While childbirth is often a joyful event, it rarely unfolds exactly how we think it will. This causes disappointment among some women, and leaves a small proportion with a diagnosis of postnatal PTSD.
Our study found babies born via medical or surgical intervention were at increased risk of health problems, from jaundice and feeding issues, to diabetes, respiratory infections and eczema.
Many women in African countries who are medically required to have caesarean sections aren’t able to access them due to weak health systems and a lack of resources.
Childbirth in the U.S. can be dangerous and dehumanizing. An ob/gyn who traveled recently to India to review childbirth there says the U.S. and India fall short in similar ways.
The particular makeup of a newborn’s gut microbes is important as it has been shown to affect their risk of developing certain diseases later in childhood and adulthood.
The reduction of childbirth to a ‘choice’ between surgery and vaginal birth with interventions comes from patriarchal views about the fundamental failure of the female body.
We’ve come a long way from the first documented successful caesarean. In 1500, Swiss farmer Jacob Nufer operated on his wife after a labour of several days. She went on to have five more vaginal births.
Medical intervention in birth is normalised by both maternity care providers and all kinds of media. Our research shows information about the benefits of natural birth help women make better choices.
Last month I attended a protest in London over an incident on the other side of the world. It concerned a woman named Adelir Carmen Lemos de Góes, who was forced to have a caesarean section in Torres…
There is a substantial literature on labour and childbirth in medical, midwifery and social scientific research. But we still don’t know much about how labouring women experience that pivotal time when…
Research Fellow University of Notre Dame Australia; Adjunct Fellow (National Institute of Complementary Medicine), Western Sydney University, University of Notre Dame Australia
SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney