What happened is this: In my 39th week, I am induced because of high blood pressure. At the hospital, I am given Pitocin, a synthetic form of the labor-inducing hormone oxytocin, and Cervidil, a vaginal insert used to dilate the cervix. Within two hours, my contractions are one minute apart. I had lasted as long as I could without an epidural because I had read that they sometimes slow dilation. That’s the last thing I need: I’m at a pathetic 2 centimeters. My doctor comes up with a solution for the pain: a syringe full of a narcotic called Stadol.

“I have a history of anxiety,” I tell the nurse who has brought in the syringe, as I always warn any medical professional who wants to give me drugs. “Is this drug OK for me?” “It sure is,” she says.

It is not. Within 10 seconds, I begin hallucinating. For five hours, I hallucinate that I’m on a swing that’s soaring too high, that houses are flying at my face. My husband has fallen asleep on the cot next to me, and I’m convinced that if awakened, he will turn into a monster — literally. I’m aware this notion is irrational, that these images are hallucinations. But they are terrifying. I buzz the nurse. “Sometimes that happens,” she says …

By noon the next day, 24 hours after I had arrived, I am only 3 centimeters dilated. The new nurse, a nice lady, tells me the induction isn’t working. “Your blood pressure isn’t even high anymore,” she says. “Tell the doctor you want to go home.”

When my OB comes in, I say, “I’d like to stop this induction, if that’s possible. I’m worn out. I hallucinated all night … I just don’t think this is working out.”

“OK,” he says. “Let me examine you. If you’re still not dilating, we’ll talk about going home.”

My previous dilation exams had been quick and painless, if not entirely pleasant. This one takes a long time. Suddenly, it hurts. “What are you doing?” I scream. “Why does it hurt?”

No answer.

“He’s not examining me,” I scream at my husband. “He’s doing something!” My husband grips my hand, frozen, unsure.

I scream to the nurse, the nice one who had suggested I go home. “What is he doing?” She doesn’t answer me, either. I writhe under the doctor’s grasp. The pain is excruciating.

The first sound I hear is the doctor’s directive to the nurse, in a low voice: “Get me the hook.”

I know the hook is for breaking my water, to speed my delivery by force. I scream, “Get off of me!” He looks up at me, as if annoyed that the specimen is talking. I imagine him thinking of the cadavers he worked on in medical school, how they didn’t scream, how they let him do whatever he wanted.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he says. He breaks my water and leaves. The nurse never looks me in the eye again.

Eleven more futile hours of labor later, I am exhausted and terrified when the doctor comes in and claps his hands together. “Time for a C-section,” he says. I consider not signing the consent form, ripping off these tubes and monitors, and running. But the epidural I’d finally gotten won’t allow me to stand up.

It’s nearly midnight when I hear a cry. My first emotion is surprise; I had almost forgotten I was there to have a baby.

I was desperate to find someone who could tell me what had happened to me was normal. To say, “You hallucinated? Oh, me, too.” Or “My doctor broke my water when I wasn’t looking. Isn’t that the worst?” Nothing …

Now, I’d never loved my doctor … I’d found him patronizing — “Normal!” he’d shout at me, when I asked a question — I thought his assuredness might be a good antidote to my anxiousness. It seemed to work, until it didn’t.

… I also didn’t have a birth plan … Sure, I had a plan for the birth: Have a baby using whatever breathing method I’d learned in the hospital’s birth-preparedness class, maybe get an epidural. But I didn’t have the piece of paper that so many of my friends have brought to the hospital with them … in my opinion, the very act of creating such a contract was to ignore what labor is: something unpredictable that you are in no way qualified to dictate.

… people who hear my story ask … Did I consider a home birth? A midwife instead of an obstetrician? … The answer is no. I am not holistically minded. My philosophy was simple: Everyone I know has been born. It can’t be that complicated.

The women who ask me about my preparations for my first son’s birth — who imply with these questions that I could have prevented what happened to me if I’d been more diligent — are part of an informal movement of women who are trying to “take back” their birth — take it back from the hospital, the insurers and anyone else who thinks he can call the shots.

But hospitals aren’t so interested in giving women back their birth … stipulations dealing with labor and delivery (“I want only one medical professional in the room at a time”) garner barely a glance. University OB/GYN in Provo, Utah, even has a sign that reads, “…we will not participate in: a ‘Birth Contract’, a Doulah [sic] Assisted, or a Bradley Method delivery. For those patients who are interested in such methods, please notify the nurse so we may arrange transfer of your care.”

… This question of whether I could have prevented my trauma has lingered in my mind since that day; now that I am pregnant again, it has become deafening. I have a chance to do it all over. Would I benefit from thinking more holistically? Should I bother taking back my birth?

During my pregnancies, friends gave me two books; their spines are still barely cracked. The first is called “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth.” … The other book is “Your Best Birth” by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein; it’s an offshoot of their 2008 documentary, “The Business of Being Born.” Their urgent message is that women who want to deliver vaginally can do so if no one intervenes. Instead, doctors and hospitals are doing all they can to “help” the laboring woman along … and failing. Inductions like mine, epidurals given early in labor, continuous fetal-heart monitoring — all of them have been associated with a higher risk for cesarean section. The result is an epidemic — 32 percent of U.S. births were C-sections at last count, the highest rate in our history. Individual surgeries may be medically necessary, but as a matter of public health, the best outcomes for mothers and babies come with a rate of no more than 15 percent, according to the World Health Organization.

Sam … was five months pregnant when watching “The Business of Being Born” convinced her that hospitals could be dangerous and a home birth would be more meaningful. She and her husband found a midwife … and spent the rest of the pregnancy preparing.

After 24 hours of labor, Sam’s contractions were two or three minutes apart, yet when her midwife examined her, she was only 3 centimeters dilated. The midwife gently told her that she was nowhere close to delivering, despite her contractions, exhaustion and pain. Sam asked to be taken to the hospital.

The change of scenery did her good. “At that point, I had been in labor for 40 hours,” she says. “I entered the relaxed zone. The epidural took the edge off … It was a sacred space.”

After her son’s delivery, Sam passed out, having lost 50 percent of her blood volume in a postpartum hemorrhage. Needless to say, she was relieved that she was in a place where blood transfusions were readily available … she believes she will want midwife care at a hospital next time.

… Bialik’s first birth didn’t go the way she wanted. After three days of labor at home, she stalled at 9 centimeters, one short of the goal. Her midwife suggested they go to the hospital, where after a natural childbirth, Bialik’s son spent four days in the neonatal intensive-care unit. “My son was born with a low temperature and low blood sugar, which isn’t unusual in light of the fact that I had gestational diabetes,” she explains. “I understand doctors need to err on the side of caution, but there was nothing wrong with my child. All of our plans for bed sharing, nursing on demand, bathing him — gone.”

The experience was scarring. “I felt a sense of failure that I had to call my parents from the hospital,” Bialik continues. “Yes, I know vaginal birth in the hospital is the next best thing to a home birth.” …

I point out that natural childbirth in the hospital — her “failure” — was my best-case scenario. But I also understand when she says, “Everyone is allowed her own sense of loss.” She realized her vision when her second son was born at home.

The second time around
I don’t consider myself a candidate for a home birth. The risk of uterine rupture from an attempt at vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) makes it unthinkable … I’m also not really interested in a home birth … But I’m also not interested in another C-section …

So I’d like to attempt a VBAC, but I know that it doesn’t always succeed. I have a new doctor — the 10th I interviewed following my son’s birth — at a new hospital, and he has agreed to help me try. But my primary goal is more modest: not to be retraumatized. Even now, my heart pounds at the sight of hospital receiving blankets, the antiseptic smell of the maternity ward.

The common thread in Bialik’s and Sam’s stories that impressed me was how supported and safe they felt with their midwife …

In an e-mail Bialik sends after our meeting, she goes back to my idea that some women weren’t meant to have babies the holistic way. “There are those among us who believe that if the baby can’t survive a home labor, it is OK for it to pass peacefully,” she writes. “I do not subscribe to this, but I know that some feel that … if a baby cannot make it through birth, it is not favored evolutionarily.”

I think about my appendectomy, back in 2003. Had I not made it to the hospital in time, I would be dead. What would it be like to refuse medical intervention? I’d call my family, say my good-byes. “I’m sorry,” I’d say. “But I’m not evolutionarily favored. It’s time for me to go.”

This attitude, that everything was better back when there were no doctors, seems strange to me. C-sections, although certainly done too often, can save lives. Orthodox Jews still say the same prayer after childbirth that those who have been in near-death experiences say — and with good reason. A birth that leaves mother and child healthy may be commonplace, but it’s also a miracle every time.

As the weeks pass and my belly grows, I can’t stop thinking about Sam. Her pregnancy was a sacred time, and she had truly looked forward to labor. Is that what I should try for — a meaningful birth, as well as an untraumatic one? At what point had people like Sam and me learned to feel entitled to a meaningful birth?

“I think that birth should be a beautiful experience,” says obstetrician Kimberly D. Gregory, M.D. She’s the vice chair of women’s health care quality and performance improvement at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. “It should be exactly the way you want it, and doctors should intervene only to preserve the health or life of you or your baby.”

Naturally, one would assume that Dr. Gregory advocates birth plans. When I ask her this, she laughs. “We always say, ‘If you show up with a birth plan, just get the C-section room ready,’” she says. “You get everything on that list that you don’t want. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Dr. Gregory led an unpublished study that compared women who took traditional hospital birth classes with those who employed Bradley-like training and a birth plan. The birth-plan group trended toward a higher C-section rate and more interventions. “There’s a certain personality type that tends to be more anxious. Maybe the anxiety hormones themselves put them at risk,” Dr. Gregory theorizes. “It seems that being open and honest and choosing the right doctor is probably a better option than writing everything down. Walking in with this list appears to set up an antagonistic relationship.” …

… In the past three weeks, I’ve had the same dream. I’m in a field (I believe at Ina May Gaskin’s Farm), and women in braids are dancing around me as my baby is born, painlessly, joyously. As I reach down, I notice my C-section scar is gone.

I wake up upset. Am I truly under the impression, subconscious though it may be, that taking back this birth will undo the damage of the last one?

“I don’t understand this phrase ‘take back your birth,’” nurse-midwife Pam England, creator of “Birthing From Within,” … tells me. “Who took it? What would a woman tell herself it meant about her if she failed to meet the criteria she made up for ‘taking back’ her birth? I am concerned that this phrase, meant to generate action and a feeling of empowerment, may actually be generated by or feeding the victim part of her.”

England is right: Having a childbirth that I deem successful this time will not change what I haven’t overcome from the first. I try to find a way to make what my doctor and nurses did to me OK, but my mind rebels. I feel loss — no, theft — of an opportunity for me to have a baby the way so many other women do: a carefree pregnancy, a labor that could still go any way.

Maybe I’m not so different from the women I spoke with, after all. Bialik had a successful natural childbirth but felt like a failure because it was in the hospital. Women who had a C-section also used words like failure. Perhaps part of the problem is that our generation of women is so ambitious, so driven, that we don’t know how to do anything without quantifying it as a success or failure.

According to Dr. Gregory, women are now requesting a C-section for their first birth, even without indication. “A lot of people are uncomfortable with the unknown,” she says. Plenty of people are wary of C-sections by choice, from holistic moms to obstetricians. But isn’t this, too, taking back your birth? Refusing to be out of control seems to me the epitome of taking it back. You don’t have to have an unattended birth in the woods to be considered a real woman.

Deciding that you can’t control the uncontrollable — and committing to that decision when you are, in fact, out of control — is also taking back your birth. It’s what your grandmothers did. It’s what their grandmothers did.

With this, I realize that I have already taken back my birth, but not as part of any movement. I have stopped judging women who take extra precautions as defensive and started to understand that everyone has to find her way.

I don’t know how this story ends. I’m still not convinced my body was made to deliver vaginally. But here’s what I do know: I will insist on kindness. I will insist on care. And I hope I will be open to being treated kindly. It’s harder than it seems.

She was delivered at home after her mother, Leah, rejected advice to have a caesarean section … because her first baby … had been born that way …

A surgical birth – about 30,000 are performed in NSW each year – would have cost the public hospital system about $8000.

If she had been admitted to a neonatal special care unit, like 70 per cent of babies born by caesarean, including her big brother, it would have cost another $900 a day.

But her entry to the world, in a Dee Why lounge room, cost taxpayers nothing …

[Midwives] are calling for another urgent meeting with the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, before the new rules come into effect in July.

… mothers should only have a C-section for medical reasons, according to the authors of the World Health Organisation study.

Women who chose a caesarean over a natural birth were 10 times more likely to be admitted to intensive care and suffer severe bleeding.

… “I do get women who ask for a C-section, often because they’ve got a pathological fear of childbirth, fears of pelvic floor problems in later life or have been sexually abused earlier in life, so they choose to have a C-section to avoid any genital tract trauma which would remind them of what’s happened.”

Dr Kliman said Epworth Freemasons had about 20 mother-requested caesareans out of 3500 deliveries a year.

“I tell them it is not necessarily an easy way out,” he said.

“They have risk of haemorrhage, infection and more discomfort after the procedure.”

Vice-president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Michael Permezel, said …”If a woman said, ‘I want a C-section’ and had no understanding of the risks, I think most doctors may decline the request,” Prof Permezel said.

A baby girl is born. She grows and begins menstruating. She becomes sexually active and becomes pregnant. She births her baby. She breastfeeds her baby. This is life—normal and natural, yet exciting and important. In the continuum of life, pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period are milestone events. These experiences profoundly affect women, babies, fathers and families …

When a woman gives birth, she has to reach down inside herself and give more than she thought she had … There is a moment when every woman thinks, “I can‘t do this.” If she is lucky, she has a midwife … to whisper in her ear, “You are doing it.” As she does it, she becomes someone new: a mother. If the birthing process is skipped or occurs in a hostile situation, or if the interventions become overwhelming, she becomes a different mother than she would have been if she had only had a supportive, midwifery model of care.

… A woman‘s confidence and ability to give birth and to care for her baby are enhanced or diminished by every person who gives her care and by the environment in which she gives birth.

To control and actively manage a woman‘s labor and delivery, modern obstetrical practice relies on conformity. A woman is “subject” to rules, restrictions and protocols … Physicians and the hospital staff have authority—there is an unbalance of power … I say: You can only consent to that which you are capable of refusing. If you can‘t refuse the test, the drug, the procedure or the surgery, then you did not consent to it. This is coercion and it leads to disempowerment of women …

Many women who have cesareans suffer in silence because society expects them to “just be happy about their baby.” …

… Research has shown that when we stray from evidence-based maternity care, we have a high degree of obstetric intervention that is associated with acute trauma symptoms … how a woman perceives the event, not the event itself, plays a vitally important role in whether she has trauma symptoms.

Women report experiences that fall into the following categories:

* A sense of loss: birth didn‘t turn out like expected, loss of the experience of participating in the birth experience, not being there when the baby enters the world
* Interrupted relationship with baby: feelings of detachment from her baby
* Altered identity: sense of failure, feminine identity altered; lowered confidence in her body
* Intimations of mortality: surgery gives “rise to fears about mortality”
* Feelings of violation: from surgery where the body boundaries are violated, feeling “mutilated” or “butchered”
* Anger at caregivers: particularly regarding “what was perceived to be an unnecessary cesarean, lack of involvement in medical decisions, feeling unsupported by hospital staff before, during and after the cesarean”
* Dissociation: feeling that the surgery was taking place on someone else or from a distance
* Humiliation: being scolded
* Helplessness: not being able to take care of herself or her baby
* Posttraumatic Stress Disorder symptoms: anxiety, trouble sleeping, panic attacks

Let‘s consider that a moment. What if we went to a wedding today and while waving the couple off in the limo, we see it get hit by a truck before it turns the corner. If the bride were to spend her honeymoon in the hospital, no one would tell her, “Well, at least you have a healthy husband.” …

… Some women have such a traumatic experience, they close themselves off to the possibility of more children. They never consider the idea that it doesn‘t have to happen that way …

… Women who have had cesareans have higher rates of voluntary … infertility … This is often due to their determination that the trauma, whether physical or emotional, was too much to repeat.

Another husband expressed … he was “ashamed that I let them hurt my wife as I stood by.”

… Birth has become extremely interventive and this includes everything from the seemingly minor … to the most invasive—the cesarean. It has become so interventive that it takes something away from what the experience should be. As a result, many women find themselves grieving.

… Partners witnessing birth trauma are also at risk of developing depression, caused by feelings of helplessness during the traumatic event. Men are more likely to express their feelings of depression through anger and abusive behavior. Truman stated, “The cesarean completely destroyed my faith in the medical community … ”

… Tim stated: “I‘m mad and bitter—disillusioned. That likely won‘t change with time. Recovery is not a term I would use. I‘m not recovering. I have learned a lesson.”

How the couple process their experience can determine whether the marriage survives. Chris said, “… It put us at the brink of divorce. I didn‘t understand fully what happened and my wife thought I didn‘t care.”

The cesarean may be difficult for the father. A husband may have seen his wife rushed to the OR. He saw her uterus taken out of her body. He was worried about her. He may not have words to describe the experience, but he needs to process it.

When I broached the subject of intimacy after cesareans to husbands, some asserted, “Everything‘s fine there, thank you.”

Others report having to work hard to restore intimacy to their marriages: “It took more than a year for intimacy to start returning. More than a year.”

One husband, when asked, snorted, “Hah, are we seriously going there? Personally, it has left ’intimacy‘ out in the dark. She is embarrassed about her scar and she thinks it makes her less sexy. I guess it‘s more of an emotional hardship for her and she just doesn‘t feel sexy anymore.”

The cesarean recovery has an impact on the couple‘s ability to resume intimate relationships. The immediate problem is healing of the incision and recovery from the surgery itself. There also is long-term impact that is rarely noted by the medical community. Some women report a loss of feeling around the scar. Others are hypersensitive to any touch or pressure in the scar area—which may be psychological as well as physical. They report pain and discomfort.

Intimacy is an emotional connection. After a cesarean a number of things may interfere with this connection. The husband may have been frightened by the sight and sounds of—or the scenario that lead to—the cesarean. He may be hesitant to resume relations, worrying that he might hurt her. What if she gets pregnant again? He certainly doesn‘t want to do that again. His wife might feel the same way. She has to focus on her own recovery, which takes away from what she can give to their relationship.

… Stephanie‘s cesarean changed her husband‘s view of the medical community. He said, “… To know that people we trust with our lives and the lives of our children are so careless and insensitive about our lives and the little ones they savagely bring into this world.”

Professor Lesley Barclay … is a leading proponent of the need to reorient maternity care around the needs of women and babies …

“When women talk about what matters to them when it comes to childbirth, the issue they repeatedly mention is safety.

But their understanding of safety around childbirth is often quite different to how health systems and many professionals define it.

For women, a safe childbirth is not only about what occurs at the time of the birth. It also refers to longer-term issues, such as their social and emotional wellbeing in the weeks and month after the birth.

When women talk about safety, they are also thinking about the increased rates of depression and anxiety that manifest after operative birth or the consequences of wound infection on general health.

The Australian health system often makes it difficult for women to make wise choices around birth …

For example, evidence shows for most women most of the time birth does not need to take place in hospital. Some women will only feel safe however, whether this is evidence-based or not, with specialist medical services and technology.

The term “maternity care” … incorporates their social and emotional needs. It puts them – rather than the professional or the service …

Evidence shows maternity care can be provided by both midwives and obstetricians in public and private sector hospitals and can be safely provided at home.

… evidence also shows that safety from morbidity is less likely for Australia’s healthiest and wealthiest women cared for by private obstetricians in private hospitals. More recent epidemiological evidence shows as volumes of operative birth increases, deaths of mothers and infants are also increased by overuse of the very operation that was developed to save lives.

So where does choice fit in this repertoire of terms, locations, professionals, services and outcomes?

Safe birth should be the goal of choices offered to women and decisions taken by those who provide care for them.

Unfortunately, the choices some professionals offer or accept are self or income centered and ignore evidence. As a consequence of gender-located power historically, and a rapid increase in the numbers of more technically oriented professionals in recent decades, health services and costs do not reflect women’s needs or evidence.

The most important example of this is allowing caesarean birth to be a choice rather than only using this as the lifesaving emergency procedure it is.

… caesarean birth is rapidly becoming a life threatening procedure itself because of excessive use … maternal death reviews and coroner’s reports now show the risks attached to using a major surgical procedure as a routine mode of birth.

Maternal mortality is between two and seven times higher for surgical than vaginal birth …

… The physical, social and emotional morbidity attached to women who experience this mode of birth is not recognised therefore ignored within acute care hospitals but is evident in their homes and the community.

Research has identified that physical morbidity associated with CS is five to ten times higher than for women birthing vaginally. No less importantly there are also psychosocial consequences of surgical birth with women less satisfied, more concerned about the baby’s condition and fearful. Women delivering by CS report feeling less in control than women who have birthed vaginally.

Research also shows rates of post natal depression significantly different between women who birthed vaginally and the group of women who delivered either by planned or unplanned CS … Women who birth by CS evaluate their babies less favourably, are less likely to breastfeed and/or feed for a shorter duration.

Paradoxically, the choice to have a normal, safe, confidence affirming birth that is low cost and relieves pressure on hospitals is only available to a small minority of women.

This is not possible for Australia’s most vulnerable women and families, who, the evidence suggests, would benefit most. How many rural or remote living Aboriginal women can opt for a home birth attended by a skilful midwife?

… 1 in 10 remote living Aboriginal women in one large community avoid hospital services or skilled professionals because of the unacceptable risks to them of being evacuated from their community …

Other Australian women with more options are also taking this route, fed up with what they see as biased, self-interested advice and unacceptable risks of our current system.

To have real choices, one needs options and good information on which to base decisions. Better resourced women … can chase evidence themselves, or question doctors, hospitals and midwives …

… there are some ultimate arbiters beyond opinion. One of these is the impartial review of evidence provided by such as the Cochrane data base.

I saw to my great delight a writer (male and medically qualified) who also a Member of Parliament, recently quoting this source in a newspaper. His message, while aimed at indemnifying home birth midwives, was that home birth is safe.

… home birth is indeed safer at times than hospital birth when planned and supported by good hospital care for rare emergencies.

I wish the current president of the AMA, an erstwhile obstetrician, would be similarly correct with his claims that certainly are not recognisable as fact to those familiar with the evidence.

Choices for women are difficult when all they receive is highly partial and ill-informed opinion. Choices around birth are important or women will opt out of a system that does not meet their needs.

…. Should it be a matter of choice though for women to give birth via major abdominal surgery? Should we permit choice that means their babies avoid the process of vaginal birth that prepares them to live and breathe? Should it be women’s or obstetrician’s choice that health pays or heavily subsidises the avoidable costs of unnecessary operations that prevent other necessary surgery being performed and add to waiting lists? I think not.