Then my best friend was bullied into a c-section by the doctor on call. She has endometriosis, so for her, a c-section has lead to major issues (adhesions, adenomyosis) and also caused her PTSD and problems with breast feeding. She had her second child naturally, as a VBAC at a birth center, and there were no issues with breast feeding and she was able to heal somewhat from the c-section nightmare.
I had my first child in a hospital. I had read that using medications such as an epidural can increase your risk of a c-section, and wanted to do anything I could to avoid one. I found myself in the hospital being rush, yelled and, and constantly being bugged to get pain medication. I finally gave in. I first asked for the IV anesthesia (it was fentanyl, a narcotic), then the epidural. By the time they had put enough IV fluids into me (which confined me to the bed, on my back), I was fully dilated. They had lost track of the baby’s heart beat, and when they found it it was a bit slow. When I pushed, my water broke and there was meconium in the amniotic fluid. The OB seemed to think it was a result of the anesthesia. Regardless, it was a very stressful experience that I do not want to repeat. I am pregnant again, and this time, I will birth at home with a midwife, and will be able to have a bit more say in what interventions are used.
Have you read the book “Pushed” by Jennifer Block? I believe she does use science to show that a lot of women are pushed into doing things that they don’t need to do, like having c-sections and inductions.

I had three births. The first was a high risk pregnancy and I gave birth with pit and no epidural with the doctor practically standing over me with a knife waiting to cut me open. If that had happened my child and I would have been separated for 2 weeks while I was transferred to a different hospital for recovery so I did everything I could to avoid surgery.
The second was a stillbirth in a hospital without any interventions. Not needing to rush, the experience was less painful and stressful so I was able to grieve throughout my labour.
My third was a homebirth attended by midwives. Pain free? Nope. Less pain? Yes. Less stress? Yes. The safest birth of all three? Of course. Partially that was luck, having a complication-free pregnancy, but partly that was because the midwives were knowledgeable and my body did what it was designed to. No weird positions or heart rate monitors, just some pseudo-yoga and Veronica Mars DVDs. lol My longest labour (30 hours) but the best.

I am glad that I had the opportunity to have medical treatment when necessary, but even happier that I was not forced to be treated medically when unnecessary.

Miccrobiologychick is right when she says natural birth is a gateway to woo. We skeptics need to take natural birth back! The Netherlands shows that it is completely possible to have a natural birth culture that is rooted in science.

For example, only options that women have for pain relief are pethidine (“demerol”, I believe you call it) or an epidural. That’s it. No option of nitrous oxide, no option of TENS, not even the option of ice chips in the mouth.

As crazy as I find the anti-science crowd, I can’t help thinking that they’d have less of a point if women in the United States had the full range of evidence-based options.

The people who get epidurals don’t care if someone else had their kid with or without epidurals.”

Look, I have never once said that women who choose epidurals, c-sections, etc are bad, inferior, or somehow ‘bad’ at birthing. My point was that there are huge issues with informed consent with these procedures and that they are not as medically nessecary in most cases as people believe. To assert that women birth outside of hospitals is ‘woo’ and that these women are illogical and anti-science is a pretty biased notion. If someone had asserted that women who get epidurals are ‘lesser’ women, I would have objected to that notion as well. Women should be given all of their options and should have informed consent. One of those options is medicated hospital birth, one of them is unmedicated home birth. Picking either one of those options does not make a woman an idiot or a bad woman.

There are good reasons to take various medications/narcotics, or to have an epidural, or a c-section. For the most part, there’s little impact on the baby, and what little there is will be very short term. Some medicines can make the baby drowsy at first. Epidurals will restrict the mother’s movement during labor. They can also prevent some horrifically intense pain, which is fantastic. My wife is planning on doing a natural (read: in hospital) birth and avoiding meds, etc. unless they are medically necessary, but she reserves the right to change her mind at any point.

Lastly, I take some issue with c-sections. These shouldn’t be done lightly, as they can cause some long-term complications to the mother. They can also complicate later births, making it necessary to have further c-sections down the road. I’m not saying that they are bad. It’s great that we can do this so reliably these days. But they shouldn’t be opted for lightly.

– me -

Something like that always depends on the person and the people they surround themselves with.

The people who get epidurals don’t care if someone else had their kid with or without epidurals.

IMO childbirth woo is a gateway woo. Some extreme parent cultures use childbirth method as the first litmus test for inclusion and status. Vulnerable women, lamenting an “imperfect” birth experience, are easy prey for other forms of woo–like antivaccinaiton.

It’s an unfortunate situation. My OB no longer sends her patients to her hospital’s childbirth classes for the reasons commenter Derek stated earlier: if women succumb to even one intervention, they beat themselves up as “failures.”

Thanks for hosting this discussion!