Cesarean Birth

The best policy on Cesarean birth is prevention. I believe that American women would be best served by the Midwifery model for maternity care then the heavily medicalized version we have subscribed to over the past century. Most American women don't realize how different our maternity system is here compared to other modern countries who keep their cesarean rates under 10%.

Our current system has resulted in a cesarean rate of 29.1% (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2005) and an increasing number of women who are traumatized by their birth experience. Hospitals have not made birth safer for mothers or babies. We've been trying to fix a broken system for half a century.

The fix is in. As long as doctors and the powerful money behind our current model reject the midwifery model for maternity care and continue to treat pregnancy as an illness rather than the inherently natural condition it is the system will continue to fail American women. A mother astutely observes that, "There are many rackets in America but the one I find most offensive is "Medicalized Childbirth". The money that is made by the medical community from complicated birth and cesarean sections fuels the miss use of these interventions and women and babies reap the consequences. Before you just accept these medical interventions as necessary research the connection between common medical interventions and cesarean rates in the U.S. Remember when it comes to caesareans prevention is key, and yes in large part they can be prevented.

For those who have already suffered the consequence and who are told that they cannot have a natural birth after a cesarean I would say find another doctor there are doctors who are willing to do this and women are having successful VBAC’s every day. (See my article on VBAC’s to learn more about this issue) For example, a mother I know had a c-section with her first baby because she was told that her pelvis was too small to birth her 9 lb. baby boy. After the birth of her son by cesarean her doctor told her she would not be able to have a baby vaginally, but because this mother had friends in the natural birth community she sought another opinion. The doctor she found was known for his positive position on VBAC’s, he asked her if they had ever done an official measurement of her pelvis which they had not, he measured her and found that her pelvis was perfectly ample and that she would be able to have her next baby naturally. Since then she has naturally birthed five healthy babies with no complications. This is just one story of many like it that should convince women to question what their doctors say and make sure they are receiving the best medical advice.