While Web sites like www.childbirth.org and www.childbirtconnection.org document national increases in women who give birth by cesarean section, women in Natchez are below the national average.

Natchez Community Hospital Birthing Center Director Marie O’Neal said of 600 women that gave birth in Natchez in 2008, 33 percent of women gave birth by c-section.

Of those who gave birth by c-section, 15 percent gave birth to the their first birth by c-section.

In comparison, 23 percent of women in Mississippi and 17 percent of women across the country had their first child by c-section.

O’Neal said the primary birth is important when examining statistics because almost, without exception, a woman that has her first birth by c-section will have all her subsequent births the same way.

“It’s almost unheard of (to delivery vaginally after a c-section),” O’Neal said.

Natchez Regional Medical Center Nurse Practice Leader in the Women’s Center Theresa Cole said once a woman delivers by c-section the internal uteran incision left behind is likely to rupture in subsequent vaginal births.

“It can be dangerous and it’s generally avoided,” Cole said.

Cole said unborn children that are not positioned to leave the womb head first, or mothers with sexually transmitted diseases, are prime candidates for primary c-sections.

And potential danger prompted Miranda Nealy to have her second child by c-section.

Nealy, due to issues with high blood pressure, had to have a c-section for the birth of her first child.

And since she was aware of the dangers associated with vaginal birth after a c-section, she had her second child by c-section also.

“It’s not a risk I wanted to take,” she said.

And while Nealy said recovery is slow and sometimes painful, she’s glad she had her second child, Madison, born May 18, by c-section.

“She’s doing great,” she said. “I’m doing fair.”

And at Regional, like Community, of 600 children born in 2008, the percentage was lower than the national average.

Of Regional’s 600 births, 16 percent were done by c-section.