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My wife and I decided to try for a home birth since she had had basically a perfect pregnancy. It may turn out to be the worst decision we ever made. She ended

by lemming 12y ago

My wife and I decided to try for a home birth since she had had basically a perfect pregnancy. It may turn out to be the worst decision we ever made. She ended up in second stage (pushing) for 6 hours due to an awkward presentation and was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. She suffered a pretty bad tear and was seriously traumatised by the whole experience - she still has flashbacks almost a year later. 3 months later she suffered a prolapse as a result of the labour. Prolapse is the huge dirty secret of vaginal delivery - one woman in two will suffer some degree of prolapse as a result of childbirth, but probably only one in 5 of those will have it badly enough to have symptoms. But once you have it there's basically no cure and it can be hugely debilitating. My wife has always been very active, when she was younger she was going to try out for the Spanish national handball team, she has always run a lot, and so on. She will never run again, she shouldn't lift any weight at all (not even our daughter), she is basically an invalid by her previous standards. Her sex life has been severely compromised due to nerves in the vaginal wall being crushed - that will never improve either. All this was probably not 100% avoidable but we could have massively improved her odds if we had had access to accurate information ante-natally. Natural childbirth is the biggest lie we have ever suffered from. If we had known then what we know now she would have had an elective caesarian, and I recommend everyone consider it.

tarminian 12y ago
You are arguing from emotion rather than logic.
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  It's called "empathy", and it's a very valuable cognitive skill. Of course it achieves optimal analytic results when balanced with detachment, causal analysis, and hard statistical reasoning. But better to have too much empathy than too little -- or none at all.
  - tarminian 12y ago
    Having empathy is different that saying that my bad experience should make you consider a c-section.
    - dreamweapon 12y ago
      Of course. But I didn't read that as the main point of the post.
- lemming 12y ago
  It's true that I'm arguing from emotion, I'm extremely angry about the biased information available to prospective parents. There's plenty of evidence about that in the OP. I'm also arguing based on research I've done subsequent to our daughter's birth. One in ten women will suffer a prolapse with significant symptoms at some point after a vaginal delivery. Because it happens after the birth, not during it, it never gets included in any statistics about birth complications. Basically, there is zero information about this risk ante-natally, so people cannot make informed decisions. If we had had all the information that we have now before the birth, we would have at the very least considered a c-section and probably insisted on one, which is why I recommend everyone investigate it for themselves and consider it.
mcv 12y ago
Pushing for 6 hours? That's certainly not normal. I'd expect the midwife to rush you to the hospital after 2. Why did your midwife wait so long? Note that hospital deliveries can also have complications. Due to high blood pressure, my wife had to deliver our first child in the hospital[0], and under the care of the hospital, rather than the midwife[1]. She spent 17 hours in labour, and only after pushing for 2 hours did the hospital's midwife discover that the baby was stuck, which I suspect was a serious fuck up; only after I insisted that they figure out how the baby progressed, did they discover it had been stuck this whole time. While the caesarean team was preparing, the hospital's midwife managed to deliver the baby with a pump. My wife spent the next two years walking like an elderly person due to instability of the pelvis. Fortunately she eventually recovered, and she's in a much better condition now, a few weeks after delivering our second child. [0] I'm Dutch; home births are the standard here. [1] Our second child was delivered in the hospital but under the care of the midwife; home birth was not an option due to the complications with the first pregnancy.
- lemming 12y ago
  The midwife waited much longer than I would consider safe with the information I have now - at the time we had no idea of how bad the long term consequences could be, we just knew it was agonising for my wife but everyone always goes on about how painful childbirth is so we had no idea what was normal. We later had an appointment with our attending obstetrician to go over our case notes, and she said that midwives with a stronger focus on natural childbirth will often leave mothers pushing for longer than a hospital or more "conventional" midwife would. Then getting rushed to hospital takes longer than you'd think - 45 mins end to end for us, and we live in a small town. Once there my wife was assessed for risk, the ob/gyn came about 30 mins later because there didn't seem to be any immediate danger for her, then there's a protocol to be followed before any intervention takes place - it all adds up to a surprisingly long time. Congratulations on your second child, I'm glad that went well and that your wife has recovered - that's really great.

by lemming 12y ago

tarminian 12y ago

You are arguing from emotion rather than logic.

dreamweapon 12y ago
It's called "empathy", and it's a very valuable cognitive skill. Of course it achieves optimal analytic results when balanced with detachment, causal analysis, and hard statistical reasoning. But better to have too much empathy than too little -- or none at all.
- tarminian 12y ago
  Having empathy is different that saying that my bad experience should make you consider a c-section.
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    Of course. But I didn't read that as the main point of the post.
lemming 12y ago
It's true that I'm arguing from emotion, I'm extremely angry about the biased information available to prospective parents. There's plenty of evidence about that in the OP. I'm also arguing based on research I've done subsequent to our daughter's birth. One in ten women will suffer a prolapse with significant symptoms at some point after a vaginal delivery. Because it happens after the birth, not during it, it never gets included in any statistics about birth complications. Basically, there is zero information about this risk ante-natally, so people cannot make informed decisions. If we had had all the information that we have now before the birth, we would have at the very least considered a c-section and probably insisted on one, which is why I recommend everyone investigate it for themselves and consider it.

mcv 12y ago

Pushing for 6 hours? That's certainly not normal. I'd expect the midwife to rush you to the hospital after 2. Why did your midwife wait so long? Note that hospital deliveries can also have complications. Due to high blood pressure, my wife had to deliver our first child in the hospital[0], and under the care of the hospital, rather than the midwife[1]. She spent 17 hours in labour, and only after pushing for 2 hours did the hospital's midwife discover that the baby was stuck, which I suspect was a serious fuck up; only after I insisted that they figure out how the baby progressed, did they discover it had been stuck this whole time. While the caesarean team was preparing, the hospital's midwife managed to deliver the baby with a pump. My wife spent the next two years walking like an elderly person due to instability of the pelvis. Fortunately she eventually recovered, and she's in a much better condition now, a few weeks after delivering our second child. [0] I'm Dutch; home births are the standard here. [1] Our second child was delivered in the hospital but under the care of the midwife; home birth was not an option due to the complications with the first pregnancy.

lemming 12y ago
The midwife waited much longer than I would consider safe with the information I have now - at the time we had no idea of how bad the long term consequences could be, we just knew it was agonising for my wife but everyone always goes on about how painful childbirth is so we had no idea what was normal. We later had an appointment with our attending obstetrician to go over our case notes, and she said that midwives with a stronger focus on natural childbirth will often leave mothers pushing for longer than a hospital or more "conventional" midwife would. Then getting rushed to hospital takes longer than you'd think - 45 mins end to end for us, and we live in a small town. Once there my wife was assessed for risk, the ob/gyn came about 30 mins later because there didn't seem to be any immediate danger for her, then there's a protocol to be followed before any intervention takes place - it all adds up to a surprisingly long time. Congratulations on your second child, I'm glad that went well and that your wife has recovered - that's really great.