I MARRIED when I was 36 and fell pregnant on my honeymoon — I had come off the Pill deliberately six months earlier because I was concerned that I might have trouble conceiving.

Right from the first scan, I was told that my baby would be big. At about the five-month mark the consultant obstetrician began discussing my “birth plan” with me. This was at an NHS hospital in North London — not at all the sort of place associated with the so-called “too posh to push” crowd — but right from the start he suggested that I should consider a Caesarean. “Your baby has a very big head,” he said, “and there’s a chance that you will have to have an episiotomy. It will be a hard delivery. If you were younger and this wasn’t your first child, I would suggest a natural birth, but you’re going to find it tough.”

He also said that no matter what anyone else told me, my insides would not just ping back into shape after the birth: “Anyone who says that you can have a baby and be the same afterwards is lying. Your muscles will never be the same again, and your pelvic-floor muscles may be so weakened that later in life you’ll have incontinence problems.” He added that a high percentage of female obstetricians chose to have Caesareans precisely because they knew how much damage could occur.

What sealed it for me was the fate of a friend who gave birth in West London. The baby was in breech, she split horribly and had to have reconstructive surgery. On top of that she couldn’t have sex for two years. That decided it for me. Matthew wanted the Caesarean all along — he was worried that I would end up with permanent medical problems if I went ahead with a natural birth. But once I had made my decision I began to discover just how much hostility there is towards elective Caesareans and those who opt for them.

I was taking prenatal yoga classes at a holistic centre which was very “hairy Mary”. The woman taking the classes told us that there was never any need to use drugs during childbirth, that women had been giving birth since time began and that all pain could be managed through breathing control. I said: “But a lot of women used to die in childbirth.”

The lowest point came when a woman at the gym engaged me in conversation about the approaching birth. When I admitted that I was going to have an elective Caesarean, she simply walked off. The only affirmation I had was from a wealthy European friend, who said “good for you. Who wants to go through all that muck and pain?” as if I were about to have my car valeted. I can’t say that helped.

I had the Caesarean at 37 weeks because I had ovarian cysts and my baby was pressing on them, causing pain. Raisley was already 8lb.

On the day of the procedure, Matthew and I went to the hospital quite calmly. I wasn’t terrified of what was about to happen, as I might otherwise have been. The doctor gave me a spinal anaesthetic so I was awake throughout, and once that kicked in the Caesarean took only about five minutes. (The doctor removed the ovarian cysts at the same time, so that was another advantage of the procedure.) I remember hearing a sloshing sound as they cut through, then they held Raisley up in front of me. It did feel a little as if they had a basket of babies behind the curtain and were saying “this one’s yours”. But of course, because I couldn’t sit up to begin with, Matthew held Raisley much more than he would have done otherwise, and they bonded. The whole experience was a really happy one.

That said, by the time I came to have Constantine I’d had so much negative feedback about Caesareans that I felt I ought to have him naturally. But at 38 weeks I was examined and the doctor discovered that he was in transverse breech. He was delivered by forceps Caesarean. Had I tried to go ahead with a natural birth there could have been dreadful complications and Constantine could have been starved of oxygen. After the delivery I was in a lot of pain. In fact, I had a serious problem that was dealt with by an emergency procedure. The midwives were initially slow to react because they thought I was a “moaning Minnie” who had opted out of the pain of childbirth.

The poor woman next to me was an Omani refugee who barely spoke English. She was all alone, her labour went on for 36 hours and she ended up having an emergency Caesarean. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone, because her hips were tiny. She just lay there next to me in tears. It’s all very well to stigmatise women who have elective Caesareans, but sometimes it is the right thing. I felt that it was that woman’s basic human right not to go through that, and to have some kind of choice.

As for me, I have two healthy little boys, and I also have my health intact. I don’t understand why I, or other mothers like me, should have to feel apologetic about that.