Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic' • Hacker News Board

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#141

Post by burfog » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #7

My sister-in-law just had her first baby, and got very into all of these statistics and the "medical industrial complex take on childbirth" I believe the WHO recommends around 10-15% of births should be C-Section in a healthy population, but the figures in first world countries are at least 3-5 times that. There are about 3 million stories of ladies "booking in" their birth a month or three in advance. I.e. I want my…

"wanting to go home for the weekend or to play golf"

That is 100% real. A friend got hurt for that purpose. In her case, it was a huge and brutal episiotomy. The moment the kid was out, he ran out to play golf. Another friend got just about exactly the same, but because the doctor's house was flooding.

Doctors are human. Humans are often uncaring or even evil. Customers get dehumanized, like mechanical widgets on an assembly line in a factory.

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#142

Post by thrower123 » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #75

danw1979 wrote: post #30

Women feel enormous pressure (at least here in the UK) to give birth naturally, from both their peers and health professionals. How a baby is delivered is none of anyone's business but the mother herself. My wife (an epidemiologist) deliberated for months over having our second by VBAC (vaginal birth after csection) and opted to go for it, due to the overwhelming expectation from everyone around her that she should d…

Sorry for your loss. And I agree on the pressure around birthing choice. My wife just delivered our 3rd child, and at this point we felt confident in our choices. But the birthing class we attended before our first child was born was full of fear, pressure, and pseudoscience.

There is an unbelievable amount of woo marketed at first-time parents. I suspect its a bit of an artifact of smaller family sizes, so that there is less practical experience in general circulation. I wish my grandmother who had nine children and a dozen or so pregnancies was still alive be a source of advice.

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#143

Post by nemonemo » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

giardini wrote: post #129

C-section babies are prone to certain ailments later in life: "Giant study links C-sections with chronic disorders" - http://sciencenordic.com/giant-study-links-c-sections-chroni... My guess is that this is tied to the reduced exposure to the mothers' vaginal and anal microbiome that occurs during vaginal delivery but which is absent in C-section. Much as childhood exposure to animals reduces autoimmune disorders in…

As the article says, the cause is not certain. From some study, higher c-section rate correlates with higher income, so my guess is that it could just be an outcome of better hygiene according to the hygiene theory.

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#144

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #33

paavoova wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women have been giving birth since creation with minimal enough problems for humans to survive and succeed as a species - it absolutely is natural, no idea why you put that in quotations. Why stop at C-sections? Raise them in test tubes a la Brave New World, skip the biological process entirely. After all, it's much safer, quite possibly even zero risks on the woman's part. The thing with C-sections is that until fai…

At a species level yes, childbirth works fine. Before the modern era deaths of both child and mother were very high (10%+) when giving birth. That said, the U.S. approach to childbirth is clearly not working, with childbirth deaths at 3 times that of Canada, and higher than the rest of the developed world.

Like lots of things in USA this is tied to racism. Whites in USA have risks similar to those of other developed nations. Analysis has found that nonwhite immigrants have largely the same results as USA whites. However, their daughters have the same elevated risks as other minorities in USA. Public health experts don't have any idea why this is, so they're no closer to solving this problem than e.g. the public education system is to fixing its own racist outcomes.

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#145

Post by mikeash » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

monocularvision wrote: post #134

Angostura wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How a baby is delivered is none of anyone's business but the mother herself. I'm sorry for your loss. Caesarian's costs the NHS around £1,700 a time compared with £750, for a normal childbirth and women also stay in hospital for twice as long on average. There is a general presumption in the UK that avoiding what is an invasive operation is preferable for both baby and mother alike, in the absence of other factors.…

> I would argue that clearly How a baby is delivered is other people's business since other people are involved. This is one major reason to oppose publicly funded health care. _Every_ decision becomes a public one.

Much better for every decision to be a private one made by insurance executives on your behalf.

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#146

Post by burfog » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #41

Synaesthesia wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of factors which make natural childbirth better, the mother recovers much quicker, a day or two vs weeks. There are things that happen during vaginal childbirth with hormones released by mother and child which do not happen with c-sections, like the bacteria which transfers from mother to child which is essential for gut function. The baby is also prepared for birth during the process and is more a…

You are describing some idealized optimum vaginal birth. Those are not the norm. I've spoken to one woman who indicated she recovered rapidly from one birth. It was her first child. She attributed it to youth. Subsequent births were harder on her. I've had two children. Both births were relatively uncomplicated vaginal births with episiotomy. It took me 5.5 weeks to stop bleeding after the first one. It took me six m…

Idealized is much better than that. I knew a lady who slept through labor, waking up just a few minutes before birth. There are even women who have birth orgasms.

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#147

Post by notimetorelax » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

jarvist wrote: post #124

SigmundA wrote: post #59

This really seems like one obvious way in which we are effecting our own evolution and would not be surprised if in a short time (on an evolutionary scale) that humans will require c-sections for successful birth. This may not be a bad thing, the reason child birth is so difficult for humans vs most other animals is our head size vs the female pelvis. C-sections bypass the evolutionary constraint allowing more large…

It is believed that this is already happening: "The regular use of Caesarean sections is having an impact on human evolution" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38210837

If there is indeed a causal relationship, then the only alternative was not to let those parents be born through c-section. We anyway already heavily depend on medicine for our survival.

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#148

Post by rsanders » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

monocularvision wrote: post #134

Angostura wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How a baby is delivered is none of anyone's business but the mother herself. I'm sorry for your loss. Caesarian's costs the NHS around £1,700 a time compared with £750, for a normal childbirth and women also stay in hospital for twice as long on average. There is a general presumption in the UK that avoiding what is an invasive operation is preferable for both baby and mother alike, in the absence of other factors.…

> I would argue that clearly How a baby is delivered is other people's business since other people are involved. This is one major reason to oppose publicly funded health care. _Every_ decision becomes a public one.

The situation isn't terribly different for private health insurance. You're still spending out of a shared pool of dollars, and you don't have complete freedom in how you choose to do so.

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#149

Post by wizzard » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

lellotope wrote: post #109

epmaybe wrote: post #67

Interesting article. I also thought that encouraging cesarean sections was something obstetricians did often to avoid the time spent waiting for delivery. However, in my training I witnessed quite the opposite. My resident and attending physicians were very cautious with going forward with cesarean sections, and would do whatever they could to continue with vaginal delivery when the mother wanted that, and also encou…

With the birth of our daughter, we had a different, and more complicated experience. Pre-delivery there was no pressure to do a c-section. None at all. My wife definitely did not want one. At the time of delivery, though, there was very much pressure to do a c-section. Although the admitting resident didn't seem to pressure my wife, care was quickly transferred (because of shift reasons) to other physicians (resident…

This is a well-known phenomenon called the cascade of intervention: http://www.childbirthconnection.org/maternity-care/cascade-o...

Re: Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'

#150

Post by zrail » Sat, Oct 13, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

amalag wrote: post #76

My mother was in labor for over 36 hours (maybe more, she told me but I forgot) in 1976. You know that would be a C-section nowadays. She had two more children after that. I don't know how long her labor was for those but I assume it wasn't as bad.

My wife was in labor for 40ish hours in 2016. There was never any pressure for a c-section.