Natural Birth & Vaginal Birth - The Difference

[BellyBelly]

I've posted about this before somewhere but can't find it - but there is lots of confusion over this and I want to help everyone to clarify.

A vaginal birth is a birth where a baby is born through the vagina, where there is no caesarean but may be pain relief, instrumental birth, inductions etc.

A natural birth is a birth without interventions, where labour starts on its own and is allowed to progress in it's own time without interference - often natural birth will be used in confusion of a vaginal birth. This does not include a midwife checking baby's heartrate with a doppler and your blood pressure etc but it does mean birth without artificially rupturing membranes (i.e. someone breaking your waters), use of drugs, or the third stage oxytocic injection to expel the placenta. You might not have drugs during labour but you might have your waters broken and an oxytocic, which is a drug-free birth, but not classed as 'natural', as it's a birth where the process has been interfered with 'unnaturally'.

This does not mean one birth is better than the other, this is purely for the sole purpose of clarification and understanding, and if you get to the birth and you need the oxytocic for instance for a haemorrhage (of which rates are low but more common with intervention - it's the cascade of intervention) etc then it was needed and important. Sometimes intervention IS needed. But sadly, not as much as is currently happening.