Tag: c-section

Who Needs a Lockbox Instead of a Vagina?

~ Clarissa ~ 52 Comments

A very convincing argument (albeit an unintended one) in favor of elective C-section:

 I don’t think I adequately appreciated the ways that the juggernaut of childbirth could transform a woman’s relationship with her vagina, altering her entire body’s feelings about her pelvis and genitals.

See, by Sunday afternoon I was thinking clearly enough to notice a kind of “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” mental block around my entire pelvis. My brain was definitely in self-protection mode, after just the small, brief trauma of having the uterus penetrated with something less than half an inch in diameter.

With childbirth, the fundamental MEANING of those body parts would change, from sexual to… well, women with different cultural backgrounds/baggage would construct different narratives to account for it, but essentially, they’d be transformed into a lockbox.

For a sexually healthy woman who perceives her genitals as, first and foremost, a source of sexual fulfillment, the prospect of her vagina turning into a lockbox surrounded by a police line is horrifying.

Of course, the number of women who derive no enjoyment from sex and who will gladly offer up their vaginas to be shredded to bits in order to have some sensation in their genitals for once is huge. This means that vaginal childbirth will never go out of fashion.

And Here I Thought The UK Was a Civilized Country. . .

~ Clarissa ~ 39 Comments

I just discovered that in England and Wales a maternal request cesarean “is not on its own an indication” for surgery. What kind of a barbaric policy is it to push a woman into pain and suffering of vaginal childbirth against her own will? Can a country call itself civilized while claiming that a woman is not allowed to choose her method of delivering a child from her own body?

Don’t the so-called medical professionals who come up with reasons to prevent women from choosing the method of giving birth that suits them best realize that a woman who doesn’t want a vaginal delivery will develop every symptom under the sun that will allow her to qualify for a scheduled C-section? This is what my sister went through to guarantee that her wish for an elective cesarean was taken into account. This took place in Quebec where she was bullied by nasty, irresponsible doulas to reconsider and deliver vaginally while she was already in labor. You really have to be a monster to bully a woman in such a situation. (And then she was further bullied by “lactation activists.” And by crazy nurses who insisted the baby be awakened in the night to be fed when she was very obviously not hungry. The amount of bullying women undergo whenever they try to give birth is overwhelming.)

The anti-cesarean movement that claims you are not a woman until you have really suffered and had your vagina torn to shreds is gaining ground everywhere in the world. It’s sad to see that the UK still considers its female population to be incapable of making even the most basic decisions about their own bodies.