It was shared that:
“The introduction of caesareans DID lower infant and maternal mortality and morbidity, in a steady rising curve until the late 70s. In the 80s and 90s that curve has moved slightly downwards, because too many are being done, but you simply cannot argue that caeseareans are unjustified. W.rld Health Organisation guidelines suggest that best practice results in a caesar rate of 10%”

~~Isn’t it fact that the greatest proportion of improvement came from the availability of life-saving antibiotics, improved sanitation and nutrition ?

I will just paste a qoute, perhaps you’ll want to track down the source (I don’t have it immediately available):In the 1960s, in a rural, impoverished California county, introducing midwives into the county hospital more than halved the newborn death rate. When doctor opposition to midwives blocked renewal of the program, the newborn death rate promptly tripled.”

…and this; “Overall neonatal death rates have also improved since the 30s, but homebirths appeared to be safer even then. In 1939, Baylor Hospital Charity Service in Dallas, Texas, published a study that revealed a perinatal mortality rate of 26.6 per 1,000 live births in homes compared to a hospital birth mortality rate of 50.4 per 1,000.[1]”

and this “The World Health Organization recommends that national maternity policies reflect a preference for midwife-supported, planned out-of-hospital birth, and a November, 1996 study in the British Medical Journal verified that planned home birth is a safe option for women with healthy pregnancies.”

a mother a midwife

I know its not perfect here in the Western world, but lets not let our quibbling over details mean we lose sight of the big picture of how fortunate we are to have these choices in the first place.

Not me though:)

What’s more, Alex is not purporting to have any such expertise, merely claiming that many women and/or their babies have died in childbirth despite the best efforts of trusted, caring and professional midwives, and would not have died had they had a c-section. This is a claim you can refute if you wish, but not by pointing out that he has a penis.

Things can and do go wrong and you just sound silly if you assert that the only reason women and babies got stuck or died in childbirth was from malnutrition. Pelvises can only do so much and your repeated assertion that a squat opens the pelvis by up to 30% is not particularly relevant in a country where women just do not squat for that length of time, and become easily exhausted.

Last time I was in my ordinary country hospital labour ward, there was a woman who gave birth exactly the same way as me. I didn’t have a stitch. She ripped her pelvis nearly in two. I am not exaggerating. She fractured it. She tore all the ligaments and all the skin from her vagina through to her tailbone. Both healthy, well-nourished and in a positive environment, under the same doctor. My pelvis did what it was supposed to and hers didn’t. She walked again, only because of the surgical skill of the doctor we shared.

The introduction of caesareans DID lower infant and maternal mortality and morbidity, in a steady rising curve until the late 70s. In the 80s and 90s that curve has moved slightly downwards, because too many are being done, but you simply cannot argue that caeseareans are unjustified. W.orld Health Organisation guidelines suggest that best practice results in a caesar rate of 10%

Faith is a wonderful thing, but I prefer to take each case on its merits, and respect choices.

Yes Rebekka, I may have been able to wait for labour to start naturally. Who knows when that would have happened. I had contractions before being induced but they weren’t serious enough to warrant not going ahead with the induction. The baby had never fully engaged, even two weeks after due date. The point for me though was that I had a choice. I did wait for two weeks, despite my extreme discomfort but I was quite happy in the end to go for the induction. The baby had to come out and more to the point I WANTED the process to start then. The midwives in the birth centre I had attended had given me a lot of information about options and I felt I needed to invoke that option.

I can’t stress it enough, choice, choice, choice. I understand your concerns with unnecessary medical intervention but I am also wary of making childbirth an endurance sport that only ‘real’ women can endure without the assistance of whatever help they need. Seeking help is a choice, as is choosing to give birth to a huge baby in your lounge room while squatting.

The pelvis is not a stiff bone, it’s full of joints that loosen towards the end of pregnancy because of a hormone called relaxin.

A woman’s pelvic outlet is 30% bigger when squatting.

Many women have given birth to babies larger than that – my sister-in-law included (if you scroll down here you can see her birth announcement: “She is 5 kg, or 11 pounds!!! She was born with me standing, no tears at all!”), vaginally, when given the right support in the right environment.

Being told your body is not able to birth your baby is exactly what I think is wrong with the way the medical profession treat women as inadequate and birth as a medical event. History is littered with women who died as a result of their babies being too big post-industrial revolution, when women were often malnourished and had rickets. Rickets often results in the pelvis being malformed. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon – and not one that well-nourished Western women need to worry about. Babies evolved to fit out their mothers’ pelvises.

Georg was obviously told at some point that it wasn’t okay for her to wait for her baby to trigger labour, that she needed to be induced. Induction very often leads to a cascade of interventions resulting in a c-section. It’s a well-documented phenomena. If she had had a midwife who was willing to observe placental function carefully and wait for labour – and there’s no reason at all why you can’t go three weeks overdue – the outcome might have been completely different.

The medical profession does not trust women’s bodies.

Georg – I was not suggesting you made the wrong choice, I was suggesting that you almost certainly could give birth to a 4.7kg baby vaginally if given the right support and the right environment.

That’s bullshit.

As I’m sure georg will attest, a pelvis can only expand so far. History is littered with stories of women and babies dying precisely for that reason.

Rebekka, I appreciate what you’re saying, but in general the idea of something being “naturalâ€? and therefore good for you kinda gives me the creeps.

That’s not exactly what I was saying. I was saying medical intervention often happens for no good reason and does not improve outcomes.

If human knowledge and technology can make a labouring woman’s life easier, or healthier then that’s great.

Sure, no arguments. But often technology does exactly the opposite.

Forcing women to have procedures they aren’t comfortable with is one thing – assuming labour is the only area where human cleverness has nothing to offer is another.

Assuming human cleverness can improve on an extremely complex process honed by millions of years of evolution ain’t unproblematic neither.

Georg – I was not suggesting you made the wrong choice, I was suggesting that you almost certainly could give birth to a 4.7kg baby vaginally if given the right support and the right environment.

Lettersfromthefront – I was not making assumptions, Georg SAID she was induced – “30 hours of non-productive induced labour”