So You're Telling Me That C-Sections Aren't a Magic Bullet?

Before I read the articles by Goer and Gawande, I thought of cesareans as the magic solution to child birth. In my mind, cesareans were a healthy alternative to a long and painful process. I viewed cesareans as something to desire not something to be wary of. However, both Goer and Gawande point out that cesareans do come with a great number of risks like infection and chronic pain. In my experience, cesareans have not been presented as dangerous, last resort procedures, but instead, I have always thought of cesareans as a positive choice.

Although I do understand Goer's argument about the dangers of cesareans, I do not see a possibility of completely abandoning cesareans anytime soon. If something goes wrong in child birth, cesarean is one of the only effective options. I do not know much about cesareans, but I wonder if not performing them would do more harm than good. Goer argues that midwives and doulas can help treat complications in child birth without surgery, but this will not always be the case. There will be cases in which the doula's techniques for treating complications do not work. Both options, at home birth and hospital birth, have their dangers, but in the end, I would feel more comfortable in a hospital with a doctor than at home with a midwive if something went wrong in my child birth experience.

Another reaction that I had to Goer and Gawande is a reaction that I frequently have when reading about the dangers of childbirth. Childbirth becomes a scary event that is to be feared when I read articles such as these. I know child birth is supposed to be thought of as a beautiful process, but the descriptions in Gawande of all the various risks involved are frightening. So many complications can occur. If I were in labor,  I would just be waiting for something to go wrong. The weird thing to me is that I never hear mothers talk about the scary parts of child birth. True, I hear about the pain, but I do not hear about all the various complications that occur. The first time I really heard what I would call "real" accounts of child birth was in the brown bag about child birth stories.

In regard to medical intervention, I understand Goer's point that medical intervention can actually cause unnecessary complications and procedures. However, I do not feel that medical intervention in pregnancy is all bad. If some types of medical intervention make the birthing process easier for the mother, I am in favor of those practices. 

Women have to go through so much with child birth. Labor, as in Rourke's case, can last for over 24 hours. This causes me to question why women are not considered equal to men. Obviously, great strength is needed to go through child birth. Men will never know the strength it takes to have a child, to go through that long and painful process, yet for some reason, women often get categorized as weak in comparison to men.

The biggest lesson I got from these readings is that cesareans are not what I think they are. They are risky, dangerous, and are most definitely not a magic bullet solution to child birth.