Hello and welcome to episode one of ‘c-section support’ by ‘OT in motherhood’ podcast. Thanks so much for being here. I have to say I am quite excited to get started. This is something I've been thinking about and planning for quite a while and I've finally made it happen. By the time you're listening to this it will be 2024, so happy new year and I hope you have had an awesome start to the year. Alright, today, for this first episode, I wanted to give an overview of what a c-section is, and talk about some of the attitudes in society and the emotions that you might experience around c-section birth.
If you are listening and you've given birth via c-section, first of all, I want to say a huge congratulations. That is amazing. You have done an amazing job bringing your baby into the world. I want to say that you absolutely birthed your baby. There seems to be an attitude that c-section birth is not real birth, but you grew your baby, you carried them, you went through major surgery to get them here safely, you literally sacrificed your body to bring them here - that is awesome. You are not a failure. Okay?
There seems to be this attitude in society that c-sections are the easy way out, and I have to say that I think those people that think that haven't had a c-section themselves, or maybe if they have, they're feeling some negative emotions around it still. It is definitely not the easy way out. It is hard. I have been through it twice. And each time you can have a different experience. I have to say that both of my births and recoveries were not the same. There were quite a few differences, and I knew in advance that I was going to give birth via c-section as well.
The way you give birth does not define your worth as a mother or your motherhood journey. It's merely the start of being a mum. It's how your baby came into the world. I totally understand that it can be disappointing to have a c-section birth, especially if it was unplanned and an emergency and you were not expecting it.
To be honest, when I found out I was going to have a c-section for my first baby and that I would need a c-section for each consecutive pregnancy, I cried. I left the office of the OB and held it together. I was with my husband and I got outside and I burst into tears. And with me, I had time on my side. I found out when I was 15 weeks pregnant, so I had time to process that, to get my head around what that might look like, to put in supports in place, and to just understand the process.
And I understand that some of you listening may not have had that chance. So one of the major parts of me bringing this podcast is to educate people and to prepare them so that you can have a more positive experience. I do want to say it's okay to grieve the birth that you wanted. You might have a grief experience and that is okay. Your feelings are valid. I see you, I hear you. Your feelings, your emotions are valid. It is okay to be upset that you did not experience the birth that you wanted to have. Two conflicting emotions can coexist. It doesn't mean that you don't love your baby. You can absolutely love your baby and be sad that you didn't experience a vaginal birth. You can be happy your baby is safe and wish your birth went differently. You can be excited about your new role as a mother and wish that it didn't start that way.
If you are feeling this way, I really urge you to talk to someone. That could be a friend or it could be a professional. Sometimes it can be easier to talk to someone that you don't know because they will not be offering up suggestions and trying to fix things for you. They will have an impartial ear, I guess. So, people that you could talk to could be your GP, it could be your midwife, it could be your child health nurse. Some hospitals may offer a birth debrief. You could pursue that option. There are also private providers who offer birth debriefs as well. I'm also going to add some resources in the show notes of some organizations that you can reach out and talk to if you are feeling down, about your experience.
I wanted to go into some of the practicalities of what a C section is. I won't go into too much detail, as I will cover some of this in future episodes, but just an introduction. So, it is a major surgery. Generally it is done through spinal or epidural anaesthetic, which means you are awake and the lower part of your body is numb. You won't feel the surgery happening. And the benefits of being awake are that you get to meet your baby straight away. But there are some situations where you may need a general anesthetic, which is where you are put to sleep. And that will often happen in a more emergency situation. So, during the surgery, the obstetrician will cut through seven different layers in your abdomen. It is usually done through a transverse or lower segment incision, which is done just at your bikini line, underneath where your underwear would go. That's the most common and it's where it's a horizontal incision or cut in your skin and through all the layers through to your womb as well. There is another type, which is called a classical incision where it might be a horizontal or vertical cut on your abdomen and then a vertical cut through your uterus. And that's most often used in an emergency situation and the different incisions have different implications for healing and for future births. So if you're not sure what type of incision you have, that's something that you can talk to your doctor about and what the implications are of that.
C-sections can be elective, which means they are planned in advance. It still may be recommended by the medical team or it might be completely your choice and that is where at some point during the pregnancy, the decision is made that it is best to have a c-section and it will be planned in advance so that you will have a date set, you'll sign consent forms and you will know when you are coming in for surgery.
The other type is an emergency and this is unplanned where the decision is made due to issues with the baby's or the mother's health that may not have been apparent earlier on in the pregnancy. So it is possible that you could have an elective c-section planned and then it become an emergency. You might have been attempting a vaginal birth, or a VBAC, which is a vaginal birth after cesarean, and then it become an emergency c-section.
So, furthermore, there are actually different categories of the surgery, and this is something that I didn't know before I had surgery. It is something that I saw on my discharge letter, so I didn't know what category I had until after I had given birth. The categories are; category one where there's immediate threat to mother or baby. This is your true emergency where the baby needs to be born as soon as possible. There's category two where there's problems affecting the health of the mother or the baby, but it's not immediately life threatening. This is the type of c-section that I actually had for my first child. I had a C section scheduled, it was an elective. It was recommended strongly by my medical team. So I had a date set and then I went into labor beforehand, which means that it became a category two and I bumped someone off the list on the elective list on the day and they fit me in to have my baby on that day.
Category three is where the baby needs to be born early, but there's no immediate risk to the mother or the baby. And then category four is scheduled for a time that suits the mother and the medical team. So my son, my second child was actually born via category four c-section. So I had a date set in, I went in as a complete elective admission, and he was born later that day. And what happened, he was born about, I think, five hours after I went into hospital because on that day there had been about three other emergency c-sections. So, women that needed to have their babies more urgently. Which means that my surgery and the other women on the elective list were delayed. So that's the way that the medical team determines the urgency of c-sections and helps them prioritize which births need to happen on which day. And it is possible that if you are scheduled for a category 4 c-section, that if there are a lot of emergencies on the day that you're scheduled, it can happen that your c-section is bumped for the next day. Not ideal in some ways, but it's possible. So just be aware of that.
The other thing I didn't actually cover was the reasons for c-section birth. There are a lot of different reasons. I also am not going to cover, why the c section rate is so high in Australia. Currently about over 30 percent of babies are born via c-section. And as I said, there's many reasons. It could be that the baby is breech, meaning they're not head down, so they're sideways or their feet are down. It could be that it's a multiple birth. There could be a medical condition or issue with either the baby or the mother. It could be due to a vaginal birth failing to progress (which is a terrible term), but basically the baby could be in distress and needs to be born more urgently.
Thanks for listening today, and I just want to reinforce that if you are feeling down about either having a c-section birth, as in, it is planned, you will be having one in the future, or perhaps you have already had one, and you have some negative emotions around that, I really, really urge you to reach out and talk to someone. I just want to reiterate that you are awesome. You grew your baby. You brought them into the world safely. You are honestly superwoman and congratulations. In another future episode, I will go more into what you can expect on the day during your C section and the recovery. But for now, I just wanted to give a little introduction to what you can expect.
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe below, check out the resources that I've linked in the show notes, and I will see you later.