I think many of us walk a fine line between wanting to know what’s going on in the world, and being sorry we ever asked. Thanks to the power of Twitter, I have been able to cyber-witness mothers everyday in hospitals all over this country being rolled off to the OR for their cesareans – all Tweeted live by the expectant father. It’s not hard to tell by a quick glance at the blinkies on the side of my blog that I am no fan of cesarean deliveries, and I’m not one to hide my feelings on the matter either. Science and evidence are on my side, and I know it. I realize this means I’m putting myself in a challenging position by exposing myself to certain Tweets in Twitterland.
Oh, they just make it too easy. If you have a nifty application like TweetDeck or Seesmic, you can perform a quick search on any word, and it will open a column that is continuously populated with tweets that contain that searched word. Right now I have a column open for the term “BFing” (or breastfeeding) and one for the term “cesarean.”
Almost every day I see a tweet or two come in from a dad in a delivery room somewhere in America’s heartland, saying something to the effect of “labor’s a bust, we’re going with the cesarean.” And of course, being who I am, my heart drops just a little. I can’t not say something (more on this later). So here is the transcript from yesterday’s encounter:
TheDad: Thank god for the epidural. She's in labor getting close! Exciting!
TheDad: Doing cesarean in bout half an hour after no progress from baby with 2 hours of pushing(Here's where I come in)
Me: Get rid of the epidural, and she probably won't need the cesarean (they r bad news). Seriously. That's what worked for me.
TheDad: it's only bad whentoo strong to feel anything. Babies head toobig nothing to do with epidural
Me: it's bad when she can't move to reposition the baby. If she was able to move, baby's head is likely to fit. Avoid cesarean.
Me: and btw, "big baby" and "big head" are good excuses for docs to cut, and 90% of the time they are wrong about size.TheDad: of course she can move to reposition the baby. Epi doesn't mean handicapped. It's not rocket science. Some heads are too
TheDad: big and some hip bones are too small and don't move.
Me: i'm a small woman who birthed a 10 lb baby after the doctors said I never could. Doctors love cesareans. Very sad.
TheDad: great for you. Unfortunatelynot all womens bones cooperate
Me: we always blame the woman's body. Our bodies are not a lemon. Good luck with baby, I wish Mom a speedy recovery. Ican-online.org
Now, I realize that it seems completely ludicrous that I would expect some stranger to take my advice over Twitter. I am under no delusion that this man is going to turn to his wife whilst she’s being prepped for the OR and say “Honey, unplug the spinal, this woman on Twitter says you shouldn’t have a cesarean.” And I’d surely die of shock if she actually turned to him and said “Really? A stranger on Twitter said so? Okay, unhook me Doc! I’m delivering this baby through my vagina instead.”
No, no, it’s not like I really think that’s going to happen. So why do I bother? Why do I upset myself, and undoubtedly upset this expecting dad on the most important day of his whole life? I promise this is not nearly as selfish as it sounds. Or at least I hope not.
Yes, I understand that I don’t know any of the details about this couple’s unique situation. Maybe there was a really, really good reason why she needed a surgical delivery. The issue is, though, this situation is hardly “unique.” If people only knew how their cesareans played out like scripted screenplays, they might feel cheated and lied to. The Business of Being Born did an excellent job of creating a cartoon out of this all-too-common situation. Everyone thinks their cesarean was “necessary” and an “emergency” when in reality so few of them really are. I want people to know this. I want to help them avoid this. I want them to avoid the pain and trauma my cesarean caused me.
My intentions are pure – but you know what they say about Intentions and that Paved Road to Hell… The truth is, I can’t help it. I have always felt some unshakeable urge to convince others of my argument, especially that which I am passionate about, even if it may not be the appropriate time or place for such an exchange.
Ten years ago I wrote and recorded a song called “The Joke’s On You” in which I announced to a (then) unrequited* love that:
I have two things
A big mouth, and bad timing
But I have something
You can’t admit that you need
Oh, oh, oh, the joke’s on you.
It seems not a lot has changed in the last ten years. I’m a different person, arguing about different things, but my need to be right, and/or save people from certain doom (whether that be a major surgery, or the sin of not loving me back) hasn’t shifted much. And now that I think about it, I may have been like this since I was a child.
I once held a sleepover in 7th grade. You know, the kind that you invite all the popular girls to in an effort to improve your social status. For some reason these sleepovers always consisted of a crying session, in which girls would sit in a circle and take turns telling some tear-jerking tale. We would all sob and hug each other – the general purpose being that all this emotion-sharing would bond us, like, 4-ever.
I remember at this particular party, one girl, let’s call her “Lydia”, used her turn to tell the story of her uncle who was dying from cancer. Very sad indeed. Everybody loaded onto the Sympathy Train and listened intently to Lydia’s sad story. She came to a point where she told us all that she visited her uncle in the hospital, and he had lost all his hair. Lydia informed us that the cancer had made him bald.
I looked at Lydia with the typical level of care and concern that an 11 yr old girl is capable of, and proceeded to correct her. “No Lydia,” I said, “the cancer itself didn’t make your uncle lose his hair, it was the chemotherapy – the treatment for the cancer that did that.” Big Mouth. Bad Timing. Even at 11 yrs old.
Lydia screws up her face and shouts back at me “No! It was the cancer! He said so!” and wails a little harder. All the other girls rush in to hug her, glancing over their shoulders at me with daggers in their eyes, like I’m the biggest dickhead in the whole world. They think to themselves, “Ughgh, there goes Gina again, being an argumentative ass. It’s no wonder none of us really likes her. We only came to this sleepover because she promised that there was an old liter of vodka stashed in the back of her grandparents cupboard.”
What? I was right about the Chemo. But I guess that’s no excuse for saying so.
I don’t know. Perhaps I am a dickhead. Perhaps my habitual urge to explain the truth to others indicates that I harbor some clinical form of narcissism that could benefit from a little old-fashioned shock therapy.
I prefer to believe that I am a Defender of The Truth. I think this is what will make me a great lawyer. If I wasn’t willing to take one for the team, how could I ever help anybody? I suppose it is my destiny in life to be a little bit hated by some, but appreciated by those souls I can actually get through to. I may not have saved that woman from her cesarean, but maybe I planted a seed? I hope, very very hard, that’s what happened.
Though most days I think I ought to delete the columns from Tweetdeck, and surgically remove the part of my soul that aches from these un-truths.
It is just so much simpler not to care.
~TFB
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*We went on to date for two years, and are still very good friends. That relationship remains one of the most important relationships either one of us has had to date. See? I was right.
Oh, man. The worst thing they did for me was turn off the epidural. And they wouldn't turn it back on. I tried all kinds of positions. The baby was stuck. I really wish they would have listened to me to begin with and NOT turned off the epi. If this family was okay with that decision, I do think the topic should have been dropped. I know it's hard when your experience was different and t's okay to mention it once, but otherwise, it is just too much.
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