Sad story

Donna Metler wrote:

There are SO many people out there advocating for VBAC, non-interventionist
childbirth, home birth, etc, that it would be easy to convince yourself that
the doctors are wrong if they tell you that they expect complications. After
all, having babies is easy, millions of women do it, right? And if that's
what you want, it's easy to convince yourself of that.

There's some of that, but I think that the medical
folks have to take some of that blame as well for crying wolf
all this time. When you claim all sorts of things that are
demonstrably untrue, you're practically begging people not
to believe you when what you're saying *is* true.

I would dispute that there are SO many people out
there advocating for low intervention birth. There are
many here, but in real life, I find they're few and far
between. There are far more people willing to tell me
I'm crackers for wanting to avoid an epidural than there
are people willing to tell women choosing high intervention
births that they should rethink their plans. I suspect
Angela may have the right of it--that something about her
previous c-section experience and sequelae made her bound
and determined not to have that experience again, even
if it meant taking risks others would see as foolish.
(Not that that's rational, but her experience may have
been such that she was not capable of rational thought
about this particular issue.)

Also, when it comes to at least frank breeches,
with an experienced caregiver, the additional risk of a
vaginal delivery is *very* small. The problem now is that
there are very few caregivers experienced in vaginal breech
births, and there are many ways to do the wrong thing and
make the situation far more risky. So, what was once only
a mild additional risk has become a significant additional
risk through loss of knowledge and experience. It also
provides an opportunity for confusion, because there are
several studies done that show little increased risk--but
they were done before that knowledge became so much more
scarce.

I pity her-because now not only will she have to deal with the guilt and
pain of a loss, but realize that there's a good chance that her choices
caused it. And that's a pain I would hate to see anyone go through.

Absolutely.

Best wishes,
Ericka