Posts Tagged ‘caesarian’

 

Too Posh to Push? (Part 2)

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

But, having said that, there are things you aren’t told when schedules are being done and options are being narrowed down and made, and I will have to list them to distance myself as much as possible from these admissions:

  • It’s a totally freaky experience being fully awake and knowing that your insides are spilling all over the operating table and there is blood and fluid flowing like a fountain from your belly – the gynae and theatre nurses have to wear wellies (enough said). Don’t ever look at the overhead light, as you will be terrified by the reflection.
  • You are given your baby at about the same time as a shot of morphine in your thigh – the effect of the drug is not conducive with (a) safety and (b) bonding.
  • It’s fucking sore when the drugs wear off.
  • It’s fucking sore when you have to get up to go to the toilet for the first time after they take the catheter out.
  • You get a suppository – this is supposedly for the alleviation of the pain but, when you are crapping your guts out, it is revealed that it is all a cover and it is really to prevent you clogging up, getting constipated and having to push so hard that your stitches pop out.
  • You are incapable of coping with a tiny baby at home when your husband only has three days of paternity leave (RSA Labour Law sucks … believe me, I know).
  • You are incapable of coping without your parents or in-laws around.
  • You are incapable of coping WITH your parents or in-laws around.
  • It is perfectly normal to have permanent nerve damage in your coccyx – my feeling in that area disappeared totally for over a year and now the pain is making up for the long-term loss.
  • The entry point of the spinal block needle comes back to haunt you by causing the most excruciating pain – this when you are constantly having to pick up a 13kg bundle.

Perhaps the NHS should change their propaganda slogan. Or perhaps they tried … but, admittedly, the above list doesn’t make for a particularly catchy slogan.

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Too Posh to Push? (Part 1)

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

One of the reasons I left the UK was because I could no longer deal with the NHS propaganda that made women feel like they were either failures as women or just weren’t particularly interested in breaking
a sweat during the birthing process. The former touches a nerve in even the most non-maternal woman and the latter conjures up images of a woman who hands her baby to a wet nurse as soon as it emerges from the bloody wound.

Not particularly into the whole maternal, mother nature thing (which, one has to admit, is not so much mother nature as total fad these days), I knew I would have a c-section – it’s unnatural to try and get
something that big out of such a small exit. Whether the gynae was looking after his schedule or my continence is irrelevant. When he told me the head of my foetus was too large to exit ‘naturally’, I was relieved to have the medical back-up for my instinctual beliefs – after all who said a small slice across the lower abdomen to extract a living being isn’t natural.

There are revelations that follow. I do, however, have to pre-empt them with a disclaimer: I still believe in the advances of medical science enough to believe that a c-section is the only way and I would never go back and change a thing.

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He’s coming out the sunroof

Monday, June 4th, 2007

I had always been under the impression that gynaes were gung ho about natural childbirth. Gynaes and midwives. On my trial run to the hospital I discovered the latter to be untrue when each of the four midwives advised against ‘pushing it out’, citing incontinence at age 80 as the reason. Now my gynae was trying to convince me that surgery was the best route.

‘I don’t want to disappoint you but it is unlikely that your child will come out naturally. Have you considered having a Caesarian?’

A few things went through my head on hearing these words. He either really thought that my small frame and the large head of my unborn child would pose a space problem or, being close to retirement date, he didn’t want to leave anything up to chance with his final deliveries.

And, hey, I needed no convincing. With all the advances of medical science, would someone with a heart problem ponder their dying wishes when they could have a triple bypass or a pacemaker installed?

Again to quote my gynae, ‘you don’t have to be a hero.’ Being a parent is good enough (that part is mine). It’s got nothing to do with posh and a hell of a lot to do with practical.

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