On a scale of 1-10 how much does a CS hurt in comparison to a Vaginal Birth?

[dejags]

Our third DB is due in just over 7 weeks time. She is breech atm - I saw the Ob yesterday and she said that although we can try an ECV at 36 weeks that DB seems very happy in her current position and that I should start preparing myself mentally for a CS at 38 weeks (oh shit, that's five weeks away ).

I am absolultely and totally terrified of the whole procedure. Mostly I am scared of the anaesthetic not working (I had two failed epidurals when I was in labour with DS1) but I am also afraid of the pain afterwards.

So, give it to me straight. For those of you who have had both, how much more painful is a CS than a vaginal birth? (before, during and afterwards).

dejags, please do not worry.

I had an elective section with dd1. I remember very little pain (though it's nearly 7 years ago now). When they put the spinal anaesthetic in they said it'd be like a bee sting, and it was. Ouch... but then immediately nothing. The spinal anaesthetic worked brilliantly on me and I didn't feel anything throughout the procedure. I did feel some rummaging, but just the sensation without any pain.

When the anaesthetic started to wear off I remember my stomach feeling all flobbly and wobbly, but not desperately painful. I had a morphine injection in the recovery room, but hated it as it made me feel very out of control and panicky (and I couldn't remember what we'd called our dd, which was horrible). Midwife insisted on giving me another morphine jab later too and went into the muscle at a strange angle so that I kept getting cramp in my thigh. (This went on for ages afterwards... I remember screaming in agony in the middle of Thornton's as I attempted to buy chocs for the nurses who were looking after dd! But cramp is 'just' cramp, and I think it was just bad luck.) Otherwise I just had voltarol and paracetomol and was fine. I had dd at 9.40 a.m. and was wheeled down to the pumping room to try to express some milk for her (long story... she had to be tube fed for a while) that evening (say, about 6.00). That was in a wheelchair, as my legs were still very wobbly, but I did get myself out of bed OK. By the next day I was up and walking about, albeit tentatively (leaning on dd's cot). If you keep moving it's definitely better. The pain is definitely not unbearable.

I can't compare my cs with my vaginal birth. The vb was much more painful, but it was a 'good' sort of pain, somehow. I definitely remember pain with dd2, whereas I don't at all with dd1, but neither of them was traumatic or unbearable. If you baby doesn't move and you need a cs it'll be fine, honest.

Oh, I was also a bit worried about the need to have a catheter. Don't know why, I just though it'd be disgusting and painful. But I didn't feel it at all, and it was so nice not to have to get up and pee. In fact, I was quite sad when they came and took it out! They didn't put it in till the anaesthetic had worked anyway, so I didn't feel it going in, and it wasn't painful when they took it out.

Sorry... just read down to Klaw's post, and I would agree (though I might phrase it slightly differently) about the psychological aspect.

I don't know enough about it to debate the pros and cons of trying for a vaginal breech birth. However, if you feel that you have no choice but to have a CS (i.e. if you feel that the doctors are right to recommend that, and that you are not being bullied into it), then the thing is to get your head around it beforehand, so that you see it as a positive thing and not as, somehow, 'second best'. I had to do this with dd1. Had planned a natural homebirth (which might have been pie-in-the-sky, but it was what I was hoping for, anyway) but had to get my head round a long hospital stay and elective section. (I had grade IV placenta praevia and quite severe bleeding from 27 weeks.) At first, I was very resistant to the idea that I needed the CS and felt very let down by my body and angry and a bit of a failure. But over time (and I had a good 9 weeks in hospital before dd was born to get used to the idea) I came to accept that the CS was the only way that I was going to have my baby and that it would be a positive experience, after all the stress of the hospital stay and the fear that she'd be born very prematurely. I had the chance to talk about the birth very thoroughly with the midwives (and, in particular, with a really superb student midwife who had a bit more time to chat than the regular ward midwives and who told me exactly what to expect and just made me realise that nothing mattered except the safe arrival of my baby) and just to accept that I wasn't going to have the birth that I had planned, but that I was going to be experiencing the birth of my baby, and if that was the way she had to arrive, well... so be it.

This process of acceptance was really important to me. It wasn't immediate, but eventually it did come.

And the birth itself was so beautiful. It was, as I said, 7 years ago, but I can remember as if it was yesterday the moment when the consultant lifted my tiny beautiful, bloody (she had got a bit caught up in the placenta), screaming dd over the screen. It was, without a doubt, the best moment of my life.

Anyway, sorry to have gone on (and on and on), but hope this may help a bit.