A Prayer/Advice Request (Caution: this contains somewhat graphic material so beware if you are a male or female without children who is grossed out by the idea of birth or mentally twleve years old)

I forgot to mention this in my last post, but as most of you know I had a c-section last time. For those of you who don't know the story I'll fill you in a little so you'll understand my predicament a little better.

Hayden was a massive baby. I started measuring three weeks too large around 29 weeks and by the time my due date got here I was not dilated at all. I did lose my mucous plug but that's about all my body did in preparation for this baby by 40 weeks. So since he was so large, and I knew he would only get larger I asked them to induce me the next week if he hadn't come by then. I REALLY wanted a vaginal birth and was afraid the larger he got the more unlikely it would be to happen for me. I went into the hospital 5 days later and they started a med overnight to try and make me dilate. It didn't work, so in the morning they broke my water, and even then it didn't work. Then they started me on pitocin. I waited as long as I could before asking for the epidural, and at first it was a gradual pain, but then they turned the pitocin up and it hit me like a ton of bricks. All I could do was cry without blinking and stare at my iv stand until I had the fluid I needed to get the epidural. Someone said to just look at Steve and concentrate on him but HE was crying too so that only made it worse! Lol...by the way, if I didn't know how much he loved me before that day, I certainly had no question after. He was amazing...so sweet and supportive. Just wanted to share that. :) So anyway, I finally dilated all the way to 10 not long after all of this, and I started to push. At this point everyone that saw my belly loudly exclaimed that I had a ten pound baby in there...like I didn't know that already. So the looks I got when I decided to push were a little questionable, but I really wanted a vaginal birth as I said before, so I went with it. My midwife didn't even turn off my epidural, nor did she remove my catheter, and since I had seen her in the delivery room with two other friends previously with whom she did turn the epidurals off when it was time to push I knew she had her doubts about this. The one thing I feel good about is that I did move him with my pushes! This reassures me that I knew which muscles to use so if there is a next time I would hope I wouldn't have any issues in that department. At this point the doctor on call came in and stood at the back of the room with my midwife, talking about me like I wasn't in the room as they usually do. He looked very concerned and told her that if I kept pushing and something went wrong that he couldn't use any tools to help get the baby out because he was so big and that he didn't think this was a good idea. She looked concerned and I heard her tell him to give her a minute but that he might want to prepare for a section. She came over to me and told me it was my choice, but after hearing that why on earth would I say I wanted to keep pushing if it could possibly hurt my baby??? I thought I would be okay with a c-section but in reality when the decision was made I was terrified. I was shaking uncontrollably and they actually had to give me something to calm me down. By the time I finally got in there I was a little better, but still scared. They started before they even brought Stephen back and that didn't help things. As an afterthought someone said, "Hey, does she have anyone?" And then they brought him back. They told me I would only feel intense pulling and tugging when they were actually pulling the baby out, but I felt it the ENTIRE time. It was a terrible experience. I found out later that he had actually gotten stuck and that was why it was so hard to get him out. His chest was so broad that he wouldn't fit through the tiny 6" incision so the doc got pretty rough with me. As a result I had a really hard recovery and required medication for twice as long as they usually give it. They also whisked my husband away with the baby and I was all alone for what seemed like forever while they stitched me up, so that didn't help my nerves. And what do you know, he was 10lbs, 3oz! Now, I have talked to a ton of women who have had c-sections and their experiences were nowhere near as terrible as mine. Infact, most women tell me theirs went very smoothly. I know I had some extenuating circumstances so maybe that was the issue, but either way it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

So that brings us to the conversation I had with my new doctor on my first visit. I told her that I ideally would like to have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) but that I do want to be very educated on the subject before I have made up my mind 100%. She asked me how many children I wanted, because if I just maybe only wanted one more after this a c-section would be what she would reccommend, but if I wanted multiple more children after this, she would possibly reccommend a VBAC if everything was perfectly healthy throughout the pregnancy. I told her I have no idea how many kids I want...Stephen and I have never really put a number on it, and we are both fine with that. We could have one more after this or three more, who knows? So at this point she told me what her suspicions were as to why my baby got so big last time. I told her that I failed the first glucose test and had to do the four hour one. They usually administer the test between 24 and 28 weeks, and at 29 weeks I started measuring three weeks larger. She said that at the time of the test I may have been borderline gestaional diabetic and may have developed it later in my pregnancy, after the second test. So she said that if my sugar was perfect this time around and if the baby seemed to be of average size and there were no other complications that we could serioulsy talk about a VBAC. She reassured me that if I did have to have a c-section this time around that it would be a whole different experience. She said my body wouldn't be exhausted from laboring all night and day and that the baby wouldn't be so big so there wouldn't be tons of pulling and tugging, and that all in all it would be a much better experience. One of my worries with this is if I do have another c-section, this may limit me on how many kids we can have. That's a little sad for me because I don't want too many incisions and scar tissue to be the reason we can't expand our family more if we want to later on. She said we have plenty of time to decide, so I would like to ask if any of you have any advice or knowledge on the subject or if you could just keep the matter in your prayers for me so that when the time comes I can make the decision that is best for both the baby and me. I appreciate it, and sorry for another ridiculously long post! :)