Elective Caesarean

I am booked in for the 7th September!

This is the same as the EDD - Expected Delivery Date. This is unusual for a planned Caesarean. Usually they are scheduled a week before the EDD to avoid the "risk" of going into labour.

The reason given to me for waiting until the EDD was to minimise the risk to the baby. Nobody has said so in so many words, but clearly my obstetrician does not recognise any medical "risk" of my having another vaginal delivery. She has emphasised that my elective Caesarean is a matter of pure choice which it is the hospital's policy to indulge.

Not that she ever gave me the opportunity to put my case. I was all prepared for it but she wasn't in the mood for listening. So I'll put it here:

Point 1: The trauma of contractions with Sofia's delivery sent my body into total paralysis like my acutest phase of ME within half an hour of labour starting. I couldn't even speak or feel where my limbs were. This paralysis, or extreme weakness, took over a week to wear off. I couldn't sit up, or hold Sofia in my arms for several days. It was almost a week before I could shuffle to the toilet and eventually go home. My brain was totally mashed up too. I barely remember any of it. Now I look back, the impact on my early bonding with Sofia was huge. Even though bond we did somehow in our own way.

Point 2: I was considered by the doctors to be in no state to deliver vaginally by the time it came to pushing and got within 5 seconds of an emergency caesarean but miraculously the ventouse device coaxed Sofia out against everyone's expectation. But I'm clearly a very high risk case for an emergency C-section next time. I WISH AT ALL COSTS TO AVOID THE DOUBLE WHAMMY OF GOING THROUGH LABOUR AND HAVING A SURGERY AT THE END OF IT.

They all throw the same statistics at me. "It takes longer to recover from a caesarean than from a vaginal delivery." Well, that may be one of these abstract truths but this time I'm willing to bet that that rule doesn't apply to me. The pain of the wound will be immobilising, I know. But I'm reckoning I won't be half as immobilised as I was before. The trauma of surgery may trigger a relapse just as badly. True. But my instinct tells me otherwise.

I have rosy, ecstatic visions of sitting up and breastfeeding an hour or two after the birth, like normal mums. But who knows. Maybe I'll eat my words. Maybe they'll be right. The risk is on my shoulders now. Then again, maybe I'll go into labour before my due date, like so many women do, especially with a second child. And then my fate will be entirely out of my hands.