Essential C-Section Guide Pain Control, Healing at Home, Getting Your Body Back and Everything Else You Need to Know About a Cesarean Birth

Chapter 1 Why a Cesarean? "'Don't cut her open, she's not numb!' I heard the anesthesiologist yell to my OB as a team of nurses rushed me down the hall toward an operating room. 'Wait, wait, wait!' was all I could think, so stunned that I couldn't even speak. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. 'But I'm barely in labor,' I managed to say before the anesthesiologist placed a mask over my face and instructed me to breathe. He counted to three and the lights went out. When I woke up later, it was to the news that my newborn son was on life support." That was how one of our perfect and perfectly uneventful pregnancies (Dana's) ended. In a matter of minutes, labor shifted from ordinary to potentially disastrous and an emergency Cesarean became necessary. Even though we had completely different experiences with our first Cesareans--Maureen labored for nine hours, pushing for two and a half of them, before it became clear that her son Jack wasn't going to come out any way but through her belly--there were many similar themes. We each had "normal," healthy pregnancies; we both felt very prepared for labor by the end of our childbirth classes; and neither of us even considered the possibility that we would have Cesareans. In the weeks after our babies' births, when we were home and well on the road to recovery following the surgery, we both felt an overwhelming sense of failure. "Why me?" and "What did I do wrong?" were questions we asked ourselves for months. Making Sense of the Statistics With the benefit of hindsight, we know that our Cesarean deliveries weren't the result of anything we did--or didn't do. But very few pregnant women (at least those who are not carrying multiples or have certain medical conditions) plan even for the possibility that they will give birth via c-section. More of us should; the odds that a baby born in the United States will be delivered via Cesarean are more than one in four, 26.1 percent to be exact; 18 percent of the Cesareans performed in 2002 were primary, that is, performed on women who had not had a previous Cesarean delivery. During the past few years, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding these statistics. A number of healthcare providers, including some OB/GYNs, believe that the Cesarean birth rate in the United States is too high and, in many cases, that surgical deliveries are unnecessary. "We have turned childbirth into a medical procedure," is a frequent refrain. While we certainly don't believe that a Cesarean is the ideal way to give birth--and we would never encourage anyone to request a c-section for the sake of convenience--neither should women who have one feel that their birth experience is anything but extraordinary. Childbirth by Cesarean is still childbirth. It's also worth noting one fact that is rarely brought up by the media: medical advances during the last several decades have made c-section surgery much safer, so today many physicians will opt for a Cesarean birth well before the situation becomes desperate. The fact that the technique now used in about 90 percent of all c-sections--called a "low transverse" incision--has fewer complications than the vertical incision that was used for many years is one reason. This refined surgical technique has made it possible for women to attempt a vaginal birth after Cesarean (called a VBAC) in subsequent pregnancies. This makes some physicians less reluctant to perform a Cesarean on a first-time mom. Another reason is developments in anesthesia. Namely, that a regional anesthetic can be used 90 percent of the time, rather than a general, which lowers the risk of complication and death from anesthesia. Now there also are a variety of antibiotics that protect against postoperative infection, which was a substantial risk historically associated with Cesarean deConnolly, Maureen is the author of 'Essential C-Section Guide Pain Control, Healing at Home, Getting Your Body Back and Everything Else You Need to Know About a Cesarean Birth', published 2004 under ISBN 9780767916073 and ISBN 0767916077.