Successful HBAC (not entirely positive)

I started having contractions(every 10-50 minutes) around 6am on Tuesday 1/18.  Around 1:30 they picked up and became a lot more frequent(every 2-9 minutes) and I started to have to breathe through some of them.  I called the midwife and being that the weather was so bad, she decided to head on over.  By 6pm things were pretty painful, but I was still rather early in labor.  After around 8pm things get kind of blurry.  I was in a lot of pain.  I couldn't believe labor was taking so long after DS's labor up to 8-9cm was so quick.  At some point my midwife checked me and I was at 6cm.  I was pretty devastated, but I wasn't really expecting more because of how I felt (ie. not in transition).

I spent a while in the birthing pool.  It didn't really seem to help.  Nothing did.  I was moaning really loudly and afraid the neighbors were going to call the police!  My midwife and her assistant were good at getting me to keep eating, drinking, and changing positions.  Sometime around 3:30 or 4am the midwife did her first internal.  I was 8cm.  She had me lie on the couch for an hour.  It was so uncomfortable, but apparently lying on my back helped because in that hour I finished dilating.  They had me go upstairs and sit backwards on a chair until I had the urge to push.  At first I thought I had to have a BM but it turned out to be the baby!  I pushed for about 2.5 hours, but didn't have the urge with every contraction and couldn't force my body to push when it didn't want to. 

I wound up with a 2nd degree tear and a postpartum hemorrhage.  I was stabilized but I kept getting lightheaded so DH freaked out and called 911.  I wound up taking an ambulance ride and going to the hospital to get my stitches, some fluids, and a catheter to relieve my bladder (I couldn't get the pee out and it turns out I had over a liter of fluid in there-no wonder!).  The hospital staff were really great until it was time for discharge.  The OB came in to lecture me and then made the nurse come to my room for all sorts of information on my midwife.  I'm not sure what she thinks she is going to do, since homebirth isn't illegal here.  Regardless, she finally let us go.  I wanted to sign out AMA but DH wasn't keen on it, and I was afraid the OB would call CPS or some other ridiculous thing. 

With all that, I have to say I think I'm done having kids.  I originally wanted at least 3, but I can't imagine having another c-section and I know this birth would've ended with one in the hospital.  I doubt most of the docs here would even allow a PP hemorrhage history to have a VBAC.  The recovery so far is a million times better than the c-section, so there's that.  Sorry this isn't a super happy, encouraging post, but I think reading some stories like this were helpful to prepare me when planning my VBAC.

Best of luck to all of you-if I can do it, you probably can too :-)