If you had no help with a CS birth of a second child, what did you do?

[TheBeesKnee]

What I mean is, what did you do with your first child? How did things work out with you?

I have 3 realistic options but I'm not keen on any of them, so I'm interested to hear of anyone else has been in this situation and how they handled it.

I think my best case scenario is for my CS to be after 9am on a Monday or Tuesday so that we can drop toddler off at nursery and spend the day together with the new baby before DP picks him up and brings him in to meet his sibling then takes him home for bring and repeats the process for the 2/3 days I'll likely be in. It's not ideal because it would mean doing the nights alone and I was off my face after the first CS so I'm not sure how safe this would actually be either.

But if course I'm very aware that they could book me in for 6am towards the the of the week and then we'd be really screwed.

Just for information, my three options (and my issues with them) are:

1. Get my mum to move in for a few days to take the toddler to nursery etc. However, she is very overwhelming and all consuming. She never stops talking and everything is about her and her feelings. She interferes with absolutely everything and has really poor boundaries and it doesn't matter how many times I've spoken to her about it, it's in one ear and out the other. I just don't want to deal with that on top of everything. It is very draining.
2. Get my friend to move in for a couple of days to help with the nursery run. 6 months ago this would have been my preferred option; however, she is going through a really difficult time (ex is having a baby with someone else after they broke up because he "wasn't ready" for marriage and children) and I feel like this is asking too much, given what she is going through.
3. Hire a nanny? I wouldn't even know where to begin with this one or if you can for a short period of time.

All our other family live too far away, including abroad, to feasibly be of any help.

We don't have any family support and when we had our second our local friends all had babies/ toddlers themselves.

When my second was born we had a 2.5 year old. He was booked in to be born in nursery hours but I went into labour early. I just did the c section by myself while my husband looked our eldest, I just pressed my buzzer if I needed help to get him out of the cot to change nappy or put him back in but it wasn't long before I could do it myself.

Dh's dad looked after our dc1 on the morning of our CS. I did have mine at about 9am. Dh then went home in the afternoon as fil had to go back to work. I ended up being in for longer for help with feeding, but I really could have gone home the next day. I didn't find one night alone on the ward too bad.

When we had dc1, the hospital didn't let men stay on the ward overnight at all, so did that one on my own too.

We had MIL stay at our house for 2 days and look after our first while we were in hospital. When we got home my husband did everything while I recovered from CS.

i went into labour the day before my planned CS, so definitely prepare for that. Seems to be common with second babies.

For me I was lucky, Ds had just finished school for a 4 week break, so no drop offs.
My best friend had said she'd take Ds while we were in the hospital but had gone away for a weekend (early labour with second c section) Dh's best friend ended up driving us to the hospital, then taking Ds to his house and him and his wife kept him overnight, then Dh went and got him.

I totally get your worries OP and we are in the same predicament almost although I do have a sister 1.5 hr away who is going to try to help.

I guess a lot of people on here had better experiences on the post natal ward than I did. With my first I would have massively struggled if I had been by myself. I had the catheter in overnight and would have struggled to get DD out if the cot and do nappies etc. I was also shattered despite it being a semi-elective section. The staff on the ward were absolutely useless (massive overworked) in my experience. I even needed DH to find someone to change the catheter bag as no one came when we pressed the buzzer. One option is hiring a doula to help you overnight but I think it’s too expensive for us.

Last time I went into labour spontaneously before the section date and needed to go to hospital straight away due to baby being breach and not sure what we would do in a similar situation.