Emergency C-Section (Caesarean) at Addenbrookes: My Story

You join me towards the end of my labour with my eldest son (make sure you check out Part 1:The Birth Centre and Part 2: The Delivery Unit) – I have finally reached the magical 10cm dilated but have just been told my baby is presenting in a rare way that make vaginal birth nearly impossible. The consultant has offered me the choice to take an hour to try making progress via pushing, but otherwise I’m headed for a c-section, or Caesarean as it’s also known.

An Advocating Midwife

So there I am, watching the consultant’s back as he strides from the room, rocking from the news that while my son is within touching distance, I may yet have to go through the outcome I most wished to avoid, in the shape of a Caesarean.

I feel conflicted. On the one hand I want to do everything I can to give birth the “traditional” way, especially knowing it would be a smoother recovery. I hate taking an “easy option” with a passion. But on the other hand, I feel sapped by the information that there’s an extremely high likelihood that it won’t work and all the effort will be for nothing. It may even make things worse, causing my baby distress. My pride wants to push, but my head tells me it’s not the right call.

My midwife turns to me and does something for which I will be forever grateful. She shares her opinion, and in doing so takes charge.

If I would like to try pushing, she says, will support me 100%. However, in her 35 years of midwifery, she has never seen a brow presentation baby born successfully.

Did You Know?

Approximately 30% of babies are now born via Caesarean section, with about 16% of these being emergency and 14% planned c-sections. [Source: NHS]

Both my son and I are doing well, she says, and trying to force him out when he isn’t in the right position is likely to lead to him getting stuck. Ultimately that could cause both of us a lot of pain, distress, and potential complications with longer term consequences. It would also make a Caesarean significantly more tricky, stressful and also highly time-sensitive. She would strongly advise me against trying to do so. In fact, she will even tell the consultant that I tried pushing if that’s what I am concerned about.

Throughout my labour, I was grateful to have been given all the relevant information and allowed to make my own decisions. I am very much someone who likes to be in control of their own destiny on things that matter.

However, in this moment, I didn’t feel like the scraps of information I had gleaned in a few short minutes were enough on which to be making such a monumental decision. Phil was an absolute rock, but he was just as blindsided by these developments as me. We knew births aren’t always straightforward, but my age, health and easy pregnancy lulled us into a false sense of security, and we never imagined it would happen to us.

In the two key moments of my labour, faced with important choices over an epidural and a c-section, the midwives gave us the space to decide if we wanted to do so. But then they ultimately took the pressure off us making those decisions, allowing me to suck up my pride and do the right thing.

So after 36 hours of labour, and 9 months of swearing I would avoid every intervention specifically to avoid needing a c-section, I sign the paperwork to give birth to my baby boy via Emergency Caesarean section.

Into the operating theatre

Phil phones both sets of parents at this point just to give them an update, and lets them know we were heading into theatre. We are so close to meeting our little one.

I’m being prepped for surgery and just as the team are preparing to wheel me the short journey up the corridor and into theatre, when (unsurprisingly, given the way my labour is going!) there’s a slight twist in the tale…

Across the hall, another expectant mum and her baby are now in a critical emergency situation and need to be rushed into theatre. We’re technically an “emergency” c-section insofar as the surgery isn’t planned in advance, but since both Lewis and I are healthy and chilled (just unable to move), we’re not really that much of an emergency, and we are bumped down the schedule. More waiting it is!

Another hour ticks by, and then finally, finally it’s our turn. Phil disappears off somewhere to try on a fetching surgery outfit, and before I know it he’s back by my side as we cruise up the hallway and into the theatre.

They give my epidural a quick top up, and settle me onto the operating table. My left arm is out to the side with an IV attached, and a sheet is erected so that the enormous bump with which I’ve become so well acquainted over the last 9 months is hidden from view.

The room is buzzing with people – various nurses, a paediatrician or two, the anaesthetist and of course the surgeon who will be the first to meet my baby boy. Mostly, though, they’re the far end of the room, and it’s just the midwife, Phil and me on our side of the sheet.

Someone asks Phil if he’d like to visit the other side of the curtain to see our baby being born, and he blanches. Frankly I’m relieved. It’s one thing to stand in front of someone fully dressed, and compare that to the vulnerability of allowing someone to see you without clothes, in just your bare skin. Allowing someone to see what lies beneath your skin is a whole new level of vulnerability, and one I personally believe should be restricted to the medical profession!

And then it’s time.

Meeting our baby, C-section and all

Two things really stood out for me when it came to the surgery.

Firstly, the midwife thankfully warned me that they would need to angle the operating table. Apparently this is quite common when C-sections are required for babies who reach 10cm dilated, as they are a long way down into the birth canal and need to be gently encourage back up through the pelvis a little so that they can be lifted out.

Secondly, it is an indescribably weird feeling to be completely numb (trust me, they checked what feeling I had multiple times!) and yet still feel a vague sensation of someone tugging around inside your body. One day, the geek in me will look up exactly what happens during a c-section, but I’m just not quite ready for that just yet!

It was all over so very quickly: it took less than 20 minutes from being wheeled into the theatre to our beautiful baby boy being born. They cut the cord and took him over to the table to be checked over and weighed, but then he was brought back across and placed on my chest.

The remaining time in surgery went by in a flash, and I was completely and utterly oblivious to whatever they were doing behind the curtain to stitch me back up again, obsessed and besotted with this tiny baby resting so peacefully on me. I remember that it was a bit of an awkward angle, as he was a chunky monkey and there wasn’t really room for him to fit all of him on my chest between the curtain and my neck, so he was kind of resting on my face. But in that moment, I did not care one bit. He was finally here.

After the surgery we’re wheeled into recovery, and immediately a nurse comes rushing over. Apparently they have taken numerous phone calls from our parents, frantic with worry because they aren’t aware we had been bumped down the schedule and thinking the worst. And of course the nurses have been unable to give them any information due to privacy rules.

We spend a little time introducing them to their grandson, and then as night falls and other families are moved out to the postnatal wards, suddenly it’s just the three of us properly alone together for the first time.

And already, we can’t remember life before.

Coping with the dreaded ‘C-word’: Caesarean

I never thought I’d have a c-section. I know that’s probably true for most women, but if I’m honest it never even crossed my mind as a possibility. I was 29, with a “perfect” BMI, “perfect” blood pressure, and I was still playing badminton and getting in my BodyStep workouts past 8 months of pregnancy.

If good health were a precursor to good birth outcomes, my firstborn should have entered the world into a warm, relaxing pool, a matter of minutes after my body effortlessly went into labour.

36 hours, making me violently and physically sick throughout, and arriving through the sunroof were not in the script!

All I can say, is thank goodness I did NCT classes, because I’d have had absolutely no idea what to expect from a c-section if I hadn’t sat through a session on them – even if I was completely in denial at the time that I might be the one in four mums who has a caesarean birth!

And if you’d told me before I went into labour that I would learn I’d need an emergency c-section, I’d have thought I’d take the news pretty badly. It wasn’t what I expected, it wasn’t what I wanted, and it certainly wouldn’t allow me to be back playing netball a few short weeks after birth as I’d planned!

Yet at the point we had to decide, I felt curiously zen about the whole situation. I was fine, my baby was fine, but between us we just needed a bit of help to allow us to meet in the outside world.

It’s ironic that I was so set on avoiding the famed “cascade of interventions” – with the benefit of hindsight, it seems obvious to me that (in my case at least) the cascade happened not because I tiptoed onto the slippery slope at the top of the labour, but simply because my baby was in the wrong position, so no intervention was able to make a difference.

I personally feel that women are made to feel like their poor choices are what ultimately lead to interventions or births that are not what is classically perceived to be “the right way” to have your baby.

The reality is very different.

Having a c-section does not mean you have failed. Having an epidural does not mean you have failed. A woman bringing a new life into this world is a miracle each and every time it happens, however it happens.

Many people said to me after they heard I had had an emergency c-section, how gutted I must be. And I was gutted, in the short term. I was gutted that I couldn’t go back to playing netball only weeks after giving birth like I had planned, gutted that for the first few weeks I needed help doing anything even vaguely strenuous, gutted that I had to stay in hospital for longer by myself. There were plenty of frustrating outcomes of having major surgery like that.

But I wasn’t gutted I had a c-section itself.

My son arrived safe and well, and I was safe and well too. At the end of the day, that’s the only outcome we can hope for. Not so many years ago neither Lewis nor I would have survived the situation, and I am grateful for the advances in medicine, the knowledge and expertise of the midwives and the surgery team.

My experience in labour and delivery at the Rosie Maternity Hospital was faultless from start to finish. And at the end of it, we came away with the most beautiful, healthy baby boy, who has lit up our lives ever since.

So I’m not gutted.

I’m grateful.

This article is part of the ‘New Mum Series’ – a collection of useful articles, jam-packed with tips, tricks and advice for new mamas across the UK!