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August 2026 Babies 🇬🇧

Guilt as traumatic labour with first baby is stopping me from enjoying this pregnancy

I had a rough birth experience with my first in 2022. I had GD and baby was expected to be huge, estimated 10/11lb and was my first baby so followed medical advice and they didn't want me going to full term.
My local hospital rang when I was 39 weeks and said I needed to be a priority for induction but they couldn't fit me in and offered me a place an hour away from home but said if I travelled there I'd be straight in and induced etc. This did not happen.
I travelled and once there was left for a week stuck in there just waiting in a bed as I couldn't travel back home, wasn't prioritised, just monitored and sat around for a whole week undoing all of the progress I'd made as I'd been out walking long distance and stretching etc for weeks prior to prepare my body for labour. After that week I was no longer 2cm like I was when assessed before I went and they we're unable to induce me without trying all of the different methods first whereas before I could've had my water broken and started off on pitocin as I was already dialated somewhat.

So an extra day with the foley catheter, totalling 8 days living in the hospital for no reason, I was then straight into pitocin induction at 2am, left to labour with the worst back labour contractions i'd ever felt in my existence to the point where my body was pushing but I was passing out from pain between every contraction, waking to push then passing right back out until the next one.
They wanted to leave me another four hours in this state before I managed to beg my partner to get someone else to help me as I knew me and baby was struggling.

Was then seen by a conultant who said my baby was never going to be able to be delivered naturally as she had got stuck half way through turning when coming down to be born and was stuck in the birthing canal and that it was too tight for her to come through at the angle she was at, leading to a quite traumatic emergency c-section with attempted forceps and vontousse and a horrendous after-care that saw me present with serious infection markers hours after surgery that they spent days of testing and blood withdrawals trying to find but they couldn't locate so just chucked me on a random IV anti-biotic and hoped for the best. All whilst sending my partner home and wanting me to be up and walking hours after the surgery as well as looking after my newborn alone as a first time mum.

I know that is alot to read, apologies for the vent. I've talked this through at my booking appointment with a midwife with a request for some suport throughout this second pregnancy as I'm terrified of labour now, but I was just told that whilst this all feels traumatic to me it is quite standard on paper for them and she has noted on my notes that I have 'no previous birth trauma' so it seems my experience wasn't deadly enough for them to think it's anything particularly traumatising, which is wonderful.

I'm posting I guess because I'm 24 weeks now and I can't seem to let myself enjoy this pregnancy. I'm having a boy, which is a dream I never thought would happen, I thought i'd be destined for just girls as there are no boys in my family and I can't wait to meet him. But there's a complete mental block there in terms of the reality of him arriving and I can't shake the panic sometimes when he kicks and I lay there awake wondering how I'm going to do labour again. I dread getting closer to 40 weeks, can't make sense of what I want to do in terms of delievery as I have GD again so will likely be put through all of the monitoring and bullshit that comes with pressure of induction and not going to full term etc again, I'm just really quite scared and feeling quite lonely with it all, the stress and anxiety of the decision is heavy and I don't know how I'm supposed to decide on how to move forward without adding to that trauma and still being here and a good parent to my toddler all at the same time because she's going to need me too.

Apologies if you're read all of this it's kind of a ramble, I'm just having a hard time