International Cesarean Awareness Network

Why so many?  That is the question I find myself asking more and more these days.  As I wander the hospital, making my rounds, I see so many women everyday that just had major abdominal surgery to deliever their babies.  All the smiling faces, but sad eyes.  It makes it hard to go back, but I must, to finish my lactation educators certificate.  I wonder how hard it will be once I acutally start my L&D rotation?  Most of these woman have no idea that what just happened to them.  I see the struggles of all these sectioned women trying to breastfeed with their sore incissions.  All these babies with low birth weight, because they were taken too soon.  Some in NICU.   Even though there is no VBAC ban here, it is still rare that someone even tries for one.  Strange to me, who would want to go through the pain of a cesarean if you didn’t have to?  But more and more women are having cesareans, and less and less are choosing to try for a VBAC.  I so desperatly want to tell these women the truth.  Most of them did not need the  surgery they just had.  If I hear one more worker tell a mom she needs a cesarean because "that baby is just to big" I think I will scream!  And then, they take the baby by surgery, and guess what?  That "big baby" is only 6lbs!  Or my friend that just had a baby.  Her doctor told her (without reason) that her baby was going to be large based on the size of her husband.  That she needed to be induced early, to prevent the baby from getting to big.  She was terrified that her baby was going to be so big she couldn’t push him out, so she agreed to be induced at 37wks, 3days.  She had NO indications of being ready for labor.  Scored VERY low on Bishops Scale.  But they did it anyway.  She had trouble from the word go.  Everythign stacked up against her.  We all know the story of what happened to her next.  She got an epidural early, because her doctor told her it posed no risk to her or the baby, and would not slow things down.  Of course, we know that to be not so truthful.  Her contractions nearly stopped, so they turned the pitocin up.  Then her epidural wasn’t working so well, so they gave her another dose.  After that, her baby started to go into "fetal distress"  They put her on oxygen.  Didn’t help of course.  So, the doctor rushes in, tells her she needs a cesarean to "save her baby" and they rush off to surgery.  They started to cut her open, and she starts screaming… guess what?  All that complaining that her epidural wasn’t working? It wasn’t, and in MID SURGERY, they put her all the way under.  Once it was all over, her baby was in NICU, having trouble breathing from the medication they had given mom.  Guess how much baby wieghed?  Barely 6lbs.  Mom was not doing well.  She bled alot during the surgery.  Had to get blood products, and had LOTS of trouble breastfeeding.  The next day, her OB came in and told her that she needed to have cesareans from now on, because her body was not built to have babies, and she would have died if she had given birth vaginally, and the baby may not have survived.  We all know these types of stories.  Funny thing is, since my time at the hospital, I have been keeping a mental note of this.  How many stories do I see like this in a day?  I see it EVERYDAY!  On busy days, we have many, many people recovering from just this story.  It breaks my heart…