Cesarean vs Natural Birth Baby

In hospitals they would lie a woman on a bed as though there was someone wrong with her. In a natural childbirth, she would be more likely to give birth squatting or kneeling or hanging by her fingertips from the lampshade, if that's what made her comfortable. Odent pioneered water births, of which more later. And he avoided medical intervention unless it was absolutely necessary. His ideas were simple, obvious and profoundly controversial.
 

Cesarean vs Natural Birth Baby

For a lot of obstetricians have no time for this at all. They believe that childbirth has been civilized by technological advance. No longer do women die in childbirth - or at least, very rarely (in England and Wales in 1907, 3,520 women died in childbirth, or as a direct consequence of being pregnant. In 1997 the figure was 38. That's 0.059 for every 1,000 births. They are more likely to be killed in a road accident on the way to the hospital).

Drugs take away the pain. And if they want, women can subcontract the whole process to the surgeons by having an elective Caesarean. An increasing number of middle-class women, it says in the newspapers, are 'too posh to push'. Maybe they have to be back at their desks in two weeks and so don't have time for all this pregnancy stuff. Or maybe it all seems too much like hard work. 

Far easier to have the little blighter sliced out and turned over straightaway to the first of eleven Bosnian au pairs who will be caring for it 23 hours and 40 minutes a day until it's packed off to school in seven years. According to one eminent obstetrician, these women 'know the risks. But the way I see it, they are like people who choose to travel by car rather than train - despite knowing the train is safer.' 

In the US, Caesareans are actually promoted as a lifestyle choice. One hospital ad encourages mothers-to-be to 'keep yourself honeymoon fresh with a Caesarean'. As it happens, women having Caesareans are four times more likely to suffer serious complications than women giving birth vaginally, and nearly twice as likely to have problems conceiving again. No one really knows the long-term risks involved in delivery by forceps (every bit as nasty as it sounds) or ventouse (the giant sink plunger of your worst nightmares).

But according to Department of Health figures, more than half of all births in NHS hospitals now involve forceps, ventouse or Caesarean section.
 
Not that natural childbirth rejects medical intervention altogether - of course not. If an emergency Caesarean is needed, an emergency Caesarean it will be. One of the man-eating midwives at the hospital's antenatal class sneeringly called this 'the best of both worlds', which is true - and a strong endorsement for natural childbirth, I would have thought. Why not have the best of both worlds, if it's available and free?
 
These, then, are the opposing ideologies. Their battleground is the antenatal class. Woollen wombs and flip charts are the main weaponry, and the poor embattled parents-to-be are the first wave of troops to be mown down in the crossfire. You have to wonder what sort of people would willingly let themselves in for this misery. Then you look in the mirror. 

In some NCT classes, I have heard, everyone becomes terribly good friends, and are at each other's births and invite each other to dinner parties and become godparents to each other's children and play sad wife-swapping games and divorce horribly and drink themselves to death in sorry bedsits in wind-battered seaside towns. 

And it's true, there is a camaraderie of sorts. You are all there together, a slight nervousness unsuccessfully masking your deep-seated fear, and exactly half of you have had to cancel something more interesting to come to this. You couldn't fail to get on. Whether the bonds last beyond the end of the classes is less certain. Like holiday friendships, they may or may not the flight home. To find out more, you can check out Cesarean vs Natural Birth Baby.