C-sections have become lately the most common way to give birth. Surprisingly more and more future mothers opt for a C-section instead of a natural birth, simply because they fear the labor pain or because a lot of problems that require immediate surgical intervention may appear during a vaginal birth.
Recent studies based on the experience of US doctors performing hundreds of C-section daily all over US, discovered that in case of overweight future mothers C-sections take longer than for those with regular weight. Also there are increasing chances for complications to appear for the babies born this way to obese mothers.
C-section facts for obese mothers
It is a fact that women that had a BMI under 30 before they got pregnant had a 9,4 minutes interval between the C-section incision and the delivery. In case of those women with a BMI over 30 before they got pregnant the time gap between incision and delivery increased from 11 minutes to 16 minutes.
This happened because , doctors do their best to avoid damaging the tissue from the mother’s belly more than necessary. Because of this the incision is done with extra care, slower and takes longer time. This is not something wrong but in case of emergency C-sections those extra minutes can endanger the baby’s life.
Why extra care is needed?
During a C-section common issues like extra bleeding, may occur. Also things like inserting an IV, finding a vein, anesthesia issues and an increase of acidic blood inside the cord often occur in the case of mothers with a BMI over 40 previous to pregnancy.
C-section anesthesia can cause a large multitude of problem for overweight mothers from tachycardia to low blood pressure . Along these the recovery time post-surgery is doubled if not tripled.
Being a responsible future mom
Doctors encourage women to have a healthy weight before they get pregnant and future mothers to be responsible and maintain a healthy amount of weight gain during the pregnancy months. A healthy lifestyle and ultimately a healthy pregnancy can prevent the problems that can appear during delivery in case you are overweight and you need a C-section.
In case an emergency C-section is needed for the sake of the baby or the mother, being overweight can become an issue. Doctors do their best to come with new ways to perform C-sections, to reduce the time span between incision and delivery but it’s up to mothers to avoid these situations if they can.
