Caesarean births

Saturday night I was talking with my cousin who is pregnant with her third child. Her first two were delivered like mine, via a c-section. Her doctor had told her that the third would also need to be delivered Cesarean. I could not believe the bitterness that she felt about this. I am so grateful for the technology that allowed me to deliver both my children safely. Here is my stories.
Monkey was due on August 29, 2004. My husband had got a new job and we needed to relocate, but because it was a small town we let them know that we would not be coming until after the baby was born. August 29 came and went and we were into the 41st week. The hospital that my doctor is affiliated with will not allow doctors to induce if nothing is happening until the 41st week. 41 week happened to fall on Labor day, my doctor doesn't work on Tuesdays and so I was brought in on Wednesday September 8th and started. This is after sending all of my belonging to the new town with Spencer on Labor day. Him going to work on the 7th and than coming home to be with me for the birth of our son.
Things went well. I tried to do it naturally, but when they broke my water the pain was unbearable and so I did the epidural. I dilated fully and began to push by 6 that night. I pushed for an hour and a half and nothing happened. Monkey than shifted and I started pushing him into my hip instead of down the birth canal. At that point my doctor was called in and she looked at me and told me that I could push for another hour and a half or we could just decide that I wasn't giving birth vaginally and I could just get prepped for a c-section. I looked at Spencer and we made the decision that we would not push anymore and just go for the c-section. At 10:59 pm they brought my 9 lb. 14.5 oz. son into the world. Realizing how big he is it is easier to deal with the fact that I ended up delivering him surgically.
Don't get me wrong I still had this little voice in the back of my head that wondered why my petite little sisters were able to deliver vaginally when I, with the largest bone structure of all my sisters, could not. Some days I wondered if I would ever get over this fact, but than I got pregnant with my second son nine months later. We had moved a little closer a large town with more options to hospitals at this point, but I was still almost two hours away. I was a little slow finding a doctor, but I found one that delivered at the hospital that I had decided to deliver at. And at the first appointment I told him that I was just fine scheduling a repeat c-section. I had been researching and found that doctors were not encouraging VBACs as much as they had been and combine that with the fact that I lived so far from the hospital it just seemed easier. The second pregnancy progressed just fine. By the time that I went in to be tested for strep I was measuring big and my left hip ached and it felt like he was up under my ribs. I had scheduled the c-section for March 21st, eleven days before my April 1st due date. I went into my appointment on March 13, and the doctor talked with me, told me that he would get all the information to me that I needed so that I didn't need to come back in for another appointment before my c-section the next week. He than got up to leave and asked me if I wanted him to check me because it was still early and we already had everything planned for the next week. Something told me that I needed to be checked. I live two hours from the hospital and so I wanted to know if some thing was happening so I could be prepared just in case.
To this day I am grateful that I made that decision. After the doctor checked me he told me that he was glad that he had checked me as well. I was dilated to a three and there wasn't anything presenting. Where a body part should have been near the birth canal, there was nothing. So Bub wasn't even coming feet first, but he was oblique. At this point the doctor left us to call the hospital to find out if there was an opening for the next morning because if there wasn't we would be going in that night. At this point I am kicking myself because I had left the suitcase at home as being wishful thinking on my part that I would even need it.
There are a number of things that can go wrong with an oblique presenting baby. The most serious I think is the prolapse cord. And the reason the doctor opted for surgery instead of just putting me on bed rest was because he didn't want to get a call from an EMT telling him that he had a hand or foot. I was in shock. Spencer had called his boss to let him know and his boss had let the ladies in the front office know so that they could rearrange schedules. One of them called me and I really couldn't talk. I was still in shock. It is scary being told that your baby is coming a week earlier than planned because of a complication.
We leave from my Grandparents home at five thirty the next morning. I am prepped for surgery and my doctor came in with the portable ultra sound to get a better idea of what position Bub is in. As it turns out I had his head under my right ribs and his butt wedged against my left hip.
They get me into the O.R. and get in and break my water and the cord comes out along with the fluid so most likely I would have had a prolapsed cord. If that wasn't bad enough, there was also a knot in the cord that if things had been left could have added another complication.
Do I wish that I could have delivered my children vaginally? Maybe. I am just ever so grateful for my two healthy children and that I lived through both deliveries. Things could have gone so much different than what they actually did.