ANIKA CRENSHAW planned on a vaginal birth for her second child, as she had done with her daughter a few years earlier. But soon after she arrived at the hospital in 1998, she began experiencing some light bleeding, and a nurse entered the room with a razor and a catheter and told Crenshaw she was about to undergo a cesarean section.
“It just happened so fast,” Crenshaw says. “It was very traumatic. No one explained anything to me about the procedure or the risks. It wasn’t an emergency, but they just threw some papers at me and said I had to sign them. When I woke up, I felt horrible. Physically unstable and emotionally dead.” It got worse: Crenshaw contracted an infection, and recovery took months.
Seven years later, when giving birth to her third child, she underwent another C-section, and again said she felt “duped.” When she became pregnant with her fourth in 2013, she decided to try a home birth to avoid the hospital.