However, if you are anything like me, that birth experience might not have taken a fully positive route. Well meaning midwives and doctors probably advised you to do/take/consent to many different things and so if your birth wasn’t ‘straightforward’ very often those feelings will come back to bite you.
Centrainly, after my first birth I thought I was ‘fine’. My baby had to be born by unplanned caesarean after a lengthy process which involved induction drugs and continuous monitoring. None of these things were what I ‘wanted’ but it felt like I should accept them at the time. I had gone through a hypnobirthing course so at the very least I felt confident and calm and I had planned every eventuality out in my birth plan so I wasn’t ‘upset’ per se. Just a bit confused as to why it had gone the way it did.
During my pregnancy with my second child I was pretty anxious, I had been through a miscarriage earlier that year and so that heightened all of my fears and worries ten-fold. To then be told I was ‘high risk’ due to my previous caesarean and that I would be offered another straight away was a lot for my brain to deal with at the time. When I shared my preference for a water birth, or at the very least a birth within the midwifery suite, it was met by surprise. But they were supportive and I was offered a birth debrief to go over everything that had happened in my first birth.
I met with a lovely midwife at the hospital in which I had given birth and she produced all of the notes from my record, she talked through each part, asking if I wanted more detail on certain points – and finally, I had reasons why things were done. It suddenly made sense and even though I didn’t really agree with a lot of it, it made it a lot easier for me to go ahead with my new preferences in the knowledge that my BODY HAD NOT FAILED ME as I had thought it had.
That knowledge alone made me so confident in my choices to go ahead with my VBAC. I was able to do my research and speak to my consultant to come up with a plan we were both happy with and it all gave me a lot of comfort and closire.
One of the biggest enemies of a positive birth is fear. Fear creates tension. Tension creates pain. And that birth debrief and my subsequent research released a lot of fear and tension for me.
My second birth went ahead as I had wished and I had a successful VBAC.
It is your right to ask for a birth debrief – please reach out to your midwife or consultant and ask – even if you are not currently pregnant. It was your birth, you are in control of that ending.