Women can choose Caesarean section

AllNew wrote (see)

Skotty - I'm not sure about that. A pregnant woman gets lots of medical attention during her pregnancy, as well as stuff like NCT. It's not like they turn up in the delivery suite 9 months after doing a home pregnancy test without having seen a doctor or midwife along the way.

i disagree.

especially when having their first child a lot of women are pretty clueless about the advantages and disadvantages of both.

i can see a huge increase in c-sections as many will simply opt for what is commonly regarded as the easy and pain free option. and doctors and midwives will be happy to encourage people towards births that can be more easily scheduled and planned.

beebs wrote (see)

skotty a lot of women are also intelligent, wel informed and make decisions based in fact.

I agree with Beebs that a c section is not a 'simple op', it is major abdominal surgery and should not be undertaken lightly. Even when things go well, it leads to more time in hospital and a longer recovery time in general.

Caz, I also agree with your point about weighting the potential risks and benefits. These should be presented in a way that is easy to understand, with some indication of prevalence and significance of each.

AllNew wrote (see)

Skotty - are you really saying that the majority of women who choose to have kids are not very bright? You got any other ill-informed sweeping statements you want to throw into the debate?

no. i am saying that in general more intelligent women have fewer children than less intelligent women.

so when it comes to the number of births involved the balance is tilted towards the lower end of the spectrum.

Not sure where I stand on this.

I wonder if the cost implications of this will come to bite the NHS.  At this stage it's hard to judge whether it'll just be a handful of particularly phobic women electing to have this, or whether it'll literally open the flood gates to a huge number of people who don't want to be in agony for a day.

I do think we need to distinguish between "wants" and clinical "needs". 

I bet if people could elect to have a GA for dental fillings or tooth extractions, many people would opt to have it regardless of clinical need and the risks involved in GAs, in order to avoid facing fears.  But should that mean the NHS should pay?

Looking at midwifery capacity locally, I know our LHB has got a real problem and it's the same midwifery recruitment crisis across the board. I doubt they have enough time to be able to meaningfully address fears etc with mum's to be.  They're literally flying from one woman to the next with huge case loads.  If we were to build capacity in midwifery (which we can't due to national efficiency savings) we would have more midwives, smaller caseloads, more time spent with each mum to be, better ability to really work with someone's fears, support them etc...

It's ironic.  The whole rest of the health service is trying to refocus away from acute hospital interventions towards capacity building in community-based outpatient services, but here it's going exactly the other way?

There is a place for C-Sections based on medical need but as a general choice.

 A standard birth is painful but once done generally you are up and about fairly quickly.

 C-Sections is indeed 6 weeks not doing much and not lifting and that isn't easy when you have just had a child especially as somebody said if you have older ones.

My wife was absolutely dead-set against having one and when it was discussed during a difficult birth she pretty much refused. Had it naturally in the end, quite a few stitches but was OK fairly quickly. Actually the worst ongoing pain was due to the epidural, she was tryng to avoid that as well but is came dfown to that to avoid the C-section. They kept the needle in place with sticking plaster which she is allergic to and it took half the skin off her back. yep I should have remembered but it was getting fraught and no way was she having a C-Section.

My wife is intelligent though and can process the facts. I think part of the issue is celebrities chosing C-Sections to fit with with their lives. Well that is fine because they hire a nanny so they can do nothing for six weeks without a problem. Not so easy for a standard mum.

I guess I've had both extremes of c-section. The first an emergency on the Wednesday morning after being induced on the Monday evening. Baby was virtually out but stuck and in distress. The cut ripped open further as baby was stuck so low. A major vein got severed and had to be repaired. I lost a lot of blood and wasn't doing well in recovery so had an emergency blood transfusion (before they screened for CJD so blanket ban ever since on me being a blood doner).

Second one was elective and luckily so because the surgeon told me that I wouldn't have been able to get her out either. That operation went as well as these things can go.

But still I would not recommend for anyone that doesn't absolutely need to have one.

That said I think the risks of emergency c-sections must obviously be higher than planned ones because at that point it can quite often be a rush to save baby.

If I had had more babies, they would all have been c-section.

I think an elective c-section is just going further down a road that many women have already travelled by having cosmetic surgery.

Not so many years ago most people outside of Hollywood would have thought it bizarre that you would actually choose to have somone cut open your face, chisel your nose,  suck fat out of your gut with a surgical vacuum cleaner or pump yourself full of silicone or botox but times have changed, although I still think that.

C-sections should only be performed for genuine medical reasons - unless the parents are prepared to pay, in which case it's up to them.

If those who have no clinical need, but feel it's necessary to have a c-section, fancy stumping up the £1000 difference between a V-birth and a C-section privately, they're welcome to it.  I have no problem with that.

I just can't see why, when cash in the NHS is tighter than ever, we're prioritising £5,000,000 of funding towards something deemed not to reflect clinical need?

if men gave birth there'd be no whining about the pain or looking for the "easy" option.

AllNew wrote (see)

Would someone really, really tell the media "I decided to have major surgery because I can't be bothered with the whole birth thing." No, they don't. We just assume every time we hear about a celeb having a c-section that they're 'too posh too push'.

exactly the point.

they wouldn't tell the media that but the basis of your argument is that she never told the media that!

the whole celebs thing comes down to the fact that they mostly seem to have c-sections, a far higher percentage than in the public at large.

which is fair enough I suppose when they're paying for it.

AN: I would actually think that it's more to do with the policy of private hospitals. I imagine they want to run things according to strict timetables in those places.

Imagine having a very expensive medical team waiting around for hours for a natural birth - the cost would be astronomical. And then celebrity X's birth might "overrun into celebrity "Y's birth who has the same team and whole complicated schedules have been organised around both celebrity lives....

You can see why it would all be a bit "conveyor belt".