The national rate of women who have C-sections has hovered right above 31 percent in recent years. This can have consequences for the women who give birth, as there is a higher risk of complications for both the infant and the mother.
Because of these reasons, many women try very hard to avoid having these procedures that are often not medically necessary. This is the situation faced by one woman recently, but there was a twist — the woman was a physician herself.
As described in her essay published in the Washington Post, the woman was unaware of the pressures women routinely undergo from their ob-gyns to have C-sections. She wrote, “As a physician . . . I thought I was pretty savvy about health care in the United States. But nothing prepared me for the experience of delivering a baby in the U.S. health-care system.”
The physician and mother is one of Stony Brook University’s assistant professors of medicine and preventive medicine. She had a high-risk pregnancy because she delivered at the age of 40 and also had a diagnosis of gestational diabetes. Regardless, she had concerns that medical technologies that were available could be used to coerce her to agree to unnecessary medical interventions.
She described a pregnancy and delivery that involved “a revolving door of caregivers” and physicians who appeared to be planning to deliver her baby by C-section when she was only 36 weeks repeated her intentions to give birth vaginally. She added that she was pressured to induce her labor at 39 weeks, reportedly to avoid a stillbirth, and, that during her hospitalization, there was constant fetal monitoring even though studies show that monitoring has no effect on infant mortality but increases the C-section rates.
While this mom eventually was able to deliver her infant vaginally, one wonders if that would have been the case had she not had the title of “MD” at the end of her name. In an interview with Yahoo Parenting, she stated that the pressure for a Caesarean section was “startling.”
Certainly some C-sections are necessary, but if you experienced complications due to a C-section that was performed needlessly in Miami, you may have a cause of action to file a claim for damages.
Source: Yahoo, “Pregnant Doctor Shocked by C-Section Pressure,” Beth Greenfield, accessed Jan. 13, 2016
