To staceyjw: Reply-Turned-Post

staceyjw left a comment on a post I previously had a link to in my list of "favorite posts" in my sidebar, which prior to receiving this comment, I hadn't updated in a very long time.  I have now updated the list, and chose to no longer include that post, because I feel it no longer reflects the direction of this blog, and I have more recent posts that are "more favorite" for me currently.

The post, published October 23, 2010, was called Elective Cesareans as Commentary on a Failed Birth Model.  In it, I explored one woman's writing about her view of the choice of cesarean vs. vaginal birth, and how her assumptions about vaginal birth, which, in my opinion, were largely informed by our culture's negative image of childbirth and common obstetric practices that are often seen as dehumanizing, appeared to color her view.  I contrasted that with the view of birth held by the natural childbirth community, suggesting that perhaps if our system could make vaginal birth a better experience for the majority of women, perhaps less women would request cesareans.

This is the comment:

You don't have to think VB is dehumanizing or rape like to prefer the risks and recovery from a surgery to the risks and recovery from a VB. Sure, VB can go well, but when it doesn't, it can be very damaging (NCB or not, it happens). Personally, I would trade a belly scar and ab pain for vaginal pain and possible damage anyway. This doesn't mean we see "modern" VB as horrible, or anything else, just that when looking at all the ways to birth, we prefer one to the other.

This is because many Moms, including myself, see the actual arrival of our child as the life changing event- the act of becoming a parent, welcoming a new member of the family and enlarging our hearts with another human to love. How the baby gets out/into the family is irrelevant. I dont have to push a baby out my vagina to be a Mom! Focusing on a biological act to make a woman/Mom is also the very antithesis of feminism.

By focusing on VB as a "rite of passage", instead of the actual arrival of the baby (or child, in adoption) you cause a lot of hurt to Moms who didn't VB. This is not necessary, as women have enough to deal with without creating a distinction between Vb and CS, adoption, surrogacy as a way to parent.

Here is my response:

In this post, I was responding to the view of vaginal birth expressed in the Pregnancy Zone article.  I was disturbed by the way the author described vaginal birth, and it did sound very negative and verging on sexual assault to me. I do think that particular writer's negative view of vaginal birth was largely formed by the negative image of vaginal birth in our culture and common medical practices that disrespect women. Obviously, each woman is different, and each woman's reasons for her birth choices are going to be different as well, so your reasons for your choices will be different from hers.

You are right that vaginal birth does sometimes cause serious vaginal damage.  I don't deny that.  With good care, though, it is relatively rare, just like serious complications from c-sections (that some of us NCB people are so afraid of) are also rare.

I understand what you are saying about the arrival of the child being the significant, life-changing event.  I also believe that welcoming a child into your family is always special and sacred, no matter how it happens.  I have problems with saying that the baby getting there is all that matters, because that is hurtful to all the women who are traumatized by the way they are treated while giving birth.  Mistreating a women is never okay, even if you hand her a healthy baby at the end of it.  I do believe that the process by which a woman brings her baby into her family matters a great deal.  I do not, however, believe that there is only one correct way to go about it.  If you read my post Why Natural Childbirth is Not Important, you will see that I feel that  going through the literal biological process of natural birth or vaginal birth is not as important as being an informed participant in the process of a birth (which can also extend into other methods of acquiring a child).  I was referring mostly to medically necessary cesareans in that post, but it also applies to elective cesearans.  Only you know your body, your priorities, and your circumstances, and only you can make the best decision for you. 

The way you have interpreted my use of the term "rite of passage," will lead me to use a lot more care in how I use that term in the future.  There are some who believe women who do not experience natural childbirth will not be as good of mothers for not having gone through that experience.  I may also have believed this in the past, but I was wrong.  Just because one woman feels a certain experience was important or necessary to her development as a mother does not mean all women have to have that same experience to become a mother.  We are all different and all of our "rites of passage" into motherhood will be unique.  I believe that God gives us each individual experiences that best help us learn and grow in our own individual ways.  I feel that whatever you go through to get your child is your rite of passage into motherhood.  For some women, the rite of passage will be adoption or surrogacy--which are often very long and difficult journeys.  For one woman the rite of passage is joyfully pushing her baby out with an epidural, for another it is choosing a cesarean as her preferred method of birth, and for another it may be having an unmedicated birth.

Many women have described their unmedicated birth experiences as significant self-discovery journeys, that made their baby's arrival into their life special in a way that was right for them.  You may feel it wouldn't have be an awesome experience for you to give birth that way, and not all women who give birth unmedicated feel that way about it, but that shouldn't lessen the experience for the women who do.  A woman may feel giving birth on their own terms, without feeling powerless to authority figures or controlled by an obstetric system (that many feel is patriarchal), was an important part of her life, motherhood (and possibly feminist) journey.  Another may feel that having experienced the intensity of unmedicated birth is something she can draw strength from in the future.  Another woman may feel that giving birth naturally brought her closer to God.  To say that there is never value in the experience of natural birth is to discredit these women's experiences.  Not every woman wants or needs that experience for her personal growth, but those who choose it should be free to attach whatever personal significance to it that they see in it.  Seeing significance in the journey of birth doesn't take away from the joy of welcoming a child into your home, not any more than appreciating personal growth one might achieve through a challenging adoption journey would take away from that joy.  It is not a one-or-the-other choice between appreciating the process and the product.

And for some women, the process has nothing to do with it.  Some women will define their transformation into "motherhood" as being completely unrelated to it.  I understand not caring about how the baby gets there.  I used to say I was sure I wanted all the drugs I could get.  My own paradigm shift was more about the belief that it would be safer to avoid drugs and procedures as long as there weren't complications (I do still believe this, and it would take a lot to change my mind) than it was about wanting some great experience.  However, learning that it is possible to have a joyful, empowering experience birthing naturally, and that it wasn't necessarily the horrific ordeal I always assumed it would be was also part of it.  Attempting to birth without pain medication in my first birth turned out to be harder than I expected, and I chose to have an epidural.  For my second birth, I used hypnosis (Hypnobabies, which I now teach), and it helped me increase my endorphins and think of the sensations I was feeling in a positive light.  It allowed me to remain mobile when I wanted to be, and feel connected to what was happening as my baby emerged, which was important to me.  I was overall, really happy with the experience, and felt I learned a lot from it about my strength and the power of my mind, just like I learned a lot about being flexible and accepting change in my first birth.  Both birth experiences were different, both were significant learning experiences for me, neither was superior to the other, and I don't think either gives me any advantage over any other woman--we all have different needs for our growth.

I admit that I have difficulty wrapping my head around the idea of a woman wanting to choose a cesarean without a medical reason.  I know this is because of things in my background that influence my perception of the choice.  It has to do with my faith--my belief that vaginal birth is God's design, as well as my desire to have the option of having a large family for religious reasons (since having cesareans is likely to limit how many children a woman can have), my lack of experience with major surgery, and yes, my history of exposure to natural childbirth literature.  But I recognize that you may have a different background, beliefs, and life priorities than I do.

I take your point and I apologize, for myself and the rest of the natural birth community (though I guess I don't really have the right to speak for anyone else) for hurt feelings caused by the idea that there is any best way for all women to become mothers.  There may be a best way for me to welcome my child (and that "best way" may not be the same for each child--it hasn't been for me so far), but what is best for me and my baby may not be best for another mother and hers.  I will do my best in the future to avoid talking about vaginal birth or unmedicated birth in ways that are hurtful to those who do not have those experiences.

Elective Cesareans as Commentary on a Failed Birth Model

A recent article out of Australia, Fear of natural birth driving one in three mothers to cesarean, addresses the issue of maternal request cesareans. I feel that this article misrepresents the issue by placing so much of the burden of rising cesarean rates on maternal request. The author doesn't site a source for the "research" that supposedly supports this, but research can be misleading in what they categorize as "elective cesareans." Sometimes such cesareans are actually "doctor unofficially recommended" cesareans and not "maternal request." Also, elective repeat cesareans are different from elective primary cesareans because of the factor of having a uterine scar. However, there are women out there, while I don't know how few or how many, who do actually request their first cesarean.

While I have strong opinions about what constitutes safe childbirth, I respect the rights of all women to make their own choices about their births. It appears that in reaction to the strong natural childbirth presence on the internet (where many women get support that they do not get from their doctors, families, or local girlfriends), there are now websites with the purpose of promoting elective cesareans as a viable birth choice.

Many birth advocates (perhaps myself not exempt) are guilty of using fear of cesareans as a springboard. I realize that most of the stuff out there is attempting to dissolve some of the fear that surrounds c-sections, and I don't really have a problem with that. I would prefer for women for whom the benefits of having a c-section clearly outweigh the risks to be able to go into their cesarean birth without fear. As I have said before, I am all for lessening fear in all types of birth. However, what good does it do to attempt to make vaginal birth sound scary in order to make c-sections sound less scary?

The September 2009 opinion piece at Pregnancy Zone, The Benefits of A Cesarean Section Delivery, which one of my friends at an online community recently shared, is one such attempt. The article was bombarded by comments from women who disagreed with the point of view of the author and criticized her approach of using generalized claims without evidence to support them. I think the two sides of this argument are starting out with different basic assumptions that prevent them from effectively communicating with each other.

The author of the article is assuming that the alternative to a cesarean section is the typical medical model hospital birth. On the other hand, most of her opponents are likely working from very different construct of "vaginal birth" (such lack of understanding is quite common in internet mommy wars). I'm not going to argue about whether the claims made in the piece are true, but rather to look at her characterization of vaginal birth and what that says about our maternity care model and birth culture.

In the "No Labor Pain" section she brings up three kinds of pain associated with vaginal birth: contractions, perineal stitches, and hemorrhoids. When discussing contractions, she assumes that all women see birth as a necessary evil to get over with in order to get a baby. She compares being in labor to recovering from surgery. She assumes that "most" women receive episiotomies (and don't have a choice in the matter) and seems to feel that stitches in the abdomen are preferable to stitches in the perineum. Even without episiotomy, there are a lot of women who assume tearing is inevitable. The author also assumes that hemorrhoids are common in vaginal birth. So, in this author's view, a woman who has a vaginal birth not only has "labor pain" but also a painful, messy recovery involving a sensitive area.

The "Dignity and Privacy" section assumes that all women giving birth are dehumanized and violated, mentioning the presence of a multitude of medical strangers doing vaginal exams and being in a "less than flattering position for any number of hours." At best, this birth sounds like pseudo-surgery, and at worst like sexual assault and torture. No wonder women want to be disconnected from this.

What does the fact that there are women who view vaginal hospital birth as less desirable than cesarean surgery say about how our system treats vaginal birth? Has our system really made birth so clinical, unknown, and scary that major abdominal surgery sounds preferable to a normal human process?

If birth is just a clinical baby extraction, it does make sense that women would prefer to do it through their bellies instead of their vaginas. But this doesn't make sense to women who see labor as a rite of passage, a challenge to rise to, or even a joyful experience that doesn't have to be painful. Natural birth advocates know that with the right kind of care, vaginal birth with an intact perineum or with very minimal tearing is very possible and that vaginal birth doesn't have to permanently damage the vagina. For women who understand humanized birth, it is sad to realize that women think vaginal birth has to be demeaning and rape-like. With sensitive, respectful care, when women choose their own labor positions and choose when they have vaginal exams (or not to have them at all), vaginal birth can be dignified, private, and even empowering.

Perhaps the question physicians should be asking themselves is not, Should we perform cesareans at a womans's request? but, What have we done to vaginal birth to cause women to request cesareans?

Passing knowledge on to the next generation

Photo by Jordan Gillespie.

This is a photo of four generations of women (left to right: my daughter, me, my mother, and my grandmother) taken at my grandparents' 50th wedding Anniversary this summer.

I've been thinking about how sometimes our choices impact future generations. There has been a lot of talk about circumcision lately, due to reports that the circumcision rate has dropped drastically over the past four years. The vulnerability of circumcised men is one of the reasons that circumcision has been perpetuated from generation to generation in America.

Interestingly, both my husband's and my parents, having children in the '80s when the circumcision rates in the U.S. were somewhere around 80%, broke with this particular tradition. After recently reading an article that discussed how circumcision affects sexuality, I feel that I am lucky that my mother-in-law chose to stick with what was normal in the culture she grew up in, regardless of the culture she was living in at the time. My in-laws' decision made the decision to keep our son intact very easy. The more people stop circumcision in their own families, the faster the custom of non-religious routine infant circumcision will end, since circumcised adult males are some of the biggest propagators of circumcision myths, (for reasons explained in the piece on vulnerability linked above).

I've been thinking about other things mothers can do to benefit future generations. My own mother had a beautiful birth journey. Her first was born by induction for term PROM (sound familiar?) with an epidural and forceps. She had hoped to avoid interventions because she didn't have health insurance, but she was birthing at a hospital and with a doctor both still known for being very medical model (and her doctor was still praciting when I had my daughter in that same town, though I went to a different hospital). Her other three she was able to have less medicalized experiences, using shots of narcotics for two of them and having a drug free birth with her fourth and final birth. Her two youngest were caught by nurse-midwives.

I did not know any of this until I was about 7 to 8 months pregnant with my first and told my parents I had decided I wanted a natural birth and was considering switching to a group of nurse-midwives. My mom had never mentioned her birth experiences to me. I never knew she'd had a bad experience with an induction and epidural or that she had a natural birth. I would have been nice to have grown up knowing that natural childbirth was not something to be feared, that there were women who still "do" natural childbirth, and my mother is one of them. I don't begrudge the journey I've taken myself, it is part of what feeds my fire, but I have a dream for my own children.

My dream is that my daughter (and any sisters that may come along) will grow up knowing that birth is not something she needs to fear--I hope she will know that her experiences giving birth matter, that birth can be a special experience for a woman. I hope that she will respect the amazing power her body to create life, and to celebrate it.

I hope my son (and any brothers that may come along) will understand the importance of supporting his future wife's intuition and helping her find her inner strength in her preparation for the births of their children

"Mothers who have fears also hand down fearful attitudes about birth to daughters--and to every other woman who will listen. But each woman who gains the confidence to birth as unhindered or freely as her biological circumstances will allow--she will go on to encourage her sisters and daughters with birth words and images which resound with all the potential strength and beauty of birth." --Jan Tritten

If not my children, perhaps my grandchildren, will live in a world where fear of birth is not the dominant attitude; a society where the medical world provides support and back-up for the natural process of childbirth; a world where all women are confident in their ability to give birth.


(to learn more about circumcision and intact males, see birthnaturally.org's consumer information on circumcision and peaceful parenting's prepuce and circumcision resources)

2009 Washington State Cesarean Rates

The Unnecessarean posted the 2009 Washington State Cesarean Rates by Hospital today. The hospitals in my area are actually doing really well. Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital has the lowest rate on the list (not including hospitals that only had one or two births in the year because they don't have labor and delivery departments) at 16.8%, and Toppenish Community Hospital (where I had my son, even though it is farther way, for insurance reasons) is the second lowest, at 17.6%.. I mentioned a few reasons why I think the rates here are so good here in the comments. The factors that influence cesarean rates in hospitals are complex, and the cesarean rate is one measure of how well maternity care is doing in an area. Although the hospitals here are very good, this community can definitely use some improvement in options for childbirth education and birth location, since the hospitals pretty much have a monopoly on both right now. The data did not list the rates for homebirths or birth centers. It's not really fair to compare hospitals whose communities have very few out-of-hospital options to hospitals that have abundant ones--because having out-of-hospital options takes away some of the vaginal births from the hospital's stats. Higher c-section rates in hospitals were there are out-of-hospital births in the area is to be expected. If the data included out-of-hospital births in areas like Seattle, I think it is likely the overall rate for the state would have been lowerl.

"Let them to this and not fear"

I always love reading about traditions of childbirth in various cultures. I have yet to see anything in a natural childbirth book about birth in the traditional South Pacific. My Mother-In-Law is a Tahitian native (now a naturalized American citizen). She had seven natural childbirths before trying the epidural with her last two to see what all the fuss about epidural was about. She was my doula for my daughter's birth. I decided to do some searching on the internet about childbirth in Tahiti, and I found this beautiful passage from the book The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander.

When asked about childbirth in his country, Bligh answered as well as he was able, and enquired in turn how this was done in Tahiti. Queen Iddeeah replied by mimicking a woman in labour, squatting comfortably to her heels between the protective arms of a male attendant who stroked her belly. Iddeeah was vastly amused on learning of the difficulties of Pretanee's women. 'Let them to this and not fear,' she told Bligh, who appears to have been persuaded by this tender pantomime.

I love Queen Iddeeah was "vastly amused" learning how difficult Western women had made childbirth. It appears that she demonstrated a "supported upright position with light touch massage," but all she knew was that this is the technique women on the islands found most comfortable and efficient for birthing. They didn't need a randomized controlled trial of upright verses lying positions or a book on anatomy of the uterus to know about this, they just knew it.

I can't completely know what she meant by "Let them to this and not fear," perhaps that the Tahitian method of birthing would help women not fear birth or that if they used this method and were not afraid, their births would go better. Either way, I agree with her.

This is the first mention I've come across of traditional cultures involving men in the birth process. Most other stories feature women birthing with other women or alone. Even in Western culture, birth was the domain of women until doctors came on the scene. Apparently this was not the case in Tahiti.

Perhaps part of why my husband was good at supporting me during my births is that it's in his blood?