I could have written this myself. Intact I was going to until I stumbled across this post so I wanted to give it a little bump to see if we could get a few more answers.
Do you know the reason you had to have an EMCS? I'm finding part of my frustration/confusion is not really understanding why my labour ended up the way it did. If there is something physiologically about me that does not allow for a regular birth, then I am happy to go with the csection. I just want to know. My son got stuck and his hr was dropping and that's why we ended up in EMCS. I just wish they could tell me one way or the other so it could help my decision process, you know?
My OB says he doesn't want to sway my decision however has told me several times that if my labour didn't progress last time, there is a high chance the same thing could happen again..........hmf. SO hard to know what to do.[/QUOTE]
One thing I'd recommend is thinking about why things didn't progress (and even what 'not progressing' means). Some women are more nervous in a hospital environment, with bright lights, strangers coming and going, being interrupted all the time, which can cause the body to slow up labour (it's basically our body's instinctual way of protecting our babies from being born into danger, if we feel stressed or like we don't have enough quiet or privacy, labour will slow until we feel comfortable again). You might be someone who needs to stay at home longer so you can labour in somewhere quiet and familiar, or you might think of using a birth center that's more home-like and less like a hospital. Being on your back rather than upright (on a birth ball, on hands and knees, walking around) can slow things, as can not eating or drinking regularly, or having too many well-meaning but distracting friends and family in the room with you. Going into labour spontaneously (not induced), being somewhere relaxing, quiet and private, being upright and walking around, and eating/drinking regularly will help keep things moving.
Also, sometimes labour just slows down. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with it and it's no risk to baby at all, except that in our modern era of continuous monitoring, we are more likely to pick up on little changes in heart rate that aren't clinically significant at all. There's actually been some interesting research that shows that since we started to do continuous fetal monitoring (that's being hooked up to the monitor that goes around your belly), it's not actually made birth safer but has led to more interventions, some of them unnecessary. If you were being monitored a lot, a small variation in HR could have been picked up, but it may not have meant anything. They picked one up during my birth (just once), but my daughter was fine. I laboured another 4 hours (4 hours of
pushing, I might add) before she was born. We were both perfectly healthy. I think in a different situation, with midwives who weren't as experienced, they would have gotten more nervous that it was taking so long (I'm sure some OBs would say that a 4 hour 2nd stage is 'non-progression' and probably would have pushed a c-section or wanted to use forceps). But it wasn't needed. We were fine and comfortable. We just needed time. So it could have been you would have been just fine if you'd been given more time to just get on with it. It's impossible to know now, but I'd try to think of things you can do differently this time (like staying at home longer, being more upright, keeping your energy levels up). Your body really can do it, but sometimes the modern birthing environment isn't conducive to just getting out of your body's way and letting you do what you need to do. So push for the little things you need, like being able to walk around or eat what you want or use a birth pool or shower or a birth ball, etc.
