About Cesareans

Hospitals love Cesareans. They require 97% less time than a vaginal birth while producing twice the revenue. Stop to think about that for a moment. Who among us would turn down the ability to double our income for a fraction of the work?

It’s no wonder that, over the last ten years, the Cesarean rate in the United States has skyrocketed to over 30%. Cesareans are the most commonly performed surgery in the United States. It’s a brilliant business model – except that Cesarean mothers are three times more likely to die.

Side effects to the mother may include:

• Infection
• Hemorrhage
• Damage to internal organs
• Early separation from baby
• Chronic pelvic pain
• Bowel obstruction
• Increased postpartum depression
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Difficulty relating to their infants
• Death

Future reproductive complications may include:

• Sexual intimacy problems
• Infertility
• Ectopic pregnancy
• Placenta accrete
• Placental abruption
• Stillbirth and malformation of babies in future pregnancies
• Loss of the right to experience a normal birth.

Side effects to the baby may include:

• Accidental surgical cuts
• Respiratory problems
• Failure to establish breastfeeding
• Asthma in both childhood and adulthood
• Celiac Disease
• Death

If they are so bad, why does one in three pregnant women submit to a Cesarean?

Simplistic logic causes 99% of American women to give birth in what would be the best place if complications were to occur – a hospital. This plan-to-fail often succeeds because our medical system is not equipped to handle normal birth. If you hand someone a machete to butter bread, don’t be surprised if he uses it.

Doctors, fearful of litigation, are forced to practice defensive medicine including restricted food intake, induction, stripping of membranes, electronic fetal monitoring, IV fluids, Pitocin and epidurals. Unfortunately, in order for all of these tubes, wires and drugs to work properly, the patent must lie still on her back.

But birth is a sport, not an illness. Laying down in labor stacks the odds against us. It ignores the benefits of gravity and causes the pelvis to close by up to 30%. Additionally, this on-your-back position (the same one that pregnant women are advised to stay out of during the last six months of pregnancy) compresses the mother’s aorta and vena cava, decreasing oxygen and blood-flow to the baby.

If, in an allotted period of time, the patient’s anti-gravity show fails, or fetal distress (possibly due to the mother’s prone position) is indicated, a Cesarean is performed “just to be safe.” Safe from litigation that is.

A popular saying among labor and delivery attendants is “The only Cesarean you get sued for is the one you don’t do.”

References:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/09newsreleases/teenbirth.htm http://californiawatch.org/health-and-welfare/more-women-dying-pregnancy-complications-state-holds-report http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1980192/cdc_says_cesarean_triples_neonatal_pg2.html?cat=25, http://www.medpagetoday.com/OBGYN/Pregnancy/4022 http://www.childbirthconnection.org/article.asp?ck=10271          http://www.vbac.com/onceacesarean.html