Risks of requested c section

[Emilypp]

Hello everyone

I'm currently 33 weeks with my second baby but have been through the ringer to get here - IVF and three miscarriages since having my daughter 7 years ago. The closer I get to my due date, the more anxious I'm getting over giving birth. I didn't have a traumatic birth the first time, having said that, they were prepping me for emergency c section at one point when her heart rate slowed down and she was then delivered with the cord around her neck. I feel so lucky to have made it this far that I am just waiting for something to go wrong, I'm a nervous wreck that I'm going to lose another baby. I feel like if I'm in the middle of labour and the same thing happens, I will completely lose the plot. I'm wanting to request a c section but I know that the midwives/consultant will try to put me off as "vaginal is best" but I'd like to know why that's the case. Can anyone tell me the risks of c section over vaginal delivery? I know that I will be told this when I request it but would like to be a bit prepared in advance! Thanks so much for any help xx

Effectively you’re having abdominal surgery and then need to still do all the things you need to do after a natural birth (look after baby etc). I had a c section due to medical reasons and wasn’t allowed to have a vaginal birth so the risks were outlined to me but I was told by 3 consultants that csection was the safest way forward.

Biggest ones I remember was:

• risk of bleeding too much (loss of excessive blood)
• if my life was at risk they would remove my womb
• baby would need steroids if delivered early to strengthen lungs
• baby’s lungs and throat aren’t ‘squeezed’ when going through the birth canal so may need suction after birth
• infections could follow despite antibiotics

There will probably be some more but they were the big ones I remembered.

@cosymama2020 Thanks so much, I appreciate your reply 😊

I'm just posting to hopefully reassure you!

When I requested a c-section nobody tried to put me off or pushed the idea of a vaginal birth beyond what would happen if I went into spontaneous labour before my section date.

I had quite a stressful first birth in episiotomy, ventouse and forceps, then a failed induction resulting in cesarean with my second, so I have tried all the various options! I opted for an elective cesarean with my third and had the quickest recovery of all (despite being ten years older than first time around) and generally felt better all round afterwards - driving after about a fortnight and we went to a festival when my youngest was 11 days old and I managed all three kids on my own while my husband worked. I hope you have a calm birth and swift recovery.

I had an elective CS with my second baby after a traumatic vaginal delivery with my first - nothing that indicated I shouldn’t go through a vaginal birth again but after 24 hours in active labour with a failed epidural, forceps and episiotomy with no pain relief that meant I was begging to die at one stage - I just couldn’t face it again. I strongly suspect the circumstances of DD’s birth affected bonding - I still feel awful that I just didn’t want to hold her when she was born, I just wanted to sleep. Very little support as we were in lockdown at the time. I did have to do a bit of pushing to get the elective but I just made it very clear that my mental health just couldn’t take a repeat of that.

When they ran me through the risks I did have a bit of a wobble but on digging down I discovered that they don’t separate up the stats between elective and emergency C sections. That’s the thing I’d make really clear to you and I do think is a bit crap that they don’t clarify. So they were giving me the risks of baby being ‘nicked’ by the scalpel and when I asked, they couldn’t tell me how many of those were emergency situations (where it’s just ‘get this baby out now’, understandably) and a calm elective where the surgeon can take their time. Same case with lots of the other complications. Obviously it is still major surgery and shouldn’t be undertaken lightly but tbh neither should any kind of birth!

Good luck if you decide it’s the right thing for you. It was for me - I always took the view that I’d rather have a straightforward vaginal birth with DC2 than a CS, but if I wound up with a repeat of DC1’s birth when I’d had the chance to avoid I’d have never forgiven myself.

Thanks so much both for taking the time to reply...and for reassuring me! After trying to do some responsible research myself, I also found that there seems to be a difference in risks when looking at planned vs emergency c sections...which makes me even more worried about vaginal delivery! I think I'm going to go ahead and try and be assertive in asking for a planned c section on mental health grounds. Hopefully they'll see my recurrent loss as a justifiable reason for being petrified of labour complications. It doesn't help that my due date is a year to the date of my last miscarriage 😕 Thanks again everyone x

No worries! Just to flag as well, maternal request is a perfectly acceptable reason under the NICE guidelines for a CS - should you need to/get any pushback, the charity Birthrights is fantastic on this and gave me lots of great advice when I had questions.