Yes I have two kids one of which was delivered by c-section.

The fact that epiderals aren't literally always done for women still shocks me.

Why would that shock you? An epidural has side effects that should be taken into considerations. Plenty of women have kids without any medication…

Lots of women don’t want them.

Is there data on this? Specifically I wonder if women who refused it for a first birth still refuse them for subsequent births (or maybe they change their mind?).

I don't have any good data and would also be interested. Anecdotally, I do know women who didn't use them at first and started using them later for multiple reasons: aging, advice of medical team changing, unexpectedly low pain tolerance, and in a couple of cases, just wanting to experience an epidural with the last kid. :)

I also know some who stopped using epidurals, but fewer and most of them simply had become interested in more natural births between children.

They increase the risk of c-sections.

And it looked like a butcher shop to you? I honestly have no idea what you're getting this from. Do you remember you/your wife giving vaginal birth to her placenta? Didn't that look like a butcher shop?

He might mean butcher shop as in being treated like a piece of meat to be handled as conveniently as possible, rather than consulted or even allowed to guide her own birthing experience. My wife had made similar remarks.

Well, I guess sorry your doctors sucked, but that isn't reason to malign the whole concept.

What are you talking about? This doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of individual doctors, or whether any particular procedure has value. (At least, as I understand the point of the descriptions of systems in action in the article.)

I'm responding to the butcher shop comment, not the article. The article has no reference to c sections or labor and delivery in general being butcher shoppy, unless you think scheduling a time for a c section or inductions makes it a butcher shop. I assumed OP was talking about c sections specifically, since it was in response to a comment about c sections, and c sections might use similar tools to a butcher shop(a knife).

The comment makes even less sense if they're talking about labor and delivery generally, which maybe they are. Maybe hospitals are a little too clinical for some, but that doesn't make them a butcher shop, and that's why you can bring your own doula. And maybe the clinicalness is part of the reason hospital births are far safer than home births.

I see. Sounds like you and the OP might have significant ideological differences, and you are unhappy about an idle comment by my wife because I tried to clear up confusion around OP’s metaphor. Sorry for adding to the confusion.

I understand why a phrase like that can be emotionally activating, but please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. You made your point already. Escalating ("your doctors sucked") is unhelpful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html