NatureBACK: Dr. Abdelhak's Guide to Pregnancy & Childbirth

NatureBACK is a philosophical approach to pregnancy as well as a tool that optimizes a woman's chance of having a vaginal delivery. It represents the cumulative knowledge of Dr. Abdelhak's career in obstetrics that has spanned several decades. A career dedicated to providing women guidance to their desired birth outcome. 

NatureBACK stresses that the process that leads to natural birth needs to start early in the pregnancy. It incorporates the important criteria for selecting the right OB/GYN or midwife provider. It's a return-to-nature approach in regards to diet and activity. NatureBACK guides you to the 'Mother Nature Train' so that you optimize your chance of avoiding a C-section.

The analogy of getting on a train. It would be silly to go to Penn station jump on a random train and then start planning where you want to go. Yet that is what many do when approaching vaginal birth. They research and plan for their delivery in the third trimester. Many have no idea they have been on the cesarean section train for months with little chance of reversing course. 

There's a tendency to believe, actually more than believe, to have faith in Mother Nature. To be balanced, women have been birthing vaginally for millennia and we have no reason to suspect a parturient would grow a baby that cannot physiologically pass through her birth canal. It's more than common sense, It's history. All mammals birth as humans do. There is practically no cesarean section in the animal kingdom nor was there in human history shy 100 years ago. Historically pregnancy was always associated with morbidity and occasional maternal. Historically 1-3% of women would not survive labor. A high er percent of babies would sustain permanent birth trauma. Yet, there is absolutely no historical indication that 30% of mothers and or babies would have perished or sustained long term morbidity before the advent of c-sections. Further, we do not see this in the animal kingdom. Both domesticated and wild animals birth unassisted  and it is rare for mother to die in childbirth. So in light of these obvious facts, why has nature let us down?  How could this time-tested, proven, physiological, fine-tuned process be blamed for contributing to today's cesarean sections epidemic?

There has been a C-section epidemic in the last 50 years. Today, cesarean sections represent over 30% of all deliveries. This is a dramatic increase from the mere 5% of babies delivered via C-section in 1970. The explanations for the multiple fold increase in cesarean delivery are familiar. Fingers often point at the bias of over-worked obstetricians, the increase of counterproductive medical interventions such as induction of labor, and the widespread use of the external fetal monitor contributing further to the anxiety of litigious weary obstetricians. Some of these usual suspects have earned their nefarious reputation while others are surprisingly completely innocent of said charge. Most surprising is the culprit, possibly making the largest contribution to the explosion in cesarean births, has managed to sleuth under the radar and is rarely, if at all, recognized. This monster in the shadows is.... babies are way too big!  So large they often don't fit through their mother's pelvices.