School after a c/s

[MedMom]

Has anyone gone back to medical school or to be a cnm after having a section that changed your view of what birth/medicine should be? I am curious to hear, b/c I will never be as naive as I was before my one and only child birth experience. I sometimes wonder how I am going to get through my OB clerkship. If anyone can share experiences, I would greatly appreciate it.

[Rockies5]

Originally Posted by MedMom

Has anyone gone back to medical school or to be a cnm after having a section that changed your view of what birth/medicine should be? I am curious to hear, b/c I will never be as naive as I was before my one and only child birth experience. I sometimes wonder how I am going to get through my OB clerkship. If anyone can share experiences, I would greatly appreciate it.

Birth changes you. If those major life expereinces didn't make us think or juggle our values I don't know what the point of them would be!

Have you x-posed this to the RN or student midwives tribes?

Every birth event I've had, or been to, or soemtimes even read or heard about, or seen on youtube has made me shift and re evaluate where my path is.

[MedMom]

Originally Posted by Rockies5

Birth changes you. If those major life expereinces didn't make us think or juggle our values I don't know what the point of them would be!

Have you x-posed this to the RN or student midwives tribes?

Every birth event I've had, or been to, or soemtimes even read or heard about, or seen on youtube has made me shift and re evaluate where my path is.

No, I haven't cross posted as I'm in medical school, but that is a good idea.

I completely agree with you that birth changes any woman. Years later, I still rarely talk about about my experience. I change the channel every time there is a c/s story, or any birth story for that matter -- and in a few months, I have to do a rotation where I have to be ok with c-sections since I'm stuck in a hospital that has a high rate. sigh......

[doctorjen]

I haven't had a cesarean myself, but I have to say that truthfully my OB clerkship was really hard on me. I went to med school because I wanted to attend births (I used to think of it as "doing deliveries" though!) I had 3 of my own children before I did my 3rd year OB rotation. It just about killed me to get through it. The first birth I saw was a repeat cesarean x 6 in which the mama nearly bled to death, lost her uterus, and spent a week in ICU after. The second was essentially a coerced cesarean on a first time mom who was not told the truth about what was going on with her and the baby. By the end of the first call night I wasn't sure I could even finish.
Some years down the road now, I've obviously made it through! (I've been practicing now 6 1/2 years.) It helped me to promise myself a lot that I'd never do things this way once I was calling the shots. Also, I never lied to a patient, ever. If they asked questions, I told them the truth and I told them they had a right to ask their doctor the same kinds of questions. It was hard, but I got through the training. Training did bring up some issues from my own births, even though my own births were not traumatic or highly interventive. Seeing how OBs trained and practiced made me quite sure that I didn't want to do OB - so instead I'm a family doc who attends a fair number of births and practices very evidence based and non-interventively!

[Couz]

I didn't have my baby until long after medical school (I'm a family doc currently doing extra training in emergency medicine) so my influence went the other way. After my OB rotation and attending a fair amount of low-risk births as a family medicine resident, the experience made me opt to deliver my first under a midwife's care in a hospital.

I ended up with a section, but in the end the fact that baby and I were fine outweighed any disappointment I felt in the way things went down.

[BetsyS]

I also had my son (and c-section) after training to be a CNM. I had what is, especially around here, an odd reaction. I had two major feelings. The first was that all those years, I had led women astray. I had told them to push forward, that a vaginal delivery was worth it, that a c-section was horrible. And mine wasn't. It wasn't bad at all.

And, secondly, because I had spent so much time telling those same women that our bodies "were made to birth babies" and that " womens' bodies don't grow babies too big to birth" and "you can do this" even when it seemed they couldn't, well, then when my body betrayed me, I felt broken. I felt really let down that somehow these cliches didn't work for me, and instead of seeing it as maybe the cliches weren't true, I totally internalized that something was wrong with ME. Which, of course, isn't true. But, I had to work that out in myself.

I probably will go back to nursing at some point, but I don't think I'll go back to being a CNM. Having a baby changed too many things.

[maxmama]

I had my first section jsut after graduating from nursing school, and my second last fall on the L&D unit I work on. I started a CNM program this fall.

For me, what it gave me was an appreciation for the very mixed emotions that my patients often have after a less-than-ideal birth experience. No one ever says it's okay to be happy to have your baby and still be angry or grieve about her birth.

I believe in birth. I believe that we are born to birth our babies. But I also had two pregnancies where labor was not even an option, and that doesn't make me less of a mother. I think, before my (disturbingly pain-free) sections, I thought it would.

Working as a labor nurse, honestly, changed my persepctive more than giving birth. It introduced me to shades of gray and issues of clinical judgment and opinion that I never would have considered before I saw so flipping many births.

[The Milk Bag]

Similar situation here - though I didn't have a c/s with either my births. Actually, overall my birth experiences weren't awful. They had to be very medical due to complications but I knew that very early on and was prepared for it.

Anyway, I was always fascinated with the birth process and going through it myself just made it even more clear that it's what I wanted to do with my life. I'm a first year medical student now - keeping my options open in terms of specialties but ob/gyn is my favorite at the moment.

My biggest concern is that my ideals will change from being in this environment. I spent some time in L&D as a pre-med and some of the things I heard and saw just made me cringe. A 4th year student going into ob/gyn stating that she wants to have an elective c-section when the time comes for her to give birth and that she plans to do episiotomies on all women who look like they will tear because it is easiest for her! I just hope that I can keep the values I have going into this and not get caught up in what it easiest (which I doubt I will) or what is least likely to get me sued (this might be harder).

I have a year and a half before I start clerkships but I definitely share your concerns!!

[roadfamily6now]

it was not my c-section but my last birth, an Unassisted Vaginal Birth after C-section that changed my mind.

I will be pursuing a career in Midwifery now.

Good Luck to you no matter what you deside.

[MedMom]

update....

Originally Posted by BetsyS

I probably will go back to nursing at some point, but I don't think I'll go back to being a CNM. Having a baby changed too many things.

Betsy, you by far have hit what I am talking about. I know I will not be able to do OB or FP b/c of my section. Give it time. I delayed applying to medical school b/c I was not sure if I go through with this. Time does fix wounds you think are too deep to ever scab over.

Well, to update, on my first day, I ended up seeing 2 sections. The first was a planned "preferred" section for a first time mom who just didn't want to go through labor. I am not passing judgment on her, but her views were so so skewed about the birth process that I just could not relate to her. The second one was for decels when a baby was not progressing after artificial induction. Poor mom, she was scared, did not want the section, but pushed into it and gave in. Doc refused to let her keep the baby in the room after the "birth." After the event the physician was passing along his wonderful knowledge to me by telling me that if she had just been OK with the section when she went overdue, he would not have had to do this in the middle of the night. I just smiled and kept my mouth shut. He spoke as if the birth process was something he owned, rather than something that belonged to the mother/infant. 2 more weeks of this.....