'I felt so alone and like my body had failed me'

Hannah Marsh was left with PTSD after an emergency C-section, but with deliveries via Caesarean on the rise, she wants women to be more informed about giving birth

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Hannah Marsh felt like she had “survived a shipwreck” after having her first child, who was born by Caesarean after a 30-hour labour.

"Birth is a seismic experience however it happens," says Hannah, 40. "It’s an experience that tends to shake you to your foundations and spits you out on to brave new shores.

"My own experience was deeply traumatic. It was absolutely not the birth I had prepared for, physically or emotionally. That disconnect left me in a very vulnerable position, with a huge amount to unpick and figure out what had happened. I was left with a lot of questions, a lot of whys."

She has addressed those questions in her powerful new book, Thread, which, as well as telling her own story, looks at the history of Caesareans along with the blame, shame and misconceptions that shroud discussion of this major surgery.

Last year, 42% of deliveries in England and Wales were by Caesarean, compared with 29% five years before.

Hannah says that's down to a number of factors, but she wants women to be more informed to be able to make the right choices when it comes to their birthing plan.

"I had a wonderful, very experienced midwife," says Hannah. "I was also under obstetric care because I had gestational diabetes and I attended hypnobirthing classes. With everyone the intent was the same, to care for women."

But somehow, even with all that care, she felt the experience of childbirth and its many eventualities weren't fully explained.

Hannah wants professionals - which in obstetrics is still heavily male-dominated - to not wrap women in cotton wool.

BRUTAL

"I think it is hard for women to make informed decisions around their pregnancies and birth when they are caught between fluffy euphemisms, quite brutal scaremongering language and an ideology that intervention isn't the best option.