Just following from another thread, I was thinking today that in all the years I've been involved with BB, I'm constantly amazed that LTTTCers keep saying that they believe that a c/s is 'safer' for them and their baby than a VB. I've read countless posts about it, and each time I get more and more confused.

Because we all know the stats - a VB is safer than a c/s. No grey area there, it is a fact. So to me, when I finally fell pregnant, I guess the idea was firmly in my mind that for my baby and me to be as safe as I could possibly be, I should have a VB. Conversely, if I had to have a emergency c/s, I similarly understood the increased risk I was exposing my child and myself to - risk that TBH I was not prepared to accept unless it was a true medical emergency. As an IVFer, the thought of putting my child, or me, at an increased risk of complications heightened my anxieties, not lessened it, which is why I was quite scared of having a c/s.

Yet I constantly read about women, esp LTTTCers, saying they want a c/s to be safe and to ensure their baby is safe. That's completely at odds with all the statistics wrt to VB and c/s births. Nothing suggests that a c/s is safer than a VB, in fact all evidence is to the contrary. Yet LTer after LTer seem to believe it's true, that your baby is safer being delivered by c/s.

So I do wonder, is it that we've become so dependant on the medical profession to conceive that once pregnant, we actually ignore all the stats and start to believe that an obstetrician can deliver our babies better than we can birth them? That this too is 'safer' in our Dr's hands?

Have we, as women who needed medicine to help us conceive, then completely lost faith in our bodies and believe them faulty? Or have we begun to believe that the best thing for all involved is to hand everything over to our Drs, the same way we handed over the rest of our reproductive lives? Or is it that, like many women of this generation, we've succumbed to the 'societal' fallacy that a c/s is somehow safer?

I want to make clear that I don't wish this discussion to be about c/s vs VB. I am geniunely interested in this 'phenomenon'. Because to me, it's clear - if VBs are safer for mum and the child, then surely more IVFers would be choosing to have VBs than caesereans, and yet the opposite seems to be true. I would love to discuss it with LTers who have chosen either VBs or caesareans, and how it is that being a LTer influenced that decision.