You know I'd forgotten this thread, but now I have something to add.

Unfortunately, my labor went badly, my baby's head didn't engage at all even when I was fully dilated, and there was a risk of her being in distress because my amniotic fluid was absolutely full of meconium. So we ended up with an emergency caesarian. Even the c/s went difficult, as it turned out, and they had trouble getting her out that way because of the position she was in. These things evidently can happen.

I was upset about having to have a c/s because, among other reasons, I knew they would take my baby away from me for a little while after the operation. We asked them to try to find the staff to allow her to stay with us, but there were no midwives available (it was a stormy, busy night at the hospital). But in the end it actually wasn't so bad.

What happened is that they put her on my chest after she was born, for a short time (a few minutes, I think, not certain). I was so drugged by the epidural, and I couldn't stop shaking all over either. So I couldn't really hold her properly at all. DH had to hold her on my chest, skin-skin.

When they took her away, DH went with her, holding her. I think it was around 30 or 40 minutes while they stitched me up and had me in recovery, before they wheeled me back to them both. But during that time, honestly, I was in such a confused, drugged state, that I don't think I could have been any more use to our daughter than he was, in fact I suspect I would have been rather less, because I couldn't have held her close even if I'd wanted to. And I was confused and upset by the birth, and I wasn't really wanting to have to deal with holding our new baby at the time anyway, awful though that sounds.

The fact is that (in my experience - ymmv), having a c/s is such a traumatic thing to happen to your body, that the emotional anxiety of not being able to be close to the baby for a little while afterwards is small compared to what is going on for you physically, especially if you have a poor reaction to the drugs, as I did. That's how I found it, anyway.

It's nearly 4 weeks on for me now as I write this. I have almost no pain from my scar and I stopped taking painkillers a couple of weeks ago. I'm cautious about lifting things, just to be sensible, but am otherwise active and busy, and things are going fine. DD is beautiful. She is feeding wonderfully well and gaining weight at a great pace. She is interactive and engages with us, doesn't cry much, and seems, as far as I can tell, to trust that we (especially I) will meet her every need fast. She's a calm baby.

As far as I can tell, the way she was born and the events immediately afterwards have not harmed her in any way. Maybe we are lucky in that - it certainly kinda surprises me to remember just how physically traumatised I was in the first few days after the birth. Or maybe it's just how it goes.