Guilt for planned c-section?

[Kathyg533]

Hello everyone. I’m almost 17 weeks pregnant with my second baby and I’ve been offered either a c section or a vbac birth option. I know it’s still early days and a lot can change but I can’t get it off my mind.
My first labour was very long, drawn out over a week, my waters were broken by accident on a sweep , very painful, I tried my hardest but never got fully dialated and resulted in sepsis and an emergency section at the end as baby became distressed (I was kept awake luckily). It was very traumatic and invasive looking back but there was nothing medical to stop my body giving birth naturally apart from the sepsis and pure exhaustion. (that I know of anyway).
Being offered the elective section this time around has put me in a tricky situation. Im totally stumped on what to do. I’ve read utter horror stories about vbacs but I am also feeling super guilty about wanting another section (I want one mainly because of the complete fear of having sepsis again even though I know it was once in a blue moon situation ).
I feel like I have no real medical reason to want one , unless I am wrong? The midwife told me im high risk thanks to my previous section though.
I feel like I’m wasting people’s time. And the thought of being in hospital for a few days with covid going around scares me. But I can plan the dates, get my toddler somewhere safe and I’m very rural, an hour and half drive from the hospital so a planned section would be really convenient . But I’m not sure if that’s valid reason enough for a section! Really stuck on what to choose.

Can anyone give me some positive vbac stories ? Or even positive elective section stories where you have just chosen to go for one?

Very scared . I wasn’t this scared of labour with my first as I was low risk, thought I could deliver naturally. Now I’m still at that stage where I still don’t know if I can give birth naturally or not anymore.

Thank you!

You'd be more of a hindrance if you ignored the midwife's advice, tried for a VBAC, ran into trouble and had to have an emergency section.

When I was being induced with DS1 I asked all the female midwives and consultants how they'd had their babies, and unanimously they'd had sections. I was delighted when I ended up having to have one, and even happier when I could have another one with DS2. I even got to choose his birthday.

Hi OP. I haven’t got a useful story to tell but just wanted to say I relate to how you feel. I had a traumatic first birth which resulted in a third degree tear - 3.5 hours in theatre being stitched up. The tear didn’t heal properly and later required revision under GA. All very unpleasant.

After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing I’m booked in for an ELCS in 10 days’ time. I too felt a lot of guilt about having one because I felt like I was choosing it purely for my benefit, not my baby’s. When I voiced this thought to my lovely midwife though she told me to snap out of it basically 😂 she said that it’s in my best interests to have a caesarean and therefore it’s in my baby’s best interests - separating the two out isn’t helpful. It wouldn’t be in my best interests to sustain an even more serious birth injury second time round and wind up doubly incontinent, and it wouldn’t be in my baby’s.

Best of luck with your decision but I just wanted to say I really do understand your feelings of guilt.

My first birth was awful too. Induced at 41wks. Many things went wrong but basically I had only dilated 3-4 cms after 12hrs labour this was after them breaking my waters and putting me on drip. I picked up an infection and my heart rate was increasing and I had a high temperature. Baby heart beat was low and getting distressed. There was talk of blood transfusions and I was just so ill after the birth. We ended up in hospital 6days and 5 nights on antibiotics, it was awful.

I was told at hospital I wld have to get a section for any future children. However once I was having second baby they said no I cld try for vbac. Part of me wanted to (felt like a cop out) but seeing the stats for what percentage of women go on to have a successful vbac I decided no I didn't want to go through all that again to possibly end up with same situation. So I was booked in for a planned section in my 39th week. Although baby had different ideas and my waters went at 37+4 and I went straight in to full blown labour. I did consider for a brief moment if I shld go with it but it was so painful and again I wasn't very much dilated so baby was born about 12hrs later by section. It wasn't the nice calm planned section I had hoped for but it was ok.

I tried to look at it this way. How upset wld I be if I tried and had an awful time again. I would have been so annoyed at myself for not getting a planned section.

C section is safest.

Vbac can go catastrophically wrong.

You'd be more responsible to go for the c section.

I had an ELCS for my first baby (no medical reason, but I was 39 so had a slightly higher risk of complications). I would never recommend any particular mode of birth because it is a very personal choice. However, my ELCS was an absolute dream of a birth and recovery process. We had an incredible team and it was just such a magical experience with our own playlist and a relaxed, happy atmosphere in surgery. I was in hospital one night, moving relatively easily in and out of bed the next morning, and home the next evening. I don’t even remember the recovery process being too bad. I was careful not to lift things and slow going up and down stairs for a little while, but a week of painkillers kept any pain at bay.

There are reasons not to have an ELCS (eg potentially if you want several more children quite soon afterwards), but guilt certainly shouldn’t be one of them! As others have said, it’s arguably safer for the baby (at least when serious complications are considered) - there are lots of recent studies considering this, and the NICE guidelines are also interesting in terms of comparing different outcomes.

I also think I’m about the only one of my close friendship group not to have a scary / difficult first birth story!

It sounds like you definitely DO have a perfectly good reason to get one. You don’t need a reason though and shouldn’t need a reason. It’s your baby and you can get it out your body however you like! I had an elective section for no medical reason at all, I’d just spent my entire life worrying about labour/giving birth and only got pregnant when I 100% knew they’d let me have a section. Probably sounds ridiculous to some people but I was having panic attacks during pregnancy when it wasn’t yet approved, was barely sleeping for worrying about it and felt like my midwife was constantly dismissing me when I really was in a high state of anxiety over it all and by then I was just thinking something could happen any second I don’t have a plan officially in place here 🙈 In hindsight I could have relaxed a bit but obviously at the time you don’t know what’s going to happen.

Anyway, I got it all approved and felt like a weight had been lifted off me. The only thing then was the sort of guilt or judgement from other people that I didn’t want and it was something that made me feel so vulnerable and even silly that I didn’t want to have to go into all my reasons with every person we saw in the street so I just didn’t tell anyone I had a section booked. The only people who knew were people who knew I felt like that before I was ever pregnant. Earlier on in my pregnancy a woman at my work started asking me all these questions about labour etc and I thought I don’t really have any way round this so I just told her it would be a section. She did the most patronising disappointed tone and said ‘awwww noooo, you’ll regret it, don’t do it’. This just added to my reasons to never tell anyone again 🙈

There’s obviously lots of risks with a section too and I’d convinced myself I was going to die during it (always think worst case scenario 😂). I was last on the list the day I went in, I knew I would be due to having no medical issues. I calmed down as soon as the spinal and cannula were done, had really worked myself up about the spinal after watching too many YouTube videos and seeing the size of the needle 🙄 I’d heard it would be quick to see the baby after that bit was done and they did lots of checks to make sure I couldn’t feel anything. The doctor had told me he’d have him out in 5 minutes but they started the op and within I’d say 90 seconds they were holding him up! About 20-30 minutes later I was stitched up and being wheeled round to recovery with a baby in my arms. I was frantically trying to process what had just happened. How could they just give you a baby that easily when there’s people a few rooms away screaming in pain and having huge forceps forced inside them to pull theirs out?! 🙈 Why were people going through that when you could do this?! Still to this day it completely baffles me how amazing, calm, quick and painless it all was. The recovery really wasn’t bad at all either, I’d say after day 5 I was fine, in the hospital was fine and I was out in 24 hours so it was just day 2-5 when it was hard going with the bleeding and being uncomfortable lying down and trying to get up. I wasn’t in any pain at all the rest of the time. I will one million per cent be doing it again if there’s a next time. I don’t regret it in the slightest. My friend is away in for surgery in a few weeks to repair her after a vaginal birth and she needs injections ‘down there’ to try to stop her wetting herself on a daily basis. I’m back out running etc and I have absolutely no after effects whatsoever.

Obviously there can be good and bad stories of both options but for me it was the best choice I’ve ever ever made! 😊 Good luck whatever you choose

Oh and forgot to say, next time I will be shouting it from the rooftops the second I announce I’m pregnant! Zero shame whatsoever 😊 People can shove their judgey comments in future because I will be able to say I’ve done it before and it was AMAZING!