HMS Blog on elective primary C-sections
(sorry about the duplicate. I didn't see that Pansy had already blogged on this article.)
Kevin Miller starts the discussion and Greg Popcak comments.
Elective primary C-sections. Mothers having their first baby who choose to have a scheduled C-section:
More women are scheduling Caesarean sections for the delivery of a first child, a trend that doctors writing in today's New England Journal of Medicine say is ethically defensible.......for a variety of reasons, ranging from the convenience of scheduling the delivery to the perception that C-sections reduce the risk of incontinence, more patients are asking about the option, according to doctors in Pittsburgh and across the country.
This is nuts. Nuts that these mothers are trying to control their children down to choosing their birthdays, nuts that their doctors aren't trying to reassure them that having a vaginal birth does not condemn you to incontinence (and wouldn't it be nice if women's reproductive health addressed this more? and publicized the recent advances that have been made in treating this?)
I wonder how much the lack of family and social support plays into this? In a new-baby haze I once fantasized about having an elective C-section if I were ever pregnant again, so I could deliver while my mother was in town to help me....
