MY C-SECTION COMPARED TO MY NATURAL DELIVERIES

This is about my experience and thoughts about deliveries. This is not comparable as such to anyone’s individual birthing experience, but it has a message that might be useful to someone. 

I read a couple of articles yesterday about C-sections on my Facebook stream. One of them was about how C-sections are best with a little labor, meaning that the labor starts in itself and includes some of the “you’re about to be born” messages to the fetus.

I’m a bit puzzled about cesarean sections gaining popularity in our society. Especially I’m surprised about the increasing number of planned C-sections. There are well studied reasons why they are popular in some parts of South America for example, which is mainly to do with the doctors scheduling instead of respecting the natural run of labor. To see the practice gain ground in our society however makes me uneasy. The reasons women go through a surgery vary from complications during pregnancies, avoiding risk factors to simply being scared of labor and its effects to the tuna taco.

My oldest was born through an unplanned C-section. She had turned around her axis before entering the birthing canal and I tried pushing for 45 minutes, after being in labor for over 20 hours. The pushing or the midwife wiggling her did nothing to help her come out, so when I was offered a chance to go under the knife, I took it with gratitude.

With the second pregnancy I was told about the risks of natural birth, such as ruptured uterus, but I was also told the risk is about 1%. It being so low and having no complications during the pregnancy, I was lucky to be able to give birth to my second and third child naturally. The pushing for my middle one took less than a minute and for my third one a couple of minutes. 

A lot of people have an idea that the pushing is the part that hurts like hell. Everyone experiences labor and pain differently, but for me the contractions were the most painful part during all three labors, but the aftermath of a C-section and a natural birth were much different in level of pain and managing. With C-section I wasn’t allowed to get up for 24 hours and laughing hurt so much I thought I was going to break in half, which is not surprising considering how many levels of skin, muscle, fat and uterus they need to cut through. Not laughing was a challenge in itself, since my husband is so effing funny. (He made me add this.) The first time after C-section when I stood up, I shook like an badly built house in a 9 Richter earthquake and quite frankly thought I was going to collapse on my face. Even though my recovery was quick (I was 22 years at that time), it absolutely cannot even compete with the recovery I had after the second and third births. After giving birth, I managed to get up, walk to take a shower and go home (with a taxi, mind you). I didn’t feel like passing out or folding like a lawnchair.

I know every birth is different and things don’t always go as planned, but I chose to have a natural birth after a C-section, because I was lucky to have heard wise words from my sister years before it was relevant for myself. Her son was in breech and was born through a planned C-section. Her daughter, on the other hand, she gave birth naturally. Afterwards she told me if I ever needed to choose, I should choose the latter one. If I never got to hear these words from her, I might have been afraid to try a natural birth with my second one. If he was born via C-section I might have been afraid to try to have a third one, since doctors don’t recommend multiple C-sections. This could’ve affected the number of children we were hoping to have. I was lucky to hear these words of encouragement from my sister, because for us, these three are exactly the children we were always the parents of. I can only hope with this I can pass the encouragement to someone who needs to hear these words, just like I did.

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