Medical bodies, advocacy groups and academics have called for women to be “empowered with information”, with figures suggesting one in three women undergo birth trauma after pregnancy.
The widespread issue is being probed in a landmark NSW inquiry that has received more than 4000 submissions.
The Australasian Birth Trauma Association co-founder Amy Dawes said while one-in-five women underwent an unplanned caesarean, and one-in-four births resulted in an instrumental delivery, women often weren’t equipped with that knowledge prior to going into labour.
Speaking to the committee on Monday, Ms Dawes used her own experience of being diagnosed with “life-altering” injuries due to the use of forceps during birth. She said it illustrated the importance of preparing women for all eventualities that could happen during birth.
Committee chair and upper house MP Emma Hurst said the volume of submissions indicated the importance and widespread issue of birth trauma.
Source: NSW birth trauma inquiry identifies critical conversation pregnant women don’t have | The Australian
Surely what this means is that more work must go into endeavouring to ensure that women are not subjected to birth trauma at all – or at least more rarely. The study/outcome seems to simply accept that this – is an inevitable outcome of giving birth. Yet surely if pregnancy is the way nature intended human beings to procreate, then nature would have intended the process to be one that did not have such negative realities and consequences. Surely too this is where concentration should be, and resources devoted, rather than on the work and resources going into trying to accommodate men’s bodies to reproducing -which is negative to the interests of any foetus and any baby created that way. Pregnancy is far more than the implantation of a uterus to ‘do the job’. Hormones produced naturally, the interaction between a women’s body (female body) and the foetus is essential.