Hi Maz,
Firstly, hugs to you, honey. I do know exactly how you feel.
My first birth was a caesar (emergency) under a general. I knew it was going to be a caesarean. Both babies were transverse, so there was no way out but through the hood. The emergency part was a surprise.
I felt totally ripped off. Totally. Still do, to this day and OMG they are 11!!!!

When I was pregnant with Lily I planned for a VBAC but ended up having an 'elective' caesar. It was calm, planned and very sterile. Again I felt as though the baby had been removed rather than birthed. I was awake though and got to see her but I still felt like a failure as a woman and that I had missed out on an important rite of passage.

Next came William...

Then we come to Ivy and Noah, again, choice was taken away from me due to emergency and again I felt as though I had failed.

It's hard when we have this drive to birth our babies, have a normal natural birth. Sometimes I feel so sad when I read about normal birth and I wonder why that was so hard for me to achieve.

Like you, Maz, I will never know normal physiological birth. I guess that is something I will have to work through.
Like some of the other girls have said, there are ways to help you achieve the absolute best outcome for caesarean birth.

Ok, so you are going to have a general. Is Jed allowed in? Most hospitals allow the partners in these days, even with a general. Get him to take in his camera, or a video camera so you can get heaps of photos for you, so you can piece those memories together. I think that is one of the biggest things, when you have a general, you lose a big chunk of what happened and that certainly doesn't help. What about having baby in recovery with you from when you wake up and having skin to skin there? What about requesting that no one touches baby (excpt Jed - who could also have skin to skin until you wake up) until you have? You can ask for all the stats to be done after you are with baby too. There is nothing written in stone that says baby MUST be weighed and measured within half an hour of birth, that just makes things tidy for us midwives!!!
If you've chosen a name for your baby, why not ask everyone to hold off calling her/him said name until you have had the first opportunity to utter it? I know that was one of the special things at Lily's birth, when the surgeon asked what I was going to call her. Saying for the first time, made it real. Made her mine.

I feel for you and I understand how you are feeling.