Future Childbearing Less Likely after Cesarean Deliveries: Feinberg School of Medicine: Northwestern University

Future Childbearing Less Likely after Cesarean Deliveries: Feinberg School of Medicine: Northwestern University



 “It is very important to consider the size of the family that a woman
wants when making any elective decisions about how to deliver,” said
first author Lisa Masinter, MD, MPH, a fellow at the Center for Healthcare Studies.
“Clearly in an emergency the health of the mother and her child take
precedence. But if a woman wants a large family, she should know that
having a cesarean delivery may limit that possibility.”

Alanna Vaughn ~ 2014 Spring Piano Recital

Avoid Fetal Keepsake Images, Heartbeat Monitors

Avoid Fetal Keepsake Images, Heartbeat Monitors

 "Although there are no known risks of ultrasound imaging and heartbeat
monitors, the radiation associated with them can produce effects on the
body," says Robert Phillips, Ph.D., a physicist with FDA's Center for
Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). "When ultrasound enters the
body, it heats the tissues slightly. In some cases, it can also produce
small pockets of gas in body fluids or tissues."

Do You Ache?

This article brought me to tears.  If you are a mom and are done having children, it is just there.

Our old baby crib is now sitting in pieces in the garage. We will take it to the dump soon (it has one of those now-outlawed dropsides so we can’t resell it or donate it). Whole sections of the bars are gnawed to bare wood by little teething babies, there are bits of sticker glue and swipes of Sharpie marker here and there, the screws are a bit loose. It’s in rough shape after nearly eight years and three big babies-to-toddlers in quick succession. There are a lot of sacred memories hidden in that dismantled old crib. The day we took it apart, I cried over that junky old crib. Goodbye, old friend.
It is likely that there are no more babies for us.
I was never one of those girls who wanted to have a houseful of babies, who just wanted to get married and have babies and stay home with them. I mean, I was okay with kids but it wasn’t my thing. I quit babysitting at 14 because I figured there had to be a better way to make money than that. And even after our miscarriages and challenges with fertility, I was unprepared for how completely transformative I found motherhood, how I loved even the mundane dailyness, how I found joy here.
I know that everyone’s experience is different, and I’m not saying that mine is normative but it’s real and I can’t deny it: I came into myself when I became a mother. I was reborn, all over again. The experience of pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding my babies profoundly changed me AND it changed my view of God entirely.
So, of course, it’s hard to know that stage of my life is done now.