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

Generally, Vaginal childbirth should be the aim, because that is the way it's supposed to be, the natural way. But many women will need help, all the things we've discussed, many might prefer say to be cut rather than tear for example. I've had 2 x CS (it's common for diabetics) , but don't think they are a walk in the park because it's still major surgery.

Women need to know what to expect, their options. More women need help in this area to be better prepared, more informed. Clearly. I'd wanna know the good, the bad and the ugly of anything I was entering into.

I absolutely loved my TENS machine (and hated them taking me off it to put the monitor on). Nobody ever mentioned an epidural and after a very long time pushing and getting nowhere they wanted me to have a spinal in case they had to do a c-section.

It took a long time for me to be persuaded.

I wanted to just order one from Mothercare that came with all the stuff it needed, but it wasn’t something they offered.

My mother had a c section 24 years ago and still suffers with pain and numbness/tingling in the area and still had an over hand after dieting and getting to 8 stone! She then has 3 vaginal births all induced, first VB was instrumental. She'd take a VB any day of the week..simply the recovery and aftermath of the c section was absolutely awful for her. Everyone's different

Also for balance - having been to the hospital antenatal class and having kept a cursory eye on the news and the various inquiries into maternity care in the UK, I definitely knew how common instrumental birth was in hospital settings. So I decided to stay the hell out of hospital. I opted for a home birth for my first and had a fantastic experience. Of course it was bloody hard and intense and incredibly long, and I was alone for most of it, but it was also beautiful. I recovered quickly and have no regrets.

my point is not to be smug, but to say that there is more than one right answer to this question. Women should get the information they need to make informed choices but ultimately there is more than one way to get the labour you want. You have to decide what is right for you. That might be a c section (if you like to be totally in control and know exactly what is going to happen and don’t mind hospitals or a slightly longer recovery), that might be a home birth (if you’re low risk, close to the hospital, comfortable with the slightly increased risk for first timers and ok with pain), that might be a midwife led unit at the hospital or maybe you just want to be on the ward. Whatever it is, do your research, know yourself (and be honest with yourself), and good luck. That’s my message to expectant mums.

Absolutely! Imagine every ninth women … this is a lot! I am very surprised they still use forces so rampantly in the UK. Here in Germany they’re banned from most hospitals and the most current statistic stated it was only used in 0,3% of births.

I think it's the focus on natural birth at all costs which has caused forceps use to be so high in UK. As mentioned up thread, when foetal distress occurs in late labour, forceps are the quickest best way to get baby out.
I had to have this option, a c-section would have been a good option for me a few hours earlier when I asked due to my distress, but my midwife was a gatekeeper and kept thinking I could deliver naturally despite stuck back to back baby head, we got terrible advice from her. Makes me quite angry remembering it.
NHS bosses don't mind this so much as it saves on operating costs.

Here they use rather the vacuum extraction - from what I read it comes with less risk for significant tearing of the mother. Or the Kristeller maneuver - - which is banned in the UK. Super dangerous if used wrongly, and can have horrific consequences on the women - as forceps too.

They definitely push you towards natural birth as well.

I opted for a home birth for my first and had a fantastic experience. Of course it was bloody hard and intense and incredibly long, and I was alone for most of it, but it was also beautiful. I recovered quickly and have no regrets.

Congratulations. That was my plan too. My midwife was dead against it throughout and when I was 40+13 said I was nowhere near going into labour and if I didn’t get to the hospital to “discuss options” my baby would probably die. She knew I’d lost an infant sibling as a child and this was my greatest fear. I hadn’t slept for 3 days and didn’t have it in me to fight anymore.

I discovered in the process that I inherited my mum’s twisted pelvis, which would never have got a baby through without assistance. So had I stuck to my guns on the home birth the odds were high that I’d have lost my DD.

There are still an awful lot of unknowns about birth. I’m forever grateful that DD came out pretty much okay. That I had to have such horrific aftercare is a better alternative to baby loss.

OP I’m sorry you have gone through this I had a similar birth experience but the third degree tear was missed and didn’t get repaired.

I didn’t know anything about third and fourth degree tears. And that is the point if we talk about this it isn’t scaring pregnant women it’s about education. So that if it should happen we know what to do, the right questions to ask, where to get help afterwards.

If you haven’t sought help for incontinence please go and see your GP. There are things that can be done to manage symptoms.

Take care of yourself.

Can’t work out if you’re trying to say home birth is mad or not. But just a few points - our hospital is really pro HB in the right cases. there’s a whole separate team of highly experienced and qualified midwives at my hospital who do home births. There’s no way I’d have opted for a home birth if my midwife didn’t support it and didn’t do them all the time as her specialism. They were incredible midwives. They do a very thorough vetting before they say you can try for a HB and keep that under review. That includes taking a history - so if you have a mum whose physiology meant she couldn’t deliver vaginally that seems highly relevant and would have been investigated. I didn’t go into anything blindly, I saw a pelvic health physio twice during pregnancy so a twisted pelvis would definitely have been spotted. She was also incredible. You can’t eliminate all risk with any type of labour, there is always an element of luck. As I said everyone should make their own choices based on their own circs. Whatever they do, they should be as well informed as possible.

I was agreeing with you.

I desperately wanted a home birth. 2/3 of my community midwives were supportive but the lead midwife doesn’t like home births.

I had everything set up for one. I had a scan at 40 weeks (to check how big baby was) and explicitly asked if they could tell me anything about my pelvis. Was told no - only way to find out is to try and push a baby through it. Apparently.

She saw me at 40+13, laughed at the birthing pool then used her best emotional blackmail to get me to the hospital.

I was just pointing out that had I insisted on a home birth, the outcome would almost certainly have been tragic. I completely agree about women being informed, but sometimes the universe knows better, I guess. (Although it took me years to heal physically and even longer mentally.)

Hi op I hope you are doing better?
very similar experience with forceps, episiotomy and third degree tear. I did struggle holding poop in especially when it’s loose. It probably took me a year to fully recover. 18 months have gone past and it’s safe to say I’ve made a full recovery x