The Gentle Cesarean: More Like A Birth Than An Operation

There are many reasons women need cesareans. Sometimes the situation is truly life-threatening. But often the problem is that labor simply isn’t progressing. That was the case for Valerie Echo Duckett, 35, who lives in Columbus, Ohio. After receiving an epidural for pain, Duckett’s contractions stopped. By late evening she was told she’d need a C-section to deliver her son, Avery. Duckett says she has vague memories of being wheeled into the operating room, strapped down and shaking from cold.

“They were covering me up with warm blankets,”she says. “I kind of slept in and out of it.” Her only memory of meeting her newborn son for the first time was from some pictures her husband took. This is the experience many women have. The cesarean section is the most common surgery in America about 1 in 3 babies is delivered this way. But for many women, being told they need a C-section is unpleasant news. Duckett says she felt like she missed out on a pivotal moment in her pregnancy.

“It took me a long time even to be able to say that I gave birth to Avery,” she says. “I felt like I didn’t earn the right to say I gave birth to him, like it was taken from me somehow, like I hadn’t done what I was supposed to do.”

Duckett’s reaction to her C-section is unfortunately a common one, says Betsey Snow, head of Family and Child Services at Anne Arundel Medical Center, a community hospital in Annapolis, Md.”I hear a lot of moms say, ‘I’m disappointed I had to have a C-section.’ A lot of women felt like they failed because they couldn’t do a vaginal delivery,” says Snow.Now some hospitals are offering small but significant changes to the procedure to make it seem more like a birth than major surgery.

In a typical C-section, a closed curtain shields the sterile operating field. Mothers don’t see the procedure and their babies are immediately whisked away for pediatric care — a separation that can last for close to half an hour. Kristen Caminiti, of Crofton, Md., knows this routine well. Her first two sons were born by traditional cesarean. She was happy with their births because, she says, it was all she knew. Then, just a few weeks into her third pregnancy, Caminiti, who is 33, saw a post on Facebook about family-centered cesarean techniques catching on in England.”I clicked on the link and thought, ‘I want that,’ ” she says.

The techniques are relatively easy and the main goals simple: Let moms see their babies being born if they want and put newborns immediately on the mother’s chest for skin-to-skin contact. This helps stimulate bonding and breast feeding. Caminiti asked her obstetrician, Dr. Marcus Penn, if he’d allow her to have this kind of birth. He said yes.

When Caminiti told Penn what she wanted, his first thought was it wouldn’t be that difficult to do. “I didn’t see anything that would be terribly out of the norm,” he says. “It would be different from the way we usually do it, but nothing terrible that anyone would say we shouldn’t try that.”..... Read More....