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The rise of the cesarean delivery

C-section
Doctors Susan Farrar (L) and Shannon Lamb (R) deliver a baby girl named Esther by C-section on board the USNS Comfort, a U.S. Naval hospital ship, on January 21, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

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Nearly 35 percent of all births in the United States are C-sections and that rate has been climbing over the 20th Century, even as rates of maternal death have begun to climb.

Many experts say there are a number of complications that can come along with C-section births.

From The Atlantic:

Compared with those born vaginally, C-section babies go on to have a 22 percent higher risk of obesity, nearly double the risk of celiac disease, a 20 percent higher risk of asthma and type 1 diabetes, and up to an 800 percent higher risk of sensitivity to allergens. Slipping through the microbe-rich birth canal might be a rite of passage for a baby's developing immune system. Josef Neu, a neonatologist at the University of Florida, says, "The types of bugs that end up in the GI tract of these babies may be very important."

On The Daily Circuit, we discuss why doctors perform so many C-sections, how many are unnecessary and what it's costing us.