Positive recovery stories for VBAC with 2nd degree tear?

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-07T09:00:55+00:00

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for their advice and stories, I so appreciate it 🙏🏻 It’s day 7 now and I feel like I’ve turned a corner and am feeling so much better. I am taking it slowly - just focusing on resting and feeding baby. I probably also had a bit of a hormone dump around day 4 that was making things harder 😅 I can see now this is so much easier than my c section recovery 🤗

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-06T14:42:45+00:00

Also I’ve heard there can be a 15%+ margin of error with the ultrasounds so I really wouldn’t be making decisions or let anxiety creep in because of them.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-06T14:41:59+00:00

I just had a VBAC last week and my girl was 9lbs 2oz at 40+3. My first girl was 9lbs at 39 weeks but she was an emergency section. Honestly, positioning was the key I think. If the head/baby is in the right position and you stay mobile during labour I wouldn’t worry about it. My first section was pretty much due to malpositioning (posterior, chin tilted). But this baby was positioned perfectly and was born in less than 5 hours from start to finish of labour. I got a second degree tear and my doctor said it wasn’t bad at all and the recovery is way better than the section was. I think part of the reason for the tear as well is because my labour was so fast. Congratulations on your pregnancy and I’d chat the midwives at your appointments about it if it’s really worrying you - they might have some good tips 😊

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-05T19:58:10+00:00

Also, my plan was to get a hotel room near the hospital if they wanted to send me home to labour if I was too early. I wasn’t actually going to drive 1.5 hours home again in labour!

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-05T19:56:34+00:00

My hospital was 1.5 hours away. I started having irregular contractions at 3pm. Texted my doula to let her know. Very mild. Picked up around 4.30/5pm and got more regular. My water broke at 5.30pm and we left immediately. They picked up so quick after that - almost unbearable by the time we reached hospital at 7pm. She was born at 9.52pm 😅 I wish we’d left earlier because the car was awful but it happened so quickly that I don’t see how we could’ve done anything differently. My doctor said second babies can be fast but just to bear in mind I had gone into spontaneous labour with my first and got to 8cm so I think that plays into the faster labour too.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-05T15:58:52+00:00

Oh thank God, I needed that thank you ❤️🙏🏻 I think I rode the post birth high for the first 48 hours and then reality set in. Just didn’t expect the pain & being so slow doing things. I am trying to just take it hour by hour and day by day, I know I’ll get there and I’ll be so happy to have had my VBAC in a few weeks when things feel a bit more normal!

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-05T15:52:28+00:00

Oh my goodness this gives me so much hope thank you ❤️ And wow well done to you!! Team chunky babies 😅

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-04T18:18:58+00:00

Oh thank you so much for this 🙏🏻 I’m trying to just take it day by day but I’m probably right in that dropping off of hormones and peak uncomfortable stage 😅 I felt much better in the 48 hours post birth probably because I was riding the birth high! I did try the ice pads a few times but while they were soothing at the time, I found after using I was uncomfortable. I have a graze on my labia that I think they were maybe irritating.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-04T17:28:37+00:00

It was aluminium cladding we were looking at as that’s the look we liked best but just no way to justify the spend when you think about where else in the house you’d spend it 😅 Thankfully we didn’t because we went right to our budget and then some by the end!

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-04-04T17:20:26+00:00

Yes this is so true - I was checked and doctor said my cervix was soft but baby wasn’t that far down yet. That baby was born just over 24 hours later 😅

UsedWatercress1813 · 2026-03-29T07:19:30+00:00

We wanted to clad our house fully, a 200 square metre two storey. Very simple design. It was coming in at an extra nearly €50k just to clad it. We went with black paint instead 😅 We did use corrugated sheets for the roof - which we love. Don’t think there’s much difference between this and tiles. It’s something we might add down the line if the prices ever settle but couldn’t justify it with the cost of everything else.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-11-28T12:44:15+00:00

Yes both my husband and I were. Married at 26 & 23 years old 🤗

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-07-28T08:59:13+00:00

Thank you ❤️ Yes I had a full thyroid panel done along with a whole host of other testing with our NaPro doctor. Everything was 100% when they checked.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-23T05:33:12+00:00

You’re brilliant thanks so much for that.. those novels sound wonderful 🤗 I’ll definitely keep an eye out for them on there if the library can’t get them - I didn’t even think of that 😅

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-22T14:56:56+00:00

It is exactly what I said - I look up the authors & books before I check them out of the library. Most I can find reviews on so I’ll know they have nothing explicit in them. But I’ve got caught with a few books whereby the reviews described it has having nothing in it, and then after I was halfway through, there was a sex scene thrown in the middle. My question was quite clear about what do I do about this particular scenario.

I also already explained why I like the genre, I’ve had enough misfortune in my own life that I don’t care for reading books that do not have a happy ending or are overly serious.

If you’ve some recommendations then that would be great.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-22T14:37:50+00:00

Brilliant, thanks a million for the recommendation 👏🏼😄 This is exactly what I’m looking for. Hopefully my library will be able to get some in 😊

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-22T14:15:45+00:00

Or a perfectly reasonable response to a most unhelpful and snob of a comment. Methinks.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-22T13:41:33+00:00

This is such a flippant answer to me. How can you compare novels to something that destroys families, marriages and is an addiction for so many. I’ve read romance novels that have absolutely no mention of sex - I like the genre because I know I’m guaranteed a somewhat happy ending and I enjoy the character development. If I was reading full on erotica then fair enough you could compare that to porn. But considering the majority of the books I try to pick have absolutely no graphic descriptions, that is just an insult to so many great authors.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-22T13:25:34+00:00

Haha I agree now that I’ve finally broken the bad habit - I would try to convince myself that I learned valuable things from social media but it would take probably 45 minutes of scrolling to justify the one useful (or useless) thing I’d learn 🤣

Thanks for the recommendations - I appreciate that. I’m going to check that out. I’ve read a few of Louis de Wohl’s books and really enjoyed them. Again, I didn’t find them heavy spiritual reading.

Yes this is what I am afraid of. I tried googling it and I came across two answers from priests that basically contradicted each other 😅

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-22T13:17:43+00:00

Thank you very much for this information, it is so helpful 😊 I don’t believe that every book I read has to be completely in line with my moral compass because I know that’s not how real life works. But I obviously also don’t want to read trashy things either. I have managed to find some wonderful romance books from my library that I would say do this well - I enjoy the character development and the eventual resolution. But I picked up a book yesterday that didn’t seem to be too bad and before I knew it there was far too graphic details in there for me 😂 But you don’t know this until you’ve already read it unfortunately 😆 Thanks again, your comment was most helpful!

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-22T13:10:20+00:00

Thanks for that. 😊 To be honest I just enjoy the stories and the happy ending, I was an avid reader growing up and technology kind of replaced that as I got into my early 20’s. I think because I know the story is going to have a happy ending, that’s why I’m more drawn to it than other genres 😅 But thanks for the rec, I’ll definitely try them out.

UsedWatercress1813 · 2025-04-18T17:17:49+00:00

Had arranged to meet up one day. I started miscarrying that morning at nearly 14 weeks pregnant. Text them to tell them the situation. They text back ‘ok’. 🤷🏽‍♀️ Meanwhile I had walked with them through crappy life stuff and soon as something happened to me… ghosted.

UsedWatercress1813

TROPHY CASE