Awful birth ‘options’ meeting

[Padronpeppersplease]

I’ve just had my 28 week birth options meeting with a midwife and wondering if anyone else has had a similarly pushy experience. She asked me about whether I intended to breast or bottle feed and also what I’m planning for the birth. I said I was 99% sure I wanted to exclusively bottle feed and then also that I was considering an elective c section. I’d heard previously that the NHS try and push both breastfeeding & natural births but I was not prepared for how pushy this midwife was! She said to me that bottle feeding was ‘way worse for baby’ and that ‘a c section was a million times harder on my body’ than a natural birth would be. According to her as my body is built for birth I don’t need to worry about the pain of natural labour and tears during labour aren’t anywhere near as bad as the potential complications of a c section, she also said that opting for a c section would limit the number of children I could have. Despite all this I’m still leaning towards a c section, I’m under no impression that it’s easy recovery & without risks but I honestly feel now like I’m doing something totally outlandish by opting for it.

@Miresquire

This is from RCOG (Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists)

•		The chance of you needing an assisted vaginal birth if you are a first time mum is between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3 in the UK (1 in 8 including women who have given birth before).
•		The chance of you needing an emergency caesarean birth is 1 in 3 if you are a first time mum in the UK (1 in 5 including women who have given birth before).

Welcome to parenthood. Where everyone has an opinion.

I did everything in my power to avoid a csection as I'd had abdominal surgery in the past and didn't enjoy the recovery. Of course the second I was looking like I was going to go overdue every professional was talking up the interventions they had poo pooed a week before.

It's great you know what choices you would like. They are doing their jobs informing you of the benefits, risks and alternatives. Be prepared for everyone to change their minds several times between now and delivery!

Your body, your choice. But she was absolutely correct and it was within her duty in ensuring it was an informed decision.

Natural birth is like"... some drunk with a pair of pliers coming at you in 1243." ?

she is simply doing her duty and telling you the facts. I think the problem is it’s not what you want to hear.

Grow up.

Welcome to parenthood. Where everyone has an opinion.

Quite. The best advise I had was not to listen to anyone’s advise. Just do what feels right to you.

I rather think the need for the emergency section at your first birth was the factor not your first hand knowledge of the difficulty of giving birth

You have no idea that OP isn't perfectly capable of natural (ish) birth

Someone disagreeing with you or providing alternative opinions is not necessarily judging you. It’s childish to think the midwife should just nod along with everything you want.

Exactly this. It seems it's increasingly usual for people in the normal events of life to become defensive and feel attacked by someone disagreeing or challenging their views. Even pointing out the well-established benefits of breastfeeding (not to mention it is the default option) across populations is seen by some as being aggressive and bullying.

I'm equivocal about vaginal vs c-section data and very opposed to c-section targets in trusts (see Shropshire/Kent scandals) but fact is that for most healthy women of a healthy weight with non-complicated pregnancies and healthy babies, vaginal usually has better outcomes for mum & baby.

Look, you can in most cases have the birth of your choice on the NHS but the midwife needs to present the full picture - formula costs the NHS more because across populations breastfeeding gives more health benefits for baby and child, c-sections cost the NHS more full stop. It does nobody any good to pretend these decisions are individualistic and don't impact anyone else.

If you want to make an entirely personal choice that is 100% supported by your healthcare providers, go private. I think it costs about £20k - which to put into context is about 1 year of full time nursery fees in the South East.

And having also done both @Silvan I disagree with you. I breastfed my first for 7 months before wrapping to formula for medical reasons. I felt more bonded with bottle as I was holding baby, staring into babies eyes and couldn’t do anything else bar feed. We had so many lovely moments like this. With breastfeeding I was more likely to be on mumsnet or scrolling internet as I had hands free. I didn’t feel this ‘incomparable’ bond of unity you talk about. You’re extrapolating your own feelings on breastfeeding as fact.

You say you’ve done both - did you fail breastfeeding your first by any chance? Get down about it and then euphoric when you managed it with your second?

Well as an economist myself I imagine the good thing about books like Emily Oster's is that she will understand marginal differences.

The average difference between outcomes of different types of feeding/birth is small at a population level. Marginal.

In the case of a specific individual, however, they could be large either way.

E.g. mum who persists with breastfeeding but finds it painful and difficult versus mum who bottle feeds as a choice from the outset versus mum who finds breastfeeding easy.
E.g. mum who tries for vaginal birth but ends up with EMCS versus mum who has ELCS versus mum who sustains a lot of damage from vaginal birth.

The NHS has to think about population outcomes.

Individual women should be more focused on their own risk factors/preferences/research. Feeling like you have some agency is pretty important. Lots of research to support that, at least.

Although it is many years since I gave birth I will never forget how long it took me to heal from an episiotomy and how much the pain and problems I went through post partum were minimised and ignored. I was sore for months, thought I would never be able to have sex again. I think they really play down how painful and difficult tears and cuts can be. Even after I had fully healed the scar gave me problems for years when I had a period, it would swell and itch. Guess healing is an really individual thing and we can't predict how things are going to work out. I do think the recovery from a vaginal delivery can be difficult and that this is not really discussed as much as it should be. Then there are the issues later in life, I have been fine but quite a few friends have developed prolapses later in life.

No, dooo try to read and understand what I actually said...
But it was a horrendous experience and I am still deeply fucked off that I was pushed into it. And if my child hadn't merely ended up in NICU, I would never ever have recovered.

No, it’s a deadly poison. That’s why manufacturers have been allowed to sell it for decades, and millions of babies have been reared on it with zero issues 🙄.

Had 2 elective sections, Combi fed one for 3/4 months and exclusively breastfeeding second one now. Father is an obstetrician and I didn’t want to go through traumatic tears associated with vaginal birth (esp as mine both had gigantic heads!) haven’t regretted any of it for a second

Some people on here are so weirdly overinvested in other people's choices.

OP has obviously thought hard about how she wants her birth and her feeding journey to go - she doesn't need a lecture from internet strangers who don't know her.

Breastfeeding lowers breast cancer risk

Mine was the other way around to this. My CS was horrific and I was still getting scar pain years later, my VBAC and episiotomy healed easily by comparison. Everyone is different. I'm glad OP is getting sound advice and a range of opinions that I wish I'd had when I opted for a maternal request ELCS with DC1, I really regret mine and all the info on MN and Birthrights and everywhere else at the time was "ELCS is better for baby and doctors are bad for not letting women have them."

The why post on a site where its full of strangers who don't know her?

I found with my first baby I was massively massively pushed into natural birth and breastfeeding. Even when breastfeeding wasn't working I was told it was my fault for missing feeding cues due to my baby having a dummy occasionally.

After a 3rd degree tear, haemorrhage, severe anaemia and a year long physical recovery I opted for a c section for my second baby. An absolute walk in the park in comparison and healed me of the trauma of my first birth. Also bottle fed after baby got colostrum in hospital, and most midwives said they did the same as me. Felt zero pressure at all.

They never seem to be as keen to talk about the risks associated with vaginal deliveries though.

For all those saying that the midwife is just telling the OP "the facts" - I respectfully disagree. Saying "a c section was a million times harder on my body than a natural birth would be" is not "facts" - it's opinion. If the midwife had provided actual facts and statistics for the OP to consider I would have felt she had done her job. In this instance it appears she was simply trying to bully the OP out of her tentative plans. Not really acceptable.

So how many breastfeeding obsessives are also pro-lifers, or does “my body, my choice” only apply when it suits?

The benefits and costs the NHS gives you are completely flawed too.

Breastfeeding only "saves money" if you ignore the mother's time and mental health. The health outcome differences are tiny at an individual level. You simply can't point to a primary age child and say "well, they were obviously breastfed"!

CS only cost more if you ignore the cost of repairing birth trauma (and it is hard to access those surgeries on the NHS). Post birth physio, provided routinely in other developed countries, isn't here, unless you make a big fuss or go private.

We are comparing apples and oranges.

2 elective sections and both babies formula fed as my milk didn't come in. Recovered easy enough from the sections (lot of work to get core strength back though) and children are healthy and thriving. Mentally I was prepared for what happened and felt I had great birth and post partum experiences. I had agency and choice and don't feel my mental health was negatively affected by the whole process thankfully. Do what is best for you and your baby, that's what matters.