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Natural Birth
stahlop
member
Depressed about friend's c-sections
stahlop
member
There have been 4 of us who were pregnant this year (including myself) and the other 3 all ended up with c-sections. Now, 2 of them I truly believe needed them. One was running a high fever and her blood pressure was shooting through the roof throughout her labor. She tried to push as much as she could (I think she was at a 10 pushing for 3 hours) but it just wasn't happening. With the other one the baby was footling breech and the cord was wrapped around his neck, arm and leg (she really wanted a vaginal birth). So those 2 I'm okay with. The other one was basically told she was too small to have a vaginal birth (she's Thai), which I don't believe for a minute. Even though some of these c-sections were warranted, it's depressing that out of the 4 of us, 75% of my friends had to have a c-section. Since the average is 34%, I fully expected only one person to need one.
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Re: Depressed about friend's c-sections
I'd say half of the people I know who have had babies in the past year have had c-sections and I've been disappointed, too. What seems even worse to me is that the people who have had vaginal births have been mostly disappointed with their care.
I think I've had the easiest experience of anyone I've talked to and even I had nurses yelling at me, telling me "I got what I asked for" and taking the baby out of my sight without mentioning that he was ok, or everything was normal, or even *he's breathing* right after birth.
I am so confused as to what this has to do with you. If your friends were hurt by their experience, be supportive. If they are okay with it, be supportive. Either way it is not something for YOU to be depressed about. And it certainly isn't up to YOU whether they should have had a cesarean or not. For goodness sake!
Now, if you want to talk about the overall rate of cesareans and the necessity of working with the medical community to reduce that rate, go for it. But to judge your friends and their decisions and in turn to have it depress you is going rather far.
I hope you haven't used phrases like "didn't know any better" around your friend. =/
What's really depressing to me is that not every woman has a provider who believes in her abilities and whose judgment can be trusted completely. And that not every woman has someone to be her advocate, or the knowledge or the confidence to advocate for herself.
I don't think you're judging your friend whose c-section you believe was unnecessary, but it would probably come across that way to her, especially if she has mixed feelings about her experience.
This. Keep in mind that several members of this board have had c-sections. My c-section baby was" too big"also. Am I uneducated? No, and I am the senior V.P. of a global corporation. But these credentials flew out the window after 14 hours of unmedicated back labor, a false growth estimate, a stern lecture about how a vaginal birth would pose serious threat to my baby, and a recommendation that was against ACOG guidelines. If my intervention free birth center vbac goes as planned I will be thankful for what I didn't know the first time. Had my DD been born vaginaly I would never have considered options outside of the hospital/epi routine birth. I'm really excited for this upcoming birth but getting here has been a progression and it wouldn't have been right for me the first time.
Statistics don't work like that...if you and your friends are all pregnant at the same time it's (obviously) not guaranteed that 1 out of 4 of you will have a c-section and the rest will have uncomplicated vaginal births. They take a wide variety of factors into account and look at entire populations, not small groups of friends.
I'm guessing you're just hormonal, because it's nothing to feel depressed about. Your feelings on their births really don't come into play so I hope you're keeping them to yourself around them.
I'm disappointed my friend that just had a baby ended up with a c-section. So is she. It's called "empathy" for me to feel that way. Yes, she needed it and it was the best thing for mom and baby, but she really wanted a natural birth with her midwife and she didn't get it. I wanted to be able to talk about her birth story... and really, it's not the same for us to talk about it now. She thinks of my birth as a fairy tale she was cheated out of by crappy circumstance.
I'm not really sure when empathy became wrong.
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This exactly. I think people are taking this post the wrong way. It is upsetting that the c-section rate in the US is so much higher than the international standard and that so many women are lied to and told they need a c-section when in reality it is being done for the doctor's convenience. C-sections are a wonderful thing when they are necessary (I probably wouldn't be alive if it weren't for c-sections,) but it is sad that the procedure is being abused.
Nowhere in the OP did she say her friends were upset about how heir births went, just that they planned for vaginal births. Also, she seems to feel sorry for herself not support for her friends. Of course empathy is a good thing and maybe that's what OP meant but that's not how it came off
Well, gee, now that she's been flamed I guess she knows how to feel.
Seriously, it's not that much of a leap to assume a mom would be disappointed she got a c-section.
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It kind of is...I'd say the vast majority of women "plan" for a vaginal birth, especially if they're FTM's but that doesn't mean they were hard core into natural birth, doing hypno birthing, Bradley classes, hiring doulas, etc.
The majority of women I know who have had c-sections went in with the "let's see what happens" mentality, get epidurals, often are induced and have no issue with the fact they had a c-section. Most are happy to plan a repeat one as well as scheduling a birth does have some benefits that go along with it. I'm not sad about it, or sad for them as they're perfectly happy with their experiences. I'm glad the options are available to them and glad my options were available for me.
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I think you need to understand the difference between be "depressed" about something and just being sad for them. For you to be "depressed" about their experiences is not healthy. The wording here is what is confusing all of us. Its not really depressing, its frustrating, and makes you worry about your own coming birth maybe? Also, I say worry, not concern because worry is needless, and unproductive. Concern would be for something that actually effects you, which these 3 ladies experiences do not qualify for.
This is how I took it. Well, two of them were okay with me, but the other one wasn't. Blah. Maybe it was an unfortunate choice of words, but she didn't sound empathetic, she sounded judgemental. Had she said, "My friends were really upset about their c/s and it is so frustrating the doctors wouldn't work with them," it would have sounded completely different.
Empathy is not wrong. Judging whether your friends made the right decision in the heat of the moment is.
ETA: I also was disappointed I had my c/s. If we have another LO, I really hope for a natural VBAC. But that is not what everyone wants. I hang out a lot on the c/s board. Some women are disappointed about the experience, but a lot are not. A lot are thrilled to be able to schedule a RCS. It is not a big deal to them. So, frankly, to me, it is a leap to assume all women would be disappointed by a c/s, because that is not my experience from talking to women who have had them.
My friend recently got a c-section in circumstances that I knew I'd be really disappointed with (the doctor monitoring the fetal monitor from another room marched in and announced the baby could soon go into distress, and ordered an immediate pre-emergency c-section). My friend is perfectly happy with it and thinks it "saved the baby's life." But it really opened my eyes to the way that practice and hospital operate, and since I was also using that same practice, I switched at 20ish weeks to a midwifery practice at a different hospital, with a 5% c-section rate instead of 40%.
I totally understand where the OP is coming from. It's scary to still be pregnant after seeing all those close friends go through the exact kind of birth experiences you don't want, and they apparently didn't either. I think from the perspective of someone planning an upcoming first-time birth, it is totally normal and appropriate to feel frustrated, disappointed, or depressed about others' recent experiences. Why is everyone acting like the word choice police?
Maybe because it is offensive to those of us who may have fallen into her disapproved category?
IDK, maybe we're reading something different, but I don't think she's saying she disapproved of them OR that she was judging her friends. C/S rates are too high, and maybe you too had one that was unnecessary (maybe not)- it's not the woman's fault. It's perfectly understandable, in my opinion, to feel something over your friends- not random people online, but your friends having possible unecessary c-sections, especially when you are about to give birth for the first time. It makes you realize what's stacked against you.
Try not to take anytime someone expresses concern over the amount of c/s they see around them as an attack against you.
Empathy is when you share an emotion that a friend is feeling. This here? There's no sharing of emotions. It's just straight up pity.
Imagine how we'd all react if someone posted on the c-section board, "I'm so depressed. There were four of us friends all pregnant at the same time, and the other three ALL had natural births. Two of them planned it and all and seem to be OK with it, but the third showed up to the hospital really late in labor and decided to forego the epidural. Poor girl, I think she just didn't know any better, about how wonderful epidurals are. So depressing, given that over 90% of women have epidurals, I thought MAYBE one of us would not get one, but out of this group, we're completely over the statistics for natural birth."
After all, it's not a leap for most people to assume that natural birth is a miserable experience for the mom.
Mommy to DD1 (June 2007), DS (January 2010), DD2 (July 2012), and The Next One (EDD 3/31/2015)
I'm not going to get too much into the depression/empathy/judgement debate, but I had planned for a med/intervention free birth with a MW and wound up with a very emergent c/s. I'm not disappointed.
I understand the OP being concerned about the rising c/s rates and possibly unecessary c's. In my office, four of us had babies w/in 8 months and we ALL had c's. I'd like to think I'm fairly knowledgeable about birth, having researched a lot when planning my birth, and I believe mine was actually necessary.
One was a repeat c/s. She had twins the first time. I wonder if she had a c/s the first time only b/c it was twins or if there were other factors that were involved. Because you can vaginally birth twins. And then I wonder if she had a repeat only b/c she had a c/s the first time and wasn't knowledgeable or given the option of vbac.
One was given a c/s b/c of high blood pressure. I believe it was a scheduled c/s. I wonder why they didn't try induction, if it was important to get the baby out sooner than waiting for spontaneous labour. But, on the other hand, an induction is likely to end up in c/s anyway.
One was due to the baby being breech. She said they tried everything to turn the baby. She didn't elaborate, so I wonder if she really did try everything, or only tried everything her general practitioner was knowledgeable in, which is probably pretty limited.
I say I 'wonder" about these things because I don't know all of the circumstances. I'm not depressed for them. I'm not judging them. But I too am concerned that people may be having unecessary c's. And I find it shocking that so many people in my immediate vicinity had c's. But, as pp mentioned, stats don't work that way. And when I stop and think about it, I know many many more women who had vaginal births than c's.
OP, if you're friends are upset about their experience, be supportive. But don't feel depressed, and don't question them on the necessity of their c/s.
bfp#4 3/19/2014 edd 12/1/2014 please let this be the one!
beta @ 5w0d = 12,026! u/s 4/22/14 @ 8w1d it's twins!