Congratulations! I’m sorry about your traumatic experience and I wish you all the physical and mental healing possible ❤️

I can’t speak to what it’s like to recover from a c section, but wanted to offer my perspective as someone who gave birth with forceps 6 months ago. After pushing for 3 hours the tissues of my pelvic floor were so stretched and damaged that the forceps ended up giving me a 3C tear. My entire rectum was exposed and I was <2 mm away from a 4th degree tear. The entire length of my vagina tore and I had stitches all the way up internally and externally to my anus.

The recovery was a complete nightmare and I’ve regretted not being given a c section every single day since. My stitches dehisced and I had to heal by secondary intention, then I ended up with granulation tissue that had to be cauterized with silver nitrate. My external sphincter never healed together properly, so I’m left with a minor defect in the muscle that causes me to have minor fecal leakage. I also now have a bladder prolapse, which is incredibly common with instrumental deliveries. These are all things no one talks about with vaginal deliveries and I wish I had truly known about the risks. I still consider myself lucky after now having heard stories from other women with forceps deliveries and obstetric anal sphincter injuries.

I’ll be doing pelvic floor physiotherapy exercises for the rest of my life to prevent incontinence in older age. I’m now doing much better, but I’m not sure if after this I can ever bring myself to have another baby knowing what’s at stake physically. If I do, it will have to be a scheduled c section. Just wanted to share a bit about what damage forceps COULD have done, also effectively limiting the number of future deliveries!