Birth Plan

When I got pregnant with this baby, I had in the back of my mind that I would want to try a VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean) delivery.  It was important enough to me to have that option open that I went through 3 doctors during this pregnancy to find one supportive of the idea.  I found a great doctor and he is willing to let me attempt a VBAC if I want to, now we just have to get the baby and my body on board.  My biggest reason for wanting this experience was the recovery.  Recovering from a c section with only 1 child isn’t really that big of a deal, it’s still hard and extremely painful, but you can lay in bed and sleep and nurse and not have to do too much- you can actually recover!  Recovering with a newborn AND a 3 ½ year old is what has had me worried.  I wouldn’t be able to do hardly anything with Barrett, not even hold him!  And I'd have to be in the hospital for much longer and away from Barrett.  Plus, the whole birth experience is just totally different with a c-section.  It has a cold feel to it, whereas a vaginal delivery seems to me to have a warmer, supportive, “teamwork” type of feel.   I really want her to be laid directly on my body when she’s born and be able to just hold her and bond with her immediately and that’s not even a possibility with a c section.  I’m 1000x times more scared to have a vaginal delivery than I am a c-section, but I still feel like it’s something worth trying.

When I had Bear, I never dilated past a 4 even when I was given Pitocin.  That plus the fact that his heart rate was dropping (maybe it was going up, I can’t remember) with contractions, we just decided to go for the c-section.  My sisters had all had c-sections and it was a more familiar/less scary route so I was fine with it.  I’ve since wondered if it was the right decision, maybe I should’ve waited or tried something else, I don’t know and it obviously doesn’t matter now. But it makes me worry about how this birth will go.  Maybe my body just doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do so we’ll be in the same situation again.  Maybe my uterus will rupture where it was cut the first time.  I mean, there’s really a million different things that run through my mind when I try to make a plan and I hate it.  I hate making decisions.

The plan we have in place now is that we have a scheduled c-section date.  If labor starts before then, we’ll do a “trial of labor” and see how that goes; it could still result in a c-section.  If baby hasn't come by our scheduled date, we’ll just show up for our c-section then.  When I’m having a hard day, I get really annoyed at myself for not scheduling a c-section on June 1^st (you can generally schedule a repeat c-section at 39 weeks) but for the most part I feel like I could wait a little longer and be fine still.  I could go up to June 15^th (41 weeks), but I’m not willing to wait longer than that (neither is my dr actually).  We’ll see… Of course, as long as me and the baby are healthy in the end, that’s all that matters.  WISH ME LUCK!!

*update: My scheduled c-section was scheduled for June 12th, but I actually pushed it back to the 15th to give baby more time to come on her own.  Am I crazy to voluntarily stay pregnant for 41 weeks?!