When I mentioned that I wanted four children, she, typical of people in Ho Chi Minh City, flipped out. "How can you want more?"
if your parents had stopped at two, we wouldn't be having this conversation would we?
"Why not?" I said. "What number are you?"
"The last five," she replied.
"So," I countered, "if your parents had stopped at two, we wouldn't be having this conversation would we? And I'd have missed out on the blessing of knowing you. If you have the ability to support more than two, and the desire, I say more power to you."
"Yeah..." she sighed, "but I can't have more than two anyway. My last one was caesarian and the doctor said only two."
"Really...why'd you have it caesarean? You do know that Vietnam has 40% of total births via caesarean section?"
"40%, more like 95%" interjected Hao (another female coworker).
"Well, I wanted it vaginal," continued Tam, "but the doctor wouldn't let me. When I insisted, he told me that my healthy pregnancy wasn't healthy anymore and I'd have to have it caesarean."
The more people I talk to, the more this story gets repeated: caesarean rates are above 90%, everyone wants a normal birth, somehow everyone's birth is incredibly dangerous, and a caesarean is performed, and finally, doctor says that you can only have two children if you have a caesarean. What an ingenious way to enforce an unenforceable rule. Oh the ethics irk me.
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