wow, i am amazed and impressed by you women who are having more babies after a C-section , and especially those who had more than one C-sec! wow. i am still afraid. my stats are:
C-section after 30 hours labor, 3 hrs pushing, due to "failure to progress" , on Feb 11, 2002. Ds was posterior and 9 lbs, 6 oz, but supposedly i was going to be able to push him out. sometimes i wonder if it was allowing the epidural and the manual rupture of my water that cause failure to progress. my midwife herself has had at least one c-section ,was not a fan of them, so i dont think she would have done that to me without reason, but who knows. i have little trust, as my hospital care was extremely lacking...
then this year i had to have surgery again to repair 3 hernias and sew my abs back together becuase they stayed "split" very wide. so 2 surgeries from one birth...i am still working out the fears , pain , etc , about that.
but to LISA.....
i think the very best thing you can do is GET A DOULA, or have at least one onther person present to stand up for your wishes that is on your sied, besides your partner. no amount of me talking to my nurse midwife prevented me from being separated from my baby at birth, i was too weak to say anyhting and wanted him to be OK so i just let him go and followed their procedure. get someone to advocate for you, because you might be weak and out of it, and youll let your wishes slide, thinking momentarily thay dont matter so much...then you might regret that later (at least thats what happened to me)
the other thing , about hospital time and healing time, just remember not to have expectaions, cuz that can get really depressing, if things go differently than you wanted.
oh , i wish you the best of luck! i truly believe , with mental preperation beforehand , a Csection can be OK, and you will do fine. it doesnt have to be horrible at all , if you can plan ahead. for me, the worst things were the things that happened at the hospital, but if i could have been more prepared for that, i might have been better able to cope with the surgery healing time, etc.
one thing i am SUPER glad i did, was i let friends bring me food for the first couple of weeks, and had MIL here the first week to hold DS for me when i was too tired. (cuz i wanted him AP'ed and held all the time
) that was the greatest relief for me.