help me process my birth story

[patronus]

my lo is 13 months old and for some reason around 12 months i have been thinking a lot about her birth. i think immediately after her birth i just felt like "ok, my birth plan went down the tubes but she's here safe and i enjoyed my birth experience so it doesn't matter". but now i'm thinking about someday having a second child and i have this feeling of anxiety like "i REALLY want to have the kind of labor & delivery that i planned for my first (as little medical intervention as possible & no pain meds)".

here's the cliff's notes on my birth story:

water broke on my due date. fair amount of meconium in the water, no real ctx. we headed to the hospital where they said b/c of the meconium they wanted to induce "in case the baby was in trouble". pitocin, internal monitoring, ctx are looking good, i am handling pain just fine but after 21 hours of labor i had only dilated to 4cm. dr. on call starts to talk cs if i don't start to progress. after discussion with nurses and dh we decide to try an epidural to see if that will speed dilation. i have the epidural and in less than 2 hours i am fully dilated, push for 30 min and have my perfect daughter in my arms.

my issues with how things went:

internal monitoring & being tethered to iv was unpleasant

i didn't get to feel much as my daughter was coming out

dh and i took 40 hours of natural birthing/hypnobirthing classes and i feel like i didn't get to fully use them

i really believe the effect of the epidural was a contributing factor to us have a very rough start to nursing

what i have to be thankful for:

neither dd or i experienced any medical issues during l&d

dd is perfect

i didn't have a cs

i keep turning it over in my head, thinking about whether i could have done something differently.

could i have done something differently?

any advice on how to mentally get over this hump?

[memz]

I'm a bit in the same boat. My DD who will be 14 months in a few days was born after a 36 hours induced  labor. Like you, things didn't go has I had wanted, starting of course with the induction. I don't think I could have done anything differently except maybe having a homebirth next time. I think that once you enter the hospital, it's all a combination of circumstances that make your birth go the way it did. I think you just have to be better equiped next time, more knowledgeable and try and have a homebirth....

[nadia105]

It really sounds like you made the best decisions you could with the information you had at the time. 

Could things have been doen differently and given you a different result?  Maybe, but there is no real way to know.  Maybe look for a midwife for your next birth?  I know my mw (hospital practicing CNM) doesn't induce just b/c waters have been broken for x amount of hours, but the meconium in your situation does add a complication to that.