in June 2025 Babies 🇬🇧

Emergency C-Section, GA or Spinal block

Just after some advice/personal experiences if anyone can relate or has been in a similar situation. I’ve had back problems my whole life and have had two surgeries and a steroid injection for herniated discs along with have fibro I had my appointment with my anaesthetist yesterday who has said during labour I will not be allowed an epidural due to scarring which is fine as I didn’t want one anyway, as it has a higher chance of causing a “headache” I have opted for a natural birth but if I have to go to theatre for an emergency section the same would be to apply to the spinal block my chances of getting getting a headache,nerve damage , infection and haematoma would be higher than the average person and it would be hard to determine if I had a deterioration of symptoms it would be because of my condition or a complication. Now my other option would be to have a general anaesthetic which I really don’t want as it’s my first baby and I would hate to miss them arriving in the world, I also have saved the gender as a surprise and I feel like not being one of the first to know who they are after all this time would bother me 🥲 but aside from that this also comes with risks , difficulty with the airway, and myself or my baby having hypoxaemia which is low oxygen levels Sorry it’s long if anybody has been in a similar situation which did choose and do you wish you opted for the other?

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Not a similar situation at all but I know lots of people without health conditions who've had complications from spinal blocks. For me, I'm not sure I'd take the risk and would opt for GA, although I can completely understand your thoughts about that too. Discuss with your consultant, if you had GA, could you wake up with baby on your chest skin to skin, find out gender of baby etc xx

@Sophie yeah that’s a good idea, this is all in light of an emergency situation so I’m hoping that there’s no complications and I can just go through with the natural x

Not the same but I have scoliosis which was only found during my last c section when they tried to get the spinal block in. It took many, many attempts and I almost got taken back out of theatre but luckily the senior anaesthesiologist managed to get me sorted. I’ve always had back pain but it’s definitely got worse since then, I get numbness in spots of my back and pretty bad pain. I’ve just had a meeting about what we’ll do this time around if I need another c section. Really hoping for a natural birth as I had one with my first and didn’t ever want an epidural anyway. Had all the risks explained etc for if it does go the c section way. My sister just ended up with an emergency section and had to be put under because it happened so quickly, she has really struggled with missing the birth but I think it’s probably harder to process because she had no idea it would go that way whereas I guess you have the benefit of being able to put a plan in place now for if that was the only option.

So sorry that you’ve got the added stress of this to worry about! X