I am a big fan of “living in the moment” and “being in the now”, which are all great excuses for being disorganized and not planning ahead. I do not plan unless my OBGYN puts a gun to my head and gives me a form with big fat VBAC written on it. Vaginal Birth After Cesarean - makes me shudder just thinking about it, but that’s what I wanted… at least those were my immediate thoughts after I had Leila. I wanted to have a VBAC with my second baby and be all:

I thought Leila will be a regular delivery – nobody in my family has ever had a C -section and there were no signs indicating that I might need one. After 20-hours of labor I don’t remember much… I think somebody said: “9cm! You are almost there!”… only we didn’t know that would be the last cheerful thing said in my delivery room. The short celebration was interrupted by the paralyzing sound of the monitor indicating somebody’s dropping heart rate… was it mine? Was it hers?… I would have asked but within seconds there was a doctor putting a mask on my face and getting really close: “honey, I need you to listen, ok? I need you to breath. I really need you to breath…” I don’t think I was, because the machine got louder and I literally saw the blood leaving my doctor’s face as she now yelled “take deep breaths! Really deep breaths for the baby!” The baby?…It was the baby…my baby.  I saw Dennis disappearing behind what looked like a crowd of medical staff, I heard the doctor rushing the nurses “we don’t want to lose this baby…”, the monitors, the paging overhead, the moving lights in the sealing…no, that was me moving. I was being moved to the OR… I think. I felt nothing. I wasn’t breathing. I tried as hard as I could but my lungs felt like rocks.

“I don’t think she can hear us… but she is blinking.”

“Call the nurse, find out her husband’s name”

“Dennis”, I said “his name is Dennis”

“Call Dennis in”

There he was – red eyes and pale as a ghost. I knew his name.  I’ve never seen that look before but I knew it, I understood…I wanted to tell him I’m ok, but I couldn’t. Not enough air. The baby cries. Somebody puts her cheek next to mine… so incredibly soft… I lost it. I lost it all. I broke down, I sobbed, I cried… and cried and then cried some more for the next 3 months. It was the worst and the best day of my life.

I will be honest – I didn’t read much about C-section before I went into labor, I never spoke in detail about it with anybody who had it, I didn’t prepare. I was SURE it will not happen to me… Trust me, I roll my eyes with you as I type this. That’s a whole new level of ignorance, irresponsibility and just plain stupidity. Surprisingly, the recovery was fast with no complications.

Needless to say that this time around I had extra motivation to do my homework. I have an option to either go with a VBAC or do a repeat cesarean section. I’m not going to bore you with all the details, pros and cons and my two long conversations with the new OBGYN who mostly deals with VBACs, but we have made up our minds. I know it will be disappointing to some of you, however we have decided to go with repeat cesarean (for now… I still have time and not closing any doors). Elective repeat cesarean is no vacation in Hawaii and has it’s own risks – we just picked what seems like a lesser evil at this time. Could this all go very very wrong very very fast? Of course, it can. I just can’t think about it anymore. For the sake of my own sanity I need to stop reading about “worse case scenarios”, I need to stop feeling guilty about somehow the first C-section being all my fault…  and just for now I need to go back into my safe place of  living in the moment… I need to cross my fingers and just let myself believe. I have to.