While many women worry about needing a Caesarean section for fear of the extra recovery time and increased complications, vaginal births that require the use of forceps can also bring serious long-term side-effects. And a new study reports that trauma from forceps deliveries has been on the rise in recent years.
In the past few decades, forceps deliveries have become less common while C-sections have been on the rise. But concern over the prevalence of C-sections, which bring the risk of infection, cause extra recovery time and potentially lead to issues with future pregnancies, has incited doctors to increase their use of operative vaginal deliveries, which involve forceps or a vacuum. But according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), this has brought a surge of injuries to mothers. The research found that while 19.4 percent of first-time mothers who had forceps deliveries experienced obstetrical trauma in 2004, that number jumped to 26.5 percent of mothers in 2014.
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