Cearean Birth

Inspired by Morgan over at Adventures in Diapering and Beyond, I am attempting a post on cesarean birth. There's a lot more to it than you might think--it's more than a surgery and more than a birth. I've had four cesarean deliveries and am heading toward my fifth. Why write about this now? Anticipating this upcoming birth has got my stomach in knots and I'm way more worried than I should be. *Note: this is probably the same feeling many of you experience when anticipating labor and delivery! I wrote this post several days ago and am not so "knotted" up now. :)

Where do I start?

When I was pregnant with Morgan, my oldest, I anticipated labor followed by pushing and a nice, natural birth. After all, I was born with these great birthing hips and couldn't think of a good reason why I shouldn't be able to squeeze a baby out of them. I never, never imagined the possibility of a cesarean delivery. My water broke at 4 in the morning after a night of mild labor and we headed to the hospital. By 9 a.m. I was asking for my doula and by noon I wanted my mother. By 3:00, when the contractions were coming 30 second apart and I was still only 5 cm, my doctor suggested an epidural so that I could relax a little. Shortly after the epidural was put in, the pain melted away and I was ready to go again. But Morgan's heart rate began to dip with each contraction. When it dropped low enough to scare him, my doctor went for a second opinion and as my mother walked into the room, I was told that the baby needed to come out NOW and that I would need a cesarean to make it happen.

Things started to happen quickly. The nurses prepped my tummy for delivery and I signed form after form. I was wheeled down to the operating room where an OB/GYN whom I didn't know (my doctor is family practice) began the surgery. Soon Morgan was out in all of her wailing glory.

I wasn't prepared for the feeling of failure that came with Morgan's birth. So while I was struggling with a body that didn't do what it was supposed to, I was flogging myself for feeling that way. I had a healthy baby, didn't I?

When Morgan was five months old, we found out that we were expecting another baby. I was geared up for a VBAC when we visited our doctor. He said that rules and regulations had just changed and that in order for me to have a VBAC, there would have to be an OB/GYN in the hospital the whole time I was laboring. I went to a maternal-fetal specialist for a consult. He told us the risks of VBAC. The chances are that 1 woman in 50 will experience uterine rupture during an attempted VBAC. Because our pregnancies were so close together, my risks were higher. I didn't want to be that 1 in 50, so much to my dismay and with me feeling like a complete failure, we scheduled our second cesarean.

Madeleine was born 13 months after Morgan. The recovery from her cesarean was easy and went well. When she was five weeks old, I began jogging.

When she was eight months old, we found out that Noah was on the way. By the time he was born, I'd had three cesareans in 29 months. The recovery from his birth was not sweet nor was it easy. I don't know if it's because I had three children under 2 1/2 or because of the proximity of my cesareans. I don't know if it was a fluke. There was something on my left side that pulled and hurt and required an ice pack every two hours for several months. A year later, that stinging, pulling feeling finally started to fade.

Using Natural Family Planning, we were able to put a bigger space between our children. We wanted more children, we just wanted to give my poor body a chance to recover between surgeries. Noah was 2 1/2 when Isaiah was born.

Before Isaiah's mouth had been suctioned, he was crying. I could hear him gurgling and then wailing as they delivered him! My surgeon (the maternal-fetal specialist) removed scar tissue, closed me, and sent me on my way. For the first two weeks after Isaiah was born, I felt great. But a few weeks after he was born, the same pain set in that I had experienced after Noah's birth. It was intense this time. If I stood for too long or walked more than a block, I had to sit with an ice pack again. It went on for months. Ice and ibuprofen helped, but even now, almost three years later, I can still feel a twinge inside of me--in a corner of the incision--if I exert myself too much.

Now we're racing toward our fifth cesarean, our fifth child. I've had a consult with the same maternal-fetal specialist who delivered Madeleine, Noah, and Isaiah. I told him about the after pain and he asked me to remind him of it the morning of surgery so that he was aware and could look for a problem and also work to avoid a potential problem or recurrence.

So I've been humbly praying for a good, quick recovery from this child's birth. I don't want the recovery to dampen her newborn phase.

Next ... what is a planned cesarean like?