I've only read a couple of pages of this thread but I need to get this out.
I was lying awake in bed and getting so angry I had to come downstairs. DD is 7 1/2 months old, and I still get so worked up and angry over her birth. Everyone around me doesn't think I should feel that way. They give me platitudes about "at least she's healthy", etc. Even the LD nurse who's a friend of mine who was my nurse through my whole labor (extended her shift then stayed past it to see me through to recovery) doesn't get it.
I quite frankly feel like I was violated. I was caught off guard and told my DD was in trouble. I folded like a paper kite in a rainstorm. I read about these other births and how other moms went over 24 hours and did everything possible to avoid a C-sec and then got stuck with it anyway and I feel like such a loser.
I never wanted to see the inside of a hospital, but I couldn't afford a midwife, medicaid would only pay for a hospital birth. So I had my plan all laid out, written down, approved by my doctor (who was recommended by the midwife I couldn't afford). He seemed to have the right attitude, and everything went great, until I went postdate.
I jumped through hoops and showed up for monitoring every 3 days, which almost every time resulted in a trip to the hospital for a nonstress test because DD had a habit of knocking the monitor off when she moved.
All well and good, and I held him off for almost 2 weeks. I set the scheduled induction date for 42 wks 1 day, a monday, which was the latest the doctor would let me, and he wasn't happy about it, either. The preceding Friday I was at the hospital for yet another nonstress test.
DD passed but the doctor wanted me to stay and be induced anyway. If I hadn't been afraid of the resulting bill for leaving AMA (medicaid wouldn't pay for the test if I left AMA), I would have walked out of there. At the very least I would have gone home and gotten a shower and eaten a good lunch. By the time I was admitted it was one in the afternoon and I hadn't eaten since about seven thirty that morning.
We got to the LDR room and there was no shower. I was hot and tired and upset, it was 100 degrees outside and our car getting there had no A/C and I hadn't had a shower since midday the day before. So I cried, and the nurses comforted me. DH was gone, had gone to get my hospital bag and call my mom (she had to drive from TX to join us).
I don't think DD was ready. But there I was, after all my research on why I should avoid induction w/ pitocin, getting the stuff dripping into my arm.
I am stubborn. Even as things cascaded in the wrong direction I tried. I really did.
I labored on the pit w/ no pain meds for 10 hours from when the contrax got going. (I'd had braxton hicks for quite a while, and was already dialated to 3 cm when I went in). They kept having to turn the pit down because DD's heart rate would drop after every contraction. The contractions would slow down, DD would do better, they'd turn the pit up, DD's heart rate would drop, etc.
Finally they said they'd probably have to do a C-sec. I was only 6 cm dialated and she wasn't handling the contractions. They said they could try doing an epidural, that it might make me relax and she might respond better, and if not I'd be ready for the C-sec.
I felt like such a failure, and that stupid needle hurt more than any of my contractions. Yet another intervention I didn't want.
Right after the epidural kicked in, meconium showed up in my waters (my water had broken some time before, but it gushed and gushed and gushed because I had a LOT of amniotic fluid, the reason the doc wanted to induce).
I just have this sure feeling that if I'd turned and run the other way and not let them induce me that day, I'd have gone into labor over the weekend and DD would have been fine.
So they took me in, I was shaking, spreadeagled, couldn't see anything... DH held my hand, a nurse told me to not try to stop shivering because that would just make it worse. I remember as they wheeled me in I asked the doctor to make sure he double stitched my uterus, because it would increase the chances of a successful VBAC. He commented that I must do a lot of reading, and that no one had ever asked him that before, then said he would.
I feel like I was violated...did I say that earlier? My DD wasn't born, my body was cut open and she was pulled out before she was ready. Due date notwithstanding, I really think she just wasn't quite ready and we tried to force it with the induction so she protested and was in distress.
So I feel like I was violated, and that it was in large part my fault, with DH no help. I'd have planned an unassisted birth if he hadn't been so uncomfortable with the idea.
And now I can't ever have a homebirth. We're unlikely to move away from here, and in AZ VBAC's have to be attended by a doctor through the whole thing. So not only did I blow my first birth, but subsequent ones are likely to go wrong and be stuck w/ a hospital setting, too. The best I can hope for is the one birth center in the Phoenix Metro area.
I'm mad at myself, at the hospital and their policies, and at my OB. I'm mad at the state medicaid program. I'm just so angry, I felt so helpless but that I should have done something differently anyway.
Well, this is already too long, so I'll just shut up, cry some more, and read the other posts on this thread.
: . Has anyone else experienced this? Does it get worse as the pregnancy progresses? (I'm about 6.5 months along right now)
The bad news is it may hurt, feel stretchy as you get bigger (if it's anything like my experience). I'm good so far this time (this is my third preg/ 4th baby) and I don't feel much stretching in my incision this time but I'm only 20 weeks so ask me in a couple months 
Of course I would prefer a 9 pounder though LOL...not holding my breath on getting a 7 pound peanut unless there is some serious deviation from the family trend LOL!
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