C-Sections
Rates of Caesarean sections are climbing, according to a Time magazine article that raises more questions than it answers:
Rates of C-sections have been climbing each year in the past decade in the U.S., reaching a record high of 31% of all live births in 2006. That’s a 50% increase since 1996. Around the world, the procedure is becoming even more common: in certain hospitals in Brazil, fully 80% of babies are delivered by caesarean. How did a procedure originally intended as an emergency measure become so popular? And is the trend a bad thing?
After Mykala described the ripping and tearing that can happen (ouch ouch ouch), I never really thought about childbirth the same. Compare a woman giving birth (the incredible pain, physical trauma, etc.) to an animal giving birth… I mean baby giraffes literally fall out and everybody keeps on truckin’. Anything that gives the mother more options is a good thing, as far as I can tell, as clearly the “natural” way needs some improvement. Keep in mind that the “natural” way also used to involve dying of all sorts of infectious diseases or making it to 40-something on average.
I wonder if any social stigma around preemptively choosing a C-section was an attempt by the author to fabricate conflict for this article.
Comments
Mykala
The social stigma was definitely not fabricated to create conflict: it exists in a very real way, and I’ve often wondered about it myself. I’m not sure if it’s an “old school” v. “new school” kind of thing, or if it’s just that penciling in your delivery in your day planner, never experiencing labor pains or contractions, and having a baby in “30 minutes or your money back” is frowned upon much in the same way as other extraneous modern conveniences. Yes, there are certainly instances when C-sections are necessary for the health of both mother and child, but I think for preemptive cases it becomes an entirely different case. It seems like just another way to take something natural and beautiful (and sometimes very painful and LONG…) and remove the anticipation, the uncertainty, the “messiness” of real life.
I haven’t really decided either way on this one. I guess I just imagine the kind of girls who get boob jobs as graduation gifts to be the ones to schedule their childbirths (probably because vaginal birth is “yucky”…), so maybe when I hear of more people I actually know weighing out this option I’ll be able to form a real opinion. Regardless, I don’t think the author of this article fabricated anything. But I do agree that it raised more questions than it answered.
Thanks, Alex!
Sam
C-sections and induced labor seem to be the norm these days. No expert, just an observation. Seems to be a matter of convenience? Just not sure for whom.