Roger Harms, M.D., Mayo Clinic specialist in obstetrics-gynecology

There would be several reasons why a woman would want to consider a vaginal birth after a previous Caesarean delivery — some of them personal and some of them medical. From the medical point of view, it's quite clear that a vaginal delivery has a lower risk to it overall and also has a more rapid recovery time than a Caesarean delivery. So both of those things are advantageous from the medical point of view. There's a substantial infection rate from Caesarean deliveries that we don't see a risk for that with vaginal deliveries, and a woman can avoid that complication pretty substantially by having a vaginal delivery. Then many women who I speak to really feel like they might have missed something in not having had a vaginal delivery, and some women feel very strongly about that and have an emotional investment in a vaginal delivery being accomplished. And for those women, that would be a reason that they should consider a VBAC (vaginal birth after Caesarean) as well.

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