Guest Post - "Cesarean SOLELY Due to Breech"

 In 2009, I was pregnant with my first daughter. It was a very uneventful pregnancy even though I gained about 50lbs during the 9 months making me 300lbs at the time of birth. She was head down from somewhere around 35 weeks till 42 and I was starting to dilate and efface. I went in to my 42 week OB appointment at which they did a U/S to check on the baby. Turned out she was had flipped to breech at 42 weeks.

It all happened so fast in the office, after they found out she was breech they wouldn't check me at all because suddenly now my only option was a c-section. The OB brought us into his office to talk about it and told me I was going to have a c-section because I was 42 weeks and she was breech, if she hadn't been breech they would have let me be. I started crying right there, I hadn't ever thought I would be having a c-section... I had a textbook perfect pregnancy and she had been head down!

I asked if there was anything we could do and I was told no. He told me to stop crying because I was crying for no reason at all but that didn't help, I knew this was a major surgery. I remember my husband commenting after we got out of there that he wanted to punch the OB because of how he was acting. He was very rude and made me feel stupid for crying when they told me I had to have a major abdominal surgery I had not been expecting. I cried off and on for the next two days, I was scared because I'd never had a surgery in my life and now I had to have this one. I had been looking forward to going into labor so I could meet my sweet little girl but now I was dreading giving birth.

When I showed up for the c-section they put me on monitors, checked that she was still breech and told me I was having contractions I just couldn't feel them yet. I was crying a little bit when she was born, I hadn't wanted it this way but she was healthy and I was going to be ok so I thought maybe that was all that mattered right then. I didn't find out about ECV (external cephalic version), spinningbabies.com or that I could have just not gone to the c-section because they can not do anything without your consent until after my surgery. I was so angry when I found out there had indeed been stuff I could have tried to turn her back to breech and avoided that surgery. I was angry that I never got to experience labor, I was angry at myself for having not switched OBs like I had thought about earlier in the pregnancy and vowed to never let myself be talked into another c-section.

I had learned that I couldn't just rely on the word of the people I was seeing, I had to research for myself these things and stand up for what I wanted so in 2013 I gave birth again this time vaginally because I had this previous experience my next one went exactly how I wanted. I didn't let anyone stand in my way, even went so far as not having a OB from 26weeks to 34weeks because the first OB tried to schedule me for a c-section at 40+3 days and I knew because of my older daughter that I likely wouldn't be going into labor till 42 weeks. I did what I had to to find someone who would support me properly so now I try to help other women out there by giving them the knowledge I didn't have during my first pregnancy to prevent them from having unnecessary c-sections.

Felicia is a mother of two little girls living in the Midwest.