Word: chung
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Long before she even met her husband, and well before she decided to become pregnant, Euna Chung made a firm decision about how she would deliver her children. "I knew for years that I wanted a caesarean section," the 31-year-old Los Angeles--based child psychiatrist says...
...weeks ago, when she was ready to deliver her first child, Chung checked herself into the hospital on a day she had already scheduled, underwent local anesthesia, and several hours later had her baby by caesarean, without any complications. Pretty tidy way to conduct the often messy business of childbirth. Yet Chung sometimes feels defensive about her decision. "There is an admiration of women who are able to do a vaginal birth without pain medications, then breast-feed, and do everything else perfectly," she says. "So I didn't go around advertising that I had chosen to have...
...Chung has unwittingly stumbled upon the latest battleground in maternity care. Just as moms and even doctors once clashed about the importance of breast-feeding, they now debate the benefits and risks of vaginal births and caesarean sections. Rates of C-sections have been climbing each year in the past decade in the U.S., reaching a record high of 31% of all live births in 2006. That's a 50% increase since 1996. Around the world, the procedure is becoming even more common: in certain hospitals in Brazil, fully 80% of babies are delivered by caesarean. How did a procedure...
Some of the rise in C-sections can certainly be attributed to women with routine pregnancies, like Chung, who make a pragmatic decision to keep their deliveries just as uneventful. Preliminary data suggest that such cases account for anywhere from 4% to 18% of the total number of caesareans. On the medical side, better anesthesia and antibiotics are making the procedure safer. Add to that the growing number of women delaying childbirth, those having twins or triplets as a result of in vitro fertilization and America's exploding obesity epidemic--all of which increase the risks of vaginal delivery. Doctors...
...fiscal forces as well, such as soaring malpractice rates for obstetricians. Since doctors are sued more frequently after vaginal births than caesareans, surgery is often the prudent choice when there is even the slightest indication of a difficult vaginal birth. Combine this with the increasing willingness of moms like Chung to talk more openly about their C-sections, and we may be headed for a time when mothers make the vaginal-or-caesarean decision in the same way many now make the breast-or-bottle decision...