Letter: In child birth, ‘vaginal’ not always ‘natural’
Letter: In child birth, ‘vaginal’ not always ‘natural’
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
In “Natural births: better after all?” (9/5), author Ambika Bhushan equates vaginal birth with “natural birth.”
While the vagina is the natural and normal birth canal, a vaginal birth is not necessarily a “natural birth.”
In the study she summarized, there was no mention as to whether women in the vaginal birth group had epidural anesthesia, narcotic pain relievers or other medications that interfere with the natural, unadulterated and non-medicated birth process.
Medical studies repeatedly show that babies whose mothers receive narcotic pain relievers in labor are less responsive at the time of birth and often need resuscitation immediately after birth.
Mothers, too, are under the effects of the opioid at the time of delivery, therefore inhibiting their “natural” or unmedicated first encounter with their newborn.
With epidurals, which nearly all laboring women in this country receive while in labor, there is an increased rate of vaccuum and forceps deliveries, external oxytocin administration (the hormone cited in the study that is linked to maternal behavior) and maternal fever, which results in the baby being placed in the intensive care unit, away from its mother.
While this study is a step in the right direction, the ultimate control group would be a group of women who did not use any medications in labor.
A discussion as to the effects of a vaginal birth on bonding, even if not “natural,” would have been interesting because this could suggest that, even in the presence of strong medications, there is something about entering the world through the normal route that is important to mother-infant bonding.
Jessica A. Pettigrew
School of Nursing Student
Comments
None 3 years, 8 months ago
I have wondered about the increasing rates of autism, asthma, eczema, and allergies in children over the past 5-10 years, and whether there may be a correlation between "unnatural" birthing processes (any birthing process that includes epidurals - which as you mentioned have become routine; pitocin, synthetic oxytocin; and or other things interjected into an otherwise natural process), and the prevalence in these issues in our children. In our desperate search for causes, many are still blaming vaccines,and more, but could the birthing process be the real cause? Please ensourage someone to research that hypothesis.
None 3 years, 8 months ago
As a mother of THREE (count 'em!) midwife-delivered babies, I think you are on the right track.
While I do not advocate midwife-assisted home birth for EVERY woman (indeed, there are many instances and conditions that would indicate the need for doctors and a birthing center, or even a hospital), I do wish more would trust in 10,000 years of evolution (again, excepting those who might have difficult births).
The rise in convenience births, i.e., scheduled c-sections (and the rise in c-sections generally) is alarming and, often, unnecessary. The US is indeed a strange place to bear a child.
Much of the unnecessary fear stems from Hollywood's insistent portrayal of birth as bloody and bloodcurdling. I am not here to tell you that one does not "give voice" to birth, but that the Hollywood drama is so overdone as to scare perfectly healthy and eligible birth mothers away from the natural end of the option spectrum.
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