Hi all,
I'm thinking of trying for my second baby in the next few months and have been thinking about birth. I was wondering if any of you could share experiences of subsequent births after a traumatic birth with shoulder dystocia? I'll explain my first birth - will probably be long, sorry! I should say that I strongly believe my birth and recover led to me having post natal anxiety which 14 months on I am just about recovered from.
My DD was born after a terrible horror show of a labour. My waters went naturally and then nothing happened for 24 hours so I was induced. Gel first, the on the drip six hours later. The drip wasn't put in properly so the medicine all pooled in my arm. A few hours later they redid the drip and contractions finally started. However, after this all the fluid in my arm was absorbed and I was hit with full on contractions with barely any breaks (as in 30 seconds to a minute) but was only 1-2 cm. baby was back to back too. After a couple of hours I was allowed an epidural. 12 hours later I was ready to push. 2 hours of pushing and nothing was happening so I went to theatre for an assisted delivery/potential section. I had 3 goes of forceps, one to turn and two to pull out, and an episiotomy. The head was born and then thy discovered a significant shoulder dystocia. The doctor basically had to reach in and pull DD out by hand. She was left with awful bruising including a full on black eye, bless her. I then had a retained placenta and had an op here and then to get it out, followed by a haemorrhage where I lost 2l of blood. Bad tears inside and out despite episiotomy, lots of stitching.
So not a nice experience at all, and the recovery was awful. My milk was several days late arriving due to blood loss (which no one told me about, caused all sorts of feeding issues, on top of DD being so sore it hurt her to open her mouth to latch). I was in hospital a week and all in all it took me a good three months to physically recover and stop bleeding. DD recovered well. The day after the birth the ob who did the delivery came to see me and told me in 25 years she'd never seen an obstruction like it and that she recommended that any future deliveries should be by elective CS. I went for a birth debrief with her when DD was 3 weeks old and she reiterated the same, and sent me home with a letter explaining his for next time.
Has anyone had a good experience of birth after SD? Safety is my paramount concern, I'm aware that a CS is no walk in the park but I'm just wondering what my options are really.
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Childbirth
Birth after Shoulder Dystocia
21 replies
Sleepthief84 · 22/06/2017 09:54
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