Historically, a caesarean section was a life or death operation. When a birth started to go wrong, the question was who to save – the mother, or the baby? Luckily, the maternal mortality rate for pregnancy has dropped to around 0.007% in the UK in 2017 (down from 0.09% in just 1952[1]), and caesarean sections are now considered only slightly more risky than vaginal births (death risk is 3 times higher[2], but this may be because a number of caesareans are only carried out in emergencies). Caesareans may also reduce the risk of complications in some cases. It used to be that having a caesarean once meant further babies always had to be delivered this way – but that’s no longer true: for women who have previously had a caesarean section, choosing an elective one for a subsequent baby over a vaginal birth reduces the risk of complications or consequential health problems (such as womb damage) from 1.8% to 0.8%[3]. However, risk overall is small.
Caesareans now account for 26.2% of births in the UK[4], but there is still a lot we don’t know about them, especially how they might affect babies later in life.
Caesareans now account for 26.2% of births in the UK[4], but there is still a lot we don’t know about them, especially how they might affect babies later in life.
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| Caesarean by Salim Fadhley via Wikipedia Commons. |
