My Aunt Dorothy passed away last spring. She was 98 years old. I heard stories about the day she was born. Aunt Dorothy was my great-grandmother Lowerta’s 10th child and 4th daughter. When Lowerta went into labor, the midwife (who was also her mother-in-law and Dorothy’s paternal grandmother) came to the home. The younger kids were sent out to play, and the older ones went about their usual business. A pet hen that my great grandmother cared for stayed close by the back door during labor and birth. After Dorothy’s birth, the kids went back into the house, the grandma stayed to help in the household, neighbors brought with food and life went on. It was a happy day, a normal day. Life went on. Lowerta eventually became a grandmother and a great grandmother. She lived to be 95 years old herself. Mother and daughter lived to a ripe old age and lived healthy, productive lives and were beloved by their families and community.
We don’t hear stories like that anymore. If a woman decides to have a baby at home it’s considered daring, old fashioned and dangerous. In some places, it’s even illegal. When it does happen accidentally on the way to the hospital, mother and child are still whisked away to be checked out by the professionals. Birth is not for amateurs in this country.
What interests me is how as a society, we have accepted surgical birth as a healthy and safe option. It’s so commonplace now everyone knows someone who’s had a Cesarean. No one questions the story of a healthy young woman having a cesarean section to deliver her healthy baby. Nowadays I’m kind of amazed when I hear that someone had a vaginal birth! I know three young women who have had babies in the last three years, and only one of them had a vaginal delivery. The others were C-sections. Even my beloved granddaughter was born via Cesarean six years ago because she was breech and very few doctors have the skill set to do a normal vaginal delivery of a breech baby. The consequences of these births don’t even raise an eyebrow. No one asks about the consequences for future births, or the risks of accreta, or rupture, or infection, or my personal curse – adhesions.
Former Olympian and Social Media Influencer Shawn Johnson is a perfect example. Shawn and her husband Andrew have a very fun and engaging Youtube channel. She’s very active on Instagram too. They share the ups and downs of married life, give tips and endorse products that they find useful. Most recently they shared their pregnancy and the birth of their baby girl, Drew.
In one of her videos, Shawn talked about how she wanted to give birth naturally, yet there was just a hint of doubt in her voice. I knew right away that someone had started to plant seeds of doubt in her mind. This healthy, first-time, young mom was spending way too much time talking about needing surgery for the health of her baby.
But it’s not really that surprising either. Shawn lives in Nashville, TN. Most of the hospitals there hover around the 30% rate for Cesareans. I guess they’re used to getting moms prepared for that high possibility.
There were other red flags as the weeks went along. The due date came with anticipation and went with a little bit of disappointment. The inevitable induction was scheduled with everything that goes with it – a trial of labor, an epidural for the contractions, breaking the bag of waters, and then finally surgery because the baby wasn’t coming and Shawn wasn’t progressing. So, of course, major surgery with all of the risks that go with that would be the only option – right?
Later Shawn expressed that she felt like a failure because she hadn’t been able to give birth naturally, and many women wrote to let her know that she wasn’t a failure and that having a healthy baby was all that mattered.
What really irks me is that new moms like Shawn Johnson still think that THEY did something wrong – they weren’t built to have a baby, or they were too weak, or their baby was too big, they were too fit or too fat, or something else all adding up to somehow being inadequate to give birth like their mothers and all the generations of women before them. What they don’t realize, is that they were set up even before they got pregnant. The system had systematically and predictably put her on the path to the operating room. Women are set up for it by the entertainment industry that still treats birth like a natural disaster waiting to happen. But women are mainly set up by their health care providers that continue to treat pregnancy as a disease instead of a natural state of life.
Shawn’s story isn’t really unique. That was my story 30 years ago! After my first cesarean, I joined the International Cesarean Awareness Network and started to hear the same story from other women in the group over and over again. Ask a new mom how her birth went, and it’s usually a variation on that same theme.
When I was active in ICAN, our goal was to have the national Cesarean rate drop, and it did for a time. But right now it’s up to about 30%. The difference between now and 1989 is that the maternal mortality rate is also going up. This is outrageous.
I’ve written on this topic before. Check out my Childbirth Page here. My best advice for any new mom is here.
Can it change? Will it change? I don’t know. The country doesn’t seem to be focused on it. In fact, the country seems to be turning away from anything that is truly woman-based. But as a mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother, the best I can do is raise awareness so that young moms don’t get swept along in the process that is birth in America and instead became savvy health care consumers. Maybe that’s the only effective way to turn the tide on this.