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.