I just found this forum today and it looked active so I just joined. My name is Stephanie and I live in MI, I am a stay at home mom.
I have had 4 children but have 2 living. I am due Feb 22nd with a girl. I am also planning to have my 2nd VBAC with this one. (hospital birth) So I am nervous that it all works out well. I am paranoid over that and also epidurals dont work for me for some reason and I am allergic to everything else for after delivery so I am paranoid about the pain, possible c-section and recovery as I have been cut or torn every single time. My hospital does not have a birthing tub or anything like that to help ease the pain for natural births. All my labors have been long and drawn out. Dialating takes forever but pushing goes quick, and goes too quick and since I am in pain I push too fast/hard so I tear bad. Since my labor goes slow and putters along the nurses always are pushing to give me pitocin and I have to keep refusing. My longest labor was over 90 hours (posterior, was on pitocin and no epidural entire time! still scarred for life over that one) and my shortest like 14 hours. This will be my 4th vaginal and I really hope that it goes quicker finally!!!! If I could get pain relief during labor or no tearing it would be my dream come true! Or I could deal with the pain if my labor was no so long and drawn out! I finally want a birth experience thats not traumatic, seems every aspect of it is horrible for me every time and if just one aspect would go well that would be great!
I would love to do home birth but the hospital is too far away from me if something were to go wrong so with a vbac and my past experiences its just out of my comfort zone to be that far from a hospital. My doctor is pro-vbac but who knows till last minute if she will be the one attending the birth or not. All my hospital experiences have been bad and traumatic so I am very torn with it all.
I am also nervous that this one and my last will be 20 months apart. When we decided to try again I assumed things would be much easier with him by now but he's still a handful. So I am nervous about how we will manage especially in the first month or two. I am home alone all day and I dont know how I will stay awake all day to watch my toddler then get up all through the night with a newborn. My toddler only naps once for about 30-60 min a day and does not go to bed at night till around 11pm. If I ended up with a c-section on top if it I dont think I could do it and would be in major trouble. We have no family to help out.
I have never had them this close in age before so I have no idea what to expect and what I am in for. I know we will manage but I hope its not as hard as I am expecting!
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