The Pregnancy Show - Elective C- Sections Part 1

Nina: We're back and now we're going to talk about a very important subject which I feel is very relevant to a lot of people, and here it is, okay. Does a woman have a right to choose when and how her baby will be born? Many women think yes and choose the baby's birthday that suits the mother and gets a C Section, others say no. Let nature decide. So here's my story. I have three babies. Whenever they decided to show up and everything was fine, etcetera, etcetera. My fourth pregnancy, the doctor said to me that I was kind of very, very low and my uterus is very weak and so thus give to me a lot of braxton hicks contractions which started - it shouldn't start until like your seventh or eighth month or towards your ninth one. Kendall: When did you get them? Nina: I started getting with my sixth-seventh month. Kendall: Wow, that is early. Nina: Right. By the eighth month, I was suffering so much in these braxton hicks. What are braxton hicks contractions? The contractions that are just -- you feel like you are in labor but you're not and preparing the uterus for labor. Kendall: The uterus is starting to exercise. Nina: Right. It's starting to stretch and contract and is starting to get ready for the baby's birth, but I would get them to such a severe point that I thought I was in labor every single day. So I would get them two minutes apart for seven or eight hours at stretch and always at night, always when I was tired and so the next day I was exhausted and every time I got them I thought I was pregnant, I was going to have baby that night. So you get to the clinic frenzy. When you think that you're having a baby, oh! My God, people are coming, washing the floors, doing the bathrooms and this craziness and this happened on a daily basis until finally. Kendall: You should have actually just used me off topic, but getting to a clinic frenzy, you should have learned to dial the phone and get a clinic service and just -- Nina: Oh! No. I thought I am having that baby, got to have. So I went to my doctor and what did he say, he said look Nina, you're ready in your 38th week, you don't need to continue with this pain, that goose is done, the turkey is done, get the sucker out. Now 38 weeks, if they do an ultrasound, they can determine the size of the baby as a good viable weight, which in my case at two week or three weeks early, I gave birth to eight-and-a-half pound babies every time. Kendall: Good weight. Nina: Very good weight. So he said, come in, we will schedule you not a C-Section and induce labor, and so they administered Pitocin through the IV and induces the labor, starts off at 9:30 and by 11:30, we got ourselves the baby, two-and-half hour, two hours. [Voice Overlap] Nina: So Pitocin is inducing labor. Your body is ready. No more Braxton, you're having a baby, you go in, you schedule it, not like a C-section, like question here was. Kendall: Right. Nina: Because the C-section is surgery and this is what we're going to talk about here [Voice Overlap] Nina: Donna is saying that C-sections are harder to heal from because it's a surgery. You have a high risk of post-op problems as well. One being death -- Kendall: That's quite a large problem. Nina: Yeah. C-sections can be useful in the case of an emergency, but in the vast cases, risks are taken for no other reason but convenience for the parents and the physician. Kendall: God came for the doctor. Nina: Right, right, or the parents have the -- Kendall: Wedding coming come -- Nina: For some kind of party, they want to have the baby earlier. So after C-section, neither mother nor baby is ready to bond or breastfeed until recovery is over and this is true. I've seen a lot of my friends have C-sections. Kendall: I got to tell you the story. I was in the hospital, second baby and after I had the baby, I was in like this little room, like an interim room. The woman on one side of me had a C-section and she was outcalled. The woman on the other side of me had an girl, but she looked like she could have murdered the first person who walked by. I was in the middle and just due to circumstances I had had nothing a purely natural birth and I was honest to God, that's what worked for me. That was like an Amazon. I was out of that bed and I said to husband, watch the baby, I need a muffin. I'll be back but that woman with the C-section, it's seriously -- Nina: I have another story to tell you about the after effects of having the baby and we'll be right back and I'll tell you that.