Hellobee Boards

I'd check on Friday, but in the meantime, walk a ton if you can. My midwife also said squatting/bouncing on a birth ball could help too.

@alleyflowers: Ah...so had you not had the car accident, you could have had a vaginal birth. Makes sense. I'd definitely wait it out then if your hope is to have a VBAC. Unless the baby is in distress, I don't see any reason to make it move along faster!

I would go with an RCS.

I'd wait if you'd really like to try VBAC, if there is no medical reason to induce, and it sounds like there isn't. As for dilation/effacement, some people go weeks being 3 cm dilated, while others don't dilate until starting labour. I was the second case, and showed up at the hospital after a couple of hours of steady, close contractions, with my water broke, only to find out that I was 0.5 cm dilated, but fully effaced. I was at 2.5 cm an hour later, and an hour after that I was fully dilated, right before my epidural arrived! I was 40+3 weeks, and baby was born after 12 hours of labour in total.

While I was wanting baby to come sooner than he did, my OB said that it's better to let labour start on its own. They only induce here at 41+3, so a few more days won't hurt, as long as both you and baby are healthy.

I would wait a bit. I ended up waiting ten days over my due date to see if I would go into labour with my second (I didn't, not a single contraction). At that point my doctor agreed with me that a RCS was the best choice. And thank god, baby was 10lb 2oz, so a vbac could have been very problematic for me. I do want another baby, but the OB who performed the surgery said I should be able to have another c-section no problem.

I will say that recovery was much, much harder this time though.

@alleyflowers: on the upside, either way it won't be as bad as recovering from birth and being hit by a truck!

My understanding is the overall risk to you is less with a VBAC, all things considered. I had a great recovery and very little pain from my scheduled c-section. With the very long manual induction VBAC, I wasn't in terrible pain for very much of it - just a few hours of active labour pre-epidural. The manual part was just uncomfortable, really. The main problem with the length was that I was extremely exhuated by the time pushing rolled around. However, I had a bad birth/recovery because of factors related to me and baby like baby's huge head and my little pelvis, which resulted in a vac assist, third degree tearing and a fractured tailbone. All that had nothing to do with the induction, though! The only thing that happened that was painful that was related to it being a VBAC was that I retained some placenta and they couldn't give me more pitocin to get it out so they had to manually extract it.

I think it's really hard to make this decision because it's impossible to know so many things in advance of them happening. And hard to know if you made the right decision, since you don't know how it would have gone if you went the other way!

Yeah, it made sense that for that last hour before the epidural came that it hurt like hell. I was seriously shaking through the contractions. I thought I just had a poor tolerance for pain, thinking that I was only 3 cm or so, but hurting so much. I didn't realize until after that I was transitioning!

Still, I'm glad that I got to experience labour and a vaginal birth, and the epidural was seriously amazing! My mom told me the story of being the last one to find out (hours later) that she was having a girl (me) and then a boy, because she had two c-sections and was completely under for them (it was the early 80s); the first was an emergency and the other was a RCS. It might have tainted my view, but I was happy that I was so alert and able to hold my baby right away (well, 9 mins after birth, bc he had an initial APGAR of 2, then a 9 at 5 mins).

ETA: I know c-sections and RCSs are done differently nowadays, and that you aren't usually knocked out for them anymore. Just wanted to share where I was coming from. Good luck with your decision! As long as mama and baby are healthy and happy, there are no bad decisions!

@alleyflowers: Update for us? This is a tough decision - I still second guess my decision for RCS at 40 weeks with my second. But I have two beautiful healthy kids, what more could I ask for!

@alleyflowers: So glad to see such a positive update. I'm currently facing the same decision and if this baby isn't born this weekend, then I'll be having a RCS next week. I was also not conscious for my first one and husband was not in the room, so hearing the difference in the experience makes me much more at peace with the idea of a RCS. I hope your recovery continues to go well!

@alleyflowers: I'm so glad to hear your recovery has been going well! Thanks for the update! I had two scheduled CS and was convinced I would try to VBAC with this third but because RCS is safer for baby, that tipped the scales for me and I'm having a CS next week. Sounds like you made a great decision!