Healthy Baby, Healthy Mommy
By Danell Swim
January 26, 2008
When a woman is pregnant, the most important thing on her mind is delivering a healthy newborn. This is always the top priority. All too often, this is used as a means to comfort women who have an unpleasant cesarean birth experience “at least you have a healthy baby, and that’s the most important thing.” It is absolutely correct. What we have to examine is what a healthy baby and mother are.
Simply being alive is not the definition of “healthy.” There are many more factors, including the mind, body and spirit.
A Healthy Mother
First, the mind. Women who have cesareans are more likely to suffer from post-partum depression. This could be a purely physical response, due to the hormones in the body. Or, it could be because of the emotional response to major surgery, and the feelings of failure that sometimes accompany a cesarean. Many women feel that they failed in not achieving a vaginal birth, which can lead to further depression.
The impact on the body is most apparent after a cesarean. The patient won’t be able to walk for about 24 hours, and will typically have a catheter in place for this period of time. She will usually require pain medication to cope with the intense pain at the site of the incision. She will also usually be given prophylactic antibiotics to ward off any infections.
After arriving home, she will have difficulty walking. Dysfunctions of the bladder are common. Pain at the incision site happens in nearly every instance. Women will often continue taking pain medication for a week or more upon returning home. She will be told not to lift anything heavier than her baby, and to not do household chores like laundry, for fear that the incision will open.
Other possible complications are infection, and return trips to the hospital to treat those infections. A woman who has a cesarean is less likely to get pregnant again. Whether this is due to a choice after an unhappy experience or because of the surgery causing infertility is unknown. Future pregnancies are also threatened, with higher instances of miscarriage, still birth, ectopic pregnancies, uterine rupture and potentially fatal problems with the placenta.
A woman’s spirit is harder to interpret. We know that women who have cesareans are less likely to breast feed. This could be because of the drugs she is given affecting the baby to make him more lethargic and less likely to nurse. It could be because of those same drugs that inhibit the supply of milk. It also could be because women who have cesareans have more difficulty bonding with their babies, or feeling detached (may be linked to post-partum depression).
The spirit of the woman often does suffer. She wonders if she did something wrong, or if she failed her child somehow. She wonders if she could have done something different to achieve a better outcome. She is usually separated from her baby during the recovery process, which can be detrimental to the well being of the mother. She’s carried this baby inside of her for 9 months, and then has it taken from her after a traumatic surgery. After this, some women won’t let the baby out of her sights for days or weeks, for fear of losing that precious connection. Other women feel detached and not like a “mother” at all.
“For weeks I felt a responsibility for my baby, but only in the way that I would have felt responsible if I were babysitting the neighbor’s kid. He just didn’t feel like he was mine, and I honestly doubted that he was. We were separated for about 5 hours after he was born. It was probably a month before I felt like we bonded. Before that, I honestly couldn’t say that I loved him. My next birth was vaginal, and that child and I were never separated. With that child, I never had any feelings of doubt about who he was, or whether I was his mother.” ME, California
The Healthy Baby
When a mother suffers, so does her child. It’s hard to gauge a baby’s mental comprehension after birth, but what we do know is that breastfed babies are more likely to have higher IQ’s. With a higher incidence of formula feeding for cesarean born babies, we know that they may suffer some nutritional deficiencies.
We also know that babies born by cesarean are 3 times more likely to end up in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) for immature lungs. The hormones secreted during labor aid in clearing the baby’s lungs of fluid, as does the passage through the birth canal. In a baby born by elective cesarean before labor begins, the newborn doesn’t receive either of these benefits. For those born after labor has begun, the physical health is usually better, but because the baby doesn’t pass through the birth canal, they are still at a higher risk of lung problems. Babies born by cesarean are also sometimes cut, which can be a source of infection.
In all areas where the mother suffers from a cesarean, so too does the baby. If she is depressed and distant, the baby loses vital bonding time with his mother. If the mother is unable to breastfeed, the baby loses important nutrients which protect against disease and allergies. If the mother is taking pain medication while breastfeeding, the baby is lethargic from those same pain medications.
A Healthy Family
All of these must be put into perspective when evaluating whether a baby born by cesarean is “healthy.” There is no doubt that the cesarean rate in many countries is too high. In the United States, 1 in 3 babies is born by cesarean. The WHO (World Health Organization) recommends a 10-15% cesarean rate for optimal maternal and newborn health. This would most of the cesareans in the USA are unnecessary.
An unnecessary cesarean means that the baby would be healthier if born vaginally, and so would the mother.
It’s time that people began to understand that a ‘longer recovery time’ is not the only possible complication of a cesarean birth. The entire health of the mother and baby should be taken into account, including the mind, body and spirit.
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