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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

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.
KaiserPro 8y ago
> There's an growing body of evidence that suggests early microbial exposure is required for proper immune development Yes. But that's not linked to "seeding" which doesn't have any conclusive evidence to back that up(yet) compared to colostrum/breastfeeding[1] I'm aware of one study that has tried seeding. It's hypothesised, but needs much more research before being counted/discounted > Women have been giving birth since creation with minimal enough problems for humans to survive and succeed as a species Yes, but up until decent, clean deliveries with the option of c-section, and anti-biotics child birth killed 5% of mothers[2]. Bear in mind that without birthcontrol (pills or condom) most women would have about 6 pregnancies in their life time. [3] my bad maths makes that a ~1/4 chance of dying in childbirth/complications arising from. The study that link obecity and asthma to c-section is small[4] however it is worth widening and expanding to more than scotland. Brazil would be a good target as 50+% of births are c-section. [1]https://www.nhs.uk/news/pregnancy-and-child/breast-milk-raises-immunity/ https://www.nhs.uk/news/pregnancy-and-child/breast-milk-rais... The only link I could find that wasn't selling something (either hippy nonsense or a drug) [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/ [3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3865739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3865739/ [4]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055095/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055095/ TL;DR: 5% of child births were fatal to the mum, modern medicine has made that drop to <0.1%. There is some evidence that you might be fatter if you were born by optional c-section. However this is a limited study in one country.
- deialtrous 8y ago
  >Yes, but up until decent, clean deliveries with the option of c-section, and anti-biotics child birth killed 5% of mothers[2] But you are conflating very different issues. You can't give c-sections the credit for the benefits we gained from learning what bacteria are. Most women who died during childbirth died from infections, c-sections don't stop infections, hygiene and antibiotics do. You need to compare modern normal births to modern c-sections, not pre-germ theory normal births to modern c-sections.
dabbledash 8y ago
Real natural childbirth involves “minimal enough problems” if you don’t particularly value the lives of individual babies, a significant minority of whom would die during birth or late pregnancy if we just let nature take its course. And putting “natural” in quotes is entirely appropriate when discussing most vaginal births, even drug free vaginal births, in the first world. There’s nothing natural about 9 months of prenatal care and monitoring, careful observation of the fetal heartbeat during labor, prophylactic administration of antibiotics to women with group B strep, early delivery of women with gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia, and the availability of c-section any time labor starts to go south. The women who end up delivering vaginally have very good outcomes, in part because a bunch of “unnatural” interventions before the moment of delivery weeded out all the women and babies who would not have done so well. If you want to see what real natural childbirth looks like, you can look at the maternal and neonatal outcomes in countries without modern health care. It’s not pretty. We need to stop using the world “natural” as some kind of signifier for goodness. “Nature” doesn’t care that lots of tadpoles or lion cubs, or salmon fry don’t make it, and it doesn’t care that lots of human embryos miscarry or lots of babies die in birth. WE care about human babies, and so intervene. Also, is there some reason we wouldn’t gestate fetuses in artificial wombs if that was safer for women and babies? Are we just obliged to suffer and risk our lives for no benefit? Because it’s “our place”, I guess?

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.

KaiserPro 8y ago

> There's an growing body of evidence that suggests early microbial exposure is required for proper immune development Yes. But that's not linked to "seeding" which doesn't have any conclusive evidence to back that up(yet) compared to colostrum/breastfeeding[1] I'm aware of one study that has tried seeding. It's hypothesised, but needs much more research before being counted/discounted > Women have been giving birth since creation with minimal enough problems for humans to survive and succeed as a species Yes, but up until decent, clean deliveries with the option of c-section, and anti-biotics child birth killed 5% of mothers[2]. Bear in mind that without birthcontrol (pills or condom) most women would have about 6 pregnancies in their life time. [3] my bad maths makes that a ~1/4 chance of dying in childbirth/complications arising from. The study that link obecity and asthma to c-section is small[4] however it is worth widening and expanding to more than scotland. Brazil would be a good target as 50+% of births are c-section. [1]https://www.nhs.uk/news/pregnancy-and-child/breast-milk-raises-immunity/ https://www.nhs.uk/news/pregnancy-and-child/breast-milk-rais... The only link I could find that wasn't selling something (either hippy nonsense or a drug) [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/ [3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3865739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3865739/ [4]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055095/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5055095/ TL;DR: 5% of child births were fatal to the mum, modern medicine has made that drop to <0.1%. There is some evidence that you might be fatter if you were born by optional c-section. However this is a limited study in one country.

deialtrous 8y ago
>Yes, but up until decent, clean deliveries with the option of c-section, and anti-biotics child birth killed 5% of mothers[2] But you are conflating very different issues. You can't give c-sections the credit for the benefits we gained from learning what bacteria are. Most women who died during childbirth died from infections, c-sections don't stop infections, hygiene and antibiotics do. You need to compare modern normal births to modern c-sections, not pre-germ theory normal births to modern c-sections.

dabbledash 8y ago

Real natural childbirth involves “minimal enough problems” if you don’t particularly value the lives of individual babies, a significant minority of whom would die during birth or late pregnancy if we just let nature take its course. And putting “natural” in quotes is entirely appropriate when discussing most vaginal births, even drug free vaginal births, in the first world. There’s nothing natural about 9 months of prenatal care and monitoring, careful observation of the fetal heartbeat during labor, prophylactic administration of antibiotics to women with group B strep, early delivery of women with gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia, and the availability of c-section any time labor starts to go south. The women who end up delivering vaginally have very good outcomes, in part because a bunch of “unnatural” interventions before the moment of delivery weeded out all the women and babies who would not have done so well. If you want to see what real natural childbirth looks like, you can look at the maternal and neonatal outcomes in countries without modern health care. It’s not pretty. We need to stop using the world “natural” as some kind of signifier for goodness. “Nature” doesn’t care that lots of tadpoles or lion cubs, or salmon fry don’t make it, and it doesn’t care that lots of human embryos miscarry or lots of babies die in birth. WE care about human babies, and so intervene. Also, is there some reason we wouldn’t gestate fetuses in artificial wombs if that was safer for women and babies? Are we just obliged to suffer and risk our lives for no benefit? Because it’s “our place”, I guess?