Surgical birth: interpretations of cesarean delivery among private hospital patients and nursing staff.

Cesarean delivery, although classified by medical practitioners as major surgery, is simultaneously defined as childbirth by both specialists and laypeople. Women experiencing cesarean delivery, therefore, confront a contradiction which affects postpartum treatment by nursing staff and expectations by family and the postcesarean patient regarding appropriate responses to delivery. Elicitation of the explanatory models of cesarean patients in a private Dallas hospital indicates the ambiguity in the definition of the cesarean reflecting more general trends in American obstetrics. Further, the data demonstrate the limited influence of the natural childbirth movement and the acceptance of technological intervention at birth in this population.