Today is the last day of Cesarean Awareness Month. Throughout the month, Giving Birth with Confidence posted a variety of information and resources on cesarean birth. As the month comes to a close, we would like to leave you with a list of helpful resources for cesarean information. (The description for the resources below has been taken from each respective website.)
ICAN (International Cesarean Awareness Network) - www.ican-online.org
The International Cesarean Awareness Network, Inc. (ICAN) is a nonprofit organization that was founded by Esther Booth Zorn and many other motivated women in 1982. ICAN has now grown to over 130 chapters throughout the United States and worldwide.
The Unnecesarean - www.theunnecesarean.com
Blog and site author Jill Arnold is a consumer advocate who founded The Unnecesarean in August 2008 as a collection of big baby birth stories, as well as women’s accounts of their cesareans and VBACs (vaginal births after cesarean). After refusing a planned cesarean for suspected macrosomia based on a 38 week ultrasound estimate of fetal weight, she gave birth vaginally to a healthy baby and later found that the midwives model of care better met her needs as a pregnant woman.
Childbirth Connection - www.childbirthconnection.org
Childbirth Connection is a national not-for-profit organization founded in 1918 as Maternity Center Association. Their mission is to improve the quality and value of maternity care through consumer engagement and health system transformation. Childbirth Connection promotes safe, effective and satisfying evidence-based maternity care and is a voice for the needs and interests of childbearing families.
VBAC Facts - http://vbacfacts.com
After her daughter’s birth in 2004, site author Jennifer Kamel spent the next couple years wading through the research on vaginal birth after cesarean and became frustrated. Over the years, she slowly and meticulously collected information. And after her son’s victorious birth in 2007, a home VBAC, she created VBACFACTS.com in order to make the studies she had compiled, and the analyses she performed, easily accessible to others.
Cesarean Rates - www.cesareanrates.com
CesareanRates.com is a snapshot of online cesarean rate reporting in the United States as of January 2012. The site compiles the most current hospital-level data accessible to the public online, whether reported directly by a state’s department of health or gathered from state hospital association web sites via pull-down menus.
Special Scars – Special Women - www.specialscars.org
A “special scar” is one resulting from a Classical, Inverted T, J, Low Vertical, Upright T or any other cesarean incision other than the most often used Low Transverse. The Special Scars website was born from the need to get more accurate information to women with these scars. It is a collection of information — articles, studies, & our own stories — regarding the possibility of VBAC after an these special incisions.
A Woman’s Guide to VBAC: Navigating the NIH Consensus Recommendations - http://givingbirthwithconfidence.org/
A group of maternity care experts and VBAC advocates came together to create A Woman’s Guide to VBAC: Navigating the NIH Consensus Recommendations, a free online resource guide that addresses the most common and pressing questions women may have about their birth choices in what could be called the “post-NIH-Consensus-Recommendations Era.” The guide gives you the tools you need to empower yourself to advocate for you, your baby, and your birth choices!
Do you have a cesarean resource to add? Let us know below in the comments.
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Ask our resident obstetrical expert, Henci Goer, any question you have about conception, pregnancy, birth, and newborns. 
I also want to add Plus Size Pregnancy http://www.plus-size-pregnancy.org/ to this list, which is an excellent resource for any size woman, but covers many topics surrounding cesarean, vbac, and vaginal birth after multiple cesareans. The website author is very diligent about providing accurate sources and also maintains a blog where she frequently responds to the newest research and studies on cesarean/vbac topics. I recommend it highly! The blog can be found at Well Rounded Mama http://www.wellroundedmama.blogspot.com/
You should definitely add The Power to Push Campaign and Best Birth Clinic to the list!
The Power to Push Campaign was created in response to the increasing trend towards cesarean birth in BC, Canada and provides up-to-date resources for pregnant women and their families, encouraging them to know their options, advocate for their choices, and push for the safest and best birth possible. The campaign also offers research-based information and resources to maternity care providers across BC to help them support every woman’s childbirth choices. The Best Birth Clinic offers birth information and medical consultation to pregnant women who are considering whether vaginal birth or cesarean birth would be best for them.
Online at: powertopush.ca, fb.com/powertopush, and @powertopush
Cheers!
This book was written by an ob/gyn with a midwife’s heart. He has the lowest cs% for years in the Netherlands. I am a midwife and was closely involved in translating the book from Dutch to English. He and I between us developed an Iphone app in 2 versions, one for professionals, but also one for clients with lots of explanation, so the woman and her partner can have a meaningful conversation with her caregiver. The partogram app will be launched shortly in english, it is already available in Dutch.
Prevention of the first cs is so important.
If you really would like to offer all choices to mothers (which is part of feminism, right?), how about including this wonderful resource for those of us CHOOSING cesarean, for myriad reasons:
http://electivecesarean.com or http://www.choosingcesarean.com/. It’s slightly unfair to claim to be offering “cesarean resources” in your list while only including militantly anti-cesarean resources rather than factual information. There are many women out there who are choosing not to VBAC or even attempt a primary vaginal delivery. There are many of us who do not and will not ever feel ashamed of our cesarean births or scars. Many of us who feel blessed to have properly functioning pelvic floor muscles and healthy babies to boot. Just sayin’.
There is nothing militant about the facts. They are simply the facts. The research clearly and consistently documents that cesarean surgery in and of itself increases the likelihood of harm to women, their babies, and, because of the uterine scar and potential for adhesions, future pregnancies. These harms include pain in the short- and long-term, longer recovery time, minor complications, and serious and life-threatening complications. How could it be otherwise? Any surgery involves pain and has risks. When it is performed on a healthy person, then by definition there are no benefits to counterbalance those risks.
As for pelvic floor dysfunction, studies also consistently show that cesarean surgery provides no benefits for sexual function or protection against anal continence. It offers modest protection against urinary stress incontinence of any degree, but no protection against severe urinary incontinence–and that is without taking into account the degree to which usual management of the pushing phase adversely affects pelvic floor strength and integrity or the degree to which no-risk strategies such as losing weight or engaging in pelvic floor exercises can relieve or improve incontinence. Furthermore, cesarean surgery has been shown to have no protective effect against urinary incontinence in later life. Cesarean surgery offers modest protection against pelvic floor prolapse: a few percent fewer women having cesarean deliveries will experience this problem compared with women birthing vaginally, depending on number of children, but again, this is without taking into account elements of usual vaginal birth management that increase risk of pelvic floor weakness.
If you doubt what I have said, let me add one more resource to Lamaze’s list that includes citations: http://motherfriendly.org/Resources/Documents/TheRisksofCesareanSectionFebruary2010.pdf. You can also read the headings for summaries of the research that can be found in my new book at http://www.optimalcareinchildbirth.com/index-of-mini-reviews/. Since, then, the statements I have made are the facts, it follows that Lamaze would be remiss to refer women to websites that state otherwise.
There is certainly no shame in having a cesarean. In fact, for many women having unplanned cesareans, agreeing to this major operation is an act of self-sacrifice undertaken in the belief that their child’s safe delivery depends on it. And speaking for myself, and, I think, many others advocating for more appropriate use of cesarean surgery, women should have the right to choose an elective cesarean, but it should be based on an accurate understanding of its potential harms and benefits and after consideration of whether some other approach might address the concerns leading them to choose it.