Has anyone been booked for an ELCS but not got it in the end?

[CSectionStress]

Hi ladies - I was booked in for an ELCS, but it got cancelled by the hospital (on the day!!). They’ve given me another date but it’s now quite a few days beyond my due date. I’m absolutely petrified that I will go into labour before rescheduled date & they’ll just tell me tough and expect me to labour naturally. I did query it but they just kept saying emergencies are prioritized which didn’t really fill me with confidence.

Has anyone been in this situation ?! Any advice on how I can insist that I get my c section ? I’m not going into reasons here but I absolutely don’t want to give birth naturally.

Oh how stressful for you to be cancelled the day you were going in!

I went into labour the day before my booked ELCS with my second baby - I was booked later than the clinic really wanted to due to new year/weekend hospital diaries. I was asked when I got to the hospital if I wanted to try to give birth naturally or continue to an ELCS. I chose to continue with the ELCS. I had to wait in a room before being prepped and did get bumped for emergencies which came in. It was overnight but had my CS around 8am having got to triage around 1am. I am still happy to have been bumped during the wait as I decided being the first section of the morning shift was preferable to the last of the tired night shift!

That’s awful. Our hospital has one theatre for emergencies and one for planned. I know because I was worried about this situation and they told me not to panic. They said if I went into labour before my planned date they would do their very best to get me in. Changing it to after your due date I can see being extremely stressful.

If you start labouring (which can happen regardless which date you've been given) you will have the option to do the CS at that point, as long as there are no emergencies. This is no different than if there was an emergency on your elective CS date, the emergency would still take priority. Your intervention is neither an emergency, nor life threatening.

Yes this happened to me. They gave me a date the day before my due date, then rang a few days later and changed it to my actual due date.

My waters broke at home in the middle of the night at 38+4 and it was absolutely fine. Like a PP, my hospital has 2 theatres, one emergency and one elective. All the elective slots were full and they couldn't schedule me in any other time.

Waters broke around 2am, I drove to the hospital around 3am, DH had to wait on my parents arriving. At the hospital I got scanned and DS2 was still breech so they started pre-op. The midwives said it was fine and weren't in too much of a rush tbh. DH arrived, they woke the anaesthetist and DS2 was born around 5am I think. It was all super chilled, stress free and easy.

Disclaimer - it was a quiet night, there were no other emergencies and DS2 was stubbornly breech. And big, they definetly did not want to try a vaginally delivery, he was 10lb 6!

I went into labour before my booked date in the middle of the night when only one theatre was open. As baby 1 took days I thought it would be ok but baby 2 was in a hurry.

They asked me I'd like to try naturally and I said "no way". They had to clean down the theatre but the midwife made them open the second clean one for me. I also had a jab that slows down contractions as baby 2 was not hanging around. It lasted about two hours. So even if you go into labour they can manage you. It will be ok.

It was awful - we were at the hospital all day, all the pre op tests and conversations had happened & I was dressed for theatre. So distressing& I’ve never heard of it happening to anyone before.

glad to hear you still got your c section, I’m terrified I’ll get fobbed off but hopefully that won’t be the case

This is the same set up as our hospital so I’m still confused why it got moved - they said emergencies take priority (fair enough) but also that the elective c section team had not performed any c sections that day so I’m not really sure what’s gone on

Okay thank you, not heard of a jab that can slow contractions but will bear that in mind if I don’t make it to my new date.

That’s even more bizarre. I can’t believe you were ready for theatre! Can you contact your midwife or PALS?