One of the reasons I waited so long to have a baby was the endless trail of horror stories about pregnancy and birth. I had the distinct impression that – despite the availability of C-sections on demand – one would be pressured into having a natural birth.
And natural birth sounded like a grisly throwback to the bad old days of mass maternal and infant mortality, a jamboree of pain and blood and emergency and terror. As friend after friend had one, then two and sometimes three children, it seemed that it only went “well” in the stark minority of cases. I was amazed that even more women weren’t left traumatised.
A fresh parliamentary inquiry into maternity care, published last week, found that women were hustled into dire births and needless emergency scenarios, “treated as an inconvenience”, and had their questions ignored or left unpursued. The inquiry’s findings entrench my conviction that the “natural” approach to childbirth should be phased out entirely. The Ockenden report from 2022 also detailed the frequent horrors of natural birth, with British mothers more likely to die than those in almost any other European country.
What are we waiting for? The NHS ought to be encouraging all women to have C-section deliveries. It seems mad that we make an exception for physiological barbarism masquerading as “nature” when it comes to childbirth. Imagine if we told people haemorrhaging, or having strokes, that the “natural” way was better. Bleed it out, so to speak.
When I finally had my baby in March, I had a planned cesarean and it was wonderful: no pain, no fear, no sickness. Happy mother and happy baby. When it comes to childbirth, women ought to trust surgeons, not mother nature.
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