Join in the C-section debate on the Alpha Mummy blog

After a gruelling 12-hour labour, I had an emergency Caesarean section by general anaesthetic. I couldn’t say that I had given “'birth” to my baby; she was “delivered”. Right from the start I felt I had let her down, not to mention me and my family.

Minutes before she was scooped out of me, Charlotte Baggott’s heart rate started plummeting, which is why I was rushed into theatre. After the delivery Charlotte spent the first few hours in intensive care and took her first sips of milk — sadly not my own — from a little cup. I was left lying alone in a cold hospital room, high on morphine and oblivious to the fact that I had just become a mother.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I had dreamt about the moment when my baby would be placed in my arms, still sticky and blue, and me still catching my breath from that final push. It may sound masochistic to say that I was disappointed that I didn’t experience the pain of pushing Charlotte out. I’ve been pregnant, but I haven’t given birth. I had failed.

I’d never failed at anything — I’d never failed an exam, never missed a deadline or left a challenge unbeaten. What made it worse was that I had trained for her arrival. I’d set my mind on a natural, drug-free birth, which is what you are encouraged to aim for in the prenatal courses. The fact that my mother and sister had both given birth in minutes without considering pain relief was encouraging. If they could do it so easily, why couldn’t I?

When a good friend said, albeit in jest, “I always knew you were too posh to push”, that hurt. I’d tried my hardest to give birth naturally. I stayed upright, I moved about and I coped admirably with the contractions, which were made even more intense as the inducing drug syntocin was pumped into me. I didn’t give up trying until the doctors made the decision to head for the theatre.

Yet I still question if there was something more I could have done. My feelings of gratitude to the obstetricians have given way to suspicion; why did they insist I take the syntocin? Perhaps they were in a rush to free the bed before the next shift? Perhaps their fear of legal reprisals meant that they were not willing to deal with possible complications? Yet, if I had been granted more time, I might have lost the most precious person in the world.

I know that these emotions are ludicrous and illogical. I feel embarrassed that I feel this way. I am the first to agree when people say: “Doesn’t matter how she got here as long as you and Charlotte are healthy.” It seemed so self-centred to even think about my feelings when Charlotte was, quite rightly, the centre of attention. I felt guilty for having negative feelings when it should be a time of joy. I felt I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. I still can’t.

Of course, I talked about the labour. As normally happens when new mums get together, the stories of labour dominate the conversation. The sagas of episiotomies and forceps sounded horrendous, but at least they had given birth to their babies. When I said that I had had a Caesarean, the reaction was “Oh, poor you”, which reinforced my feelings of failure even more.

Perhaps it was naive not to have considered the possibility of a Caesarean. According to the NHS maternity statistics for England in 2003-04, the Caesarean rate accounted for 23 per cent of all births. In the 1950s, fewer than 3 per cent of all births were by Caesarean. Kingston Hospital, where Charlotte was born, boasts a rate of 26 per cent, with a recorded 4,683 births each year (www.birthchoice.org).

I’m apparently not the only woman left with more scars than the one slashed across her midriff. Feelings of confusion, disappointment, failure and even trauma are not unusual after a Caesarean, says the childbirth specialist Sheila Kitzinger. “These mixed emotions may not show themselves straight away,” she says. “The problems can start to set in a few weeks later in the form of flashbacks, depression or posttrauma stress. Some women blame the baby, or find it hard to relate to the child. Others may try to make up for what they consider to be a bad start by being overprotective with the baby. If you don’t deal with these emotions, they stick. I’ve even had a woman in her seventies come to me still traumatised by the birth of her child.”

Instead of being treated with antidepressants, what women need at this time is to talk to a “reflective listener”, says Kitzinger. “They need to talk to someone who will validate that their emotions are normal, not tell them how they should feel or try to change their feelings.”

I have swept my emotions under the carpet for now and I am pinning my hopes on the natural birth of my second child to make up for my failure first time around.

The Birth Crisis Network was set up for women coping with the trauma of childbirth. For further information, visit

www.sheilakitzinger.com

Birth marks

In the past 50 years rates of Caesarean section in England and Wales have risen dramatically, but deaths among babies and mothers have dropped.

CAESAREAN RATES

1950 3 per cent of all births

1995 16 per cent of all births

2002 22 per cent of all births

Source: National Statistics

Maternal mortality rates

1950 About 70 deaths per 100,000 births

2000 12 deaths per 100,000 births

Source: UN Population Division

Perinatal mortality rates

1950 37 per 1,000 births

2004 8.2 per 1,000 births

Source: National Statistics

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