I regret choosing vaginal birth

[Sept2024]

Calling all expecting mums- I gave birth vaginally and I feel misled. I needed ventouse, episiotomy and forceps and ended up with a third degree tear. I needed to go into a theatre FULL of staff for stitches without my baby afterwards and now suffer incontinence as a result of my tear.

i wasn’t told how very common it is to need an instrumental birth.

if I could go back in time I would have gotten a c section. I just want first time mums to be aware of what can happen if you’re unsure how to give birth to help your decision making because I didn’t know how common it was really. It was honestly horrible

Yep. Whenever that stat is posted on here, some people respond with disbelief or think it's false (usually when they've had a natural first birth). But it's not. The odds are against a first-time mother in having an unassisted natural birth. You're far more likely to need forceps, ventouse or an emergency section.

My very small antenatal group displayed this quite nicely. Four low-risk pregnancies aiming for vaginal birth, first-time mothers. One natural unassisted birth, one forceps, two emergency sections.

This is a very good post. I'd like to add that having a complex forceps delivery for many women is worse than c-section delivery. You've basically had surgery on your undercarriage and walking and moving can be really painful. Keeping the wound clean is practically impossible due to toileting.
I hate when it gets trotted out that it was pregnancy rather than brutal forceps that damages the pelvic floor. Laughable really.

These are the stats from RCOG:

	The chance of you needing an assisted vaginal birth if you are a first time mum is between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3 in the UK (1 in 8 including women who have given birth before).
	The chance of you needing an emergency caesarean birth is 1 in 3 if you are a first time mum in the UK (1 in 5 including women who have given birth before).

My very small antenatal group displayed this quite nicely. Four low-risk pregnancies aiming for vaginal birth, first-time mothers. One natural unassisted birth, one forceps, two emergency sections.

7 in ours. 4 of us wanted home births but only one happened.

1x home birth
4x non-assisted hospital births (just drugs)
1x forceps
1x c-section (emergency)

Only one birth, but also no problems, no tear. I'm sorry you and others had a bad experience but it isn't always like that.

I spent a long long time picking through stats and methodology. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest unfortunately.

@RedToothBrush It seems bizarre to me that they aren't recorded separately. Of course outcomes for sections are going to end up worse when you're including all the high-risk pregnancies (for mum and/or baby) that have to be sections for that reason. Low-risk electives that are purely maternal request should be recorded separately so we have accurate information, not stats that aren't relevant to many women.

I would also say that I had the kiwi cup and a 3rd degree tear. This was my second birth and due to GD I had the choice of induction or csection and I chose induction as it seemed less risky to me. Even after the tear I am still happy with my choice.

Two things I would say:
Seek help for your incontinence. It was a risk for me and they advised it can be fixed.

Secondly, no mother needs to go to theatre without their baby (unless general anaesthetic). I took mine and she happily breastfed away whilst I was being stitched.

If you are still so upset (and your feelings are valid) then a birth de-brief or some counselling could help.

@kikisparks yes it is more risky because they have to disengage the baby's head from the mother's pelvis and push them back up. It's also much easier to nick a blood vessel so I think the risk of haemorrhaging is something like 10%. And there's all the pelvic floor trauma if you've been pushing as well.

As other posters are saying, it's wild that there aren't separate stats for planned c section, EMCS and EMCS at full dilation.

This sounds awful. And doesn’t really sound like it should have happened. My epidural was on throughout the entire thing so I couldn’t feel anything. I think this contributed to me needing a ventouse and episiotomy for sure, but I don’t know how I would have coped without it.

I had 2 elective c-sections. 1st was because we went over due date by 10 days so were scanned and he was huge and breech so I went in for planned c-section the next day. That was all great and the recovery was straightforward. We stayed in 4 days as I tried to follow midwives guidance to breast feed until a jr dr told me I was starving my son and he’d have to go to NICU. Basically the whole fucking breast is best brigade had decided not to put me off breast feeding in the hope that it would finally work. Stupid me was blindly following the midwives advice thinking I was doing the right thing

I’ll never forgive them for that and just writing this down and thinking about it 16 years later makes me shake.

2nd pregnancy I insisted on elective c-section but I had to jump through hoops to get it. I left hospital within 24 hrs with my healthy formula-feed baby. I did get an infection in my wound because I tried to do too much that first week but it was treated and no last effects.

This thread is so important because a lot of pregnancy, childbirth, and the post-partum period isn’t talked about widely enough.

First births are often hard however you do them. Don't blame yourself for a bad choice - it could have been even worse if you'd had a section, but you'll never know

Were you induced? There's a million different ways childbirth can go, and a few different decisions you can make, so it's not really as simple as having one choice or the other. What happened to you sounds really hard and it doesn't seem they put you first or listened to to you. They shouldn't take your baby away when they are stitching you and it shouldn't cause you problems so they need to refer you to a physio.

Induction leads to more instruments and tearing / episiotomy, not going to antenatal classes leads to more intervention / tearing. Not having an informed person to advocate for you means you can end up with a traumatic birth. Did you have a partner who was informed about their role as an advocate? Did you have a birth plan? All of these things can help. It is something that happens to your body and it's your job to know what's going on. I would recommend anyone reading this thread to read up about birth. 'The positive birth book's is a good one. The medical profession know fuck all about women and their bodies so we have to be informed ourselves. We can't leave any of this to chance and hope it will turn out ok. I would also recommend anyone reading this thread to look up induction and whether or not it's necessary because it leads to more traumatic births.

this is reassuring to hear. I reckon you would be in the minority though not needing a single stitch, particularly with the first birth.

All childbirth options are dangerous and in the UK the NHS/midwife shortage is horrendous so I feel like its being completely downplayed!

I know very few people that have had a positive birthing experience. Then they want you in and out of hospital same or next day! Then employers don't want you to have any issues on return to work either!

I'm not sure why we haven't been rallying for better birthing conditions, it still seems to be that if you can't have a natural birth with no interventions then you aren't a strong woman and should keep quiet about your experience. The NCT classes are also pro natural birth, I was made to feel ashamed because I was having a planned c section and all the reenactment was in a negative way ‘lets count how many people you would have in the room with you’. Referring to everything that isn't natural as an ‘intervention’.

For me my C-section was the worse if my births. People say is a cop out and is easier but I found new respect for people who had a C-section. It was torture for me.

Sorry but this is a broad sweeping generalisation. Plenty of medical professionals are highly informed. And actually a lot of them working in the field ARE women themselves. I know traumatic births happen, I’ve had one myself. But this is an unfair statement to make and can be a dangerous message to be spreading also.

Hm, a pregnant woman might be reading this and thinking 'I want to avoid what happened to op, I'm definitely having a section'

But section comes with its own risks. Wound infection, sepsis, pph, baby breathing difficulties, impact on baby microbiome leads to higher risk of all sorts of things, difficulties breastfeeding, anaesthetic not working fully during surgery. Even if none of those things happen, you're having major surgery while awake surrounded by a team of people and then have to care for a newborn while barely able to stand or move.

And as for gynaes etc opting for cs - they would probably do that rather than give birth vaginally surrounded by colleagues? Plus they usually see the worst, most complex side of birth. I'm sure most midwives don't go for c section.

Sadly it's not always that simple. I read The Positive Birth Book and was all prepped to get by on oxytocin and my wits, detailed birth plan, husband briefed, blah blah. In the end I had to be induced because my waters broke and labour didn't start. Then it was your classic cascade of interventions I was warned against- throwing up every 10 minutes from the pain, epidural, forceps, 3rd degree tear. BUT my son already had an infection when he was born from my waters breaking early which developed into sepsis and a NICU admission, so that cascade of intervention saved his life (although my bum will never be the same.)

I think it's really important that we don't make people who had traumatic births feel like it's their fault. It's not due to a character flaw, it's literally luck of the draw.

Also @Sept2024 agree with everyone saying you could have had your baby with you in theatre. I had mine next to me when they started stitching. He only got taken away when I started to bleed heavily and even then they gave him to his dad so I could see him the whole time. It's little things like that which make the difference.

I think this is going to be long, I apologise in advance.
First of all, @Sept2024 I'm really sorry for what you've been through and completely understand the need to get it off your chest and warn others.
While I agree with what other posters mean to do by sharing their happy endings, and I also believe that scaring first time mums is wrong, I totally get the feeling of having been misled and even lied to. Because I believe it is ultimately true, in this society, that we lie and misled women regarding the experience of childbirth: probably the only remnant of pre-modern times, when we had more awareness of our vulnerability and mortality.
Thankfully, medicine has allowed us, first, to face this experience with a very high expectance of survival; and now we even "plan" it and expect it to be many beautiful things.
But I genuinely believe childbirth is beautiful in the same way that any other numinous, life-or-death experience can be. Because that's what this is: a life-or-death situation, that again thanks to the modern medicine we can take for granted.

So I think that there will be terrifying stories, as well as beautiful ones; the majority of them will have been both. And I do feel that we make a disservice to women when, as a society, keep the transcendence and gravity of the experience hidden or masqueraded.

I once heard (it may have been Louise Perry who quoted it) that chilbirth for a woman is the historical equivalent of going to war for a man (in terms of risk for your life, not talking about morals here). It may seem a bit dramatic in our modern context (again, thanks modern medicine) but I believe it's true.

I know it's a cliche, OP, but I hope time helps you gain perspective and you see what you went through from another angle: one that gets you keep going and gives back to you the strength you maybe didn't know you had. Sending love 💐

Apologies, in my sleep deprived postpartum state I absolutely worded that wrong and wasn’t trying to minimise the OPs experience. Warn people off rather than scare was what I was meaning. Agree with many of the other posts that it should be more widely talked about.

Absolutely I am most likely in the minority. My first baby was prem and only 3lb. In fact I had all small babies, 3lb, 5lb 10, 5lb 5 and 5lb 13. This may have been a contributing factor but that was my point, all women and births are different. There is no right or wrong way and no one size fits all.

Dangerous to tell women to be informed about the birth process and their own body? The due date is a completely made up date, made up by a man from the 1700s that is still used. The whole 'stages of birth' they teach us are wrong. How many women are ignored about their own bodies and conditions left untreated? The government has even come up with a special task force to bring women's health up to the standard of men's health. Informed is always best for women. We cannot trust that a medical professional has been taught the correct thing about our bodies.

Yes you're right. That sounds really scary and I don't know what I would have done in that situation. I know someone who was coerced into taking antibiotics because they were convinced there was an infection when there wasn't so I might have refused then I don't know what would have happened if that was the case.