Birth Story

Simon (first birth - 38 years)

My wife and I had talked a lot about how we wanted her birth to progress and eventually we came to the conclusion, after speaking to a lot of people, that an elective was the way to go. Given the chances of a 'natural' birth ending up as either an emergency caesarean or an assisted delivery and what seemed to us to be the potentially quite nasty things that could happen to her in terms of tears etc it seemed like a sensible choice to make.

We seemed to get a lot of negative reactions from some mothers (and oddly some fathers too) when we said we were going this route. I found it very odd that others would want to impose their will on us. This made us decide not to tell anyone else till after the birth - even our NCT class mates.

On the appointed day we arrived at the hospital suitability prepared etc and then had to wait for hours for various other emergency caesareans ahead of us to go ahead. Finally it was time for us to go to theatre and I got changed into the theatre gowns and then went in to help out. She hates needles so my job was to keep her calm while the whole epidural set-up was done. This took a little while but the anaesthetist was fantastic and she filled us both with confidence that she really knew her stuff. I asked her about her feelings of elective vs. emergency caesareans and she said that they much preferred doing electives because you could take your time and make sure everything was just right. The set-up took about an hour in total including checking the anaesthetic was working etc.

The surgeon then came in and it all went really fast - I held my wife's hand whilst they started the procedure and then within 5 minutes our daughter was pulled out. She gave a little cry immediately which for me was hugely reassuring. The surgeon held her up above the screen for us both to see. She was taken over to be checked over and weighed etc and I went over to watch. It was amazing to see her turn from blue to pink as the oxygen worked its way through her system. I was able to relay to my wife what was going on - then she was wrapped up and given to me and I took her back over to sit next to my wife as she was stitched up.

During the stitching up process my daughter was on my lap holding onto my finger with one of her hands for all she was worth. I was able to tell my wife everything she was doing - which was really just looking about and I guess trying to work out what was going on. The stitching up process took a while as there was a student surgeon helping out and after a while the anaesthetic wore off a bit so the anaesthetist gave my wife a shot of something that made her instantly comfortable.

Then we were off to the recovery room where we put my daughter skin to skin on my wife's chest and even had a go at breast feeding. I was just relieved that everything had gone according to plan. After 30 mins we were off back up to the ward.

The second day after the caesarean my wife was walking around (slowly!) and when we took the pressure bandage off I was amazed to find that I had to really look quite closely to see the scar - it was a thin red line across her stomach.

For me going home for the nights my wife and baby were in hospital felt very strange - but I also felt hugely elated and emotional.

Once we got home my wife seemed to be relatively comfortable quite quickly - after a while not needing all of the pain-killers. Breast feeding was probably more of a concern for both of us at that point (and that clearly was painful to start with).

A week later we met up with our NCT class mates. At that point out of 8 couples only 3 of them including us had had our births. When we told them about the elective everyone was very supportive and interested in why we had made that choice. Much baby holding went on to try and get the rest of them started! In the end 5 of the 8 couples had caesareans.

The whole process was very positive for me - and it all felt very controlled and safe. I would certainly support my wife if she decided to go the elective route again.

Comment from Pinkpegasus - 11 Mar 2006

It was really nice to hear a mans point of view regarding this. My husband is really supporting my decision for a c section, and I hope ours goes as well as your partners did. One thing I have done differently, I have announced that I am having a section whether people agree or not, yes some have been quite rude and have had loads of people saying that I am too posh to push, though I tell them the real reason is that I am too scared to push, they still dismiss me as being silly. Hey I am the one who fought for my section, if I can go against the system and win, then I can certainly ignore a few idiots who have not yet realised that its now the 21st century.