Hi everyone,

Just coming on to try to get some reassurance.

Has anyone had two children already and were the births the same?

I had my daughter 15 months ago. I was induced due to my hind waters breaking. The whole birth was horrific - so painful - but I had an epidural which eased the pain. (I intend to have another one this time round!!) Also had to have an episiotomy as not enough space for the baby to get through.

However, after I had given birth the doctor sounded the alarm and all these medical people rushed in. I was haemorrhaging following the birth as my uterus didn't contract after the placenta was delivered. All as I can remember the doctor saying is "I can't get her to stop bleeding".

They had to press on my belly to try to bring about contractions and then one of the staff gave a drip to my husband to hold which was put in my hand (already had a drip in the other hand from the Petocin) and luckily enough my uterus began to contract and I stopped losing blood.

I am starting to panic about the same thing happening again. I am really hoping my body copes with labour much better this time.

Just wondering whether anyone on here has had a better birth the second time round? Has anyone had a similar experience?

I'm sure it's quite common for ladies to haemorrhage after giving birth and certainly the medical staff were amazing. They all had a specific job to do and just got on with it.

They did offer me trauma counselling after the birth but I declined. Now I wish I had talked to someone about it but I had my beautiful baby girl at home and I just wanted to enjoy time with her.

I am looking forward to having my baby home, safe and sound!

i'm sorry you had such a horrible experience first time around, hopefully it will be alot better for you this time around.

from personal experience i think an induction is alot harder than going into labour naturally. i have not had anything like the experience you did, but i do know my first labour was really relaxed and i felt in control - in fact i didn't even realise i was in labour until i was 5cm dilated! the pains built up gradually and i felt like i could cope pretty well. i did tear with him but he was a big baby.

with my second i was induced and i felt like i had no control at all. the pains were intense from the start and i was not able to be as mobile as i was in the first and i was not allowed to use water as a form of pain relief (which helped me sooo much first time). i was more panicked and scared in my second labour because i felt i had no control and it was all very intense.

i would say that rarely are two labours the same but i understand that your worry is more with what happened after the birth than before it! have you discussed this with your doctors? i would hope they would monitor you alot more closely this time and be prepared just in case!

good luck and i hope it all goes smoothly for you this time!!

I also hemmoraged after my first. Must not have been quite as bad as yours because no alarms were sounded. Basically after baby was born and after the placenta was delivered the doctor pushed down on my uterus to try to get it to contract or clamp or whatever and I had a large gush of blood. Both the nurse and doctor looked up at my face with looks of panic clearly seeing if I was going to have some reaction but I just kind of looked at them and shrugged as I didn't feel any different - they apparently fixed whatever the problem was after but I did need to receive additional platelets or blood I don't recall which or what it was -

That always kind of scared me a bit as it was never really explained to me what happened or why it happened and I worry it might happen again but you know I think it's just one of those things that can happen to anyone during any pregnancy. It either happens or more likely - does not. I don't think it is something that would happen again just because it happened the first time. Definitely made me want to give birth in a hospital setting though. I had a very long pushing stage for my first though and I do kind of wonder if that had anything to do with it. I've told my doctors about this and none of them seem to be concerned about it happening again really but they are aware.

I can relate to what you are saying although my first birth was bad for a completely different reason. It does make you really anxious about what's going to happen this time. I keep telling myself that it can't possibly go horribly wrong a second time (though I know it probably can). I guess we've just got to hope that because of our previous bad experiences the health professionals will be looking out for any difficulties... Fingers crossed it goes better for you this time x