This is a guest post by my friend Susie, mom to a 16-month old daughter whose currently pregnant with her second child. She had a c-section with her first child and is debating between a repeat c-section or a VBAC for this pregnancy.

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I’m currently reading a book called Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies? The Surprising Science of Pregnancy, a book written by a scientist while she was pregnant with her first child. She wondered if any of the common pregnancy myths held any truth to them scientifically, and she decided to do a bit of research. I have to admit that although she loses me sometimes when she goes on and on about genes and hormones, for the most part the book is utterly fascinating! The author answers questions like:

  • Why do you have vivid dreams while pregnant?
  • Can you tell if you’re having a boy or a girl?
  • Does excessive heartburn mean you will have a baby with a full head of hair?

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She also goes into how environment or food will affect the baby, how different levels of stress can make or break your baby, and so many other fascinating things. Of course, these are all theories, and you have to take them with a grain of salt. However, everything is backed up with extensive research and experiments. This book is not for the PETA lover though, because almost every chapter lists some sort of experiment that was done on lab rats and other animals.

I’m not quite done with the book, but I read a chapter that kind of hit me a bit, and it’s making me rethink my birthing plan for my next child. The author discusses what happens in the first hour after birth. A test done on mice where baby pups were “separated from their mother shortly after birth let out cries of distress as if they were being tortured and their stress hormones rocketed. Over a long period of time, they became sickly and brain damaged.”

People may think this is cruel, but this is what happens to babies and their moms every day in hospitals. Babies are placed on mom’s chest for about a minute before they are taken away to be weighed, fingerprinted, and checked for health. Moms who have c-sections sometimes don’t see their babies for almost 24 hours after birth!

The book states that in the first hour of birth, the “golden hour,”  babies have a super sensitive sense of smell and whatever odors they encounter, even unfamiliar ones, are imprinted in their memory. This window is extremely short however (the window is literally only an hour!), and babies exposed to these same smells 12 hours after birth showed no memory or preference for them later. This is why babies tend to prefer their mothers or caregivers over others.

This impression goes both ways – having the baby close to the mom will trigger ocytocin and prolactin, which make you produce milk. “If you spend the hour in an intimate embrace with your baby, you are 8 times more likely to breastfeed spontaneously than a mother who doesn’t.” Your milk will come in much faster, you may also get a better latch from your baby, and they tend to regain their birth weight more quickly.”

This chapter made me think about my daughter Avery’s birth. I was in labor for 22 hours before having an emergency c-section. After birth, my body was literally worn down and I started to shake like crazy. I was also so out of it that I couldn’t make sense of what was around me. My husband Winsor held Avery and tried to show her to me, but it didn’t even register that I had a baby, and my first thought was, “what the heck is that?” I never touched her, or held her, or barely even looked at her. I literally could not even turn my head to see her; I had my eyes closed the entire time and was trying to will my body to stop shaking.


It took about 45 minutes to an hour for the doctors to stitch me back up, and during that entire time, Winsor held Avery while sitting next to me. Then they took her away to the NICU to monitor her while they placed me in a hospital room. I woke up hours later, finally feeling more like myself, but I wasn’t allowed to see Avery until much, much later. Also, because she was in the NICU, they weren’t allowed to bring her to me – I had to go to see her. Trust me – walking, even if it’s just down the hall, right after you’ve had a 22 hour labor and C-Section is NOT FUN. The next 5 days in the hospital was a blur of tears, pain and frustration.


A year and a half later, Avery is 1000% Daddy’s girl. I know that they say girls attach to daddy and boys attach to mommy, but damn, she is just ALL about dad. Seriously the only time she attaches to me is if Winsor is not around. Even then she sometimes wanders around the house looking for “baba, baba” (Avery talk for daddy). Winsor usually gets her in the morning, but the few times when he had to go into work early and the task fell to me, she would cry at the sight of me and start whining for baba. Also, when Winsor is holding her, she will probably come to me about 1 out of every 10 times I ask her to.  In public, I usually let her be with her dad because I prefer to have my heart broken only at home where there are no witnesses.


I’m totally exaggerating because she doesn’t hate me of course, but it’s very obvious who she prefers. Anyway, I wondered if the fact that Winsor held her during the golden hour had anything to do with her attachment to him? I wondered if the reason I didn’t touch her at all until almost a day later prevented her from bonding to me? I always joke that Winsor can keep her and I’ll just have another baby to have for my own, but all jokes aside, it’s truly heartbreaking because it makes me feel less of a mother.


For my second birth, I was strongly advised to have another c-section by two different doctors because of my first birth, and the fact that it would be just shy of two years (which some doctors recommend is the minimum time needed to heal before having a VBAC). My biggest concern was the recovery time with a c-section, and that having another c-section would allow me to have only 3 babies; I wanted the option to have four (I may not have four but I wanted the option). I was assured that I could have a fourth baby via c-section if I wanted to, and I was also assured that recovery would be much better since it would be a scheduled c-section, vs an emergency c-section that was performed on a worn down body after 22 hours of labor. Also, if something goes wrong during a VBAC, they would only have about 5 minutes to get me to an operating room before serious complications (including death) could result. GULP.


I’m secretly terrified of pushing a baby out, so hearing all these things assured me that maybe having a c-section wouldn’t be so bad. But after reading about the golden hour, and also a recent article claiming that c-section babies have twice the chance of becoming obese, it made me wonder if I should attempt to have a VBAC for baby 2. I want to be able to provide the best environment possible for baby #2 to feel secure and to be able to bond with me, even if it’s just a theory (and I’m sure there are millions of babies attached to mommy without the golden hour bond). I want to go with the birthing plan that will allow me to spend as much of this golden hour as possible cuddling with my newborn. If it means pushing out a watermelon out of the hole the size of a lemon and risk pooping all over my doctor, then so be it.

How did you decide whether to have a repeat c-section or a VBAC with your second child?

C-Sections part 2 of 5

1. What to Expect When You're Expecting a C-Section by Mrs. Bee
2. Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies? by pregnancy
3. C-Section: True or False? by Mrs. Markers
4. A Positive C-Section Story by Mrs. Bee
5. Swarm: What Would You Change About Your Labor/Birth? by Swarm