[Editor’s Note: This is our second post in a two-part series on c-sections today. Contributing Writer Graeme Seabrook shares how her planned c-section helped heal her heart. You can part one of our c-section series here. -Jenna]

The birth of our first child, a son born in 2013, scarred me in more ways than one. I went from a routine doctor visit to being told I was seriously ill, through terror that I would lose the baby or my life, and finally into an emergency c-section.

Afterwards I had postpartum depression, anxiety. and I still struggle with PTSD.

And then we got pregnant again. Our daughter wasn’t planned, and my anxiety spiked. What if everything went wrong again? What if I got sick again? Could I handle this? Every time I thought about her birth I could feel the panic chasing me, nipping at my heels. I knew I wanted it to be different, but I didn’t know how to make that happen.

We called a doula. At our first meeting with her she asked if I was planning to have a natural birth or another c-section. The idea stopped me in my tracks. To me c-sections were something horrible that happened to you, not something that you could control. I knew immediately that was what I wanted. I was going to have a do-over.

At one of our last OB appointments our doula, Lin, joined us. She had worked with my doctor before and the two of them walked Adam and I through how everything would happen. When I worried about whether it would all work out, Lin reminded me, “Different baby, different experience.” It became my mantra.

On November 2, 2015 we got to the hospital around five o’clock in the morning and checked in. Lin helped me to keep the anxiety in check, and Adam held my hand and made really bad jokes with all the nurses during my prep. Everything was smooth and easy. It was so easy that I started to feel guilty. What if the baby wasn’t ready to come? Was I being selfish and forcing her out (one week) early? Lin pointed to the monitor where we could see that I had been having contractions the entire time we were getting prepped. My doctor confirmed: This baby was coming today one way or another.

“Are you ready to have your baby?”

“YES.”

And everything went as planned. I walked into the OR and the nurse said, “Just hop on up here, hon”, while patting the table and we both laughed because no way was I hopping anywhere. I was never alone; I was never afraid. Lin stood at my head talking me through everything that was happening, reminding me that everyone was following my plan. Adam sat by my side, holding my hand and kissing my forehead.

In between updates on what they were doing, the doctors asked me about my son, talked about their children, and we even talked about Jane the Virgin, which I’d been watching throughout my pregnancy. I was surrounded by women who were taking care of me and helping me bring my baby into the world. If a operating room could feel both relaxed and sacred at the same time, this one did.

“You’re going to feel a pull, she’s coming now.”

And then there she was. Held up so that I could see her, brought to me so that I could touch her before being whisked away for the Apgar tests (during which she pooped profusely on the nurse and the room erupted in laughter). As they were closing me up everyone talked about how beautiful she was. Adam stood by the nurse and was able to carry her back to me and lay her on my chest. I can’t tell you much of what happened after that as my world had narrowed down to the most beautiful baby girl in the world.

At the end of her first home visit with us, Lin said she needed to get something off of her chest. She didn’t usually like to work c-sections, she said, because they were clinical. She wanted to thank us for choosing her, for allowing her to be there. She said my c-section had changed her mind about what they could be.

I might always have to work through everything that happened to me on the night my son was born. I can’t change it, only learn to live with it.

I will never regret, or be anything other than thankful, for everything that happened on the morning I gave birth to my daughter. I wouldn’t change a minute of it for the world.