geordie of course you can try for a vbac if thats what you want, as you can too suntangirl. Noone can tell you you're "not allowed" they can only advise and give you the odds etc.
however they can't know if what happened before is going to happen again. Did you have an epidural for instance? (long labour) as that may have made it tricky for you to use good positions to move your baby from babk to back and into a good position for birth
Back to back does not always mean long, painful labour, it scares people into believing it does as we only hear the negative stories about it. Don't worry too much about position like that as such
Did you have waters broken for you as that can cause head to come down before nature would have intended sometimes and therefore baby isn't quite ready to be born but has to be, (does that make sense? ) ie if nature had taken it's course, maybe baby would have decsended at a more regular pace and therefore presented in a more birth friendly position.
You can use a pool/and or hypno as much as you like, you may have to get signed off by cons to use one at hosp but you can insist, they can use delaying tactics but can't deny you.
stg it's difficult to know what caused distress in your baby but could have been any number of things that just follwed on from each other, often happens, doesn't mean it's going to happen again.
In both your cases, might be worth going through your last birth notes from the labour and seeing for yourselves where things started to change in the direction on intervention, you might see th pattern.
Good luck to you both. :)