Ajahn Brahmali discusses rebirth and consciousness at length in his dependent origination series. He quotes many suttas to show how the EBT (Early Buddhist Texts) talk about rebirth and consciousness. It’s an excellent series, well worth watching. If you’re only interested in the rebirth/consciousness part, you’ll have to jump to the specific workshops where they discuss that. He might not address your particular question, but it might still be beneficial to watch it. Here’s a link to the whole series: https://bswa.org/teaching/dependent-origination-workshops-2020/.
Regarding your questions:
- The Buddha was primarily driven by compassion. His whole purpose was to free beings from suffering, and that includes being reborn into realms or situations with a lot of suffering. However, he was also very pragmatic. So, even though birth is seen as something to escape altogether in Buddhism, including births in better realms or situations, the Buddha acknowledged that we need certain conditions present to be able practice the Dhamma (which is how we free ourselves from birth). For example, if you’re born into intense poverty in a war-torn area and you don’t have access to the Buddha’s teaching, and so are unable to practice the Dhamma, that obviously isn’t a good rebirth. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be reborn into a situation like that. It’s also generally understood in Buddhism that being reborn into some of the heavenly realms isn’t ideal either. Those realms are so pleasurable that it’s hard to practice the Dhamma.
- I don’t know where you heard those descriptions of Nibbana. They might not be from the EBTs. In general, the Buddha didn’t talk about what happens after parinibbana in the EBTs. He refused to talk about many philosophical points related to that and some other topics. Ajahn Brahmali has said that the bliss of the jhanas is similar to how an enlightened mind feels because there is little to no greed, anger, and delusion present during or shortly after attaining jhana. So we can infer that Nibanna would be blissful.
Bhante Sujato did a series on kamma and rebirth. He’s done it more than once, actually. Here’s a link to one of those series: Karma and Rebirth Course | Buddhist Society of Western Australia. He does some “myth busting” about kamma in the beginning, which is quite eye opening as there are many incorrect views held by Buddhists (from the perspective of the EBTs). Ajahn Brahmali does this, too, at the beginning of many of his workshops. The ongoing Noble Eightfold Path series he is doing is definitely worth watching. There are 15 parts to that series, so far. Here’s a link to the first couple of videos in the series https://bswa.org/event/workshop-series-noble-eightfold-path/.
This might also be of interest to you: Are rebirth, old age etc. 'dukkha'? Or, merely *characterised* by dukkha? - #10 by Brahmali