Too Posh To Push?

I heard an interesting statistic on the news this morning as I was eating my bowl of homemade muesli (yes, homemade, by me, domestic Goddess that I am). Apparently one out of three Australian women opt for a caesarean over natural childbirth, and the reasons for that can on occasion be alarming. Before I get attacked for having a go at those who have to have a caesarean for medical reasons, that is not the case at all. I completely understand that sometimes C-sections are necessary to ensure that both mum and baby are kept out of danger as far as possible - it’s the reasons that were given in a survey of women by a midwifery journal that surprised me. Some women are opting for surgery because they view traditional childbirth as ‘undignified and distasteful’ and because they ‘distrust the body’s ability to undertake labour and safely birth a baby’. So a natural process that has remained unchanged for millions of years has become a source of distrust? What’s going on here?? And this coming from a country whose women are supposed to be tough – the archetypal ‘Sheila’ can withstand anything, she can get her hands dirty on an outback farm, scratch a woman’s eyes out on the netball courts and save a man twice her size from drowning (I’ve seen Bondi Rescue, it happens all the time!). Who are these women who are too posh to push?


Now, I know what you will be thinking. You don’t have kids so you are really not one to talk. No, I don’t yet but I hope that when I do I will have the courage to go through the pain of labour and, I imagine, I will be too busy screaming for drugs and cutting off the circulation in The Husband’s arm to care about the mess of it all. Of course, if I need to have a caesarean for medical reasons I will, but otherwise I will be trusting my body to do what it is designed to. After all, a caesarean is major surgery, which can take up to eight weeks to fully recover – how exactly is that easier than labour? I truly feel for women who have to have C-sections and it is certainly not the easier option. It’s women with views like that who give a bad name to mums who have to have caesareans. Complications occur more often than you might think, which is why so many women died in childbirth before the advent of modern medicine and surgery. If you are lucky enough to be able to give birth to your baby naturally, why on earth wouldn’t you?