…Or completely out of touch with yourself? I’d heard rumors, water cooler stories, of celebrities who had elective caesarean sections. They didn’t want the inconvienience of giving birth suddenly, they had busy lives, they didn’t want to ruin their stage exposed flat tummies, but until I read this article I just chalked it up to being out of touch with reality.
The medicalisation of life continues apace with new National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) guidelines proposing caesarean section as, effectively, a lifestyle choice for all mothers, not just those who were only recently scorned as “too posh to push”.
There is so much worryingly amiss with this that it’s difficult to know where to start. From the point of view of medicine, the inherent risks of having an elective caesarean are becoming ever less of a concern – as long as you are only going to have two or three children. Have a larger family via major abdominal surgery and you risk rupture of the uterus and severe bleeding. Then there is the cost: some £800 over that of having your baby naturally, and this at a time when NHS services are being cut back so drastically. […]
The choice is problematical, though. Should women shun medicalisation or should they demand even more medical attention for their particular needs? Should women aim to control their own bodies or seize an apparently greater power with the help of surgery – cosmetic or otherwise? As the eminent surgeon Sir Spencer Wells remarked in 1891, “Wonderful indeed, is woman’s hydra-like tolerance of sections and mutilations.”
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So… this post has some spelling mistakes ( inconvenience). Apparently WordPress is out to get me!
Why would anyone want to go through several hours of labour pains if they could avoid it and get approximately the same result? This idea that natural childbirth is not so bad is bollocks. Why do you suppose people invented epidurals? Natural childbirth may be the better option, given the risks of surgery, but from a personal experience, it may not be. Who the heck wants to suffer for several hours at a time? I’ve had four c-sections, and I’ve only managed to have limited experience of labour. I don’t want to be or feel empowered when I’m in labour. I want to stop hurting. I don’t care whose ideology that bothers. Some people might say that the birth itself is nicer if it’s natural. True enough. Consider what you have to experience to get there.
Suzanne, I think there are a couple of things this article highlights that may or may not have been factors in your situation. One of these is the idea that we ought control what our bodies will do naturally by medical means. This, I believe, is a dangerous step that seems to contribute to the “ick” factor some people have about the female bodily functions and the desire to medicalize those aspects of womanhood we find “undesirable”. But I’m not “icky”, and I don’t think women should feel like we need medication, surgery, powdered formula etc. to not be offensive to our societies, and I do find it empowering to be educated about my body in order to care for it without the aid of a medical team. But of course, if a woman needs to avail of services to deliver or keep her children, then by all means she should be able to do so. But when it’s not necessary it can become a control issue. Perhaps part of the joy of childbirth (in fact having children in any capacity) is the experience of the unexpected. When we aim to control, we aim to limit that possibility.
I don’t know, I’ve never experienced labour, but I have experienced a planned c-section (I had no choice in the matter, I’m pretty sure posh is never a factor at Victoria General Hospital). I think I’d trade in that 1-hour c-section for . . . any amount of labour. The experience of laying in a freezing cold OR and having the sensation of a midget is jumping up and down on my chest while everybody else plays tug-of-war with my uterus trying to scoop a baby out while 20 other people stand by watching and then returning to the hospital with an infection was borderline traumatic for me. I just don’t think my body was designed to be cut open like that. And it still hurts. I think I’d rather be heavily drugged and go through labour (the best of both worlds maybe?). I have SUCH a hard time imagining why anybody would go through all of that on purpose.
I think that a woman should have the right to choose whatever birthing procedure she wants, it is not harming the baby, and it is her body that have to go through labor, stitches down there and the risk of incontinence etc