Over a quarter of Births were C-section in 2007

eviltwin

BostonB wrote: »

I know about those problems I mean the back problems.

My point about them is that you can get back froblems from simply being pregnant full stop.

Epidurals are used in mainstream surgery so I would like to see what the feedback is from non pregnant patients who used them

My point is that no medical technique is without risks and some people will have good experiences, some will have bad

I was lucky in that I had an epidural and even though I had an old back injury it didnt have any adverse side effects..I appreciate other people aren't as lucky

BostonB

Khannie wrote: »

Oh hey...no problem at all. I probably misread you too. I find it very difficult to get tone across in written stuff.


In other news: Those (very low) figures for epidurals shock me. We went to a pre-natal class in the rotunda on our last baby for 2nd time mums (there was an 8 year gap, so a refresher was on the cards for us for sure ) and the woman there asked how many had had an epidural...most of the hands went up. Then she asked how many had had some back pain afterwards and a good chunk of the hands stayed up. Now I'm working off memory, and it was a small sample size and all the rest. We just both got a fright to be honest so it stuck with me.

I think iif you asked a class of men you'd get the same result. Back pain is very common.

A medical person would know that, so you have to ask why they would resort to shock tactics rather than just the pros and cons.

CathyMoran

eviltwin wrote: »

pregnancy in itself is hard on your back. its hard to know what level of backache after is down to the changes in the body or the epi. Lots of women who never took one report backache of some degree.

You should take a lot at the stats of people who use them for non pregnancy related ops like hip replacements as that might give a more accurate picture

I had an epi for surgery 2 years 8 months ago and while I did have back pain I did not associate it with epi but with the main parts of my surgery (part of my surgery involved cutting through some ribs), I will trust medical advice closer to the time...

Moonbeam

I was of the understanding that Ireland had a very high rate of epidural use much higher the alot of other countries.
I can't remember the stats off hand;)
I think the only way that I would have an epidural is if I needed an emergency c section.

Nevyn

I had the epi with both of mine, first one due to how long labour was and he'd a HUGE head, it was only for 4 hours and with in 6 hours of the birth I was up walking and not a bother on me.

I had hoped to do with out on my second but it was an induced birth as I was 10 days over, I stuck it out for as long as I could and only had the epi for about 3 and half hours.
Again with in less then 6 hours of the birth I was up and walking.

I haven't had back pain or issues from having the epi, I do have clicky hip due to a fall when I was 6 months preggers.

jimmyendless

Lets say the 25% =

1. Births which need a section to deliver the baby, complications etc,
2. Woman in Ireland are older having first child, bigger babies require c-section etc,
3. Mothers make the decision to have a c-section,
4. Doctors want the c-section,

What stuck me about the 25% was that woman's bodies are designed (among other things) to give birth naturally,(Course they were also designed to give birth from 15 onwards or whatever but that's a different story). Childbirth is supposed to work without cutting a hole in the mother. Making childbirth into some kind of surgical procedure should be unnecessary for the majority of mothers. Course if mothers would rather a C-section that is their own business but I just don't like the idea of them being carried out because the doctor would rather it. I don't even know if this happens anyway so until there is a survey on the reasons for each individual procedure we can only speculate the causes.

BostonB

So you reckon wheres doubt they should take a risk on a section, even if it raise the fatality rate and that of other problems? I mean would you take the risk of having a baby in a poor third world country just as to avoid a section?

eviltwin

jimmyendless wrote: »

Lets say the 25% =

1. Births which need a section to deliver the baby, complications etc,
2. Woman in Ireland are older having first child, bigger babies require c-section etc,
3. Mothers make the decision to have a c-section,
4. Doctors want the c-section,

What stuck me about the 25% was that woman's bodies are designed (among other things) to give birth naturally,(Course they were also designed to give birth from 15 onwards or whatever but that's a different story). Childbirth is supposed to work without cutting a hole in the mother. Making childbirth into some kind of surgical procedure should be unnecessary for the majority of mothers. Course if mothers would rather a C-section that is their own business but I just don't like the idea of them being carried out because the doctor would rather it. I don't even know if this happens anyway so until there is a survey on the reasons for each individual procedure we can only speculate the causes.

I agree. I'm all for sections if its the mothers choice but I don't like the idea of doctors making women think its the best or only option when it might not be the case. But we live in a sue nation so I can also see the medics point of view...I would rather err on the side of caution rather than have some lawsuit on my hands

ebmma

I remember reading that the majority of breech babies can be delivered naturally with a help of skilled midwife or skilled doctor.
There are tricks to it that aren't quite the same as of other deliveries.
But it is done so rarely, that there's practically no midwives or doctors skilled in this sort of delivery so women end up having sections.

hacked

eviltwin wrote: »

pregnancy in itself is hard on your back. its hard to know what level of backache after is down to the changes in the body or the epi. Lots of women who never took one report backache of some degree.

You should take a lot at the stats of people who use them for non pregnancy related ops like hip replacements as that might give a more accurate picture

As for other ops, I have never herd of people going on about back problems as a result. I truly beleive that there is far too much scare mongering about epidurals. I get the impression on a regular basis that a lot of people look down on women deciding to have the epi, and that doesn't seem right to me at all.

I've seen a lot of people have epidurlas and come out completely fine. The stats for serious back problems are incredibly low.

Like eviltwin has said, back problems come with pregnancy...and they don't go away just because you popped one out. I had an appointment with the p hysio yesterday and was told I should keep wearing the support belt I was given even after birth as the back pain can linger for a while.

Not to mention....epidural or not....just because you've numbed the whole area, doesn't mean the birth process isn't having an effect on your muscles! Now, I wouldn't know this first hand yet, but I can imagine your muscles would still be quite sore a few days-few weeks after giving birth!

ebmma

hacked wrote: »

As for other ops, I have never herd of people going on about back problems as a result. I truly beleive that there is far too much scare mongering about epidurals. I get the impression on a regular basis that a lot of people look down on women deciding to have the epi, and that doesn't seem right to me at all.

I've seen a lot of people have epidurlas and come out completely fine. The stats for serious back problems are incredibly low.

Like eviltwin has said, back problems come with pregnancy...and they don't go away just because you popped one out. I had an appointment with the p hysio yesterday and was told I should keep wearing the support belt I was given even after birth as the back pain can linger for a while.

Not to mention....epidural or not....just because you've numbed the whole area, doesn't mean the birth process isn't having an effect on your muscles! Now, I wouldn't know this first hand yet, but I can imagine your muscles would still be quite sore a few days-few weeks after giving birth!

I think it is about real risk versus perceived risk.
Kind of like with vaccinations - the risk of side effects is incredibly small, but some parents choose not to vaccinate because they are afraid that even with a very small risk it can affect their kid.

Real risk from epi is not too great, but some people are just uncomfortable with the idea of needles near their spine. (there are other side effects, but I think that's the main one)

Imo, in most cases epi is an unnecessary intervention and should be avoided. However if there's a problem, say, prolonged labour and can't cope anymore, spinal block for c-section, then it is a necessary intervention and I would view the risks differently.

Similarly, I won't take painkillers at the 1st sign of a headache, I will lie down instead. But if I'm having a migraine, I'm definitely having painkillers.

hope I'm making sense

Nevyn

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/09/anti-natal-second-child-caesarean

Caesareans are not the posh option

In a belated sign-off to her Anti-natal column, Zoe Williams describes how things didn't go quite so smoothly the second time around


So Harper was born on 5 August. She turned out not to be a boy. She did not pop out like a wet piglet. She is a lovely looking thing, though I have to admit she does look a bit like a boy. In knitwear, she looks like Gordon Ramsay in a matinee jacket. Never mention this to her.

I promise this is the last labour story you will ever hear from me: of course I totally jinxed myself by going on and on and on about wanting an epidural, as though it was a given that I was such an old hand, such a natural at this sort of thing, that nothing could go wrong and my only conceivable worry would be pain relief. (My stepmother, a week before, gestured towards my beam area and said, "If that wasn't built for childbirth, I don't know what was." And so convinced was I that it would all go swimmingly, I forgot even to be cross with her. Well, of course I'm cross with her now: there's no expiry date on this kind of thing.)

As if all that wasn't jinx enough, I had a pedicure, and my best friend J said, "You're not supposed to do that when you're about to have a baby." I blithely came back with, "That's only so they can check that your toes aren't blue if you have an emergency caesarean and an anaesthetic," like that was an absurd course of events and only a total incompetent would ever embark upon it. She did give me a look which said – if I'm not misremembering the translation – "Are you absolutely sure you want to be such an arse?"

Sure enough, a week later, there I was with my fancy toes and three surgeons removing a baby from the not-designated exit. Ladies, caesareans are not the posh option. That whole too-posh-to-push thing is nuts; it is no less insane than saying, "I am too posh to have sex. I would rather be stabbed in my kidney." I have done it both ways, and I tell you from the bottom of my heart, with absolutely no new-age backwash about natural childbirth being beautiful (it really isn't), the c-section is a savagely weird operation. It leaves you with pains so systemic and mysterious that you spend the next two weeks wondering whether they remembered to put both your kidneys back in. And the scar isn't even straight, it's curved like a hideous smile. If I stuck two fish eyes on to my stomach, I could sell my body for Halloween.

The morning after, the obstetrician came round. I think he had mistaken me for an old hippy who wanted a homebirth – perhaps because I am old – because he quite sternly said, "This delivery never would have happened naturally. If you'd been at home, you would have been in real trouble."

"I never wanted her at home," I replied. "Pretty much the only thing to be said for this whole performance is that my waters didn't break on my own carpet." "Really?" he said, diverted momentarily from the tedium of his rounds by the possibility that I might be mad. "The only thing?" "Well, no, no," I corrected, "the only thing apart from this beautiful baby." And she is beautiful. Little Gordonella.

People say one of two things about their second child – either it's much, much easier, or it's much, much harder (you'll notice nobody ever says "It's the same as having one, except there are two . . . think of the difference between a hamburger and a Quarter Pounder." Understatement. That's the first thing you lose, upon becoming a parent.) I can settle this, of course: one minute it's a million times easier, the next minute it's a million times harder. Leaving hospital was easier, and driving home was a lot faster. All that business where you think strangers will probably try to steal your baby, and you drive at 10mph and you have to keep stopping in case there's carbon monoxide poisoning in the back of the vehicle . . . you don't get that the second time. And that's what is so toweringly difficult the first time, when you have spent your whole life thinking, gah, what's the worst that could happen? and suddenly you're thinking the worst? The worst is that he could choke on the top popper of his babygrow, and then I would have to kill myself, but because everybody would know I wanted to commit suicide I would have to find some incredibly fast and foolproof way of doing it. I'd probably have to get a gun . . . So that means getting a gun licence. So I'd have to join a gun club . . . Right, I could save myself some time by joining a gun club now . . .

It's surprisingly time consuming, making the transition from carefree to neurotic. But once you've done it, at least you don't have to do it twice.

Arriving home was harder. You tell yourself a load of bollocks while you're pregnant, about how the oldest one will take it. I took the view that T's emotional range would be circumscribed by his limited language ("Mummy", "Daddy", "Spot" and "toot toot", plus the times he said complicated things such as "remote control" and nobody believed me). He wouldn't know what "dethroned" and "supplanted" and "total stab in the back" even meant. It didn't work quite like that. Apparently, the human consciousness doesn't need a large vocabulary to notice that a new sibling isn't the untrammelled boon it's billed as. That bit is terrible. It's absolutely hideous watching disappointment on a first-born's face, even though I did read once that the whole aim of parenting was to introduce successive disappointments in an age-appropriate way, so that you were able, finally, to present the world with an adult who had been wholly disappointed, from every angle, by everything.

From a practical point of view, I guess the second one is easier – we have all the hardware and the brightly coloured plastic, and the house is full of very loud, stimulating noises. First-borns are swindled out of consumer options because their parents only * notice what they need precisely two weeks after they needed it. I would think it's more fun to be a second-born. What would have been good, as well as the blankets and Whoozits and socks, would be if I had retained any practical memories from last time, and assembled them into a skill set. I can't remember anything about babies: how to hold one, how to dress one, when you are meant to start giving them a bath, how long they can get away with a babygrow rather than an outfit, when they lose their chin-dimple (do they ever? Gordon Ramsay didn't) . . .

I had forgotten that funny, flickering smile they do when they're asleep, and the way they punch the air like Superbaby when they have finished eating, and throw their little heads back like they're drunk. I have totally forgotten how to breastfeed in public without taking all my clothes off; I have lost all that elaborate origami where your baby has latched on without anybody seeing anything (now I am asking myself what the chances are that I ever mastered that). I've forgotten that when you have a newborn, and you see a four-month-old, there is a lunatic but very audible part of you saying "I never want her to get that big, I want her to stay like this forever," even though she now has milk spots on every visible inch of skin, and truthfully, the people you think want to cuddle her are rearing away.

I have this distant memory of landmarks – such as the first time I tried to make T sleep in the evening or sleep in a cot – but I can't remember, even vaguely, when these landmarks occurred; they could have been at six weeks or six months. This is no more use to me than any of the other rubbish I have filled my head with – the plot of The Bodyguard or how to stain a boiled egg with the imprint of a primrose.

It's bittersweet this time around because I know I'll never see this phase again, and I know how short it is. I have set up this mournful counting-chorus – "This is the last time I will ever have a four-day-old baby, and now, it's the last time I'll ever have a five-day-old baby" etc. You spend so much time worrying about the tiny baby stage, with its amazing range of terrible things that can happen, followed by the mountain of things that don't sound terrible but in fact are (eczema, colic, a tongue tie, a highly strung or frightened nature – it all sounds pretty trivial, I imagine, but this is the stuff that ravages households) that you forget that when nothing does go wrong, it's quite magical and dreamlike. And then, almost immediately, it's over. They stop smelling of baby and start smelling of frankfurters, and life resumes, with another person in it. The more you tell yourself to appreciate the beginning bit, the more you blot it out with the regret of its passing.

Unless you have three, that is. Which I'm definitely not gonna. Tomorrow I'm going to get myself spayed.

metrovelvet

jimmyendless wrote: »

Lets say the 25% =

1. Births which need a section to deliver the baby, complications etc,
2. Woman in Ireland are older having first child, bigger babies require c-section etc,
3. Mothers make the decision to have a c-section,
4. Doctors want the c-section,

What stuck me about the 25% was that woman's bodies are designed (among other things) to give birth naturally,(Course they were also designed to give birth from 15 onwards or whatever but that's a different story). Childbirth is supposed to work without cutting a hole in the mother. Making childbirth into some kind of surgical procedure should be unnecessary for the majority of mothers. Course if mothers would rather a C-section that is their own business but I just don't like the idea of them being carried out because the doctor would rather it. I don't even know if this happens anyway so until there is a survey on the reasons for each individual procedure we can only speculate the causes.

You didnt know that women are not to be trusted? Not even with their own bodies?

3DataModem

Khannie wrote: »

I'm guessing that in poorer countries (which have larger populations) the percentage of births by section is much lower. 25% seems way OTT to me.

Yes, in poorer countries maternal and neonatal mortality is A LOT higher - sometimes as high as 20%.

In the "old days" when a mother has a transverse baby and was under-dilated she simply died with her child of blood loss.