my_feelings

CESAREAN!!!! OH NO!

At first I was a bit sad I didn’t have my dream birth, but glad my baby was fine. But I had a nagging feeling I had been robed of my experience before (way before) there was no choice.

The next day I asked one of the new nurses, how many women there were at the maternity and she said 10. then I asked. “ How many vaginal births?” “None”. I couldn’t believe it. I began to think that my suspicions were probably right. I felt cheated. E very time I brought the subject up, I cried and people kept telling me that I should be thankful I had a healthy baby.

The stay at the hospital was good... the food good and the rooms were very nice and roomy. I was allowed to keep my baby with me all the time, (not without fighting a couple of nurses who insisted on taking him away for me to "rest") I didn’t let them. They did suggest giving him some formula since I had had a cesarean and probably would take longer for me to have milk... I declined and they didn’t bother again since it was the international breastfeeding week.

I still felt lucky that I could stand straight and had very little pain, specially when I compared myself to the other women who couldn’t walk upright, and had a hard time carrying their babies thus breastfeeding.

As the months went by, I kept being very emotional about the cesarean. But I felt guilty about it. Every time I talked about it, people kept putting me down and my husband thought it was a waste of time to dwell on it.

Finally we got pregnant again and I went to the same doctor. At the first visit she saw my scar and commented, “We’ll fix that next time(cesarean)" and then she said she was all for a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) if the baby were not as big as Patrick or that she would induce at 38 weeks.

I had read a lot about inductions and cesarean scars and I began to feel uneasy ....I was sure I was going to be eased in to another cesarean. Every time I talked about birth being natural and me willing to feel pain and also about positions she would answer “I’m not a contortionist... you know the hospital has procedures we need to follow... doulas are not allowed in the birth... I don’t take risks... your baby is big, I don’t think your body can take such a big baby”. My husband still didn’t understand my concern.

One day around the 6th month of pg, as we dinned with my mother in law, I started talking about my fear of having another cesarean if I gave birth with the same doctor...I told everyone about her comments and they told me I needed to stop trying to control everything because it wasn’t possible and that since I had had a cesarean I should expect another one.... I felt so alone and helpless and most of all misunderstood. I got really upset, I shouted something about it and hit the table. I immediately left the room after the said... “You are tired, you should rest”.

To this, my husband reacted superbly...he called the local midwife in the birthcenter and asked for advice. She said that I should stay away from private clinics because the had an economical motivation and were also less equipped to face an emergency c-section so they were prone to deciding quite early on performing them. So my husband and I visited the state hospital (Hopital Universitaire de Geneve) and we took birth lessons there to check out procedures and I was still not comfortable.... Too interventionist and you pretty much depend on who’s shift it is.