Sorry, late to the party here but I’ll come screeching in with my advice 😂
HAVE A SECTION!!!
I mean, do your research, make your own mind up, read the risk etc. If you search my name I think you’ll be able to read my life story and various essays I’ve posted on peoples posts like this one so il not bore you with it all 😂 I had one for my first because otherwise I just wasn’t having a child. I wasn’t doing it. Was called ‘spoiled’ when I posted on here asking about getting an elective c-section approved. Was told I was wasting NHS resources. Was told I’d go into labour early. Was told they’d put me last on the list and I’d end up going naturally before then 🙄
Going into labour was my number one fear on earth, like above death even 😂 I’ve just had this built in feeling all my life that I shouldn’t attempt it because something so awful was going to happen. So when I did decide potentially I could have a child as long as it was a section, I made it my life’s mission (for those 9 months) to get one approved and have it all go okay. Best. Decision. Ever!
I came up against it from every medical professional on the way there right enough. The midwife basically laughed at me and dismissed my concerns when I spilled them all out at the booking appointment. Asked her again after my 12 week scan. Phoned her at 16 weeks detailing the fact I’d been waking up during the night worrying that I still hadn’t been able to speak to a consultant and the stress of it was really getting to me. It was affecting every aspect of my life by that point, it was all I thought about. At 22 weeks I got a really helpful midwife and just about cried telling her it. She referred me to a consultant. I then had to phone again because I’d heard nothing about an appointment and by 29 weeks, in my head I was about to go into labour imminently and needed some sort of signed approval that I had this all in hand 😂 Again, explained how much it was impacting my mental health and I got to speak to the consultant on the phone that week. I had 5 pages of notes prepared to go in all guns blazing. I was physically shaking as the phone rang. She turned out to be nice, although she pretended we were going to discuss the different pros and cons of both types of birth. She didn’t mention a single risk about a vaginal birth and all she said was ‘you can have a nice easy vaginal birth orrr’ then went on to tell me I was either going to die, lose every ounce of blood in my body, my internal organs would be damaged or the baby was probably going to get its face slashed with the knife on the way out. All sounded pretty reasonable to me so I said I was happy to go ahead 😂 I think you just need to have been on the nhs website and read the risks (and the actual likelihood of any of them happening) by yourself before they try and scare you with it all. Of course they’re not trying to ‘scare you’ they have to inform you etc but in my experience it was an extremely one sided argument!
I went ahead with it anyway. Made it to the date. Didn’t die 😅 and not only that it was bloody amazing and basically pain-free! It was everything I’d hoped it would be but I didn’t imagine getting a baby out could be that easy. From actually cutting me open I saw my baby in about 60 seconds. I’d geared myself up for 15 minutes and the doctor on the day said 5 but I was not expecting 1 minute!!
The recovery is the bit everyone always says is horrific but for some reason in my head I wasn’t fussed about it because if I’d made it to the recovery part I’d survived the operation and that was good news in itself 😂 It wasn’t a patch on what I thought it would be. As soon as I got even any sensation back in that area while in hospital I just asked for painkillers straightaway so I really didn’t feel much at all in hospital. The first 2-5 days I’d say for me were the only challenging part. I kind of moped round the house not able to do that much. The only real issue was getting up from lying down without doing an ab crunch and even sitting too far back into the sofa then having to do the same action to get back out. It was much easier to sit on a firm chair and be able to use your legs to help you get up and down. It didn’t hurt at all to walk or anything like that though. On day 5 I felt a lot better then at the end of 2 weeks, other than being aware I’d had some sort of operation, I did feel pretty much normal but just a bit slower than normal. Recovery was a 2 or 3 out of 10, more for inconvenience rather than anything when I’d expected a solid 8!
The thing that made me most confident about it all was having the typed notes with all my mental health arguments, as well as physical (no bladder issues for life etc), I had the nice guidelines but I didn’t even get to that bit because she’d already said I could have one 🙈 If you haven’t already have a look at maternal request on birth rights website and find your hospital to see if they’re red amber or green. I also listened to the podcast maybe baby with Anna williamson (think that’s her name?) she takes you through a step by step of it and it was exactly as she’d said. Eilidh wells on YouTube has some great videos on it too.
Hope you get it all approved and it’s as uneventful and amazing as mine.