90% of women with children who have given birth in Greece (at least the ones I meet) have had a Cesarian. Why is this?
1. Doctors get more money for it
2. Doctors can have a regular predictable schedule
Here are some tactics they use:
1. Scaring women and blackmailing them with – what if your baby dies stories.
2. Doctor sees woman in before due-date and says – hey where’s the baby – it’s late – aren’t you worried – I think we’d better induce it. Doctor gives woman drug (or maybe a placebo – this is pure conspiracy theory) to induce baby. Baby doesn’t come so doctor says – oh dear – we have to do a cesarian.
3. Creating a culture where that is the done thing because it is more convenient.
On top of that, they:
1. Make it difficult for fathers to accompany their partners during the birth – you have to make a fuss to be allowed in.
2. Take the baby away almost immediately it is born and put it, screaming in a room with loads of other babies, away from its mother in it during the crucial first day of its life. Mother’s breast milk then does not come and – oh mother has to buy formula milk.
3. Do not allow older children into the hospital to visit the mother/new child, because they have some strange infectious disease which adults apparently do not have.