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!

I am surprisingly sane Blueberry

But it has made me even more of an advocate for women's rights. No one should have to suffer that in this day an age. I'm pretty sure that most people who think forced birth is a good idea would very swiftly have changed their minds if they had to watch my birth.

Pineneedles, how did 'she' inflict pregnancy on herself? I'm fairly sure if you want to be accurate that a man inflicted it upon her.

I'm assuming that pineneedles has only ever had sex for the purposes of procreation.

Well everyone has contradicted me but I haven't actually had any reasons why my point isnt valid...

Being forced to carry and birth an unwanted baby is not like getting fat because you ate too much chocolate.

The lack of choice and is the key difference. Also the massive emotional and physical upheaval.

Extra "and" - sorry!

Pine, but it is also the man's 'fault', no?

Pine says it's acceptable to have an abortion if your child is disabled.
It is not acceptable if it simply an unplanned pregnancy.

So, if you become pregnant unplanned and the scans show the baby is disabled, what does Pine suggest is the appropriate course of action.

Abort because it's OK if a baby is disabled?
Or have the baby because it was unplanned and therefore the woman's fault and she needs to put up with her mistake?

Logic is clearly not Pine's strongest suit.

I'm not answering your stupid misogynist point pine, because this isn't a thread to discuss abortion per se.

It's to discuss the long term health implications of pregancy and birth.

By all means start a thread about abortion if you want to discuss the principles

It's a pregnant woman's fault she gets a serious health condition as a result of pregnancy in the same way as it's an allergic person's fault they get an allergic reaction from eating an everyday food that they had not previously eaten or had not previously reacted to. (ie it's not their fault, in case that needs clarifying.)
Most people don't get severe HG when pregnant. You don't know you're going to. Just like most people can eat nuts.

If you didn't eat any food that could cause an allergic reaction, ever, you would risk starving or suffering malnutrition. So it wouldn't be a sensible thing to do. If no woman ever got pregnant because of the risk of serious health conditions the human race would die out (or they would probably force woman to be pregnant through banning contraception or forcing marriage, just like they have done through much of history and still do in some places).

The logic of Pine's position is that any woman who has ever had a baby, and therefore had sex, deserves to suffer. Sooooo medieval!

Well given that pine needles thinks the Indian lady who died after being gang raped is partly responsible for her own death as she got on the bus in the first place, I think its fair to say she has odd views and its perhaps not worth engaging in debate!

I had an almost identical birth to posterofapombear, though the forceps worked in the end. I have a mental image, just before I passed out of the doctor, leg braced against the bed, with the nurse behind pulling her waist trying to drag my child out.

Can I add Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to the list?

The problem of saying that some terminations are OK (rape, health) but not others, is that it implies that certain pregnancies are 'good' or 'bad' ones. I think the person who is best in the position to decide that is the person who is pregnant. There are other people whose views could/should be considered e.g. the father & medical staff, but it really is nothing to do with anyone else, which is why legislating for it is such a minefield.

Those who say 'but what about the innocent child?' Don't seem to see the possible life of the child that would result from an unwanted pregnancy being continued. The reasons for a termination are many and complex, but there is one thing that is pretty much a given. If a woman doesn't want to carry on a pregnancy then to make her carry to full term, whether she then keeps the child or they are adopted, will impact upon the child. Adopted children, although they grow up in loving families, often feel the 'what if' and 'why' behind their adoption. Children born to a mother who initially didn't want them may be loved, but they could well be growing up in overcrowding, poverty (relative), single parent families. They could grow up in a wonderful glow of rosy contentment, but if a mother decides that a termination is the best decision, then that outcome seems quite remote.

Interestingly, when terminations became legalised in the US, about 16 years later there was a sharp decrease in juvenile crime. Why? Because children were not being born into difficult situations, and growing up in less than ideal circumstances and eventually turning to crime. Obviously not all terminations are to young/single/poor women, but forcing women to continue a pregnancy when they believe that a termination is a better choice, has a huge impact on the mother, the child, and society.

Even if pregnancy and childbirth were magical experiences beyond anything that Disney could create, termination would still be the better option for many pregnancies, and as such it is up to the pregnant woman to make that decision, not anyone else. To then say that any illness/side effects suffered by the mother is some kind of natural justice is not only deeply misogynistic (as we don't see the same judgement being delivered or even suggested for the father) but is actually a cruel and unusual form of punishment.

I was talking about this with a friend today. I don't want children, she does. One of the reasons I don't want them is because of the health implications. She said "but those are only short-term things". I told her some of these stories so I hope she'll be a bit more informed (not that I don't think she should have children!)

It's shocking really that we don't know this stuff - I had no idea til I started posting here.

Have we had De Quervain's Syndrome or Mother's Thumb?

Can I chuck in one that isn't really a problem but was a surprise - my hair turned wavy with DS2. Seems to have happened to other women too, though it's sometimes temporary.

pregnancy.familyeducation.com/signs-and-symptoms/skin-hair-and-nails/57326.html

I've just remembered DoctrineofSnatch - my hair which used to be curly, turned straight.

Yes mine went curly too!

It's weird how easy it is to forget some of these things - it wasn't until I was most of the way through the thread that I remembered I was hospitalised for nearly a week with an infection shortly after DS2 was born and was on about five different IV antibiotics. Any other time in my life that would have been a major deal (and frankly I would have complained later about the crap treatment as I was in much longer than necessary) but, for me, I was so focused on DS2 and just getting through the days that it's very hazy when I look back.

I'm 40+5 currently and living in fear of some of the things on this thread happening to me when I go into labour....(don't worry, I knew about a lot if these long before reading this thread!) I've had severe AND and extreme fatigue during pg and am worried about how well I'll recover from even a good birth. I have found that there's little support for MH issues in pregnancy as it is: I agree that many of the health complications women suffer in/after pregnancy and childbirth would never be tolerated if men experienced them routinely - and there would be much more research into "normal" pregnancy and its complications. There is so much about pg/birth that medical science is still clueless about, like it's some voodoo process where real research doesn't venture. I ask GP/midwife about whether even very minor things are normal and they genuinely have no idea. Can you imagine any other routine part of medicine where so little was known about normal and abnormal complications?

A long time ago I read Kate Figes' Life After Birth (now there's a scary book - but OP you may find it useful for this project as she lists all the things that can go wrong/possible damage). She mentions that pregnancy can trigger previously unknown multiple sclerosis in some women which terrified me. Does anyone know if this is true - I hadn't heard it before? I read the book at 26 to cure a particularly broody phase and OMG was it effective. Ordered it to reread after getting pg and had to stop a chapter in as it panicked me so much. They could use it in schools to cut teen pregnancy, it's that terrifying....

Good luck for a safe labour, georgette x

Thank you! :)