planned home birth - emergency csection

[weeonion]

Hi folks.

i had my dd2 last Wednesday. I know i should be over it by now but cant stop dwelling on it.
i had planned a homebirth - had to battle a bit for it due to age (43). Baby was transverse up to 38.5 weeks which also means i refused admission to hospital for planned section at 38 weeks. I worked to move her and she was head down but only engaged 1/5.

labour started last Tuesday night. All good, kept active etc and was 7cm when midwives arrived at 8am. Each contraction had really bad pain in left side, not back or stomach. A little gas and air.
examied 9.30 - urges to push but only 9 CMS. At this point everything changed. I can't get my head round it. Midwife said back to back but we would get her out. I laboured in,pool, out of it, squatting, with every other contraction an,urge to push, which I did. No progress. This continued for 2 hrs and I was tired and disheartened. By 11.30, still 9cm but with swollen anterior lip of cervix. Midwife tried to manually push it back through contractions - no avail. Had catheter fitted and when urine tested at 1pm , ketones (?) found.
midwife said that I would keep pushing but baby wouldn't be born that day. She recommended we go to hospital. I had lost al faith in myself and off I went in ambulance,
on ward they induced me to get to 10 CMS but didn't do anything to help me get her into position. within 1 hr they said she wasn't for coming out. Was getting distressed and I agreed to section. After this they said she was coming out brow / nose 1st.

I am finding it hard to work out what more, if anything, I could have done to move her and if only I was able to keep going for longer, had stronger pushes at home, could I have got her out??

I guess I am,trying to find answers and this post is part of working that out.

[ooerrmissus]

I don't know the answers to your questions but it seems to me you are blaming yourself for not getting the home birth you planned. There is nothing to blame yourself for; you have a lovely baby and that is dl the matters. Congratulations!

[heather1]

Weeonion it's hard when you don't get the birth you had hoped for. It sounds like you did everything you could and at this time try to be kind to your self.
If you were a third person looking at your birth situation would you be saying 'well wee onion you should have done more'.
No I think you would say a tried my best but birth can be unpredictable.
Does your Nhs trust offer a birth debriefing service? I used this after the birth of Ds 2 and I found it really helpful and resolving. I would recommend it.

[dancingwitch]

Why don't you contact the community midwives or the hospital and ask to have a de-brief and they may be able to answer some of your questions. It may be, though, that, for some reason, you were never going to manage a natural birth whatever you did...or, if you did, it could have involved risking you or your daughter's health. Yes, it does seem that hospitals can be quick to rush people into theatre for c-sections but you don't have to look too many years back to find a time when childbirth was considered very risky and, in a situation like this, either the mother or the baby would have died. Without modern medicine, my DC1 would have died or suffered brain damage due to oxygen deprivation as she got completely jammed but, 5yrs down the lines, I continue to be grateful for the amazing things that can be done these days whereas the memory of her birth and my feelings of having failed her have disappeared.

[WerewolfBarMitzvah]

Congratulations on your new baby.
I had a similar experience to you.
Planned homebirth, back to back and eventual emergency c section.
Tbh I still struggle with how things went when I think back sometimes. You're only a week past it - mentally birth is a huge thing to get over imo, and an EMCS even more so.
You can drive yourself mad thinking of how it should or could have gone, but ultimately it's fruitless.
I do wonder if my insistence for a home birth made it way harder for me to accept my experience being the polar opposite of that in the end.

Go easy on yourself. You did a great job. She's here and undoubtedly a gorgeous little newborn bundle.

[divingoffthebalcony]

I am finding it hard to work out what more, if anything, I could have done to move her and if only I was able to keep going for longer, had stronger pushes at home, could I have got her out??

Be kind to yourself. It's highly unlikely there's anything you could have done to change the brow/nose presentation, and you certainly wouldn't have been able to push her out if only you'd tried harder. You DID try.

[Qresident]

You have done well. You have carried and nurtured your child and made all the right choices to bring your baby into this world safely. Birth is not just about what you can do, but also things completely out of your control - as the phrase goes your baby did not read your birth plan.
Please try not to beat yourself up about what you might have been able to do or not do. Enjoy your lovely baby and this feeling will pass. Hugs x

[utopian99]

Hi weeonion from a fellow November threader!
I am in slightly the same boat although planning birth centre rather than home birth and ended up emcs. I felt really a bit of a 'failure' when they said they'd tried every other avenue (to be fair we really did,) but ultimately we have beautiful new little people who were born safely under trying circumstances. There is absolutely nothing you did 'wrong' or should have done instead, and like me it sounds like they really had a go at other options. Also I remember how much you did do pre - labour and how sorted you were in the face of adverse circumstances. AND in the grand scheme the birth is a small part of the wonderful way I have no doubt you'll bring up both dds..

[Showy]

Go for a debrief. Seriously.

Remember, there are two people involved in the process. You, who can do all the optimum things to nudge yourself towards the delivery you'd like. Then, the baby who might be in a difficult position and then your responsibility to that baby and its safe birth is handing over control to medical professionals. It's hard because labour and delivery is something you go into actively. You think what will I do, what choices will I make? And then you become a passive bystander. You probably told yourself that labour was beautiful and natural and your body knew what it was doing and the shock of having to accept that it wasn't possible is difficult. The gap between expectation/hope and reality can sting. The guilt is horrendous. And wasted emotion. Believe me. It took me years to accept it.

I tried to give birth at home. I pushed for 4hrs. In every position invented. I burst blood vessels and tore a muscle trying. I transferred and a ventouse didn't work. Manual rotation didn't work. DD was in transverse arrest and asynclitic- ear first - and needed an emcs. I was fully dilated for 8hrs. She didn't descend at all. I spent months and months asking what I did wrong. Answer? Nothing.

A proper debrief helped. Talking helped. Acceptance helped. And the application of time. I felt I'd let myself down, dd down, the sisterhood down. Turns out that dd grew up and the story of her birth is something she never tires of. She likes the little details of how she sneezed when half out, pooed on a nurse, what we said to her, what we felt. It's the story of the day we met and that's bloody miraculous. I was absurd to feel it wasn't good enough or that ultimately, we have any real choice in events when giving birth. Choices within a framework, options, yes. Omnipotence? No.

Congratulations. It's fine to feel sad and in shock. Be kind to yourself. You will also be tired, post-operative and hormonal. Let it settle. Enjoy your baby. Talk about the birth. Talk about the good stuff too though. How brilliant modern medicine is. How wonderful the baby turned out to be. What they wore, how their skin felt. You did brilliantly and you deserve to know that.

[weeonion]

Thanks folks for your kind words. I know it,is early days with plenty of hormones out of sync.

I will ask,for a debrief to go over my notes and see what happened, when and why to hopefully give a bit of closure. I think it would also be helpful to write it all down and get some of this out of my head. Dp has written his version all down so it might be good to go over these as a couple.

thanks for sharing experiences and understanding. X

[babykonitsway]

We can plan and wish and hope for a experience but the truth is that childbirth is unpredictable. You have a healthy baby and you are well -concentrate on that. Congrats.