I never thought I’d have to decide whether to attempt to have my second baby naturally, or to have an elective caesarean (hence the tear or cut). My story is a bit backwards in that sense.

Stitches

Taking a trip down memory lane, 4 years ago I’d had a very healthy accidental pregnancy. I’d come to terms that my 2 month Europe trip was no longer happening. And I was trading pints at Oktoberfest for nappies.

There was not much to report throughout as I felt relatively normal. I had the first trimester vomiting throughout my extensive traveling for work. However, I was still managing a few workouts at the gym. Towards the end I felt like I was going to have the baby early (I had labour symptoms 3 weeks prior), but ended up being a week overdue. All the checkups were normal, the baby’s head was down, and I was ready to go.

The big event

Having 2 false labours the Sunday’s prior, my contractions started around 3pm. We tried not to get too excited until they became a few minutes apart around 8:30-9pm. We spoke to the midwife who came out to check me, and advised us to go in. Arriving at the birth centre, we had another examination. The midwife said that she thought I’d have the baby pretty quickly once my water broke. And break it did not… I walked up and down the halfway all night.

5am came, with no pain relief and I was buggered. We did another check, and all of a sudden I was being wheeled around the corner and signing forms for an emergency caesarean. Apparently they couldn’t feel my baby anymore as it had turned.

It was a pretty big shock, and quite disappointing given I’d gotten so far, but we had a healthy baby girl. Recovery was slow… so slow. I hated the daily blood thinning injections, and having to stay put and not lift was an absolute killer. I learnt my lesson about rest very quick, when 3 weeks post surgery I thought I was fine and overdid it. Half a day on the couch to recover.

Ala naturale

Again, second time round my pregnancy was very normal apart from the pelvic pain (which sucks balls big time unless you get a pair of these Godsent pants). Given the first time caesar, we got booked for an extra ultrasound at 31 weeks to make sure the baby was the right way. I was pretty sure the little bugger wasn’t as couldn’t feel anything near my ribs. As suspected, he was sideways.

I tried not to get too disheartened even though I was set on a natural birth. We still had time! Again I felt a lot of pre-labour symptoms and had a false labour for around 4 hours on the Saturday night before I had him. Monday we had more symptoms, but I was booked in for an appointment about turning him on the Tuesday anyway.

External Cephalic Version (ECV)

Meeting with the doctor and midwife at 36 weeks, we did another ultrasound and he had turned (the wrong way). Feet first, the doc took me through the ECV process (they pretty much push your uterus around – I’m oversimplifying). I accepted the risk of a potential caesarean if there was bleeding or the baby’s heart rate was a concern, and we booked in for the following Wednesday (3 weeks out from the due date). Before leaving I asked whether they wanted to examine me due to the fake labour etc. but got told to just go home and continue as normal.

See you guys tomorrow!

I yelled the above to my co-workers as I left at lunch time for a pre-school interview for my daughter. I’d taken half a day off on the day after my appointment to do this and see the physio for some pelvic pain relief. I’d felt pretty niggly all morning, and had a lot of back pain and pelvic pain… not contractions like my first pregnancy though.

I called my husband while walking the dogs to see if he was at our house renovating (we were housesitting) and told him I’d come see him after my 3pm physio appointment. Driving home from the physio, the back pain got worse. By the time I got to the house I even felt a bit nauseous.

He took one look at me and said, ” Are you alright? No way you’re helping me!”
I replied that I actually thought I needed to sit down or something. As our whole front of the house was a big concrete and dust pit I headed to my daughter’s room. I called the midwife to let her know I’d had some sporadic contractions but nothing consistent 5-10 mins apart and promised to call her back if things changed.

Hung up the phone, baby kicked, felt something and thought I’d better check it out. I got to the tiles at the bathroom and my water broke. Thinking I had heaps of time, I told my husband to call back the midwife. Then I jumped in the bath to rinse myself off and went hunting for some clean clothes. Also worth mentioning my labour bag was at the house we were staying at, so we detoured via there as well.

Feet first

Remember how I said I thought I had heaps of time? In the 10 minutes it took to get to the other house to get my bag, things had ramped up and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the hospital. As we sat at the traffic lights behind multiple cars on Hindmarsh (staring at the hospital straight ahead), my body starting involuntarily pushing. Hubby jumped out of his door thinking we were going to have a movie moment, while I yelled at him to get me to the hospital as our baby was breech. Add in a cop car trailing us when he sped off at 120km, and we made quite an arrival.

I managed to make it up the stairs to birth suite, and was met with my midwife calling, “Someone press the emergency button, the baby is breach!” To which I replied, “Too late, the feet are out!” 8 minutes is all it took for my son to jump into this world feet first. Drama aside, the whole event was under an hour.

So..cut or tear?

For me, having had both experiences, I’d go natural all the way. It’s worth noting that I did go to an information session that outlined the risks and benefits of cesarean vs natural birth after a caesar, so I could make an informed decision.

The recovery time and overall feeling afterwards actually blew my mind given my experience first time round. In saying that, post surgery recovery wasn’t completely horrible. I just felt stuck at home and a bit useless but definitely more time for Netflix down path no 2 :o)