The complications and long term health implications of pregnancy and childbirth

[FestiviaBlueberry]

I've been thinking about this in relation to abortion.

One of the things which strikes me, is how casual the forced-birthers are about the idea of forcing women to carry and bear children they don't want. "It's only 9 months!" they cry, as if nine months of morning sickness and bone degeneration is nothing and 24 hours of physical torture followed by lifelong incontinence is irrelevant.

I'd like to compile a list of side effects caused or exacerbated by pregnancy and birth because I'd like to do a blog post about it. My basic fury about this, is how women's lives are so marginal, that most people have NO CLUE about the very real short, medium and long term risks and side effects of pregnancy and birth - even when they become pregnant. Only if you get one of the conditions, or know someone who has, do you ever find out about the things you can suffer from as a result of pregnancy.

And if men were told that they would have to endure one of these conditions, in order to keep their child alive when they hadn't planned it and didn't want it, they would ... well, WTF am I on about really, no-one would ever tell men that they have to endure these health impacts for the sake of someone else without positively choosing to endure them.

So off the top of my head, here are the ones I can think of:

Constant nausea for months
Increased risk of osteoporosis
Diabetes, sometimes permanent - anyone know any stats on this?
SPD
Fistula
Stress incontinence
The other type of incontinence which you get from Caesarean sections, the name of which escapes me (anyone?)
Eclampsia
Pre-eclampsia
PTSD
PND
Mastitis

I googled "long term side effects of pregnancy" and literally, found one entry - which listed stretch marks, sagging breasts and average 5lb weight retention.

Looks like there's a bit of a silence on this and I don't think there should be.

Any help much appreciated!

During pregnancy and not taken the least bit seriously - lack of sleep. During my 2nd pregnancy I couldn't sleep as long as an hour at a time because of ds pressing on my bladder. My mind was affected to the extent where I literally couldn't remember dc1's name. When I told the doctor to ask to get signed off work (my job was the sort for which you really need your brain) she wrote 'pregnancy related illness' on my sicknote and I later discovered she had written 'abnormal reaction to stress' on my records. I was not fucking stressed! Just suffering from perfectly normal and predictable sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is perfectly well understood, it's hardly a mystery to science.

Tunip that is so shit. I would have been fuming (as I am sure you were)!

Festivia, I don't know if you have seen this? Blog for Choice Day

Those with coccyx pain It's worth getting a chiropractor to look at you, unfortunately doctors not usually interested in coccyx problems. Mine was dislocated and popped back in a couple of visits! Amazing relief!

Oh readysteady that is the best thing I have heard in ages, I could kiss you

I have an excellent osteopath I have seen in the past, is that the same as a chiropractor?

I have also realised from this thread that my eyesight problems started immediately after pregnancy and birth, I had never made the connection before! How on earth is eyesight effected though?

Always, it's to do with the shape of the cornea:
www.babycenter.com/0_vision-changes-during-pregnancy_1456567.bc

During pregnancy, I had all day sickness which made it really hard to brush my teeth without vomiting and led to a bit of gum disease and two fillings afterwards. DS was spine to spine and delivered via forceps, leaving me with a fourth degree tear. A year later and am still having problems with my bowels (some leakage, and occasional urgency). Am seeing specialists about but it's taking time to sort out.

Thanks for the link TheDoctrine

Lochia can be retained, causing distention of the uterus.
Increased risk 12 months post partum for Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (inflammation of the uterus, ovaries, FTs) - can leave permanent scarring, cause infertility, ectopic pregnancy etc.
Problems with C-sec wounds healing, infected wounds, haematomas associated with C-sec wounds, keloid scarring.
Episiotomy wounds can open up.
Tears into urethra and clitoris.

Are we including the increased risk of injury or death from DV during/after pregnancy?

(Look away now if you are very squeamish)

There was also a really grim story on here a while ago of a MNer whose Caesarian stitches failed very dramatically and who ended up clutching onto the contents of her insides while her DH phoned for an ambulance.

Blimey.

I expected a few, but I didn't realise that there were so many narsties you could get from pregnancy. Am slightly taken-aback and feel very lucky that I only got the morning sickness, sleeplessness, back problems, womb infections and mastitis.

God it's awful. I remember when I was pg just thinking "however many problems I get, it is very unlikely that I will get the whole list. There is always something I can be glad I haven't got." Bloody true, and I hadn't even written the whole list! It's awful to see it.

I have to pack to move house in the next 2 months. I have 2 dcs, 3.5 and 1.5. I cannot tell you what a thrill it is to be functional; to be able to get up, start doing things, remember what I am trying to do, find the things I need to do them, not cry, jolly the dcs along while they "help", go up and down stairs.... I could cry with relief and gratitude. I feel like I just lost completely 4 years of my life, starting with the moment I felt sick in the summer of 2008 and ending... well about now really, so 4 and a half years. [randomly unburdening self on tenuously related thread... sorry. I just had NO IDEA it was going to be like this, none]

curryeater I think a lot of women feel as you do. I can certainly sympathise. When I was pregnant with my second I just wanted an abortion for the first four months because I felt so shit and everything was such hard work. A veery good friend of mine has a 3 and 5 yr old and she is a SAHM. She is just beginning to get her life back now and is grateful for any progress with her children that means she doesn't have to do it e.g. Going to the toilet alone, putting on coat/shoes etc. All those little things you can end up doing several hundred times a day.

It is enough of a shock to become a mother without all the injuries/illnesses pregnancies and birth bring with it.

GettingBig - so sorry about all these things.
The mental side of things is absolutely huge. So sorry to hear about the eating disorder and I hope you are ok now.

I looked at myself sideways in the mirror, naked, when dc2 was a few days old (I know! How stupid can a person be?) and decided to stop eating as much as possible and absolutely no carbs.
I can remember when dc2 was about a week old lying on the bed crying because I was so tired and dp sitting there with a biscuit on a plate (my favourite kind of biscuit which I had put on the shopping list when I was briefly sane) saying "Please eat something. Please just eat this biscuit. Please eat half the biscuit. If I eat half, will you eat half?"

I am personally pro life and I find this post rather ridiculous.
To outline my thoughts, if a girl has been raped, then absoulutly she has to right to a termination, it would be horrifically cruel to force her to put up with that. Likewise if the baby is going to be very disabled or the mothers life is at risk from the pregnancy, then in those situations I would agree. But someone who just wants an abortion because they don't want a baby, in my opinion is very very selfish. They made the mistake of having unprotected sex, and it's up to them to put up with that and face up to their responsibility. Why should an innocent child be killed because they made a mistake. So listing all these horrible things that can happen to women, that they have to suffer through, well I think yes, it is horrible, but it is YOUR fault.

Yeah thanks for the misogyny Pineneedles.

I bet you wouldn't condemn men to that, but hey, that's not what this thread is about.

That post is exactly the sort of misogynistic brutality I'm talking about - really useful illustration.

My friend developed Bell's palsy when pregnant, she was reassured it would go away when she had the baby but it never did. She had years of appointments and her daughter is now almost 16, and she still has the Bell's palsy.

Another friend was diagnosed celiac after being ill throughout her pregnancy.

I developed carpal tunnel when pregnant and 7 years later I'm now waiting for surgery to sort it out. Plus I had pre-eclampsia, an elective c-section as my ds was footling breech and huge, I had to have 2 teeth removed as they deteriorated so much when pregnant, and like a previous poster said my feet are a whole size bigger now!

You do realize pine needles that no contraception is 100% effective, lots of women get pregnant when using contraception.

And a baby is a baby, disabled or not yet you seem to think its OK to abort one and not the other? Surely if you believe life is sacrosant then all life us? Yet you seem to have a hierarchy? Baby conceived via rape or disabled OK to abort but others arent.

Women have abortions for many many reasons, and the health implications of pregnancy are worthy of debate regardless of the abortion debate as we live in a society and have a medical system that brushes them under the carpet. "Women's issues' are often given short thrift by drs and its about time that changed.

I had an amazing pregnancy but then it all went wrong. I went overdue and suffered the whole cascade of intervention performed by a doctor who was incompetent and made it clear she hated me. This lead to an episiotomy without local anaesthetic, failed ventouse which ripped a chunk out of DD's scalp, failed forceps without any pain relief, a push back while I was still conscious and without pain relief, an EMCS which was so shit my DD has two inch long scars on her arm and I lost at least a litre of blood and had my bladder nicked.

After surviving this just about I now have anaemia, SPD in both hips, a CS scar which bursts open and oozes pus (awaiting scan), PTSD and a huge knotty lump in my boob ( not cancer, they still haven't decided what to do about it)

DD had to have osteopathy for 6 months to bend her neck and will need plastic surgery on her arm and head.

If I had gone through that for a baby I didn't want I think I would have killed myself.

Rubbish Pineneedles. Everyone knows it is Eve's fault, because she ate the apple and then tempted Adam with it.

at posterofapombear's post.

Hope you're OK now. It sounds horrific.

It's the woman's fault so she deserves horrible things to happen to her? What about the man who impregnated her? Does he end up with long term health issues too as a result of his inability to stop procreating?

I think every man who impregnated the woman he got pregnant who is being forced to carry and birth the baby, should have the same injuries inflicted on him, that the woman would go through.

To ensure that the punishment is equal.

That would be fair, wouldn't it?

I'm sure that hyperemesis in my pregnancies contributed to (or even caused) the fibromyalgia that I have now.

What with all this stuff about it being the "womans body" and such, well she allowed her body to get that way, so she should have to face up to the consequences. Its like getting fat because you ate chocolate, you cant expect to stay skinny.