c/s- the AFTER effects that you never knew

[~breeze~]

Thank you all!!!

I have been straining my brain to decide between a c/s (suggested to me by my doc due to medical reasons) & another vag birth. You have just helped me make my decision!!!
Another vag birth for me....... (Just have to be better prepared this time)

[nic]

Oh Yes Maz, the judgemental people who think they know it is the 'easy way out'
A few hours after my DD was born, I had a visitor (mother of another new parent who I knew) who told me that she had had a c/s and vaginal with her kids and the c/s was by far the worse.
Then I had my DH grannie saying behind my back "we've all been through it" yet she praises my SIL for having it so hard with her natural labour!
What upsets me even more is I had someone who had a c/s around the same time as me, telling me that she took the easy way out and had a c/s! I wonder were all these easy way out c/s are??

Nic

[BellyBelly]

I think they say c/s is the easy way out because of our fear based practice of normal birth. Women see it as frightening, painful and a c/s is quick, no pain during it - no-one talks about after.

Women are shown frightening birth videos in hospitals - one of my newer clients said to me she walked out thinking seriously about a c/s and didnt want a VB.
Obs are caring for women - they are specialists in things going wrong. Midwives see birth as normal and treat it that way until there is a problem, so there is less scare tactics when you have your own midwife - and things aren't looked at in the same way.
Hospital based birth education is highly inadequate. It takes an independent birth class to see how badly hospital classes are lacking and what you are NOT told.

So many things are wrong with our system and women are suffering. I wish they would stand up to the system more. We need to - we are losing out, they are not.

I think once women start getting more empowered with birth, start feeling stronger and are educated and confident, then it will not be said by so many as the 'easy' way out. Especially with the growing number of infections that are getting harder to treat... its becoming more serious and I have no doubt people will start to see it as NOT the easy way out really soon. I just wish people would not be so skeptical at the motives of people like myself or the mods on BB about educating and informing. Someone has to get through to the masses and I only hope women can think twice and really research the options open to them, get second opinions and believe in themselves. We don't gain financially from it. We just care and want women to experience the power and empowerment that so many of us have felt taking back the control over our bodies and gaining respect from our carers.

[paradise lost]

Women are shown frightening birth videos in hospitals - one of my newer clients said to me she walked out thinking seriously about a c/s and didnt want a VB.

Seriously common Kelly - i think part of the problem is that they show a video of a vaginal birth BEFORE they explain what the different phases are and so on. Imagine if you went to sex ed and the FIRST thing they showed you was some heavy pornography!? YUK - i'm sure i was sometimes noisy, sometimes quite, and even though it might have LOOKED like i was not coping, i WAS, and my midwives could tell i was too. People who have never seen birth need to be shown the process gently, not confronted with it. One of the most striking things one of the women i met at toddler group said to me (i skipped my "classes" as their entire homebirth education was the sentence "some women choose to have their baby at home" and that was it, and i didn't see the point of hanging around for 8 weeks to hear about all the interventions and drugs i couldn't have) was "the c-section video was really nice - everyone was so quiet and peaceful and then you just heard the baby, with the vaginal there was so much yelling "push" and the woman yelling!" - NO WONDER women THINK c-sections are a better way!

Bx

[Tobily]

Seriously common Kelly - i think part of the problem is that they show a video of a vaginal birth BEFORE they explain what the different phases are and so on.
Bx

Not to mention also that they're usually videos of highly medicalised births - mother on her back on a bed, drips and monitoring, room full of people, coached pushing, stirrups - to the outsider looking in, it DOES look clinical, impersonal, undignified and just plain bloody scary. There are too many women (and men) who only have exposure to this sort of birth and don't realise that it doesn't have to be like that.

Hospital birth classes have the sole purpose of priming women for a hospital birth and making sure that they know what is expected of them before they get there IMO. They are fundamentally disempowering and for the most part quite negative.

maz - thank you for being so honest. There is nothing glamorous or easy about having surgery even when a beautiful baby is the result.

[sazzafrazz]

Thanks so much Maz.
This is exactly what I needed to read!

I have begun to feel so ugly and disgusting lately especially as I have just seen the photos we had taken at Celeste's baptism on the weekend. I knew my blub hung down but I didnt realise it was so obvious even with clothes on. I almost cried when I saw those photos and this is 3months after the surgery. I am grateful to have had the caesarian as it saved her life and probably mine also but I am still devestated that I missed out on a VB.
I am still so itchy and get that searing burning pain all the time. My Gunt (lol I love that name) is also very crooked because it was such an emergency that I have a very funny pubic hair line with some above the scar on one side but far below it on the other side. Plus there is the verandah where the skin is in an ugly purple welt like I was stitched up like a wheat sack. Not to mention the smelly, sweaty part where the air never breathes. AB excercises are painful and I think my core muscles are affected with more back pain these days plus leaking!!! which people think only happens with a VB also.

I feel so small when people joke about how hard birth is and brag about it like I am less of a mother for having had one. I really do take it very personally. My bf said at least all my 'bits' are the same. That was like a kick in the guts too. Yeah my woo hoo looks the same but who sees that??? You cant tell in the baptism photos that my V-j is still the same!!!

Ah, its great to know Im normal for feeling all this. I was beginning to think I was being overdramatic thinking this way about my CS.

[Junglemum]

I feel so small when people joke about how hard birth is and brag about it like I am less of a mother for having had one

Therein lies a major problem, people should be less judgemental and support each other no matter how their baby was bought into the world.

Maz- Jed loves you cause you are a sexy woman, gunt, or no gunt! xxx