Did you have an emergency Caesarean?

[knittamerrykid]

I'm looking (out of interest) into the reasons why emergency caesareans are performed, specially in the UK, and would like to hear your experiences, I'm particularly interested in the chain of events leading up to it.
Thank you.

I had a semi planned caesarean - my baby was in the back to back position, which often means a caesarean, so the obstetican opted for me to have a trial labour, however it lasted 48 hours and eventually I had a caesarean because of 'failure to progess.'

I had an x ray of my pelvis 6 weeks after giving birth and was told that I would never be able to give birth naturally unless the baby was small and facing the right way.

I had an EMCS with DS2.

Waters went (though only hind waters) and I noticed deep red loss. Phoned Hospital they said to go in. Contractions had started. MW bollocked me for not bringing the pad with me. Was examined by a Doctor who noted deep red loss but MW overruled her.

Laboured on for a bit, really painful asked for an epidural. Rest of waters went, monitor showed heart-rate dipping with contractions. They did that thing where they take a blood sample from the baby's head. (MW was not happy about this happening but she was over-ruled by her superior). levels came back that needed EMCS. It wasn't particuarly rushed tbh must have been at least 30 mins from when it was decided I needed one til it happened. Was 9cms by the time I got to theatre, MW asked if we could try for a VB Anaesthetist said absolutely not. When I was opened up there someone shouted "ABRUPTION" thus why DS2 was in distress. He was absolutely fine btw good Apgar score etc.

Oh and I got the hospital around 8pm and DS2 was born at 5.35am the following morning.

I had 2 emcs, both in the second stage.

DD1 was stuck and forceps couldn't budge her after quite a protracted labour. Because progress had been slow, I had synto, ARM, epidural etc etc.

DD2 became distressed when my body started pushing and she never really engaged. My second labour was entirely normal (active, unmedicalised) until things went wrong. In fact, I arrived at the hospital at 10cm to avoid too much medical business, and I suspect that if she could have she would have come at home or in the car.

Noone would have thought that DD2 would need help after an amazingly smooth, textbook labour, but she did. Incidentally there would have been time to transfer in from home (the doctor faffed over the epidural for an age before knocking me out) but the transfer would have been awful for me I think - I was very worried about her.

My EMCS was during labour - DS2's heart rate plummeted to 30bpm and wouldnt recover. Turns out his head was far too big, his plates were being forced too hard and far over. I ended up having him pushed back up and rushed to theatre with a midwife straddling me, with her arm up me holding him away from my cervix. Not a pleasant experience at all.

There are recent, published stats about the results of non-hospital births in Ina May Gaskin's Guide to Homebirth (an inspiring read). That might get your family off your back (I fell out with my mum over it, she loves white coats, even if it's the cleaners at the hosp!) I'm a HB fan, even though I didn't do the whole thing here in the end. You just need to go with what presents itself at the time, IMHO. Babies often seem to have an agenda that doesn't always seem to match yours .

I really think if there IS a good reason not to HB, it will come to light well beforehand (e.g. signs of pre-eclampsia, dodgy blood pressure, etc). The biggest risk you probably face is the inconvenience of transferring to hosp. What swung it for me was finding the stats for our local hosp, and the staffing problems they had there. There was no way I was going to labour there (possibly scared out of my wits) under scanty supervision. Gaskin's book gives many examples of how fear in labour can hamper progression. I felt if there was a problem with the baby's presentation, etc, then we would be attended much faster if we arrived in an ambulance. And seems it was true, too - I heard the midwives having a heated discussion when I got to hospital because they were understaffed, but under no circumstances were they permitted to leave me unattended. There weren't enough of them to go round..

Knit he was not far enough out. Breech is OK but footling breech is very difficult and dangerous to deliver vaginally ( I have asked medical professionals and all sort of people in the Health Care world of all approaches and done my own reading and this seems to be very commonly held opinion), as there is no big centre of gravity to push against.

I tried a hospital birth just because it was my first and I was unsure how I would deal with it but fully intended to have home births for all subsequent DCs. Textbook pregnancy, minimal weight gain, very physically active - swimming, yoga, cycling 10km a day up til 7 months etc etc. In labour I used the pool and was physically active no drugs but gas and air and cocodamol - basically what they can give you at a home birth.
Labour was going really well, but it started slowing after a shift change and I ended up with an emergency c section for failure to progress after 19 hours, and a good two hours of pointless pushing because I was utterly exhausted and knew DS was stuck. No one had diagnosed it but he was stuck in OT with his head wedged sideways in my pelvis. After that I ended up in a high dependency unit after a big bleed - probably due to all that pointless pushing - that scared my hubby almost to death. He was left literally holding the baby and genuinely thought he was going to lose me.
So no in future I don't want a homebirth. It's the number one cause of death worldwide in women of our age. I do intend to VBAC in future with a pool and minimal drugs, but I want to be somewhere with blood transfusion and life support facilities because I could feel my life slipping away from me and it was utterly utterly hideous.
I think with a general anaesthetic they can go from knife to skin to baby out in under 8 minutes.

Sorry to be suspicious Knitamerry - and good luck with your homebirth. I just like to know who I'm talking to on a subject this personal as sometimes you get people doing research for an article.

I had an emergency cs for undiagnosed fibroids blocking delivery, causing failure to progress and foetal distress. I had an uncomplicated pregnancy and was thought to be low risk.

It's not true that hospitals need 30 mins to prepare for a cs. We had 5 minutes warning to get my ds out alive, and they made it in 4.

Exactly - they put women under general anaesthetic in the real emergency sections so they can start work at once.

I read this great post from Piprabbit on another thread and I found it resonated so much with me and my birth experience.

"Somewhere along the line we confused informing and empowering ourselves about what happens during childbirth with thinking we can actually control what happens in childbirth.

So we read books that tell us we must do X or Y or Z. We talk to friends who seem to boast about their births. We imagine our single, ideal scenario and plan for that (and that alone). We write birthplans which layout what we expect to happen (instead of plans that advise staff how we would like them to support and treat in the different situations that might crop up).

It is not surprising that the expectation and reality (as unpure says) is often separated by a huge gap.

It doesn't mean we are wrong to want certain things from our experience of birth. However, I don't think we get enough help in advance to mentally equip ourselves to deal with the full range of possibilities we might suddenly find ourselves thrown into. So we blame ourselves."

After my birth experience I agree with this whole heartedly. Plan for your ideal experience but also know what you want to do if it all goes very wrong. I will never forgive myself for example for the fact that after they sent my hubby home at 4am, my son spent his first night undressed and hungry, in a cot next to me unconscious in high dependency. I've told my hubby that even if I'm in morgue next time the baby will be dressed.

I certainly wasnt 30 minutes for a section - I went from distress to first cut within about 6 minutes I think

Abrupt placenta and undisguised breach position.
10mins from walking through hospital door to birth.

Undisguised breach with number two, but this time I did get to hospital in time for a more relaxed emergency csection.

I go into denial in labour and shut down, go to bed and put head under pillow. luckily Dh noticed I had gone quiet....too quiet.

I've had two EMCS. With DD she was apparently facing the wrong way, and after two hours of pushing just wasn't descending at all.
With DS, I was determined to try for a VBAC, and laboured really well. Got to 9cms in 4 hours, then they lost his heartbeat. I was on G&A, and remember looking up and seeing the room suddenly fill with people.
Thankfully they found it again, but he was in distress. I was rushed off to theatre, where he was delivered by EMCS. The consultant told me afterwards that my pelvis was very small (even though I am not!) and there was no way I would ever deliver vaginally. He said it should have been noted after DD's delivery.
DH said it was the scariest ten minutes of his life.

Mine was due to prolonged labour and baby in a back to back position. I just couldn't get her out...I also have a narrow pelvis.

I planned a homebirth. I was at home for most of it, in water, active, upright. I pushed for 6hrs. DD didn't descend. I transferred in and they tried ventouse and a manual rotation. She became deeply distressed, heartrate plummeted and then they couldn't find it. Straight to emcs, dd out minutes later. It wasn't until they operated that they could see the problem. She was in deep transverse arrest and asynclitic (facing the wrong way and ear first). She was unbirthable.

I know now that birth experience is luck. I did everything 'right', I had all the answers and knowledge. DD unfortunately didn't know the birth I'd planned.

Emergency c section at 27 weeks due to pre eclampsia.
they wanted to do the section at 12 but couldn't get my blood pressure down so eventually managed at 4pm.

I had a vaginal birth in hospital, having been induced due to high bp.

I was checked on less than 5 times in 12 hours of labour, I was left totally alone for 3 hours because DH wasn't allowed to be there outside of visiting hours, if something had gone wrong it wouldn't have mattered whether it only took 8mins for a cs - no one would have noticed.

If I'd been at home with a dedicated mw monitoring the situation and something had gone wrong I am in no doubt at all that I would have got help many many times quicker than I would have alone in the hospital.

I was induced because DD was late. 32 hours after my waters broke I was fully dilated, nothing was happening (hadn't been for some time) and then DD was in distress.

The EMCS was the most serene bit for me!

One of the people I know who has had an HB told me that if anything had gone wrong she was confident her MW would get things organised so she could get to Hospital asap. All the medical supplies for the MW were dropped off at her house before they were needed. Not being my personal experience I don't know how accurate this all is, although DH's work colleague who very recently had an HB needed Hospital treatment immediately after - all went well (a 3hr labour though - I wish!).

When I told my Dad I would have liked an HB I could not understand his panicked reaction. It took a couple more conversations before I realised he thought an HB was done at home with no medical staff/equipment at all! Bless.

I had a text book easy pregnancy, when out of the blue at 38+4 my waters broke and were meconium stained. Dilation was zero. Got a sweep and put straight onto the synto. A few hours later only 2 cm still. Heart rate dropping. Urgent CS. CS part was probably the least scary part of the whole process.

That's disgusting RobynLou. Sadly it isn't unusual. I don't know why hopsitals don't be honest about and let people have their families in with them as they do abroad. It is necessary to have somebody with you at your most vulnerable time, and it so isn't going to happen from the staff today.

Undiagnosed breech/back to back/generally funny position, leading to crash section involving a "t shaped" cut which has left me unable to deliver vaginally and recommended to not have any more children (I did have DD2 after that, by planned section, but that is it for me)

I was 10cm when they whisked me down to theatre, and had been refused pain relief apart from g+a up to that point :( There was apparenly no way DD1 would have got out alive, given the position she was in :(

Took me years to get over it. Not sure I have done yet. The main thing that helped me was having the lovely planned section with DD2.

Tbh, I think the situation would have been diagnosed quicker at home, although they were trying to send me home as I apparently wasn't in labour, so would the midwife have just left me?

I went into labour at 41 weeks. Hadn't had much movement the previous 24 hours. Laboured at home for 12 hours then went into hospital. The trace on my arrival was "flattish" so she wasn't that happy in there. I laboured for a further 8 hours but didn't progress from the 3cm I was when I arrived. They tried to put a scalp clip on her but she was too high.

Obviously she hadn't descended/engaged very well. THey then started the hormone drip which increased the contractions. Almost immediately she went into distress, hearbeat dropped and very slow to recover. She was born 15 minutes later by section.

There are some bleak stories on here.

I went for HB as first choice because of my response to hospital labouring (bad), the stats from our nearest hospital about their staffing levels (bad) and because there were no evidenced contraindications to HB. I also noticed during pregnancy that the hospital was clearly under resourcing strain (long, long waits for appointments, etc) and maybe because of this we weren't really listened to by anyone who worked there. We made the right choice for our particular situation living in this PCT.

I honestly think for every story on here there may be hundreds of birth stories where everything went fine, either at home, a birthing centre (a good middle option) or in a hospital.

Try to look forward to meeting your baby, however he/she arrives, and plan for a number of eventualities. You can become so very focused on the birth that you forget the story doesn't end there.. we are lucky to have so much choice in the UK. The reason HB are a killer in some other countries is because medical facilities and the monitoring skills and staff are not what they need to be for safe afterbirth monitoring. It's not HB in itself. Holland have an enormous number of happy HBs with skilled midwives seeing this as perfectly normal. Nothing wrong with transferring if things don't go to plan or it becomes your preference at the time.

I agree- in most cases (including DD2, but even DD1), the birth is such a small part of your life with your child, there is no point getting in a massive stress about it.

I think that, if I had no past problems and was pregnant again, I would have the hypothetical third child at home, or at least do as much as possible at home, but that is mainly down to the fact that I wouldn't want to leave my house and older children :)