The battle of births, summer 2018. I sat with a group of other new mothers in a cafe after a music group for babies, ate a carrot cake and regret the rude refusal of our babies to sleep at night.
Inevitably, the conversations turned to births. An outspoken lady I had never met before told us about her long birth, endured only by gas and air. When I mentioned the caesarean section I had performed – without bothering in advance – I felt her focus on me.
“So it wasn’t an emergency caesarean section?” She asked. No, I answered. “Was your baby breeches?” Not again.
UK-based writer Claire Foghes says we need to rethink the way we look at women who choose to have C-sections (file image)
After further research, I told her that behind my decision was a long-standing health problem – a damaged coccyx. “Do you know how much more expensive a caesarean section is than a natural birth?” She asked, continuing: “I guess my natural birth somehow subsidized your operation!” There was a drop of a teaspoon in the cafe. Such views are not uncommon. For a long time, giving birth to a baby by caesarean section was seen as one of the following: a bad alternative to the “real thing,” a mistake to avoid at all costs, or an easy way out.
For years, too many women have been delayed in having a caesarean section, even while suffering painful and dangerous childbirth, due to an archaic mania for natural childbirth at all costs. There was even a goal for NHS trusts to stick to a caesarean section of about 20 percent, including in cases where something went wrong, which means that maternity wards were actually punished for doing what they thought was best for the mother. and the baby.
It was crazy – so thank goodness for the news that NHS England has seen the point and rejected its goals of limiting operations.
I hope that this change makes it easier for more women to choose a caesarean section if it is the right choice for them and their baby – and not only if they are in the midst of a birth they obviously will not plan, but also in advance.
The big stigma surrounding elective C-sections caught the popular imagination in 1999 with the news that Victoria Beckham had chosen a cesarean delivery for her first son, Brooklyn. Her choice was widely criticized, and she was criticized as “too sophisticated to insist.”
With these words a clear image was formed: of delicious mummies who planned to give birth to their child between drying with a hair dryer and manicure.
Claire (pictured) says she is not ashamed or embarrassed by a caesarean section
Too sophisticated to push – how this little phrase boils down to women who have the courage to ignore the millennial tradition, who stick their two fingers to biology, who avoid the labor pains that others endure.
Well, I had a caesarean section and I don’t feel a spark of shame or embarrassment. Long before I had children (now three, two and 11 months old), I knew that if I ever had a baby, it would have to be through the hatch. A coccyx injury in my 20s meant months of serious pelvic floor problems and years of physiotherapy to solve them. There was no way I could squeeze my body again, risking lifelong problems. It was a decision that was rational, sensible, personal – and yet provoked many curious reactions.
A midwife winked at me and said that we should wait and see how I felt, as if the maternal instinct would turn on and I would do the right thing in the end.
A doctor tilted his head to one side, wondering if I would like some advice, as he quietly ticked the box off his “High Maintenance Fruit Loop” form.
Victoria Beckham criticized as “too elegant to push” after a caesarean section
Friends encouraged me to rethink; although they themselves had never had a caesarean section, they gloomily warned that mothers were unable to contact their babies. A girl from my parenting class told me that I would be sorry because I would not feel this rush of love after giving birth to my child.
Their words struck. As the day approached, I became worried that by missing the birth, I was starting this wrong relationship for the rest of my life. In the end, I couldn’t be more fascinated than my daughter, and all those worries melted away.
It is often said that cesarean sections are more risky for all participants. But the statistics can be misleading because they mix in emergency cesarean sections with planned ones.
To compare apples to apples, you need to set up planned, unhurried operations against planned, uncomplicated vaginal births – and after removing emergency life-and-death cesarean sections from the data, many argue that at least for babies, elective C-sections come out as the best. the safest option of all.
A recent study by medical experts found that when you consider the cost of compensation, a planned caesarean section is actually £ 400 cheaper on average than a natural birth (file image)
How about the consequences of the costs, so clearly pointed out to me in the battle of childbirth? While it is true that an average cesarean section costs more than an average vaginal birth, this does not take into account the huge costs of litigation when things go wrong. Over the last 15 years, careless maternity care has cost £ 8.2 billion – enough to pay for more than a dozen new hospitals. In fact, a recent study by medical experts found that when you consider the cost of compensation, a planned caesarean section is actually an average of £ 400 cheaper than a natural birth.
This is not to underestimate the power that some women derive from natural childbirth. Lots of rhapsodies about their perfect home birth: scented candles, a warm pool, a jumping baby, while Adele sobbed in the background: “Hello from the other siiiiiiiide.” If you can give birth naturally and with little complication – and walk about half an hour later – this is certainly the ideal scenario.
But I also know many whose “natural” work has left them scarred in more ways than one. They suffer from exhausting tears. They have incontinence immediately or years later. A Parents.com survey found that five years after giving birth, 10 to 20 percent of women report having a leak that they consider “socially annoying.” One woman told me grimly that she would never be the same after her brutal birth.
I’m not ashamed to have spent three “through the sun roof”
This is the indisputable truth about vaginal birth – it comes with serious risks. However, pregnant women are not as aware of these risks as they are of the risks of caesarean section.
When you decide to have one, you are repeatedly warned that this is a major operation, that the scar will be significant, that you will not be able to do much for weeks. But there is simply not the same amount of information about what can and what goes wrong during a “natural” birth. A female therapist I spoke to said that if there was a pound for every woman who had said, “I never knew she could do this to me,” there would be a villa in Barbados by now.
Of course, a cesarean section is also not a walk in the park; a shark bite through your abdomen takes weeks of painful recovery, and the scar is unpleasant. But for some women, this will be the right choice – and hopefully this NHS decision will make their voices easier.
Most importantly, removing the target of a cesarean section should clarify what matters. It does not reduce the number of trusts, not the vaginal birth at any cost, but the mothers holding a healthy new baby in their arms, regardless of the fact that they were born.