I don’t know if it helps, but this would be my best advice: this isn’t that big of a deal, either way. Right now it seems like everything, but in terms of long-run impact, it’s not even as big of a decision as choosing your childcare or your pediatrician.
I had an emergency C-section. It was the emergency part that made it awful: my epidural wasn’t working, they couldn’t figure out why, so they went to the general anesthesia. That meant I missed the birth and in fact didn’t see my son for six or seven hours after he was born, which was hard. Worse, however, is that my pain management was poorly done because of general and the epidural still being in there. I went from undermedicated to over to under and was pretty much a groggy, pain-filled mess for 3 days. None of that would have been the case in a planned section. Recovery from the section itself wasn’t bad at all.
I didn’t feel like the C-section was a factor at all in my not feeling at home again in my body. What was a factor was 1) nursing and 2) sleep deprivation and 3) hormone cascade. Nursing was probably the biggest factor, and if you are pumping 4 or more times a day, it’s REALLY not your own. So don’t let “will delay getting my body back” be a factor. If you are planning on nursing, it’s not going to be entirely your own until long after the c-section is a non-issue. Furthermore, while your body is not your own now, your WILL is not your own with a newborn in the house. Even if you are not nursing, a baby is tremendously demanding, and unless you are planning on completely dropping the ball at work for the next six months, work + baby will probably take about all you’ve got. That’s just the reality.
For whatever it’s worth, I went back to work after 7 weeks, and my doctor would have let me go at six or even earlier, provided I promised not to drive on narcotics or lift anything heavier than the baby. I think the “8 weeks for a section” thing is a holdover from when it was a much more significant surgery. I felt like I returned to work too soon, but not because of the surgery: it was entirely because of the sleep deprivation/nursing/pumping hell. The section was fine. So don’t assume a section means you have to miss more work.
One last point about missing work: at some point you will become too pregnant to work, and it’s just the fucked up reality of our system that you can’t afford to stay home and just be pregnant. Now, if your job is very accommodating and you can work from home or go to work and half-ass it, that’s great. But for many of us, that’s not an option, and it’s reasonable to take that into consideration when deciding what to do.