Britney Spears has another son, delivered by cesarean section.
Before having her first child, Spears told ELLE magazine that she "hoped for surgery" because she didn't want to "go through the pain" [of labor and delivery]. Now she has done it again. It's impossible to know whether her experience with her first surgery was everything she had hoped for. I don't know whether she had any interest, or support, to revisit the decision for vaginal delivery the second time around. It's easy to imagine, give the hostile medical climate surrounding VBAC, that like most women she presumed it was high-risk and didn't think twice about it.
And now, c-sections are even more normal than they were when I woke up this morning. Birth anecdotes create our cultural beliefs about birth (where did she get the idea that surgery was preferable to vaginal delivery in the first place?) Hundreds of thousands of young women will read about Britney's repeat c-section and accept it as a preferable and safe course of action. I doubt any of those women will ever hear what I have to say. But I'll say it anyway: It's not. Britney and her babies faced a tripled risk of death. She now faces increased risk of infection, blood transfusion, depression and anxiety. Her uterus will be sewn shut and her remaining layers of muscle, fat and skin will be stapled and glued together. She is likely to scar over with adhesions as the tissue heals.
If she wants more children, she'll have the face the fact that each c-section is more risky than the last. If she wants a large family, she will likely be outright discouraged, because of the increased risk and strain to her uterus each time it is cut open and sewn shut (uterine rupture is as likely during pregnancy as it is during labor and delivery). And if she ever is haunted by regret, by confusion and some haunting rage about it all, she will probably hear what most of us hear -- you're fine. You're healthy. It's normal. Be thankful you have healthy babies.
It looks like her family is recovering just fine. So is mine, Thank God. And neither one of us have daughters (yet) to inherit the legacy that our choices are building -- a world where surgery is normal, birth is feared, and women have little right to choose.
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2 comments:
I whole heartedly agree with your closing...we are creating a horrifying legacy for daughters where the choices will be increasingly limited...or even non existent at a certain point!
Thanks for your comments . . . I'm thinking of how my Grandma birthed a breech baby in 1956, and my tiny little mother-in-law birthed her twins (one breech) in 1972 (Oh, and they were both over thirty at the time). But by 2006, we're told we have to have surgery for breech or multiples. Not because women's bodies have changed but because because so few OBs are comfortable delivering them. It has become a lost art. What rights will we lose next, and at what cost to mothers and babies?
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