Morning Ed: Health {2017.02.01.W}

atomickristin says:

The Mother Jones article needs to be viewed in the context that some news sources have a made a decision the last decade or so to cast childbearing in a bad light, almost as if they’re trying to use these kind of extreme, frightening stories as a form of population control. “It will totally destroy your body! You’ll never be the same!! It’s the worst thing you’ll ever endure!! Also you’ll get postpartum depression and breastfeeding sucks and raising kids is not what you thought it was going to be!!! So totally not worth it!!!”

The irony is, studies have found women who are terrified of childbirth are more likely to experience extreme pain and their labors take longer. They’re also more likely to experience postpartum depression.

Caesarian itself is a kind of population control because many women can only have 2-3 of them, meaning that people are forced to limit the size of their families whether they want to or not. People don’t realize when they’re young and scared and having their first baby, but you may want 3 or 4 children and not be able to because of a decision that was made possibly without medical indication.

There’s a difference between medical malpractice (no doctor should give a woman who’s had a caesarian section, pitocin) and a widespread problem that is ruining women’s lives. To single out a VBAC at 42 weeks with pitocin and an over 9 lb baby as an example of natural childbirth gone awry is misleading and unfair. The doctor should not have done it, and most doctors would have refused. Even if it had been planned beforehand, the plans would have changed as time passed had the doctor been doing their job.

Research indicates that even young women who have never had children sometimes develop urinary incontinence and as women age more and more will develop it even if they’ve never had children. C-sections can cause them by severing nerves. Most of us laugh about it. Most women are not sad and scared about a little leaking pee, that’s why they joke about it on Friends. A minority of women have serious life-affecting problems, but it’s not the norm like the article was portraying it to be.

Cherry picked data (the article cites one study that shows epidurals are ok, but many others that show they cause issues for people) the most extreme situations…it’s a hit piece. Surely the point can’t be that women need MORE c-sections, since experts agree they’re being used far too often. If their point is to say “let’s use c-sections when needed, and avoid them when not” then they could have done that without the fearmongering.Report