I had quite a good experience, although it’ although it was an emergency Caesarean, I recovered very well, because I know when’When they decided we were going for emergency Caesarean, my husband had actually phoned his mother to say, ‘Oh, [wifes] going in for Caesarean,’ and she must have then phoned her other daughter who’d had a Caesarean before and said, ‘Oh Mum, you’re going to have to get down there, [husband’s] not going to know what to do. Because she it took her quite a long time to recover, she couldn’t get out of bed, but I was completely different, I was’ I had the Caesarean on the Monday, and they advise you to sort of stay in bed really on the Monday, but on the Tuesday they like you to start walking about a little bit, and that was absolutely fine, fine for me, yeah.

In fact, I probably was on my feet probably a little too quickly, I was walking out to the shops and found’ I was getting a bit tired and when the midwife came to see me she said, ‘That’s far too far for you to be walking,’ because I hadn’t actually been advised about’ that was probably something about after a Caesarean, so I’m probably one of these people if I can manage it I’ll go and do it, but probably wasn’t aware that I probably shouldn’t have been walking that far.

I had my mind made up for some time and then I’ at one point I had decided I would quite like a Caesarean because at least we can plan, can sort [son] out with childcare. And I had it in my mind that the hernia must have caused me complications before so therefore I’m going to have to go Caesarean, and the baby was also breech. But it’s now turned and I’ve been advised that the hernia didn’t cause the complications last time so I’d quite like to try for the natural just for the fact that you can be more mobile afterwards.

Because I got to eight centimetres last time fairly comfortably, and apparently it’s quite a common thing for your first labour for your cervix not to move completely, but eight centimetres is quite a good result to get to, and the fact that I can be more mobile afterwards so that’s why I’ve chosen to sort of go that way now. But sort of still been quite open-minded, if I have to be Caesarean at the end of it, then that’s fine.

I think I was always sort of a bit afraid of like the pain that people sort of tell you about, but I think as I said before, I’ve got quite a high pain threshold, what did I have? In fact, I just had gas and air, that’s all I had but’ but I didn’t have any sort of’ some people I think have a, a great urge that they want to do natural and I, I didn’t have that great urge, that I was desperate to do it natural. I think the, the main reason I wanted to try natural was, as I say for the recovery rate afterwards.

I had decided to try, try natural. Initially, I was undecided but having read the leaflets the- I can’t remember whether it was the hospital or the midwife gave me, about caesarean or natural birth, I had a consultation with the consultant and I had various questions to ask then, and she answered my questions and put my mind at ease about trying for a natural.

Shed gone over sort of what had happened in my previous birth and she said well there obviously weren’t any medical complications there, I think it was due to the fact that the cord had got wrapped round the baby and they were concerned about his heart rate, but she said that it may not go that way again, and I would be monitored throughout.

And did you feel confident that you, you would have a fair chance of a natural delivery?

Yeah, she, she seemed very confident as well. So that was quite reassuring.

If you were to give a message to other women facing this decision, what would you say to them?

Well I think, understand what your complications were before, why you had to go to caesarean, and I think ultimately that will define as to whether you can try natural for your second birth.

And what kind of information did you want with it being your first pregnancy, what kind of things did you feel that you’d want to know about?

Can’t really remember now whether I’ because we had the antenatal classes which provided probably the wealth of information that I needed and they thought of spoke through’ talked you through breathing, the epidurals and the breathing was something that I was very conscious of and I sort of was practising that and I think that’s what helped my labour. Because I seemed to cope just with the breathing and the TENS machine, but it probably also helps I found out I have a high pain threshold as well, so [laughs]’

And how many classes did you attend?

About half a dozen.

And was that local?

Yes.

Okay, and now thinking back, what kind of information did you want to receive?

Probably what they provided us with, yeah, because

There wasn’t anything that you feel that you could have really done with knowing?

I don’t think so, no, no.