The VBAC Link

Sheryl’s first baby was five days late. Her second baby was five days early. From the first contraction to a surprise car birth, Sheryl’s third baby was under an hour! 

Not only were the methods of delivery very different with each baby, but Sheryl’s life circumstances were too.

Julie and Sheryl chat about preparing yourself not only for the long, marathon labors, but also for the possibility of the fast and furious ones! 

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

COTERIE CODE VBAC20

https://www.coterie.com/products/the-diaper?utm_source=VBACLINK&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_campaign=DiaperFull Transcript under Episode Details 

Julie: All right. Good morning, Women of Strength. This is Julie Francom, and I am so excited to be here with you today to share with you a very exciting story. One of my favorite types of birth stories, people might think I’m crazy, but– oh, do you know what? I’m not going to tell you what the story is, but if you have been listening for a minute, you might know when I say what my favorite type of story is, but I’m going to leave it to be a surprise. 

We are going to go ahead and read a Review of the Week really quickly, then I’ll introduce my guest of the day. Okay, let’s see. This review is from Apple Podcasts. It’s from ccm57, and she says, “I am so thankful I came across this podcast and know it was an invaluable tool when educating myself regarding VBACs and the birthing process in general. My first son was born via Cesarean due to his stubbornness and refusing to turn from his breech presentation. Leading up to his C-section, I was devastated that I wouldn’t be able to experience the natural birthing process I had always wanted. 

“I am in the medical world. I knew about VBACs, and it was never even a thought I wouldn’t try for one in my next pregnancy. I found The VBAC Link halfway through my second pregnancy, and it was so addicting. I listened to every episode, sometimes multiple times a day, until my delivery. Every woman’s story was amazing and truly helpful to me personally. 

“Thank you, Meagan, for being as passionate about VBACs and educating women all over the world. I can excitedly say that God was so gracious, and I had my beautiful VBAC this past August. Thank you to every woman who have shared your story on the podcast and for all of the women who are listening and expecting a sweet baby, I am cheering you on.” 

I am so excited to hear stories and reviews like that. It’s really incredible what can happen when you get a group of women together to share stories and to help uplift and inspire each other. I’m grateful to this reviewer today and to all of you listening, to everyone who has shared their story on the podcast, and to everybody who helps spread the word about VBAC and helps increase access to people all over the world, really. 

All right. Well, guess what? It is very cold today. It’s been a very nice 70s and 80 degrees here in Utah for the last little while, but it is now mid-October at the time that we are recording this, and it is raining and freezing. There is supposed to be snow dumping up in the mountains today, and I am just wrapped up tight in my big, poofy blanket and very, very excited to talk to our guest today. 

Her name is Sheryl, and she is going to share her Cesarean and VBAC stories with us. I am really excited. I am really excited for this story, you guys. I’m not going to tell you what we are going to talk about at the end because I don’t want to ruin the surprise. It’s going to be a great episode, and I am just going to go ahead and give it over to Sheryl and let her pick it up. 

Oh, first, hold on. Let me read her bio. I am still getting into the swing of things. 

Sheryl: Sure. 

Julie: I need to remember that. Let’s see.

Oh, yes. Sheryl is a mom of three. She has been married for 10 years to her husband. They live in Sugar Creek, Ohio. I love the Midwest except in the winter. It’s getting ready to be not so fun out there. It’s beautiful in the spring and summertime. Anyway, okay. She recently returned from living in the Dominican Republic for the last two and a half years which is really cool. I feel like everybody needs to have an experience living abroad. 

Sheryl: For sure. 

Julie: You just learn so much when you are in a foreign country experiencing different things. I feel like it’s very valuable. Anyway, that was a little bit of a tangent. But now, for real, we are going to give it over to Sheryl. Go ahead, Sheryl. 

Sheryl: Okay, well thanks so much for having me on. This is super fun.

Julie: Of course. 

Sheryl: Yeah, I’m not sure where you want me to start, but I have had two VBACs and very different experiences with both. My first was a C-section. I’ll start with his story a little bit. He’s 6-years-old, so six years ago, I knew I wanted to have a natural birth. I took a natural childbirth class. I felt like I had prepared, but I don’t think I had mentally prepared for birth very well. 

I think if I could do it again, I would definitely have hired a doula just to help with the mental aspect. I was five days late. I told my husband, “I’m not going to work tomorrow.” It was Sunday night. I was like, “There is no way I’m going to work tomorrow. I will go into labor tonight because I can’t go to work tomorrow pregnant.” 

He was like, “Okay.” We went on a truck drive on a bumpy road. We played mini-golf. We were like, “Okay.” We started watching a movie. I was like, “I think I’m cramping a little bit. Okay, this is great.” We finally went to bed, and yep. Sure enough, a few hours later, I woke up with contractions, and I was so excited. 

I was very taken back by how painful they were. Now, looking back, it was like, okay. Those contractions weren’t even that bad. It was going to get so much worse. I was progressing great. I think I went to the hospital when they were 3.5-4 minutes apart. I think I got there. I think I was dilated to a 4 or 5, so they were like, “Yeah, you’re progressing really well. This is great.” 

I figured it was 7:00 in the morning. We would have a baby by noon. At 11:00, I said that I wanted to get in the birth tub or just labor, but I wanted to get out to have the baby. I was in the tub. Now, looking back, I think I was in transition. I ended up vomiting a little bit and just being so nauseous and in so much pain. The water did help, then they came and checked me and were like, “You are an 8.” They were like, “You should get out if you don’t want to have your baby in the water.” 

I was so excited. They came and got things ready, then I really got fearful at that point. I was just very scared about what was going to happen and all of the things. They came and checked me, and they were like, “Oh, no. You’re not dilated that much. You’re maybe a 7.” I just tried to keep laboring on. We ended up doing some different pain management. I was just not progressing anymore. 

At this point, I think it was 14-15 hours, so I was just exhausted. I was very thankful. One of the midwives at the practice that I was at was off that day. She had actually been on vacation. They let her know, “Hey, just so you know, Sheryl is at the hospital. She is having a really hard time. We can’t figure out why she’s not progressing further.” She was like, “I’m going in.” She came in. She was so kind, and she worked for hours trying different positions and everything possible. 

Finally, she was like, “Okay.” I think it was 8:00 at night. She said, “You are exhausted. Let’s do an epidural,” which I didn’t want because I was like, “I don’t want needles. I hate needles.” I got an epidural. I got a little bit of a nap. It worked for about an hour, then it stopped working. The pain came back, but then obviously, there’s nothing you can do except lay there. I was at a 9, and it wouldn’t go any further. 

She kept trying different things even with the epidural. Finally, she was like, “Okay, he’s actually gone back up. He was down, and now he’s back up.” She said she was going to go talk to the doctor and see what he thinks we should do. They came back. It was 10:30 at night. They were like, “I think it’s time for a C-section. We don’t know why he’s going back up, but typically, it’s a sign that things are not going well, so we’re going to do a C-section.” 

At that point, you’re just so tired that you’re like, “Okay, yeah. Whatever we have to do to get him out.” They ended up doing a C-section. I was so tired that I was falling asleep while they were doing the spinal tap. I was just exhausted. 

The C-section went very well. My postpartum was hard. I think just as a first-time mom with a C-section and all of those, and then feeling like a failure. That was a really challenging time, but right away, the doctor told me that they were one in the area that was known for VBACs. They had successful VBACs. 

He told me and my husband right away, “You will be able to have a VBAC. There is no doubt in my mind that you will be able to have a VBAC for your next.” 

Julie: Oh, I love that. I love that they said that to you right from the get-go.

Sheryl: Yeah. It was so great, so it was like, “Okay. We know that the next one will be a VBAC.” 

We actually had a miscarriage between baby number one and baby number two. That was really challenging. It was a surprise. 

At that point, we had committed to move to Haiti. We weren’t planning on getting pregnant, but we got pregnant, then 10 weeks later, we miscarried. 

Julie: Wow. 

Sheryl: It was definitely a difficult time, and it was the year 2020. I don’t think I need to say anymore than that. It was February 2020 when I miscarried. 

Julie: Oh, Sheryl. COVID ruined everything. It really did. 

Sheryl: It was definitely a challenging year. We were ready to go on a mission. That got delayed until we ended up moving to Haiti in March 2021. We were there for almost 6 months, and then their president was assassinated, so the country became really turmoiled and it was becoming unsafe for Americans to be living there. Our mission board thought it would be best to pull us home. 

At that time, we had planned, okay. We moved in March. If we start trying for baby number two in June, we would have been in Haiti for a year. We’ll start trying. We had kind of started trying, then we got pulled out in July, so it was like, man. Do we keep trying? Do we not? 

We were like, like, “You know what? We’ll keep trying. We’ll see what happens.” Yep, sure enough, in August, we got pregnant again with our second baby, our little girl named Felicity. 

Right away, I had that confidence that, “Okay. I’m going to have a VBAC.” I did a really good job, I felt, of preparing mentally. I read so many books, so many podcasts. I decided right away, “Okay. I’m going to have a doula.” I was just really prepared. 

But during this time, we were planning on going back to Haiti. It’s so many details, but long story short, we weren’t able to go back to Haiti because it ended up getting worse, not better. So our mission board was like, “Hey, let’s find someplace else for you to serve in the meantime before you have your baby back in Ohio.” We connected with a mission in the Dominican Republic and ended up going to the DR. 

That was a great experience, but also, I waited to come back from the DR until I was 35 weeks pregnant. It was crazy to be in another country and know that you’re going back. I definitely did not want to have a baby in the Dominican Republic. If listeners are familiar with the DR, they have the highest C-section rate. I looked at the number really quick. I was actually surprised it wasn’t higher, but 58% of births are C-sections. Almost all of their natural births, they do episiotomies. That’s just what they do.

Julie: What?

Sheryl: Yeah, it’s nuts. So it’s like, there’s no way I’m going to have a baby in the Dominican Republic. Thank the Lord, I didn’t have a baby int he Dominican Republic. I was very ready to do this. I had affirmations. I had prayers written out. I hired a doula and all of the things. I spent a lot of things praying for very specific things asking the Lord, “Okay, I don’t want to go late. I don’t want to have a long labor, and I want this certain midwife.” Her name was Leanne. I wanted her to deliver me. She’s delivered two of my sisters’ children, so she was a family friend. She’s known us for 20 years. Those were my prayers that I kept praying. I asked family and friends to pray.

I went in at 39 weeks. She was like, “Hey, you’re dilated to a 3. You’re 50% effaced. Do you want to do a membrane sweep?” I was like, “Yes, let’s do it.” We did that. I went home. I felt fine. We did some food prep. I finally got my husband to pack his hospital bag that next day, then I guess I went to the doctor when I was 39 weeks and 1 day, but the next day, my husband was supposed to be working 2 hours from where we lived. 

He was like, “Should I go?” I was like, “Well, I think so. I don’t think I’ll feel anything tonight. Let’s plan on going. I’ll wake up when you wake up and make sure I’m not having any contractions.” He woke up at 5:00. I was like, “Yeah, I’ll get up.” I went to the bathroom. “No, I’m fine. No contractions. Go on to work. You’ll be just fine.” 

6:30 rolls around. Whoa, that’s a contraction. “Okay, I’m going to go back to sleep.” At 7:30, a contraction woke me up, and my little boy at the time would have been 3, almost 4. He woke up ready to have breakfst, and I was like, “Oh, that’s a contraction.” I tracked my husband, and he wasn’t even to the job site yet. I’m like, “Oh no.” 

Julie: Oh my gosh. 

Sheryl: Oh no. 

I made breakfast. I got in the shower. I was like, “Surely, they’ll slow down.” At this point, they were 4-5 minutes apart. I was like, “They aren’t slowing down. Okay.” My sister texted me. She was like, “Hey, how are you feeling this morning?” I was like, “I think I’m going into labor.” She FaceTimed me. I’m braiding my hair and trying to get ready. She’s watching me, and she was like, “Have you let Javen know yet?” I was like, “No. I was trying to let him get some work done.” She was like, “Sheryl, are you timing them?” I was like, “Yeah.” She was like, “That’s every 3.5-4 minutes apart. You should probably call him.” 

I was like, “Okay, yeah, you’re right.” I called him, and he immediately knew. He was like, “Ah, she’s in labor.” He hopped in the work truck and headed toward me, but there was no way that I could sit here and wait. We had three people lined up to take Riley for us. Unfortunately, those two people both did not pick up their phones, and one was sick. 

I called number three, and she was like, “Hey, I will come and get you and take you to the midwife office.” They were going to check me there before I went to the hospital just to make sure I was progressing. She had three kids in the car. She added one more of mine in. It was an interesting 30-minute drive trying to labor while there were kids in the car and a lot happening. 

I got to my midwife practice, and she was like, “Okay, yep. You’re dilated to a 5. You need to get to the hospital.”

Thankfully, my husband met us there. We headed to the hospital. We got to the hospital. I was a 6. My doula got there at 12:00, and things were just progressing really nicely. At 1:00, I think it was 1:00, my doula was like, “Hey, why don’t you go to the bathroom to see if you need to pee or anything?” I did, an at that moment, my water broke. 

They checked me. They were like, “You’re a 9. You’re almost there. Two more contractions. Okay, you’re ready to push.” So I pushed for an hour, and she was born at 2:15. It was really an amazing birth. It was everything I had prayed for. It was less than 12 hours which I had specifically prayed, “Please, Lord, no more than 12 hours.” It was told, “Oh, you’ll probably push for 2 hours,” and I pushed for an hour. It just felt like God was very faithful, and He answered my prayers. 

The one thing I didn’t pray about, and this time I did, was for no tearing. I did tear pretty bad, so that made postpartum pretty rough. 

After Felicity, we returned to the Dominican Republic and were there for 2.5 years. 

We’ll fast forward to last year, and were like, “Okay, maybe it’s time for us to head back to Ohio.” We really loved it in the DR. We had a great community and great friendships. The ministry we were serving with was wonderful, but we felt like, “Okay, this is what we are supposed to do.”

We came home for Christmas. We hadn’t been home for over a year, so it was really exciting to come back to Ohio and see family. While we were here, I just was like, “Man, I’m one day late,” and I’m never one day late. 

I had said, “Okay, I’d better get that taste just in case.” I took it, and sure enough, we are expecting another baby. It was very surprising, but also, it was just like, “Okay, we were planning on coming home, so now we are definitely coming home.” We moved back to Ohio in June, and we were due the end of August, August 27th. 

I think I should have mentioned that with Felicity, our second baby, I was 5 days early. I was 5 days late with the first one, and 5 days early with the second. I think just with this pregnancy, it was so different because we were just in a different phase of life. I didn’t prepare as well. I felt like in the last few weeks, I was scrambling mentally. I was feeling anxious and not prepared. I actually listened to The VBAC Link one day. I was really struggling. I was like, “I need to hear some positive stories.”

I was driving to the airport to do an airport run, so I just kept listening to episodes, and it was like, “Okay. Other people have done this. I can do this to,” so that was super helpful. I would say that overall, the practice was really great. It was one midwife and one OB/GYN, but I did not love this time around. They were not as supportive as I felt. They were like, “Hey, we are not going to let you go past 40 weeks no matter what. That’s our policy. You can’t go past 40 weeks.” I was just like, “Aw, well, I don’t want to be induced. I don’t want Pitocin. I don’t want to be induced.” They just kept pressing that, especially the doctor. 

I just didn’t feel super supported. We decided not to do a doula this time. The last few weeks were kind of rough. I didn’t feel great. It was the summer. We transitioned. We had two kids. Our second one, Felicity, is two, so it’s a lot different being pregnant with a 2-year-old and an almost 4-year-old. Yeah. I kept going to the doctor. 

At 38 weeks, they checked me. They were like, “Yeah, you’re not dilated at all.” At 39 weeks, they checked me, and they were like, “Yeah, there’s no way we could do a membrane sweep. You’re not dilated at all.” So at my 39-week appointment, they were like, “Yeah, we think it’s time to schedule that induction.” They did an ultrasound at 38 weeks, and they were like, “Yeah, you look perfect. Baby is healthy. Not too big.” All of those things. It was frustrating to me because I was like, “If everything is fine, why do I need to be induced?” 

We were contemplating fighting it, but then me and my husband were like, “Hey, is the stress of fighting the practice worth over going into an induction with a positive attitude?” We decided, “Hey, we’re going to schedule the induction. We’re going to do our best to do everything we can in the next week to make it happen on our own.” Lots of walking. We tried everything. 

My induction was scheduled for Thursday, the 30th, I believe, or the 29th. The 29th. I went in on Monday and had an appointment. I was like, “Hey, I just want to get checked one more time. Can I do a membrane sweep? That worked well last time.” 

I think my appointment was at 2:30 in the afternoon on Monday. They tried, and she was like, “Nope. You’re not even dilated more than a 2, and he’s way far up. Yeah. You’re just going to have to be induced on Thursday.” I was just so devastated. I left so sad, and I was just like, “Okay. We’re going to do this. I need to just be positive.” 

But then that night after we had the kids in bed, I had a little bit of a breakdown. I told my husband, “I’m just so sad. I really thought I could do this. My body is failing me.” You know, all of those things. 

He was like, “Hey, let’s just pray about it.” That night, we specifically prayed that I wouldn’t tear, Leanna would get to deliver, and that it would go really quickly. That was at 10:30 at night. We quickly did a lap around outside, just trying to calm me dow and then hopefully a walk would start something. 

Finally, we went to bed at 11:30. As I was climbing into bed, I felt a contraction. I was like, “Oh wow. That’s been the most painful one I’ve ever had. Okay, I’m going to go to bed.” I had another one about 8 minutes later, but didn’t think anything of it. I finally fell asleep, and I kept feeling them, but I was still sleeping. I didn’t really worry about it. 

Again, in my mind, I have to be induced on Thursday. There’s no way I’m going into labor. I woke up at 1:30 to an extremely painful contraction. All of a sudden, I felt a pop. I feel like I heard it too, but I felt a pop, and I was like, “That’s my water.” I woke Javen up. I’m like, “Javen, my water just broke, and the contractions are very painful.” 

He quickly called his mom to come over and watch the kids. He called the doctor’s office to let them know. I was yelling, “Hey, tell them that Leanne’s supposed to deliver.” I got in the shower. I tried to start getting cleaned up, and I’m realizing that the contractions are every 3-3.5 minutes. But in my mind, my water just broke. I’m sure I had plenty of time. I was only dilated to a 2 yesterday. 

My mother-in-law got there. I got out of the shower and got dressed. Neither me or my husband were in a hurry, but I walked from the bathroom to the kitchen table. Contraction to the kitchen. I couldn’t walk more than a few steps without having a contraction. I looked at my mother-in-law and I was like, “Man, I’ve never had my water break this early. These contractions hurt really badly.” She shook her head and was like, “Uh-huh. Yeah.” She looks at Javen, and she was like, “You need to get her to the hospital.” 

She’s trying to get us to the car. I’m in so much pain. She was like, “You’ve got to get to the hospital.” The hospital is a 40-minute drive. We left for the hospital at 2:00. I actually rode on a birthing ball in the back of the car which now, I’m like, “Yeah, that probably didn’t help slow the progress down,” but that was the only thing that was comfortable. 

I had my worship playlist going. I was in a lot of pain. I had a few friends who I had told, “Hey, I’m going to text you when I go into labor so you can be praying.” I texted a couple friends. I texted a sibling, “Just so you know, I’m going to the hospital. My water broke.” 

My one sister does some night work. She was actually still awake, so she started tracking me on my phone. We got halfway to the hospital, and I told Javen, “Javen, we’re not going to make it. I need you to pull over. He’s coming.” He was like, “No, just wait 20 minutes. You can wait 20 minutes.” I was like, “Nope. There’s no way. You need to get the car pulled over right now. He’s coming out.”

I quickly got off the ball, and within 2 minutes of getting the car pulled over, Javen moving the driver’s seat forward, and opening up the door, and calling 9-1-1, we had our baby boy. 

It was the most crazy experience. I say he came out in three pushes, but really, I didn’t push at all. To experience my body just taking over is just an insane feeling. 

Julie: Oh my gosh. Yep. 

Sheryl: Yeah. The ambulance was headed our way but they were pretty far away because we were in the middle of nowhere. We were actually pulled over into an Amish farm. We live in the heart of Amish country in the middle of Ohio. I’m praying, “Please don’t come outside and watch me give birth.” Luckily, no. We found out who the owner was and through back and forth, they were like, “No, we didn’t wake up. We didn’t hear anything.” So praise the Lord for that.

I actually delivered my placenta before the ambulance got there. 

Julie: Oh my gosh. 

Sheryl: Baby Casey was healthy and just immediately had a head full of hair. He was the most beautiful baby boy. I held him on my chest. Javen caught him and handed him to me. Just to hold him, it was such a whirlwind. It was crazy. I got into the ambulance and realized that yes, not only does he have a head full of hair, but he has a head full of red hair. He has very, very red hair. He was just a surprise from every point. 

We got to the hospital. The midwife came to check on me. She was like, “How did this happen? I just saw you not even 12 hours ago, and you were not ready to have a baby.” Every prayer I prayed was answered again. Now I know, and I’ll tell listeners, if you’re going to pray, you need to be specific. Be specific when you say, “Get me to the hospital and not in the car.” I learned that. 

Julie: That is so funny.

Sheryl: I did not tear, and that was something I had prayed for which was really cool because my midwife is older, so I think this was baby number 1900 for her or in the 1900s. She had always told me, “Hey, when you go to push, don’t push the head out. Just breathe it out. Don’t push and you won’t tear.” 

As he was coming out, that’s all I could hear in the back of my head was Leanne saying those things. It worked. That was really special. She was really, really proud of me for remembering that. 

Julie: I love that so much. Okay, you guys know I love a good car birth story. It’s my favorite. It would be my dream birth. People might think I’m crazy, but man, I just dream one day of following somebody as they rush to the hospital in labor and then pull over to the side of the road, and I get to document a car birth. 

Anyway, probably not what you would use to describe it, but what happened when you got to the hospital? I’m assuming you got into the ambulance and drove over. They checked you out. You didn’t tear and everything. Did you go home or did you stay in the hospital? 

Sheryl: We stayed in the hospital because they were like, “It’s not necessarily you, but the baby. We have to monitor the baby for 24 hours.” My husband and I looked at each other. We were like, “We have to be here for 24 hours? We should have just gone back home and had somebody check on us there.” 

But yeah, it was great. I got in the ambulance. My husband had my phone. I looked down, and like I said, my sister was tracking me. I had a text message that said, “Did you just give birth on the side of the road?” I responded, “Yes, I did.” She said that as soon as she saw the car stop moving, she kept refreshing and the car did not move. She just knew. That was fun. 

I started nursing. I’m laying there in the ambulance, and I’m like, “Well, hand him to me. I want to see if he’s going to nurse.” He latched immediately. They were surprised. 

Also, two of our EMTs were Amish guys, so that’s fun. To live in Amish country, you do have Amish EMTs then, so that was fun. 

Julie: Yeah. Wow. That is so crazy. I think that is just such a way to highlight how every birth is different. We talk about how every person is different. Every pregnancy and birth is so different and unique in and of itself. You had three very different birth experiences. I love that. I was trying to do the math in my head about how long this was from when you woke up at 1:30. What time was baby born?

Sheryl: 2:20. 

Julie: Oh my goodness. Girl. 

Sheryl: Yes, so less than an hour. I never would have thought. We did joke a couple times, “Hey, if you want your VBAC, just have it in the car, and you for sure will get it exactly how you want it if you don’t want Pitocin and all of that.” We joke about that, but now we know that you probably shouldn’t joke about that. It might happen. 

But honestly, I never thought. I’m a little bit crunchy, but not super. I didn’t want a home birth or a free birth, but now, I get it. It was super empowering. I had so much adrenaline and just to be like, wow. My body did what it was supposed to do. I can trust it. It knew when to go into labor. Obviously, it doesn’t always go that way, but this time it did. It knew what it was supposed to do.

Somebody told me that their doctor said, “I never trust third babies.” 

Julie: I always say that too. 

Sheryl: Yep. It’s definitely true. 

Julie: I always say that I don’t trust babies. I especially don’t trust third babies. It’s just so unpredictable especially when you let babies do their thing. There are times when interventions are needed. There are times when Cesareans are lifesaving. There are times when induction is necessary, but I feel like the biggest majority of the time, if we just let the body do what it knows how to do, things will happen just beautifully and perfectly. Like I said, there is nuance there. It’s important to acknowledge that, but a lot of amazing things happen when we just trust and create space for the body and the baby to do their beautiful labor dance and let things happen as designed. 

I think it’s really neat. I think it’s all neat. I’m a birth nerd. I think birth is neat. Birth is cool, and I think there are lots of really cool things to say about all of your stories. I do think it’s really important that with VBAC especially, you can have a VBAC in lots of ways. You can have it in the hospital, a planned induction, a planned epidural, planned unmedicated, in-hospital, out-of-hospital, or however you want. A free birth, unassisted or whatever. You can do it all of the different ways, but I think it’s really important. We talk a lot about, especially with VBAC, laboring like a first-time mom and being prepared for the long haul. Plan for a 20-hour labor or longer.

But I feel like maybe it’s a disservice to not talk about the other side when things can pick up and start really fast and go really fast because I feel like the perfect length of labor is a nice 8 hours. 8 hours is a good amount of time where it doesn’t railroad you. You don’t have to catch up and process. You don’t feel defeated because it’s taking so long. 8 hours is a really great length. 

I think it’s a disservice to talk about that would happen if there is not time to get to the hospital or if there’s not time to get an epidural. Sometimes parents rely so much on not getting a medicated birth that they don’t think about what would happen if there is not time for that, then being railroaded by a fast labor and not being prepared for the intensities that come with that can cause birth trauma in and of itself even though the body is doing its thing and we trust the body. It can cause trauma by having something that you didn’t prepare for or expect of plan for. 

I would encourage everybody that if you are planning a home birth, if you are planning a long labor, cool. That’s great. It’s great to be prepared for things. I always say to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, but sometimes, it’s good to prepare for the other things too. Prepare for the things that are opposite of what you want or what you are hoping for or what you are preparing for because at least if you acknowledge them and make a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C, then you will be less likely to be unprepared or caught off guard or have the opportunity for trauma to be introduced to your story. 

I think it’s really fun to explore all of these different things and hear all of the different stories and how different everybody truly is. I love that. What would you say? 

Sheryl: As far as that, a lot of people were like, “Oh man, my husband could never do that.” One, so many instincts just kick in. So many people said, “How did you know what to do?” One, I’ve had a baby before. Two, my body knew what to do. I just listened to the cues. Okay, what should I do? What feels comfortable? But then again, my husband was amazing. No fear. He caught the baby. He drove to the hospital with bloody hands, but he is a hunter and a farmer, so he’s like, “Yeah, no big deal.” He’s known as a cool, calm, collected guy, and he even is when he is delivering his own baby in the back of a car. 

The other funny thing was that since we had just moved back, we had bought a new vehicle. I had dreamed of being a minivan mom almost my whole life. I had always wanted to be a mom. Finally, my husband got me my first minivan. Baby number three on the way, we finally get a minivan. Luckily, it came with really good mats in it that had a wide lip around the edge. Everybody was like, “What a mess that must be.” Lucky for us, everything stayed right there. The next morning, Javen went and got me breakfast. On his way to get me breakfast, he stopped by the car wash and dumped it out, rinsed it off, and we were good to go. 

Julie: Perfect. 

Sheryl: The doctor at our practice was like, “You really should write that company and do a review for them.” 

Julie: That is amazing. 

Sheryl: If you are thinking of having kids, you should put that in. 

Julie: Maybe you’ll get a free car. Did you hear the story about a guy who had a Stanley-insulated tumbler in his car, and his car caught on fire? After, he was going back through the wreckage. The car was literally on fire. He has a video of this car. He’s looking through it. It’s charred and burnt, then he opens up his Stanley cup and there’s still ice in it. 

Then Stanley the company gifted him a new car. 

Sheryl: Oh, wow. Oh man. 

Julie: The natural advertisement for that. Can you believe it? 

Sheryl: Maybe I need to reach out. 

Julie: Do it. 

Sheryl: As we were sitting there in the hospital, we can’t sleep after that. It takes hours for you to calm down after that much adrenaline. Life for the last four years, really, has been crazy. I think we’ve lived in six or seven different houses. We have been back and forth to three different countries basically. That part of our story is coming to a close. It was like, yep. Okay. This is a really great way to end this chapter of our life with a carbirth. 

Our life will continue to be interesting and crazy in other ways. 

Julie: That is amazing. It sounds like you have quite an adventurous life for sure, and what a story. What a story to tell. Thank you so much. 

Oh wait. Before we wrap it up, I want you to tell us your best VBAC advice. What is one thing you would tell anybody preparing for a VBAC? What should they do? 

Sheryl: Yeah, great question. I would say to prepare like it’s a marathon mentally. Really think about what you want. What to you is a part of birth? If you follow the Lord, ask Him those things because He does want to answer our requests. He does delight in giving us what we want. Sometimes, He doesn’t always answer that, but in my experience, when I’ve asked in this specific area, He has given me what I wanted. 

Really pray about it. I know that with every birth, I have gone and gotten a massage. For that hour, I have focused on, “Okay. What is an important part of birth to me?” That would be my advice. Really focus mentally on feeling strong and capable. 

Julie: I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Sheryl. It’s been such a joy to listen to your stories. Yeah, so fun.

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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Abigail’s first pregnancy turned into a life-threatening birth experience with undetected gestational diabetes and a traumatic ICU stay. On top of that, she unexpectedly had to move homes just two weeks postpartum. Abigail quickly developed intense postpartum depression and struggled to make sense of what happened to her. 

She was sure she would never have kids again, but after therapy and healing, she and her husband found themselves wanting another baby three years later. Abigail became pregnant right away, and she knew this time would be different. This time, things would be better. 

From the meticulous monitoring to the candid conversations, Abigail felt heard and supported throughout her entire pregnancy. Her gestational diabetes was detected and very controlled. While a scheduled C-section seemed to be a logical choice, she knew her heart wanted a VBAC. She was able to go into spontaneous labor and pushed her baby girl out in just 13 minutes!

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Meagan: Welcome to the show, everybody. We have our friend, Abigail, from California with us today. She is a 27-year-old stay-at-home mom with a 4-year-old daughter and a 7-month-old son. She experienced a very unfortunate, traumatic experience with her first which really left her not really sure that she wanted any more kids. She’s going to dive more into her wild experience, but she had a COVID pregnancy. She had a lot of different stresses through the pregnancy, especially at the beginning– gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and so many things with her first that really taught her a lot, and had a wild birth experience. 

Then the second time, she ended up getting gestational diabetes again, but did a lot of different things to improve her outcome like hiring a doula, getting a supportive provider, and all of that. We are going to turn the time over to her in just one moment, but I do want to quickly in place of the review share a couple of tips for gestational diabetes. 

If you guys have not heard about it so far, check out Real Food for Gestational Diabetes by Lily Nichols. It is absolutely incredible. It is less than 200 pages long. It is a fantastic read and filled with a lot of really great information and studies. She also talks about prenatals, so I wanted to remind everybody that we have a partnership with Needed who we just love and adore. We do have a promo code for 20% off. You can get your 20% off by using code VBAC20. Definitely check that out.

Then we are going to be including a lot of things in our blog today like third-trimester ultrasounds, sizes of baby, and gestational diabetes so make sure to dive into the show notes later and check out what we’ve got. 

Okay, my darling. I’m so excited for you to share your stories today. I feel like there’s part of your story that I want to point out too before you get going, and that is that sometimes you can plan the most ideal birth scenario, and I’m not going to talk about what this scenario is, but a lot of people are like, “Do this. Do this. Do this.” Sometimes you plan it, and then your care falls short or something happens and plans change. 

If you guys are listening, I just want you to dive in. As you are listening to Abigail share her stories, listen to how sometimes things change and what she did, and then what she did differently to have a different experience. Okay, Abigail. 

Abigail: Hello. First of all, I just want to say that I’m really happy to be here today. Thank you for having me today. 

Meagan: Me too. 

Abigail: Yeah, I guess let’s just dive right in. 

Meagan: Yeah. 

Abigail: First thing is I am a stay-at-home mom, so my mom is out in the living room with my babies right now, and at this point, my son is 7-months-old, and we are having a really good time over here. I just want to start by saying that. 

Basically to start with my story, I got pregnant for the first time in January of 2020. Everybody knows what else happened in 2020. I was, I think, about 12 or 13 weeks pregnant when everything completely shifted. Everything started to shut down. There was a chance that I was going to get laid off of work which I did end up getting laid off of work about a week later. It was not a fun time. 

My husband and I had an apartment. We lived in a place we had just moved to. We had been there for about 3 years. We had a roommate, and everything was totally fine. Everybody worked full-time. I was working out regularly. We had a pretty chill life. Go to the farmer’s market on the weekend. I was really excited when I found out I was pregnant. I was like, “Okay, yeah. We are going to bring a baby into this. Let’s do it. I love what we’re doing.” 

So again, everything completely shut down and shifted. Our roommate decided he wanted his own space, so he gave us a 30-day notice. We were stuck in a situation where they were raising our rent because our lease was up. We would have had to re-sign. It would have cost us more and everything, so we were looking at having to move because our roommate was moving out. 

It was all not a very fun time, so we decided to move back to where we were from, rent a room from a family member, and stay with them for the time being. They had a little bit of extra space for us. We thought it would be totally fine and everything. 

We moved when I was about 20 weeks pregnant. Up until that point, I had regular OB care at a regular office. I had done all of the blood work and everything and the ultrasounds and the anatomy scan and everything up until 20 weeks. 

When we moved, I decided, “Okay, I think I want to have the baby at home, especially now since the pandemic.” I don’t know that I really wanted to go to the hospital, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do that to begin with. I grew up in a community where home birth was pretty normal. My mom had my younger brother at home. Several of my friends were born at home and their siblings when we were younger. It was a pretty normal thing to me. 

I reached out to a team of midwives. I talked to them, and got everything set up. I started doing appointments with them. They were coming over to my house fairly frequently. It was pretty nice doing the regular blood pressure checks and the urine samples with the little sticks, and all of that stuff. 

When it came time for the gestational diabetes testing, I was like, “Okay, is this something I have to do?” I didn’t have my insurance set up at that point or anything because we had just moved so we would have to pay out of pocket for it. I would have to go sit in some lab or office some place. Again, during COVID, while I was pregnant, I was like, “I don’t know. If I don’t have to do it, I don’t want to. If I have to, I will. What are we doing here?” They were like, “Well, you’re low-risk. These are the risk factors. If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. You just have to sign this form.”

I was like, “Okay, cool. I’ll sign the form. Seems easy enough.” I totally skipped the gestational diabetes testing. That was on me, but it wasn’t on me at the same time because I don’t feel like I was given proper informed consent. 

There was a team of three midwives plus a student, so a total of four that I was seeing. One of the midwives ended up getting switched out at about that point, so it ended up being the student, the same original two, and then one newer one. Everybody was really nice. They were coming over and checking on me and doing all of the things that I thought they were supposed to be doing. 

I was not weighing myself. We did not have a scale. Again, they didn’t tell me that it is important to make sure that you’re not gaining too much weight at a time or anything like that. 

What happened was, I started gaining a lot of weight, but I didn’t really realize just how much weight I was actually gaining. I was like, “Oh, I’m pregnant.” I quit going to the gym. I can’t even hardly do anything. It’s hot out. It’s summertime. I was pregnant from January to September, so the bigger I got, the hotter it got.

I didn’t do much, so I was like, “Whatever. I’ve gained some weight. It’s not a big deal.” I was a pretty small person to start with. Just for reference, I’m 4’8”, and I was 95 pounds when I got pregnant initially, so really small. 

It started becoming concerning because toward the end of my pregnancy, and toward I guess not even the end, the beginning of my third trimester, I started getting really swollen. Like, really swollen. My feet and my legs up to my knees– not just my feet, but my calves and everything were pretty swollen. Toward the end of my pregnancy, I had swelling up to my thighs. I’m being told this is normal. I’m 23. I’ve never been pregnant before. I don’t have any support groups or anything going because it’s COVID. Nobody wants to talk to anybody or do anything. 

It was a little frustrating for me because they were like, “Just put your feet up. Soak your feet.” If I soaked my feet, they got more swollen. I was not taking proper care of myself either. I went from exercising and eating right and doing all of the things that you are supposed to do to sitting at home and eating a lot of fast food and not walking. I was not having a great time mentally either. We were living some place I didn’t want to be living. It was all of it. 

I didn’t think too much of it. Again, I’m like, “Well, I’m being told this is normal. I’m gaining some weight. It’s fine.” At one point, one of my urine tests that they did came back positive for glucose, and they were like, “Well, what did you eat for breakfast?” When I told them, I was like, “I had some waffles. I had some orange juice,” and whatever else I had, they were like, “Oh, you just had some orange juice before you got here. That’s fine.”

I was like, “Okay.” They didn’t think to check it again. I didn’t think to get a second opinion or anything. At one point toward the end of my pregnancy, I had a blood pressure reading that I checked myself at home with the little wrist cuff. That was really elevated. It was the end of the day. I texted the midwife. I was like, “Hey, my blood pressure is really high.” She was like, “What did you do today?” I was like, “I didn’t really do much. I ate this for lunch. I had some soda.” 

She was like, “Okay, well that’s probably fine. Just rest and check it again in the morning.” I checked it again in the morning, and it was still relatively normal, so they didn’t do anything. One of the midwives came over at one point and dropped off some herbs for me that they wanted me drinking like some tea or something like that because I was getting swollen. I was standing outside talking to her, and she was like, “Oh my god, I can see your feet swelling up while we are standing here. You need to go back inside and put your feet up.” Again, nobody thought anything of it. 

How four people missed all of this, I don’t know. I feel kind of like the student may have been more concerned, but didn’t really know how to say anything or anything, just looking back on the facial expressions she would give and things like that. 

I go into labor right at 40 weeks. I am planning a home birth. Everything is set up for that. I’ve got the tub at my house. We’ve done the home birthing class and how to get everything set up. We’ve done all that. There was no backup plan in place. They did not suggest that I have one. Again, I did not know any better at the time. I was told that if there was some kind of emergency, I would go to this hospital. That was as far as it went. I didn’t have a backup bag ready. I didn’t have a hospital bag ready. I didn’t have anything planned. There was no, “Hey, this is what we watch out for. This is what you might go to the hospital for.”

I go into labor at 3:00 AM. Honestly, contractions started, and they were immediately painful. I’ve never done this before. I’m like, “Okay well, maybe we’re just starting out harder than I thought. That’s fine. Maybe there’s not going to be early labor.” I labored for a couple of hours. I was really uncomfortable, so I called the midwives. They came over. They checked, and they were like, “Okay, you’re only at 2 centimeters, and this is seeming like early labor.” 

I’m like, “This really painful. I’m not having a good time. This does not feel okay at all.” They checked my blood pressure. My blood pressure was through the roof. They waited a little bit, checked it again, and it was even higher the second time. They were like, “Okay well, this is out of our care. You’ve got to go to the hospital now.” I’m like, “What do you mean I’ve got to go to the hospital? That’s not part of the plan here. We don’t even have a plan B or anything.” 

Through tears and contractions and everything, I was having contractions maybe every 10 minutes or so, 5-10 minutes. Somewhere around there, I don’t remember exactly. I got a hospital bag ready. I got some clothes for the baby together. I got my phone charger, my toothbrush and everything, and we headed to the hospital. 

I sat in triage by myself for 4 hours because they did not have a bed available for me. They would not let my husband into triage with me because it was COVID. The entire time, I was so uncomfortable. They had me immediately start on blood pressure medication to try to get my blood pressure down. They started me on magnesium, and they told me that the magnesium was going to make me feel yucky which is the biggest lie I have ever been told by a nurse. I don’t know if she just never had it or what, but I felt like you have the worst flu you’ve ever had. My whole body hurt. It made everything feel worse. I felt groggy. I felt sick. It was not fun at all. 

At that point, I think I got to the hospital at 11:00 AM. They didn’t get me into a room until 3:00 or 4:00 that night. So at that point, I’d been in labor for 12 hours. I was still hardly dilated. The doctors, initially when I got there, said, “Your notes say you are only 2 centimeters. Why are you here?” I was like, “I don’t know. I was told to be here. I was told that my blood pressure is high or whatever. I don’t know. I don’t want to be here.” 

They did all of the things. They ran all of the tests. The doctor comes back in and says, “You are severely preeclamptic. Why did you not get here sooner?” 

Meagan: So why are you here and okay, why weren’t you here sooner?

Abigail: Yeah. I was like, “I’m so confused. I don’t want to be here.” I’m freaking out. I’m stressing hardcore. My blood pressure went down for a little bit, but it stayed really, really, really high. They put me on fluids and everything which of course, did not help with the swelling. They get me into a room and everything. Things are moving along. It’s going fine. I was okay for a little bit, then it got to the point where my legs were so swollen that I felt like they were going to pop. My legs felt like balloons that were going to explode. They were trying to put compression boots on me and stuff in the bed. Every time I was having a contraction, I was trying to get up and get moving because it felt better to get up and move. 

They were taking the boots on and off. It was miserable. After, I think, 28 hours of labor at that point, I was like, “Okay. I would like an epidural, please. I really don’t want to have to get out of bed. I can’t do this. I want my legs up. I don’t want any part of this.” 

They got me an epidural. I don’t know exactly how many centimeters I was at that point, but things had not moved very far in 28 hours. The doctor kept pushing to try to break my water. I kept telling her, “No, thank you. I don’t want that. It will break on its own. I would like to take a nap.” 

I took a nap. My water did break on its own. That was nice. The water was clear. Everything was fine. We are still moving. I have an epidural. It’s working great. I’m laying in bed. 

My blood pressure was still high. The swelling was still bad, but other than that, everything was maintaining. We were fine.

I continued laboring for a while. I was getting checked pretty frequently because the doctors were uncomfortable with the situation. Again, looking back, I realize why they would be uncomfortable with the situation. They kept checking me and trying to want to do stuff. I was on Pitocin at that point. They had started it at some point, I think, shortly before I got the epidural. 

I had been on that for a while. It had been from being okay to all of a sudden, I was not okay. I don’t remember exactly what hour that happened. It was somewhere between probably 36-ish. I was dealing with some stressful stuff with some family members. I was not having a good time. My phone kept going off. I was just trying to rest. It was a miserable time. 

They said that I was getting a fever all of a sudden. They were like, “You’re getting a fever. We’re going to see what we can do.”  They tried to give me Tylenol to bring it down. They tried putting a cool rag on my face. They were trying to get me to eat ice. At that point, they had completely stopped letting me eat because initially when I got there, they were letting me eat a little bit, but that stopped. 

They wouldn’t let me drink anything, so they were giving me ice chips and stuff. I started getting to the point where I was feeling really sick, like more sick than I already felt. 

They checked me again, and depending on which doctor did it, I was at a 6 or a 7 still. They finally called it. They were like, “You have an infection. You are not doing okay. This is not okay. You need to have a C-section now.” 

Crying, I was like, “Okay, fine. That’s not what I want, but let’s go.” They prepped me for the OR, got everything moving, got me back. By the time I got in there, it had been 38 hours. I had an epidural for about 12 of those hours, I guess. 

At that point, it wasn’t working super well anymore. It was not working well enough that they could do the C-section, so they put in a spinal as well. I had both of those done. To my understanding, they are two different pokes. Again, I didn’t want either initially, and I got both. I was not thrilled about that. 

I’m laying on the operating table. I was so thirsty. They wouldn’t give me anything to drink. They kept giving me this moist sponge. They said that I couldn’t suck on the sponge. I could moisten my mouth with it. They gave me some stuff to drink that said it was going to make it so I didn’t throw up. I wasn’t nauseous at all the entire time. I hadn’t thrown up at any point at all. I was like, “I don’t want this. I don’t need it.” 

The stuff that they gave me tasted awful, and they wouldn’t give me anything to rinse it down. My mouth is dry. I’m gagging from how dry my mouth is, and the stuff tastes bad. They have me strapped to the table. My arms are down. I just laid there crying. 

The C-section went fine. They got my baby out. She was okay. She was 7 pounds, 12 ounces. For somebody who is my size, I was like, “Wow. That’s a really big baby.” That was surprising. 

So they get me sewn up and everything. They let me look at my placenta, and it was four times the size of any placenta I have ever seen. It was like a dinner plate sized, but a couple of inches thick, like really thick. I was like, “Okay well, that’s really weird.” 

They moved me and the baby to recovery. My husband was with me. Everything was okay. Everything calmed down. We were okay now. We’ve got this. It’s fine. 

Then all of a sudden, the nurse was like, “I don’t like your bleeding.” This is the same nurse I had for two or three nights because at that point, I had been in labor for 46 hours. It was 46 hours by the time they took my baby out. I started labor initially on the 28th at 3:00 AM, and my baby was born on the 30th at 1:00 AM, so almost a full two days. 

She’s like, “I don’t like your bleeding.” I’m like, “Okay.” I’m really out of it. I’m not really paying attention. I’m trying to nurse my baby. I can hardly move. I’m uncomfortable. 

Next thing I know, there are more people coming in, more doctors coming in, more nurses coming in. They take the baby from me. They hand the baby to my husband, and they shove them out. I’m just screaming, “Please don’t give my baby formula.” I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know where they’re taking her. I was trying to nurse her, and I’m so confused now. 

Next thing I know, there are 10 people surrounding my bed. It’s three doctors and seven nurses. I had one IV in my hand initially, or in my arm or wherever they put it. Next thing I know, I had two more IVs. There was one in my other arm and in my other hand. 

They put some pills up my backside, and I’m so confused what’s going on at this point. I’m still numb from everything from the spinal and the epidural and everything, so I can’t feel what’s going on. She’s pushing on my belly. She’s changing the pads under me. Everyone is freaking out.

Meagan: Wow. 

Abigail: I am fading in and out of consciousness. I don’t know what’s happening. My husband’s freaking out. My blood pressure had dropped to 25/15 I think. 

Meagan: Whoa. 

Abigail: I was about to die. They finally got me stable. I don’t really know what happened exactly. All I know is the next thing I know, I woke up and I was in the ICU. They wouldn’t let my husband come see me. They wouldn’t let me see my baby. I’m with a bunch of COVID patients and everything. 

They gave me two or three blood transfusions. They put a balloon in my uterus to apply counterpressure so that it would stop bleeding, and they had a bucket attached to it. I’m watching them just empty buckets of my blood. It was so scary. 

I’m laying in the ICU by myself, and the balloon in my uterus hurt so bad, like, so bad. I didn’t end up moving. I laid there for the rest of that night, the entire next day, the whole next night, then I think they moved me the next day. It was a night and a half plus a whole day that I just laid there by myself. 

Meagan: Wow. So scary. 

Abigail: It was so scary. The nurses came in at one point and were trying. I think it was the lactation consultant maybe. They were trying to get me to pump and everything. I think I pumped once or twice, but I was not up for doing anything. If they didn’t come in and sit me up, they didn’t really do it. 

I finally get the balloon taken out because that was what I kept begging for. I was like, “Please take this out. It hurts so bad. The pain medications aren’t helping.” I didn’t want to give the pumped milk to my baby as it is because I was on so many pain medications and so many antibiotics and everything else. 

I get the balloon out finally, and I think they took it out that night then they moved me the next day. They moved me to high-risk maternity, and they let me take a shower and eat some food and stuff before they brought my baby back from the nursery because she was fine in the nursery. That was nice to be able to take a shower and wash off all of the blood. I was so covered in blood and everything. I looked at my C-section scar and everything for the first time, and I realized I had a reaction to the tape that was on it and stuff too, so my skin all around it was all irritated. 

All up and down my arms had been profusely poked and prodded because they were checking my blood every four hours because of the infection and stuff. Depending on the lab tech’s skill and everything, it was not going well for some of them. They kept having to poke me. The IVs weren’t working for them to take blood from or something like that so they just kept having to poke me more. 

Again, I was having reactions to some of the tape, so my whole arms are just completely raw and everything. I was still very swollen. I was very, very, very swollen still. They had compression socks and stuff on at this point, not boots at least. 

They finally bring my baby to me, and then we ended up spending three days in high-risk maternity, so total, that was two days in labor, almost two days in the ICU, and three days in the high-risk maternity. Total, I spent seven days in the hospital. 

I get home, and they had me on blood pressure medication for a few weeks until I think my six-week appointment when I followed up, and then my blood pressure was back to normal, so I was able to quit taking the blood pressure medication and stuff. 

I dropped 30 pounds instantly because it was all of the swelling that just came off. I had still gained a lot of weight, but it a huge chunk of it was swelling which is so bad. 

It was finally over. I was settled. I’m in bed with my baby, and then the family member we were living with decided that they didn’t want us living there anymore, so at three weeks postpartum, we had to move. 

I had only been home from the hospital for two weeks at that point. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t want to be around the situation. My husband was dealing with it. I ended up going on a road trip with my grandma to go stay with a different family member out-of-state just to make sure my baby wasn’t anywhere near anything that was going on. 

Three weeks after a C-section and almost dying, I was driving and doing a whole bunch of other stuff– going out, walking around, and trying to put jeans on. I couldn’t figure out why my clothes didn’t fit. I didn’t realize just how big I had gotten. 

It was not a fun time. It was about five days out of town, then I moved into a different family member’s house temporarily where I was completely isolated by the people that I was living with. They did not understand what I was going through. They thought that I was choosing to be difficult intentionally, so that created additional problems. 

I ended up getting pretty bad postpartum depression which is really not a surprise. I still didn’t understand what had happened to me. I still didn’t understand why I had almost died. I still didn’t understand. I didn’t know if I had done something wrong. I didn’t know what was going on. 

I spent a lot of time really upset over the fact that everything went wrong, and I didn’t know why. Life was falling apart around me. I was not doing okay. It turned into really bad postpartum depression pretty quickly. 

My husband and I got our own apartment when my baby was four month’s old. I was like, “Okay, things are finally going to get settled. Things are going to be okay now.” It did not settle. My depression got worse, and I didn’t even know what to do. I was eating a lot because I was like, “I’m breastfeeding. I need to eat.” I basically just sat at home, didn’t do anything but eat and nurse my baby. I was very thankful I was able to successfully breastfeed my baby after everything that happened to me. 

All of the nurses at the hospital were surprised about that and stuff. 

Meagan: Yeah, with the amount of blood loss and everything, that’s pretty rare. It’s pretty rare. 

Abigail: Yeah. I never ended up giving my baby a bottle or anything because I was so scared that if I tried to give her a bottle or something that it would mess up my breastfeeding, and that was the only thing that had gone right. 

I was doing okay for a little while, I thought, but it was not okay. I was really not okay. I was very, very sad. I was fully convinced for a period of time that they should have let me die at the hospital. I was fully convinced that the doctor did me a disservice by trying so hard to save me. 

Meagan: I’m so sorry. 

Abigail: Yeah. I finally started therapy. I started trying to get up and do more and not eat so much and get moving. I think finally around the time my daughter was a year or a year and a half, I started to feel a little bit better, and things slowly did start to get a little bit better for me, but I was fully convinced that I did not want more kids.

I was like, “I am never going through that again. I do not want another C-section. I don’t know what happened to me, so obviously, I would have to have another C-section because we don’t even know what went wrong.” 

It took me until my daughter was almost three. She was about to be three when all of a sudden, my mindset shifted, and I was getting mad at myself for feeling like I wanted another baby because I was like, “I don’t want another baby. Of course, I don’t want another baby. I made that very clear.” We got rid of all of the baby stuff. I told everybody I wasn’t having more. What was wrong with me? I was fighting internally with myself because I wanted another baby, but I did not want another baby. It was insane. 

I kept it all to myself. I didn’t say anything. All of a sudden, my husband was like, “I think we should have another baby. I was like, “What are you talking about? You’re insane.” He was like, “No, really. I think we should have another baby.” I was like, “You shouldn’t have said that because I want another baby.” 

Meagan: Yeah. I have been actually thinking the same. Yeah. 

Abigail: Yeah. I was pretty surprised that I got pregnant right away. Literally, within a couple weeks, I was pregnant. It was a good thing and a bad thing because it didn’t give me a chance to overthink it, but also, it was like, “Oh no, I haven’t even had a chance to think about this. This is definitely what’s happening.”

I started going to the doctor right at five weeks. They started doing ultrasounds right at five weeks. They were checking me for everything every time, all of the time. I had so much anxiety. I made that very clear to them. I think that’s part of the reason that they checked everything all of the time and were trying to be more reassuring. They did ultrasounds at almost every appointment. Most people don’t even get an ultrasound until 12 or 20 weeks. 

Meagan: And then that’s the only one. 

Abigail: I had four of them before I even went for my anatomy scan. They were trying to watch everything and make sure everything was fine too because again, they didn’t do my care last time. This OB place did my follow-up care afterward. They saw the aftermath of everything, and they were concerned and stuff. 

That’s what we were dealing with. I was dealing with some nausea, so they gave me some pills for that. Come to find out, one of the side effects of one of the medications they gave me was anxiety. I was fighting a losing battle with myself because I was taking these pills for the nausea. I wasn’t eating because I was anxious, and I wasn’t eating because I was nauseous, then I was getting more anxious. It was a rough first 20 weeks I would say. 

Then I did start feeling better, thankfully, so I was able to start eating and stuff again. Once I felt better, I was eating ice cream and all of those things that I wanted and all of that. It was fine. I was doing fine. I was doing all of my appointments and stuff, then it comes up for my gestational diabetes testing. 

The doctor says, “You need to do this,” and immediately, I was like, “Yes, please. I need to do that because that’s one of the things I didn’t do last time. I need to do everything to make sure I’m good.” 

I need to backtrack a minute, I’m so sorry. At my first intake appointment at five weeks when I met with one of the– they’re nurses, but it’s not the nurse who actually checks you and stuff. They have an office at the OB’s office, and they check in, and they ask, “Do you have transportation for your appointments? Do you need help with anything? Do you have access to food? Are you in a safe relationship?” 

I let them know what had happened previously with me, and she was like, “Oh, well then you might be interested in this. This is something new your insurance covers. You could get a doula if you wanted since it sounds like you wanted to have a more natural experience last time.”

Meagan: That’s awesome. 

Abigail: Yeah. Immediately, I was like, “Hell yeah. Let’s do that.” I didn’t have a doula last time. 

Again, last time was COVID. I was already trying to pay for the midwives. It wasn’t something I thought about one, because I thought I was having a home birth with a couple of midwives. I didn’t think I needed a doula. 

Also, I didn’t fully understand what they were and the actual extent of the benefits of them. I was like, “Yeah, totally.” 

The first thing I did when I got home was call. They were like, “Yeah, we take your insurance. We can get you set up. We’re taking new clients. Let’s get you in for an appointment.” 

I started seeing a doula sometime in my first trimester. I don’t remember exactly when, but I remember I pulled up the office and I got out. I was like, “This can’t be right. This is too nice. There’s no way my insurance covers this.” I was shocked at the care I received from my doula service. I’m just going to go ahead and give them a quick shoutout just because they are amazing, but it’s Haven for Birth in Sacramento, California, and they do amazing work for a lot of different things. I still attend lactation meetings and stuff with them monthly. 

Meagan: That’s awesome.

Abigail: It’s such a great team of people. 

I got the doulas that they set up for me because there are two of them. There’s a main one and a backup one. My main doula’s name was Heidi, and the backup doula’s name was Francine. They were both so sweet and wonderful. 

Heidi has been doing doula work for a good amount of time. She owns a chiropractic business and Haven. She’s the main one, and she’s the one who has dealt with higher-risk pregnancies and things like that, so she was my main source of support and throughout everything. I would text her if I needed something. She was so reassuring. She was like, “Yep. You can totally have a VBAC if that’s what you want to do.” I was like, “Really? I can do that, okay. I’m going to talk to the OB about it.” 

The OB was like, “Yeah. It’s completely up to you. As long as you are fine and we watch everything, that’s fine.” I really did feel like they were supportive. It wasn’t like, “Well, if you are okay, then you can.” It was like both of the OBs that I had seen, one of them was a guy and one of them was a girl, and both of them were like, “Yeah, as long as we keep everything in check, you are totally fine. I don’t see why you couldn’t.”

I started to feel a little more confident in that. I had a lot of anxiety about it and for a couple of weeks, I did contemplate scheduling a C-section just to ease my own anxieties, but I didn’t feel right with that choice. I really didn’t. I was like, “I need to try.” It was tough, though, because I was like, “I don’t know how I’m going to deal with the feelings of trying and not succeeding,” so that was the struggle of, “Do I want to just have a C-section that way? I get what I want no matter what,” but I didn’t feel like I wanted to do that. 

I worked really, really, really hard to get my VBAC is basically what ended up happening. Back to where I was, I get my gestational diabetes testing done, and the first-hour one comes back really high. I’m like, “Okay, that’s concerning.” I texted my doula about it. She was like, “It’s okay. You’re going to do the three-hour one. You’ll probably pass the three-hour one, but even if you don’t, it’ll be fine.”

I failed the three-hour one really bad. My fasting number was fine, but the rest of the numbers were very elevated, not even just a little bit. I was like, “Oh, okay.” This is all starting to make sense. I had a lot of anxiety initially about what I could or couldn’t eat because I didn’t feel the greatest, and I was letting myself eat what sounded good to make sure that I was eating. 

It was a rough week initially when I got that, then it took them a minute to get me the referral in for the program, the Sweet Success program where I was actually able to talk to nurses and dieticians there. Once I finally got in with them, I met with them a few times throughout the end of my pregnancy. I did feel very supported by them. They were very nice. The dietician was willing to meet with me one-on-one instead of a group setting because I was having issues with eating and not wanting to eat and feeling very concerned that I was going to hurt myself or hurt the baby.

They did a very good job making sure that I was cared for. We completely changed up my diet. I started walking after every meal. I started checking my blood sugar four times a day, so first thing in the morning, then after breakfast, after lunch, and after dinner. I basically, immediately after eating, would get up and do the dishes or clean up the food I had made or pick up the house or start some laundry or something so that I was getting up and moving. 

Only a couple of times, there was only once or twice where my blood sugar numbers were higher than they really wanted by more than a point or two. I did a really good job keeping those in check with what I was doing and watching what I was eating very closely and monitoring my portion sizes and realizing what I could and couldn’t eat. 

Once I got to the point of 36 or 37 weeks or whatever where they were like, “Okay, this is the plateau. It’s not going to get worse than this,” and I realized I was able to keep it under control and things like that, I would let myself have a couple of bites of a cookie here and there. It wouldn’t spike my blood sugar or anything because I was doing everything I needed and that made me feel really nice because I was able to eat the stuff I really liked as long as that was within reason.

We met with the doula multiple times. She came over and did a home visit at 37 weeks. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions from the time I was 19 weeks because we got COVID. We got RSV, and we got a cold. We got a cold. We got COVID, and we got RSV. 

Meagan: Oh my goodness. 

Abigail: Yeah. That was the whole first half of my pregnancy along with dealing with nausea and everything else. I found out I was pregnant the beginning of September. We got a cold in October. I got COVID in November, then in December, we got RSV, and my daughter who was three at that point spent five days in the hospital, so I spent five days in the hospital right next to her dealing with RSV while I was pregnant. I feel like the coughing kickstarted Braxton Hicks contractions almost because at that point, I started having them pretty regularly. 

From 19 weeks on, I had tightenings all the time. Some days, they would be worse than others, but because I was so active, it definitely– I never got diagnosed with irritable uterus or anything, but I think that’s what it was because it would get really irritable when I would do pretty much anything, and I was doing things all of the time. 

At 35 weeks, my contractions started getting fairly intense-ish. They weren’t painful at all, but it was every 3-5 minutes, I was contracting. I drove myself to the hospital. I was like, “I’m fine. I’m not concerned.” I didn’t bother my husband or my doula or anything. I let her know I was going, but I was like, “Don’t worry about it.” 

They hooked me up. They checked me and everything. they were like, “You’re hydrated. We don’t need to give you fluids or anything.” They were like, “How are you feeling? You’ve got to tell us if they hurt or not because we can see them on the monitor, but you’ve got to tell us how you’re feeling.” I was like, “I just feel annoyed. They tighten up, and it’s uncomfortable when they do, but nothing hurts. I’m annoyed.” 

They were like, “Okay, let’s check you.” I was still completely closed with no baby coming down. So they gave me a single pill to stop them and sent me home. It worked. It slowed them down for the rest of the night, then they kicked back up to their normal here and there the next day. But for the next couple of weeks, I kept it fairly easy. If I noticed I started I was having more of them, I would try to go lay down. 

I was able to have my baby shower at 36 weeks which was wonderful because I had not had a baby shower for my first baby because of COVID. I feel like 36 weeks was almost pushing it because my family had asked if we wanted to have it later to have somebody else be able to join us and I was like, “No, no. Please don’t push it later. I don’t trust that.” 

It was like I knew that he was going to come just a little early, but I was doing all of the things and still having the regular Braxton Hicks contractions and everything. They were doing multiple growth scans on my baby because he started measuring small at 28 weeks, I think. At his 28-week scan, they noted that his kidneys were slightly enlarged, so they wanted to follow up on that. They followed up on that at 28 weeks. His kidneys were completely fine. We never had another incident with that, but they noticed he was measuring a little smaller so they started doing regular checks. 

By the end of my pregnancy, I was having a growth scan every week, so they went from, “Let’s check you in six weeks. Let’s check you in four weeks. Let’s check you every two weeks. Let’s check you in a week.” 

They noticed he was measuring small, and he continued measuring small. 

Meagan: They were regressing, or he was staying on his own growth pattern but small?

Abigail: He was growing but not a lot. 

Meagan: Okay, yeah. He was staying on his own pattern. 

Abigail: They didn’t want him to drop below the 10th percentile, and if they did, they were going to be concerned. He did get right to the 9th or 10th percentile, so they did start to get concerned. They labeled him IUGR. They were doing non-stress tests on me twice a week. 

Basically, by the end of my pregnancy, I was seeing the OB, the place for the non-stress tests, the gestational diabetes program, the place for the ultrasounds and growth scans, a therapist, a hematologist because I ended up having to have iron infusions and B12 injections, and the doula’s office, so seven places. 

Almost all of them wanted to see me every week. 

Meagan: Whoa. 

Abigail: I was running around, super active towards the end of my pregnancy. I was still taking my daughter out and doing all of the things with her as well. I noticed after my baby shower at 36 weeks that my feet were just a little puffy, and I was like, “Huh. That’s funny.” It hit me all of a sudden. I was like, “My toes are kind of pudgy.” I’m 36, almost 37 weeks pregnant, and this is the most swollen I have gotten. It was not up my legs. It was not even in my whole feet. It was my toes and the top of my feet, not even my ankles. They were the tiniest bit puffy. 

I had this moment of clarity where I was like, “How did nobody notice that something was so wrong with me?” I was shocked because I’m looking at myself and I had gained a total, by the end of my pregnancy with my son, of 25 pounds, and that was it. With my daughter, by the end of it, I had gained 70 pounds. 

Again, how did nobody notice? I am shook. I thought on that for a long time. I’ll come back to that, but I thought on that for so long. I ended up emailing the midwives who had provided me care. I was having a day. I went off on multiple people that day. I was not having it, and I emailed them, and I sent them a four-paragraph email about how they let me down. They should have known better. Somebody should have noticed something was wrong. They should have asked for a second opinion. It was ridiculous. I was shook that they didn’t push harder for gestational diabetes testing, and all of the things because clearly at this point, I realized that my blood sugars being in control has made all of the difference. 

Not knowing, you can’t do what you need to do which is why I’m such a big advocate for informed consent and gestational diabetes testing. I know sometimes I see people saying that they want to skip it because they are fine. I had zero of the actual risk factors, and I still had it. I’m just putting that out there. That’s my main thing for this. Definitely get checked, and stay active, and watch your blood sugars because it’s a really, really serious thing. I literally almost died. 

Sorry, I keep jumping around. My son was measuring small, so they started doing all of the tests and everything, and they couldn’t find anything wrong. They were like, “Your cord dopplers look great. The blood flow looks great. Nothing specifically is measuring small. His head is not measuring smaller than the rest of him.” 

He was very, very, very low in my pelvis. I was waddling from 32 weeks on. He was low the entire time. I could feel him moving regularly. He was super active. I felt confident in myself. I felt safe. I felt good. they were telling me he was fine. Everything was looking fine. My fluid levels were looking good. My non-stress tests were always good. 

They make you sit for a minimum of 20 minutes, and if they don’t see what they need to see in 20 minutes, then you need to stay longer. I never had to stay longer than 20 minutes. It was always in and out. He was always moving. His heart rate was always good. 

When they started mentioning induction at 37 weeks, I was like, “I don’t want to be induced. I don’t. There’s really no reason.” They were like, “Well, he’s measuring small. Your other baby last time was so much bigger. He is so small. This is such a concern.” I was like, “But I think there was something wrong with me and my baby last time. I don’t think she should have been that big for me.” I thought that was the problem. I tried explaining that to them that I think they had it backward. They should have been concerned about how big my last baby was because they didn’t check my blood sugar when I was in the hospital or anything. They didn’t check it. 

Everything was fine. I was feeling fine. I was having pretty regular Braxton Hicks still. I was convinced I was going to have him early. I told him that. “I will have him early, and you’re not going to have to induce me. I promise you. You’re not going to have to induce me.” 

I told the doula that I promised the doctors and the specialists that I was not going to have to be induced. She was on my side. She was like, “Okay. We can try some midwives’ brew if we get to that point. We’ll talk about it.” I didn’t end up getting to that point, thankfully. 

I had another scan at 37 weeks and 36 weeks. At 37 weeks, the doctor was like, “Okay, well, I specifically want to see you next week. I want you to come out to my other office next week because I specifically want to see you. I don’t want you to see the other doctors. I want to follow up with you.” I was like, “Fine. I’ll drive to Rosedale. No problem.” It wasn’t farther than the other office I had been going to. 

I didn’t get that far. I went into labor at 37 and 6. It had been a normal day. I had taken my daughter to the jumping place and had gone to the grocery store. I messed up when I went to the grocery store and the jumping place. I parked too far out, and I didn’t think it through. I jumped near the jumping door, not the grocery door. Walking in was super close, but then I had to walk all the way back carrying my groceries. The carts didn’t go out that far or anything. I’m like, “Oh my gosh. This is so heavy.” I’m still having Braxton Hicks the whole time. I’m feeling fine. I haven’t had any kind of mucus plug activity or none of that. There was no swelling in my feet or legs. My blood pressure had been good. I checked it regularly. My blood sugar had been good. I had checked it regularly. 

I get home, and I’m like, “Man, I’m tired.” I got up, and I kept doing laundry and stuff. My husband gets home from work. He’s like, “Hey, do you want to go out to dinner? We can go to the restaurant up the street.” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s a beautiful day out. It’s the beginning of May. That’s a great idea.”

It’s a 3-minute walk from my house to the restaurant. I’m not kidding. About halfway there, I stopped, and I was like, “Oh. Well, that one was a little more uncomfortable than they have been. Okay. I actually felt that.” It felt like a bad period cramp, but also tightening with the Braxton Hicks at the same time. 

I was like, “I’m fine.” I kept walking. We get to dinner, and I notice at that point, I’m having mild contractions every 10 minutes. We ate food. I had sushi, and I know that rice spikes my blood sugar, so I try not to eat too much of it, but I was like, “You know what? I feel like I’m going to have them. I just need to make sure that I eat.” I ate my dinner. We walked back home. It was still about every 10-12 minutes that I was having mild contractions. 

We went about the evening as normal. I put my daughter to bed and stuff. I took a shower. My husband and I were watching some TV. I was bouncing on the ball. I wasn’t really telling my husband that I was super uncomfortable at that point yet. 

It hit all of a sudden. It was 11:00 PM. At this point, it was 6:00 PM when I felt the first slightly uncomfortable contraction. It’s now 11:00 PM. I’m like, “Okay. This is actually starting to get a little bit more uncomfortable.” I got up, and I paced around the living room. My husband was like, “Uh-oh. We should probably go to bed.” Yeah, we should probably go to bed. That was a good idea. 

We went to bed, and I did not sleep. I think I slept for about seven minutes because at that point, it went to seven minutes, not 10 minutes. I started timing them on my phone. I texted my doula. I made sure I had all of my stuff ready just to be safe. I made sure the house was picked up. I tried to sleep. I let the doula what was going on. She was like, “Don’t worry about timing them, just get some rest.” I was like, “I’m not trying to time them, but every time I have one, I look up and I see the clock. This is happening.” 

She was like, “Okay, well I’ll start getting up, and I’ll be ready to head over if you need me. I want you to take a shower.” It took me a good 45 minutes or a half hour or something like that to actually get from hanging around my house to getting in the shower because I started shaking really bad, and I was starting to have contractions pretty quick together. They started getting closer and closer together. 

My husband ended up texting her at that point, “Hey, she’s int he shower. I think contractions are getting closer together. They are two minutes apart at this point. You should probably head over.” She gets here pretty quickly. My daughter is still asleep. 

At that point, my doula was like, like, “Yeah, I think you’re in active labor. We should think about heading to the hospital.” I’m only 10 minutes from the hospital, but my daughter needed to get picked up. I put my bag in the car. 

We call family. I get my daughter picked up. She hadn’t heard anything. She hadn’t noticed I was in labor. I wasn’t being necessarily loud, but I wasn’t also being super quiet or anything. She gets picked up. She’s mad she’s awake. It’s 2:00 AM. We get ready to go, and by the time we get down the stairs, because I live in an upstairs apartment, so I’d been pacing the whole upstairs in my apartment and everything, I was super afraid my water was going to break in the car so I put on a Depends because I was like, “I’m not going to have to clean that up later because I’m going to be the one cleaning it up later, and I don’t want to have to deal with that.” 

My doula was like, “Chris, get her a bag in case she throws up in the car. Let’s go.” She tried checking my blood pressure, but I kept moving and stuff, so we couldn’t get an accurate reading which made me that much more anxious. I was so afraid that by the time I got there, everything was going ot go bad. I had convinced myself that it was fine, but there was this nagging voice in my head that was like, “No, no, no, no, no. Everything went wrong last time, so surely, you are going to die this time.” I was like, “Nope. I am fine. Everything has been fine. They are aware. They have blood on deck for me. It’s going to be okay. I’ve got this.” 

We get to the hospital. It’s 3:00 in the morning. It’s fairly quiet. We parked in the parking garage which was across the street. We walked through the parking garage. We take the elevator. We take the walk bridge across. We get into the hospital, check in with security and everything. they were like, “Oh, sweetie, do you want a wheelchair?” My doula was like, “No, no, no. She’s fine. She will walk.” I’m like, “Yeah, okay Heidi. Walking is a great idea.” 

I mean, that’s what she’s there for. It’s fine that I kept walking, honestly, because we had to walk from one side of the hospital to the elevator to take the special elevator that goes to the 6th floor. We’re about halfway to the elevator, and I’m like, “Oh, I think my water just broke.” 

My water broke walking into the hospital which was that much more convenient. We get in. We get checked into triage. The nurse is so nice, and she was like, “It’s okay if you want to give me a hug,” because they wouldn’t let my husband or my doula in at first. I gave the nurse a hug. She was so nice. They were like, “We need a urine sample.”

At that point, basically, from the time labor started, I couldn’t pee. That was an issue, so they were like, “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Let’s get you back on the bed. Let’s check on you, and see how you are doing.” They said I was a 4 or a 5 depending on who checked and who assessed.

They asked me about pain medication and stuff, and I was like, “I’ll get back to you. I’m doing okay.” Contractions are about every 2-3 minutes at this point. My water had broken on the way in. They tried doing one of the swabs to check it was my water and not that you peed, and the nurse was like, “I’m not even going to send this in. It’s fine. I know that it’s your water.” They got me in pretty quickly. By the time I got into a room, I was like, “I would like some pain medication please.” 

They were like, “Okay, do you want an epidural? Do you want IV medication?” I remembered when I was in labor with my daughter, the nurse had initially offered me what was called a walking epidural, so I asked because I remembered declining that with my daughter. I was like, “No, no, no. I don’t want to do anymore walking. That’s the point. I don’t want walking. no walking.” 

This time, I was like, “That actually sounds like I wanted to know more about that.” I asked the nurse more about it. She was like, “It’s still an epidural. It’s put in your back the same. It’s just different medication. It’s lower doses or different medication or whatever it is. It’s going to provide some pain relief, but you’re not going to be numb. You’re still going to feel everything.” I was like, “Honestly, that sounds like what I would like. That sounds like it’s a really good idea.” 

I was having a very hard time taking a deep breath. I was having a very hard time relaxing because I was so afraid that something was going to go wrong. At that point, my blood pressure was fantastic. Everything had been normal. No protein in my urine, no swelling, no high blood sugars, nothing. 

I was like, “Okay, this is going to be fine. I’m going to be fine.” I felt a little weird about asking for pain medication because I was adamant that this time, I was going to do it without it, but they called the anesthesiologist. He comes in, and he says, “Okay, are you sure you want the walking epidural? That’s definitely not going to get you were you want to be pain-wise.” I was a little ticked off, but I was like, “Just get me what I asked for, please. If I change my mind, I will tell you.” That’s the thing. If you change your mind, all they have to do is switch up your medication. It’s not continuous with what I got. It’s just a bolus of medication, and the little thing is taped on your back. You’re not actually hooked up to medication or anything, but if I wanted to be, all they had to do was hook it up. 

I was like, “I’m fine. I don’t need that. Thanks, dude.” They get me that, and they made me stay in bed for the first hour just to make sure I was okay and my blood pressure was fine and everything. My blood pressure was fine. Everything stayed fine. My blood sugar was a little high at this point. It was two points over the max where they want it to be. My husband ran down to the gift shop and got me some trail mix, cheese, and meat things. I ate that. They checked my blood sugar in a little bit, and it was back to a healthy, happy, normal range, so they weren’t concerned. 

I was like, “I ate rice the night before, guys. That’s all it was. You checked my blood sugar in the middle of the night after I had rice. Of course, it’s going to be a little high.” 

At this point, it’s 4:00 AMish. I stayed in bed for the first hour. My doula was like, “Okay, let’s get you out of bed. Let’s get you moving.” I was out of bed almost the whole time. I did spend a little bit more time in bed at one point. I had the initial bolus of medication. That was all I had, so at this point, I can feel the contractions are getting stronger, and I can also feel that the medication is also starting to wear off. 

It started getting more intense. I was on the toilet for a minute. I was still having the issue where I still could not go pee. My doula kept feeding me water after every contraction, so they were keeping an eye on that. My doula was keeping an eye on that and stuff. It got to where it was 8:00 AM, I think, so at this point, I had been in labor for a total of– from the time contractions actually started being painful at midnight to 8:00 AM– 8 hours. I was on the side of the bed leaned over the bed. They had it at my height. My husband was rubbing my back. The nurses were there taking care of me and making sure I was good. 

All of a sudden, she’s like, “Okay, honey, I think it’s time to get you back in the bed.” I was like, “What?” She was like, “We’ve got to get you back in the bed. With the noises you’re making, and squatting down, we’ve got to get you back in bed.” With every contraction, I was bearing down. 

Meagan: And they just didn’t want you pushing standing up, type of thing? 

Abigail: I think they wanted to check me and see how I was doing and everything. They had me on continuous monitoring, which initially I didn’t really want, but up until that point, I hadn’t minded the monitors. It was just at that point because I kept moving, and I was so sweaty. I was so sweaty. My IV kept slipping off. The monitors kept slipping off. My gown was drenched. My hair was drenched. They kept re-taping my IV, and I was like, “Can you please just take the IV out? It’s bugging me.” 

At that point, the IV was somehow more painful than the labor. I was coping with labor, but I kept feeling the IV in my arm because they kept having to poke it and mess with it and stuff because it wasn’t staying in. They ended up leaving it in which I was annoyed with, but I was in and out of at that point.

They get me back in the bed, and they check me. They’re like, “Okay. You’re already starting to push. Let’s get the doctor in here. Let’s do this.”

I’m on the bed. I’ve got the squat bar. I’m up on the bed on the squat bar. I’m kneeling in a lunge position. I’ve got one knee up and one knee down. Every contraction, they were having me switch my knees which started getting really uncomfortable for me. I felt so heavy, and I was falling asleep in between each contraction it felt like. I wasn’t all the way there, but they ended up saying that my son’s heart rate was dropping just a little bit, and they were like, “Okay, let’s get him out. Let’s move this along.” 

They pulled the squat bar, and they had me on my back. The bed was propped up. I was upright, and they had me holding my own legs. I was having a hard time because I was so sweaty that my hands kept slipping off the back of my thighs. They were like, “Okay, you need to push. Let’s push.” I wasn’t really listening to them. They were trying to do coached pushing, but if I didn’t feel like it, I just wasn’t doing what they were telling me. I was more listening to my doula than anything else because I felt like I trusted her and what she was saying more than anything else. 

I told them, I was like, “I feel like it’s pulling up. I feel like it’s pulling up.” They were like, “Okay, lower your legs a little bit.” It was really nice that I was able to feel everything. I put my legs down a little bit, and that helped a little bit. I don’t know exactly how many pushes it was. I don’t know if anybody counted, but it ended up being 13 minutes that I pushed for from the time they got me in the bed and were like, “Okay, you’re pushing,” to “Let’s get you on your back. Give a couple good pushes.” I think it was two pushes once I was on my back and he was out. 

Meagan: That’s awesome. 

Abigail: He came right out. I had a small right inner labial tear, no perineal tears, and then I don’t think I actually tore up, but I noticed I was sore afterward up toward my urethra, but they ended up only giving me one stitch on my right labia. That was fine. 

They did numbing shots and everything for that, and I could feel the numbing shots and everything, and I didn’t like that. It’s uncomfortable, but it was fine. I felt fine. I felt good. They put him right onto my abdomen because his cord was so short that they couldn’t put him any further up. I wish they would have waited just a little longer to cut his cord, but they were like, “He’s hanging out down here where we need to be,” because his cord was so short, which makes sense that he was head down the entire pregnancy and didn’t move. He stayed right there. He flipped and rotated. 

Meagan: Transverse. 

Abigail: Sideways. He would put his butt back sometimes and toward the side sometimes, but that’s all he would do. His head was in my pelvis the entire time. 

He comes out. Once they cut his cord, they moved him up to my chest and everything. They got me cleaned up and everything. Everything was fine. I got my golden hour, and he didn’t want to nurse right away, but he was fine. They were taking bets like, “Does he look like he’s over 6 pounds or what?” He ended up only being 5 pounds, 5 ounces. 

Meagan: Tiny. 

Abigail: He was a little, tiny guy. He was barely 18 inches. I had him right at 38 weeks, so he was a little small. He was closer to the size of a 35-week baby. 

Meagan: Mhmm, and he had IUGR. 

Abigail: I don’t think there was anything wrong with him. I think I’m a very small person, and I think my first baby was too big because when I look at pictures, my daughter’s head was coned off to the side, and I know that she did not have room to move around in there. She was stuck where she was stuck. 

Meagan: That would mean it was asynclitic probably. Her head was coming down wrong. 

Abigail: Yeah, which is probably why it hurt so bad. I know that now, initially, it started even with early labor. I don’t think that even once I had an epidural with her, they were using the peanut ball. They were changing my positions. They were doing all of the things, and she wasn’t coming down any further. She wasn’t moving, and I wasn’t going past a 7. I think that she was too big which I think is from having unchecked gestational diabetes. Even though she was considered an average-sized baby. I’m not an average-sized person. I’m really, really, really small. Me having a 5-pound, 5-ounce baby seems about right.

He came out perfectly healthy. There was nothing wrong with him. His blood sugars were good. His blood pressures were good. Everything was great. And now at seven months, he’s still slightly on the smaller side, but he went from being in the 2nd or 3rd percentile or whatever he was born into all the way to about the 20th. 

He’s almost caught up. He’s healthy. He’s chunky. There wasn’t actually anything going on with him. I think that says a lot to the fact that I’m just really small and my first baby was the result of an unhealthy pregnancy. 

I didn’t have a postpartum hemorrhage. I didn’t need any extra medication. I didn’t need Pitocin. I didn’t end up getting a full epidural. When they asked me about my experience, I made sure to tell them that the anesthesiologist should choose his words more wisely. 

It went well. I waited two months afterward to see how I was feeling and everything, and I do not have postpartum depression. 

Meagan: Good. 

Abigail: No more anxiety than what I regularly deal with. I have had a great time. Everything is just completely different, and my son is already seven months old, and I am already at a point where I’m like, “I want another baby.” I don’t know if I’ll actually have another one or not. I mean, there are financial reasons to consider and actually giving birth to another baby and raising another human. It’s not just a baby. It’s a whole other life. It’s a lot, but I have baby fever already. I would absolutely do it again, and I just had him. 

Meagan: Oh, that makes me so happy. I am so happy that you had such a better experience that was more healing and positive and has left you having a better postpartum for sure. 

Abigail: It was a completely different experience. I mean, night and day. I’m just trying to make sure that I didn’t miss anything. I think the only thing that ended up being different was like I mentioned, I couldn’t really go pee. I did end up having to have a catheter at the end of my labor once they had moved me to recovery, and that was my choice. The nurses didn’t push for it or anything. I felt like my bladder was going to explode. I knew how much water I had drank. I tried so hard. I waited a little bit, and it wasn’t working, so I ended up having a catheter but I felt fine about that. 

I’m glad that I did it because I felt better afterward, and then I went back to normal after that. I didn’t end up having to have anything else done or anything. 

Meagan: Well and that can also help reduce bleeding, help the uterus contract down. So if you are unable to go to the bathroom after, it really is good to get that released somehow. 

Abigail: Yeah. I was glad that I did that. My bladder was really full. I was really uncomfortable. Anytime I was having the after-cramps or anything, it was like I couldn’t. I was like, “No. Fix this, please.” 

I stayed in the hospital for the 24 hours or whatever it was. We got sent home. 

Meagan: Much better than seven days. 

Abigail: Yeah. Everything was fine. 

Meagan: Oh, that makes my heart so happy for you that you were able to have that healing, redemptive experience with positivity and people surrounding you and talking to you and including you in your birth and you being able to make the choices for you and your baby and people not just coming in and doing things. 

Yeah, and you had a much better prenatal care experience for sure. 

Abigail: Yes. It was wonderful. Even just seeing the OB, because where I’m at, the OBs don’t deliver at the hospital. It was the on-call doctor at the hospital either way, so my OBs had to defer to the specialists, and no matter what, I got the on-call doctor, but I did end up getting the on-call midwife. It felt nice. I mean, I don’t know how much difference it would have made, but it was nice. It felt nice to have a midwife delivery after wanting to have midwives the first time. 

Meagan: Yeah. Well, thank you again for sharing your stories, and congratulations. Here’s to a happy postpartum and maybe down the road, baby number three.

Abigail: Maybe. We’ll see. Thank you for having me. 

Meagan: Thank you.

Closing 

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

What are the typical differences between hospital OB care and home birth midwifery care? Throughout her VBAC prep, Gesa was able to directly compare the two side by side. She was planning a home birth with a midwife but continued to see her OB at the hospital for the insurance benefits. 

Some differences she noted: 

• Her OB used ultrasound to determine baby’s position. Her midwife palpated her belly.
• Her midwife ran a blood test to check iron levels, and then suggested an iron supplement. Her OB did not track iron.
• OB visits were typically a few minutes long. Visits with her midwife were an hour or longer in her home. 
• The hospital required cervical checks, laboring in a mask, continuous monitoring, and only allowed one support person. 

The way Gesa navigated her care is so inspiring. Her midwife was hands-on during pregnancy in all of the best ways and just as hands-off during birth to let the physiological process take over. Gesa’s story is exactly why we love HBAC so much!

Needed Website

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Julie:  Good morning, Women of Strength. I am really excited to be back here with you. This is Julie, and it is my first official episode back doing regular episodes. Just like we talked about a couple of weeks ago, I’m going to be doing– or was it last week? I can’t remember what week it is. But we are going to be doing every other episode alternating between me and Meagan for the most part. I’m really excited to be back here. 

We have a really special guest with us today. But before we get into that, I want to say that I just got back from South Korea two weeks ago. No, two days ago. If you haven’t listened to Paige’s episode for her maternal assisted C-section, go listen to the episode that launched on December 2nd. I do believe it was maybe episode 357. Me and Paige are talking and sharing her story. I am literally so jet-lagged right now. It is going to be a morning for me for sure. If I’m a little clunkier than usual or my brain doesn’t work just right, just be a little patient with me, please, because the jet lag is absolutely real. 

Before we do get started though and introduce our guest, I want to read a review. Meagan sent me a review this morning, and I think it’s really interesting because she sent me this review this morning. It’s a 1-star review, and you might be curious as to why I’m choosing to read a 1-star review, but I’ll tell you a little bit more afterward why I picked that. 

This one is on Apple Podcasts. This person said, “Listened to 10 episodes, and found that the stories they choose to share are usually always the same with a twist. Didn’t find any episodes that said ‘A C-section saved me and my baby’s life’ so lots of bias and fear-mongering from people who are selling female empowerment. Maybe I’m missing the episode where the hosts say that sometimes it’s okay to have a C-section. With all of these birth stories, you would think I could relate with one, but I find that the anecdotes shared in this podcast are a really easy way to avoid talking about women who are actually statistical outliers.” 

I think that episode is really interesting. First of all, I appreciate everybody’s views and perspectives. But also, I think that review is a little bit interesting because she said she has listened to 10 episodes. I’m just assuming it’s a she. Maybe that’s not the right way to do that. She said she has only listened to 10 episodes. It’s interesting because I wonder what 10 she picked. 

I feel like, isn’t it maybe a sign that all of the stories are similar because our healthcare system needs a lot of work? Clearly, if so many women are having trauma and unnecessary C-sections, isn’t that a sign that something needs to change? I know that a lot of us have struggled with unnecessary C-sections and really traumatic treatment in the hospital systems, so I don’t know. I wanted to bring that up because first of all, we do have many, many episodes where C-sections were necessary. We’ve talked a lot about that how C-sections are lifesaving procedures when they are necessary. 

I feel like we do a pretty good job leaving space for all of the stories, but let me know what you think. Go to the Instagram post today about this episode, and let me know. What do you think? Do you think we do a pretty good job? Do you think we need to have a little bit more talking about C-sections that are actually necessary and lifesaving? Do you think it’s unequally represented? Let me know. I want to start a discussion about this. Go ahead and leave a comment. 

Let’s talk about it. But I do know that me and Meagan have been very intentional with sharing a wide variety of stories and outcomes and necessary and unnecessary C-sections. Hopefully, you feel well represented no matter what side of the view you are on. 

Anyway, we are going to go ahead and get started now. Today, I have a really awesome guest. Her name is Gesa, and she lives in Charleston, South Carolina. She is a mom of two boys. She had a C-section with her first baby. The C-section was because of a breech presentation after she tried everything to turn him. Knowing that she absolutely did not want to have a C-section for her second baby, she navigated the difficult search for a truly supportive provider and ended up having a successful HBAC, or home birth after Cesarean, after having some challenges to get labor started. 

We are super excited to hear her story. We are going to talk more at the end about how to find the right provider for your birth and your birth after a Cesarean after she goes ahead and shares her story with us. All right, Gesa. Are you there?

Gesa: I’m here. 

Julie:  Yay. I’m so excited to have you with me today. Thank you so much for joining me, and again, for being patient with all of my technical issues this morning. 

Gesa: Of course. 

Julie:  But I will go ahead and would like to turn it over to you. You can share your story with us, and yeah. I’m excited to hear it. 

Gesa: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here and share my story. 

Okay, let’s start with my first birth which was my C-section. Everything was going well at the beginning of the pregnancy. I was feeling a little bit nauseous, but overall, feeling well. Then at the anatomy scan, I found out that my baby was breech. I was like, “Wait, what does that mean? What does that mean for birth? What’s going on with that?” 

We had so much time left. The provider was not worried at all. It was around 20 weeks so we thought we had plenty of time at that point. Babies are little. They flip-flop around. I was not concerned at all. 

As time progressed, he continued to stay breech, so he did not flip on his own. During one of my OB appointments, I was basically told, “Well, if your baby does not turn head down, we’re just going to have to have a C-section.” There were really no other options given. 

At that point, I was actually planning a natural birth at a hospital, so that was not really what I had in mind. We had also taken a Hypnobirthing class which was awesome. We learned so much about birth and pregnancy that I had no idea about. 

Hearing that I was going to need a C-section if he wasn’t going to turn head down was really not what I wanted. I started looking into things I could do to help him turn. I started doing Spinning Babies exercises. I started seeing a chiropractor. I did acupuncture. I even did moxibustion at some point which is really fun. It was a Chinese herb that you burn by your toe, and that’s supposed to create fetal movement and help the baby flip which unfortunately did not help. 

I was out in the pool doing handstands and backflips about every day. I was lying on my ironing board at some point with a bag of frozen peas on my belly. I really tried everything possible to get this baby to flip. Nothing worked. I ended up trying to have the ECV at about 37 weeks. That’s the version where they try to manually flip the baby from the outside. She gave it a good try to attempt, and he would not move. 

It was that his head felt stuck under my ribs. It was very uncomfortable. He was very comfortable where he was at. They had me schedule the C-section which I was really unhappy about, but at that point, I didn’t really see any other option. 

It was about my 37-38 week appointment, and the OB wanted to talk a little bit more about the details of the C-section which made me really emotional because that was not what I wanted. I started crying during the appointment, then the nurse comes in and says, “Hey, we actually forgot to check your blood pressure. Let’s do that really quick.” I was like, “I’m sure that’s going to be great now that I’m all emotional and crying here.” 

Of course, the blood pressure was higher than it was supposed to be. The OB started joking, “Oh, maybe we’ll have a baby today. Maybe we’re just going to do an emergency C-section,” which was not what I wanted to hear at all. It made me even more emotional. I remember sitting in the office crying. Now, I had this high blood pressure. 

My husband handed me this magazine of puppies or kittens. He said, “Sit here. Chill out and just relax. Look at the kittens. They’ll retake your blood pressure, and I’m sure it’s going to be fine.” I was like, “Oh my god. Nothing is fine right now.” It ended up coming down a little bit. They still sent me to the hospital for some additional monitoring. It was all good, and we ended up being sent home. But I just felt so unsupported and so unheard in that moment. 

When I was thinking about the C-section, I was even considering at some point what happens if I just don’t show up for my C-section appointment and just waited to see if I’d go into labor? But then I thought, “Maybe an emergency C-section would not be any better than a planned.” I had a friend who had an emergency C-section, and she said that the recovery was really difficult so that’s also not really what I wanted. 

I went ahead and showed up to the hospital for my scheduled C-section at 39 weeks and 1 day. But I was so emotional. I was crying on the way to the hospital. I was crying at the hospital. Everybody was really nice at the hospital, but it was just not what I wanted. The idea of them cutting my body open and removing the baby was just so far away from what I had envisioned. 

The C-section went well. I really did not have any major issues. But recovery was pretty rough. He was pretty big. He was 9.5 pounds and 21 inches long. Recovery was a little rough. He had also a really difficult time with breastfeeding. He had a really weak suck. I just kept thinking, “What if he was not done cooking? What if they got him too early? He wasn’t ready to be born yet.” We found out later that he had a tongue and a lip tie that the hospital failed to diagnose which just made things even more difficult. 

I, overall, hated my stay at the hospital. I felt like I was not getting any rest at all the whole time I was there. My son didn’t like sleeping in the bassinet because why would he? I felt like there were people coming in all of the time and interrupting the little bit of rest that I was trying to get. They were checking on me, checking on the baby, taking temperatures, the photographer, the cleaning people. It was just like people were coming and going. 

The only person who did not show up who I hoped would show up was the lactation consultant. She did not show up for almost two days which was really, really disappointing. 

The first few months were pretty hard. I would say they were pretty rough emotionally and physically. When people ask me about my birth, a lot of times, I got comments like, “Well, at least he’s healthy” or “Oh, your baby’s really big, so it was probably good that you had that C-section.” That really upset me because I understand that it’s important for my baby to be healthy. Yes, that is the most important thing. But at the same time, my feelings are valid about it, and my emotions. I felt really robbed of that experience to birth my own child. The fact that I had never felt even a single contraction really was upsetting to me. I felt that my body had really failed me. 

Yeah. I knew that if I ever were to get pregnant again, I would not want to have another C-section. 

So let’s fast forward to my second pregnancy.

I got pregnant again when my son was a little over a year and a half. Like I said, I knew exactly what I didn’t want, and that was to have another C-section. When I found out I was pregnant, I pretty much immediately jumped on Facebook group and mom groups trying to do my research and find a truly supportive provider. 

I did call a birth center here in Charleston, and they told me right away, “We don’t do VBACs. Sorry. You can’t come here,” which was pretty upsetting because they basically see a VBAC or having had a C-section before is a high-risk pregnancy for your next which really does not make a lot of sense because every pregnancy is different. Just because you had a C-section, there can be so many different reasons. You should not be considered high-risk for your next pregnancy. 

I found a provider who I thought was VBAC-supportive. It seemed like that was my only option, so I started seeing her. As I was seeing my OB further into my pregnancy, I started asking some questions about birth. I really didn’t like some of the answers she had for me. I asked about intermittent monitoring. She said, “No, we can’t do that. Hospital policy is that you have to have continuous monitoring.” I didn’t love the idea of being strapped to the bed. I wanted to move around freely. That was not going to be an option. 

I asked about eating. I got the answer, “No, we don’t really allow eating while you are in labor. You can have clear fluids.” I was just thinking, “I don’t want to eat ice chips while I’m in labor. If I’m hungry, I want to be able to eat.” 

I asked if I could labor in the bathtub because they did have tubs at the hospital. She said, “No, because of the continuous monitoring, you’re not going to be able to get in the tub.” Hearing all of that made me really uncomfortable. Whenever I did ask questions, it almost felt like she didn’t really want to talk about it. She didn’t really want to talk about my birth plan which was really important to me. 

Now, at the same time, it was also COVID. I got pregnant with my second literally the week before people started quarantining for COVID. On top of all of these things that I didn’t like about the hospital, there were also the COVID restrictions. 

I had to show up to my appointments in a mask which was totally fine, but the idea of having to labor in a mask made me a little uncomfortable. I was thinking about hiring a doula, and because they were only allowing one support person at the time, that was also not going to be an option. 

I knew my son wasn’t going to be able to see me at the hospital which was something I was really looking forward to. I kept thinking, “Maybe there has to be another option. This can’t be my only option here.” I started looking at places farther away. I was like, “Maybe I can travel to another place further away.” 

I was looking into birth centers around the area and all over South Carolina, really. At some point, I did come across a website that said they were offering VBAC support. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I filled out a form. I said, “Hey, I need some help with a provider. I’m seeing an OB, but I’m not feeling super comfortable.” I submitted that form. I want to say that maybe a couple of days or a couple of weeks later, a midwife called me. She was like, “Hey, I’m not in your area, but I actually know a lot of people all over the state. Let me send an email to my network, and we’ll see if we can find somebody who can help you.” 

One day, I got a call from a home birth midwife here in Charleston. She was like, “Hey, I got your message. Tell me how I can help you.” We talked a little bit about home birth. At that point, I was like, “Do I really want a home birth?” It was not something I had really considered.” During that HypnoBirthing class when I was pregnant with my first son, we watched a lot of videos of water births and home births. I always thought it was really cool, and I would love to have that experience, but at that moment, when she asked me, “Hey, would you consider a home birth?” I was like, “I need to think about that for a second.” 

I talked about it with my husband. I did a lot of research on home birth. I ended up sending her all of my medical records from my first pregnancy. We continued talking and checking. I continued to see my OB, and that was really for a variety of reasons. First of all, I had really good health insurance. All of my visits were covered, so all of the DNA tests, and things like the anatomy scan were covered by my health insurance, and it was just easy to coordinate those things with my OB. 

I also wanted to continue my care just in case there was something that would pop up that would prevent me from having a home birth and those plans would fall through. I’m a big planner, so I like having not just the plan, but also a plan B and a plan C. 

Yeah. I also like that established relationship just in case I needed a home birth transfer to the hospital. I’ve heard stories where moms were treated very differently when they arrived at a hospital with a home birth transfer, and in the case that I would have needed that, I could have just shown up to the hospital and said, “Hey, I’m a patient. I’m here. I’m in labor,” without them knowing that it was really a home birth transfer. 

I did not tell my OB that I was actually planning a home birth. I think she would have been pretty upset. Maybe she would have fired me. I don’t know. But the difference in care that I received from the OB and from the midwife was really, really interesting. It seemed like at my OB appointments, there was a lot of focus on different tests and procedures like my weight. Further down, they wanted to do lots of cervical checks which I all declined. 

At the same time, when I talked to my midwife, the focus was a lot more on nutrition and on exercise. She was asking, “What do you do to prepare for your VBAC?” Lots of education on birth. There were lots of books that she suggested for me to read. 

I also started seeing a chiropractor pretty early in the pregnancy. I was doing my homework. I was doing my Spinning Babies exercises. I was so focused on doing everything I could to have the birth that I had envisioned. 

At some point, my midwife had me do some extra blood draws. She wanted to make sure that my iron levels were okay for the home birth, and they were actually slightly lower than they were supposed to be, so she put me on an iron supplement for a couple of weeks. That was an example of something that the OB never asked about or really cared about. 

At some point, I was a little bit nervous about the position of my baby. It almost felt like he was lying sideways, and I couldn’t really tell. I brought it up to the OB. She was like, “Yeah. Let’s get in the ultrasound machine. Let’s take a look.” She was trying to feel, but she couldn’t really tell. Everything was good. He was head down. Well, I didn’t know he was a he because we did not find out the gender. 

Baby was head down. Everything was okay. I brought up the same thing to the midwife, and it was so funny because she did not need an ultrasound. She just felt. She felt really good. She was like, “Yeah. I know. I feel all of the different body parts. You’re head down. You’re good.” Of course, she was right. It was just so interesting to see how different things were approached by the two providers. 

I also hired a doula, and I made sure she was VBAC Link certified. It was really exciting. She was familiar with the podcast that I was, of course, listening to at the time to prepare for my VBAC. 

At some point, I had a situation with my OB that made me pretty uncomfortable. It was time for the GBS testing, and I had done my research. I made an informed decision. I let her know that I was declining the test. 

She was not happy to hear it. She kept saying, “Well, if your baby dies–”, and she kept saying that multiple times. It was like, “If your baby dies–”, and I was like, “This is so unprofessional to say it like that.” I totally understand that they need to–

Julie:  Oh my gosh. I can’t even believe that. 

Gesa: Yeah. Isn’t that horrible?

Julie:  That’s horrible. 

Gesa: I understand she needs to educate me on the risks that come with declining certain tests, but that was just not a proper way to communicate that. 

Julie:  Yeah. Find another way. Find another way. 

Gesa: Yeah. Right. That situation really confirmed for me home birth was the way to go. I did not want anything to do with this hospital or this OB anymore at that point. I was fully committed to the home birth. I was planning on it. 

I continued my OB visits more just to check a box. 

At 37 weeks, my midwife brought over the birthing pool and some supplies. I gathered everything that I needed. She had sent me a list of all of the different supplies that we needed to buy and gather, so I started getting all of that. I created a beautiful birthing space for myself in our bedroom. I had my affirmations up. They were taped to my mirror in the bathroom as daily reminders. I had them hung up in the bedroom with some twinkle lights. I had the picture of the opening flower, and everything was ready. 

I had my Spotify playlist ready, and I was so excited for baby to come here. 

Then, at 39 weeks and 1 day, it was early in the morning, like maybe at 6:30 AM. I was lying in bed, and our toddler had climbed into bed with me. I felt a little pop, and I was like, “Hmm, that was weird,” but I didn’t really think much of it because pregnancy is weird, and our bodies do all kinds of weird things that we can’t explain when we are pregnant. I didn’t think much of it. I went back to sleep. 

An hour later, I got up to go to the bathroom. I sit down on the toilet, and water is gushing out. I was like, “Shoot. What is going on? I’m not peeing. What’s happening?” I just realized, “No, my water broke.” 

I wasn’t expecting it at that point because you hear about a lot of women going into 40-41 weeks, 42 weeks, especially with their first pregnancy that they are going into natural labor, so I was so surprised that it happened at 39 weeks and a day. 

I was feeling a tiny bit of cramping, but definitely did not have any contractions. I texted my husband, “Oh my gosh. My water broke.” He was out for a workout, so he rushed home. I also texted my doula and my midwife just to let them know what was going on, but then the whole day was really uneventful. I was ready and waiting for labor to start. It just didn’t. 

I went on a lot of walks. I tried some curb walking. I bounced on the yoga ball. I ended up getting a last-minute appointment with my chiropractor for a quick adjustment. I really spent all day just trying to get labor started. I took some naps. I also tried using the breast pump for some stimulation to get things going. I got some tiny little contractions. 

At that time, I thought they were contractions, but now that I know what contractions actually feel like, I realize that was not actually the case. I got some tiny contractions going, but then they fizzled out again. My midwife stopped by a few times to check on me and baby. She had me take my temperature every 4 hours and text it to her just to make sure I wasn’t running a fever. 

Baby was moving normally. She wasn’t overly concerned. She assured me that my body was probably just waiting until nighttime when my toddler was in bed and I was relaxed for things to start then. It was weird because I was leaking amniotic fluid all day, so I tried to stay super hydrated and replenish all of that water I was losing. 

I went to bed and thought, “Okay. This is it. We’re going to have a baby maybe early in the morning. Labor is going to start.” Nothing happened. I woke up really early and really disappointed that nothing had happened. 

My midwife had sent me some information on PROM, so premature rupture of membranes, just to make sure I was making an informed decision. She always gave me the option to go to the hospital. She said that I could go in the evening of when my water broke. She said I could wait until the next day and do whatever I felt comfortable with, but she wanted me to be aware of the dangers with having a long time of broken waters. 

She also had sent me a recipe to the midwives’ brew. That was something we talked about to get labor started. She said, “Something to consider for the next day if you don’t have your baby overnight.” My husband went out. He bought the ingredients just in case. It was castor oil, almond butter, apricot nectar, and champagne. It was absolutely disgusting. It actually ruined almond butter for me for at least 2-3 years. I could not have it anymore. It was so gross. 

Julie:  Oh my gosh. That is so funny. That is funny. 

Gesa: I took it around 10:00 AM in the morning. At that point, my water had been broken for over 24 hours. I layed down for a nap, and maybe 2 hours later, I started feeling some contractions. They were coming in. I was just laying in bed breathing through them and listening to my HypnoBirthing affirmations and some relaxing music. 

My husband was actually taking a nap at that time with our son. 

At some point, things were getting pretty intense. I texted my doula and my midwife. I was trying to time contractions but it was also difficult. They both came over around 2:00 PM and realized pretty quickly that labor was going. They needed to fill that pool because that actually takes a while which was not something I was even thinking about.

They quickly got the birthing pool filled. Once I got in the water, it was such a difference. At that point, I had some really, really heavy contractions and I think I got in there around 3:00 PM. It was such a night and day difference. My doula was awesome. She was rubbing my back. She was giving me cold washcloths on my neck. Yeah. She was super helpful. 

I was laboring in the tub. At some point, I needed to get out to go to the bathroom. As soon as I got out, I instantly regretted that decision because it was so horrible and the contractions were feelings so much stronger when I was not in the water. 

My husband was still sleeping at that point. I was like, “Okay, is somebody going to wake him up before baby comes?” But I also lost track of time of how long I even was in the pool. They did wake him up at some point. It was really funny because when he lay down for a nap, it was just me laboring in bed by myself. They woke up from the nap, and I was in full, active labor in the birthing pool with the doula and the midwife there, full action going on. 

He was just like, “Whoa, what’s happening?” Yeah. He jumped right into action and helping me out and massaging and all of that good stuff. 

It was really sweet because my son kept bringing toys. He was a little over 2. He was 2 years and 3 months at that point. He kept bringing over toys. He was playing right next to the pool. He was checking on me. It was just really sweet and really special to have him there. 

Our dog was also walking around the pool and was really interesting in what was going on. I really lost track of time and of how long I really was in the pool. 

At some point, I felt some really, really intense pressure. It was almost like my body was pushing on its own without me really actively doing anything. I had heard of the fetal ejection reflex, but I didn’t realize that that was what was going on. I didn’t realize that baby was already coming. 

My midwife just looked at me. She was like, “Feeling a little pushy, huh?” I was like, “Yeah, I guess that’s what’s going on.” It all happened really quickly. My husband got our son situated downstairs because we wanted him to be there, but we didn’t want him to be there right as baby was born. We thought that may have been a little bit too much for him, so we got him situated downstairs. 

Yeah, things happened really quickly. All of a sudden, his head was out. It was really fun because we got to feel his hair, and I did not have another contraction for a minute which was weird because his head was out. It was underwater, and it felt like a really, really long time between contractions. But then he was out with the next one, and my midwife caught him. He came right to my chest. My husband got to announce that he was a boy which I knew all along. We didn’t find out his gender, but I just knew he was going to be a boy. My pregnancy was just so similar that I was like, “There’s no way he’s not a boy.” 

But yeah. He was born a little after 4:00 PM, so really just 6 hours from when I had the midwives’ brew, so that really worked for me. Of course, I cried tears of joy. The amount of emotions I was feeling was just absolutely incredible. The rush of endorphins, I felt so empowered and so strong in that moment, like literally the strongest person in the world. It was awesome. 

We brought my son up and he got to meet his baby brother within minutes of his birth which was so special and such an amazing experience. Once we got settled a bit, I got to take a shower. I got to eat pasta in my bed, and then also safely cosleep with my baby in my own bed and in my own home which was just the complete opposite of that hospital C-section experience. 

Yeah, the home birth experience was really healing for me in a way. It gave me closure from my C-section experience. I think because I had the C-section, I just knew what I absolutely did not want, and I think that really helped me fight and prepare for my home birth experience. 

I still had to call my OB and cancel my 40-week appointment which was probably one of the weirdest phone calls I’ve ever had to made because I was like, “Yeah, I need to cancel my appointment because my baby is actually here.” They were like, “Wait, where was your baby born? We have no records of this.” I was like, “Yeah, he was born at home.” 

They were like, “You need to get him checked out immediately.”

Julie:  You’re like, “Yeah, accident.” 

Gesa: I was like, “No, we had a professional there. It’s all good. Don’t worry about it. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

Julie:  I love that so much. Okay, I want to talk about a couple of things or maybe just comment. When you were talking about your C-section and how you felt guilty about how maybe he was having trouble nursing or whatever and you were feeling guilty that maybe he had been taken too early or he wasn’t ready to be born yet and stuff, I felt that so hard with my C-section baby. 

I just wanted to validate that because I feel like that is not an uncommon thing. I feel like a lot of us have that concern when we have either a scheduled C-section or an induction that results in a C-section or maybe even an induction that results in a vaginal birth. You can look back at it and feel like, “Oh, maybe I made the wrong choice,” or “Maybe he was taken too early,” or things like that. I just wanted to validate that. Know that I see you, and I hear you, and I feel you. And everybody, not just you, but everybody. 

Try not to be too hard on yourself. I’m not speaking just to you, but everybody. Try not to be too hard on yourself because you were making the best decisions that you could with the information that you had available to you at the time. So give yourself some grace. Give yourself some love. I think that’s really important is that we navigate our pregnancies and birth after having an unwanted C-section or an unwanted birth experience. Giving ourselves that grace is a really, really important part of it. 

I did want to talk about the difference in care. You highlighted a few things in your episode about the difference in care between a hospital OB and having a midwife or especially a home birth midwife. In the hospital, you’re still going to see a little bit of similarities between midwifery and OBs, although midwifery care in a hospital is a lot more hands-on and a lot more personal and a lot more trusting, generally speaking, of the birth process. 

I just was thinking this morning about a post. There was a post in not even a VBAC group. It was just a local mom’s group in my community. This woman was talking about how it was her first baby. She hasn’t had an ultrasound or seen the baby since 10 weeks. She had a 10-week scan, and she hadn’t seen the baby since then. She wasn’t 20 weeks pregnant yet, but she was almost. She was just like, “I’m just wondering if this is normal. Every time I have an appointment with my OB, I only see him for 2 minutes. I don’t feel like this is normal. I have some concerns, but I’m not being able to ask questions,” and things like that. 

It made me sad. It made me sad for this parent not being cared for in the way that she needs to be. It also made me sad because her experience is not that uncommon. I wanted to say that unfortunately, this is normal. You’re not going to usually see your OB for more than a couple of minutes per visit. You’re not going to have time to ask a lot of questions and get a lot of answers because hospitals are busy and OBs are busy. Most of them don’t have the time or intentionally make the time to give you that kind of attention. It’s just how it is. 

Now, I say most of the time because there are some OBs. I saw briefly an OB for my third pregnancy, and I love her. She was always 45 minutes late. Our appointments were always 45 minutes late. My appointment would be at 1:45, and I wouldn’t get in there until 2:00 because she was giving everybody the attention that they needed. A lot of people get frustrated because she was an hour late for the visits, but I wasn’t frustrated because I knew that she was giving other people the same attention that she gave to me. 

That is so, so rare in a hospital setting. I love that you highlighted that. I love that you talked about how your midwife took time to address your concerns, how she monitored your iron levels and gave your iron supplements and your OB didn’t. It wasn’t even on his or her radar. I don’t know if your OB was a boy or girl. I can’t remember. Their radar, right? And how your OB needed an ultrasound to confirm baby’s position, but your midwife just palpated your belly because midwives are more hands-on. They are more intimately connected to the female body, to the baby, and to the physiologic birth process. 

Gesa: Yeah. She was more hands-on during the pregnancy, but then during the actual birth, she was very hands-off. She let me do my own thing. 

Julie:  Yeah! Yeah. 

Gesa: She wasn’t constantly in my space and interrupting my labor. 

Julie:  Right. 

Gesa: She would come in very quietly and very softly. She would check on the baby and check on me, and if everything was good, she was back out the door. She let me labor in my own space and at my own pace which was awesome. 

Julie:  Right. I was going to talk about that next actually. I’ve been keeping notes while you have been talking because during your labor, you said you felt that fetal ejection reflex, and your midwife was like, “Oh, feeling pushy are we?” I know exactly what that looks like. I’m not a midwife, but I’m a doula. I’ve been a doula and a birth photographer, and I know what it looks like when a woman’s body is progressing. 

But in a hospital setting, what do we do? We connect you to monitors. We put an IV in you. We sit at a nurse’s station and watch the monitor. That’s how we know how you are doing. We use ultrasounds to determine baby’s position. We use data and numbers. We look at data to decide how the parent and the baby are doing. But in midwifery care, especially out-of-hospital midwifery care, you use a completely set of tools. We use observation. We are watching. We are listening. We are seeing. We are noticing the movements that are shifting and the sounds as they evolve and change. We are seeing the belly moved. We are seeing all of the different things, and it’s a completely different approach. I know exactly what an unmedicated parent looks like as they are getting close to transition. I know the noises that change, what sounds are made, what different subtleties there are. You just learn these things when you actually just watch a laboring person, and notice what is happening. 

But they don’t do that in a hospital. An OB and nurses– probably nurses because they are in the room a little bit more, but your OB won’t show up until you start pushing. They don’t know what the signs are. All they have is the data on the machine to see if you are doing. I know what approach I approve. Let’s just say that. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of home births, especially for VBAC, when the parent feels comfortable there. I just really loved that. 

My appointments when I had my three VBACs at home, every time I saw my midwife, we would chat for an hour. She did talk about nutrition. I had preeclampsia for my first. My blood pressure was high. I was like, “I don’t want high blood pressure,” so she gave me all of these nutritional things to do to help take care of my heart and help make sure that my blood pressure wasn’t high. 

But then what would happen in the hospital? They wait until your blood pressure is high, then they treat it. They don’t work on preventing it or making you healthier or things like that. I just feel like there is such a big difference in care. It’s not for everybody. That’s not where everybody feels safe, but I wanted people to know that home-birth midwives are very skilled. They are very hands-on throughout the pregnancy and oftentimes hands-off during the delivery because we trust these bodies to do what they need to do. Sometimes they do need help, but also observing and watching can help us know when a little bit of extra help is needed. 

It’s such a fun little dance that can be done throughout pregnancy and labor. It’s kind of like an art form as much as it is a medical side of things. Midwives are not chicken-dancing hippies that run around your room with incense and pray for a safe delivery. They are skilled medical professionals that have high levels of training and care and can practice in very similar ways that you see in a hospital setting just without all of the extra crap and interventions that are there. 

Obviously, they can’t do surgery, and depending on your state and where you live, there are different restrictions about what out-of-hospital midwives can and cannot do. But a lot of people are surprised to find out how much training and knowledge and skills and procedures that out-of-hospital midwives have access to, so I wanted to talk about that. 

Yeah. Anyway, Gesa, do you want to give one piece of advice to anybody preparing for a VBAC right now? What would you tell anybody?

Gesa: I think a lot of people, when they go to the doctor, they see their OB and they heavily rely on what they are telling them. They almost glorify the OB’s advice in a way. We have got to remember that these doctors work for us. We don’t work for them, so if we don’t feel comfortable with what they are saying, we have the option to go somewhere else, and to take our business somewhere else. The doctors work for us. We don’t work for them. It is never too late to switch your provider. 

I was going back and forth whenever I was pregnant with my first, and I was very late into my pregnancy. I kept thinking, “What if I just find a provider who does breech births?” In a way, I wish I had, but then you never know what actually would have happened, so it’s hard to say how that would have changed my experience. I could have still ended up with a C-section, but I could have. I could have changed my provider at 38 weeks if I had contacted somebody, but I was just so overwhelmed by the whole situation that I didn’t. 

But I was so glad that when I wasn’t feeling comfortable with my OB during my second pregnancy and with what she was saying, that I took the step to find somebody who was truly supportive and who was able to help me with the birth that I had envisioned. 

Julie:  Yes. I absolutely love that. I think that’s great advice. You make a very good point. It’s never too late to switch providers. I think that the single most important thing that you can do to affect your birth outcome is to choose a provider who operates in the way that you want to birth just naturally. It’s just what they do anyway. I feel like if you do that, then that’s half the battle. 

Gesa: Yeah. 100%. I know some people feel very comfortable at the hospital, and a lot of people are not good candidates for a home birth. 

Julie:  Yeah, and that’s where they should be. 

Gesa: When I told people that I was planning a home birth, I got a lot of people saying, “Are you sure? That’s so scary.” If that’s scary to you, then you shouldn’t do it. If you feel safer in a hospital, go ahead. There’s nothing wrong with that. Go to the hospital. Have your baby there if that’s where you feel comfortable. 

For me, just the thought of having to fight for certain things while I’m in labor and very vulnerable wasn’t something I wanted to do. I wanted to focus on laboring and birthing and just having that experience. I did not want to get into fights with OBs and nurses over whatever I could or could not do while at the hospital. That just did not sound like a good idea to me. 

Julie:  Yep. Absolutely. I agree, 100%. 

All right, well thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for sharing your story with us. I’m super proud of you. You said that after your baby was born, you felt like the strongest woman ever. I agree. You are the strongest woman ever along with all of the women listening right now. We are truly Women of Strength, and no matter how your birth outcome ends, you are strong. You are powerful. I’m very grateful to each of you.

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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Katie has had a Cesarean (failure to progress), a VBAC, and most recently, an unmedicated breech VBAC!

She talks about the power of mom and baby working together during labor. She is 4’10” and attributes so much of her first successful VBAC to movement. 

Katie’s most recent baby was frank breech throughout her entire pregnancy. After multiple ECV attempts, she exhausted all options to seek out a vaginal breech provider. She was able to work with providers while still advocating for what felt right to her. 

Though there were some wild twists and turns, this breech vaginal birth showed Katie, yet again, just what her body is capable of! 

The VBAC Link Blog: Why Babies Go Breech & 5 Things You Can Do About It

The VBAC Link Blog: ECV and Breech

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

COTERIE CODE VBAC20

Julie: Welcome, welcome. You are listening to The VBAC Link Podcast. This is Julie Francom here with you today. I’m super excited to be sharing some episodes with you guys this year and helping out Meagan a little bit and keeping things rocking and rolling here at The VBAC Link. 

I am excited to be back, and I am especially excited to be joined by Katie today who has a really, really incredible story about her three births. Her first was a C-section. Her second was a VBAC, and her third was an unmedicated breech VBAC. I absolutely love hearing stories about vaginal breech birth because I feel like it’s something that we need to bring back. 

It’s only fair to offer people options when we have a breech baby. I don’t think it should just be an automatic C-section. I’m excited to hear her story. I’m excited to hear her journey to find support in that regard. 

But first, I’m going to read a review. This review is actually from our VBAC Prep course. If you didn’t know, we do have a course preparing you all about all of the things you need to know to get ready for birth after Cesarean. You can find that on our website at thevbaclink.com. 

But this review on the course is from Heather. She says, “This course was so helpful especially with helping to educate my husband on the safety of VBAC as he had previously been nervous about my choice. We watched all of the videos already, but will also be reviewing the workbook again right before birth. I highly recommend.”

I absolutely love that review from Heather because I feel like we get a lot of these comments about people and their partners really being on board and invested after taking the VBAC prep course with their partners. 

This course is chock-full of information about the safety of VBAC, and different types of birth situations. It talks about different interventions and hospital policies that you might encounter. It talks about the history of VBAC. It talks about all of the statistics and information. It talks about mental prep, physical prep, and all of those things. There are videos. There is an over 100-page workbook. There are actual links to sources, PDFs of studies, and everything you can even imagine. It is in this course. I also highly recommend it. 

Anyway, thank you, Heather, for that review. 

All right, let’s get rocking and rolling. I am so ready to hear all about Katie’s birth stories. Katie is right here snuggling her sweet little baby with her. I cannot wait. I hope we get to hear some little sweet baby noises. They are kind of my favorite. But Katie, go ahead and take it away, my friend. 

Katie: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here and hopefully share some things that I would have loved to have shared with me. So let me just start from the beginning with my first baby 5 years ago. 

I was planning to have a birth. I wasn’t quite sure what it would look like, but I thought I wanted unmedicated. It was my first baby, and I wanted to labor spontaneously. The labor was long, so 3+ days of labor. It ended in me getting to 10 centimeters and pushing. However, due to fatigue and the multiple interventions that I had and the cascade of interventions, I believe, resulted in a diagnosis of failure to progress so I had a C-section. 

It was, I would say, disappointing to me not because of anything except that I would have loved to continue on my path of vaginal delivery. That wasn’t in the cards with this one for me. 

Then with my second 2.5 years later– oh, I should also say that I was at a teaching hospital. There were lots of people. They were very pro-intervention. You name it, I had it across those 3 days. 

So 2.5 years later when I got pregnant, I thought, “Okay. I know I want to attempt a VBAC.” My husband, my partner, was so on board. He got a shirt that said, “You’ve got this.” He was wearing it all of the time. We watched a ton of positive VBAC birth stories on YouTube. We listened to podcasts like this one. We followed all of the things on social media and prepared with an amazing doula. 

I went into spontaneous labor again and this time, I was sure I wanted– actually, I should say I had a membrane sweep, and then I went into spontaneous labor. I was sure I didn’t want interventions for this one. My doula was on board. My partner was on board. 

I labored at home for quite a while. I came into the hospital. It was the same hospital. That doctor was not so supportive of me attempting a VBAC, however, another OB had said that because of our family planning, I said, “I think I want more kids,” another OB told that OB, “Hey, let’s make it as safe as possible to do what she wants, so let her give it a try.” 

My doctor was semi-supportive, but I came in. I was 9 centimeters. It was unmedicated. I was in there for less than 3 hours. I pushed the baby out with a bar. I was squatting. They didn’t even know the baby was out. In fact, the baby started crying, and it felt like minutes or hours in my mind, but it was just a couple of pushes. My doula said, “Baby out. Baby out.” Everyone rushed because they were so surprised because normally, I think, folks labor on their backs, and I had requested a bar. 

That was pretty amazing. It was just me and my son doing the thing. It was incredible. I remember that OB who was skeptical said, “You did it. You’ve changed my mind.” So that was exciting. 

3 years later to now, I became pregnant with my third baby. I went in for my anatomy scan at 20 weeks, and the ultrasound tech said, “Baby is breech. No big deal. Tons of babies are breech.” Because I have some other health complications, I guess they deemed me as high risk. I went to multiple ultrasounds, so that means I get to see my baby once a month which also meant I continued to see that baby was breech each time. Each time, they kept saying, “Oh, don’t worry. Plenty of time. Plenty of time to turn.” 

As we approached my due date, I was like, “I feel his head. I don’t think he’s going to turn.” So they started to let me know what type of breech he was. My baby was frank breech. There are a few different types of breech positions which I didn’t know prior to this baby, but now I’m very well-versed in the different breech positions. 

Frank breech is basically a pike position. The feet are by the head, and his little rump was just hanging out in my pelvis. I was also hoping to birth at a birthing center with my doulas. This was different than that learning hospital that I shared because I just wanted a different experience where they were less pushy with interventions. I knew that with my last birth that they used the term “something pelvis”, but anyway, I was ready to do something different with less people in the room. 

However, when they found out that I was breech, I was told what I think is the stock option which was, “Hey, if baby stays breech, but don’t worry, there’s plenty of time and he’ll probably turn, but this is what we’ll do. We’ll try an ECV, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll schedule your C-section. We’ll give you an epidural, try the ECV one more time, and that way, you can go right into your planned C-section. But don’t worry, we have time. The baby is going to turn.” 

I left and was like, “I don’t want that. My baby is healthy. I’m healthy. I am on the fence about this plan.” Now, I’m 36 weeks so at 37 weeks, I go in. We have the ECV. They give me the shot to relax my uterus. The ECV is the external cephalic version where they put their hands and try to rotate the baby. It was unsuccessful. 

So I said, “Can we try again?” She looked at me like, “What?” 

She said, “We’ll try again with that epidural when you schedule your C-section.” I said, “No, no, no, no, no. Can we try again?” This is where, I think, that advocacy and that information and research are so important. She said, “Sure. We can try it again.” We scheduled another ECV. 

I went back in, and it was also unsuccessful with her. She could tell at this point, I was grieving what I thought was the end of this journey for me, and also not necessarily on board with the protocol they had put in place. 

We planned. I said, “Hey, can I try a different provider?” I know that you can do up to four ECVS. I’m not suggesting that people do that. I just wanted to make sure that I did everything possible for me and baby to have a vaginal birth. They seemed pretty gung-ho about not delivering unless baby was head down. 

She said, “Sure. We can do that.” That was also unsuccessful. 

At this point, the OB said, and I appreciated this. They said, “I feel really uncomfortable delivering a breech baby. I think you should go to our sister hospital in a city away if you are considering breech because we don’t have a NICU here.” That felt reasonable to me because I had said to her previously, “I hear you, and I hear that protocol with what you’re suggesting. I also feel really healthy, and I will absolutely change course if me or baby’s health is in jeopardy, but unless that is imminent, I consider breech a variation of normal,” so I didn’t necessarily think that was the rationale for the C-section knowing what that recovery is like and knowing that I had a 5 and a 3-year-old back at home. 

Julie: Oh, I love that so much. I love that they gave you options, and they admitted that they weren’t comfortable with it. So many times, doctors will be like, “We don’t do breech here.” They don’t tell you that it’s because they haven’t been trained or they’re not comfortable with it or it’s not safe, they just tell you that’s not the protocol, and they don’t offer you other options. I really love that, and I love the conversation you had where you were like, “I understand the risks, but however, this is how I feel.” I think that’s a really healthy way to go about it on both sides. So, cool. Kudos to your provider. 

Katie: Yeah. Then that doctor suggested this. It was in the underground world. It wasn’t like, “Go to the next place.” She also suggested, “Why don’t you consult with UCSF?” That’s the University of California San Francisco. That’s maybe an hour and 20 minutes with traffic, and it can be up to 3 hours, but they do breech birth there. 

She referred me to have a consultation with UCSF to talk about breech birth which they are very comfortable with. The consultation was great. The people were really helpful. They also had a lot of requirements for me to deliver there. Those requirements were things like an anatomy scan to ensure that the head and rump sizes were comparable for safety of baby. They wanted me to do a pelvic pelvimetry MRI. 

Julie: Pelvimetry? 

Katie: Yes. They said, “You have a proven pelvis,” which is the word I couldn’t remember earlier, but because I’m very short– I’m 4’10”--, they just wanted that in this case. I said, “Sure. I’ll do all of the things if this is the place where I know I can make that birth plan with you and we can do it.” Then they said, “We also give you an epidural. You’ll birth in a birthing room, then we’ll transfer you to an OR. You’ll have an epidural, and that’s in case anything goes wrong.” I fully understand the risk and the why behind that, but given with my first baby, one of the interventions was the epidural and I labored on my back, I wasn’t quite confident that was the way baby and I were going to do this because what I found in my second birth is me and baby working together and moving together was what, I think, was all of the difference in the world for us to be able to meet each other. 

That gave me a little bit of pause, but nonetheless, I was like, “Okay. They are being upfront with me about all of the things I need to do.” I had the anatomy scan. Rump to head ratio was 1:1. It looked great. They were scheduling this MRI for me to take. Now, keep in mind, I’m 38 weeks pregnant now. 

The other things I was concerned about, or more my husband I should say, was that San Francisco, like I said, is about an hour and 20 minutes away from me. With traffic, it can be 3+ hours. 

Julie: Oof. I’ve driven in San Francisco during traffic and let me tell you, it is a nightmare. 

Katie: Yeah. My husband was like, “What if you don’t get there in time? How are we going to make this work?” These were all pauses that we had around it. 

Nonetheless, we were on this track and UCSF was so helpful and wonderful. I’m so grateful for my provider for recommending this consult. Then my doula, as well as other providers, started sharing information with me. I want to say it’s an underground network of knowledge where people aren’t advocating for vaginal birth on the record because either the hospitals don’t want to or don’t condone it for whatever reason. I guess you can guess the reasons whether it’s money or policy or education and patriarchy, but there is definitely a need. Breech babies are born all of the time. 

They said, “There are three providers at that sister hospital (that my doctor had initially recommended that was 15 minutes away) who are experienced with breech.” I thought, “Okay. In the event of an emergency and I went into labor, that’s where I want to go.” They had a NICU. They had all of the things that made me want to feel more at ease knowing that we were doing something new to me and to keep myself and my baby safe. 

I still told the UCSF doctors, “Don’t worry. I know I’m 38 weeks, but my other babies came at 40 weeks and 1 day, so I’ve got 2 weeks. He’s cooking for 2 more weeks.”

Then, at 38 weeks– 

Julie: Third babies, man. Third babies. 

Katie: Right? At 38 weeks, 4 days, I wake up. I should say, sorry. The UCSF doctor also said one other thing to me. She said, “Please do one more ECV, and this time, do a spinal.” I was like, “Ugh, this sounds awful.” But I understood the rationale. The safest way to come out was head down. I wanted to compromise and do everything in my power to do that. She said, “Because they hadn’t done a spinal previously, there’s data that shows it’s more successful.” She shared all of that research with me, so I requested that from my local doctor. 

My doctor was like, “We don’t usually do this,” but to their credit said, “We will. We will absolutely do it.” Keep in mind, I went in. I was like, “I know that this baby is loving where they are at. They are not moving, but if I don’t try it, I’ll never know.” 

Knowing the risks of ECVs, and knowing all of these things, I did do that because it was a request of the hospital that was going to be potentially the hospital where I give birth, so I wanted to make sure to follow all of the things. 

I do that. It was also unsuccessful. Then, now fast forward to 38 weeks and 4 days, I wake up and it’s been a couple of days since that ECV. The spinal they give you is on your back. I wake up and I have some stomach cramps. I thought, “Man, this is strange, but it’s probably from the ECV,” because in the past, it did cause some cramping for me. Because I had the spinal, I wondered if perhaps it just was residual. 

In my past labors, all of my laboring started with my back. I had a little bit of back aching, but it was again, I chalked it up to the spinal and just recovering from that. I went about my day. It was right before Halloween. I’m telling my partner, “Let’s carve pumpkins.” My 5-year-old had a soccer game. I’m trying to get him ready, and I keep getting these cramps. They start to be regular. 

I thought, “Oh.” I’m 90% sure I’m in labor. This labor just felt different. Maybe it was because it was a breech baby. Maybe it was because it was a third labor, who knows? But nonetheless, it took me a while to get there. Maybe I was thinking it wasn’t happening and willing that 40-week mark. 

Nonetheless, I was laboring. I texted my doula, and I’m timing my contractions. We had agreed that she would come over earlier this time because the baby was breech. All of the doctors said, “Labor at home. Come in during active labor.” We agreed that I would come in earlier than I did last time because of the circumstances. She comes over. She says, “Where I’m laboring, if the contractions are feeling intense, however, I can talk and laugh in between them,” so we agreed that I might be 5 centimeters. I just started to think, “I’ve got to lie down. I feel super tired. I had this ECV. I want to keep my energy up,” thinking this could be a long labor. Let me eat something. 

Then she says, “Just go. Sit on the toilet because your body does something different.” I do that. It’s 1:00 in the afternoon now, and my water breaks. My husband was packing the bags to get to the hospital thinking, “Where do we go? Do we go to UCSF? Do we go to that sister hospital?” I say, “My water is broken.” I have another contraction. She’s watching it. She was like, “We’ve got to–”, and I started to feel nauseous which are all signs of labor. 

Julie: Good signs. 

Katie: Yes, so she was like, “Let’s go. Let’s go now.” 

We get in the car. I think this is funny. It’s a little on the side, but my husband had set up the car seat right behind me. I’m laboring. I’m definitely contracting and trying to retract my seat. There is this car seat, so I just remember picking it up and tossing it across the side saying, “Why would you set this up here?” He’s looking at me, “Oh, you are really in labor. This is clear.” 

I’m trying to lay down. He has the GPS set. I am in the car. We get going. It’s now between 1:00 and 2:00 on a Saturday. There is a ton of traffic and construction. I’m looking at the GPS and I see 25 minutes to the sister hospital, and to San Francisco was 3 hours. We don’t have 3 hours. 

My doula says, “Where are we going?” I say, “That sister hospital. Let’s go.” I also happen to know that there are three doctors there through that grapevine and underground network who are experience at delivering breech babies there, so I thought the odds of me having one of them would be beneficial. I would much rather have had conversations with all of them, but I didn’t plan to go there thinking I was going to go to UCSF. 

We get in the car and are driving in this traffic. I’m just looking at the GPS and at the time ticking down. I’m really quiet which was also strange because with my other births, I was super vocal. My husband and I were thinking, “I’m in labor, but maybe I’m just not as far along, even though my water broke.” 

I’ve never been quiet. I was dead silent through this whole thing just staring at this GPS. Then all of a sudden, we’re going on a bridge called the Causeway and I looked at him, and I said, “I have to push right now.” 

Julie: No. 

Katie: He looks at me and says, “No,” which is not very much– he’s a very supportive person. What he meant by this was that we didn’t come this far to get this far. We’re going to get to this hospital. We are driving, and I just remember internally that I was so quiet going inward. I was talking with my baby, talking with myself and saying, “Okay. We’ve got to get to the hospital. We didn’t come this far to get this far. I’m not having a baby breech unassisted delivery.” That was not something that I was comfortable with. 

We get off the off-ramp, and we’re finding the patient drop-off. I’m contracting and I see the sign, and my husband drives right by it. I look at him right after I contract and I say, “You drove right by the patient drop-off. You have to put on hazards. I have to get out now. I have to push.” He’s like, “I can’t. We’re parking.” 

So he parked the car, and I was like, “What do you want me to do?” He says, “We’ve got to walk.” Keep in mind, the parking lot where he went is not right next door. It’s a block and a half or two blocks away.

Julie: No way.

Katie: I just was like, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” He says, “Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You have got this.” So I was like, “Okay. I’ve got this.” I get up, and I walk. When I start contracting, I’m walking down this busy street. I said, “I have to poop.” I had this big contraction, and I think I possibly poop. I’m just looking at these cars thinking, “Why won’t somebody stop and help me?” 

That’s when I channeled back to this idea, at the end of the day, It’s just you and your baby. You are the team. 

I contract. We are going. We finally get to the hospital. I have another contraction. I say, “Run in and tell them to help.” He does. I’m holding on to the railing. This lovely woman with her family sees me. She tells her 13-year-old son, “Get her!” I was standing by myself, definitely in labor.” She says, “Get her a wheelchair!” This amazing 13-year-old does just that as my husband runs back. He gets me this wheelchair. I’m sitting in it, but I can’t sit down. Again, I think it’s because I’ve had this bowel movement and maybe I’m in transition. I don’t know. 

We get up and pass security, so security is yelling at us. My husband was like, “I’ve got to go. We’ve got to go.” We got to L&D and came in. This amazing nurse midwife welcomes us. I don’t know if she saw me not sitting down all of the way in my wheelchair or what, but she yells, “Get her a room right now.” She says, “We’re going to deliver this baby.” I say, “My baby is breech. Can you help?”

She says, “Call this doctor.” My heart is so relieved because this is one of those three experienced doctors who I know is comfortable with breech delivering. He scrubs out of a C-section, I guess. She helps me take off my pants, and then realizes what I thought was poop was really– it’s called rumping as a breech instead of crowning. 

She was like, “Change of plans. Get on all fours.” I just started laboring. The doctor comes in scrubbed out of that C-section. I know that the nurses are saying, “You’re doing great. You’re going to meet your baby,” and all of the things that are so wonderful. I couldn’t speak more highly of the people in that room at that point. My doula joined us because it took her a minute to find us in all of the mayhem. 

He tells my partner, “Please make sure she goes on her back.” I had this vision of doing breech without borders on your hands and knees, but given that this doctor was very experienced with breech delivery through this underground network of knowledge, I was like, “Okay. We didn’t come this far to get this far. I’ll do whatever you want. Let’s just see this baby.” 

I turn around after, my husband said, my baby was halfway out. He sees the legs drop which again, in a frank breech position, that happens. You see the rump, and then you see the back and the legs drop. He sees the rest of the body come out as I’m laboring on my back which I didn’t do with my first. I wasn’t actually, I didn’t know if that was something my body was down for. But here I was delivering this breech baby. 

Of course, I should have known. Women are amazing. We do amazing things, and our bodies are built for this work. I labored, and then I felt him come out completely. I held my breath for a second because what I do know, and excuse me if this statistic isn’t 100% accurate, but my understanding is that 1 out of 7 babies born head down might need resuscitation, but 1 out of 3 babies born breech might need resuscitation. 

So one of the things I was pausing for at this moment was to hear this sweet baby’s voice, and so I just start hearing crying immediately. They tell me that his APGAR score was 9/8 which was exactly the same as my first VBAC. 

Julie: That’s great!

Katie: Yeah. They were like, “Baby is great. Baby is healthy.” They put him on me. I was trying to feed, but my cord was short, so low and behold, I have a feeling that the reason he was not interested in turning is because my cord was kind of short. He just was sitting fine where he was at with my posterior placenta up high. 

He and I sat and met each other. We celebrated. The doctor was so funny. He said, “You keep it interesting. You’ve had every kind of birth you could possibly have.” 

Julie: You keep it interesting. 

Katie: Yeah. Every type of birth you could possibly have. 

The nurses came in after. They said they wanted to come in and watch because they don’t see this. They said, “This is amazing. We wanted to respect your privacy.” But they were so supportive of the whole thing. I just felt elated to have the people in the room and around me who believed in me and my baby as much as we believed in us to make it happen. 

I should say that I came in at 2:10 to this hospital. I delivered at 2:24. When I say it was fast and this was going quickly when all of those things happened, I wouldn’t recommend any of those things. However, I think that advocacy and all of those things like knowing all of the data made me feel prepared to do that. That’s my breech delivery story. 

Julie: I absolutely love that. I love that. I was like, “Aw, dang. Too bad she didn’t have her baby in the car.” No, I mean that would not have been ideal for you, but it is a dream birth of mine. I mean, I would have loved to have my own baby in the car. It would have been amazing. I love the stories. One day, I dream of documenting a car delivery, but alas, here I am still waiting. But it’s fine. 

Here’s the cool thing. I really love how you navigated your birth. You sought out all of your options. You made a choice that you were comfortable with. You heard the risks that the doctors were telling you about. You acknowledged them, but you also stood up for yourself and your plan. I feel like when you can have that mutual respect where you can trust your provider and your provider can trust you, I feel like that’s a great place to be. 

I love how you adapted and changed plans when needed, but you still stood firm for the things that you wanted. It doesn’t always work out like that when you have to change plans, but I love that you had the plan and you navigated it with the twists and turns and all of the things that come with the unpredictabilities of birth. 

I love how you did all of that. I think it’s really important and necessary to have strong opinions about how you want to birth. Like I said before, it doesn’t always mean that the strong opinions that you have are going to hold true about what you actually end up getting. 

I think that the value in having those strong opinions about birth is the things that you learn along the way and the things that enable you to navigate through those changes of plans and things like that. I think that’s really, really important for us to be able to have and do and be flexible. 

I do have a few different blog articles on our website related to breech babies. Now, there’s one that is just recently published. It was a few months ago. Well, maybe it will almost be a year ago by the time this episode airs. It talks a lot about ECVs, the external cephalic version, in order to try and manually flip a breech baby. It talks about what ACOG recommends and ACOG’s stance on it, things you can do, who is right for it, what may exclude you from having an ECV or attempting one and all of those things. 

It talks about the safety for VBAC and how it’s performed, what it feels like, and all of those things. If you ever want to know about ECV, we have a blog for you. It’s called ECV and VBAC: What you Need to Know. It goes into all of that stuff. I definitely recommend looking into it because like we said before, you don’t really know your options until you have them, and the more information you have in your arsenal, the easier it’s going to be for you to navigate those things. 

Basically, ECVs are pretty safe for most people. They have a success rate of 60% which is a really cool success rate. It’s higher than 50%. You’re more likely for it to work than not. Sometimes babies are breech for a reason, and they need to stay that way for some reason. There are really only a few things that exclude you which is excessive vaginal bleeding, placenta previa or accreta, if you have really low levels of amniotic fluid, fetal heart rate issues, if your water’s already been born, sometimes providers won’t do it that way, or if you have twins or multiples, I think that excludes you. It’s listed here, and it makes sense. We’ve got lots of babies tangled up in there. 

It’s absolutely safe for VBAC as well. We also have a couple more blogs about why babies go breech and some things that you can do about it. I’m sure, Katie, you probably tried all of these things, all of the Spinning Babies protocols, all of the forward-leaning inversions and things like that too that can help. 

There’s another article in here about how to turn your breech baby– 8 ways to flip your baby. Like we said, sometimes babies are breech for a reason and they do not want to turn. I’m just really looking forward to the day where breech can be just a variation of normal again. The biggest problem is that our providers are not learning how to deliver breech babies. It does take a different skill in order to do that. You have to be really hands-off. You have to watch for certain things and depending on the type of breech, there are different techniques that you would use. Those techniques are not being taught. 

Kudos to your original provider who admitted that they were not comfortable or did not have the knowledge to feel comfortable in delivering a breech baby. I’m excited there are organizations called Reteach Breech, Breech Without Borders, and Dr. Stu. If you know Dr. Stu, he is leading a great mission to bring breech back so that women can have options for delivering their breech babies. 

So what happens if you don’t know your baby is breech and your baby is delivered foot first? You can’t just stop and go for a C-section right then. It’s impossible. So to deliver breech babies safely no matter the circumstances, the knowledge there is important. I’m hoping that one day, that can be an option for anybody if they want that. 

All right, Katie, I’m so glad that you joined me today. It was so great hearing your story. I love how it all went. I do not pity you having to drive in San Francisco at traffic time. Yeah. I’m glad everything worked out. 

Katie: We ended up going to this other hospital closer. 

Julie: Yeah, yeah. But I mean just ever, not even in labor. Just ever. 

Katie: Yes. Yes. 

Julie: All right, Katie. Before we sign off, will you tell me, what is your best piece of advice for somebody preparing for a VBAC?

Katie: Oh, I think it is so important to do two things. One, educate yourself and surround yourself around folks who are down with that education and believing in you and baby. What I mean by that is knowing what’s happening so you can make those important decisions. You understand what consent looks like. You understand those risks. You understand all of the tips and techniques like in this case of breech and turning that baby, and then making sure that you also are advocating and you have people around you who are advocating, but not so stuck on that that you get stuck. 

You want to do what’s best for you and the baby, but as you said, breech is a variation of normal. I think that being around people who are supportive of you, they don’t necessarily have to agree with you, but they are working with you, is just so important to empower you because at the end of the day, it’s you and baby doing the thing. People who believe in you as much as you believe in yourself and you believe in your baby are so important to get to that finish line in labor. 

Julie: Yes. I absolutely love that. You have to have people who believe in you and who are on your side and who will support you even if they don’t necessarily understand your decisions. They trust you to make those decisions because that is a huge deal. 

Katie: And give you the information so that if the information you have is not full or complete, you can reevaluate. You don’t know what you don’t know until you know. I just think that you need to make sure you take it all in if you can unless you don’t know your baby is breech and you find out when you are delivering and you make that snap decision, and it’ll be great. 

Julie: Yes. No, I love that. There’s something about people bringing you information especially in a respectful way because I feel like in today’s world, when people disagree with others, it’s very aggressive and condescending and judgmental. 

I think it’s important that we can disagree respectfully but also bring information if you are concerned or if you have another point of view in a respectful way as well. I think it’s received a lot better and I think that’s where we can really bring that true change and sway people’s opinions. It’s if we do that in a respectful and understanding way. 

Yeah, I appreciate that. Good point, Katie. That was awesome. Okay, well thank you so much for sharing your story with me today. I cannot wait for the whole world to hear it. 

Katie: Thanks so much for allowing me the space to do it. I hope that women are able to explore their options and do what’s right for them and their baby and their families. 

Julie: Yeah. 

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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Happy New Year, Women of Strength! Meagan and Julie share an exciting announcement about the podcast that you don’t want to miss. 

While they chat about topics to look forward to this year, they also jump right in and share stats about cervical checks and duration between pregnancies. 

We can’t wait to help you prepare for your VBAC this year!

Needed Website

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Julie: Ready? 

Meagan: Happy New– 

Julie: Oh, are we supposed to say it together? Oh, sorry. Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go again. 

Meagan: No, you were just saying okay, but let’s do it together. Okay, ready? Remember I did this last time? 

Julie: Okay, 1, 2, 3– 

Meagan and Julie: Happy New Year!

Julie: No, it was not right. 

Meagan: Well, we’re going to leave it. You guys, we’ve been trying to say Happy New Year at the same time. There is a delay, I’m sure, on both sides, but Happy New Year, you guys. Welcome to The VBAC Link. It is 2025, and we are excited for this year. Oh my goodness. 

Obviously, you have probably caught on that there is another voice with me today. 

Julie: Hello. 

Meagan: I have Julie. You guys, I brought Julie on today because we have a special announcement. I didn’t let her get away for too long. I didn’t want her to go. I couldn’t. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been bringing her on. I’m like, “Can you do this episode with me? Do you want to do this episode with me? Do you want to do this episode with me?”

And now, at least for the next little bit, she’s going to be doing her own episodes. She is helping me out. 

Julie: Yeah. 

Meagan: We have been doing two episodes a week for almost a year now, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot. 

Julie: You have been such a champ. 

Meagan: Oh my goodness. So that’s what we’ve been up to. I decided that Julie needed to help me. She was so gracious to say, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” Get this, you guys. She was nervous the first time. 

Julie: I was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Meagan: But she totally does know what she’s doing. But yeah, so you will be hearing every so often Julie’s voice solo. She is going to be hosting the show solo, so you will be hearing a little bit of a new intro with her and I where we are both talking so you don’t get confused, but I don’t think it is very confusing. Julie has been with us since the very beginning because her and I created the company. It’s been so fun to have her here, so thank you, Julie, for helping me out. 

Julie: You are always welcome. It’s always a pleasure. 

Meagan: I’m trying to think. I want to talk about 2025 and some things that we have coming up as far as stories go. As a reminder, if you have not subscribed to the show, please do so. As you subscribe, it will send you the episodes weekly. 

Right now, like I said, we are doing two a week, so soak it all up. We have so many great stories. We have stories from OB/GYNs. They are doing Q&As. We have polyhydramnios. 

Julie: Polyhydramnios. 

Meagan: Yes. I always want to say dramnios. We are going to be talking about that because we have a lot of people who have been asking about more unique things. Poly is not necessarily unique, but it’s not talked about, so we are going to talk about the high fluid, low fluid, unsupportive providers, and if you have been with us for a while, the biggest thing that we talk about is supportive providers. 

Julie: Mhmm.

Meagan: Maybe it’s not the biggest, but it’s one of the biggest. We talk about finding a supportive provider all of the time. It is so important. Then we’ve got vaginal birth after multiple Cesarean, twin births, gestational diabetes, PROM– if you’re new to that one, that is premature rupture of membranes meaning that the waters break, but labor doesn’t quite kick in. 

Whave else do we have? We actually are going to do some re-airing. We are going to rebroadcast some of our older episodes that we just think are gems and wonderful or have connections with people like Ali Levine. She came back on recently and we want to bring back her episode. Dr. Stu– just some really great episodes from the past and thinking about how long ago that was, Julie– 

Julie: Oh my gosh. 

Meagan: As I’ve been going through these podcasts, holy cow. Some of these are in our 70’s or there was actually one that was out 17th episode or something like that. 

Julie: We need to re-air the dad’s episode. Do you remember that one time when we had all of those dads on? 

Meagan: Yes. 

Julie: That was so good. 

Meagan: That was so good. It was a lot of fun. 

Julie: You need to put that in a spot. It was so good. I remember, I can just be taken back to us in the studio recording and calling each of these dads. It was so cool. 

Meagan: It was. It was really fun to hear their take on it and their opinion of doulas, their opinion of VBAC, their opinion of birth and how they were feeling going into birth, and how they felt when their wives were like, “Hey, I want to do this.” Yeah. Do you know what? That’s for sure. We will make sure that is re-aired as well because I do know that we get people saying, “Are there any episodes that can help my partner or my husband?” because they want to really learn how to get the support for them or help them understand why. Or Lynn. Guys, there are so many of these past episodes that we will be bringing back. 

Julie: Lynn’s episode was so great. 

Meagan: That was so great. We’re going to be having home births. Forceps– VBAC after forceps or failure to progress or failure to descend or big baby. We’ve got so many great things coming this year, so I’m really, really excited. I also wanted to share more about what we’ve going on the blog. We have had weekly blogs, so if you haven’t already subscribed to our email list, go over to thevbaclink.com and subscribe. We send out weekly emails filled with tips or recent episodes. We have a lot of questions in The VBAC Link Community on Facebook. We see some repetitive questions in there, so we respond to those via email. 

Those are really good. We’ve got cervical checks. When is it good to do a cervical check? When is it not good? 

Julie: Umm, never? 

Meagan: When is it not good to do a cervical check? When are they really necessary? What do they tell us? We’re going to be diving into that. We have a blog about that. Do you want to talk about that for a second, Julie? Let’s talk about that. 

Julie: Okay. I understand that there is nuance. That’s the thing about birth. There is nuance with everything. There is context with everything. It just reminds me of the recent election and things like that while we are recording. There are all of these one-liners are being thrown around on both sides. One sentence can be taken out of context in big ways when you don’t have the context surrounding the sentence. For both sides, I’m not pointing fingers at anybody. I’m sorry if that’s triggering for anybody. I know there are a lot of people upset right now. 

But the same thing with cervical checks. Isn’t that true with all of life? All of life, all of birth, and all of VBAC, there is nuance and context that’s important. I would say that most of the time, most of the time, cervical checks are not necessary. They only tell us where you’ve been. They don’t tell us where you’re going. They are not a predictor of anything. I’ve had clients get to 8 centimeters and not have a baby for 14 hours. No kidding. I’ve had clients push for 10 hours. 

I’ve had people hang out at 5 centimeters for weeks, then go into labor and have the baby super fast and also super slow. It doesn’t tell us anything. 

However, there are times when it might be helpful. I use that really, really carefully because it can only give us so much information. I feel like sometimes the cervix can swell if you’ve been in labor for a really long time, or if the baby is in a bad position, so if labor has slowed or hasn’t been progressing as much as expected– and I use that term very loosely as well. There might be a suspicion for cervical swelling. Having a cervical check can confirm that, and having a swollen cervix will change the direction of your care. 

I would say that maybe an important question to ask– and this is a good question for any part of your care– is, “How will this procedure, exam, intervention, etc. influence my care moving forward?” Because if it’s not going to influence your care moving forward at all, then is it necessary? 

Meagan: Why do it?

Julie: Right? So, a swollen cervix, maybe checking baby’s position. You can tell if baby’s low enough. You can see if their head is coming asynclitic or with a different type of presentation. Again, with a suspicion that it might be affecting labor’s progress.

Meagan: You can check if they are asynclitic. 

Julie: But, how would your care change if you find out that baby is asynclitic? What would you do if that is the result of the cervical check? If the answer is nothing, then I don’t know. But also knowing that baby’s position or knowing that you have a swollen cervix, there are things that you can do to help labor progress in the case of a malpositioned baby or for a swollen cervix. First of all, back off on Pitocin or take some Benadryl or things like that that can help with those things. 

But honestly, I think most of the time, cervical checks are another way for the system to chart and keep records, that they are doing their job, that things are happening normally (in air quotes, “normally”) so they can have their backs covered. 

It’s really funny. There are other ways to tell baby’s position. There are other ways to notice. Midwives, especially out-of-hospital midwives know all of these things. They can gather all of this data without cervical checks, without continous monitoring, and all of that stuff. But in the hospital setting, they can literally sit at a desk and watch you on the strip. That’s the only way they know how to get information. They don’t know how to palpate the belly. They aren’t as familar with– I mean, probably nurses more so than OBs. 

Meagan: Patterns. 

Julie: Right? Labor patterns, the sounds, how mom is moving her body and things like that. Those are all things that you can use to tell where a laboring person is at in their labor without having to do cervical checks. But anyway, that was a long little tangent. 

Meagan: No, that’s good. I love that you are pointing that out. Is it going to change your care? If you are being induced, a lot of times, they are going to want to do a cervical exam. You may want a cervical exam as well so you can determine what induction method is going to best fit your induction. 

Julie: Yeah, that’s true. 

Meagan: Like starting that, but even before labor, I want to point out that when it comes to cervical exams, I see it time and time again within the community, within Instagram, within Utah here– we have birth forums here in Utah– I see it all of the time. “I am 38 weeks. I got checked to day. I am not dilated. It’s not going to happen. My provider is telling me that my body probably doesn’t know how to go into labor and that I should be induced or that my chances of going into labor by 40 weeks (that’s a whole other conversation) is low because I’m not dilated yet at 38 weeks,” or they are the opposite and they are like, “I feel like I can’t do anything because I’m walking around at 6 centimeters.”

Then they don’t go into labor. 

Julie: Baby will come right away as soon as labor starts. 

Meagan: Yeah, or the person who has been walking around at 38 weeks, 39 weeks, 40 weeks, 40.5 weeks at 0 centimeters has their baby before the person who has been walking around at 6 centimeters. It really doesn’t tell you a whole lot other than where you are in that very minute and second that you are checked. 

Now, if it is something that is going to impact your care, that is something to consider. Also, if it’s something that’s going to impact your mental health, usually it’s going to be negatively. Sometimes, it’s positive, but I feel like we get these numbers in our head, and then we get them checked and– 

Julie: You get stuck on it, yeah. 

Meagan: You get stuck on it which is normal because of the way that we have been taught out in the birth world. Think about it also mentally. Is a cervical exam in this very moment to tell you where you are right now worth messing up your mental space? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s a very personal opinion. But really, it’s so important to know that cervical exams really just tell you where you are right now. Not where you’re going to be, not where you’re going to get– 

Julie: And not how fast you’re going to get there either. I do not trust babies. I always say that. I do not trust babies. 

Meagan: You don’t trust babies? 

Julie: They have a mind of their own. They are so unpredictable. Yeah, I don’t trust them. I’ll trust them after they are born, for sure. But before, no way dude. They trick me all of the time. I really appreciate how you brought up the induction thing because I feel like a cervical check at the beginning of an induction and after a certain amount of time that the induction is started is helpful information because it tells you where you started from. It tells you if the induction methods that they are using are working. I feel like that’s helpful to know because you don’t want to sit there with an induction method forever if it’s not working. 

I feel like also, why the induction is being recommended is important too. If baby needs to come out fast because something is seriously wrong, then more frequent cervical checks or a more aggressive induction may be needed. But if it’s something that you can wait a few days for, then is the induction really necessary. 

But that’s really the context there too. Context and nuance, man. 

Meagan: Yep. I also think really quickly before we get off of cervical exams that if you are being induced, a cervical exam to assess if you are even in a good spot to induce, assuming that it is not an emergent situation where we have to have this baby out right now. You are like, “I want to get induced,” then you are maybe half a centimeter. 

Julie: The BISHOP score, yeah. You are low and closed and hard. 

Meagan: You’re maybe 40% effaced. You’re really posterior. You guys, that might be a really good indicator that it’s not time to have a baby.

Julie: Right. 

Meagan: There we go. 

Okay, so other things on the blog– preparing for your VBAC. We talk about that a lot. We also talk about that in our course, on the podcast, in the community, on Instagram, and on Facebook. That’s a daily chat. We have blogs on that. 

Our favorite prenatal– you guys have heard us talk about Needed now for over a year. We love them. We truly, truly believe in their product, so we do have blogs on prenatal nutrition and prenatal care. What food, what drinks, and what prenatal you should take. 

Then recovering from a C-section– I think a lot of people don’t realize that our community also has a whole C-section umbrella where we understand that there are a lot of different scenarios. Some may not choose a VBAC which is also a blog on how to choose between a VBAC and a Cesarean. They might not choose a VBAC or they might go for a VBAC and it ends in a repeat Cesarean, or they opt for an elective Cesarean. 

These are situations that lead to recovering from a Cesarean. We have blogs and a section in our course, and then we even have a VBAC– not a VBAC. Oh my gosh. I can’t get Facebook and VBAC together. 

We have a CBAC Facebook group as well called The CBAC Link Community, so if you are somebody who is not sure or you maybe had a Cesarean or you are opting for a Cesarean, that might be a really great community for you. I believe that it’s an incredible community. 

Let’s see, the length between pregnancies is one. Do you want to talk about that?

Julie: Oh my gosh. I see this so much. 

Meagan: Daily. 

Julie: People are asking, “How long should I wait? I want to have the best chances of a VBAC. How long should I wait before getting pregnant?” Or, “My doctor said I have to have 18 months between births and I will only be 17 months between births so it excludes me from VBAC.” 

Meagan: Well, and it gets confusing. 

Julie: Yes. It does get confusing. 

Meagan: Because is it between or is it conception? What is it? 

Julie: Right. Is it between births? Is it between conception? Is it from birth to conception? Birth to birth? Conception to conception? I don’t think it’s conception to conception, but thing is that everybody will have their thing. I hear it really commonly 18 months birth to birth. I hear 2 months birth to birth quite a bit. 

Meagan: 2 months? 

Julie: Sorry, 12 months. 

Meagan: I was like 2? I’ve never heard that one. 

Julie: 12 months birth to birth. Oh man. 

Meagan: 24 months. 

Julie: I need some caffeine. 2 years, not 2 months. 2 years between births. 

Meagan: 24 months. 

Julie: There are a whole bunch of recommendations. Here are the facts about it. The jury is still out about what is the most optimal time. There is one study. There are three credible studies that we link in our blog. There are three credible studies. 

One says that after 6 months, there’s no increased risk of uterine rupture. So 6 months between– I’m sorry. 6 months from birth to conception. 

Meagan: Birth to conception. 

Julie: So that would be 15 months from birth to birth. There’s another study that says 18 months from birth to birth, and there’s another study that says 2 years from birth to birth. These are all credible studies. So, who knows? Somewhere between 15 months to 2 years. I know that the general recommendation for pregnancies just for your body– this is not talking about uterine rupture– to return to its– I wouldn’t say pre-pregnancy state because you just don’t really get back there, but for your body to be fully healed from pregnancy is a year after birth. From a year from birth to conception is the general recommendation. 

But we know that there is such a wide variety of stories. There is a lot of context involved. There are providers who are going to support you no matter your length. This is circling back to provider choice and why it’s so important. If one provider says, “No,” and they want 2 years from birth to birth, then bye Felicia. Go find another provider because there is someone who is going to support you. 

There is someone who is going to do it rather than be like, “Oh, well, we will just let you try.” They are going to support you and be like, “Yeah. Here are the risks. Here is what I’m willing to do, and let’s go for it.” I think that’s really important as well. 

Meagan: Yeah, this is probably one of the most common questions. Sorry, guys. I was muted and chatting. It’s one of the most common questions, and like she said, there are multiple studies out there. It’s kind of a complicated answer because it could vary. Overall, the general studies out there are anywhere between 18 to 24 months. 24 months being what they are showing is probably the most ideal between birth to birth. 

A lot of people out there still think that it’s birth to conception, so they have to wait 2 years before even trying to get pregnant. Then I mean, I got a message the other day from someone. They were like, “Hey, our hospital policy,” which I thought was interesting– not that she was saying this, but that it was a policy. “Our hospital policy is that if I conceive sooner than 9 months after a Cesarean, they will not accept me.” 

Julie: Boom. Go find another hospital. 

Meagan: I was like, okay. That’s weird. 

Julie: I know. 

Meagan: And that’s 9 months, so that would be 18 months from birth to birth. 

Julie: Right. 

Meagan: Then you can go to another provider, and they’re different. This is my biggest takeaway with this. Look at the studies. We have them in our blog. They’re there. Look at them. Tune into your intuition. What do you need for your family? What do you want for your family? What feels right for you? 

Julie: Yeah. 

Meagan: I mean, we have many people who have had VBACs before the 18th-month mark. Aren’t you 15 months? 

Julie: No, mine was 23 months birth to birth. 

Meagan: Oh, birth to birth. Okay. I thought you were a little sooner. 

Julie: I conceived, what was that? 

Meagan: Mine was 22 and 23. I was a 22 and then my other one was 23, I think. It was something like that. It was right around 2 years. Tune into what it is. Yes, we say this, and someone has said, “Well, yeah. People have done it, but that’s not what’s recommended.” Okay, that’s true. 

Julie: Yeah, recommended by who? Recommended by who? Because like I said, three different studies have three different recommendations. What does ACOG say? I don’t think ACOG even has an official recommendation do they? 

Meagan: My mind says 24 months. 

Julie: I think they say something like a pregnancy window doesn’t automatically exclude somebody from having a VBAC. 

Meagan: Yeah. You guys, we have that. We also have stories coming up with shorter durations. We have epidural blogs, and how to choose if you want an epidural or not, and then what happens when an epidural comes into play. Maybe I need caffeine too. I can’t even speak. But when they come into play, and so many facts, stats, and stories on the blog and on the podcast. 

You guys, it’s going to be a great year. It’s 2025. I’m excited. I’m excited to have you on, Julie. It’s going to be so great. I’m excited to bring some of our really old, dusty episodes back to life. 

Julie: Polish them up. 

Meagan: Yeah. I’m really excited about that. And then some of the weeks, we’ve been doing this since October, I think, we’ve got some specialty weeks where it’s VBAC after multiple Cesarean week, and you’ll have two back to back. We might have some weeks like that in there that have similar stories so you can binge a couple in a row that are something you are specifically looking for. 

Okay, as a reminder, we are always looking for a review. Before I let you go, you can go to Google at “The VBAC Link”. You can go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I don’t know about Google Play. I actually don’t know that because I don’t have it. 

Julie: I don’t think Google Play has podcasts anymore. 

But also, you can’t rate it on Spotify. 

Meagan: You can rate it, but you can’t review it. 

Julie: Oh, yeah. You can rate it, so you can give it 5 stars. That’s right. 

Meagan: If you guys wouldn’t mind, give us a review. If you can do a written review, that’s great. Honestly, you can do stars then go somewhere else and do a written review. We love your reviews. They truly help. I know I’ve said this time and time again, but they help other Women of Strength find this podcast, find these inspiring stories, and find the faith and the empowerment and the education that they need and deserve. 

Thank you guys for sticking with us. Happy New Year again, and we will see you soon. 

Julie: Bye!

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We can’t believe we have arrived at the last episode of 2024! This year has brought so many incredible and empowering births. We loved hearing how each of you fought for your birth goals, magnified your voices, and showed your strength. 

In today’s episode, Meagan sums up The VBAC Link’s 2024 achievements and shares some of the exciting things she has in store for 2025. 

The VBAC Link Supportive Provider List

The VBAC Link Doula Directory

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Meagan: Hey guys, it’s Meagan. Guess what? Today is our last 2024 episode. I cannot believe it is the end of the year. I absolutely cannot believe it. It feels like just yesterday that we started doing two episodes a week, and here we are 11 months later. We started in February. 

You guys, it has been such a great year. We have had so many incredible episodes from placental abruption, faith over fear, breech VBACs, post-dates, what hospital policies mean,and National Midwifery Week. One of my favorites, well actually, two of my favorites because he came on twice, was Dr. Fox. We had Dr. Fox a couple of times. We’ve had doula tips from VBAC episodes. We’ve had some fun episodes where we’ve had some VBAC Link-certified doulas as cohosts. Oh my gosh, so many great things. 

I don’t know if you noticed, but in October, we started doing a themed week. Every two episodes in one month was a theme. For October, we had midwifery. It was National Midwifery Week so we talked about midwives and the stats about midwives. We had CNM Paige come on with our very own Lily who talked more about midwifery care, what does it look like, how to choose, can a midwife support VBAC, and all of that fun, fun stuff. 

And then in November, it was Veteran’s Day so we had some military mamas on there and more about how to navigate that. We talked a little bit about Tricare and tips about navigating birth as a servicemember or as a significant other. That was really, really fun.

This month, we touched on uterine abnormalities. We had Flannery talking about her bicornuate uterus and more about specific types of uteruses and what that means. It’s so weird to think, but there are different types of uteruses, you guys. That doesn’t mean that if you have a different type of uterus that you can’t VBAC. It may mean that you may be faced with some challenges like a breech baby or something like that, but we wanted to share more about that because that’s not talked about. 

But it’s not going to stop. We have got that coming all year. 2025 is going to have a lot of really fun, specific episodes. The reason why I did this is because I wanted to have a whole week in two episodes where people could come and just binge two specific episodes that they may be looking for. 

We have a lot of people writing in saying, “Hey, I’m looking for VBAC after multiple Cesareans. Hey, I’m looking for breech stories. Hey, I would like to hear more healing CBAC stories or planned Cesarean stories.” We wanted to have it so they could just do two episodes back to back.

Then of course, there are episodes throughout the whole podcast that we have that you can go back and find, but this way, you can find it in one week, two episodes back to back. We’ve got things like CBAC coming, VBAC after multiple Cesareans. We’ve got breech. We’ve got OB week. That’s going to be fun. Oh man, I’m trying to think. So many other things. Special scars. We have a special scars month. We are just going to have months where it’s typically going to be that second week where it will be a specific theme and topic. Don’t forget to check that out coming up in 2025. 

Like I said, we started that up in October. 

Okay, so some other really fun and exciting things coming up, I do have a surprise for you, but unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait until 2025. I’m really excited for this series. Yeah. It’s going to be so good. Make sure to come back next week in 2025 to learn more about a surprise that I have coming your way. 

Then, in addition to that surprise and our themed weeks, I’m actually going to be rebroadcasting some of our old episodes. As you know, we are getting up there. We are at 365 episodes today which is so dang exciting. I cannot thank you guys enough for continuing to support this podcast, for coming back, listening, downloading these episodes, and just being here with us. We see you in our community on Facebook. We see you on Instagram. We see you downloading and listening. We are getting messages in regards to these stories and how much they are connecting with people.

You guys, these stories are incredible. Just a reminder also, we are always accepting submissions. Now, we can’t get to every submission because we do get a lot of submissions which is so fun to go through. We share them on our social media if we can’t sometimes share them on the podcast, but please, if you have a story that you would like to submit and share them with other Women of Strength who are coming after you and are wanting to hear these empowering messages, go to thevbaclink.com/share, I believe, and submit your podcast story. 

Okay, going back. We are rebroadcasting episodes. I have gone back and listened to probably 10 or 12 episodes. Some of our really, really amazing episodes, and I’ve found some nuggets after re-listening that I’m pulling through and giving tips. We’re going to have extra tips, extra links, and also if there have been updated things or updated studies from 2018 that have now been updated, we want to make sure that we freshen up these episodes and bring them back to more recent episodes. 

If you have a favorite episode that you would like to hear rebroadcasted or one that you listen to on repeat, will you let us know? Email us at [email protected] and let us know what your favorite episode is and why, or if you are looking for some more information or want us to elaborate more on a topic that maybe we have discussed but didn’t go too far into detail that I can maybe go into deeper detail about. 

Okay, I’m trying to think, you guys. We’ve had so many amazing things this year. Blogs– we have been pumping out blogs like crazy. There are so many things from preparing for your VBAC, 5 things to do before you get pregnant, recovering from a Cesarean birth. You guys, if you’ve been with us for a while, you know we absolutely love and adore Needed. We wholeheartedly love and trust everything they produce. We love them. 

They have really been so gracious to offer us a wonderful 20% off discount code, so don’t forget that. That is still valid. You can go to thisisneeded.com and type in VBAC20 and get 20% off your order. 

We talk more about why prenatal nutrition matters. We talk about creating your ideal hospital environment. We talk about C-section scar massage and why it’s important. That is a big one that isn’t talked about enough. We talk about hiring doulas, things to put on your registry, more about red raspberry leaf tea. We talk about heartburn, Tums, and also what else Tums can do to help us in our VBAC. 

So many things. We talk about positions and using the ball. Oh my gosh, just so many incredible things. We’ve got so many blogs coming at thevbaclink.com/blogs so make sure to check out the blog and learn more about these topics. Membrane sweeps, VBAC after multiple Cesareans, uterine rupture, if you’re looking for that VBAC provider, definitely check out that blog about how to find out if you need to switch your provider. 

Then of course, we have our VBAC course. You guys, I love our course so much. Another big reason why we are going to be re-airing our episodes is so that we can keep updating our course. Birth in general is updating all of the time. This course– Julie and I created it a long time ago, and it is my baby. I am so excited for this course because I have seen so many people get the information that they need, feel more empowered and equipped to have a VBAC, then we actually have a birth worker course. The birth worker course is to certify VBAC doulas, our birth workers, and it is accredited. It is 8 ICEA credits, so if you have a doula that hasn’t been in our course yet,  maybe suggest that to them or if you are a birth worker listening, I highly suggest it. 

We have a VBAC Link Doula directory, so if you are looking for a doula or, like I said, you are a birth worker and you want to be found, we want to help you be found. You can find a doula at thevbaclink.com/findadoula, and if you are a birth worker, you can check out your area. California, I know needs more doulas. Texas, there are a lot of states that need more doulas. We would love to add you to your family.

Okay, you guys. I’m trying to think what else. Oh my gosh. I could not leave without saying this. This year, we updated our provider list. It is on Instagram. You can go the The VBAC Link at Instagram. Click on our linktree in our bio, and it is the top one to find a supportive provider in your area. 

Now, if you have a provider that should be on this list or if you are a provider and wantt o be on this list, please email us at [email protected] or you can email us on Instagram so we can get your provider listed. We really need providers who accept VBAC after multiple Cesareans, breech VBAC, and who are just VBAC supportive in general. 

You guys, it is so stinking silly and stupid how hard it is to sometimes find a provider. Please check out that form. If your provider is supportive, please, please, please let us know so we can get them listed. 

Okay, you guys, I think that is about everything. It has been such a great 2024. I am so grateful again for you guys. I hope you will continue to join us for 2025 because we do have more incredible episodes coming your way from a lot of VBA2Cs. We have polyhydramnios (high fluid). We have HBACs. We have CBACs. We’re going to have a couple of OBs actually and special scars. So many great things. 

We will catch you in 2025. I hope you guys have a fantastic new year. 

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Women of Strength! 

We have another beautiful VBAC birth story for you today from our friend, Georyana. Georyana shares how she went from having an unplanned Cesarean with her first birth to a planned HBAC but unexpected breech delivery!

During her first postpartum period, Georyana experienced postpartum preeclampsia, depression, and anxiety. She and Meagan dive into coping tools and resources available for anyone else going through the same.

While prepping for her VBAC, Georyana also talks about the power she felt while listening to other stories on The VBAC Link Podcast. She knew she had to give her body the chance to show what it was capable of. 

“If it could happen for her, it could happen for me. Why disqualify myself? Why disqualify my body?”

Needed Website

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. Merry Christmas to you. It’s so fun to be recording today. It’s actually not even October. It’s September when we are recording, but it’s so fun to think how close we are to Christmas. I hope you guys are having an amazing day, and if you are listening the day after Christmas, I hope you had an amazing Christmas. 

We have our friend, Georyana, with us today, and she is from Florida. Hello, love. How are you? 

Georyana: I’m doing well. How are you? 

Meagan: I am so, so great. I was going to say that as you may hear, she’s got her little one on board, so we may hear all of the little baby coos and noises. What is your baby’s name? 

Georyana: Her name is Sophia Victoria. 

Meagan: Sophia Victoria. I love it. I’m so happy she’s here. I actually love when we have babies because I don’t really hear those noises anymore. I hear them as a doula for a minute, but I miss those little coos. It’s so fun. 

Okay, like I was saying, she is from Florida. She’s a stay-at-home mom of two beautiful babies, a three-year-old and this one-month-old that she’s got with us. She works part-time remotely and is a Christian and serves as a worship leader for the youth group worship team. Is that correct?

Georyana: Yes. 

Meagan: Awesome. I love that. She says that she’s officially started homeschooling her toddler this year which is super exciting. That is exciting. We’ve had so many moms on the podcast lately who are like, “I’ve quit my job. I’m homeschooling,” or “My full-time job is homeschooling.” That’s amazing. 

Georyana: Yeah. Yeah. It really is just to be able to soak in all of these moments with your kids. Time flies so fast. You just want to treasure everything. 

Meagan: It’s so true. It really does. I have a 7th grader which is crazy, so yeah. Super crazy. 

Remind me, you used Needed’s iron?

Georyana: Yes. I’ve actually used it for postpartum.

Meagan: Yes. I wanted to talk about that because we talk about their prenatals and all of the other things to do during pregnancy. We haven’t really talked about the iron, so can we talk a little bit about why you’re taking iron and how it’s been?

Georyana: Yeah, so after this pregnancy funny enough which is something I’ll tell during my story, but I passed out after I gave birth. I believe it was due to a lot of blood loss and low hemoglobin, so after I gave birth, I kept taking my prenatals, but my prenatals only had 15 milligrams of iron in them. That’s when I decided to go for Needed. I had heard of a lot of amazing reviews. I had heard about it too on The VBAC Link. 

I’m only taking one additional per day, so I’m taking around 30 milligrams of iron. 

Meagan: Have you noticed a difference?

Georyana: Tremendously. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely less fatigue, more energy. I was getting dizzy a lot during the early days of postpartum and breastfeeding, so that helped a lot too. 

Meagan: That’s what I was going to say. It’s probably helping you breastfeed as well. 

Georyana: Yeah. It’s definitely an amazing supplement. 

Meagan: That’s so awesome to hear. I believe in Needed’s products wholeheartedly, so it’s so fun to see that other people are loving it too. 

We do have a Review of the Week, so I want to get into that really quickly, then we are going to turn the time over to you to share these stories. This is from nnoah and it says, “Generational trauma”. It says, “This podcast and the Facebook group have been a godsend to me. After my 56-hour failed induction and emergency C-section due to very low heart decelerations with my daughter, I told my husband I would be happily scheduling my C-sections from now on. My sister-in-law told me I could VBAC, but I had no hope that my body could birth after such a drawn-out process that ended in ‘failure’. My mom had three C-sections herself with the first being highly traumatic, and I never realized how much her birth experience has influenced my own physiological state as I approached labor and delivery. I researched everything with my first from breastfeeding to infant development and sleep, but I did not read a single book or take a single class on birth. Now, I realize it was because of how much fear and trauma I was carrying around with me from my mother’s experiences. I walked into birth ready to fail because I didn’t think I could do it. I wasn’t tough enough.”

She says, “After listening to this podcast, it has me believing in my body and preparing my mind even more before we try to conceive our next baby. I have begun working through my birth with How to Heal a Bad Birth,” which we absolutely love if you want a good book on how to heal a bad birth. That is one of our favorites. 

It says, “I’ve already interviewed a VBAC-Link certified doula to assist me in my next birth when we conceive. The resources, podcast, and recommendations here have had me anticipating my next birth with excitement rather than dread. I couldn’t be more grateful for this resource. Thank you.” 

Wow. So many things within that review. I one, am so thankful for that amazing review, and I want you to know that we are here for you and this community and these stories are here to help empower you even further going into your next birth. I love that she said that she had a doula before she was even conceived. She’s found the doula she’s going to hire, and as soon as she conceives, she can hire that doula. 

As a reminder, just like she said, we have a VBAC directory with VBAC-certified doulas. You can go to thevbaclink.com/findadoula and look for a doula in your area.

Okay, mama. Oh, look at this cute little baby with a full head of hair. 

Georyana: Yeah, she had a lot of hair. That’s how she was born, with a lot of hair. 

Meagan: Her hair was probably born first. It’s so long, oh my gosh. Oh, I’d love to turn the time over to you to share these stories of yours. 

Georyana: Okay. Well, just like every VBAC, it starts with a C-section. Mine was in 2021 with my first son. It was an overall healthy pregnancy quote-on-quote. Every prenatal visit was normal for the most part. There was nothing out of whack. I do want to be transparent and say that I did not eat healthy or exercise knowing that I was supposed to. I remember working at this part-time job, and literally after I was done clocking out, I would go straight for the Chick-fil-A. It was Chick-fil-A every day. I ended up gaining around 87 pounds during my pregnancy. 

Meagan: Wow, okay. 

Georyana: I was 215 when I delivered. At around 39 weeks with my OB/GYN, she was like, “I want to schedule a C-section because your baby’s measuring really big.” We did the whole– I forget the word– where they actually check the baby’s weight. 

Meagan: Oh, like a growth measurement in an ultrasound. 

Georyana: Yeah, she was like, “This baby is already a 10-pounder.” I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I was freaking out because I really wanted to give birth naturally. That was something I had told her about, but she was like, “No, let’s schedule a C-section.” We were going back and forth, and she was like, “Okay, well at least we are going to get an induction date.” She set up an induction date for March 15th. It was a Monday. 

I started going into labor. I started going into labor on Friday spontaneously. I went into spontaneous labor. I didn’t really know that much about laboring at home and all of the things like right now that I know you’re supposed to do. 

Yeah. I had labored at home for an hour or two until contractions started getting intense. I went to the hospital which was an hour away. I checked in. They checked me. I was 2 centimeters dilated, and they took my blood pressure. They were like, “You have high blood pressure.” They didn’t give me a reading or anything, but they were like, “We’re going to make you stay. We’re going to have you stay. We’re not going to send you home.” 

I was like, “Okay. You guys know what you’re doing.” I started laboring for an hour or two, and then a nurse came in and I had explained, “I really want to try and go for a natural birth.” She was like, “Okay. I’m going to give you an hour. I’m going to give you an hour.” 

Meagan: What?

Georyana: “I’m going to give you an hour and see where you are as far as dilation and as far as progressing.” I was like, “Okay.” An hour went by. Mind you, I was strapped to the chair because there’s something that you’re never really taught, to move around while you are laboring. 

At the one-hour mark, she comes in. She checks me, and I’ve gone nowhere. She goes, “I’m going to put you on Pitocin.” Things started getting really crazy at that point because it was my first time feeling contractions, and those contractions were horrible. They are so intense, and now having had experienced these natural contractions from my VBAC, you can automatically tell the difference. 

She puts me on Pitocin. I labor and I had my husband with me. It was back-to-back contractions to the point where I could barely breathe. I had taken one birth class, but it was the standard information. They never really teach you how to breathe or the importance of getting your mind right, and the importance of your mind and how it plays such a huge role in birth.

I just kept laboring. I kept literally squeezing my husband’s hand. I couldn’t allow him to go anywhere. It was horrible. As the hours passed, things started getting worse and worse. They ended up breaking my water. Then it was more Pitocin. It was already Saturday the next day. I hadn’t drank anything. I hadn’t eaten anything. There was no ice. There was nothing. 

Yeah. It just felt horrible. I just stayed. At one point, I couldn’t handle the pain anymore so I asked for an epidural. 

Crazy enough, when the anesthesiologist came, he was with a student. He had asked the student to put the epidural inside of me. They had me sign a consent form. I was like, “Oh my gosh, what is this?” I had heard about the epidural and that it was supposed to numb you, but I never expected to get to that point.

I got the epidural, then I just started feeling numb. It numbed me completely down. The day went by. It was Saturday, then I eventually reached a 10. It was 10 PM on that Saturday. I was like, “Okay, well I want to try and push.” I tried to push for an hour or two, and basically, that went nowhere because they had me pushing on my back. They were trying to tell me, “Just try and push as if you are trying to go to the bathroom and poop.” 

It was just so frustrating because I was trying, and nothing was working. Eventually, they were like, “Your son’s heart rate is dropping. We just have to do a C-section.” When she told me that, I felt like my world came crashing down because I didn’t want it at all. 

But in that moment, as a mom, you are so vulnerable. You are going through so many emotions mentally, emotionally, physically, and so many things that it’s just so hard to make a decision. Obviously, you want what’s best for your baby. I was like, “Okay. Let’s just do a C-section.” They didn’t put me to sleep entirely. It was just my legs, but I just remembered that when they did that, I lost it. I had a very severe panic attack. I was like, “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs.” There were all of these nurses around trying to calm me down. 

Eventually, we went to the C-section room. My husband was with me, and they did the procedure. My son was born thankfully. They made sure he was okay. They put him near my chest for a minute. They cut the cord and all of the things. 

But I didn’t know what to expect. I thought that was what I was supposed to expect, to have him for a minute and to have him take him away. I didn’t have anything else. So nothing, I stayed at the hospital for an entire week because my blood pressure rose drastically. 

Meagan: Did you have postpartum preeclampsia?

Georyana: Yeah, technically. Without the seizures, thank God, but the blood pressure was crazy high. There was a nurse coming in every 2-3 hours to check my blood pressure. I got medication. Yeah. It was just a horrible moment because right there, you just gave birth to this human being while your body is out of whack going through all of these things, and you just feel like you failed. You feel like you failed, and you just did a horrible job. 

But you know, I just kept in-hospital, and one week later, I was released. The C-section recovery was horrible. It was very, very painful. I couldn’t even walk or anything. Taking care of the baby was just really hard for me. Yeah. Eventually, my blood pressure got back to normal, and everything was well. 

I suffered from postpartum depression and severe anxiety to the point where my husband would go to work, and I would stay alone in the house. I would think that I was going to die of a heart attack. 

Meagan: Oh, yeah.

Georyana: Yeah. My mental health was bizarre. I constantly felt like I was dying. I remember one night, I woke up in sweats. I just felt like I couldn’t breathe. We had called the emergency 9-1-1. I literally felt like I was dying of a heart attack. They checked me and were like, “No, you’re fine. It’s just an anxiety attack.” Postpartum was definitely not the greatest experience for me for the first. 

Meagan: I am so sorry to hear that happened. 

Georyana: Yeah, but other than that, I’m so grateful to God that my son is healthy. He’s currently 3 years old, and he is just a joy to be around. 

Meagan: Yeah. Do you have any resources or suggestions for someone who may have experienced that before or just in general for someone listening in case they have any symptoms or anything like that that you want to share?

Georyana: For what specifically?

Meagan: For postpartum anxiety and panic attacks and stuff to maybe help recognize what it could be or resources that helped you. 

Georyana: Yeah, definitely my biggest resource was God, the church, and prayer. I think that helped me a lot and just having a community of people who you can count on whether that’s a friend or your mom where you can say, “Hey, mom. I’m going through this. Hey friend, I’m going through this. Pray for me. Come over. Please help me. Please help me do some chores,” or anything like that. The weight is a lot. 

Once you’ve given birth, you’re thinking about a million things– the baby, the diapers, yourself, the kitchen is a mess, and you definitely need to have the support group to lean on. 

But as far as anxiety, learn where your mind is going. Be able to detect those thoughts that creep in and that tell you, “Hey, you’re not doing a good job. You’re going to die. This is going to happen.” Learn to stop those thoughts or reframe. Reframe your mind. We have so much power in our minds. 

Meagan: Yep.

Georyana: If we only knew where it could take us. 

Meagan: Yeah. I agree. Our minds are so powerful, and there is something about that community that can really, really help. There are even more resources like deeper resources. There is postpartum support, Baby Your Baby, and so many things. We talk about this in our course, and I won’t go through all of them, but I think it’s so important to do a self-care checklist after. Think about, “Have I eaten enough? Have I slept enough?” You want at least 5 hours of sleep. Most of us with newborns can say no to that automatically, so maybe doing something like hiring a postpartum doula, having our mother-in-law come, having our community come in to help and hold baby so we can get really good and effective sleep. Have a bath or a shower. Just getting ready for the day is weird but can help us mentally. It can help us get out of that mental funk. 

Exercise– now, we can’t really do that in the beginning. But have I exercised is another question. Have I allowed myself to laugh today? Have I allowed myself to smile today? These are things. There are many more. Like I said, we talk about those in our VBAC course because it is so important. It’s not talked about enough, so I’m so glad that you were able to take this space to feel vulnerable enough to talk about this experience. 

Georyana: Definitely. I agree. Right now, for this postpartum, I have my mom. She lives 30 minutes away. She comes twice a week and helps me cook meals. 

Meagan: So good. 

Georyana: Yeah. They are delicious. You just have to be willing to take the help. There is definitely help. Yeah. It’s important that we don’t feel alone. 

Meagan: Yeah, I agree. 

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. Sorry, we can go on to this next birth story. 

Georyana: This next birth story– my husband and I knew that we wanted another baby, but we just didn’t know when would be the right time. 2.5 years passed. We got pregnant. It was a surprise. It was a surprise and a blessing. 

All I knew inside of me was that I wanted a VBAC. I wanted a VBAC. I was like, “You know what? I’m going to try for it again.” I was obviously open to the fact that it could end in a C-section. I didn’t have a closed mind in that sense.

I ended up searching for supportive providers. After finding one, I found an OB/GYN. The first thing that I had asked was, “Do you support VBACs?” They were like,”Yeah, we do. We do.” They had five doctors on board, so basically, every prenatal visit had a different doctor so that eventually when I would go into labor, one of them was going to be assisting my birth. 

To each one, I would always ask the same thing, “Hey, I would like to do this. Do you support it?” They were like, “Yeah, we do that.” 

My blood pressure was great at every prenatal visit. There were no concerns. I did change a lot of what I had previously done in my previous pregnancy which is that I started exercising. I started walking 30 minutes 3 or 4 times a week. I started eating healthier because I think that’s one of the things that most people don’t talk about too is the importance of nutrition. It is important in pregnancy. You’re always told that you have another human being and you have to eat for two. You’re like, “Yeah, let’s eat for two,” and you gain 10, 20, 30 pounds. 

I tried to be mindful of what I was eating. Long story short, everything was going great. At my 32-week appointment, I met with a provider. I meet with one of the doctors on the team, and my same question pops up. She’s like, “Oh, you can’t really go past 40 weeks here. You can’t.” I’m like, “Why? I’m perfectly healthy. My blood pressure is fine. Why can’t I go a day past 40 weeks?” She was like, “No, you can’t. You actually have to schedule your C-section date right now. You have to sign a consent form. You have to put your due date as your C-section date.”

My due date was August 1st. I was like, “Well, I don’t understand.” I was just feeling led on because, during the prenatal appointments, there were subtle signs, but I guess I didn’t really want to pay attention to them because I was like, “Oh my gosh. I can’t imagine switching providers.” I was 7 months pregnant. I was like, “Okay, thank you. I’m just going to call back and schedule that C-section.” 

I remember going home and being like, “Wow. This really just happened.” I remember that I started praying. I told God. I expressed how I felt. I was just very overwhelmed and, “Is this really the path that you have for me?” I felt that he just told me, “Do a home birth.” 

I was like, “What? A home birth? That is not–” 

Meagan: That’s not what I’ve been looking at at all. 

Georyana: That is insane. Funny enough, I started researching, is that truly an option for me? After researching, I found a midwife. She is actually Chrisitan, a pastor, a worship leader, and a midwife. 

Meagan: Wow. She wears a lot of hats. 

Georyana: She wears a lot of hats. I don’t know how she does it, but I expressed to her, “Am I able to do a home birth if I had high blood pressure during my previous pregnancy?” She was like, “Yeah. We will monitor you. We will make sure you are taking care of yourself.” She did tell me, “During labor, if your blood pressure skyrockets, we’ll have a plan in place and we will go to the hospital.” We had plan A and plan B. 

I spent the last 2 months with her. She would come to my house, and check my blood pressure. She had me drinking lots and lots of water which is another thing that we underestimate or is not often talked about. 

Meagan: We do. We really don’t. We usually drink water, but we’re not getting enough of the hydration.

Georyana: 100%. She was like, “You need to be drinking at least half of your weight in water.” All I remember was that every day, I was chugging water. She actually advised me to take Calm as a magnesium supplement. 

Meagan: MagCalm? 

Georyana: Yeah, MagCalm. That helped tremendously. That helped tremendously. Everything was safe and sound. I was doing all of the things at 37 weeks– the Miles Circuit, the red raspberry leaf tea. I was eating the dates and all of the things that they tell you to VBAC. I was listening to a lot of birth stories, especially on The VBAC Link which just helped me tremendously because I was able to get in a right mindset. The birth stories edified my faith to a whole other level. 

I just remember every day doing dishes and I was plugging in a story. Every story was different, and I was like, “Wow. If it could happen for her, it could happen for me. Why disqualify myself? Why disqualify my body?” That’s another thing that we do a lot. We often hear, “Oh no, your body wasn’t meant to do it” or “Your body can’t do it”.

Meagan: Yep, yeah. We hear those things, and then we believe them. 

Georyana: Yeah, that’s the sad part. I think I was 39 weeks and 3 days. I go into labor. My water broke at 3:00 in the morning, but I need to backtrack that. At 38 weeks, my midwife checked me. I had asked her to check me. She checked me, and I was 3 centimeters dilated. The baby was head down. The baby was head down. Everything was normal and everything was looking good. 

She came back at 39 weeks, and I was like, “Can you check me again to see if I’ve progressed?” Even though that doesn’t really mean anything, I was just so excited. She checks me, and she’s like, “I don’t know what I’m feeling, but I’m not feeling the head anymore.” 

Meagan: Oh, okay. 

Georyana: Yeah. I’m like, “What do you mean you’re not feeling the head?” She checks, and she’s like, “I don’t know if that is her hand or her knees or something like that, but it’s definitely not the head.” 

She tells me, “I think I’m going to have to send you to get an ultrasound to see the positioning of the baby.” We spend a couple of minutes just trying to sink that in. She was like, “But you know what? Let me check again. Maybe I was wrong.” 

She checked again, and she is still feeling the same things, but then she was like, “Is that your coccyx (the tailbone)?” 

I thought it was. I genuinely thought it was. I tell her, “Yeah. I think that’s it.” 

We were like, “Okay, I think we should be fine.” We were going a little loopy. I don’t know. 

Fast forward to when my water breaks at 3:00 in the morning, I started feeling contractions, but nothing consistent, so during the day, I just remembered that I texted her. She was like, “What other symptoms do you have?” I had my bloody show. My mucus plug fell out. The contractions were different from the Braxton Hicks that I had been facing all of these weeks.

I was like, “Yeah, there’s definitely some type of shift here because I feel like they are stronger. They are lasting longer.” Fast forward to Saturday, I ended up walking with my husband. His family was in town, and that also helped pick up the contractions. 

At around 6:00 PM, I gave her a contraction timer app on my phone so she could see. By the way, I had a doula, so she had the app as well. She was an hour away, and she was like, “Please text me so I can come out on time.” 

At around 7:00 PM, they both arrived to my home. Contractions were 6 or 7 minutes apart. She had me actually do nipple stimulation with my husband. They went out of the room. We did nipple stimulation, and that just skyrocketed everything because I had all of the oxytocin flowing. 

Meagan: I was going to say that’s natural oxytocin flow right there.

Georyana: I had natural oxytocin. I was like, “Whoa. Now I’m in a whole other dimension.” Contractions were 3 minutes apart. I just remember breathing. I had worship music playing in the background. The lighting was dim. It was so different from the hospital. It was so intimate. It was something unforgettable what I experienced on that day and when I compare it to my hospital birth, I had so much tension. All the bright lights, it was so different. 

She set up the birth pool. I went in, and I sat down. She was like, “Okay. I think it’s time to push. You’re at a 10.” She had checked me. I was trying to push, but I didn’t really get it. I was trying to feel my intuition because they always tell you, “Your body knows when it’s going to push.” She had me stand up, and she coached me. She said, “Try standing up and seeing if you have the urge to push.” 

When I stood up, I got that urge. A contraction came. I did a push, and nothing happened. Then another contraction came, and I did. I just remember breathing in, and I just let it out. She sees knees. 

Meagan: What? Knees? 

Georyana: Knees. She sees the baby’s knees come out. She screamed. 

Meagan: What?!

Georyana: She was like, “Oh yeah. She’s breech. She’s breech. She’s coming out breech.” 

Meagan: Oh my goodness. 

Georyana: I just remember I was moaning during that period. I was just like, “Ooh.” I didn’t look at anyone, but my husband tells me that at this moment, I just looked at the doula and she had her jaw on the floor. She was like, “Okay, well, you have to breathe in, and push in during the next contraction.” I remember that during the next contraction, I just let out the biggest roar. It was a roar. 

She came out entirely. My husband caught her. I just fell. I just fell, and yeah, she was breech. She came out knees first, then her legs, then her whole head just popped out. 

Meagan: I am dying right now. This is amazing. Oh my gosh. Once her knees came out, her whole body slipped out? 

Georyana: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Definitely. It was such a moment of shock. 

Meagan: Yeah, I bet for everybody. 

Georyana: Yeah, for everyone because we thought she was head down. I kept telling her, “You were right. You were right. What you were feeling was the knees.” 

She was like, “Thank God I didn’t send you to do the ultrasound because you would have gotten a C-section automatically at the hospital. That would have been an automatic C-section.” 

Meagan: Yeah. They wouldn’t have entertained that at all. 

Georyana: Yeah. He put her on my chest. It was so surreal. I was like, “Wow. My body did this. God really did this to me.” We went on over to the bed. They weighed her. She was 6 pounds and 3 ounces. 

Meagan: Aw, your tiny little thing. 

Georyana: Yeah, she was tiny which also helped me. Yeah. Shortly after, I started breastfeeding. With my first, with my son, that was something I really wanted to do, but he never really quite latched so I just pumped for 2 years. 

For this one, I didn’t really expect to breastfeed, I was like, “If it happens, good. If it doesn’t, then whatever.” But when she started breastfeeding, I was just like, “Wow, my body is doing this too.” The connection that I just feel with her that I have is just out of this world. 

That was my experience. 

Meagan: Wow. Had your midwife done breech before? 

Georyana: She says that obviously when she was in training with other midwives before she went solo, she had experienced breech births, but this was her first time solo and alone. Technically, she’s not allowed to deliver breech babies under law. If she knows, she needs to automatically send me to the hospital. 

Meagan: But if the baby’s knees are coming out, and baby comes out like that, what are you going to do?

Georyana: Yeah, exactly. You don’t really have any other option than to just deliver the baby.

Meagan: Oh my goodness. Wow. That’s an amazing story. This is so awesome. Oh my gosh. This postpartum has been much better?

Georyana: Yeah, it has. During the first one, like I said, I suffered from anxiety and panic attacks. I didn’t really get that this time around. What I got this time around was anger. 

Meagan: Hmm, okay. So some postpartum rage? 

Georyana: Yeah, it was rage, and I guess just handling two kids and the transition from one to two hit me hard. I didn’t really know how to understand that. But the same thing around, just being able to give myself grace, I had a postpartum session with my midwife and my doula being able to let them know how I felt was very good. It was very helpful. Speaking with my pastor and just letting them know my feelings and how I felt really helped me. It really helped me. 

I’m doing so much better now. This postpartum has been amazing. A lot of breastfeeding, a lot of cuddles and snuggles. Seeing my son play with his sister was something I always dreamed of, being able to have two kids. 

Meagan: Oh, what a beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing. Huge congrats. This little ball right here is just stunning. Her head, oh my gosh– her head of hair is just insane. She has so much hair. That is just so much fun, and I’m so happy for you.

Georyana: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me. 

Meagan: Absolutely. 

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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Aubrey shares her three birth stories that tell of resilience, healing, trust, and miracles. She has had a vaginal birth, a crash Cesarean, and a VBAC– all of which presented cholestasis. 

Aubrey’s first birth was a long but routine induction. Her second birth was a traumatic whirlwind including a complete placental abruption, general anesthesia, and her baby miraculously surviving 15 minutes without oxygen. 

Though her third pregnancy had many complications, the open and honest relationship Aubrey had with her provider is what ultimately led to her TOLAC and successful VBAC at 37 weeks and 6 days after another medically necessary induction. 

Aubrey is proof that no two births are the same, and miracles happen even when circumstances threaten to say otherwise. 

**Aubrey also wanted to mention that after her VBAC, she was readmitted to the hospital for postpartum preeclampsia. She had a headache every day, decided to eventually buy a blood pressure machine, and it was through the roof. She took herself to L&D, and they put her on magnesium. Aubrey had no idea it was even possible to get it postpartum and wanted to share!

Managing Cholestasis Symptoms

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Meagan: Hello, everybody. It is almost Christmas, and I am so excited to bring another story your way. This is a VBAC story from a mama who is from Louisiana. She had quite a few roadblocks within her pregnancies that could have easily stopped her from having a VBAC, but she really established a good relationship with her provider even though her provider wasn’t actually as gung-ho or excited about the VBAC specifically because she was nervous, together they communicated their feelings and understood where each other were, and came up with a plan to ultimately have a VBAC.

I just respect that so much. It’s important to know. We talk about providers all of the time. Providers are so important, and they make such a big impact on our outcome, but this provider, even though she wasn’t really comfortable with VBAC, she truly believed in our guest, Aubrey, today. You’ll have to hear it from her own words. It’s awesome to hear how everything unfolded. 

We also have a topic today that maybe isn’t shared a ton. It’s called ICP or cholestasis that we are talking about. It is a liver condition that can occur during pregnancy and cause a range of symptoms. A lot of the times, it is baby being born that is the thing to end cholestasis. We are going to talk a little bit more about that, but I wanted to go over some of the symptoms. 

We’ve got dark urine, pale or light gray stools, and she’ll talk about this. That is definitely something that is not normal in pregnancy, so if you are seeing that, that is a reason to contact your provider. Nausea, she described some other symptoms there. Decreased appetite, pain in the abdomen, or jaundice. These are some things to look out for. 

Now, there is a website called icpcare.org. We’re going to make sure to attach that in the show notes, so if you have had cholestasis before or you want to learn more about cholestasis and how to manage the symptoms, and what types of things like healthy diet, they have so many amazing resources on their website. They even have recipes and different types of healthy fats and grains and legumes and things that we can focus on. We know that all of the time in pregnancy, really what we are putting into our body is so important. 

Definitely check out icpcare.org if you want to learn more about ICP and managing symptoms and resources and community support and all of the above. 

We do have a Review of the Week, so I want to get into that, and then turn the time over to Aubrey. 

This reviewer is reneekc89. The review title is, “A Turning Point”. It says, “When I was pregnant with my first, I was one of those ‘whatever happens is fine’ moms about birth. Then I had an unplanned Cesarean after a stalled induction. It wasn’t until I saw family members and friends so easily have vaginal births that I knew I had to try something different the second time around. I found this podcast through a local mom’s group and immediately binged every episode. I continue to listen every week even after my successful VBAC in October 2020.”

It says, “Listening to what seemed like every possible outcome helped me release my fear that I might have had. I felt emotionally prepared for anything that might have come my way. I switched hospitals and advocated through my entire 25-hour labor in the hospital, and felt like every decision was a conversation between two adults rather than demands.” 

Oh, what a powerful thing right there, you guys. She says, “I advocated throughout my entire 25-hour labor in the hospital and felt like every decision was a conversation between two adults rather than demands.” That is how it should be. 

It says, “I have to thank this podcast for helping me gain that kind of confidence. Thank you also to the Facebook Community for always answering my questions.” 

Oh my gosh. Thank you, reneekc89, for that review. Just a reminder, you guys, if you have not found us on Facebook yet, check us out. You can find us at The VBAC Link Community. You have to answer a few questions to get in, and then you’ll get into this amazing community. We have the community on Instagram, and Facebook, and in this Facebook group. I believe so much that this Facebook community will empower you along the way. Like she said, you can ask questions, share pictures, and share concerns, and share triumphs and feel that love and support along the journey. 

I also wanted to throw out that we have a CBAC group, so if you are going for a TOLAC and it does end in a Cesarean, or you choose a Cesarean birth after a Cesarean, this group is here for you as well. You can find that at The CBAC Link Community on Facebook. 

Meagan: All right, Ms. Aubrey. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. I know you’ve probably been waiting. I feel like there are so many times when people are really excited to record their story, then I’m like, “Hey, you’re going to be aired this much further out.” You have two months to wait. You’re recording now, and then in two months, you’ll be airing on, but I’m so glad you are here to share your three stories. 

You had a C-section, then two VBACs, right? 

Aubrey: I had a vaginal birth, then a C-section, and then a vaginal birth. 

Meagan: That’s why I’m thinking two vaginal births. So vaginal birth, then Cesarean, then vaginal birth. You’ve got all sorts of different things added to your story. 

Aubrey: So many. 

Meagan: Cholestasis is one of them, right?

Aubrey: Yes. 

Meagan: Okay. I’m excited to talk about that, because I think a lot of people think with cholestasis, there’s only one answer. We’re going to be talking about that, but I’m going to turn the time over to you.

Aubrey: Okay. I guess we’ll start with my first birth. Heads up if I cry at all during it because I just do that sometimes. 

Meagan: That is okay. That is okay. 

Aubrey: My first pregnancy was totally normal. I had no complications. I was big and miserable, but that was about it. I did have SPD, so my pelvis hurt really bad. I didn’t know enough about it to go to a chiropractor to fix it. That was really my only thing until right at 38 weeks, it was that night at about 11:00 at night. I started itching on my feet. I couldn’t scratch the itch. I got my husband’s socks, and I put gel ice packs inside of them and wore them. That helped, then the itching started in my hands. 

This had been going on for about 2 hours, so I got in a really cold bathtub. The itching had started to spread more. It wasn’t just my hands and my feet. It wasn’t a normal itch. It was coming from underneath my skin. It was like my blood was itching. 

Meagan: People have described it to me as an unreachable itch.

Aubrey: It is. It’s the most miserable. 

Meagan: You touch the spot, but you can’t get to it.

Aubrey: Yeah. It’s like when the inside of your ear itches. You’re like, ugh. It’s like that but all over. Nothing helps. I called the after-hours line at probably 4:00 in the morning. The doctor on call was like, “Pregnancy can be itchy. Take some Benadryl.” I was like, “I’ve already taken Benadryl. It’s not helping.” 

She was telling me to take some creams, and I knew something else was wrong. I spent the rest of the morning researching. I came to the conclusion that I was 99% sure that I had something called cholestasis, and that I was going to have to be induced.

One thing that solidified that was that there were other symptoms that I didn’t know about. My stool was white. It was really weird. It just was white-colored. I had this really violent episode of vomiting beyond anything I had ever experienced in my life. That’s one of the things. It’s this uncontrollable exorcist-style vomiting. 

Meagan: I actually did not know that. 

Aubrey: Yeah. It was unnatural. I remember thinking, “That was so weird,” but it was a couple of days before that, and then the next day or so was when I had the weird white-colored stool, but again, I had never been pregnant, so I was like, “I guess this is just pregnancy,” then the itching. That’s when I put it all together, and I was like, “Well, I’ve got cholestasis.” 

My husband was working that weekend, so I got my best friend to bring me to the hospital. When we got there, I was scratching all over. I was saying, “I’m pretty sure I’ve got cholestasis.” They clearly didn’t believe me. They weren’t being ugly. They were like, “All right. Let’s see what’s really going on here.” 

They put me in triage, and the on-call doctor came in. She is a lovely person. I don’t mean anything bad, but she walked in. She said, “Okay, here’s why you don’t have cholestasis.” She starts listing off all of these reasons. One of them was that I wasn’t jaundiced. Later on, in my research, there’s only 30% of women who have elevated bilirubin levels when you have cholestasis. 

I wouldn’t have been jaundiced because my bilirubin wasn’t elevated. I said, “Okay. I understand all of that, but can you please just run the labs?” She was like, “Okay, if you want me to run them.” She brought the lady in there. They did the labs, and about 30 minutes later, she came back in, and she was like, “Okay. You were right, and I was wrong. You have cholestasis, and we are going to induce you right now.” I was like, “Okay.”

Meagan: Oh my gosh.

Aubrey: I called my husband and told him he needed to leave work. At about 5:00, I think– I guess it was about 5:00. They put misoprostol. 

Meagan: Mhmm, misoprostol, yeah. Cytotec. 

Aubrey: Yeah, they inserted that. After the first dose, they determined that my cervix was not tolerating it well. They decided to not continue it. They went straight to Pitocin. I didn’t know then that what they were doing was really, really fast, but they were upping it every 15 minutes 2 milliunits. 

Meagan: 15? Wow. That is really fast. 

Aubrey: It is. Now that I know. At the time, I was like, “Okay.” During my birth, I prepped. I read books, and I went to classes, and I did the Bradley method, and all of the things, but I didn’t prepare for induction because I had no idea that I would ever need that, so I knew a lot about birth, but I did not know anything about induction. I was like, “Okay, if you say we’re going to do that, we’ll do it.” 

I think I felt my first contraction. It wasn’t that long after the Pitocin, but it wasn’t that strong. I had contractions off and on for several hours, and the nurses would come in and say, “Oh, are you okay? That was a really strong one.” They didn’t feel that bad to me, so I was like, “Oh, I can do this.” That went on for a while, and I guess once I got going more, It just felt like I was always contracting. I didn’t know any different, again. 

I didn’t know any different. I just thought this was what it was. Sometimes, it would be more intense, but there was always a contraction. Even on the monitor, you could see that it never dipped down. She asked if she could break my water at 7:00 that morning. It was my doctor. I don’t know if she came to check on me or if she happened to be on rounds. She asked to break my waters. I told her I didn’t want her to right now. 

She came back later, and I was okay with her breaking it, so the floodgates opened. I had so much fluid. We did not realize how much fluid I had. That was that morning or maybe the mid-morning. That evening, I hadn’t slept in two days at that point because of the itching the night before, and then the contractions. 

I asked the nurse, “If I get an epidural, will I sleep?” She was like, “Probably so,” then I was like, “Then give it to me. I am so tired.” I did. I slept like a baby. The nurse, I wish I knew her name, but she was so sweet. She came in the night. She put a peanut ball in between my legs. I was only 4-5 centimeters at that point. She put a peanut ball in, and she would come in every 30 minutes. She would flip me from one side to another while I was sleeping. 

I woke up the next morning at 6:00 in the morning. I had been in labor at that point for 39 hours. I got the epidural at 30 hours. 

Meagan: Wow. 

Aubrey: Yeah. She came in the next morning, and the doctor was like, “Okay. You’re ready to push.” I was like, “I am?” The epidural was so strong. I couldn’t wiggle my toes. I had no idea. She came in, and set everything up. I pushed her out in 15 minutes. 

Meagan: Whoa. That’s awesome. 

Aubrey: 14 minutes actually. 

My doctor was like, “That’s the best I’ve ever seen a new mom push.” I was like, “Wow, yeah. Okay.” 

Meagan: Go me!

Aubrey: Yeah. I didn’t have any reference. For me, I was like, “This is taking so long, but apparently it was very quick.” Now I know it was pretty quick. 

Afterwards, my uterus would not contract back. My placenta wouldn’t come off. Now I know it’s because afterwards, she told me that my contractions never stopped. There was never a break between contractions, so my uterus was just completely exhausted. 

Meagan: Uterine atrophy, yeah. 

Aubrey: Yeah, so she had to manually go in there inside of me and start my uterus to contract again which was not pleasant, but she just basically had to shock it. 

Meagan: Stimulate it, yeah.

Aubrey: Yeah. Eventually, it did, and my placenta just fell out. That was that. When they broke my water, I forgot to say, they did find meconium which is common in cholestasis. It was very light, and she wasn’t worried about it. It wasn’t an automatic C-section because of the meconium. It was really light. She did have to be suctioned, but other than that, she was perfectly fine. We didn’t know any of the genders for any of my babies, so it was fun to find out that she was a girl. 

That was birth number one, and that was in 2018.

A year and a half or whatever it was, I got pregnant right before COVID became a big thing. I was pregnant all through the COVID scare. I was due in September, at the end of September. Again, it was non-complicated. I forgot about this. I had a subchorionic hemorrhage around 16 weeks which I didn’t know about. I didn’t have any bleeding or anything. They just found it on the ultrasound, and then by the next time I went, it was resolved. 

I was considered high-risk though the whole time because of the cholestasis, so I had frequent scans all the time. That was really the only thing that was weird. We had tested for cholestasis. There were a couple times because anyone who has had cholestasis knows that anytime you itch, you’re like, “It’s back.” There were several times I had her test me, and there were no elevated levels. 

Right before 39 weeks, I told her about some intense itching on my foot. I told her that this time was it. It was the itch. She was like, “Okay, well because of COVID, and we’re not sure what the hospital bed situation is going to be like, we’re going to go ahead and test your blood and find out if it’s present, but in the meantime, let’s go ahead and schedule your induction to make sure you have a place if we do have to induce, then you’re already there.” 

She wanted me to induce that day. I couldn’t because my husband was gone for the Army. I said, “I just need a few days for him to get back in town.” That was on a Thursday or Friday, and I was induced either Monday or Tuesday. It was on September 1, 2020. 

I went in for my induction. This time, I had not prepared at all. I was like, “Oh, it’s like riding a bike. I’ve done it once. I can do it again.” I want to say upfront that anything they did during the induction, I was totally a party to it. I agreed. I never said no. I never asked questions. I was uninformed or unprepared or whatever, but I never spoke up, so I don’t blame them for anything that happened because I could have spoken up, but I didn’t. They always asked me. They never told me, “This is what we’re doing.” They asked me my permission for everything. 

We got there. They did not do Cytotec because it hadn’t worked before. They went straight to Pitocin. Again, the same 2 milliunits every 15 minutes. 

Meagan: Is this just their way?

Aubrey: I think it was. I don’t think it is anymore, because it was different when I went for my VBAC, but yeah. 

Meagan: Well, I wonder if that’s because you were a VBAC though. 

Aubrey: No, because one of the conversations I had with one of the nurses, I asked her if we could start slow. She was like, “Well, our policy is to go 2 milliunits every 30 minutes.” I was like, “I’d like to go slower than that.” I think they must have changed their policy. I don’t know. That’s what my hospital records say is that they were doing 2 milliunits every 15 minutes. I got those thanks to y’all. I was like, “Let me go see what that says.” 

Meagan: It’s nice to see what it says, yeah. 

Aubrey: Yeah, it is because in my situation especially with what happened to my son, it was so amazing to read what really happened and to know my son is where he is. I’ll get to that. 

Anyway, so she came in around 7:00 in the morning. My doctor was on shift. She asked if she could break my waters. I was like, “Sure, go ahead.” She broke my water. So far, it had been a pretty uneventful induction, nothing to write home about. I didn’t have an epidural. I didn’t feel like I needed one. I was going to try to do it without one if I could, but that might have been at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning. I don’t know. It was in the morning. 

Around lunchtime, they started saying that the baby was wiggly and that they couldn’t really get a reading of his heart. He had been wiggly before, and so they were like, “Is it okay if we insert an IUPC?” I had that with my daughter. It doesn’t harm the baby. It didn’t hurt me. I didn’t mind them putting it in, which is for those of y’all who don’t know, it is a–

Meagan: Intrauterine pressure catheter. You’ve got it. 

Aubrey: It measures the contractions from the inside so you can see how effective they are and all that. I was like, “Fine, yeah.” My nurse, whose name is Becca, she’s lovely, inserted the catheter into my uterus, and the tube that comes out is clear, and it filled with dark red blood. I knew something was wrong. I said, “That shouldn’t be red like that.” She said, “It’s okay. Sometimes we have a little bleeding.” I said, “Not like that. That’s red.” She was trying to calm me down. 

Meagan: Yeah, and sometimes they can knick the cervix and it can cause bleeding, but you were like, “No. Something’s not right.” 

Aubrey: Yeah. I just knew something was wrong, but before that, I had no symptoms. I had no clue that anything was wrong. I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t feel any pain. Nothing. 

I was like, “You need to take it out. Please take it out. Please take it out.” She called my doctor who was in her clinic down the hospital, and she said, “It’s okay to take it out if she’s not comfortable with it.” When she took it out, blood just came shooting out of me. It was gushing. 

Meagan: Really?

Aubrey: I know it was blood mixed with fluid, so that’s why it was so much, but it looked like it was pure blood. It was so dark. I mean, I was like, “Okay, I need the doctor.” Becca was so sweet. She said, “Okay, just give me one minute. I’m going to go outside and get the doctor.” She was so calm. I was freaking out. She went out there. My doctor was in my hospital room within a couple of minutes. I think she was across the hospital in her office. She was there within a couple of minutes. She had an ultrasound machine. There wasn’t a lot of time for talking about what was going on. She just got the ultrasound machine, looked for a second, pushed it up against the wall, and my doctor has the most wonderful bedside manner with the way she talks even when she is stressed out. She said, “Okay, Aubrey, we’re going to have to go back to surgery now. Brandon, I need you to tell your wife goodbye.” 

As she’s telling him that, they’re pulling my jewelry off. The other nurse handed me a consent form for a C-section. They were prepping me as we were talking. Then they ran me down the hall. It felt like Grey’s Anatomy. They pushed this poor woman up against the wall. I remember her head hitting the wall. It was that fast. We were running down the hall. 

We got into the OR, and I just remember them prepping my body and prepping the room. They were getting the instruments lined up. There was no time for anything. I didn’t have an epidural, so they didn’t have time to call an anesthesiologist to my knowledge. They started putting the lidocaine where my incision was or was going to be. I started hyperventilating. The nurses threw a bedsheet over my head. They popped up under there with me. They were like, “I’m so sorry, but this is the best we can do. We don’t have time to put a sheet up. We’re going to have to stay under here. We’ll stay here with you.”

Meagan: Oh my lanta. 

Aubrey: Yeah, it was really scary. I remember right before they threw the sheet, I could still see the door swinging. That’s how fast everything happened. They eventually, she was like, “You have to calm your breaths down because the baby needs the oxygen.” Little did I know that it really didn’t matter how much breath I took. He wasn’t getting anything. Eventually, they put me out with gas. 

Meagan: Did they put you under general?

Aubrey: I had to be gassed out. I was hyperventilating. They were like, “We need you to be still.” At the time, they were literally about to cut me before they threw the sheet over. I remember the very last thing that my doctor said to her nurse was, “There’s no fetal heartbeat. There are no fetal tones.” I knew at that point that he was dead. 

Meagan: That’s the last thing you heard. 

Aubrey: Yeah. I woke up. I don’t know how much longer it was. It was pretty quickly after surgery because I don’t think they anticipated me waking up so early. I was in a hallway. I wasn’t in a recovery room. Because I wasn’t out all the way, I don’t know, but I woke up, and two of the nurses, because there were like 18 people in the room with me when everything happened. The nurses’ backs were to me. I said, “Is my baby alive?” 

One of them said, “Oh, she’s awake.” They turned around. One of them said, “They’re doing everything they can.” I passed back out. Then I woke back up in the recovery room. My doctor was waiting for me. It was COVID, so my husband wasn’t anywhere near any of this. 

Meagan: Yeah, I was wondering. You said his name was Brandon, right? They were like, “Bye, Brandon. We have to take her.”

Aubrey: Then he was just left alone in the labor and delivery room freaking out. 

Meagan: No one talked to him?

Aubrey: He told me later that my doctor had come in after the surgery to tell him everything that happened. Immediately afterward, she came in there to tell him. She is the best doctor in the whole world. 

Meagan: But he had to wait. 

Aubrey: Yeah, he had to wait. There wasn’t any time for anybody to tell him anything. 

Meagan: How scary for him. 

Aubrey: Because come to find out, my placenta had spontaneously 100% completely detached from my body in a matter of a couple of hours. If anybody has ever had a placental abruption, it starts slow. It comes off a little bit at a time. Mine came off in a couple of hours. It was completely detached. We didn’t know why at the time. It was very unexpected. 

She was there. I woke up, and I said, “Is my baby alive?” She said, “Do you want to know what you had?” I said, “Is the baby alive?” She said, “He’s alive, and he’s a boy.” Then she told me what happened. He was dead when he was born. He was dead for 15 minutes. 

Meagan: Wow. 

Aubrey: Yeah, 15 minutes. He had no blood flow or oxygen flow to his brain. A lot of his blood had been drained out of him because my placenta had pulled it out of him because it was detached so quickly I guess. 

He was not completely exsanguinated, but he lost a lot of blood and he had no heartbeat. According to my hospital records, they tried compressions. They tried the electrode things. They tried an epinephrine shot, and they tried an epinephrine drip, and nothing started his heart, and then after 15 minutes, his heart just spontaneously started by itself. 

Meagan: Wow. 

Aubrey: Yeah. That’s why it was so cool reading back my hospital records to see. My doctor and everyone involved was like, “We can’t believe this. I cannot believe he is alive. I cannot believe you are alive,” but reading it and seeing how amazing it really was was really cool. 

She told me that the surgery had happened in just a few minutes, and that because of how quickly she had to perform that surgery, that my recovery was going to be really intense, and that most people who have a C-section would not be in as much pain as I’m going to be in because they literally had to rip my body open to get him out, but she said, “Your incision is fine.” Luckily, she’s a really skilled surgeon. She did all of that perfectly. 

She said, “I don’t expect any trouble with you healing or anything with your scar.” He was put on a cooling blanket and intubated and given maybe six blood transfusions. If anybody from the hospital is listening, I’m sorry if I get the numbers wrong. 

But it was a lot. There were six little stickers missing from his transfusion bracelet. He couldn’t eat. We couldn’t pick him up. We couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t see him for the first 24 hours because I couldn’t move, so the nurses had taken pictures of him and brought them to me so I could see what he looked like. They didn’t show me the really scary ones until later because there were some at the very beginning that were very scary-looking. 

My doctor came in the next day to check on me. It was her day off. She just came in to check in on me to tell me how grateful she was that I was there. I know it traumatized her too because she said she had never opened up someone and seen their placenta floating inside of their body. My nurse, Becca, came to see me. She was also pretty traumatized. But anyway, it was a lot. 

Once he was in the hospital, they put him on the cooling blanket and all that. He had to be on the cooling blanket for 72 hours, and then they were going to be able to test him to see how significant the brain damage was because we knew that he would have some. I mean, after 5 minutes, you start to have brain damage, and then we knew having been out for 15 minutes that we were looking at something pretty significant based on science. 

That was the thing that I think was different about me then than now. My background was in physiological psychology. That’s what I studied in grad school. My immediate thought was, “I know what science says. I know the probability is of my baby,” and that’s what I was looking at. What do we need to do to take care of this baby with significant brain damage?

We waited, and on the second day, the day before I was released from the hospital, I had a really cool encounter that was just the way that God changed everything for me which came into my VBAC later because of the faith that it gave me, but I had dragged myself to the shower that morning. It was so painful. My husband was still asleep on the couch. I got in the shower, and the water was cold. That made it even worse pain because it was cold. I was in the shower, but I couldn’t get up because I was frozen in pain. 

I was like, “Why is this water in the hospital cold? It shouldn’t be cold.” I sat in there for about 15 minutes. The water stayed cold, and it never warmed up. Finally, I said, “God? If you can’t save my baby, can I at least have some hot water?” The water turned hot. I just started laughing and crying at the same time. I just knew that my baby was okay. I don’t know how I knew. I just knew that even if he wasn’t going to be perfect, whatever was wrong with him was okay. 

It helped me to get through the next few days because it was hard to see him just laying there. Finally, when they were able to do his tests after 72 hours, we had to go to a different hospital. He had to go in a little ambulance and go over there. We had one of the best pediatric neurologists in the area, Dr. Holman. She’s not known for her bedside manner, but she’s an incredible, incredible doctor. I say that in a way that she’s very to the point. She doesn’t sugarcoat anything. 

My sister, who is a nurse, warned me, “I’m just telling you that she’s the best of the best, but she’s not–” 

Meagan: She’s blunt. 

Aubrey: She’ll give it to you straight. That’s what we were expecting. They did his little scans, and when she came back she said, “I don’t have a medical explanation, but your baby is perfect. There’s not a single spot on his brain. The cooling blanket does incredible things, but I should see something, and I don’t see anything.” 

Meagan: Wow. 

Aubrey: She said, “Your baby’s going to be perfectly fine.” She told us that he’s probably going to have some issues from being in the NICU and being still. He would have to have physical therapy to help his muscles and all of that, but as far as his functioning as a human being, he was perfectly fine, and nothing was wrong with him. 

Meagan: Yay. What a miracle. 

Aubrey: Yeah. That’s what she said. She said, “Your baby is a miracle, and I don’t get to say that with what I do very much.” 

Meagan: That’s awesome. 

Aubrey: Yeah. So that was his birth, and after that, that day, my husband left and went back to the Army. I recovered from that. I recovered from that pretty much alone which was almost as traumatic as what happened in the hospital because I was in so much pain, and I had a 1.5-year-old and a new baby who screamed all the time which was one of the things they warned me about after the NICU. They said, “He’s going to cry a lot. We don’t know why, but coolant babies just scream a lot.” He did. For hours and hours and hours, he would scream. 

It felt like torture in a way because it was like I couldn’t do anything. He would scream and scream and scream. My friend, Ashley, and my sister were the only way I made it through that. I would call my sister, Kelly, and be like, “I need to come over,” at 3:00 in the morning. She was like, “Come on.” She would hold him while he screamed so I could go in the back and sleep because I was so sleep-deprived and in so much pain. 

Then my friend, Ashley, would come over and help me clean. She helped me with my daughter. They helped me through that part. My husband was gone for the first 6 months of Amos’ life. 

About 2 years later, I got pregnant again. 

I was really scared of having to have another C-section. I was on a pregnancy app, and I asked, “Has anyone ever had a vaginal birth after they’ve had a Cesarean?” Somebody on there was like, “Oh, you should try this thing called a VBAC. There is a place called The VBAC Link.” I was like, “Okay.” I had no idea. I had never heard of The VBAC Link or the term “VBAC”. I found The VBAC Link, and like everybody else, I became obsessed. I listened to every episode, read every article, and every post. 

By the time it came time for my first appointment with my doctor, I knew that I was going to at least give it my best try. 

When I told my husband that I wanted to have a VBAC, he was not okay with that. He was really freaked out because, I mean, everybody involved was traumatized. He was. The nurses, the doctors, everybody. He was just like, “Are you sure that’s safe?” I was like, “Yes, actually. I am sure that’s what is safest.” 

I got on The VBAC Link, and I was like, “How do I make my husband understand?” They were like, “Enroll in the course and show him the course.” 

Meagan: Yes. Take the course with him. 

Aubrey: We did. By the end of it, he was like, “Okay. If that’s what you want to do, we will do it.” 

That’s what we planned for. I was really hoping that I didn’t get cholestasis for the third time. There’s not really anything you can do to prevent it, but I was just really hoping that somehow it wouldn’t show up. 

About, I guess, 20 weeks, I was told that I had complete placenta previa, so that was super fun. My maternal-fetal medicine doctor explained it, and this is for everybody who gets diagnosed with that. It made my brain so much more calm. He told me that your uterus is a muscle. It’s juicy, and it has all of these blood vessels. Your cervix is a connective tissue. It doesn’t have all of that. Naturally, your placenta is going to gravitate toward where it can get the most nutrients. It almost always resolves itself because it’s not going to get what it needs off of your connective tissue. 

I just banked on what he said, and by 28 weeks, it had gone so far up that it wasn’t a concern at all. 

Around 24 weeks, I started seeing a chiropractor for severe SPD. My pelvis was on fire. It was grinding, and all of the things. It was worse than with my daughter. I didn’t have it at all with my first son, but man, it was back with a vengeance with my third pregnancy. 

The chiropractic care helped so much. If anybody is in the Natchez, Mississippi area, my chiropractor moved to Natchez, Mississippi after she helped me. But anyway, that’s where she is if you’re near there and you need a good Webster-certified chiropractor, she’s amazing. Her name is Dr. Ashley Edwards. 

She helped me. Then she helped me with positioning and stuff. She’s really good. 

That was 24 weeks. I started that. Early on in pregnancy, I had been coming from one doctor to the other in the same building, and I was really huffing it. My blood pressure was high. They let me sit for a minute and retest it, and it was fine. I didn’t think anything of it until later on in pregnancy when that happened again. My maternal-fetal medicine doctor freaked out. He was like, “You’ve had two high blood pressure readings. We need to test you for preeclampsia.” 

That was in my third trimester at some point. I’m probably skipping around. He kept pinching me to see, and asking me if the swelling was normal. I kept telling him, “That’s just my ankles. I just have big calves and ankles.” Every time, he would be like, “Is this swelling always like this?” I’m like, “That’s not swelling. It’s just what my ankles look like, but thank you.”

Meagan: Oh my goodness. 

Aubrey: That was fun. I had to carry around my urine for 24 hours to the urine test. He said that I did have protein in my urine, but it didn’t meet the threshold of preeclampsia, so I was not preeclamptic, but they were going to watch me for it. 

Toward the end, I did get, “Your baby’s really big,” not from my OB, but from my maternal-fetal medicine. My OB– I guess I should rewind. I didn’t even talk about how we had that conversation. My OB from the very start was so amazing. When I first came in, she was like, “I’m so excited for you.” She was like, “Is it okay if I tell Becca (my nurse from before)?” I said, “Yeah, you can tell her.” She texted Becca and told her. 

Becca and I stayed in touch through everything. She texted me, and she was excited for me. But I told my doctor that I wanted to try for a VBAC, and she said, “I’m perfectly fine with that. I don’t see an issue.” She was like, “The only thing that could possibly present an issue is if your cholestasis comes back, and it’s early on. But for now, let’s plan for a vaginal birth, and that’s the goal. If something changes, then we’ll talk about it when it changes.”

She’s a very great doctor because you can talk to her, and you can be open with her and be honest and never feel like she’s judging you for telling her how you feel. I can’t tell you how many times I cried just with her telling me all kinds of different things. She just listens and never judges. 

We went through most of the pregnancy with that as the goal until at the end, around 32 weeks, my itching came back. They tested me, and I had elevated bile acids, so I was considered to have cholestasis. 

They put me on ursodiol. I only itched for a few hours, but I knew what the itching was. It’s so different. I knew what it was. I never itched again the whole pregnancy. Even before I got on the medicine, before I had even picked up the prescription, the itching had stopped. I still took it. 

At that point, they were like, “Okay. We can’t let you go into labor naturally. We’re going to have to induce,” because that is an automatic induction. Then the whole thing with the preeclampsia came around a little bit after that, so my maternal-fetal medicine doctor was talking about, “We might need to do this at 35 or 36 weeks.” I was like, “I don’t think I’m comfortable with that.” My doctor was like, “We’ll see, but if you have preeclampsia, that changes everything.” 

My doctor, my OB doctor– I was talking to her about everything, and she was like, “The reality is that what you have could potentially be dangerous for baby. So every week from about 35 weeks on, we’re just going to have to determine if baby is safer in or if baby is safer out, then at that point, we can determine how we are going to deliver the baby because we don’t know what your body is going to be doing. We just have to see.” She said, “I’m not telling you that you can’t have a VBAC. I’m just telling you that we need to be open to the possibility that it could turn into a C-section if this doesn’t go the way we want.” 

She said, “I feel like as your doctor, I wouldn’t be doing you any service if I didn’t at least have this conversation with you because if it came to the point that we had to have a C-section, and we had never talked about it, then you would be like, where did this come from? I don’t want you to feel blindsighted.” I appreciated it. I did leave really discouraged from that conversation. I cried because I thought that secretly she was trying to bait and switch me. But I should know that my doctor really is great. 

Anyway, so we went through the next couple of weeks where she would tell me, “Baby is safer in, so baby gets to stay in.” I had scheduled a lunch with Becca. I had asked her if she would be at my new baby’s birth. She said she would be my labor and delivery nurse. We’d get to try it again. She was like, “I’m going to help you have a VBAC. You can totally do this.” We had lunch. I told her about the conversation that I had with my doctor. I said, “I just want the opportunity to try. If I get to try and something happens and it doesn’t work out, then I’ll be okay with that. I just want to try because I know my body can birth a baby.” 

I said, “I don’t have to have the epidural, but if that’s what makes her comfortable, I’m okay with that because I’ve had the epidural before. It’s not like I’m anti-epidural. I’ll have it if that makes her more comfortable.” I’ve realized that she is a person with trauma, and I knew that what I was asking her to do was scary for her because of what happened and because probably most people don’t know, but cholestasis comes with the risk of placental abruption. It does something to the vascular structure, so it’s not that it causes it, but it makes you more susceptible to placental abruption. 

I knew that she was worried about that. I knew that everything else that had popped up and popped up and popped up, she probably was like, “I don’t think I want to do this anymore.” 

I told Becca all that, and she said, “Have you ever told your doctor that?” I said, “No,” because she knows her. She works with her. She said, “I think if you have that conversation with her, and you tell her just like you told me that she would feel a lot differently about it.” 

The next appointment was the appointment where we were going to do my first cervical check. We needed to know what my body was doing, so if I had to induce, they knew. 

Meagan: Where you were at. 

Aubrey: Yeah. It was one that I wanted and that I needed, I think, in that situation. Before she checked me, I knew that this time if she checked me and it wasn’t doing anything that she was probably going to be leaning more toward C-section because I was going to have to be delivering within that week or a few days after based on everything that was going on. 

When I got in there, I said, “Before you check me, I want to tell you something.” I said, “I just want to tell you this so you don’t think that my response to whatever happens in the check is me begging or anything like that. I just want you to know that this is how I feel.” I told her everything I told Becca. I told her that I wanted to meet her halfway and do whatever made her comfortable as long as I got to try. 

She said, “Okay. Let’s just check you and see what’s going on.” She checked me, and she said, “You’re soft. You’re 1 centimeter dilated, and we can have a VBAC.” She said– hold on. Let me get myself together. 

She said, “I’m uncomfortable with this, but the reason that I’m okay with this is because I trust you. I trust you enough to know that when you tell me your body can do this, I believe you. I know that you trust me enough to know that if I tell you it’s time to call it, then you’ll believe me and we’ll call it.” She said, “The reason that we’re doing this is because we have a mutual trust and understanding. We can be honest with each other.”

I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I mean, I was just so excited. On the way home, I got into a wreck. I totaled my car. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh!

Aubrey: Yeah. It wasn’t as bad because it was totaled because my airbag came out, but it was in very slow bumper-to-bumper traffic. I had to go back to the hospital. She was on-call, and she was like, “Why are you here?” I had to be monitored for that, but everything was okay. 

Saturday at midnight was my induction. I came in, and they started my IV. It took them a while because I have really weird veins and they are hard to stick. Eventually, they called in an anesthesiologist to use his machine to find my veins. If anybody has hard-to-stick veins, you can use an anesthesiologist, and it works like a charm. 

He got my vein, and we started fluids. About 30 minutes later, it was probably at 2:30 or so whenever the Pitocin was in. I had my first baby contraction. Rebecca– a different Rebecca, but her name was Rebecca– said, “Okay, here’s the schedule we’re going to go on.” I forgot to mention this too, but right before my induction, my husband surprised me with his VBAC certification doula course. He had gone through the doula course. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh!

Aubrey: He went through The VBAC Link doula course. He was like, “Surprise! I can be your doula.” 

Meagan: That is amazing. 

Aubrey: It was cute. My husband, when she starts telling me the schedule of how we were going to do everything, was like, “Excuse me, I think we need to not be going every 30 minutes. We need to be going every 45 to an hour.” He was so well-educated about the whole thing. She did. She did it slow at first, then we did that through the night. I don’t remember if I slept or not, but Becca came on her shift at 7:00. 

She was like, “Okay. You’re doing good, but here’s the reasons why I think that we need to increase the interval. We were having contractions, but we need to get a pattern going.” She told me why. I agreed with her that I was okay with it as long as it didn’t go faster than 30 minutes. 

We did that, and that started to actually get a pattern which was really nice. She is a brilliant nurse, and she knows what she’s doing. 

She was like, “We’re going to get you moving. Come on. Get up. We’re getting out of bed.” She had me walking down the hall, and with the peanut ball, and sitting on the ball. My doctor came in around 9:00. She told me that she thought we needed to break my water. I was really nervous about that because in my research of what happened to my placenta, I had found that it was likely that I had a placental abruption due to the rapid decompression of my uterus. My doctor agreed that that’s probably what happened, but when they broke my water, because my vessels were already weak, the pressure suctioned it off. 

I was really worried about breaking my water. She was like– I’ve never seen her be so stern with me before because she’s always so calm and nice. She said, “Aubrey, I’m very uncomfortable right now. I do not want to see you have a rupture. I do not want to see your placenta detach. We need to be real about this.” She said, “You have a lot of fluid. If we do not let some of that fluid out, your baby is not going to drop. You have a lot of fluid.” 

I did. I guess I forgot to mention that. I wasn’t quite poly, but I was pretty close to having poly.

Meagan: Borderline. 

Aubrey: Yeah. I told her that I was scared. She said, “You cannot make decisions based off of fear. You have to make decisions based off of what is happening and what is fact. The facts are that your baby is high. Your body is contracting. You have a pattern, but your baby is not dropping. There is a reason, and it’s likely because of the fluid level.” 

So, she said, “I can break your water in a way that is not aggressive. I will just cut a tiny little slit and let it come out on its own, then it will come out.” I agreed. I mean, when I step back and look at it, I was like, “She’s right. Scientifically, the baby is buoyant and is just floating there.” Come to find out, I definitely had poly. I had so much fluid. 

When it finally came out, Becca was like, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much fluid come out of somebody.” It was the exact thing that the baby needed. He came down, and immediately, I went from 4 centimeters to 6 in an hour. 

I could feel my body doing very differently. It was changing differently than it had before. I started to get nauseous and shaky. I knew that I was probably getting closer to go-time. I told Becca, “You might want to get the guy to come give the epidural now. I promised her I would get the epidural, and if we’re going to get it, we’re probably going to need to get it now.” She was like, “Yep. Let’s go ahead and get it put in.” 

She had him put it in really light though so I could still move my legs and wiggle my toes. I could even put pressure on my legs which was nice. That was maybe at 2:00 in the afternoon or 3:00. Oh no. I got the epidural at almost 5:00. I was way off on the time. It was almost at 5:00 that I got my epidural. I had been between a 6 and a 7 and about 70% effaced. 

After the epidural, they had to go to an emergency, her and my doctor. They came back afterward, and me and my husband were playing Scrabble. I started throwing up. I had the bag, and I was like, “I need to throw up.” Becca came in and she was like, “You’re throwing up? This is the best!” She was like, “It’s time. It’s time.” I was like, “How do you know?” She was like, “I’m telling you. I’m telling you.” She checked me, and then Dr. Barrios came in, and she was like, “Okay, Aubrey. We’re going to have this baby.” 

My husband caught the moment. He has a picture of me the second that she told me I was going to have my VBAC. It was just the least flattering picture I could possibly have, but it’s so cool because it’s a live picture, and I could see the wave of emotion washing over me. 

I could feel pretty much everything. I mean, I’m sure if I had no epidural whatsoever, and I think Becca said she turned it down, but I’m sure it was way more intense if I was doing it without completely. I could feel everything. I could feel the ring of fire. I could feel opening up. To me, it didn’t feel like I had to poop. It felt like I had a bowling ball just sitting there. 

They were still setting up while I was trying to push. They were like, “Wait. Let somebody get there, so we can catch it.” Right as they were finished setting up and getting dressed and everything, I was like, “Okay, we’re pushing now.” I pushed. I don’t remember how many times I pushed, but I felt the head come out. I said, “Is that what the head feels like?” She was like, “Yep. That was the head. We just need one more push and we can get the body.” I pushed. He was out in 4 minutes. 

Meagan: Wow. 

Aubrey: Yep. It was crazy. I had to go back and make sure I was not crazy. I looked at the timestamps of the pictures because I was like, “There was no way that it was that fast. It felt like an eternity.” It was 4 minutes. 

Everybody cried. My husband got a picture of the first time they put him on my chest. As soon as I pushed him out, it was like all of the trauma and everything from before just washed off of me. It was so amazing. 

Meagan: I bet it was so healing for you to see that you could have a different experience. 

Aubrey: It was. 

Meagan: Even though you had a different experience with your first, after having that experience the second time, I’m sure that weighed over you for sure.

Aubrey: Yeah. I love the fact that both my doctor and my nurse from the time before were there and we all got to do it again. 

Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say that. I bet this was really healing for your provider and your nurse, and not even just healing for your provider, but something that stepped up her experience to see that birth could go a different way after a very traumatic experience. 

Aubrey: Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I hope that. I would say she’s not, “Woo, I love VBACs.” She was not anti-VBAC at all, but I would like to think that it helped her see VBACs in a more positive and more probable light. 

Meagan: Mhmm, exactly. I think you probably did a lot for her that she may not have even known that you did. 

Aubrey: She did a lot for me. She’s the best. The sad thing is that I have different insurance now so if I got pregnant again, I can’t have her. But she’s incredible. She really is. 

My baby– we didn’t have a name picked out. One of the other nurses, Jordan, who helped me deliver my baby was like, “I know you don’t have a name picked out. You don’t have to use this if you don’t want to, but I was just thinking that y’all wanted a cute, short name that started with A, and Becca’s last name is Anders, and it would just be really cute.” So we named our son Anders.

Meagan: Cute. Oh my gosh. That’s adorable. I bet Becca is so happy. 

Aubrey: Yeah. When she left the hospital that night, because she charted forever and she left at 11:00 that night, we still hadn’t picked out a name. Jordan came in after she had left. She suggested it, and we were like, “That’s it. That’s his name.” I sent her a picture of the announcement with his name on it. 

She said, “I had to pull my car over on the road. Don’t do that to me while I’m driving.” 

Meagan: Oh my gosh. That is so cool and so special.

Aubrey: Yeah. There were so many times on The VBAC Link where I see people who are like, “I don’t know if I should do it. I’m scared.” Just do it. Just try. If you succeed, it changes you. It’s so, so powerful. 

Meagan: It really is. It’s hard to explain. It’s so hard to explain that feeling that you get after having a VBAC. It’s unreal. It really is unreal. We just had a client the other day who had to be induced due to some pretty severe preeclampsia, and she was a VBAC. The second she found out that she had preeclampsia and needed to be induced, I think a lot of her faith slipped and her belief that it was going to happen slipped. 

We too have a very raw, beautiful, live photo of the second she saw her baby and her hands reaching down to grab the baby. It tells the whole story within that and that one image tells her whole story. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. 

Aubrey: The picture that I submitted to y’all is a picture of right when they put him on my chest, and I mean, it was so surreal. 

Another thing that I think I didn’t really mention is that there was a point when– because I had so much going on. I had all of these different complications and week to week. We don’t know if you’re going to have a baby this week. It was so stressful. Eventually, I just had to say, “Okay, God. You healed my baby. You started his heart. You healed his brain. You can make my body do what it’s supposed to do. I can only do so much. I can eat the dates. I can drink the tea, but after a certain point, there’s nothing else I can do other than just walk it out and just trust that God’s going to walk me through that.” 

I had to keep reminding myself of that with every single step because it got really hard. There’s a community called “Labor Nurse Mama”, and I was a member of that community too. There’s a doula on there. Her name is Lamay Graham. I think she’s in Milwaukee. I’m going to tell you where she is, but she’s a doula, and she’s incredible. We would have these live chats and Zoom calls. They would talk to you.

She would help remind me, “You can only do so much, Aubrey. You’re doing everything that you can. Stop putting it on you because your body is going to do what it’s going to do, and you’re not going to change that the more you stress yourself out. You have to just trust God.” She is one of the reasons I kept being able to come back to reality. It was because she would remind me, “You have to just remember. Stop trying to do it all yourself.” 

Meagan: Yeah. We have to trust, have faith, and do everything we can within our own power, but then understand that there are going to be other things, and you have to have faith in those things. The more educated we are and prepared we are, we can navigate through those things. 

Well, I am just so stinking happy for you. I can see the emotion. I can hear the emotion. I saw the pictures. If you guys are listening right now, go over to our Instagram or Facebook page, and check out this beautiful image of her just holding your baby. You’ve got Jordan in the background, your nurse Jordan. I mean, really, it’s so beautiful and I’m so happy for you. Congrats. 

Aubrey: Thanks. I’m sorry I was kind of all over the place. 

Meagan: No. Listen, that’s okay. That is totally okay. I’m just so happy you are here to share your stories. 

Aubrey: Thanks. I appreciate you. 

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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Marlene joins us from California sharing her journey to a VBAC after three C-sections. She was a teenager with her first, and her doctor suggested scheduling an elective C-section for convenience. Marlene didn’t even know what a C-section was.

She became more educated with each birth experience. Still, when it came time to advocate for her physiological VBA3C birth, there were no hospitals, doctors, midwives, or doulas who would support her. 

Marlene decided to free birth at home with her husband. During labor, she made the call to transfer to the hospital. She arrived at 9.5 centimeters dilated and pushed her healthy baby out in just two pushes. 

Though she experienced resistance all along the way, Marlene kept fighting for the vaginal birth she knew she could achieve!

Marlene's Doula Website: Designed to Birth

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We are a week away from Christmas. I just cannot get over how fast this year has gone and how many incredible stories we have heard. I cannot wait to hear more stories next year. Today’s story is a VBA3C story. These are stories that we get requests for daily. On Instagram, we get people writing us saying, “I need more stories of VBAC after multiple Cesareans. Is VBAC after two Cesareans possible?” Yes. The answer is yes. We have Marlene here with us. Hello, Marlene. 

Marlene: Hello. 

Meagan: She’s going to be sharing her story just showing you how possible birth is. We have a Review of the Week. We’re going to get into that, then we are going to turn the time over to Marlene. 

This review is by Rachel, and it says, “11 out of 10. Would be best friends with these ladies.” I love that. You guys, we feel like we are best friends, too. Even though we haven’t met half of you, we just love this community so much. We feel like we are best friends. It says, “Amazingly knowledgeable doulas with a passion for compassion and birth. Funny, kind, smart. Specialized in VBAC. If humans are exiting your body, you want them by your side.” I love that. That is such a fun review. Thank you so much for your review 

You guys, if you have not yet, please help us kick off the 2025 season with some new reviews. You can go to Google and just type in “The VBAC Link” and you can leave us a review there, or you can leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. 

Meagan: Okay, Marlene. Welcome to the show. 

Marlene: Thank you. 

Meagan: I’m so happy that you are here and excited to hear more details about these journeys of yours that led you to the final VBAC after 3 C-section point. 

Marlene: Yeah. Sorry if I say “like” or “um” so much because I’ve been on a few podcasts, and it never gets easier. For some reason, I am always so nervous. 

Meagan: It is hard. This is episode 300 and something, and I still say “like” and “um”. It happens. Listeners, just know it happens. Picture yourself sharing your story and thinking about what you’re sharing and who you’re sharing it too and what you need to share for them. It just happens. “Um” slips out.

Marlene: Okay. So, I’ll get started. I really want to tell my VBAC after 3 C-sections, so my fourth story, but I will get into a little bit of my first three because that paints the picture of how I had my VBAC after 3 C-sections. 

I was 18 when I had my first. My son is now 15. He’s going to be 16 in November. Man, time flies. 

Meagan: Oh my goodness. It really does. 

Marlene: Yeah. I grew up in the LA area in Norwolk, so the outskirts of LA. I grew up with my grandparents because my parents were drug addicts and in and out of jail. The social workers took us and put us with my grandparents. There were 7 of us. We were fortunate to be together with family and my grandparents. 

My parents came when I was 16. I’m the youngest of 7. My parents came when I was 16 years old in the middle of my junior year of high school and were like, “We’re clean. We want to take you back.” My grandparents were old. They already raised all of their kids, and they raised all of us, so they were like, “Just go.” They were tired. I understood, so I was like, “Okay.” I went with my parents. They moved me about an hour away from all of my friends and all of my family. It was just us. 

Probably a year later or 6-8 months later, they started doing their stuff again. I got pregnant. I didn’t have anybody to ask. I wasn’t educated. I didn’t know. I was just like, “I’m pregnant. I’m going to go to the free clinic. I’m going to go to the doctor.” Being a sheep, this is what we do. I go to the doctor and the free clinic. My pregnancy was fine. My son was fine. I’m fine. There were no complications. It was a beautiful, good pregnancy, but towards 38 weeks, on my 38-week appointment, my OB/GYN was like, “Aren’t you so uncomfortable? Wouldn’t you want to have your baby on your due date? Most first-time moms go to 42 weeks.” 

In my head, I was uncomfortable. I was super swollen, but I didn’t have preeclampsia. He didn’t even mention preeclampsia or anything, but my ankles and my legs were probably 3-4 times the size of normal. I was very uncomfortable. I had back pains and stuff. He was like, “You want to have your baby on your due date?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He was like, “Okay. Let’s schedule you for you C-section on November 12th.”

Meagan: Wait!

Marlene: I didn’t even know what a C-section was, and not even an induction. Now that I think about it, no. It was straight to a C-section and I’m over here like, okay. I didn’t even know what a C-section was. I thought this is how the process was. I was just so uneducated. I trusted him. I was like, he was the “expert”. He knows best, so I’m just going to trust him. I showed up at the hospital on the time and date that he said. They prepped me for a C-section.

Meagan: Wow. 

Marlene: Yeah. Now, in hindsight, now that I know, I’m like, that’s crazy. I could have probably sued him or something, but anyway. 4.5 years later, I’m 23 years old. I get pregnant again, and I didn’t educate myself still. I was young and living the party life. I was not really caring and not educating myself. I did plan this one though. The first one was unplanned. My girl was planned. We planned to have her, but I still didn’t educate myself. I just knew I wanted a VBAC because I wanted to experience birth the way women are naturally supposed to. 

I just went. I went to a different OB/GYN in a different city. I came back to Norwolk because I’m an adult, and I have my own place now. I went to my sister’s OB/GYN. She was like, “Oh, he’s good.” I’m like, “Okay.” I just go with him. He was fine. I actually got to go into spontaneous labor this time at least at 39 weeks. My water broke, and straight to the hospital I went. 

Meagan: Yeah. 

Marlene: I just went straight to the hospital because that’s what I was told to do. I got there, and my pregnancy was fine. There were no complications or anything. I got there, and they were like, “Okay. You’re not even dilated, but we’ll keep you here since your water is broken.” They let me labor. I didn’t feel anything. 12 hours passed, and they were like, “Oh, there’s a risk of infection. We have to get this baby out. There is failure to progress,” blah, blah, blah, and this stuff. I’m like, okay. I trusted them again, so they gave me another C-section.

6 years later, so this is 2019 right before the pandemic, I got pregnant. It was probably actually 2018 because I had my second daughter in August 2019. I got pregnant, and I was like, “This time, I’m a little more educated.” I found the Free Birth Society. I was listening, and decided to do more research. My husband opened my eyes to, “Oh, we shouldn’t be vaccinating our kids.” He had been telling me before, but I was like, no. I was so brainwashed. My family is more medical-minded and stuff. Now, I’m the total opposite. My husband opened my eyes to things. 

I started doing more research. I can’t just trust the doctors now and stuff. Now, I’m in Fresno, California when I was pregnant. I searched high and low for a good, VBAC-supportive OB/GYN, and a lot of them told me, “No, we can’t do a VBAC after two C-sections.” This one told me that we could do it. She was truly VBAC supportive. I got to decline all of the things. I didn’t even do the diabetes test. I didn’t really do anything except for a little bit of bloodwork. I declined everything, and she was okay with it. Then she told me, “You don’t have to have a C-section. You could try for a VBAC, but I might not be the doctor who is on call. Who’s to say that the doctor who is on call is going to be VBAC supportive.” She said, “Just to warn you, you might have to stand your ground, and fight for your VBAC and stuff.”

I was like, “Thank you for being straightforward with me.” 

My water did break. I went into spontaneous labor again. I went to the hospital right after again. I mean, it wasn’t as fast this time. I took a shower. I ate dinner, and maybe an hour or two later, I went to the hospital. I didn’t get a VBAC-supportive doctor. The whole time after I got there, she was like, “Okay, you can try for a VBAC.” She was telling me all of these things that I can’t do. “You haven’t done it before. What makes you think you can do it again?” Just all of this stuff.

This time, I did feel contractions. I was in labor longer than 12 hours, but after the 12 hours, she started saying, “Oh, infection.” I had to keep fighting them off, the nurses, and the doctors. I was exhausted from labor. I believe I got to 6 centimeters or so. Those contractions were pretty hard. 

She just was like, “Oh, I’m about to switch shifts. Don’t you want me since you’ve already been working with me? Wouldn’t you feel comfortable if I gave you the C-section versus some new person?” They were doing whatever tactics. I was standing my ground, then finally, I threw the towel in because I was having to fight all of the nurses off while I’m laboring naturally. I had monitors, and the IV, and everything else. I was stuck on the bed. They wouldn’t even let me move or anything like that. I was just like, “Whatever.” I educated myself a little bit more, but I wasn’t fully educated. I didn’t know that I was the authority. I thought they still were. I did educate myself a little better, but not as much as I should have. 

They wheeled me off into another C-section, and then not even a year later, I got pregnant again. It was probably 6 months later. I got pregnant again. It’s funny because my two boys were unplanned, and my two girls were planned. I didn’t plan to get pregnant with my fourth. When I found out, especially because it was in the middle of the pandemic, they had pretty much just announced the pandemic when I found out I was pregnant, so I was bawling when I found out. The future was so uncertain. 

My husband and I just finally, because my husband wants a big family. He wants 7 or 8 kids, and I’m like, “You’re crazy.” I finally got him to say, “Okay, we’re done. We don’t have to have any more kids,” then I get pregnant again, and everything that was going on with the pandemic, I was bawling. I was like, “I can’t believe this, but whatever. I’m pregnant. I don’t believe in abortion. I’m just going to suck it up. I’m having a VBAC now,” especially since none of them were medically necessary. They were all unnecessary. 

I started doing way more research, reading books, reading articles, listening to podcasts, then finally, I did hear about the Free Birth Society before, but I really dug in and listened to every episode. They were the ones who made me want to do it and believe in myself. 

Finally, I tried to go look for a VBAC doctor though, and I went back to my other one who was truly VBAC supportive, but she was like, “Oh no, VBAC after three C-sections, we can’t do this.” I’m like, “Okay, then,” so I went to look for midwives in my area. I interviewed them all, and they were like, “Nope. We would lose our license. Sorry, we can’t do it.” I’m like, “Okay, I guess I’m just going to have to have an unassisted birth or a free birth, so I’m going to look for a doula.” 

I looked for a doula all in my area, and all of them told me, “No, we can’t be your doula because it’s going to be an unassisted birth.” So I’m like, “Okay, then. I guess I’m going to do it all on my own.” Like I said, I started reading all of the books, doing all of the things. It comes to the day. My due date comes. My water breaks actually on my due date. I’m like, “Okay.” 

But it was a normal day. I was cooking and stuff. But with my two girls, when my water broke, it was a full gush. This time, it was a little trickle. It might have tore. I knew about it. I was like, “Okay. It might replenish. I’m not going to panic. I’m going to go about my day.” It wouldn’t stop trickling, so I had to put a diaper on, a big pad or a diaper, and I just went about my day.

I never felt contractions. I went to sleep, then the next day was a normal day. That night, I went to put my kids to bed, and my husband and I laid down. I started to feel these sensations. They were pretty hard. They weren’t hard enough that I had to get up and walk around, but they were hard enough to keep me up. They were not consistent, but they were happening all night. I didn’t sleep all night because of them. 

In the morning at 6:00 in the morning, they totally went away. I had another normal day. I went back to sleep, and I got to sleep that night. Then again, I put my kids to bed. Me and my husband laid down. I felt these sensations, and they were a little stronger. The same thing, I dind’t even tell my husband. I was just laying next to him. I put in my Christian Hypnobirthing. I tried to listen to it and breathe through them. 

They weren’t consistent, then the sun camp up, and they went away. The same thing happened every night for a week and a half. 

Meagan: Whoa. You were still having trickling and stuff or no?

Marlene: No. I wasn’t having trickling. It was just that one day. My water never broke again. I think it really was broken for that week and a half. 

Meagan: Oh, okay. 

Marlene: It’s playing with me. I was just like, “Man, is this real? Is it not? Is it prodromal labor? What’s going on?” I’m like, “What’s going on?” Then finally, the day comes, and I had been up all night the previous night, then I had a normal day, then I went to bed, but at 3:00 in the morning this time, I woke up with strong, and they kept getting stronger, faster, and more consistent. 

I’m like, “Okay.” I couldn’t even lay down like the other day. I had to get up. I didn’t wake up my husband. I went and took a bath. I was like, “Oh.” I didn’t have a pool because I didn’t want to make more work for my husband. I was trying to be not selfish. Even though now, I wish I did have a birth pool, I probably wouldn’t have gone to the hospital if I did. I went in the bath. It was hard and small, so I’m like, “I can’t be in here. I’ve got to get out.” I went to the living room. I was pacing back and forth. I was on the ball trying to watch TV to get my mind off of things, then at 6:00 in the morning, my husband wakes up. 

He always wakes up early. He woke up, and he was like, “Are you okay?” I’m like, “Yeah.” I was like, “I think it’s the real thing this time though.” He’s like, “Okay, well I’m going to go to Home Depot.” I’m like, “No, babe. Don’t go. I need you. It’s really intense. The baby is going to be coming soon.” He’s like, “No, I’m just going to go.” I’m like, “Okay, whatever. Just go.” 

He goes, and I go to the restroom. I try to check myself because I never educated on myself how to check myself because I wanted to trust my body, and I didn’t want any cervical checks, but in the moment, I wanted to see how much longer even though cervical checks don’t really tell you how long you have, but in my head, I was like, “I’ve been going through this for a week and a half. I want to know how dilated I am.” 

I stuck my fingers up there wrong. I only went up to my first knuckle, but now I know you have to go put your whole hand in there and go way high up there. I only felt no opening, so I’m like, “Oh my goodness. How much longer am I going to have to go through this?” 

I started getting blood dripping down my leg. 

Meagan: Bloody show?

Marlene: It was drops of blood dripping down my leg. My cervix was opening so it wasn’t bleeding a little bit. It wasn’t too much. It was just a little bit. I call my husband. I’m like, “Adam, get home.” That’s my husband’s name. “Take me to the hospital. I need an epidural.” He comes home 20 minutes later, then when he gets here, the first thing out of his mouth, “Are you sure you want to go to the hospital? Because you told me that unless it’s an emergency, don’t take you to the hospital. You told me this.” 

I’m like, “Shut up, and take me to the hospital.” I’m all mad at him because he left me, and he was not helping me. We drive to the hospital. It’s a 15-minute drive, and I get there. I’m like, “Check me. Check me. I want to know how far along I am.” 

They check me, and they’re like, “You’re 9.5 centimeters.” My whole mentality changed, and I’m like, “I should have stayed home. I’m here. I’m not going to take that horrible car ride again. I’m guess we’re going to have a baby here.” 

But when I got there, they were like, “Okay, let’s prep you for a C-section,” because this was the hospital that I had established care with my third, so they already knew I had three C-sections. They were like, “Okay, let’s prep you for a C-section.” I’m like, “I’m not having a C-section. I’m pretty much pushing this baby out. I’m 9.5 centimeters. I’m there.” They’re like, “Okay,” so the  nurse went to get the doctor 10 minutes later. 

Now, I’m pretty much complete. They didn’t check me any other times, but they were like, “Okay.” They just wanted her to tell me that I needed a C-section. I’m like, “Lady. I’m not having a C-section. I’m pretty much pushing this baby out.” She goes to my husband and says, “Your wife needs a C-section or her or your baby could die.” He’s like, “Lady, get out of here. We’re not going to do a C-section. She’s pretty much there.” 

Then she leaves, and then 10 minutes later, she gets more fierce. “You need a C-section, or you and your baby will die. Do you understand that?” I’m breathing through my contraction, closing my eyes, and ignoring her, then she goes and tells my husband the same thing. He’s like, “Lady, don’t come back. We’re not having a C-section.” So she leaves and doesn’t come back. 

I pushed the baby out in only two pushes. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh. So was the doctor even with you?

Marlene: A different doctor which is the doctor who I had seen for my third, came. Actually, I forgot to mention this earlier. I did establish care with her, but since it was the pandemic, I had only seen her about three times throughout my pregnancy. I wanted to make sure I didn’t have placenta previa, the placenta wasn’t in the way, everything was fine. I went a couple of times to the doctor. 

I told her at the last one around 34 weeks or 36 weeks– I can’t really remember, but towards the end in the last trimester, she was like, “Okay, let’s schedule you for a C-section.” I’m like, “No, I have to talk to my husband and ask him for his schedule.” The whole time, I told her, “Okay, I will have a C-section,” but in my mind, I was planning that I wasn’t going to.

She was like, “Well, we could schedule it now, then if it doesn’t work for your husband, then you can reschedule.” I was like, “No, I’ll just not schedule it, and I’ll call you once I get his schedule.” She’s like, “Okay,” then a week passed, then she calls me, but I didn’t answer, and they just left a voicemail, “Hi, we need to schedule your C-section.” I heard nothing from them after that. She never tried to call back. I never tried to call her back until I saw her in the delivery room. That was the lady who delivered my baby.

Yeah, when she saw me, and I was pushing, she was like, “Hi, Marlene.” I’m like, “Hello.” She had a look on her face.

Meagan: You’re like, “Yes, I’ve been ignoring you” 

Marlene: Yeah, it was funny. It was amazing. I told them I wanted delayed cord clamping. I didn’t want any vaccines. The whole time, she said, “You’re bleeding a lot. We need to cut the cord.” I did bleed a lot for their comfort, but I felt fine. It was a lot of blood, but I didn’t need a transfusion or anything. I didn’t feel dizzy. I felt fine, but in their case, I was hemorrhaging. I knew some women don’t bleed a lot. Some women don’t bleed at all. Some women do bleed a lot. It’s just different for everybody. 

I told them, “Leave the cord alone. Leave the placenta alone.” I still had to advocate the whole time because they were trying to cut the cord sooner than I wanted. They were trying to put the ointment on the baby’s eyes, trying to vaccinate, and then before I left, they told me, “CPS came to visit me because of medical neglect.” I didn’t see my OB/GYN too many times throughout my pregnancy. I used the pandemic. I was like, “I have three kids at home. Nobody could watch them. I can’t take them to the doctor with me. What do you expect me to do, leave my three young children at home unsupervised? I don’t know anybody around here to watch them.” 

They dropped everything. It was crazy.

Meagan: What was that process like with CPS? We hear it happening. What did they do?

Marlene: I guess they have somebody in the hospital, like a CPS worker working in the hospital for cases like mine or whatever. 

Meagan: Interesting. 

Marlene: She just came in. She was really sweet. She was like, “I have to come and check.” She was like, “Can you tell me why you didn’t go to the doctor? You only went three times throughout your whole pregnancy. You didn’t make it to every appointment.” I said, “I have three young children at home. Nobody is willing to watch them, and I can’t take them to my appointments.” 

She was like, “Okay,” That was it. She was like, “Okay, case closed. I just needed to do my job and ask you.” 

Meagan: It was like, “I’m going to take this baby away from you because you didn’t go.” This is the hard thing for me. I’m going to get a little salty. 

Providers need to do better. Hospitals need to do better. If they don’t want people having free birth or unassisted birth, stop pushing people to do that. I also don’t judge anyone who does a free birth. Everyone has their own thing. We’ve shared free birth stories on here, but if they’re going to give people so much crap and call CPS on them which is completely ridiculous because these people are just trying to do what’s best. 

Stop making people go that route. Providers, if you are listening, please change your ways, and do better because you can’t shame someone for going out of the hospital or not having support from a provider if you don’t offer the support that they deserve in the first place. We’re restricting midwives out-of-hospital. Providers are restricting after two Cesareans, and sometimes even after one. We have to do better in the medical world in order to see change. 

Then people who decide, “Okay. I’m going to do what I feel is right, and I’m going to free birth or I’m going to go unassisted, or I’m not going to be hounded about everything that I don’t want,” right? It’s so aggravating to me that people put people through CPS and things like that because they made the best choice for them when they were pushed away. 

You had three unnecessary Cesareans. You were failed from the beginning, right? In your very, very first birth, a provider set you up for failure that they had no idea maybe what the repercussions would be in the next few years with how much you’d have to go through to find the support and to get the support. It’s just frustrating to me. 

Marlene: Yeah. I totally agree. Honestly, that’s what made me, because I’m a doula, become a doula because I want to try as best as I can. I’m just one person and not a very important person in the medical world, but I try to educate my clients on not getting an unnecessary induction or unnecessary C-section. I’m not against them if they are an emergency, but if they are unnecessary, they’re handing them out like Oprah. “You get a C-section. You get an induction.” That’s how they’re handing them out. In my area, that’s what I see. 

And also, because the ladies who want to have a free birth like me, if I would have had a doula to support me, then I would have probably done it at home. I’m that doula who I was looking for. I support free birth. I’ll be there if you’re free birthing and you can’t find any other doula. 

Meagan: Yeah, and there are a lot of doulas who feel uncomfortable with it, a lot of it because maybe they are uneducated on it, but I do think it’s important for people who do decide to free birth just to make sure you are educated. You know what you are doing. You have a backup plan. You have the support. 

It is good to hear that you and other doulas are able to go and support still. Everybody has to decide what’s best for them and what feels best, but support is needed, so I’m glad that you are willing to support your community. 

Marlene: Yeah. Honestly, I’ve noticed that the ones who decide to free birth are very prepared and educated even more so than the ones who are doing it in the hospital and stuff because they have to, in my experience at least. 

Meagan: Yeah. They do. They do have to. I do believe that those people who decide to free birth don’t take it nonchalantly. It’s a very serious thing that they take. We talked about that in the last episode. It’s important to note that. These people are very educated. It’s not just, “Oh, I’m going to go have a baby by myself in my closet.” It’s not like that. Really, these people are educated. 

I’m so happy for you that you were able to fight through this, and to grow through each of your pregnancies and your births because you deserve that support. I’m sorry that you had to fight so hard in the pushing stages. Big eye roll. Again, we need to do better. We need to do better. 

Marlene: I agree. I’m grateful for podcasts like yours and other ones to get the story out there because we do learn as a community through storytelling and stuff. That’s actually what helped me a lot.

Meagan: Yeah, they do. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your stories today. 

Marlene: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. 

Closing

Would you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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In this episode, Meagan and Julie tackle hot topics like the VBAC calculator, epidurals, and uterine rupture. What does the evidence actually say? And why do providers give such drastically different statistics from one practice to the next? 

When you know the facts, you are equipped to take charge of your VBAC journey!

VBAC Calculator

ACOG: Deciding Between a VBAC and a Repeat Cesarean

VBAC Calculator Online Library

Epidural Side Effects

VBA2C PubMed Article

Evidence Based BirthⓇ: The Evidence on VBAC

Uterine Rupture

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details 

Julie: Welcome, welcome. You are listening to The VBAC Link Podcast, and guess what? We have a special guest for you today, and that is me. It’s Julie Francom. I am here today with Meagan, and I am joining her for a really cool information-packed episode debunking some common misunderstandings about VBAC and showing you what the evidence is and where you can find more evidence-based information about VBAC. 

Without further ado, your host, Meagan. How was that?

Meagan: Oh my gosh. Thanks Julie for the amazing welcome. Oh, so fun. It’s so fun. Yes. I am so excited for this episode because it’s one of the last episodes with you and I. No, it’s not one of the last episodes. It is the last episode of you and I of the year which is so crazy. It is so crazy. 

Julie: This year has flown. Time is wild. Time is wild. 

Meagan: It’s so strange to me, but that’s okay. We will welcome in 2025, and we will say goodbye to 2024. We want to say goodbye to it with, like she said just a really great evidence-based packed episode for you guys.

I feel like all year we have gotten messages like, “I had a C-section. I’m being told I can’t ever have a vaginal birth. Is this true? Is VBAC safe or possible?”

We’ve had, “I’ve had one and two C-sections. I’ve had three C-sections. Is VBAC possible? My provider gave me a 20% chance to VBAC. Is that true? Can I VBAC? Do I really have that low of a chance?”

How about this one? This one was more recent that I’ve heard from our last recording. “You have a 60% chance of uterine rupture if you choose to VBAC.” Ugh. Seriously, so many things that we have heard along the way where it’s just–

Julie: Lies, lies, lies, lies. It’s lies. Let’s just call it what it is. 

Meagan: Aggravating. 

Julie: For the most part, I do not think providers mean to spread lies or misinformation. I do think that there is a lot of information related to birth in general, but especially VBAC about how this is the way we’ve always done it. They are just regurgitating information that they have heard from some unreliable source somewhere and aren’t really taking the time to keep up with the actual facts about VBAC, about birth, and about anything in general. 

Also, our system is not set up for continuing educating all of the providers in all of the things. Our hospital providers, I feel like in some capacity we have to give them some grace because they are incredibly overworked. They work crazy hours. They see lots of things and deal with a lot. The medical system is that way. 

But I also feel like who’s responsibility is it to make sure that you are providing the best care? But how can you when the system is working against not only the parents but also the providers and the nurses and everybody. It’s really hard because it puts the responsibility on you, the parent, in order to really dig and discover what your options are so that you can make the right choices that benefit you because the system is not set up to support you in any other way besides their hospital policies and following their rules, etc. 

So, yeah. I don’t want this to turn into a provider-bashing episode. I don’t think it will either. Sometimes, I think with me talking especially with me being more salty now, it can come across that we are anti-provider or whatever which we are not, but the system is just really frustrating. 

It takes everybody’s efforts to try and change it, everybody’s efforts. Not one part of the system can be passive if we want to change it and we want to influence it for better.

Meagan: I agree so much. Like you said, we don’t want to ever shame the hospital system or providers, but a lot of times, the things we are saying definitely does happen. But it’s because there is a lot of fault. There is a lot of fault in these areas. 

Like you were saying, a lot of these things are lies. The biggest and hardest thing that I found when I was going through my VBAC journey. Julie, I wanted to speak for you and probably say that is the same for you, and that’s why we created The VBAC Link: How to Prep VBAC Course is because we didn’t know what was right and what wasn’t. We just didn’t know, and there were so many avenues on Google that you could go down, and you could actually find truth on both sides sometimes even. 

Julie: And trying to figure out which is true and credible and which is not sometimes is really tricky.

Meagan: It’s really, really tricky. We want to talk more about that today. We recently talked about hospital policies and what that means and how to go about those, but along with hospital policies come a lot of other things that providers do or suggest or say, so we’ve got this random policy that was created over here, then we’ve got all of these random things that are being said over here. We want to know our options. 

We know hospital policies are what they are. If you haven’t listened to the episode, go listen. It’s back in November, last month. Go look for it. But today, we are going to be talking about what is the evidence. What are the facts?

Let’s talk about the VBAC calculator. Let’s just start right there because this is where a lot of providers actually begin to determine someone’s ability or qualifications if they can VBAC. They’ll pull out this list, this calculator, that is online. You can actually get it online. If you want to play around with it, I’ll try and make sure to put the link in our show notes because I actually find it very interesting to play around with. We used to do that when we would do in-person courses. We would have everyone pull out their phones, type in the calculator, and type in different scenarios. It was pretty mind-blowing to see how much it could change based off of the answer that you give this computer. 

You want a VBAC. You have determined that a VBAC is something you want to explore. You want to learn what you can do to have a VBAC. You go to your provider and you go, “Hey, I’ve had a C-section. I don’t want that experience this time. I want a different experience. I would like to have a VBAC,” or what they would call a TOLAC, a trial of labor after a Cesarean. And they’re like, “Great. That’s wonderful.” Then they’re like, “Let’s talk about it.” 

They pull up their calculator and they ask you questions like what, Julie?

Julie: They ask you questions like, hold on. I was just digging into the history of the VBAC calculator a little bit more because I was curious about it. They ask you what was the reason for your previous Cesarean? How much do you weigh? It used to ask what your ethnicity was then they docked you if you were black or Hispanic. 

It also asks, let’s see. 

Meagan: It asks if there was an arrest of descent. 

Arrest of descent is if you needed a Cesarean because your baby didn’t come down. It asks about your history as in have you had a vaginal birth before? Have you had a VBAC? What was the reason for your previous Cesarean? 

It even asks if you’ve been treated for hypertension. Interesting. 

Julie: Interesting. 

Meagan: Yeah. So height, weight–

Julie: Oh, because the chronic hypertension requiring treatment is what replaced the race. When they replaced the race question with do you have chronic hypertension requiring treatment? It may serve as an obvious proxy for race and appears to function similarly in the revised calculator in terms of statistical performance. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh. Yeah, it says that right on the website. “The information on this website describes the outcome of vaginal birth after Cesarean in term pregnancy for population individuals who receive care at hospitals within (blah, blah, blah) network.” It says, “The information on this website is not intended to be the only basis for making care decisions for individuals nor is it intended to be definitive,” meaning it’s not going to be yes, you have to have this or this is the exact chance of you having a VBAC, but yet we have so many providers who go off of this as in point-blank fact.

Julie: Like it’s the law and like it’s a crystal ball. 

Meagan: Really though. It’s so frustrating. Sorry, what were you going to say before?

Julie: I just sent you this link from what I was digging into. It’s so interesting about the VBAC calculator. It’s interesting because first of all, a couple things. The likelihood of the VBAC calculator being accurate for you, the higher percentage of having a successful VBAC, the more likely it’s going to be. It’s more accurate when the predicted success rates are above 60%. The lower success rate, the more likelihood it is to be inaccurate. 

Do you know what that tells me? That tells me that most people who attempt a VBAC are going to be successful. That’s what that tells me. It’s just so stupid because I mean, the development of the calculator was in the early 2000s. From the outside, it actually looks like a good sample size. There were 11,856 people with one prior Cesarean between 1999 and 2002. 

It was analyzed whether they had a successful VBAC or an unplanned repeat Cesarean. It was analyzed retrospectively. Retrospectively means they looked back on births. It doesn’t mean that they did the study when people were pregnant. They looked at it after it had already been done. 

I like retrospective studies because there’s a lot. It really removes the chance for bias related to the study. 

The interesting thing is that the risk factors that they chose were related to BMI, if you’re overweight, age, history of prior vaginal deliveries– so did you have a prior vaginal birth or not– if the prior Cesarean was because of labor dystocia, so that’s stalled labor, or your race– black or Hispanic ethnicity. 

They used these criteria to determine whether or not you were going to be successful in having a VBAC. Here’s the stupid thing about this. What it doesn’t take into account is the bias in our system against people of color and against people who are overweight. It does not take into account the bias and the different ways people who are overweight and people who are not white are treated in the system. 

I mean, there are just so many flaws against it as well, but also, I don’t know. It says here– sorry. Before I get to my also. It says here– first of all, there are only 19 academic hospitals that were included, so I feel like the sample size of 19 academic hospitals, so university hospitals, and it’s between 1999 and 2002. Also, there was a lot of backlash from all of the controversies surrounding uterine rupture in the mid-1990s from that carrying over into that as well. 

If you didn’t know this, they started inducing VBACs with Cytotec in the mid-1990s. It increased the risk of uterine rupture like crazy. I’m not going to do a history lesson right now, but this was only 4 years after all of that. There was probably still a lot of fear and everything related to uterine rupture and everything during all of the time that they were collecting this data. 

Sorry, I’m probably really nerding out right now. But the thing is that when the predicted success rate was over 60%, it tended to be more inaccurate when it was less than 60%. Accuracy of lower estimates was mixed but generally decreased as predicted success rates declined. I said this before and I’ll say it again. My first client ever as a doula had a predicted success rate of 4%, like the number 1-2-3-4. You count to 4. That was her predicted success rate, and she pushed her baby out in 20 minutes. So, I think the VBAC calculator is garbage.  

Also, ACOG says in their most recent guideline, actually for the most couple VBAC bulletins that they have put out, is that a low chance of success is not a good reason to exclude somebody from attempting to have a VBAC. But yet, there are so many providers who will not take you if your predicted chance of success is less than 60%. But what did we just say? We just said that if your predicted success rate is less than 60%, it’s less likely to be accurate. Isn’t that stupid?

Meagan: Yes. The other thing I have noticed from providers who do the VBAC calculator is that not only if they say your chances are lower, if they are doing it and it is lower than 50-60%, they automatically go in their mind and they’re like, “Oh, she has a lower chance.” They may start being tolerant, but I think it’s something to watch out for. If your provider is pulling out this calculator and putting too much weight on the calculator, it might be something to watch out for and understand that there may be a bait and switch coming up or that provider may not end up feeling comfortable with you being able to VBAC or TOLAC. 

We’ve talked about this with other providers where they say they are uncomfortable. That is a really good time to say, “You are not comfortable with this. I am comfortable with this. We are not a good match.” 

Julie: Yes. Don’t let your provider dictate how your birth goes. I love that you brought that up, Meagan, because I’m in a member of a Facebook group for labor and delivery nurses. There are 12,000 labor and delivery nurses in there. I’m mostly quiet. I mostly watch because I like to see the climate of the profession and the attitudes around VBAC, birth photography, doulas, etc. 

There was a post actually this morning in there. The nurse asked, “What is your hospital’s protocol around vaginal breech deliveries?” I was like, “Oh, this is going to be good.” 

I went through the comments, and I was stalking the comments because I know that having a vaginal breech delivery in a hospital is a freaking unicorn. It’s a unicorn. You don’t usually see it. It was interesting to see the labor and delivery nurses’ comments. 

One of them stuck out to me. I almost commented back, but I pulled myself back. I was like, “This is for labor and delivery nurses. I don’t want to stir the pot. I’ll stir this pot in other places, but I don’t want to stir the pot in this community most of the time.” 

One of the nurses said that vaginal breech delivery carries risks, and it is up to the provider and patient to decide what risks are safest and what risks to assume. 

I rolled my eyes at that because it should be like that. It should be the provider AND the patient together to decide the risk, but how often is it the provider only who decides the risks that these patients are going to take on? No. It’s not the patient and the provider. It’s the provider deciding. It’s the provider deciding. Nowhere in the normal, typical, standard conversation does it include providers and patients making decisions. Not real ones. Not when they disagree. Not when they want a little flexibility or not when they want to go against hospital policy, right? 

Meagan: Yeah. 

Julie: I mean, there are sometimes, but it’s really rare. 

Meagan: This comment reminds me of the many scenarios that I see or hear within my own clients here in Utah of, “Hi, I really want a VBAC. I met with my provider, and they said they would let me do.” It reminds me of the “let me”. This provider looked at me, read my history, and said that this is what I can and cannot do. This is what they let me do. 

Julie: Or they led me to the calculator.

Meagan: Yeah. We’re losing that conversation. Women of Strength, I encourage you to go forward and have conversation with your providers, especially if you are getting this kickback and especially if you are not being told the risks for both VBAC and repeat Cesarean, and you’re just being told, “Oh, you have a 46% chance of VBAC based off of this calculator, so I’ll let you try, but don’t count on it.” Seriously? If I hear anymore providers, ugh. It’s so frustrating.

Julie: They’re doing you a favor. “We’ll let you try. Okay, you can try.” Or they say, “But you have to go into labor by 40 weeks or we’ll schedule a C-section, but we won’t induce you.” Come on. Come on. They’re trying to be this savior. We’ll let you try, but…

Meagan: Don’t stand for that unless that’s what you’re okay with. I can’t tell you, “No. You can’t see anybody like that.” That’s not my place, but I will say that if you’re having a provider in the very beginning pull out this calculator telling you that they’ll let you try, but the chances are low, your pelvis hasn’t done it before, don’t know if it will do it again, your cervix didn’t dilated to 10, these are problems. These are red flags.  

Okay, so the VBAC calculator, we talked about it. We talked about the stats. We talked about our rant. Now, let’s talk about uterine rupture. This is a big one that I feel like hovers. It’s that dark cloud. 

Julie: The elephant in the room. 

Meagan: Yeah. It hovers over people and their fear. I see it daily within our community. “I really want a VBAC. A different experience is so important to me, but in the end, I’m so scared. I’m so scared of uterine rupture.” Valid. I just want to validate your fears right now. It’s okay that you feel scared. It’s valid that you feel nervous about it. 

Julie: Mhmm. 

Meagan: It’s also understandable that you may feel extra nervous about it because the outside world talks so poorly about it. 

Julie: Mhmm. 

Meagan: They make it sound scary. It is scary. 

Julie: It can be, yeah, when it happens. It is. 

Meagan: When it happens, it can be, but the chances are actually quite low, you guys. We want to talk a little bit about it. I know we’ve talked about it in the past, but I feel like you can’t talk about uterine rupture enough. 

Julie: Yeah, it keeps coming up, so we’ll keep talking about it. 

Meagan: It keeps coming up. It keeps coming up.

Okay, so let’s talk about one C-section. You’ve had one C-section. Your baby didn’t come down. You pushed for 2 hours. You had a C-section. You dilated to a 5. You didn’t progress. They did all of the interventions. You had a C-section. You got an epidural. Your blood pressure dropped. Your baby didn’t do very well. Decelerations. You had a C-section. There are lots of scenarios of why we have C-sections. 

One C-section– Julie, let’s talk about the evidence of uterine rupture after one C-section.

Julie: So here’s the thing. There are multiple studies out examining uterine rupture and things like that. It’s interesting because I feel like it does vary. There are some studies with very small sample studies that have 0% uterine ruptures in their studies, and there are some studies that show higher rates. 

Now, what I have found as I have been digging is that the studies that are the most credible and most reliable will usually have a rate of rupture between 0.2%-0.9%. I feel like if you have anybody telling you that your chance of rupture is half of 1% or you have a 1% chance of rupture or that the chance of uterine rupture is less than 1% or 1 in 200 or 1 in 100, all of those, I feel like, are pretty accurate representations of what the actual risk of rupture is. 

Now, there are lots of things that contribute to that of course, but I feel like if you ever have a provider tell you, “Oh, it’s about 1%”, that’s pretty cool. 

Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s pretty reliable to know that they are within–

Julie: Within range.

Meagan: They are looking at some study that is within accurate range. 

Julie: Or I think 0.4%. One of the bigger studies that we cite in our course is 0.4% or 1 in 250. Those are all that for me, personally, I would feel that yeah, you are presenting the data pretty accurately. Yeah. I feel like you’re trying to lead this a certain direction.

Meagan: No, I’m not. That’s exactly something I wanted to talk about is how it can range. You may see something that’s 0.2% and you may see something that’s 0.47, and you may see something that’s 0.7, so I love that you pointed that out. 

Julie: Yeah. I think that’s why the more I go on, I used to say 0.4% or half of a percent whenever somebody would ask me, “What’s the rate of uterine rupture?” Those are the numbers I would go to, but now, I feel like it’s a little more fluid, and I feel like there’s more nuance to that. 

Meagan: Yeah. I usually say around 1%. What about people who are wanting to VBAC after two C-sections? Because this is another big ask, then it gets even stickier.

Julie: So sticky. 

Meagan: And when we talk about 3+. 

The evidence after two C-sections– again, everyone has different reasons, but I was told slightly over 1%. 

Julie: Right.

Meagan: 0.7% to 1.1-1.4%. 

Julie: Well, here’s the thing, too. There are not a lot of studies about VBAC after two Cesareans. There’s just not, but there are two large studies in the ACOG VBAC bulletin that ACOG cites, and it actually says that– I’m actually going to quote the guideline right now. It says, “Women who have had two previous low transverse Cesarean deliveries should be considered for a trial of labor after Cesarean (TOLAC). However, other factors should also be considered to determine the likelihood of successful VBAC.”

Now, here’s the thing. It cites two studies in their bulletin as far as risk of uterine rupture. One study that they cite shows that there is not increased chance of uterine rupture from one to two Cesareans. There is one that shows no statistical differences. 

Now, the other study that they reference shows double the risk of rupture. So, what? 0.5% to 1%? I think it was 1.2% is what the ACOG bulletin says. I’m not sure. I don’t have the actual bulletin pulled up right here in front of my face except for that. 

Meagan: This is another thing where it depends on what you’re reading. Some of them are 0.1-1.5% or 1-1.5% and that’s even on the higher end of the chances. 

Julie: Right. The interesting is that ACOG even says that, yet people are going to go say double and triple, or whatever. They’re going to make up all of these crazy statistics. Now, gosh dangit. I literally had that guideline. Do you have it open?

Meagan: No. The ACOG? No. I don’t.

Julie: I’m going to find it exactly because we’ve been called out for this. We literally quoted the exact phrase from ACOG and got thrown under the bus for spewing misinformation when it was literally a quote from ACOG, but whatever. 

Meagan: While you are finding that, there is an article showing vaginal birth after two Cesareans There was a systemic review and a meta analysis of the rate of adverse outcomes in a VBAC after two. It talks about how the VBAC after two success rate was around 71.1% and the uterine rupture rate was 1.63%, so that is within this. 

We will have all of these here. If we are quoting something, we’re going to make sure that we have it here in the show notes. Please, please, please make sure to go down and check it out. You’re going to want more information. We don’t have all the time to go over all of these, but I think these are such great reads. 

 

Sorry, have you already found it?

Julie: Yep. 

Meagan: Okay, go ahead. 

Julie: Excuse me while I clear my throat and crack my knuckles. I’m ready. Let’s go. Oh, do you know what? This is actually a pdf from an actual publication, so it’s not going to be the exact page that I said. 

There is a whole section called, “More than one previous Cesarean delivery”. Now, what it says about the studies, I’m going to quote it exactly. “Two large studies with sufficient size to control for confounding variables reported on the risks for women with two previous Cesarean deliveries undergoing TOLAC. One study found no increased risk of rupture, 0.9% versus 0.7% in women with one versus multiple prior Cesarean deliveries whereas the other noted a risk of uterine rupture that increased from 0.9% to 1.8% in women with one versus two prior Cesarean deliveries. 

“Both studies reported some increased risk in morbidity in women with more than one prior Cesarean delivery, although the absolute magnitude of the difference in those risks was small.”

Meagan: Mmm, send me the link so I can put the exact link in the show notes so everybody can go read more.

Julie: Yeah. Yep. It also says, “The likelihood additionally retrospective–”. Remember, retrospective is looking back on data that already exists. “Retrospective cohort data has suggested that the likelihood of achieving VBAC appears to be similar for women with one previous Cesarean delivery and women with more than one previous Cesarean delivery. Given the overall data, it is reasonable to consider women with two previous low transverse Cesarean delivers to be candidates for TOLAC, and to counsel them based on the combination of other factors that affect their probability of achieving successful VBAC.” 

Meagan: Hey, see? They’re even saying that it’s reasonable. Here we are. It’s reasonable. But then, there are so many people who are like, “Nope. Out of the question. It is not acceptable. We will not support VBAC after two C-sections.” 

Julie: Actually, I don’t think you are supposed to publish this. You might not be able to distribute it. 

Meagan: Oh. 

Julie: Because you just do a search on the dark web for ACOG VBAC bulletin 205 pdf and it will pull up. I promise. 

Meagan: Okay. There you go, everybody.

Julie: I just don’t want you to do anything illegal. 

Meagan: Yeah. Get on a search. Get on a search. 

I do want to talk when it comes to three. When it comes to three, the hardest part for me with three C-sections being shut down is that the evidence is still not there. The concrete evidence is not being studied that much. 

Julie: Mhmm. Even the studies that do exist, they don’t have super large sample sizes. They are very old. They are 20+ years old, so that’s the best data that we have to use. Sometimes those studies are just automatically disqualified because of their age, their smaller sample sizes, and things like that so it’s hard to make any definitive statements about its safety or risks. 

Meagan: Yeah. Then there is evidence with induction. Increasing around 1.1% if you use Pitocin. A lot of people say, “We can’t use Pitocin. It increases it astronomically.” I mean, to some, 1.1% and having that be their rupture rate, that may make sense, but for a lot of people, 1.1% is still quite low. 

I did just want to throw it out there that the risk of uterine rupture is not dismissed because you schedule a C-section. It’s not. 

Julie: That’s true. In fact, you are more likely to undergo a uterine rupture during the Cesarean than you are by attempting a VBAC. 

Meagan: You are? I thought it was 0.06. 

Julie: No, it’s in our course. I have the charts from the National Institute of Health. Because of the pressure during the surgical procedure, your uterus is more likely to rupture. 

Now, granted, it’s probably “safer” to have a uterine rupture on the operating room table because baby is already coming out, but there is data that shows it. I’m pretty sure there are graphs and charts in there from the National Institute of Health. 

Meagan: Yeah. I’m going to go find it. I was reading about it. It was 0.02%. It’s just really important to know that it’s not just eliminated. Your risk is not just eliminated. 

Okay, let’s talk about– and anything else you want to talk about with that?

Julie: Mm-mmm. 

Meagan: Let’s talk about epidurals and the risk that we have with that. 

Julie: Not ugh about epidurals. That sound was not about epidurals in general. It’s about how I know where you’re going with this. Sorry. 

Meagan: No, it’s okay. I just want to talk about the risk with epidurals because a lot of people don’t know that some of the things that happen after epidurals can be placed or things to do before if you’re planning to get an epidural like hydrating and making sure that we’re good there. 

I want to talk a little bit about epidurals. Epidurals can do a few things. They can lower our blood pressure. That’s one of the most common that I have seen right out of the gate. But it’s given, and the blood pressure drops. Mom’s blood pressure drops. Baby’s heart stops responding. 

Julie: Baby’s heart rate drops a little bit too.

Meagan: Yeah. In fact 13 out of 100 women have epidurals cause low blood pressure. Epidurals can also increase infections. Now, yes. Infections are in our back and stuff, but I’m actually talking about vaginally because I feel like the vagina is an open door. Once an epidural is placed–

Julie: Then you have the catheter too. That will give UTIs. 

Meagan: Yep. Yes. We’ve got a catheter, then it’s like, “Oh, I can check you. You can’t feel that.” We keep introducing bacteria. 

Julie: More cervical checks. 

Meagan: Yes. 

Julie: Increased infection.

Meagan: Yes. It also can cause problems urinating because we’ve got this catheter. It can sometimes be placed for hours and hours.

Julie: Yeah. 24 hours sometimes depending on how long you’re in labor.

Meagan: Yes. Approximately 18 out of 100 women will have urinary issues because of cather and things like that. It’s kind of interesting. Epidurals can also cause itching. Is there morphine in epidural? I think that’s why.

Julie: Fentanyl.

Meagan: Okay. It wears off, and it can cause itching. It can cause you to go so numb that you’re unable to move and groove. 

Julie: These are small risks. They are small risks. It’s okay to have an epidural. Don’t be scared out of having one if that’s what you want. You can still have a VBAC with an epidural.

Meagan: I want to talk about that. I’m still going over these risks. Going into what you were saying, there’s an article that I’m reading right now. It says that 75 out of 100 women who had an epidural and they were very satisfied with the pain relief that they received. 75 out of 100 is really great. That’s really great. It says, “50 out of 100 women who were very satisfied with the pain relief.”

Of opioids, sorry. It says, “Compared to 50 out of 100 women who were very satisfied with pain from opioids.” There are risks to epidurals, but there’s also a lot of great things that come with epidurals because we can be more present and have less trauma. It comes to a point sometimes where labor– we talk about pain versus suffering, and if you’re suffering, that’s not usually going to lead to a positive experience.

But, let’s talk about the just-in-case epidurals. We have talked about this before. 

Julie: That’s what my sound was for.

Meagan: I had a feeling. The just-in-case epidurals are frustrating. We’ve talked about them before. It just doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t make sense. 

One of these days, I would like someone to sit down and try to make this make sense. It doesn’t make sense to me. Is there anything else you would want to share?

Julie: Just-in-case epidurals. I just want to do the math on it though. Just-in-case epidurals don’t make sense. It’s not logical. The idea is that a lot of hospitals will have a requirement that you have to have an epidural placed but not turned on. If you don’t want to have it turned on, you don’t have to have it turned on, but you have to have it placed just in case of a uterine rupture so they can give you an epidural quickly and go get the baby out without having to put you under general anesthesia because general anesthesia is riskier. That is true. 

The problem with that is that in order for an epidural to be dosed to surgical strength, it takes 15-20 minutes to be dosed to surgical strength even if it is turned on already. If you have a catastrophic uterine rupture where baby needs to be out in minutes, 15-20 minutes is not going to do it. You’re going to be put under general anesthesia anyways. Even if you have an epidural, and baby needs to be out in seconds or minutes, then you will be put under general anesthesia. 

If there is time to wait, there is time to do a spinal block in the OR. It takes effect in 5 minutes, and boom. You don’t have to be put under general anesthesia. So the math isn’t mathing there whenever they do that.

I’ve had clients ask when they say, “Hey, just-in-case epidural,” and my clients will be like, “Even if I have the epidural turned on and need the baby out immediately, how much time would it take to get to surgical strength or would I have to be put under general anesthesia anyways?” They’d be like, “Well, we’d probably have to put you under general anesthesia if it’s a true emergency.” 

Every time you ask somebody, the math doesn’t math. You can’t explain it. Anyways, that is my two cents about that. I think that is the most nonsense VBAC policy ever because you can’t make it make sense. It is not even make it make sense. You have people say that about everything nowadays. Make it make sense, but this one literally doesn’t make sense.

Meagan: Yeah. It’s a tricky one. It’s a really tricky one. There are risks to getting an epidural, but don’t be scared of getting an epidural. It’s still okay. It’s still okay. Just know, if you are getting an epidural, do things like hydrate. Wait as long as you can. Make sure you go to the bathroom. Eat before. Get your blood sugar up. I’m trying to think of all of the other things. Don’t think that just because you get an epidural, you have to get cervical exams anytime they want. 

Julie: Yeah. 

Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. It’s okay to turn your epidural down if you decide it’s too heavy. 

Julie: There are also some providers who will tell you that you can’t have an epidural with a VBAC because then how will they know if you have a uterine rupture? 

Anyway, the hospital policies that we see are just so different. They change and they are so drastically different even from one hospital to the next in the same area. Anyways. 

Meagan: Okay. Anything else that you want to cover or think that we should cover? 

Julie: No. Is there anything else pressing? I feel like we intended to cover more things, but we just keep chatting about it, but that’s okay because there are some good stuff in this episode. 

Meagan: No, I think it’s great. So if you guys have any questions or if you have any studies that you have found that contradict anything that we are saying, share it. 

Julie: Yeah. Send it over. 

Meagan: I would always love to read it. There are times where we miss updates studies or there are studies that we haven’t seen, so please, if you have a study that either contradicts or goes along or says something slightly different, share it with us. You can email us at [email protected].

Closing

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