My C-Section Birth

Today was definitely full of learning.

The birth of my first daughter was a failed attempt at natural birth due to a fused pelvis post-fracture. I could feel exactly what was happening in the c-section although it didn’t hurt. This freaked me out more than a little going into c-section number 2.

There’s a blessing in not knowing when the baby’s coming. Trust me. I hardly slept a wink last night – covering every possible scenario in my head. Every possible one… outside of the smooth and relatively painless delivery of a perfectly healthy girl.

I was doing some light reading, as I do, on labour and delivery outcomes in the United States. It’s a decently well known fact that maternal and infant deaths are on the rise in hospital settings and that their track record is comparable to the better performing countries in the developing world.

Few people though realize that infant and maternal mortality are also on the rise in home births.

Though quality of care and existence if unnecessary intervention is obviously a huge part of the problem, I think it’s pretty clear from the statistics that there is a third factor.

Maternal health and fitness.

One of the major factors leading to a Caesarian birth is maternal obesity.

It would be interesting to look at the outcomes for natural and medical births for women who are healthy and fit. Everyone always assumes that “healthy” ladies pop a baby out natural in twenty minutes and then go for a jog. But in reality this is not always the case.

Fit women still have difficult births and face difficult situations. They are just better prepared to handle them.

I’d be dead right now if not for medical intervention. I’d probably have survived the crash that broke my pelvis – and just ended up very very disabled. But I’d never have survived childbirth… and neither would my two beautiful children.

My big epiphany today, if you can call it that… is to be grateful to modern medicine but never take it for granted. You never know what tomorrow brings, so be in the best form you can to confront it.

The freezing worked much better this time. No pain or sensations until the doctor started pulling the baby out. I couldn’t figure out how I could hear her crying since they didn’t cut a hole.

Which leads me to my second thought if the day: healthy moms make healthy babies. Even if birth did go sideways I’d hope she’d be better prepared to take it on.