Ottoway Citizen: The new normal

The new normal
Increasingly, giving birth is a medicalized procedure
Published: Saturday, August 18, 2007

“It must have been the cocktail of drugs they gave me before my first daughter was delivered by caesarean section, but as I lay on the operating table, I felt like chatting.

What, I asked the anesthetist seated at my head, did he think about the number of caesareans being performed? Were there too many? Was there reason for concern?

“No one ever complains about C-section rates once their babies are born,” he said in a gentle but dismissive tone, “because the babies are healthy and beautiful.”

….One of the most telling anecdotes in her book takes place at Florida Hospital Heartland Medical Centre in Sebring, Florida. When Hurricane Charley hit in 1994, it knocked the power out. The hospital had an emergency generator, but its capacity was limited. So the hospital sent most women home and asked them to come back when they were in active labour.

During the few days following the hurricane, nurses noticed a change in the way babies were being born: most babies made it into the outside world without medical intervention and within hours of their mothers arriving at the hospital; nurses saw no cases of fetal distress or respiratory distress in newborns; and the hospital’s C-section rate dropped dramatically — from more than 29 per cent to 17 per cent (six per cent if several scheduled repeat C-sections were excluded from the stats).

Prior to the storm, most mothers were induced so that their babies would be born during the day, and labours were electronically and chemically managed. Once life returned to normal, a number of nurses quit the hospital, convinced its management of labour was doing more harm than good.”

….”Still, she believes that the increasing medicalization of birth, even north of the border, is part of the culture of fear. Many women are convinced that normal birth is dangerous and to be avoided. Yet, she argues, women are seldom given accurate warnings about the risks of C-sections, which include an increased risk of infection, blood clots and stroke, emergency hysterectomies, surgical injuries and longer-lasting pain, compared to vaginal births, according to Childbirth Connections, a U.S.-based childbirth research organization.”

…”More than 30 years after the natural birth movement led many women to turn their backs on the heavy medical interventions their mothers had endured, the over-medicalization of birth is back with a vengeance. And surprisingly, few are raising alarm over the trend.