Mom defies doctor, has baby her way - CNN.com

Mom defies doctor, has baby her way

(CNN) -- On Thursday, December 2, as Aneka sat at home nine months pregnant, the phone rang.

It was her obstetrician wanting to know where the heck she was. Did Aneka forget that today was the day for her cesarean section? How could she have forgotten?

No, Aneka hadn't forgotten. She hadn't shown up intentionally.

"She told me, 'You're being irresponsible. Your baby could die. You could die,'" Aneka recalls. Then the doctor hung up.

Aneka (she doesn't want her last name used) had already resolved to not have a C-section, even though the doctor told her it was absolutely necessary. She wasn't going to be opened up surgically, no matter what her doctor said, no matter what any doctor said.

In some online communities, Aneka is a hero who defied the obstetrical establishment and gave birth her way. To many doctors, however, she's a risk-taker who put her and her baby in peril by giving birth at home.

'No, no, no, you can't do this'

Aneka's story begins nine years ago with the birth of her first daughter, Nya. After 10 hours of labor, her doctor told her she wasn't progressing quickly enough, and she needed a C-section.

"I didn't know any better, so I said OK," Aneka says.

In a postpartum visit six weeks later, the doctor told her she'd needed the surgery because her hips were too small to pass the baby.

"I thought to myself, what's she talking about, I don't have small hips," Aneka remembers.

Four years later, doctors told Aneka she couldn't deliver her second child vaginally, since Nya had been delivered by C-section. Studies show when a woman gives birth vaginally after having had a previous C-section, there's a higher chance her uterus will rupture since she's pushing against scar tissue.

Then again, when Aneka was pregnant with her third child, son Adasjan, she had a C-section for the same reason.

When she became pregnant with her fourth child, a boy named Annan Ni'em, she expected to have a fourth C-section. But about seven months into her pregnancy, Aneka started to read more about childbirth online, and noticed a documentary by actress Ricki Lake called "The Business of Being Born," a film released in 2008 that questions the way American women have babies.