Fair warning: This will be incredibly long.
My third was born vaginally after two previous c-sections due to footling breech presentation.
My best advice for you is to surround yourself with support and determination. There are a lot of doctors who have lists of what they will and won't "let" you do (shameful to my way of thinking how many c-sections are performed because the baby is guessed to be big)--remember that you're the doctor's employer, & although s/he is the medical professional, s/he's not going to know everything. Do your research, stick to your guns, and if at all humanly possible have someone else with you during labor who is on your side & can help advocate for you.
I went 11 days past due. Many doctors start getting antsy about not "letting" you go postdates, which of course is silly (postdates doesn't increase your risks any). If you haven't had a previous vaginal birth, be warned that VBACs count as first time labor (from my experience this is true even if you labored before your c-section). My labor with Esther was about 40 hours long, and that was undoubtedly shortened by the Pitocin I was augmented with (I would not have consented to an induction with Pit, but I felt comfortable with augmentation).
I avoided an epidural because it increases risks (and I do believe that it increases the likelihood of a c-section in & of itself). It hurt. Unbelievably so, but Esther was posterior. I really recommend visiting
Spinning Babies for info on optimal fetal positioning (also an excellent Google search term). I adhered to it as best I could & I do think it made the difference in a vertex baby vs a breech baby.
When I went in to the hospital (had planned a homebirth), they made me sign a VBAC consent form that said 75% of VBACs are successful. Sounds scary, but consider that the rate of c-sections in this country is darn near 30%. Now, if my math is correct that means you have at least as good a chance of a vaginal birth as a woman who's never had a c-section.
Write out a birthplan before hand, and have it flexible. I talked about almost everything with the nurse before I was checked into the hospital. The one thing I forgot did indeed crop up--I am against Valsalva (coached) pushing, and the whole nightmare scenario of being yelled at to push, even to hold my breath, did indeed happen. I have every confidence that, had I told them I didn't want coached pushing, or to push flat on my back, they'd have been OK with it (****, I'd have pushed on my back all day long if they just hadn't hollered at me!). I also advise knowing what you will & will not give on. I didn't want my membranes ruptured, but they wanted to place an internal pressure monitor, so I acquiesced, even though it necessitated placement of a catheter & confined me to the bed (I'd passed as much time as I could at home before going to the hospital).
Now, I said I avoided an epidural, but I did get a narcotic for pain relief. I'm 90% sure it was Fentanyl. It didn't relieve much pain at all, but it did enable me to nap. It has a 2-hour window, which is to say they wouldn't have given it if they'd judged me to be less than two hours from delivery, because they didn't want it in the baby's system at birth.
Oh, and crowning hurt like heck. For some reason I had thought it would be there and then gone. It's not. It takes a while to get past that, but once you do it's relatively smooth sailing. The other thing no one told me about--the resident who caught the baby was wearing a clear face mask. Kinda like a welder's mask, but clear plastic. I understand why--high potential for nasty stuff to be flying around--but it was kinda weird.
I tore, and wound up getting a large number of stitches, but I'd rather that than an episiotomy. They gave me two or three shots of the numbing agent, but it didn't work; I still felt the needle quite well. Frankly, after everything else, I just didn't care about that.
I wasn't prepared for the recovery, either. Most women I've spoken with who've had both have said that recovery from a vaginal birth was easier. Not so for me. It was literally about two months before I could walk without feeling like my hips were going to disjoint. My whole vulva felt bruised, to say nothing of the stitches. It was about a week before I had a bowel movement--you can indeed be scared into constipation. Even just going pee stung like the dickens; the peri bottle was my friend.
All that said, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I had NO nursing issues with Esther. She was alert from the moment she was born; both the other two were sleepy and lazy nursers. I hadn't been able to hold the other two until several hours after their births, with Esther they really did hand her to me right when she came out; I can't fully explain how much laying hands on her right away meant to me. You don't get a medal for a VBAC, nor a demerit for an ERC, but knowing that your body can indeed do what it's made to do is just wonderful. There's such a feeling of empowerment to a VBAC.
ETA: Talk to your husband beforehand about taking pictures. Rob took pictures of everything (and I do mean
everything) because, as he told the nurses, he didn't know what I wanted him to take pictures of, so he was just going to photograph it all. There are parts of my body I really don't want to see in pictures, especially not in that context.
