I just found a fab website,

[QuietNinjaTardis]

It's called tellmeagoodbirthstory.com

It's all about positive stories about labour and birth and might help counteract some of the horror stories that we get told as soon as we announce we are pregnant.
My dd is now 6 weeks old but her labour was amazing and reading some of the positive stories is fab. A friend who recently had her baby asked me how my labour went and I told her. I told her not to worry and be positive because it can go well. When she announced her dd had been born I asked how it went and she said you were right it can go well and it did.
I think this website will be good for those who don't have someone who can say that to them.
Anyway I hope someone gets something good from it.

Thank you for sharing! I'm stuck with ELCS these days, but on one of my due date forums there's a lot of nervous first time mothers (and second time!) and I know this will help them. As you say normally people only ever share the horror stories after all, and there are plenty of good stories out there but they aren't as "fun"(!) to share I suppose so people generally don't.

I read so many of these 'good stories' that when I went through mine it was so shocking and so so so dissappointing! I felt like swearing at Inna May and your likes for putting all that nonsense in my head! I won't believe it until it happens to me.

Indigo I'm sorry for making you want to swear, my first birth was pretty traumatic so dd's birth was a complete surprise to me. I'm sorry you had a tough time. I just wanted people to know that it isn't always like that.

I agree quietninja, I get so annoyed with all the horror stories....people keep trying to tell me them despite two amazing (and fairly easy) water births "oh yes, but the third can be really difficult...."
Thanks for posting the link!

Crispy, I don't think an ELCS precludes you from having a positive birth. Mine certainly didn't (even the first one which was more emergency than elective).

I might go and post my CS story later....

some births are just biologically difficult - but many many many more are made difficult because labour is disturbed and the labouring woman doesn't have what she needs in terms of physiology - privacy, the chance to focus, safety thanks to proper by-her-side support, warmth, darkness, not feeing observed. Unfortunately complicated and traumatic birth stories are so the norm now, that when a woman does have a simple time, the assumption is she got lucky - and certainly that if she talks about it, she is crowing or being smug. And that is a shame - a huge waste to silence the most obviously useful resource of all. In every other area of our life, we turn to those with know-how, who have positive experience of an area and ask them about it. But society/ culture/media have succeeded in getting women to ignore this obvious route of collaborating and pooling resources, and instead got us turning against each other. Those who have something positive to share are compelled to shut up. It's the kind of silence women were made to keep when they no control - a very loud 'be quiet and know your place' and the sad result is it rolls back the clock about 100 years in terms of women being able to determine events and enact real choices for themselves and their babies.

OP, really sorry, that was a typo on my part. That was not meant to read 'your likes', gosh sorry, it was meant to read 'the likes'.

I don't believe complicated births are the norm at all. It's just people like to hype up the bad stories.

I talk a hell of a lot more about my first premature birth than my second completely uneventful birth for example, and my friends are the same as me. In fact, at the toddlers group I go to, I arrived with DC2 all newborn and lovely and because I said how easy it was, they all said, without exception, that they too had uneventful births.

I agree though that there is a fetishisation of labour pain to a ridiculous degree in the press and online. We're told to expect the worst, most painful thing in life which definitely makes me .

Pregnant women should be aware that anything is possible, of course, but the usual outcome is an uneventful birth.

That's ok indigo. I can understand your frustration but I think strgee has it right and its important women know that labour and birth can and does go well. Without it being smug for someone to say so.

And what lebfg said.

quiet I found that site really helpful when pregnant with DD and my story is now on it. Why not submit yours?

BingoWings - yep, I'm doing what I can to make my ELCS into a positive experience - have done all the research on natural c-sections etc and have made a "birth plan" to throw at the consultant! Last time round I had an ELCS and they were pretty good about lowering the skin and having baby on my chest right after and so on.

It can still be good, just different.

Ooh how cool glorious. I did think about. Maybe ill get in touch with them. Glad you found it helpful.

Do, the lady who runs it is really nice. I'm also a birth buddy but have only been contacted once in about 6 months and that was just email.

Think I will. I did think about putting it on here but thought I'd get accused of being smug or something so never did. Just feel proud that my body did what it was supposed to do after the hideousness of ds birth.

well I'm with Indigo - when I was pregnant I felt very positive about my future birth experience, got a lot of reassurance at my NCT classes, my mum and sister both reassured me too by telling me how relatively easy their births had been. I was actually looking forward to giving birth!

and now that I had a bad experience, I feel really disappointed and 'cheated' out of the experience I was hoping to get.

Not to say that people should stay away from positive stories - I think the key is to not expect either a wonderful or a horrendous experience, but to be aware that both exist and that which one you'll get is mostly a matter of dumb luck.

(just to qualify - didn't mean to say I was with Indigo in wanting to swear at the OP! just that I read too many positive stories and ended up disappointed)