ugh, this thread. Wish OP would come back and clarify what her intentions were with “awareness.”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See my previous post. As many as 1 in 6 women who delivered vaginally have a pelvic floor disorder. 200,000 women undergo surgery every year to fix the damage. That is pretty much the exact opposite of “most women come through childbirth just fine.”

Just wait until your bladder or uterus drops out of your body through your vaginal wall or you start being incontinent of feces or urine or you become unable to fully evacuate your bowels and have to go around all day with a rectum fool of stool you have to manually disimpact due to a rectocele and I promise you, you will not be saying this is “just fine.”

I work in this field. A lot of the pelvic injuries that elderly women are dealing with are from twilight sleep plus forceps. We no longer use both typically. Also, women are now laboring down on their own more.

Than you know that ACOG is promoting operative delivery as a strategy to avoid C sections then, also.

https://m.acog.org/Clinical-Guidance-and-Publications/Obstetric-Care-Consensus-Series/Safe-Prevention-of-the-Primary-Cesarean-Delivery

And you also know there was a study that just showed laboring down makes no difference for outcome, as well.

Anonymous wrote:I guess by your rationale and thinking, then we shouldn’t care about rape, PP. You know, since statistically only 1 in4 women get raped, the vast majority of women won’t be raped. And being a woman carries real and significant risk, and 3 out of 4 women (a whopping 75 percent!) will live their lives without being raped, which is absolutely the majority of women.

Do you even hear how insensitive and callous you sound? Try a little empathy.

Who said anything about not caring?? Can we not both care and also be mindful of the actual facts?

Anonymous wrote:See my previous post. As many as 1 in 6 women who delivered vaginally have a pelvic floor disorder. 200,000 women undergo surgery every year to fix the damage. That is pretty much the exact opposite of “most women come through childbirth just fine.”

Just wait until your bladder or uterus drops out of your body through your vaginal wall or you start being incontinent of feces or urine or you become unable to fully evacuate your bowels and have to go around all day with a rectum fool of stool you have to manually disimpact due to a rectocele and I promise you, you will not be saying this is “just fine.”

I work in this field. A lot of the pelvic injuries that elderly women are dealing with are from twilight sleep plus forceps. We no longer use both typically. Also, women are now laboring down on their own more.

Anonymous wrote:I guess by your rationale and thinking, then we shouldn’t care about rape, PP. You know, since statistically only 1 in4 women get raped, the vast majority of women won’t be raped. And being a woman carries real and significant risk, and 3 out of 4 women (a whopping 75 percent!) will live their lives without being raped, which is absolutely the majority of women.

Do you even hear how insensitive and callous you sound? Try a little empathy.

You don’t sound very rational. Nobody said we “shouldn’t care” about women affected. Just stop trying to claim that the statistics show “the opposite of most women come through childbirth just fine.” That’s exactly what the statistics show - that the majority of women are just fine and not injured. That is not lack of empathy, it’s just facts. It doesn’t mean we just throw up our hands at those who suffer and say tough luck. But making false and exaggerated claims helps no one at all.

Tacky to try to draw parallels with rape. Talk about callous.

I guess by your rationale and thinking, then we shouldn’t care about rape, PP. You know, since statistically only 1 in4 women get raped, the vast majority of women won’t be raped. And being a woman carries real and significant risk, and 3 out of 4 women (a whopping 75 percent!) will live their lives without being raped, which is absolutely the majority of women.

Do you even hear how insensitive and callous you sound? Try a little empathy.

Anonymous wrote:See my previous post. As many as 1 in 6 women who delivered vaginally have a pelvic floor disorder. 200,000 women undergo surgery every year to fix the damage. That is pretty much the exact opposite of “most women come through childbirth just fine.”

Just wait until your bladder or uterus drops out of your body through your vaginal wall or you start being incontinent of feces or urine or you become unable to fully evacuate your bowels and have to go around all day with a rectum fool of stool you have to manually disimpact due to a rectocele and I promise you, you will not be saying this is “just fine.”

Why are you so angry? What do you want? That 1/6 includes any pelvic floor disorder, no matter how mild, including those caused by pregnancy and present in women who undergo c-section for delivery as well. And yes, 5/6 women (83.33%) with zero injury is absolutely the majority of women!

No one is undermining the horrific experience of those who have traumatic birth injuries by also acknowledging that significant injury is unlikely and that all modes of delivery carry very real and significant risks. If you have suffered, I am truly sorry.

My point is that you should not minimize other women’s childbirth injuries, just because you got lucky and sailed through your vaginal birth ok. To ignorantly state “oh most women are fine from birth” when 200K women are having prolapse surgeries and bladder slings and hysterectomies every year is an insensitive, inaccurate and ignorant thing to say.

I’m not saying all women should have c sections. But I do think women deserve to be educated about risks and benefits of both modes of delivery. Vaginal birth as the default only makes sense if we are all having babies as we are biologically intended—around age 20. The likelihood of injury is FAR less at that age. At older ages we are far more likely to be injured, and we deserve to know that ahead of time. That means you might still want your vaginal birth, but someone else might want a scheduled c section. Both are legit choices.

There are risks and downsides to c sections. There are risks and downsides to vaginal birth. But right now obstetricians only inform women about the former. The latter is ignored, fetishized, and held up like some amazing thing. That creates shame and stigma around c sections. It promotes a false narrative, and feelings of failure among c section moms, and national hand wringing and initiatives to reduce c section rate and longer second stage labors that injure women and increased use of forceps and vacuum that also injure women, all for the goal of getting the baby out of the vagina and not the abdomen. Women with c sections are told their births are unnatural, that they won’t be able to successfully breastfeed, that they didn’t give birth the real way, and that their kid’s health and biome are permanently screwed up. It’s completely insane. Meanwhile women with injuries from vaginal birth are told “at least you avoided a c section,” and “well, you had s baby,” and then told they can just go pelvic floor PT and get a pessary or a mesh surgery to “fix” things—never mind the insane risks of mesh implants. It’s all total misogyny. Birth has a cost and many women pay the price. It’s disgusting to me that you would minimize any of this.

Anonymous wrote:See my previous post. As many as 1 in 6 women who delivered vaginally have a pelvic floor disorder. 200,000 women undergo surgery every year to fix the damage. That is pretty much the exact opposite of “most women come through childbirth just fine.”

Just wait until your bladder or uterus drops out of your body through your vaginal wall or you start being incontinent of feces or urine or you become unable to fully evacuate your bowels and have to go around all day with a rectum fool of stool you have to manually disimpact due to a rectocele and I promise you, you will not be saying this is “just fine.”

WTF is your point, exactly? Seriously. What is it you are trying to say?

Make c-sections mandatory? Stop having babies? Enlighten us.

Because I see your facts clear as day, and I will still have another baby, hopefully vaginally. I understand statistics and how they work, and I made make educated choices. I’m sorry you are (I’m assuming) completely incontinent, that must be awful. But are you saying you’d trade your kid back in to regain those abilities again? What if the alternative was dying on the operating table? I mean, the what it’s are endless!

Honestly, your biggest statistic probability is that you’ll die in a car crash on the way home from the hospital.

See my previous post. As many as 1 in 6 women who delivered vaginally have a pelvic floor disorder. 200,000 women undergo surgery every year to fix the damage. That is pretty much the exact opposite of “most women come through childbirth just fine.”

Just wait until your bladder or uterus drops out of your body through your vaginal wall or you start being incontinent of feces or urine or you become unable to fully evacuate your bowels and have to go around all day with a rectum fool of stool you have to manually disimpact due to a rectocele and I promise you, you will not be saying this is “just fine.”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since most pelvic floor damage occurs during pregnancy itself, I guess women should just stop having babies altogether.

Citation for that unsubstantiated generalization?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29332252/

Changes and damage occur during pregnancy. Changes can be accentuated following vaginal birth, but generally heal and return to normal within the first year PP. C-section was not protective of these changes/damage.

But see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/30561480/?i=2&from=/29332252/related, linked to on the right of the study you cite.

You can pick and choose studies all day long that say what you want them to say. I’m not sure what you’re advocating for - c-sections for all, and enjoy seeing material morbidity rates skyrocket? What is your agenda?

The bottom line is that most women come through childbirth just fine, with no lasting damage or effect. Several of the linked studies show an 8-13 percent rate of puborectalis muscle injury. Our bodies actually are able to do this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since most pelvic floor damage occurs during pregnancy itself, I guess women should just stop having babies altogether.

Citation for that unsubstantiated generalization?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29332252/

Changes and damage occur during pregnancy. Changes can be accentuated following vaginal birth, but generally heal and return to normal within the first year PP. C-section was not protective of these changes/damage.

But see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/30561480/?i=2&from=/29332252/related, linked to on the right of the study you cite.

You are misstating that study. “Cesarean delivery is not completely protective.” But they were only referring to things like reduced levator strength and bladder neck mobility. Planned c section is fully protective of other pelvic floor disorders not included in that study like fistula, puborectalis avulsion, EAS tears, etc.