C section

(Disclaimer - I am beyond grateful that my son and I are both happy and healthy however I am still carrying a lot of trauma regarding his birth.) I’m just curious as I’ve seen loads of photos of people who have had a c-section, holding their baby straight away but I never got to. I had a cat 2 emergency c section. I was asked if I’d like skin to skin/golden hour and I said yes. But when my son came out, my partner cut the cord, one of the nurses brought him over to me while I was being stitched up and held him next to me for a moment and then my partner held him for the duration. After that my partner and baby were sent to recovery room. When I was done and went to recovery room my mum was holding him and then he got taken to NICU for 2 hours so I didn’t actually get golden time. Feel quite sad reflecting on this and why I didn’t get to hold my baby 😔 I was shaking an awful lot so I’m guessing this might be why.

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Your feelings are perfectly valid, I also didn’t get to hold my baby for a few hours and hated it. I’ve had therapy around the experience as a whole and it’s really helped me. You can ask for a debrief from your hospital and they should be able to explain why you didn’t get to hold baby. But regardless of it you are allowed to be sad it wasn’t the birth you wanted xx

It’s a real shame the nurses/midwives didn’t meet you wants to hold your baby. You’re right you shaking a bit might have prompted them to not offer but really they should have, and I’m sorry this didn’t happen. What you can do now though, is have ALL the skin to skin cuddles as possible now! Get naked with your baby and hold him every moment you want to. The golden time can happen anytime but i appreciate it didn’t happen how you envisioned that so that’s hard. Remember there are also debrief services at the hospitals to chat things through in a few weeks.

Definitly request a birth reflections appointment. These things need feeding back to the hospital. There are safe ways to facilitate skin token and maternal bonding in theatre and your baby should absolutely not have been taken out of theatre without you unless it was to the neonatal unit. This has been. Big no no at all of the units I’ve ever worked at!

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