CAM and VBAC, or VBA2C even (22w4d)

It's ridiculously difficult to admit that I'm already in my 23rd week of pregnancy. But I just got pregnant! But August is so far away! And in actuality, it's not. Here I am, squeaking my second Cesarean Awareness Month post in before the alarm bell rings signifying the end of April ... and shit! That means it's almost May. And then there's only June, July and, and, and, and August (gulp). Holy crap New Baby will be here before we know it.

Before that, though, I am in dire need of getting myself focused once again on gestating in peace. It's hard to do that with so many distractions around. One thing I've had to do was unsubscribe from the insane amount of emails from the ICAN list. For one thing, it was too much. For another, some of the women on the list are too much. Some of them are truly convinced that there's never a necessary c-section performed. And while it's wonderful to feel empowered by your body and its ability to give birth the "normal" way, it's another thing entirely to stick your head in the sand and pretend like the medical community is never actually useful.

It's time for me to start focusing on my truth and moving forward to my birth experience.

Anyway. Like I said in my previous post, April is Cesarean Awareness Month (or CAM) and I wanted to focus this entry on VBACs in particular.

One thing I'm running into on a pretty consistent basis is the look of surprise I get when they find out we're planning a VBAC. They still subscribe to the popular "once a section, always a section" philosophy that much of society believes to be true. And I've gotten to the point that it doesn't so much frustrate me anymore, but makes me sad.

Obviously, the "big" risk in a VBAC is uterine rupture. I put "big" in quotes because it's not that high of a risk -- less than 1% (even for a VBAMultipleC). I came across a list of the relative risks of uterine rupture in a VBAC and I thought a few of them were interesting (albeit a bit frightening!):

• Your risk of dying in a car accident, over the course of your lifetime, is between 1 in 42 and 1 in 75. This is roughly 4 to 5 times greater than the risk of uterine rupture.
• You're about twice as likely to have your car stolen (that's an annual risk) than to experience a uterine rupture.
• Your odds of being murdered are 1 in 140 over the course of your lifetime. That's 2 times more likely than the risk of rupture.
• You're more likely to have twins than a uterine rupture. Odds of twins: 1 in 90. That's about 3 1/2 times the likelihood of rupture.
• If you flip a coin, you'll be more likely to get heads (or tails) 8 times in a row than to rupture.

Perhaps I should start quoting some of these to my naysayers ...