C section regret

[cockcrowfarm]

Long before I got pregnant even I've been looking forwards to the experience of giving birth. Unfortunately my baby was breech so I was recommended a csection. I found a hospital that would give me the chance to try for a natural birth. The baby was estimated to be less than 3kg, my pelvis is big enough etc so they said I was a good candidate for vaginal birth.

I had some mild cramping on Friday night (I thought caused by a curry!) which got progressively stronger through the night … Around 10 am I woke my partner and timed the contractions they were 5-6 minutes apart and 40-50 seconds long so we headed to the hospital. The doctor said I was about 6cm and put me on a machine to monitor the contractions for a bit. During this time my water broke.

My usual doctor wasn't on duty and the other doctor told me that the hospital was busy and none of the doctors wanted to deliver a breech. There was no point to continue the labor as I was going to have a csection in the end. They told me it is very dangerous to deliver breech and basically put some pressure on me to sign the consent form for csection.

I had the operation at 2 pm and it went well, despite my sobbing and shaking all the way through. They said next time If everything is ok I will be able to try vaginal birth. I am very upset about the csection, I'm crying now writing this. It would be different if it was an emergency section, I feel confident that I could have delivered the baby and at least wanted the chance to try. Up until that point at least labour was progressing well.

Of course recovery time was uncomfortable and now I can't feel my belly and worry that I'll never feel it again. Yesterday, a woman on a group chat had a baby and my first reaction was a huge wave of jealousy because I didn't get the chance to try and probably won't in the future. I want another child but I doubt it is a possibility because I am almost 42, I feel like I lost my only opportunity.

I know IABU, please give me advice on how I can get over this. I am not usually a jealous person and I don't want to become bitter about it.

How old is your baby? It’s normal to feel all over the place after such a big event and one day it won’t seem such a big thing-in time it will just be “the way it was”. If you don’t have friends to talk it through with then I would suggest writing feelings down or even talking to yourself out loud can help or talking to a professional as talking it through will help you make sense of things

BTW I felt insanely jealous in the early days of people who had had textbook deliveries (which I classed as gas and air, no injuries, baby straight to breast). I felt like they were better than me with my back to back baby, agonising labour over several days, forceps, massacred undercarriage and jaundice baby with feeding issues. In time tho I stopped caring and now it is just something that happened.

You are going to feel better about this. It will just take time and processing it.
Giving birth for the first time can be very traumatic. This is the case especially if you had one plan and, as it so often does, it went differently.
You will be all over the place anyway after giving birth. Your hormones are adjusting, you're exhausted, you have a new baby, and physically you feel you have been put through the mill whatever kind of birth you have.
Your body will recover. The horrible numb bit on your tummy will go away. Even if you don't spend ages obsessively thinking about it, your brain will process your birth and adapt.

The baby is just one month old. I live in a foreign country and just moved to a different city so I don't know anyone at all to talk to, that's why I wrote here.

You need to keep talking about it to process it, it might also help if you ask for a debrief with the hospital so they can talk you through again why the decision was made and what the benefits were.

Is your baby healthy and well? Sorry as insensitive it sounds but as long as your baby is fit and well it doesn't matter how he/she was born IMO. If the doctors didn't feel comfortable delivering a breech baby then I'm sorry but that's just how it is. Give thanks for the child you have no matter how they were delivered. It's not a big deal to have to have a csection IMO (I had to have one)

Unfortunately medical staff have become deskilled at delivering breech babies so they were being honest and promoting your best interests when suggesting a CS. Breech deliveries are tricky and have become unusual as CS has become safer.

Try to focus on the joy of a newborn and the complete fabulousness of your body growing and birthing ( yes, you did birth him) your beautiful child. As others say, it will become a mild regret later. If you are consumed with these feelings it would be wise to have a chat with your HV or GP as pnd May be a factor.

Best wishes and congratulations.

Focus on the positives. My friend has a severely brain damaged child as he got stuck and starved of oxygen coming out. That always puts giving birth into perspective for me. It's not just about 'the experience'; it's a bloody dangerous process for mum and baby and if you've both come out healthy and well, then that's something to celebrate. Your child won't care how he or she was born.

It’s worth trying to unpack why you feel as you do. I’m presuming you birthed a healthy baby. Why does the delivery method matter to you?

I’m honestly curious. I had 2 c sections and don’t feel one iota of disappointment. I was gunning for the second section, even though the drs wanted me to at least try vaginally.

I have a friend who felt like you (to the extent that she delayed having a second baby, despite her age, to have a better chance of a VBAC). I’ve never understood it.

But most of all be proud of what you’ve done and enjoy your baby.

Yes, the baby is healthy and well. I've read positive things about debriefing sessions but I don't think it will be so helpful. They didn't have any medical reason to suddenly say no, I would have accepted it better if there had been. I wonder if it was because they were busy that morning.

I am at the opposite end of the spectrum my DD was an LOP presentation which the hospital persisted with a vaginal birth. My DD is fine, I have a bladder prolapse and 15 years later still have difficult feelings about it.
Please find someone to talk to about this, I wish I had done this sooner and now feel that it has become so entrenched in how I feel about it I am not certain that I can change that.
What I do think is when a delivery is not what you expected it can be hard to process.

OP- this is the most raw time for you right now emotionally- few days post birth.

For what its worth both mine were textbook deliveries that Siameasy describes- but my 2nd DC's- my husband missed the birth. I was also very emotional/raw/depressed about this for weeks afterwards.
We have just been through basically the biggest event of our life! Emotions/hormones are everywhere/you are knackered- of course you will dwell on your birth and if it wasn't the birth you expected throughout your pregnancy its so natural to be feeling regret/anger/down about it. I promise it will pass. Enjoy your lovely baby x

Hi OP. Similarly to you wanted a normal delivery, but I had to have a section for baby in the wrong position. The anaesthetic also went wrong so I ended up under GA and didn't even know my baby was born when I woke up.

I felt devastated and carried a lot of bitterness for a long time - similar to the way I felt when breastfeeding just didn't work. Both contributors for sure to what I now recognise as PND.

All I can tell you is that nobody can tell you how to feel about this, but it's a good idea to talk to someone about how you're feeling. Post natal counselling or a debrief is a good idea. Looking back now, I can see that of course it didn't really matter how I delivered or fed, because my baby is alive and well and loved, and no different to any babies who were born vaginally and breastfed (I say baby, she's 5 so I have the benefit of long hindsight) but at the time I felt robbed of an experience I desperately wanted and as though I was a failure/fraud of a parent. It really affected my ability to bond. So don't let people brush these feelings off - try to find someone to talk them through with and explore why you feel the way you do. But please don't ignore how you feel.

Oh and I went on to have a normal delivery with DC 2 (but ended up with mild vaginal prolapse and a dodgy bladder, so it's definitely not all roses!)

Congratulations on your new baby xx

Ah OP you will feel better. My SiL has a c section in similar circumstances and said she was most upset about the way it was handled, not the fact that she had to have an operation she didn’t want.
I also had an emergency c section and some months after the birth did find myself fixating on a rough midwife who kept threatening me with forceps if I didn’t push harder. I didn’t mind having the c section, all the other doctors and midwives did their best to stop it happening, but I wondered if I’d had a more supportive midwife earlier on, if things might have been different.

Having also had a vbac, there are some upsides to a c section and I hope you feel better soon.
It must be hard being in a new city.

Part of me just wants to shake you for being silly because, as you acknowledge, this is ridiculous.....

.... but I also do understand that the mental toll of not getting a vaginal delivery when that's what you wanted can be huge (and I won't go into a digression about how the medical community is messing with woman's heads by making out it's so important).

I second what others have said. Go talk to someone. This isn't something that will need years of therapy, but a proper discussion with a trained professional will help. A lot of therapists can offer relatively short course treatments of 6 - 8 weeks. It will help, I promise.

A breech vaginal delivery is much more risky than cephalic or a section. They got the baby out safely. I don't think you can really blame them. If something had gone wrong you'd be asking why they let you continue something they knew was riskier.

The medical reason was that there was nobody skilled enough to deliver a breach baby on shift. That is a very good reason, in my opinion. You both could have died.

A natural birth isn’t always better. I had a very traumatic first labour. It was very long and painful, and there were lots of complications. My baby was back to back, and was eventually delivered with forceps, and an episiotomy for me. I was ill after the birth, and my recovery was slow and painful.

I was actually very scared about having a second child, but went ahead with it. Because my first labour was so hard, I had a planned c-section. It all went smoothly, and the recovery was much better than with my first baby.

I really wouldn’t feel upset that you didn’t have a ‘natural ‘ birth, it might not have been what you were expecting!

OP I would ask for your post to be moved to a more supportive board.
All you will get here is people telling you that you should just be grateful that your baby is healthy, but it's not that simple really.
Birth is a massive event in your life, especially the first one.
I can understand why you feel the way you do, I wonder if you were given false expectations of the likelihood of delivering a breech baby naturally.
Doctors are very risk averse (for obvious reasons) but it may have helped if they had been honest with you about the chances. At least then you would have been more informed.
I don't know where you are but honestly I think it's important that you make some contact with other mums and get out of the house with the baby. Being screwed up over the birth can make you feel very down and contribute to PND. It's natural to want to talk about it.
Are you on Facebook? I am also outside the UK and the city I live in has women expat groups including sub groups for babies due/born around the same time.
It can be a nightmare especially accessing support when you are in a foreign country and you don't understand all the workings of the health systems.
Please keep talking to us here and try and get out a bit. I know it's hard but it's helpful.
From me to you
PM me if you want to talk

My baby was breech; they managed to move her round at 37 weeks. Up to that point we'd been talking about a CS delivery because if you don't have staff confident in doing a breech birth who happen to be on shift for your whole labour, there's a risk of baby getting stuck at the neck with the rest of the body already out or of hip problems depending on where baby's feet are in relation to their bottom (paraphrasing slightly).

Any birth that doesn't go how you wanted it to is a terrible shock for you. Especially if you're not able to debrief with the hospital afterwards. I know you're not in the UK but if your hospital offers this, please do go for it. I did this before baby 2's birth because baby 1, induction, ventouse, mangled baby, 10 days in hospital, was a bloody car crash and I'd have rather had that breech baby at home in the bath than trust the NHS with her without an explanation of what the hell went wrong first time round. I suspect you were just the victim of staff who weren't confident in breech birth so they went with what was most convenient and safest for them, so you don't sue them. Bluntly. Hospitals tend to do this.

Hi. I understand totally how you feel, I had a section for my first birth now 6 years ago. I felt the same as you, so cheated and denied the chance to try. Everyone said oh be grateful you and the baby are ok, at least you have a baby some people can’t etc but it really didn’t help. Yes I was grateful for my daughter and yes I was grateful we were both ok and I think being made to feel my feeling towards me section were invalid made everything worse. Like you I couldn’t face a debrief and felt it wouldn’t help, but later down the line I did do it and it was so helpful to just talk through it with a midwife and afterwards a huge weight was lifted and I moved on. Pm me if you want to chat and be kind to yourself

Thanks for your kind and reasonable words! I know I have to focus on the beautiful baby I have and not dwell on the delivery. I'm really not sure why I care so much but it's hard to get rid of.

I'm sorry you are so upset about this and it is detracting from your first few months of parenthood.

However, I have to correct one of the things you said cockcrowfarm. There was a medical reason to perform a C-Section.

You were in labour. Your baby was coming and that can't be stopped.
But there was no one around to support that occurring as a vaginal breech delivery.
The hospital would have been negligent to allow you to continue to deliver vaginally without offering a C-Section.

And since the term breech trial and recommendations that LSCS improves outcomes for breech infants the skills to deliver vaginal breech babies have become very rare.

I've been involved when vaginal breech deliveries have gone wrong. The consequences are devastating for child and family.