02.07.07
Birth Trauma
In the article Neonatal intracranial hemorrhage common after vaginal birth, Radiology 2007; 242: 535-41, more than a quarter of infants delivered vaginally have a small amount of asymptomatic intracranial bleeding compared with none delivered by cesarean section. Results are based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in this study. Keeping in mind this is a very small study, 88 newborns (65 with vaginal delivery and 23 with cesarean delivery) were screened. Altogether, MRI showed that 17 infants suffered intracranial hemorrhages (ICHs), and seven infants had two or more types of hemorrhages.
Now this is the part that I don’t understand, ORGYN.com reported, “Women who gave birth vaginally were therefore significantly more likely to deliver babies with ICH, while those who had a prolonged duration of labor or a traumatic or assisted vaginal birth were not, compared with those who underwent cesarean section.” I immediately assumed it was the assisted vaginal births (induction/augmentation, forceps/vaccum) that would have significantly increased the cranial trauma in the vaginal birth category, but is this saying that is not the case? I will indeed dig further into this.
“Obviously, the vast majority of us who were born vaginally and may have had these types of bleeds are doing just fine,” concludes John Gilmore, from the University of North Caroline School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, ”Humans have been born vaginally for a very long time, and our brains probably evolved to handle vaginal birth without major difficulty.”
americanmum said,
May 23, 2007 at 7:20 pm
As an advocate for natural birth, I want to believe that there is a positive reading for the bleeding.
Another possible cause is that in most vaginal births these days, women are in a prone position and not encouraged to squat or be in a position that naturally opens up the pelvis.
A small part of me wonders if it could be because our brains/heads have been getting bigger while our pelvises have not.
I want them to do this study on animals and see if the results are similar.
fingerpaintings said,
May 24, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Americanmum,
Studies prove that it is obstetrical interventions, including pushing positions, that negatively impact optimal fetal outcomes shown in the study above.
As for your pondering… I personally was curious about the fetal/pelvic disproportion in my own practice working almost exclusively with VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) women. My research found babies have not gotten bigger… weight, length or head circumference… in the last three generations (where we can obtain accurate obstetrical data from) so this theory does not borne out. I’ve found that in reality it takes many generations of very selective breeding in animals to obtain specific characteristics such as you are proposing here.
Thank you for your comment!