Bayar from Babies
Babies seem to be all the rage these days, so much so they are the stars of a new feature film out next month. Babies, which chronicles the first year of four babies born in four different countries, looks to me like it will be a pure pleasure to watch. Hopefully it will highlight the universal joys of human life, but also examine how unique and fantastic our cultural differences can be (if you haven’t yet, you really should watch the trailer – it will put a smile on your face). One of these differences is how we come into the world – in the United States, we are increasingly becoming a society where cesarean births are the norm. The CDC released a report yesterday on the new statistic that 1/3 of all women who give birth do so through cesarean section, the highest rate in American history.
These rates have risen in every age-group (groups ranging from 20 to 54 year-olds) and all of the racial-ethnic groups included in the study. The rate of women having cesarean births between the ages of 20-29 (the lowest risk age-group when pregnant) between 2000-2007 rose by roughly 8%. Cesarean births are major abdominal surgery, which often have serious complications requiring stays in the ICU and the mother to be re-admitted to the hospital. And while it shouldn’t be a decision maker, they are almost double the cost of vaginal births. What used to be a procedure saved for high-risk pregnancies/births, is now becoming common-place. The NYTimes had a nice article summarizing the report and talking about some of the reasons and effects of such a drastic shift in our birthing practices.
Rising numbers of multiple births (twins, triplets, etc.), larger babies, larger mothers, and older mothers, all represent our cultural shift towards using some of the amazing fertility technologies now available. And they are all more likely to have cesarean births. The CDC study did not specifically state, but there are no doubt stark socio-economic differences between vaginal and cesarean births as well. Women have been requesting the procedure even when it has been deemed not medically necessary, creating a culture of ‘pushers’ and ‘non-pushers’. Doctor’s fears of lawsuits have been tossed around as a reason for the rise too, but we are going to stick with this larger cultural shift as a whole. What does this mean for mothers and babies and how does the U.S. compare to the rest of the world?
The U.S. and other developed countries medicalized childbirth decades ago, but now it could be argued that if the rise in C-sections continues, women will literally have no control over the birth of their children. This rise is occurring in developing countries too, with China and countries in Latin America reaching nearly 50% of births through cesarean. Maternal Mortality Daily states that nearly 550,000 women die a year from complications from pregnancy – 99% of these occur in the developing world where simple aspects like clean water and sterilized equipment are scarce. The contrasts in birthing around the world are stark, and while women should have the right to choose the birth they feel is best for their child and themselves, we should recognize that the human universal of childbirth is far from a universal experience.
*Image from the upcoming feature film Babies.
Punyu 