In our society today, it seems that obstetricians keep narrowing their definition of normal. They seem to jump at any opportunity they can to intervene with the normal process of birth. And with the standard use of electronic fetal monitoring in hospitals, they find it easier and easier to send the woman for an “emergency” c-section. It really makes no sense to me; I feel like the current OB’s have no belief in the female body. I mean, our bodies are designed to reproduce and to carry and birth babies, and over time we have lost faith in the human body and what it is capable of. Our society keeps trying to find ways to make birth easier and faster, and by doing so, more expensive as well. Honestly though, how do these OB’s think they were born, how do they think generations before them were born? Women have been carrying and delivering babies for thousands of years-is it really necessary to change something that wasn’t going wrong in the first place? I don’t think so.
My sister-in-law ended up having a cesarean, due to high blood pressure towards the end of her pregnancy. My nephew’s birth weight was 9lbs 6 oz. After the delivery when her OB came to see her the next day she said to my sister-in-law “There is no way you would have been able to push that baby out.” This is just so irritating to me. Doctors have no confidence in women and their bodies, and if they make statements like the one said to my sister-in-law, they are making women feel like they are not capable. They are taking away their confidence of themselves and their bodies. And for the most part the woman will believe their doctor, because they’re the doctor, not you.
As a nursing student, I have seen two c-sections. The first one I saw, I had to walk out before the baby was “born” because I the smell of the skin being cauterized made me feel so sick to my stomach and like I was going to pass out. The second one I saw I was able to stay in the OR the whole time. I could not believe how barbaric the procedure was. Cutting, cauterizing, pulling, shoving, it was really hard to watch. As the doctor prepares to reach in and grab the baby, he has the nurse or assistant use what looks like a big shoe horn to hold/pull back on the incision to make as much room as possible for the doctor to get inside and remove the baby. No wonder the woman is in so much pain afterwards, they push and pull and shove her insides around and deliver a baby that apparently was in distress (which is, most of the time, actually healthy at birth). If doctors weren’t so busy looking at the printouts of the electronic fetal monitor there would not be so many c-sections. They see a few decelerations and get all panicky, well what do you think that baby has been doing in there for 40 weeks? It probably has decelerations every day of gestation, only now that it is visible on monitor the doctors can use it to back up their advice that the woman should have a cesarean.
With my own experiences and in reading both Cassidy’s Birth and Goers A Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth, I don’t know how a woman could want or be okay with having an (unnessary) cesarean.
