djk42
01-31-2003, 10:48 AM
Just wanted to throw that quote out there (thank you to whomever I got it from).
If something is known to happen to 1 out of every 3,000 women, but that one woman is us, or our sister, we may tell everyone that it is a huge risk or very common, because we have seen it. On the flip side, we may have never seen a certain phenom, but it is known to happen to 85% of women- the fact that we have never seen it does not make it untrue.
Example=
Most of my friends and family have had drug free childbirth. Only one person in my small circle of influence (not people I know, but people I know well) has ever had a c-section, and she had three vbacs afterward. That means in my circle, there is about a 5% c-section rate, a 100% successful vbac rate, and a 35% drug use rate. In my state as a whole though, there is a 23% c-section rate and an 80% drug use rate (not sure of vbac rates, they were unpublished in the article I got this information from).
The information I have from my small sample is not equal to the information published by the state health department. If we hear a stat, we cannot discount it just because it is not true in our experience. What is true for me may not be true for you.
If something is known to happen to 1 out of every 3,000 women, but that one woman is us, or our sister, we may tell everyone that it is a huge risk or very common, because we have seen it. On the flip side, we may have never seen a certain phenom, but it is known to happen to 85% of women- the fact that we have never seen it does not make it untrue.
Example=
Most of my friends and family have had drug free childbirth. Only one person in my small circle of influence (not people I know, but people I know well) has ever had a c-section, and she had three vbacs afterward. That means in my circle, there is about a 5% c-section rate, a 100% successful vbac rate, and a 35% drug use rate. In my state as a whole though, there is a 23% c-section rate and an 80% drug use rate (not sure of vbac rates, they were unpublished in the article I got this information from).
The information I have from my small sample is not equal to the information published by the state health department. If we hear a stat, we cannot discount it just because it is not true in our experience. What is true for me may not be true for you.