Currently there is a lot of buzz about our high cesarean section rate and trying to lower it. Why? Because the statistics are starting to bear out what many of us have been saying for years, that doing more cesareans doesn't mean better care or better results. Furthermore that moms are getting a tremendous amount of pressure from their doctors to have C-sections and that c-sections put moms at more risk with no improvement in benefits for babies. This video is a good explaination of current trends in our birth culture and medical practices. It goes on to show how these trends are effecting our cesarean section rates, maternal out-comes and baby out-comes.
My thoughts on the statistics coming out about c-sections:
What an outrage has been perpetrated on women yet again! The rising birth surgery rate in the last 10 years is an appalling abuse of power. This is just one more time in a long list of times when our society's views on women and it's values of pursuing science and money have blended with the male dominated medical model to put women in harms way. Women, just as other minorities within our culture, have been used and abused at the alter of the medical machine once again.
Young mother's today haven't grown up with the mantra, "Question Authority!" or the understanding of the true balance of power between men and women built into our system. They have grown up in a Hillary Clinton world where women like Meg Whitman appear to be able to have a firm grasp on the levers of power in the financial and political world. They don't understand that these women are an aberration. They are an illusion. In the world I live in thousands of women everyday are being lied to or at the very least subltly manipulated into turning their bodies over for someone else's monetary gain. And the propoganda is so good most of them have no idea what just happened to them. They actually believe that their rapists are their saviors. How sick is that? They arrive home dazed and in pain with only one clear thought, how grateful they are to their doctor for saving them and their baby.
I have one thing to say to young women today, "Wake up!! Stop drinking the kool-aid! Question Authority!" Just because Authority wears a white lab coat and has a degree behind the desk doesn't mean he or she has only your best interest at heart. Don't let yourself be a cog in the wheel of the great machine. Take a cue from your hippie sisters of the sixties and reclaim your right to your bodies and your births. You deserve it.
GET EDUCATED! WATCH THIS VIDEO: http://www.lamaze.org/OnlineCommunity/LamazeVideoLibrary/LamazeVideoPlayer/TabId/808/VideoId/4/Birth-By-The-Numbers.aspx
I'm with you Jennifer. I had a natural birth and it was the most amazing moment of my life. Doctors are trying to steal that joy from women just to protect themselves- against what I'm not sure. Doesn't it seem like a larger risk to engage in an elective surgery when you can simply work with the process perfected by someone a lot smarter and more powerful than any doctor, hospital or insurance company?
ReplyDeleteDoes it hurt to have natural birth - sure it does....but doesn't everything worth doing come with some pain. If you are healthy and your baby is healthy and the birthing process is proceeding along a positive path, go for the natural path - it is the biggest natural high you will ever feel. I felt like I could take my baby and walk home from the delivery room.
And how about recovery? When you deliver naturally, you can breastfeed your baby as soon as they enter our cold, scary world and comfort them instead of letting them get handled by a bunch of strangers. If it is all possible go your own way - the way we were designed to go and savor every moment of the natural birthing process. You will be SO glad you did.