Caesarean Section is a Life-Saver NOT A Death Sentence!

A story I heard recently broke me. Lady, young, promising.

Sometime last year, I heard that she suffered a still birth. The umbilical cord was wound round the baby by the time she was delivered of it. She cried so badly; her blood pressure shot up.

A few months later, she was pregnant again. Lots of complications. Three months into the pregnancy, she was still bleeding. She was advised to visit a hospital as soon as she gets close to her EDD, her Expected Date of Delivery. Well,  she took that advice and went in for a scan at nine months. The scan revealed that the baby was breech (positioned head up as against the head down posture typified by the last month of pregnancy).

The revelation made away with her senses. She left the hospital and went to meet a traditional midwife, who promised to give her something to drink so the baby’s position could change. She agreed.

While there, the situation got complicated. Suddenly, the baby came out, one leg first. It was in that condition her pastor was called in. He was furious with her for not going to the hospital as advised.

By the time they arrived the hospital, it was not too late for the baby, but the same could not be said for the mother.

Caesarean Section! That’s what she was running away from, going by the story. Finally, the baby was still brought out through CS. If the operation had been done earlier, possibly the mother would have been alive.

Now, why exactly do people think CS is a death sentence?

What is this talk about Hebrew women?

This deception around town that a real woman puts to bed through the natural method (whatever that means) is not only fallacious but deadly. Our women – mothers, wives, sisters – lose their lives in the course of insisting that they be delivered vaginally.

Some husbands do not help matters. I have heard of a husband who kept taunting the wife for not being able to have a normal delivery. Some of them go as far as refusing to sign the consent form. Provision should be made for the women to be able to sign the forms themselves and do what’s best for their bodies.

Of course, most women want to have vaginal delivery, but unfortunately, not all women get to achieve that. Complications occur sometimes, which necessitate medical intervention in order to preserve the lives of both mother and baby or babies.

Such complications include pregnancy-induced hypertension, big baby, prolonged labour, ‘wrongly’ positioned baby at birth and a host of others.

No woman deserves the pain of losing her baby for something as inconsequential as a method of delivery. More so, no woman deserves to lose her life in the course of birthing her baby. The most important thing should be that both baby and mother come out alive.

Caesarean Section is just another method of birthing a baby. There is nothing evil about it. The only downside, to me, is the cost implication. It costs more than vaginal delivery. But that too, when compared with human lives, is inconsequential.

Technology has so evolved that a woman can actively take care of herself and her baby a few days after being operated upon.

Stigmatisation of women who go through CS is both thoughtless and insensitive.

Stop the unnecessary killings.

Caesarean Section, if anything, is a life-saver!