Hi, I'm back. It's only been a few days but this thread has been very active.

Sorry it sounded so bad that I had to walk to special care, oops, I should explain myself more.

The morning after his delivery, they took me to intensive care, bed and all - now this was painful, felt every bump, to see my baby. He was so big in comparison to the premmies. His feet were touching the bottom of the humidicrib and his head the top, even I found this funny. The next day they took me in a wheel chair. But by day 3 they really want you walking, I was in the room with the door right opposite the special care nursery, so they did try to make it easy for me and the midwives would walk with me to make sure I was ok. We were in for seven days and went home the day that he was able to leave special care.

Also re the birth, even though I had a very sick baby, I was still given him to hold and then my husband went with him to the nursery. I think it was another two days before we got to hold him again.

I just wanted to add something that I remembered that is worth sharing. I started to feel really great after around 10 days, well in comparison to how I had felt since I hadn't handled the pain very well. I don't remember when, I think it was after a couple of weeks, I went to the supermarket. Did the shopping, pushed the trolley to the car (all things I'm sure I was told not to do). Next day I was in awful pain that lasted a couple of days, so the lesson here is, it's true what they say about being careful.

I can't wait to see how I handle it this time, state of mind may have a big impact on how the pain is perceived and since I was unable to do anything for my baby, I probably had too much time to dwell on myself. I was also really upset that I had had a caesarean as I had never contemplated that this would happen to me. My first was a 7 hour labour and the second was supposed to be easier!

Naturally, I would love to have a VBAC, since in my experience the caesarean was much harder but it's really scary having a sick baby and the factors against me are:

I'll probably need an induction, which adds to the risk, as I have not delivered a baby before 42 weeks and as I'm older there is a higher risk that my placenta will fail earlier than it did with my son;

My second baby was 9.3 lbs and too big, so this baby will need to be smaller for me to have a chance (so hard to tell);

Also, I'm more scared of having a sick baby than I am of the pain.

So after talking to my OB, I think I have decided to have the caesarean without a trial labour unless it is spontaneous.

Should have told you all to go make a cuppa at the start of this! It's pretty exciting though anticipating what will happen.