure you have your reasons reallytired" - but I have to take issue with statements such as

"I suppose that women survived in 1960s who would have died in the past. They are now becoming granmothers. Natural selection would have prevented. The daughters of these women are also genetically prepositioned to find labour hard. Also there are more obsese and older women giving birth"

cause that clearly is personal and imo incorrect.

bellissima - exactly and this is why i dont understand the argument:

C sections are going up this = BAD therefore we must stop/reverse it. WHY? Why are c sections so bad??

High CS rates do not equate to bad care for me. I think that if babies are born by CS to keep everyone healthy and safe then hospitals and doctors are doing their jobs.

canucktraveler - I agree totally and wish DS had been CS instead of the 2.5 ears of misery I suffered and the knock on effects on my marriage, mental health and relationship with my son, from all that which lasted far longer than 2.5 yrs.

pinkmook that is an excellent question. Why are c sections so bad that hospitals are encouraged to reduce them? None of the maternity staff made me feel less of a mother for having a section, it just seems to be "wrong" in the big wide world for some reason.

you could say "well its major surgery" "its not natural" etc but as others have said humans are developing faster than nature has been able to keep up (i.e head size/birth canal size) so thats not natural either and like bellissima said, unless under GA (which ECS aren't usually) c sections are al ot safer and more "risk free" IMHO than bad VB's

I just think its become one of those "ishoos" now but the arguments for reversing CS seem really weird and not very well thought out or realistic to me