6 ms·

Ok so no mention of the health implications of so called "natural" childbirth, which aren't trivial and have an increasing risk as your age. No mention of the r

by harry8 8y ago

Ok so no mention of the health implications of so called "natural" childbirth, which aren't trivial and have an increasing risk as your age. No mention of the rising age of mothers in wealthy countries. No mention of different trade offs for fit 19 year olds and less active 35 year olds. A lot of 30+ women decide they don't want to piss their pants and have painful intercourse for the rest of their lives. Word gets around and it undermines trust in doctors advice when they don't even mention the issues. A higher proportion of doctors make the c-section choice. They're kind of educated, doctors, less likely to be bullshitted into higher, unnecessary fees too. But you're not an idiot so you want the actual numbers. So did I. Not available, no research done and/or no doctors know of it and can hand you print outs of the papers. So much for evidence based medicine... There's an epidemic of women not just doing what they're told! FFS Lancet. How's their credibility nowadays? Taking hits?

sergers 8y ago
"A lot of 30+ women decide they don't want to piss their pants and have painful intercourse for the rest of their lives." Not specifically only for those reasons, my wife always wanted a c-section birth due to the risks with vaginal birth and recovery times.
- vladgur 8y ago
  I would imagine the recovery times for c-section are longer
  - KaiserPro 8y ago
    Depends. If you have a tear (1/4 chance) it can take longer to heal, but it's not as debilitating in the short term. It doesn't affect your ability to get out of bed, as much. However a bad tear will have long lasting impact on your life. Incontinence, infection, painful sex, amongst a whole host of other problems. C-section has a higher risk of infection, There is significant muscle damage to, which limits your ability to lift and sit up. In terms of pain (emergency c-section compared to a 4b tear, the wife says the c-section was easier to recover from. )
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Possibly not always true. Women are fairly frequently given episiotomies. This is intended to prevent vaginal tearing, which is far more harmful than a clean cut and much harder to repair and much more likely to leave a bad scar. Scars in the genitals can be pretty unpleasant. Scar tissue in female genitals tends to not want to cooperate with that whole sex thing. Furthermore, sutures in the genitals make it impossible to comfortably or safely sit. They can become infected or tear open when you are using the toilet. You are typically given a stool softener to try to reduce the odds of tearing your sutures post partum. Taking care of sutures in the outer genitals is inherently challenging. You can't see them without help of a mirror and they are difficult to reach for purposes of tending to them. I imagine sutures across the lower abdomen are, in many cases, a piece of cake compared to that.
    - marmaduke 8y ago
      Is an epidural assumed in all this discussion? The mothers I know who didn’t have the epidural didn’t have these nightmare symptoms, while those who did or had a C section were worse off. (I’m assuming competent medical staff and follow up, but I realize that’s a difficult one in the US and elsewhere)
      - acjohnson55 8y ago
        What would an epidural have to do with tearing and episiotomies?
        sambe 8y ago
        Higher rate of complications during birth, more interventions (instruments), which in turn are associated with tearing/episiotomy. The implication that this never happens without an epidural is wrong of course.
        acjohnson55 8y ago
        Gotcha, makes sense when I think about it. But it's tough to say MN a given case whether complications wouldn't have occurred without the epidural. Sigh, it's a tough call.
  - Tuna-Fish 8y ago
    You would imagine wrong. Smoothly cut, cleaned and expertly closed up wounds heal a lot faster than ripped tissue that doesn't even get properly cleaned because it's in there somewhere.
    - sambe 8y ago
      Don’t be so sure. I can’t find good research comparing the two, but it seems generally held that CS recovery times are longer. I see NICE quoted as saying no risk difference between the two methods but longer recovery times for CS (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2011/nov/23/health https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-poll...).
wsc981 8y ago
In Thailand a lot of woman prefer C-section in order to choose a lucky day for the birth of the child [0]. --- [0]: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30355415 http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30355415
paavoova 8y ago
Women have been giving birth since creation with minimal enough problems for humans to survive and succeed as a species - it absolutely is natural, no idea why you put that in quotations. Why stop at C-sections? Raise them in test tubes a la Brave New World, skip the biological process entirely. After all, it's much safer, quite possibly even zero risks on the woman's part. The thing with C-sections is that until fairly recently, children weren't inoculated with the mother's vaginal canal microbes. Now they know better and do a smear, but that means many children failed to receive a proper immune boost when they needed it most. There's an growing body of evidence that suggests early microbial exposure is required for proper immune development and function, and that the lack of this exposure is linked to allergies and other self-inflicted immune diseases. I can't speak of any data off the top of my head, but perhaps the doctors recommending against C-sections are aware of decades of data on C-sections and childrens health?
- rodgerd 8y ago
  > Women have been giving birth since creation with minimal enough problems This bears no resemblence to the actual history of childbirth.
- isostatic 8y ago
  At a species level yes, childbirth works fine. Before the modern era deaths of both child and mother were very high (10%+) when giving birth. That said, the U.S. approach to childbirth is clearly not working, with childbirth deaths at 3 times that of Canada, and higher than the rest of the developed world.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Like lots of things in USA this is tied to racism. Whites in USA have risks similar to those of other developed nations. Analysis has found that nonwhite immigrants have largely the same results as USA whites. However, their daughters have the same elevated risks as other minorities in USA. Public health experts don't have any idea why this is, so they're no closer to solving this problem than e.g. the public education system is to fixing its own racist outcomes.
jobigoud 8y ago
If we perfect the art of surgery to a point where it's painless/seamless/benign it won't even be a question, it seems so much more efficient and clean. Open, extract, close.
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  There are a number of factors which make natural childbirth better, the mother recovers much quicker, a day or two vs weeks. There are things that happen during vaginal childbirth with hormones released by mother and child which do not happen with c-sections, like the bacteria which transfers from mother to child which is essential for gut function. The baby is also prepared for birth during the process and is more awake and able to suckle faster with natural birth. https://www.mamanatural.com/natural-birth/ https://www.mamanatural.com/natural-birth/
  - DanBC 8y ago
    There's no evidence for bacteria transfer, and some children have been harmed by mothers taking vaginal mucus to transfer bacteria after a c section.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      Don't bother pointing out that those cases are abnormal, and the mothers have diseases...
  - colechristensen 8y ago
    A lot of that seems like unsupported woo which appeals to the sort of people wishing to rebel against the science / chemical / medical mainstream. That doesn't make it true or untrue. It reads exactly like someone who has decided what is true went to find evidence to share to support the claim. You can pick any position at random and find a wealth of evidence to support your claim. From a source in the above article: >Although these new findings and proposed potential mechanisms are novel and exciting, further exploration and replication in larger cohorts of children ... are needed. Most scientific results are not intended to be consumed by ordinary folks to instruct their final decisions. They are almost always only evidence, not containing any decisive conclusions.
sambe 8y ago
The second paper of the series does review and compare several aspects in comparison to natural birth: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31930-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
iforgotpassword 8y ago
OTOH, you seem to argue that since you couldn't find any papers on that, doctors and media must be lying and c-section is just better. That sounds an awful lot like the typical conspiracy theorist. > A lot of 30+ women decide they don't want to piss their pants and have painful intercourse for the rest of their lives. I heard of that child once that died after it got the flue shot. We all should stop vaccinating now.
jayalpha 8y ago
Sorry for being naive but: "A lot of 30+ women decide they don't want to piss their pants and have painful intercourse for the rest of their lives. " Is this a real risk of vaginal child birth? And how risky is it?
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  Yes, vaginal birth increases the risk compared to c-sec. However unlike what GPs wording suggests you don't go full throttle like a toddler learning to sleep without a diaper, it's more like a few droplets. If you had it during pregnancy already, chances are higher it'll continue after birth. In most cases it stops after a few weeks, but it can be permanent, so it will happen every now and then, when you're sneezing hard etc. You can get it under control with exercising. You can look up further information from your country's health institutions, usually including numbers on how prevalent it is where you're from. Being older when giving birth, being obese and some other factors do increase the risk.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  This is a real risk of vaginal birth. Long term complications of vaginal birth are not usually studied (this may be related to an ongoing issue in the medical community in failing to address women’s health). For example, painful sex has been reported in a quarter of women 18 months after birth. Painful sex is common in 90% of women in the shorter term after giving birth. Women overwhelmingly experience at least one complication within 6 weeks after birth and are recommended to wear adult diapers as the uterus continues to expel. Women also report at least one long term health complication about a third of the time. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_period) (Edit: this doesn’t differentiate between vagina and c-section, but for example I’ve seen in passing that vaginal birth causes more issues with incontinence and painful sex)
- kdowining 8y ago
  The majority of incidence of female incontinence is attributed to child birth. It's a very high risk that no one like to talk about...mostly because who cares about women? And who cares if they pee themselves for the rest of their lives? They're alive aren't they? I'm not joking, when I talked to my doctor about this they totally dismissed this concern in a manner that suggested that women should just be fine with a diminished quality of life after child birth. That that's just the way it is and should be and if you don't like it, then don't have kids.

by harry8 8y ago

sergers 8y ago

"A lot of 30+ women decide they don't want to piss their pants and have painful intercourse for the rest of their lives." Not specifically only for those reasons, my wife always wanted a c-section birth due to the risks with vaginal birth and recovery times.

vladgur 8y ago
I would imagine the recovery times for c-section are longer
- KaiserPro 8y ago
  Depends. If you have a tear (1/4 chance) it can take longer to heal, but it's not as debilitating in the short term. It doesn't affect your ability to get out of bed, as much. However a bad tear will have long lasting impact on your life. Incontinence, infection, painful sex, amongst a whole host of other problems. C-section has a higher risk of infection, There is significant muscle damage to, which limits your ability to lift and sit up. In terms of pain (emergency c-section compared to a 4b tear, the wife says the c-section was easier to recover from. )
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Possibly not always true. Women are fairly frequently given episiotomies. This is intended to prevent vaginal tearing, which is far more harmful than a clean cut and much harder to repair and much more likely to leave a bad scar. Scars in the genitals can be pretty unpleasant. Scar tissue in female genitals tends to not want to cooperate with that whole sex thing. Furthermore, sutures in the genitals make it impossible to comfortably or safely sit. They can become infected or tear open when you are using the toilet. You are typically given a stool softener to try to reduce the odds of tearing your sutures post partum. Taking care of sutures in the outer genitals is inherently challenging. You can't see them without help of a mirror and they are difficult to reach for purposes of tending to them. I imagine sutures across the lower abdomen are, in many cases, a piece of cake compared to that.
  - marmaduke 8y ago
    Is an epidural assumed in all this discussion? The mothers I know who didn’t have the epidural didn’t have these nightmare symptoms, while those who did or had a C section were worse off. (I’m assuming competent medical staff and follow up, but I realize that’s a difficult one in the US and elsewhere)
    - acjohnson55 8y ago
      What would an epidural have to do with tearing and episiotomies?
      - sambe 8y ago
        Higher rate of complications during birth, more interventions (instruments), which in turn are associated with tearing/episiotomy. The implication that this never happens without an epidural is wrong of course.
        acjohnson55 8y ago
        Gotcha, makes sense when I think about it. But it's tough to say MN a given case whether complications wouldn't have occurred without the epidural. Sigh, it's a tough call.
- Tuna-Fish 8y ago
  You would imagine wrong. Smoothly cut, cleaned and expertly closed up wounds heal a lot faster than ripped tissue that doesn't even get properly cleaned because it's in there somewhere.
  - sambe 8y ago
    Don’t be so sure. I can’t find good research comparing the two, but it seems generally held that CS recovery times are longer. I see NICE quoted as saying no risk difference between the two methods but longer recovery times for CS (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2011/nov/23/health https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-poll...).

wsc981 8y ago

In Thailand a lot of woman prefer C-section in order to choose a lucky day for the birth of the child [0]. --- [0]: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30355415 http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/national/30355415

paavoova 8y ago

Women have been giving birth since creation with minimal enough problems for humans to survive and succeed as a species - it absolutely is natural, no idea why you put that in quotations. Why stop at C-sections? Raise them in test tubes a la Brave New World, skip the biological process entirely. After all, it's much safer, quite possibly even zero risks on the woman's part. The thing with C-sections is that until fairly recently, children weren't inoculated with the mother's vaginal canal microbes. Now they know better and do a smear, but that means many children failed to receive a proper immune boost when they needed it most. There's an growing body of evidence that suggests early microbial exposure is required for proper immune development and function, and that the lack of this exposure is linked to allergies and other self-inflicted immune diseases. I can't speak of any data off the top of my head, but perhaps the doctors recommending against C-sections are aware of decades of data on C-sections and childrens health?

rodgerd 8y ago
> Women have been giving birth since creation with minimal enough problems This bears no resemblence to the actual history of childbirth.
isostatic 8y ago
At a species level yes, childbirth works fine. Before the modern era deaths of both child and mother were very high (10%+) when giving birth. That said, the U.S. approach to childbirth is clearly not working, with childbirth deaths at 3 times that of Canada, and higher than the rest of the developed world.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Like lots of things in USA this is tied to racism. Whites in USA have risks similar to those of other developed nations. Analysis has found that nonwhite immigrants have largely the same results as USA whites. However, their daughters have the same elevated risks as other minorities in USA. Public health experts don't have any idea why this is, so they're no closer to solving this problem than e.g. the public education system is to fixing its own racist outcomes.

jobigoud 8y ago

If we perfect the art of surgery to a point where it's painless/seamless/benign it won't even be a question, it seems so much more efficient and clean. Open, extract, close.

Synaesthesia 8y ago
There are a number of factors which make natural childbirth better, the mother recovers much quicker, a day or two vs weeks. There are things that happen during vaginal childbirth with hormones released by mother and child which do not happen with c-sections, like the bacteria which transfers from mother to child which is essential for gut function. The baby is also prepared for birth during the process and is more awake and able to suckle faster with natural birth. https://www.mamanatural.com/natural-birth/ https://www.mamanatural.com/natural-birth/
- DanBC 8y ago
  There's no evidence for bacteria transfer, and some children have been harmed by mothers taking vaginal mucus to transfer bacteria after a c section.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Don't bother pointing out that those cases are abnormal, and the mothers have diseases...
- colechristensen 8y ago
  A lot of that seems like unsupported woo which appeals to the sort of people wishing to rebel against the science / chemical / medical mainstream. That doesn't make it true or untrue. It reads exactly like someone who has decided what is true went to find evidence to share to support the claim. You can pick any position at random and find a wealth of evidence to support your claim. From a source in the above article: >Although these new findings and proposed potential mechanisms are novel and exciting, further exploration and replication in larger cohorts of children ... are needed. Most scientific results are not intended to be consumed by ordinary folks to instruct their final decisions. They are almost always only evidence, not containing any decisive conclusions.

sambe 8y ago

The second paper of the series does review and compare several aspects in comparison to natural birth: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31930-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

iforgotpassword 8y ago

OTOH, you seem to argue that since you couldn't find any papers on that, doctors and media must be lying and c-section is just better. That sounds an awful lot like the typical conspiracy theorist. > A lot of 30+ women decide they don't want to piss their pants and have painful intercourse for the rest of their lives. I heard of that child once that died after it got the flue shot. We all should stop vaccinating now.

jayalpha 8y ago

Sorry for being naive but: "A lot of 30+ women decide they don't want to piss their pants and have painful intercourse for the rest of their lives. " Is this a real risk of vaginal child birth? And how risky is it?

iforgotpassword 8y ago
Yes, vaginal birth increases the risk compared to c-sec. However unlike what GPs wording suggests you don't go full throttle like a toddler learning to sleep without a diaper, it's more like a few droplets. If you had it during pregnancy already, chances are higher it'll continue after birth. In most cases it stops after a few weeks, but it can be permanent, so it will happen every now and then, when you're sneezing hard etc. You can get it under control with exercising. You can look up further information from your country's health institutions, usually including numbers on how prevalent it is where you're from. Being older when giving birth, being obese and some other factors do increase the risk.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
This is a real risk of vaginal birth. Long term complications of vaginal birth are not usually studied (this may be related to an ongoing issue in the medical community in failing to address women’s health). For example, painful sex has been reported in a quarter of women 18 months after birth. Painful sex is common in 90% of women in the shorter term after giving birth. Women overwhelmingly experience at least one complication within 6 weeks after birth and are recommended to wear adult diapers as the uterus continues to expel. Women also report at least one long term health complication about a third of the time. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_period) (Edit: this doesn’t differentiate between vagina and c-section, but for example I’ve seen in passing that vaginal birth causes more issues with incontinence and painful sex)
kdowining 8y ago
The majority of incidence of female incontinence is attributed to child birth. It's a very high risk that no one like to talk about...mostly because who cares about women? And who cares if they pee themselves for the rest of their lives? They're alive aren't they? I'm not joking, when I talked to my doctor about this they totally dismissed this concern in a manner that suggested that women should just be fine with a diminished quality of life after child birth. That that's just the way it is and should be and if you don't like it, then don't have kids.