Childbirth in a Technocratic Age: The Documentation of Women’s Ex ...

for planned cesarean. For example, of this study’s 16 (21%) mothers planning cesarean delivery, only three reported clearly identified risk factors, and the remaining mothers planning cesarean had undergone previous cesareans without other identified risk factors (see chapter 6).

Again speaking strictly theoretically, low-risk mothers anticipating vaginal birth have more flexibility in childbirth pathways than mothers expecting (planning) cesarean. For example, a low-risk mother anticipating vaginal birth can plan to give birth in or outside a hospital, whereas a mother planning cesarean delivery is constrained to, and therefore expects, hospital birth. Mothers planning VBAC are the exception for reasons discussed in chapter 7 and usually have their anticipated pathway restricted to hospital birth. Of my 75 interviewees, 59 (79%) anticipated vaginal birth; I placed them into subcategories based on their reported expectations of

Among the 59 mothers planning vaginal birth were three (5%) who reported identified concerns that placed them at higher risk (one planning an epidural, one “wait and see,” one VBAC); the remaining 56 were low-risk mothers. Despite the various and vague terms they used to refer to the expectation of vaginal delivery—for example, natural childbirth to describe vaginal birth with or without expected obstetric intervention—one feature unified all study mothers anticipating vaginal delivery: With only one exception, they held an across-the-board and strongly stated desire to avoid cesarean surgery.

In contrast to vaginally birthing mothers’ use of veiled language to describe their delivery mode, the 16 mothers anticipating planned