The VBAC Link

“I hope I give you some hope.”

All around, Lauren’s stories are different. Her birthing journey includes Asherman’s syndrome, infertility for over 10 years, two rounds of IVF treatments (each with only one viable embryo), a miscarriage, placenta accreta, and significant hemorrhaging after her first Cesarean delivery. 

Lauren miraculously got pregnant naturally with her second son. She was committed to having a VBAC even with her complicated medical history. When her water broke at 32 weeks, Lauren made her desires known loud and clear to every person who entered her birthing space that a Cesarean was not an option. 

Sure enough, Lauren was able to successfully VBAC with no signs of placenta accreta or hemorrhaging. After years of so much heartache and holding onto hope, Lauren was finally able to see one miracle unfold after another.

Additional links

The VBAC Link Community on Facebook

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is where you are at, welcome. You are listening to The VBAC Link podcast. This is Meagan and we have our friend, Lauren, today. You guys, she is currently in Vietnam and it is 4:10 a.m. where she is recording. I cannot believe that she is up and ready to record an episode. We are so grateful for her for being with us today. She has a lot of great things in her story, a lot of great things that sometimes we don’t talk about or know of. 

There’s a certain thing in her story where I hadn’t even ever heard the word before until I saw it in her story. So I can’t wait to dive into her story and have her tell more about all of the things about her story.

Review of the Week

Meagan: Of course, we have a Review of the Week so I will read that and we will dive right in. This is from saraalbinger and she says, “One month ago, I had a successful VBAC induction just 18 months after a Cesarean section. I almost called to schedule a repeat on my due date because I was so scared. Then I found your podcast and listened to it for two days straight. It gave me the courage to go through with the induction and I am so glad I did. I hope more people find this as a resource.”

She actually emailed us, which is awesome. Congratulations, Sara, on your VBAC. So happy for you. Like I said, she emailed. You can email us your reviews if you would like or if you have a moment, maybe push “pause” really quickly and jump onto your podcast whether it be Apple or Google Play, and leave us a review. We would really appreciate it and again, we always read one on the episodes, so your review might be next. 

Lauren’s story

Meagan: Okay. Lauren, I’m so excited to have you. Seriously, I cannot believe that you are up. I don’t know if I could get my tushy out of bed at 4:00 a.m. to record a podcast. I’m so grateful. 

Lauren: It is early. 

Meagan: Yes, it is so early. Oh my gosh. We just talked about it. You just had a baby not long ago, so you’re not only up at 4:00 a.m. but probably sleep-deprived within those few hours that you did get to sleep. So seriously, thank you so much for being with us today.  

Lauren: No problem, I’m excited to share my story. 

Meagan: Well, I’m excited to hear it. I would love to turn the time over to you. Share all of the amazing things. You have had such a journey that has led you here today. 

Lauren: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. This is a wonderful opportunity for me to go back and remember what has happened to me over the last couple of years. My story started, I feel like, way back when. I was a Montessori teacher and at that point, I knew exactly what I wanted out of my birth at the age of 18 or 19 years old. I wanted a water birth. I wanted all-natural and I wanted to have all my kids by the time I was 25. 

Anyways, that didn’t happen. I got married. I got married when I had just turned 23. Kids did not happen right away. My 25th birthday was the most depressing birthday I’ve ever had. It turns out I was struggling with some infertility there. At that time, I had sought some, I don’t know. I will tell you that I pondered on it and it just didn’t feel right. 

The time to take care of our infertility didn’t feel right, so we ended up moving our family abroad. My husband and I taught English abroad, then we came back to America. We just so happened to live in Boston. We had some contacts there, but we felt, I don’t know the right word, we felt very inspired to move to Boston. 

We didn’t start working on the family thing right away because you have to have insurance for that but on the east coast, they pay for infertility treatment. If you have insurance, it’s covered. I didn’t know that at the time. 

Meagan: That’s amazing. For real?

Lauren: Yes, for real.  

Meagan: I need to tell my sister who just moved to Boston and is having fertility issues. 

Lauren: Oh my goodness. Yes, the insurance coverage is amazing. So then I started finding out about other people who had moved there just to get the insurance just to seek infertility treatment. 

Meagan: Wow, cool. 

Lauren: Yeah, it was amazing. Exactly. I feel like the right people were put in our path at the right time. They shared the doctors and I was like, “Okay, let me go to your doctor. Okay.” 

So then pieces started to fall into place to figure out, “What the heck is wrong with me?” I think it had been thirteen years at that point in time of not stopping from having children. Everything was the way it is. So I go and they do this huge check-up on me. My doctors just couldn’t believe the long list of all the crap that was wrong with me especially because I was in my thirties.

I ended up having what was called Asherman syndrome. It’s adhesive. It’s scar tissue and they can exist in the cervix or in the uterus. Mine was everywhere. I was 100% scarred over through my cervix and my uterus. It took multiple surgeries to try to remove it. It’s called hysteroscopies. Here’s the miracle here. Asherman syndrome is not well known. It’s still, “Oh, hush-hush.” 

A lot of women hear the word “adhesive” and that’s exactly what it is. It’s the scar tissue that’s in the uterus and it usually happens after D&C or if you’ve had a miscarriage, there’s a percentage of women who scar over. There are specific doctors out there that will take care of it. One is in Boston and the other one lives in California. I got to see that very specialized doctor and that was just a huge miracle. I felt like I was being taken care of. 

So we went there and my scar tissue was just so severe. I’m pretty sure I still have it. It’s something that doesn’t really go away, but it was blocking my tubes. That, and we had a diminished ovarian reserve, so my eggs were like I was a 44-year-old woman. I think I was 32 at this time and going through all this. I’m like, “My eggs are old. I’m old.”

Then they did a biopsy of my uterus. It showed that it was inactive.

Meagan: What?

Lauren: It was menopausal. I was like, “So I’ve gone through menopause and here I am.” It turns out that if you don’t have a period for over a year, you’re considered in menopause. I didn’t realize that because I hadn’t had one in seven years at this point. 

Meagan: Wow. I didn’t even know that either. I mean, I didn’t have a period but I have an IUD, so I’m guessing that’s a little different, right? 

Lauren: Mhmm, yeah. 

Meagan: I didn’t know that. 

Lauren: Yeah, I had no idea. I was learning so much so quickly. There were a lot of emotions. I cried and cried because I felt like my journey of having children was completely over. I had a very slim chance of having a baby and so I was like, “Okay. We’re doing this. I’m jumping head-in.” So I jumped and with IVF, I had only one good embryo out of my first round. It ended up in a miscarriage. It was nonviable and it ended up that it had something wrong with the chromosomes in it. They did some testing. 

This is where I feel like, “Oh, I had this journey.” Here it comes now. With IVF, they watch you and so after my two-week wait, I had a positive test. Okay. Then, they watch it grow. Mine wasn’t growing, so then I had my ultrasound. They were like, “Oh, this isn’t right. There is no heartbeat. This doesn’t even look right. Whatever.” I’m bawling my eyes out because it’s really hard.

They waited an extra week until I was seven weeks when I went in for my D&E. The doctor told me it was because of my Asherman’s that it was going to cause a huge, big problem. So he goes in. He scoops it out. That’s the way I like to think of it. He just scoops it out and he’s done. Lo and behold, my HCG levels were still the same, if not going up. I was still feeling very sick. The next two or three days later, I’m like, “Something is really wrong. Something is really wrong.” 

I went back and they drew my blood. Come to find out, my levels are still going up. I’m like, “Something is wrong.” I went back to my Asherman syndrome doctor. They did an ultrasound and then they did an in-office, I was wide awake, hysteroscopy. They took little scissors and they tried to go in and take out what they could see. 

Meagan: What?! This is giving me chills right now thinking about going through that. 

Lauren: Uh-uh. It was so painful. 

Meagan: Oh my goodness.

Lauren: It was so bad. I’m just bawling my eyes out on this table and they were like, “This is too much.” I was like, “Yeah. This is too much.” I was scheduled for surgery the next day and that’s when I was told about my accreta. That teeny, tiny little sac had grown into my lining. Again, my Asherman’s syndrome was worse than the first time I went, which is saying something. I had a few more surgeries after that one just to clean it up. 

It took a long time, a lot of hormone therapy, and a ton of estrogen to try to get my uterus back up and running. They called it “jump starting” because I was still not having periods. They were forcing them through medication. Anyway, it was just a crazy time of my life. 

The second round of IVF was maybe six to nine months later. Again, I only had one little embryo. It turned out to be my son. At the time, we didn’t know the sex of our child until he was born, so it was a really fun surprise. I was so excited. Well, and surely hesitant because you are like, “Oh my goodness, is this going to stick? What’s going to happen?” He stuck and he continued to grow. His percentile growths every ultrasound were still 13% and 15%, so I had a small baby. It always worried me. 

We got flagged for genetic testing. We got flagged and we got called. It was like, “You’ve got to come in right now. We’ve got to do this ultrasound.” The worry that comes over your face is like, “Oh my gosh.” You just start breaking down and immediately crying. We drove straight to the hospital to do a two-hour-long ultrasound of just laying on the table. They don’t talk to you, by the way, in this clinic. They just look. They look. They look. They look, and then at the very end, they may say something or you have to go to your doctor and your doctor will tell you but the ultrasound tech does not say anything to you.

So it’s just nerve-wracking. We ended up seeing a genetic counselor right after who then gave us the results of, “Oh, it’s not anything. You’re fine.” You had a little bit of leakage that could have caused this. It’s not Down syndrome. You’re okay. I was like, “Whew.” 

So other than that, my pregnancy was pretty normal. We got a doula right away, super grateful for her, and then my baby just wouldn’t turn. He wanted to be feet down. I don’t know how to explain it. He just wanted to be breech. We were doing our birthing classes. I just remember the doula who was doing them was like, “Well,” I don’t know I was probably at 30 weeks. She was like, “Oh, he should really be head down.” I’m like, “Really? At this point, he should really be?” She was like, “Yeah. You really need to get on it more.” 

I was like, “Okay, I need to get on it.” At that point, I was like, “Okay.” So my doula and I worked on Spinning Babies. I spent so much time upside down every day. I was on an ironing board. I was doing all of these things for Spinning Babies. You buy the stuff. All of the stuff, I bought it. It wasn’t working, so then someone was like, “Okay, you should go to the acupuncturist and do this epoxy–”. I was like, “Okay.” So then I’m burning this thing on the outside of my pinky toe on my right foot for 20 minutes. 

Meagan: Mhmm. Bladder 06.

Lauren: Yeah, but I’m very pregnant, so to bend over for 20 minutes to do one toe and to do 20 minutes on the other toe was excruciating. I did it every morning and every night. I was like, “Okay. This is a lot. I am very dedicated to spinning this baby.” That didn’t work, so I started chiropractic. I started seeing a chiropractor during my last month of pregnancy. I saw her every other day, and then I started seeing her every day. 

Again, nothing, and then I just got this gut feeling. It was, “Your baby’s going to be born the way he needs to be born. You just need to accept that and you need to go with it.” When that happened, it just clicked in my brain. I was like, “Okay. I can still have a birth plan for a Cesarean. I can still do this and that’s okay.” But that switch when you have planned something and you believe in something so hard– to make that switch in your brain, it’s so difficult. 

I still was holding hope that somehow this baby is going to flip. They wanted to try an inversion at 37 weeks. I was like, “No,” because they were like, “If you spin the baby in the hospital and it works, then you are having a baby. If it doesn’t work, you are still having a baby.” I was like, “Oh, then I’m waiting.” I’m very grateful. So we went in on my scheduled day with my big, long list of everything I wanted for my Cesarean which was wonderful. 

My doctor was very supportive and she made sure everything on my list got crossed off. I got to completely watch my baby being born, the surgery, and everything which was really unique for me. I didn’t realize I was going to get emotional about my little Oden. Anyway, I just remember laying there and having my surgery. My husband was right beside me and my doula was also in the room with her essential oils. 

He comes out and it was announced that he was a little boy. He gets cleaned up. My husband goes over. My husband gets to do skin-to-skin with him. It was such a beautiful birth. It’s like, I don’t regret it at all. I’m just like, “I did everything I could.” Once you see that little baby, he was just, oh wow. He was on my husband’s chest and he was rooting and making rooting noises. My doctor and everyone in the room just stopped. They were like, “We’ve never seen this before.” We’ve never seen a baby come out Cesarean and literally be banging his head on a chest wanting the breast. 

I knew right away. I was like, “That’s my baby. He’s hungry. He knows where it’s at.” My doula was really excited. So anyways, I remember at this point that my doctor mentioned something about blood. “Oh, there’s a lot of blood,” but I was dismissive because I had this cute baby over here rooting. It wasn’t even until after I was in recovery and I started breastfeeding that my doctor came in and told me that I had hemorrhaged. I had an MFM who specialized in accreta and percreta and all of these things because I was just so worried that if I had a seven-week sac that stuck to my uterus, then what is it going to look like at full-term? 

I had done all of this research and I was prepared to lose my uterus with this birth. It didn’t happen. I just felt so blessed. I felt so blessed that I got to keep it and that my child was born at full term. I just remember, “I can’t wait for baby number two.” Anyway, I enjoyed this birth so much and him so much. The hemorrhage only added to my list. I had forgotten about it until baby number two and then it starts adding on, right?

Okay, miscarriage, baby number one, baby number two comes and I really wanted my VBAC. I don’t necessarily– my pregnancy was baby number two. I had accepted a job that paid for my insurance and I was going to go back to my doctors, but I ended up getting pregnant before. I mentioned before that I stopped having periods sometime in my twenties and went through menopause. I had gotten the COVID vaccine and gotten both shots. After my second shot, 17 days later, I started the first period I had in years and years and years and years and years and years. 

I was so shocked. I had no idea what was happening to my body. I was like, “This can’t be happening to me. This is so weird and so foreign to me.” I remember just calling my doctor like “What is going on?” She was like, “You are not the only woman to report this. It’s okay, just go with it. Track it. Let’s see if we can have a natural pregnancy. Let’s see if you can get pregnant naturally.” I’m like, “Wow. This is insane.” 

So, in the third month, I was pregnant. I just couldn’t believe it. 

Meagan: Wow. 

Lauren: I’m like, “But my eggs are crap.”

Meagan: Wow, wow. 

Lauren: Yeah! I’m like, “My eggs are crap. Everything is crap, right?” She’s like, “Lauren, we are just going to go with it.” I’m just like, “Okay. Just going with it.” So yeah. Third month, boom, and I was pregnant. And yeah, wow. 

But it started off–

Meagan: I’m sure. Yeah. 

Lauren: You just don’t believe it. After you’ve been through everything, you don’t believe it. So I just couldn’t believe it. I started having a lot of pain and this is where I was like, “I’m going to lose this baby.” I just had this gut feeling like something was really wrong. I ended up going to the emergency room the day I took a pregnancy test. I was going. I was like, “It had better not be ectopic. I need to make sure this is in the right place. There’s something going on.” 

They’re like, “You’re not pregnant.” That’s what they told me. I was like, “Okay.” This little, dinky hospital. They did a urine test and they told me I wasn’t pregnant. I literally had to tell them, “Listen. I’ve been through infertility treatment and I know that you could do a blood test to tell me if I’m pregnant or not. Come on.” 

And so then they do a blood test but in the meantime, it’s been an hour and I’m a mess. I am crying. I am just an emotional, crazy mess. They come back and they’re like, “Oh yeah, your levels are 100, so most likely, you’re going to lose this baby. It’s very early.” They already put this on me. So then they gave me a doctor because I am new to this facility because, sorry. I had moved from Boston to Connecticut to work and buy a house during the pandemic. So I am in little Podunkville with Podunk doctors. There’s nothing wrong with Podunk doctors, sorry! But it’s just different when you go from downtown Boston, top-notch to country, okay?

So we were there and he kept telling me that my levels weren’t rising. They weren’t doubling. They are supposed to double and they weren’t. Baby wasn’t growing and nothing was happening for two weeks. So they did an ultrasound, but no heartbeat, nothing. There was something there, but they were like, “Lauren, we will give you another week before we do something.” I’m just a mess. I’m a complete mess. They drew my blood again and my progesterone levels were decent, but my pregnancy hormone was just not growing.

And so a week or two weeks went by, I can’t remember. I had a heartbeat. I just remember feeling so relieved. I looked at the doctor. I was like, “I’m never going to see you again. I’m so sorry, but I’m never going to see you again. I’m going to go to the best of the best.” So I jumped right back to my MFM up in Boston. The first thing out of my mouth was, “Okay, I’m pregnant. Will you support me with a VBAC?” And she said, “Yes.” She said, “Yes, 100%.” This was the kicker. She was like, “But Lauren, you have to know that because of all your issues, we are aiming for a vaginal birth. You can’t sit there and go, ‘I want it to be unmedicated.’” She was like, “What we are aiming for is a vaginal birth.”

I was like, “Okay.” And then I go home, I’m like, “I want an unmedicated birth!” I’m like, “I don’t care.”

Meagan: You’re like, “Joke’s on you guys, I’m going to do that anyway.”

Lauren: Yes, exactly. So my pregnancy is progressing. Baby is head down the whole entire time. I’m super excited. I remember at 28 weeks, I had this very distinct feeling come over me that I was going to have this baby early. I didn’t know what that meant. So I was like, “Okay.” So around week 30, I started prepping my house. I bought all of the baby things, got baby things out, just little things like that. In the meantime, I’m teaching kindergarten, I’m still working full time. I still have a toddler now and I’m just resuming life.

This is when I really started hitting hard on The VBAC Link. I was listening to every podcast every chance I got. I was listening on my lunch break just to prepare myself. I did a class with you guys. There was an OB that was there. I had a ton of questions that I got answered, so that was really wonderful. I just really appreciate this podcast being there. I feel like that’s why I really want to share because it was just so helpful, but no one had anything like what I had gone through. I’m like, “Maybe that means something.” I’m like, “Am I crazy? Can I do this?” sort of a thing. 

Anyway, so I didn’t feel very prepared. My 32-week doctor’s appointment was on a Friday. I drove to Boston which was an hour and a half away from where I live. It was a devastating doctor’s visit. My sweet little baby boy was not growing. I had what is called, I have it in here because I’m like, “What? I forget everything.” It was fetal growth restriction.

Meagan: Was it IUGR? Intrauterine growth restriction?

Lauren: Yeah, but they called it FGR here. It was like fetal growth restriction, yes. 

Meagan: FGR, fetal growth restriction, yeah. 

Lauren: Thank you for that. I forget all of the things. And so then I was like, “Okay. Tell me exactly what that means.” My baby was measuring in the 1st percentile. So then she goes back and she was like, “Well, he’s barely been over a 10th percentile this whole time. He’s always been very, very small.” He was in the 10th and the 13th. I was like, “Where do we need to be to get out of this?” She was like, “You have to be at 10% to not have this label.” I was like, “That’s not going to happen, is it?” She was like, “No, I’m sorry.” And I’m like, “Oh man.”

So at this point in time, I was like, “Okay.” I was visiting her every week. I had her visit plus I had a blood draw, plus I had an ultrasound, so now it was moving up to three visits a week and I was having to drive an hour and a half. I’m like, “This is not going to be sustainable. I cannot work full time and do this.” I had made all of my appointments for that next week. I go home that Friday and then Saturday morning at 3:00, my toddler wakes up and I go in to tend to him. 

A big thing about FGR was that I had to count my movements. I wasn’t feeling my baby move because he was so small that there were times that I didn’t feel pregnant. I was like, “This is really weird.” It was one of those times when I was up at 3:00 a.m. and I noticed that there were zero movements. I’m like, “Okay, maybe he’s asleep.” So I spent time with my toddler, put him back to bed, go back to my room and I’m starting to feel him move. So then I start kick counting, kick counting, kick counting, and then my toddler gets up again. I’m like, “Oh my goodness, you’ve got to be kidding me.” 

He comes into my room. He wants to snuggle, so I let him in my bed and he’s holding me. I’m holding him and my husband gets out of bed. He doesn’t do that. Anyway, next thing I know, I just feel this gush between my legs and I’m like, “What the heck? I am not prepared for this. This is not okay.” We have Google in my home, so I was like, “Okay, Google. Broadcast.” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, “My water just broke! You have to come right now!” My husband runs in and he’s freaking out. I don’t know. It was a really wacky picture in my mind. He has his arms and legs sprawled out like, “What’s going on?” 

I’m like, “Take our son. Take our son and get me a cup because this is gushing out and I don’t know what to do.” It was crazy. I started contracting, but they weren’t painful at all. They were like Braxton Hicks. My belly was tightening and then it was just gushes of water. I was like, “This is so crazy.”

So I immediately called my doctor. This was the part that made me nervous because here I am preparing for a VBAC and the doctor immediately said, “You need to get to the hospital right now. You will have a repeat Cesarean and we will get this baby out. Something is wrong.” 

Meagan: Whoa. 

Lauren: I immediately started crying. Yes. 

Meagan: Scary. So scary. 

Lauren: Oh, 100%. The good thing is that I had 40 minutes for someone to drive to be with my son to ponder, sit down, and try to process this. Meanwhile, I’m walking around the house with a cup between my legs trying to catch all the water that is coming out of me. My husband and I were talking back and forth like, “This is not anything I had ever ever ever thought of.” I’m like, “Okay. I’m going to go in. I’m going to have a VBAC.” 

And so we both agreed that we were going to be open to what the doctors were saying. “This a bunch of learning. We are on a learning curve now. This is not on our terms. It’s on this baby’s terms. We are now open-minded and learning.” It took us an hour and nine minutes to get to the hospital. We passed five policemen. One actually passed us. We were way speeding. We were easily doing 90-100 the whole way. No one pulled us over, thank goodness. 

It turned out to not be that much of an emergency. We got there and the first thing that they did was they took me back to confirm that I broke my water. I was like, “You guys can’t see the stuff gushing out of me?” I’m like, “Is this not water?” They’re like, “Well, it could be urine.” I was like, “No, no, no, no, no.” I know what urine is. This is not urine. They were laughing because I was like, “This is not pee, or else I have been continually peeing on myself for two and a half hours now.”

And so anyway, I’m like, “Okay, whatever.” And then they were like, “Yes. Okay. This is the fluid.” They came to my room and they talked to me about everything. PPROM is what it’s called. It’s a premature rupture of membranes. Now, I was a PPROM. 

Meagan: Yeah. PROM is just premature rupture of membranes but PPROM is premature meaning that the baby is before 37 weeks. 

Lauren: Exactly. 

Meagan: Premature premature rupture of membranes. 

Lauren: It was happening way too early. And because I was 32 weeks, they weren’t going to stop it, so I did not receive any magnesium or anything like that to stop it which I was kind of grateful for because after I read, I was like, “Oh, I don’t want that in my body.” It burns like fire. But they did start me on penicillin and steroids and all of these things because they wanted the steroids for the baby’s lungs. The penicillin was because the risk of infection goes significantly higher when you have PPROMd or when you have PROM’d early because now I’m just sitting there with open stuff and it’s easier to get an infection.

They refused to check me, which was nice. They would not check my cervix to see how dilated I was or anything like that, but I do remember at the very beginning, she guesstimated that I was about a 1, so it was nothing. And so I sat there. They were like, “You’re being admitted to the hospital. You will be here until you have your baby. Since you are 32 weeks, we will induce you. If you get to 34 weeks, you will be induced and you will have your baby.” 

The reality was that they go through my chart and this is where my past kicked me in the butt. They were like, “Okay, you have a chance of accreta. You have hemorrhaged with your previous Cesarean. You have to put in your mind that most likely you are going to have another Cesarean.” I was like, “No, I’m not.” This whole entire time, I was like, “No, I’m not.” I was like, “No, I’m not. I’m having a VBAC and that’s it.” 

I kept telling every doctor that came into my room. I was like, “Listen, I’m having a VBAC.” I was like, “I’m having a VBAC. It’s happening, so I don’t even want to discuss another Cesarean unless it really gets to that point. I don’t want to discuss it.” I was like, “I want to discuss how I can have this baby vaginally. That’s what I want.” They were very supportive. I’m just so grateful and they were just like, “Yeah. Okay. This is awesome. This woman has opinions.” 

And so every new resident– I was at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Sorry, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that.

Meagan: You can totally share. You can totally share. 

Lauren: Okay. Okay, so it’s a learning hospital. You have a lot of residents and interns. I don’t know exactly what you call them all. Every morning, there were ten doctors that would visit my room a few times a day. It was a lot of doctors. Anyway, so Wednesday comes and before that, they were like, “Okay, listen. You’re either going to have this baby within 48 hours or it’s going to be a week or two. It’s either one or the other. We don’t really have people in the middle.”

Guess what? I was in the middle, so whatever. 

Meagan: Way to be different.

Lauren: Right? All around, I’m different. The thing that really worried me is that I was like, “Okay, I want a VBAC,” but at the same time, I had these NICU doctors who were right there on my case like, “Okay. Here are the chances of this. Here are the chances of this. Your baby might be dealing with all of these different things.” Anyway, they were updating me every day on where my baby’s development was for that day and what could be possibly wrong with him when he was born. 

“Oh, by the way, our NICU is full. We don’t have any beds. So if you go into labor, we will be transferring you to a different hospital with your child,” or however it works. I’m like, “What? Are you serious?” They’re like, “Yep. We’re full and so is the hospital next to us, so it will be the hospital down the street.” I’m like, “Oh wow. This is incredible.” Anyway, so right then and there, I started praying, “Okay. Listen to me. If I’m going to go into labor, it better be the day that someone gets sent home.” 

It’s got to work out. It’s got to work out. It did, by the way. It worked out. On Wednesday, I started to have more pain. It was like, “Okay. I’m still contracting by the way. I keep having what I call Braxton Hicks contractions because they were not painful. It was just that my whole belly would tighten and my water would continue to spew out. That’s the best way I can say it. I remember distinctly that I woke up at 1:00 in the morning on Wednesday and I started having pain. 

I called my nurse right away and I was like “Listen, they shifted. My contractions have shifted now, but they are still 10-14 minutes apart.” We just kept an eye on it. In the meantime, every time I have a contraction, my baby’s heart disappears. They can’t find him. I’m like, “Okay. Baby, cut this out.” So when that happens, guess what they start talking about? They talk about a Cesarean. They’re like, “Oh, Lauren. His heart rate is really dipping really low. We are going to end up. You need to prepare.” I’m like, “Nope. I’m not preparing.” 

And so I finally get up out of my bed. I’ve been in a bed this whole entire time. A friend came and visited me. It was 1:00 in the afternoon at this point. I was standing up during the whole visit which was the most I had stood in two or three days. I’m starting to have regular contractions. They were easy, 4-6 minutes apart, somewhere around there. They started being really painful and I had to breathe through them. 

I’m this way. I’m like, “Listen. I’m not going to call my nurse in here because she’s just going to prepare me for a Cesarean.” So I go for an hour with my friend and my friend is like, “Lauren, you really need to call your nurse.” I’m like, “Fine. You leave. I’ll call my nurse.” So I called my nurse and, sorry I’m laughing. She’s freaking out because she is like, “Why didn’t you call me?” I was like, “Listen, I didn’t call you because I don’t want to have a Cesarean.” 

They called the doctor. He guesstimates and he says I’m about a 1 or a 2. I haven’t changed much. Now, they have increased and they’re back to back. I could not. I was like, “What? A natural birth? I wanted that? That’s crazy.” They wouldn’t let me out of my bed because of the heart rate and everything that was going on with the baby, so I was stuck and confined to my bed. 

I was just holding the railing and turned to my side. Every contraction was worsened by a million because my nurse was like, “Listen, if you don’t want a Cesarean, I have to find the heart rate of this baby.” And so she is literally, in the middle of my contractions, I’m screaming and she has got that monitor and she is searching for the baby’s heart rate to prove that he is okay. 

This continues and she calls the doctor back in here because my contractions were literally on top of each other for 2-3 minutes. It was so intense. I really didn’t feel like I had time to breathe. I was like, “Listen. I am having this baby. I am going to have this baby.” My doctor– he’s not really my doctor. He’s the resident of my doctor. He walks back in and he basically tells me to suck it up and that lots of moms go through this. I’m not having this baby. He will check me for real this time. 

So he goes in and I’m about 3 centimeters dilated, but I’m 90% effaced. He was like, “Oh. Hmm. This could change. We’re going to send you to labor and delivery, but don’t put it in your mind that you’re having a baby today because this could stall.” He was like, “I’ve seen this stall so many times.” I was like, “How would this stall? I’m in so much pain.” He was like, “No. This could still stall.” I’m like, “Okay, whatever. I’ve PPROMd. I have no idea what I’m talking about. This is all new to me. Okay, fine. This can stall. This labor can stall, sure. Okay.”

I am put in labor and delivery and my labor nurse looks at me. She was like, “You’re going to be having this baby in a couple of hours. I don’t know what your doctor is talking about.” She is bad-mouthing him so hard. She’s like, “I don’t know what he’s talking about. This is insane.” She was like, “Listen, I know. I don’t want you to be infected,” but she was like, “I am going to check you right now. There is no way that with the amount of pain you are in and your contractions are on top of each other.” She was like, “I’m going to check you. I’m going to call the anesthesiologist. We’re going to get him in here. We’re going to get you an epidural,” because I was in so much pain. 

Anyway, I can’t believe it. This is where I’m like, “I wanted a natural birth?” So my anesthesiologist comes in right after my doctor had come in again to check me. He was like, “It’s only been 30 minutes. Stop paging me.” Those were his exact words. “Stop paging me. It’s only been 30 minutes.” And now, I’ve progressed to a 5. His eyes got really wide because before that, he yelled at my anesthesiologist, “You’re not needed here. You need to leave. This is not happening,” like that. My nurse was like, “What?!”

And then he checked me and he was like, “Umm, this is happening. I’m so sorry. Anesthesiologist, please come back in the room.” He’s yelling, “Please come back into the room. Help her! This is happening and it’s happening very, very fast.” They were like, “Where’s your husband?” I was like, “Oh my gosh, my husband’s not with me.” At this point, I’m panicking. He’s not even with me.

Meagan: Oh no!

Lauren: Yeah and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to call him right now.” They were like, “Call him.” So I call him. I was like, “Listen, I know I called you an hour ago and things were progressing slowly, but you have to be here now.” He was like, “Lauren, I’ve got an hour and a half.” I was like, “Permission to speed. Permission to put your cute little sports car to work. Go fast.” He was there in 45 minutes. 

He showed up. They were like, “Hold the baby.” There are the funniest things that you remember. It’s like, “Okay.” My epidural half-worked. I was still having pain, but it was this weird floating area of, “I can feel pain on my left side, but not on my right side,” and so it was this weird state of where I was. I’m actually kind of grateful for it because I still got that natural birth feeling that I wanted. I still very much felt the ring of fire and the birth and at the same time, I feel like the hard contractions were taken away.

So it was a nice in-between that I felt. But as soon as my husband got there, my labor nurse was like, “Listen, Lauren. I just need to tell you that because of your long list,” here it comes again, “because of this long list, you might end up with a Cesarean. I want you to know that they are preparing for it.” This time now, I’m uncontrollably crying because this is not what I wanted. She was like, “I need to also tell you something else.” I was like, “What?” She was like, “There are going to be probably 12-15 people in this room as you give birth.” I was like, “What? How many people?”

Meagan: Why? Why so many people?

Lauren: Exactly, because it was a learning hospital. 

Meagan: Oh, okay. 

Lauren: My doctor had his two doctors and my labor nurse had three assistants, and then I had the NICU team for the baby, and that’s what it was. So I had the NICU doctor plus his three assistants or residents, and then they brought people in to watch me have this VBAC after accreta and after hemorrhaging. I wanted to be fully present for this birth. I told the nurse, “I want to grab my baby and I want to pull my baby out. That’s what I want. I want to pull him out. I want him out on my chest.” They were like, “Lauren, the realization of that happening– if he cries, sure. If he doesn’t cry, we are so sorry. We have to take him. We have to.” 

I’m praying. Long story short, the baby comes straight out. I mean, he’s 4 pounds. They estimated him to be 3 pounds, but he was 4 pounds. He comes out. I got to watch the whole thing with the mirror. I had one of those resident people taking pictures the whole time, so I got really good pictures of my birth and here he is. He’s screaming, so he has healthy lungs. I was just so happy that he had healthy lungs. I was like, “Okay. We’re good.” 

Anyway, I got to hold him for about one minute while we did delayed cord clamping, and then I had to hand him over. I didn’t get to see him again for hours and hours which was really hard, but I had done it. I had done it and I had my VBAC. It was successful. I’m just so grateful through my whole entire story that it had gone the way I really wanted it to go. I feel like I was prepared for so many things. Right after he was born, they were like, “Okay, the placenta is not stuck, Lauren. There’s no accreta. Check. Lauren, you’re not hemorrhaging. Check. Now, we just have to stitch you up.” 

I remember him taking way too long to stitch me up, but I just remember what I always wanted. I was able to jump out of my bed. The epidural got turned off and I was able to get up and start walking within an hour and a half. That’s the whole reason for me. I want this vaginal birth, but I want to be present whereas, for my Cesarean, it took me almost a full 12-24 hours before I could really get out of my bed. It’s just very different and I’m very grateful. I’m very grateful for the information that I received through this podcast to help me get the birth story that I wanted. 

I’m hoping that my story can help some of you out there that are listening that maybe struggle with infertility and any of the same things I did. I hope I give you some hope. 

Meagan: Yes. Oh my gosh. So many miracles in your story. So many miracles.

Lauren: So many. 

Meagan: From moving to Boston and finding the doctor that you did find because that in itself, there are so few doctors out there who even know much about this, and then to go through all that you did to get pregnant and then trusting that, “Okay. This baby is just wanting to be this way and this is the journey.” And then again, not getting pregnant and what a crazy thing that all of a sudden, you are pregnant after months and then years!

Lauren: Mhmm. They did a pathology. They did testing on my placenta to see why this all happened and why I PPROMd. It was because, I don’t even know what they are called, but the placenta has the phalanges that attach to the uterus and it pumps the vitamins and nutrients in. Mine were scarred over and adhesive. They had adhesives and they were swollen. He wasn’t getting the proper nutrition that he needed, which was why he came early. I can’t help but think, “Oh, maybe that’s my Asherman’s.” 

They tell me it’s because of COVID because I had COVID.

Meagan: That’s another question I was going to ask. Have you had COVID? From what I have heard, even the vaccine, which is interesting how yours is linked to the opposite with starting your period. They are saying that COVID vaccines are related to changing cycles and things like that. But sometimes, if they get the vaccine, then they go into premature labor. We’ve been seeing a lot of people get COVID and then their placentas are just like, “Hey, I’m done,” and they send the message to the body that they need to have a baby. 

I’m curious. Maybe it’s a little bit of all of it. I don’t know. COVID stuff is all a mystery. It’s all very a fascinating thing.

Lauren: Well, I’ll tell you that the NICUs are definitely full. The doctors are definitely telling people that it’s because of COVID that so many of these women are having early, premature births. 

Meagan: So interesting. How long before did you have COVID?

Lauren: I had COVID at Christmas and I PPROM’d in late February. He was born on February 23rd. 

Meagan: Crazy, so a couple of months. 

Lauren: A month and a half-ish. 

Meagan: Yeah. Interesting. So interesting. Well, I am so grateful for you for getting up at not even dawn, for getting up in the middle of the night to share your beautiful stories with us. We are so happy for you and grateful for you. I will promise you this. You are going to touch someone out there. I know you will. 

Lauren: Thanks. I really appreciate that and again, thank you so much 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 Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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“Being pregnant in general is the biggest musculoskeletal change of your entire life.”

Having a baby changes your life in the best ways. It also takes a huge toll on your body.

Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist, Dr. Betty DeLass, tells us how her treatments help women resolve issues like leaking, prolapse, movement restriction, adhesions, endometriosis, fertility, hemorrhoids, pelvic pain, and so much more. She helps clients not only get back to their previous activity level but also far surpass it!

Run to your local pelvic floor PT or take advantage of Dr. Betty’s out-of-state options to get the personalized care YOU need. It may take time, but we promise that you don’t have to feel the way you’re feeling forever. 

Additional links

Reborn Pelvic Health & Wellness Website

Pelvic Rehab Practitioner Directory

Pelvic Guru - Pelvic Health Resource

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Hello, this is Meagan with The VBAC Link and we have a wonderful episode for you today. We have a great friend. Her name is Betty. She is actually local here to Salt Lake City, Utah and she is a pelvic floor specialist. Seriously, you guys. It’s going to be a good one. Just hearing her speak, I feel like she’s reading from a book. There’s so much education in her mind. I feel like she is just reciting this book because she uses all of the right words and just makes sense. 

I can’t wait for you guys to hear more about the pelvic floor and all of the things that go into prepping for a VBAC, how we can help things after a VBAC, and even we are going to talk a little bit about infertility. 

Review of the Week

Meagan: Of course, we have a Review of the Week, so I’m going to read that, and then we are going to jump right in. This review is from jmclane04 and it’s on Apple Podcasts. The review title is, “I got my VBAC.” It says, “I am four days out from my VBAC. I told my husband today it was the greatest accomplishment of my life thus far. Thank you, Julie and Meagan, and all of the wonderful women of strength who shared their stories. I cried so many times on my daily walks while listening to this podcast including the day before my TOLAC started. It was truly inspiring and one of my main resources in preparing for a VBAC. I will continue to listen to every new episode.”

Well, jmclane04, I hope that you are listening to this wonderful review of yours. Thank you so much for leaving that. If you haven’t left a review and have a moment, please press “pause”, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play. You can head over to Google and type in “The VBAC Link” and leave us a review there or you simply send us an email on Instagram, Facebook, or our personal email at [email protected]. 

Dr. Betty DeLass with Reborn Health & Wellness

Meagan: Okay, Betty. Oh my gosh. Seriously, I love you so much. 

Betty: I love you too, Meagan. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh, seriously though. Actually, I have been one of Betty’s patients. She is amazing. She does pelvic work, in my opinion, in a very unique way. I just feel like you do things a little differently and I love that. I love that you do internal. I love that you do dry needling. I love that you’re talking about balancing the pelvis and all of those amazing things. 

So, let’s get into this. I think one of the very first questions I have for you is, what does pelvic floor therapy mean? What does it even mean when you say “pelvic floor therapy”?

Definition of pelvic floor therapy

Betty: Yeah, I think most people right out of the gates think, “Oh, you do your Kegels.” I just want to myth-bust that right out of the gate. It’s way, way, not Kegels and way, way more comprehensive and holistic than that. My definition might be a little bit different than some people's, but this is my definition of pelvic floor therapy. 

We are physical therapists, then we are orthopedic therapists, then we are pelvic floor therapists. We are kind of the nerdiest nerds of nerds and just couldn’t stop learning, so we dove down the rabbit hole of pelvic floor therapy, and then we were like, “Oh, here is the missing piece, the pelvis. It’s kind of important.” 

So that’s kind of what it encompasses in a nutshell. We do an evaluation. We do a full body movement analysis on you. We look at you from head to toe. We will have you bend all different directions, squat, balance, lunge, run, whatever you are coming in for, and then we will dive into each area specifically. We will look at your rib cage, your spine, your breathing patterns, your abdomen, and how your organs move. We’ll check out scar tissue, your hips, your pelvis, SI joints, pubic bone, tailbone, all the way down to your feet, and then we switch gears and do an internal exam as well. 

We are looking through the lens of a PT. We are not a midwife or an OB, but it is a pelvic internal exam similar to that. We are looking at a range of motion, strength, coordination, trigger points, prolapse, pressure management, and all sorts of things like that, and then piecing all of those things together to figure out why you are leaking. Why are you having pain during sex? Why are you having tailbone pain? Why do you have low back pain? Why do you have SPD or pubic symphysis dysfunction or all sorts of hosts of things like that regarding the pelvic floor and why you are coming in because a lot of times, it’s a combination of things inside the pelvis and outside of the pelvis. 

We want to make sure we are addressing and getting to the root cause of why you are having symptoms because honestly, ten people could walk in with the same complaint of, “I pee my pants when I sneeze,” and it could be for ten different reasons. We want to make sure we are addressing the reason why you have the issue you are having. 

Meagan: That is interesting because many of us think, “Oh, I pee when I sneeze.” And then they’re like, “Oh, it’s because I pushed for five hours.” It’s maybe not. I think that is fascinating. I want to go a little bit into C-sections specifically and how maybe a C-section parent could utilize pelvic floor therapy because I think sometimes, even for me, back in the day before I had my vaginal birth, I always thought that my pelvic floor wasn’t touched and wasn’t damaged. Nothing bad happened to my pelvic floor because I was cut open, right? 

Betty: Sure, sure. 

Meagan: But I feel like the more I have learned, the more I’ve realized that I really needed, really needed you back in the day when I was preparing for both my VBACs and really, for my first one because I feel like, over time, I’ve had more issues stem because I didn’t get care earlier on. 

Betty: Yeah. I think a really common misconception, too, is, “Oh, I had a C-section. My pelvic floor was spared,” and really, that’s not the case. You still grow a human being on top of your pelvic floor. Your pelvic floor still changed. Your weight shifted and all that stuff like that. Being pregnant in general is the biggest musculoskeletal change of your entire life more than having surgery or anything like a knee surgery or a shoulder surgery, and then you put on top of being pregnant and then having a C-section. It’s like, “Oh man. Those people really need some pelvic floor rehab because they also had a major abdominal surgery too.”

And so it’s just important to think about if you were to have just a simple knee surgery, you would do rehab for months to get back to activities, but we don’t do anything for pregnancy and postpartum as a standard of care. That’s really what I’m about is changing that narrative and empowering other people to speak up for themselves and seek out that care because it’s really necessary. We could avoid a lot of the other surgeries or low back pain or other issues and get people back to being active and wanting to do the things they want to do. 

Literally, the world changes one vagina at a time. That’s really important to know. If you’ve had a C-section, you most definitely need pelvic floor rehab just because it’s not solely pelvic floor dependent. We are working on the abdomen, the C-section scar, any restrictions or adhesions that have happened, turning your core back on, mom butt, and all that stuff. So it’s all included in pelvic floor rehab. We’re making sure that the whole system works. Also, we’re bringing down the rib cage after being expanded from baby, so there’s just so much that can be done. 

Especially getting that mobility back in the C-section scar. They cut through seven layers of fascia and that’s really important to know because if we don’t mobilize that, low back pain is super, super common post-C-section, so we want to make sure the mobility happens in the front side of the abdomen so that you don’t tork and pull through your low back as much as you do because it’s restricted from the C-section scar. So, important pieces to know there. 

Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, okay. That’s for parents that have had a C-section. What about first-time parents? How can we use you and your services to avoid a C-section?

Betty: Totally. We love it when people come in proactively whether they have things going on or not. When they find out that they are pregnant, typically we see most people around their second trimester just simply because one, they don’t know that they are pregnant, and then two, they’re finally well enough to leave the house. They are not too tired or too sick and things like that. That’s a great time to come in. Even if you are having pain with intercourse or leaking before you even get pregnant, know that none of those things are normal. There are things that we can do to address that to even help with getting pregnant. 

And then when you are pregnant, prepping for labor and delivery, a lot of things that we will look at are just your movement patterns. We make sure your hips move off or your spine and your hip flexors are in good mobility. We can help with the round ligament pain. We can help lengthen the pelvic floor, make sure you are coordinated, and make sure you know when you are pushing, pushing correctly, and then also making sure that you’re– I’m going to get a little bit nerdy here. The deep frontal fascia line is a fascia line from your head to your toes and it incorporates the pelvic floor, the inner thighs, the adductors, and then the hip flexors. 

We really work a lot on the balance of that and making sure your adductors, your inner thighs, have a good length so that you can get into a deep squat to get those hips wide and pelvic floor open, and just making sure that you are in a good position from a musculoskeletal standpoint for baby to drop down in that pelvis. We make sure that you are able to open up the pelvis and get the pelvic floor out of the way so that you can have a vaginal delivery whether that’s the first time or a VBAC.  

Also related, we’ve had a lot of really cool patients come in who are seeking VBACs. They are doing everything they can. They’re going to a chiropractor, acupuncture, pelvic PT, and doing all of the things. They have beautiful, beautiful outcomes. It’s just really cool to see. 

Meagan: Oh yeah, I love that. I would say that’s another misconception. “Oh, I haven’t had a baby yet. I don’t need pelvic floor rehab at all.” I’m just listening to you and there are so many things you can do and prepare to really have a beautiful experience and save us so much damage in the long run because not everyone has severe damage, right? But we could learn all of the tools to minimize anything. 

Betty: Totally, totally. Absolutely. I’m a big fan of prevention health and wellness and actually having true health care versus our sick care model that we currently live in. 

Meagan: Mhmm, absolutely. You mentioned a little bit about back and even ribs and stuff, what other symptoms, other than sneezing and peeing or pain during sex, would someone maybe have that would alarm them to say, “Hmm. Maybe I need to just seek out an opinion for a pelvic floor rehab person”?

Betty: Yeah. Anything related to the low back, SI, and tailbone would be a great spot to start including, like you said, the leaking, and anything with the bowels. So constipation, hemorrhoids, painful periods, endometriosis, diastasis recti, prolapse or heaviness, pressure down in the pelvic floor whether it feels like your organs are falling out or your vagina is falling out– those are all things that we treat daily. 

Most of the time, people come in for one thing and then we dive deeper into their history and they’re like, “Oh yeah, this and this,” and then all of a sudden, they’re like, “Oh my gosh. All of these things that I thought were just part of who I am aren’t even things anymore.” So really, all of the things that we can address because we are that comprehensive PT, orthopedic PT, and pelvic PT. We treat it all and make sure that you are literally living your life to the fullest and walk out of here being like, “Wow, I never thought that I could feel this good.” That’s where we put our pride and joy in helping make that happen for people. 

Finding a pelvic floor PT

Meagan: Oh my gosh. I love it. You have so many therapists all over Utah. How can we find even more people like you, for our listeners who are not here in Utah, that have the same qualifications? Because you have other– I’m going to talk about it in a second. I mean, it’s not other things but she does other things. She has this thing called dry needling and it’s my favorite so I have to talk about it. But anyway, how can people really find someone with qualifications like you?

Betty: Yeah, absolutely. So there are a couple of websites that I’ll send people to. It’s called www.pelvicrehab.com and that’s a great resource. You can just type in your zip code and they’ll pull up a bunch of practitioners that all have a little bio and potentially a picture if they pay for a subscription and whatnot. Then also www.pelvicguru.com and the same thing. You type in your zip code and it pulls up practitioners around you. You can look at them. I would treat it similarly to seeking out a hair stylist or an OB, midwife, or doula. You want to make sure. You can have a chat with them, see if you’re a good fit, and see if they fit your philosophy of what you are wanting from your care perspective because there is definitely a dynamic shift that’s happened in pelvic rehab itself.

A lot of us are being very much more holistic but there are still some people who sit there in the biofeedback and kegel world. That’s what their treatment is, so just make sure that you’re matching well with the person that you’re finding when you do look on those directories. Otherwise, just a simple Google search too of “pelvic floor therapy near me”. Another key piece through that is to know that most of us are PTs, but there are also OTs as well that do pelvic rehab. 

Meagan: Okay, good to know. I don’t even know if I realized that OTs can do pelvic rehab. 

Betty: Yep. 

Dry needling

Meagan: Awesome. Okay, let’s talk a little bit about dry needling or a lot of it, whatever you decide. All I know is, okay. A little bit of storytime. So Betty rides. She cycles and so do I. We did a little, it’s not a race, but a ride across Utah essentially. She was telling us about dry needling and everyone went to bed. I should have been exhausted, but I just had to learn more about dry needling, so I started YouTubing it and Googling “dry needling”. I was like, “Oh my gosh. This looks crazy.” It kind of reminded me of acupuncture a little bit. 

But anyway, when we got home, I scheduled Betty, got in, and she did this dry needling. I will say it can be a little intense, but so amazing. So talk about what dry needling is, maybe how it differentiates between acupuncture, and how it can benefit people out there. Also, I know that you’ve been doing it on C-section scars now, right? 

Betty: Yes!

Meagan: Let’s talk about that too. What does dry needling do to a C-section scar? I haven’t had that done yet but let’s talk about those things. 

Betty: Yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m going to start but if I get distracted because I like to talk forever, then totally redirect me. You can be like, “Don’t forget to talk about this.”

Meagan: Okay.

Betty: So dry needling is a tool that we use to help communicate with the nervous system and so if you think, most people know what acupuncture is. Acupuncture and dry needling use the same needle but have totally different philosophies on the treatment and intervention of what it is there for. Acupuncture is very eastern medicine, Chinese medicine, acupuncture points, Chi energy, meridian lines, all of the stuff like that. Dry needling is all about the trigger point in a muscle, so a knot. When you’re like, “Ooh, I have a knot,” that’s the trigger point. That’s what we’re after. 

We use that needle to do dry needling in a trigger point in a muscle. What happens when you have a trigger point in a muscle is there’s decreased blood flow which leads to decreased oxygen, which drops the pH in the muscle, which then, neuropeptide chemicals sit there and signal to the brain, “Pain, sharp, dull, stabbing,” or whatever your brain’s perception of that is. 

We take a dry needle into the trigger point which creates a local twitch response. Like when your eyelid twitches, it has a little twitch trigger to it. It feels like that plus some spicy spark electricity when a muscle twitches from a dry needle. Then, what happens from that twitch is blood flow comes back in, oxygen comes back in, the pH gets restored, and then those neuropeptide chemical toxins release into the bloodstream and wash up, kind of like a lactic acid burn. The post-needle soreness that you feel feels very much like a workout sore only very specifically located to where that needle twitched. 

That can last anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. Immediately after dry needling, it’s such a cool clinical game changer both for the clinician and the patient because it’s super effective and efficient. You immediately have a better range of motion, less pain, and better activation of muscles. It just does this whole host of things chemically locally, and then also through the nervous system locally in the spinal cord, and then up into the brain from an essential system side too. It’s an amazing modality for you. 

So that was dry needling. What was the next part that you wanted me to answer? 

Meagan: I’m trying to remember now. 

Betty: Something about a C-section scar—

Meagan: C-section scars, yeah. What I was thinking is how, and maybe even why. 

Betty: Yeah. 

Meagan: I mean, you kind of just even talked about it. My left part of my C-section scar– I think that’s where maybe my provider was stitching, my left side specifically. It seems like it’s tighter on that side. 

Betty: Yes, totally. 

Meagan: Tighter, maybe tougher. I don’t know exactly. 

Betty: Yeah, more restricted. 

Meagan: More restricted. And so, I don’t know. It sounds like maybe that would benefit. But yeah, let’s talk about dry needling a C-section scar and how that can help and why you would benefit. 

Betty: Absolutely. First, I want to touch on the tightness of one side of the scar versus the other. Typically, it depends on where your surgeon stood and where they tied their last knots. So if your surgeon was standing on the left, it will be tighter on the left and if they were standing on the right, it will probably be tighter on the right. So just keep that as a side note of, “Where was my surgeon at?”

Meagan: He was on the left. That’s what I was thinking. He was on the left. 

Betty: Yeah, most people are on the right because the surgeon is right-handed so they will stand on the right, but if you had a left-handed surgeon, they would stand on the left so that should make sense. And then as far as dry needling scars, it can be done on any scar, really. It doesn’t have to be a C-section scar, but that’s the one we most commonly see. We are pelvic floor PTs, so we see a lot of C-sections. We take a dry needle into that tissue where the scar is superficially and then once it’s in there, instead of the trigger point twitching that I just described, we spin the needle and wind up the fascia around the needle. 

So fascia, if you don’t know what that is, is the spider webbing material all over you. It basically holds you all together. You’d be a blob on the floor without it. If you think about chicken, if you peel chicken apart, you can see the fascial spider-webby stuff. You basically stick the needle in the tissue and twist it up. It usually doesn’t hurt at all when we are twisting it up. It sounds gnarly but it’s not that bad. It’s all superficial. 

Once it’s twisted up, we really can’t even pull the needle out because all of the fasciae wraps around it. And then we sit there and breathe a little bit, talk about something else, and then once that tissue has relaxed and the nervous system has decided, “Oh, okay. I can let go of this holding pattern here,” then we can pull that needle out. We can always untwist it too and pull it out, but it’s really great. We’ve had tons of really great success with that with people who say like, “Oh my gosh, that burning symptom is gone,” or “I can touch my C-section scar now.” Pretty immediately, big, big changes can happen with that. 

That just brings up mobility and movement. Another thing that we commonly do with that is often times if that C-section is tapped down, we’ll also needle the rectus abdominis which is the six-pack muscles both above and below that and then where it attaches into the pubic bone too. That can release a lot of things. A lot of times, people might have urinary urgency frequency and burning, almost UTI-like symptoms after a C-section just because that fascia is pulled tight and that fascia from that abdominal wall goes into your pelvic floor. That can cause issues in the pelvic floor too if that C-section scar doesn’t move well in creating those UTI-like symptoms even though you maybe test negative on all of those. That’s another good sign of, “Hmm, I should go to pelvic PT because I have negative cultures when I test for a UTI.” 

Meagan: Yeah, that is interesting because I had that. They kept saying, “No, you don’t have a UTI.” That was after my second C-section. I was like, “I’ve got to.” I grew up with UTIs so I just figured, “Oh, I had a catheter in. I probably do because I’m more susceptible to it since I have a history of them.” They kept saying, “No, no, no, no, no you don’t.” I was like, “Okay.” But now it makes me wonder. It just makes me wonder if that had anything to do with it. It honestly happened for weeks, though. Like, weeks after birth. 

Betty: Yeah, yeah. So definitely something to do with pelvic PT for sure. We might need to get you back in to needle that C-section scar. 

Adhesions

Meagan: I know. I definitely don’t have that UTI feeling anymore, but I know that I have tightness on that left side. I know that I have adhesions in there. That’s another thing I wanted to talk about with having two C-sections myself. Having a C-section or just a scar in general, anytime our body is cut open, our body creates adhesions and scar tissue, right? So two questions. One, can it affect the outcome of a vaginal versus Cesarean birth if we have dense adhesions and scar tissue in there, and can you as a pelvic PT rehab provider help with that? Can you do that? 

Betty: Yeah. Well, so we can definitely help with scar tissue, mobility, things like that. Now, true adhesions. You can’t really break adhesions up from endometriosis or really heavy scar tissue, but we can definitely move the tissue around it and we can get that scar as mobile as possible. Sometimes, there are the extremes where it’s like, “You do need surgical intervention to remove adhesions depending on the severity of it.” I just want to put that out there. Not all things can be managed with conservative care, but most things can. 

And so just figuring out where is your sealing on that and figuring that out. As far as tears, whether it’s vaginal tears or C-section tears, having the mobility through that just allows your body to function the way it’s supposed to so your pelvic floor can move out of the way. Baby may be able to better drop in the pelvis if all of that is mobile the way it should be. When you have restrictions and things like that, things tighten and bind in. It’s hard to even– like having a breech baby and having them flipped. If things are really tight, you can’t even move them no matter what you do unless things are loosened up. 

If the scar tissue is really tense and not moving, you might tear again on a vaginal delivery if you don’t have that mobile and moving. So just making sure that all aspects, I mean, that’s our job too, is to evaluate you and make sure, “Okay. What’s moving? What’s not moving? What do you have good activation on? What do you not have good activation on?” and then fine-tune those things so that you can be symptom-free and be able to move your body the way it needs to move. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh, yeah. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. How would a provider even be able to diagnose those really dense adhesions that are causing big problems? Could a provider say, “Your baby could be breech due to this? Maybe you could go do this.” Do you know what I mean? Does that happen? Are providers in the know?

Betty: Yeah, I think that’s just a hard topic. I can speak for us as pelvic PTs. We’re like, “Well, that just makes sense. Let’s balance out the pelvis. Let’s get the adductors moving. Let’s get scar tissue moving. Let’s get the hip flexors out of the way and the round ligaments,” all of those things. Those are the day-to-day things of what we are doing. I think that the rest of the world and most providers, not all, there are some amazing other providers that are great advocates for pelvic rehab, but a lot of them don’t even know what we do or how we can help people. They still think we do Kegels and biofeedback. 

It’s like, “Oh, just go if you have issues later.” There’s still a lot of, “Oh, you have pain with sex? Just have a glass of wine. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine. Just give it some more time.” It’s like, “No, no, no, no. You don’t understand. It shouldn’t be painful at all and you don’t have to live with that kind of stuff.” So I think it just depends on the provider that you talk to, what their scope is, and what they do. I’ve even had good relationships with OBs and midwives and stuff like that. They’re fabulous clinicians and they’re really good at what they do. I’ll even ask them a question about something related to pelvic PT and they’re like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You can do something for that?” 

That’s, unfortunately, more common than not, but that’s really where my passion is too. That’s why I’m so thankful you invited me on the podcast here to share the knowledge of what pelvic floor therapy is, what we can do, what we do help with, and know it’s not something you just have to live with or have surgery or medication. There are better ways. 

Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Oh my gosh. There are so many other better ways. I am just so grateful that you are here. Is there anything else that you would like to touch on or anything that you think our listeners could really find valuable? I mean, obviously, all of the things you have said are valuable, but is there anything else that maybe I’m not asking because I don’t know the question? It’s like when you go to a provider and the provider is like, “Do you have any questions for me?” And you’re like, “Umm, should I? Maybe?” I have questions, but I don’t know what questions to ask.

Betty: Sure. 

Returning to activities

Meagan: It’s not even that I don’t know. It’s just like, there is so much that you do that I probably don’t even know that you do still. But yeah, especially for our VBAC parents, anything else that you would like to cover?

Betty: I would just say in general, be an advocate for yourself. I know that you can echo that a lot. “This isn’t normal. I know that this isn’t normal. I should be able to do something about this.” Listen to your gut on that because most likely you can. And then, just finding those providers that are a safe space, are going to listen to your story, and be able to guide you in the steps that you need to be able to take is just an overall, general good thing to know. 

Something else that we do too is a lot of return to activity whether that’s walking around the block pushing a stroller, being an ultra trail runner, doing a marathon, or CrossFit. We get people back to those activities after baby whether that’s C-section or vaginal and make sure that they are fundamentally loading their body correctly and have those foundations laid so that they know they are activating their core correctly and they are using their glutes correctly. We have a lot of people who, when they do work with us, go above and beyond what they were even pre-pregnancy because they have that foundation laid. 

I’m a big fan of the idea that postpartum is such an opportunity to really find out some of those things that were there that you didn’t know were there because you basically get stripped down to nothing, right? I can say that from experience. “Oh my gosh. What happened to my body? How am I going to get back to running a marathon?” As an opportunity, you can really work on those fundamental skill sets and build a really solid foundation of movement patterns, and then just go crush it. So we really enjoy that too of getting people back to the activity they want to be doing, and then high-level activity too.

Meagan: Yeah. Get back to normal life. I have had doula clients who were like, “Yeah, back in the day when I could lift” or “Back in the day when I could run” and it’s not even like they’re always leaking. It’s causing pain or they feel a lot of pelvic pressure and things like that. I just want to say that you can still do that. You can. You can get there again. If you enjoy those things and you want to, you can do it again. So know that you don’t have to feel the way you are feeling forever. 

Betty: Totally. 

Meagan: There’s help out there. It might take time. It might take time and it might take effort and patience. Give your body grace and allow it to recover, but it can happen. It really can. 

Dr. Betty’s virtual and out-of-state resources 

Betty: Awesome, yeah. If anyone is interested too, we also have some free resources on our website as PDF downloads to help with just a couple of the things we touched on. Online programs and in-person sessions are available for you guys. That’s why we are here. 

Meagan: Yeah. I was just going to ask you to share all of that. I know you have a course. You have freebies. Are you guys doing virtual? Is it possible to do virtual or is it super recommended for people to find providers in their area? 

Betty: Yeah. We definitely do virtual. We call that a remote consultation. We don’t classify it as pelvic floor therapy because we honestly can’t evaluate you over the internet, but we can be kind of like a coach navigator and play an educational role through that. So that’s definitely an option from an online standpoint. And then from there, we definitely encourage people to find someone local to them. 

But if they are unable to find a provider that is really resonating with them and getting them the care that they need, we do offer an out-of-town program. People fly in for a week. They come and see us in the clinic for anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours a day. We see them five days a week or for however long they are here. It is a very intensive program, then send them on their way with things to work on once they leave, then follow up with them remotely as well. 

We have done a few of those as well which is really fun for me when people fly in to see us. I’m like, “That’s pretty cool.” 

Meagan: That’s awesome. So awesome. Such a good feeling, I’m sure. 

Betty: Yeah, but obviously no online program, and I have online programs and they are there for education, but no online program, no “get fit after six weeks postpartum”, any of that stuff is actually going to truly get to the root of things. I firmly believe that in-person, one on one, hands-on, manual therapy with a skilled practitioner is the gold standard. I always say that if that’s what your options are, choose that first but there are other options from an access standpoint to make sure that you are getting the care that you need and helping get you in the direction that you need to go. Like I said, you can always fly to Utah and see us. 

Meagan: Absolutely. That is such a cool option. So if you are looking to check out Betty and her amazing team, can you tell them where they can find you? Obviously, you are in Utah, but you’re all over. 

Betty: Yeah. Our website is called www.rebornphw.com for pelvic health and wellness. We are on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all of the things @rebornpelvichealthandwellness. That’s where you can find us all over the place. 

Meagan: Absolutely. We are going to be listing all of those things in the show notes. We will make sure to be tagging you on social media. So if you are not on our Instagram or didn’t know we had an Instagram, head over to Instagram @thevbaclink and see today’s post. We’ll have her post right there. You can click on it and go like her page. There is so much that you post that so many people from out of state really can still benefit from. It’s definitely one of those pages that I would suggest following. 

Well, thank you so much for being with us.

Betty: Thanks, Meagan. 

Meagan: Seriously, you are awesome. I just think you are incredible and I know all of the people out there do as well because I see them. I see the comments all over our Utah birth forums. So keep it up and thank you so much for sharing today all of your wealth and knowledge. 

Betty: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Meagan. I really appreciate it.

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 Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. 

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

“Your story is 50% yours and 50% your baby’s.” 

After having a crash C-section under general anesthesia, Jennifer planned to have a peaceful and redemptive vaginal birth at home. Jennifer shares how she still found peace and redemption through her VBAC, even though things didn’t go exactly as planned. 

If for some reason, your home or birth center birth is transferred to the hospital, know that it’s okay. Know that you didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing failed, the story is just changing. You’re turning the page and it’s going to a new place. 

It’s okay to change!

Additional links

Jennifer’s Instagram and Photography Website

The VBAC Link Blog: Deciding Between HBAC and Hospital Birth

The VBAC Link Facebook Community

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Good morning, everybody. This is The VBAC Link and we are excited to bring you another VBAC story today. We have our friend, Jennifer, who is in California, and guess what? She is also a birth doula. I love when birth doulas share their stories because I feel like sometimes as birth doulas, while we are in labor, we forget all of the doula things. I always like to hear sometimes how we as birthing doulas will labor because for me, when I was in labor, there were some things that I knew I probably should have done but I wasn’t in that doula mindset. I couldn’t think, “Oh, I should do Rebozo apples right now.” And so I love hearing what doulas do and don’t do. I love that because it’s just a reminder that even we as doulas can benefit from having a doula in the room. 

So I’m excited to hear your story, my love. 

Review of the Week

But of course, we have a Review of the Week which is from RosiP87 and she says, “This podcast is empowering and healing.” she says, “The VBAC Link has been exactly what I needed but I didn’t know it. Listening to the podcast has been healing and helpful in processing my C-section after my first baby. Julie and Meagan are informative and engaging to listen to. I know that I will have a different birth experience with my second baby because of the information and confidence that I have gained through listening to this podcast. Thank you so much, ladies.”

Thank you, RosiP. That was back in March, so definitely write us when you have your baby and let us know how things went. Thank you so much for writing a review. If you haven’t written a review yet, we would love your review. You can head over to Apple Podcasts or Google Play. You can go over to Facebook. You can leave us an actual Google review on our website or if you would like, send us an email with the subject “Review.” We would love to add your review and possibly read it on the next podcast. 

Jennifer’s Story

Meagan: Okay, Jennifer. We are going to turn the time over to you. We were just talking a little bit about you becoming a doula. I would love to hear why you became a doula, what inspired you, and maybe how being a doula helped you during your birth as well. 

Jennifer: Hi, thank you for having me. I appreciate it so much. 

Meagan: Yes, thank you for being with us. 

Jennifer: You guys were a huge part of my journey through this, so I’m really excited to be here.

Meagan: I love that because we can’t physically be with everybody but I love that we can just be with people on their journey, even if it’s just a sliver. If it’s following our Instagram, following our blogs, or listening to the podcast, it just makes me feel so special. I feel like I have attended so many births through listening to all of these birth stories and then kind of being a doula on the side on this podcast. 

Jennifer: Yes, absolutely. You guys have definitely helped thousands of women, I’m sure. 

Meagan: Well, awesome. Well, share your stories with us. 

Jennifer: Yeah, so I know you just asked how I became a doula and I’m still fairly new to it. I’m going slowly because I have two little kids. 

Meagan: Yep, being a doula with children is hard. 

Jennifer: It’s really hard. Yeah, it’s definitely tricky to navigate, but it’s so rewarding. I think even just doing a little bit here and there–

Meagan: Yep. One or two is so great, yeah. 

Jennifer: Yeah and really, it was just my original C-section that inspired me to become a doula because I was always interested in birth, but after I went through a really scary situation that I wasn’t prepared for, I just wanted to make up for it by helping other women go through their journeys and hoping to help them avoid going through some of the more traumatic stuff if they’re educated and advocated for, and stuff like that. 

Meagan: I love it. I love it, love it, love it. Well, welcome to your journey. I’m excited to see you grow. 

Jennifer: Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m excited too. 

Meagan: Do you have an Instagram for your doula work? 

Jennifer: You know what? I don’t. I just use my personal one, but I’d be happy to give you that. 

Meagan: Yeah, if you want anyone to go follow you, feel free to share it. 

Jennifer: Yeah, I can just send it to you because my last name is kind of confusing. 

Meagan: Perfect. Send it and we will add it to the show notes. 

Jennifer: Perfect. Awesome, thank you. 

Meagan: Okay. Well, feel free to share your stories. I’m so excited to hear them. 

Jennifer: Sure. So I guess no VBAC is a VBAC without a C-section, so that’s where I’ll start. I was 24 when I had my first baby. I had always wanted to become a mom. I was always super interested in birth even when I was a teenager. I’d always watch all of the birth stories and all of that stuff on TV and all of the things that make birth sound really scary. I was still interested in it. 

I guess I’ll just jump right in. I was 40 weeks exactly on the dot. I was laying in bed at night and I was feeling super uncomfortable. I got up to go pee and my water broke. I had taken a Bradley class and I was just preparing to labor at home for as long as I could, but I was confused when my water broke because, in Bradley, they would teach, “10% of people have their water break first. It’s probably not going to happen to you. Here’s what to do if it doesn’t, basically.”

So when my water broke, I woke up my husband and I was like, “Dude. My water broke. I think we should just go to the hospital. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” And he was like, “I don’t know. Are you sure?” So I called them and they said, “Well, we have to tell you to come in,” and I was like, “Okay, I guess I’ll go in then.” 

So I took a shower and went in. I got there and I was 1 centimeter dilated, of course. I was having contractions and everything. I kind of expected to be barely dilated, but I just–

Meagan: That’s where I was, too. 

Jennifer: Your water broke first?

Meagan: My water broke, and then I walked in there and they were like, “You’re maybe a 1.”

Jennifer: It’s like, “Oh my god.” Hearing that is just like, “Okay, we have a long road ahead of us.”

Meagan: Uh-huh. 

Jennifer: Yeah, but they said, “We’re going to keep you because your water broke,” and blah blah blah blah, all the things they normally tell you. So we were in triage for a couple of hours and then they got me a room. That’s when the contractions really started kicking in. I was planning an unmedicated birth, but I was pretty surprised from the get-go how intense it was. My husband was just rubbing my back and everything. I was doing fine. I was just leaning forward through all of the contractions and breathing. 

I think around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., we called our parents and they came. It just started getting so intense at that point and I just wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was for the sensations. My mom and my husband were rubbing my back and everything was just getting so intense so fast, on top of each other. They checked me and I was 4 centimeters. I was just like, “Oh my god, dude. What? How?” 

I kept going, though. I labored for, I don’t know, maybe another four hours. They checked me again and I was at a 6. At that point, I was just like, “I can’t do this anymore. If this is going to get more painful, I can’t do it.” I asked them for something at that point, but not for an epidural. I did not want to get an epidural, so they were like, “Okay, well let’s try the laughing gas.” 

I tried that and I don’t know about anyone else, but I could not keep that thing on my face at all. I just couldn’t.

Meagan: I had it too and I was like, “I need something to hold it for me,” because while holding it, too, I would get kind of like, not sleepy-sleepy, but drowsy. 

Jennifer: Yes. Like, out of it. 

Meagan: Out of it a little bit. I couldn’t apply the pressure that I needed for it to be on my face, and then I’d forget, and then my hands would drop, and then it would fall. I was like, “Can someone just hold this for me? Because I can’t.”

Jennifer: Oh my gosh, I know. It’s like, the thing that you have to hold your own. 

Meagan: Yeah. You can’t have anyone else touch it. That’s the rule.

Jennifer: Exactly. 

Meagan: Yeah. 

Jennifer: Oh I know. Yeah, that was terrible because I was like, “Okay, if I could just get this thing to work properly, maybe I could keep going,” but it didn’t work like that. Everyone was, not yelling at me, but just like, “Hold it on your face. Just hold it there.” I was like, “I can’t.” It was horrible. So I was like, “Screw this. Let’s forget about this.” 

So they were like, “Do you want to try fentanyl?” I was like, “I really don’t want fentanyl,” because my whole take on the situation was like, “How is it that I’m not allowed to take Advil but I can take fentanyl?” It just didn’t make sense to me. 

Meagan: Right? 

Jennifer: So I was like, “Okay, let’s just do the epidural then.” They were like, “Well, that has fentanyl in it too.” So I was like, “Okay, whatever. I’m not going to get through this without it,” or so I thought. I ended up getting the epidural. I was 8 centimeters at that point and it worked right away, but then immediately after I had got it, his heart rate dropped really low to 70. Immediately, they were just like, “Okay. We are taking you to the OR. We’ve got to get this baby out right now.” 

So they rolled me to the OR and I was freaking out the whole time, of course. My parents were in there and they were just talking. They had no idea what was going on. They threw my husband some scrubs and they rolled me in there. Everyone was just like, “What? What happened?” No one else was paying attention, but by the time they got me in there, his heart rate stabilized. They were like, “Oh, never mind.”

Meagan: It’s actually really common for babies' heart rates to drop after an epidural. 

Jennifer: Yeah, which at the time, I didn’t know that. The nurses were telling me, “We have never seen this before.” 

Meagan: What?!

Jennifer: Yes, and since then, I’ve been like, that’s either a huge lie or this is their first time being a nurse. 

Meagan: Yeah, that’s interesting because I see it all of the time as a doula. 

Jennifer: Yeah. 

Meagan: Sometimes, it’s getting more fluid. Sometimes, it’s stabilizing mom’s blood pressure. Sometimes, it’s just changing the position because they sit you up, you curl over, and then they lay you flat on your back. Between those three positions, baby’s like, “Whoa, what the heck?” And sometimes, it’s just slightly moving to the right or the left and it can recover. 

Jennifer: Yes, yes. And since then, I’ve learned that. I also know that my blood pressure is naturally really low so that probably has something to do with it. 

Meagan: Yep, yep. 

Jennifer: Yeah, so they rolled me back in and they were like, “Just kidding, you can have a vaginal birth,” and I was like, “Okay.” So they checked me again. I had a million cervical checks and they were like, “Okay, you are at a 9.5. The baby is coming soon,” and I was like, “Okay cool.” So they were like, “You just have a little cervical lip.” They put a peanut ball in between my legs and I lay there for two hours. Nothing was happening. I was feeling a lot of pressure, but I wasn’t feeling the urge to push. It was just a lot of pressure if that makes sense. 

The nurse next to me– I remember just laying there and I was like, “Oh my gosh. When is something going to happen?” I was just over it at that point. And the nurse was sitting next to me on her computer and she was like, “You know, I know you don’t want medication, but the doctor and I really think that the lowest dose possible of Pitocin might get this baby out right now.” I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t feel comfortable with that.” She was like, “We can just do a 2, the absolute lowest dose, and we really think it will help.”

I was like, “Uh, okay.” So they did that and once again, immediately, his heart rate dropped really low. Everyone came rushing into the room again and I was just laying there freaking out. It just got so frantic so fast. This nurse started saying, “Okay, it’s been three minutes without a heart rate. Three minutes, four minutes, five minutes,” just counting it like that. The doctor was right there and she was like, “Okay, push. Just push.” I tried once and she was like, “Not like that. No, no, no. You’re doing it wrong. Just push.” I was just so flustered. 

Meagan: Oh my goodness, yeah. 

Jennifer: Yeah. It was crazy. The nurse next to me just continued saying, “Seven minutes, eight minutes, nine minutes,” and eventually, the doctor was just like, “Okay, we’ve got to get this baby out.” So once again, they rolled me back into the OR. I’m a first-time mom. I’ve never given birth before and I’m like, “Is he alive? I don’t know.” So they rolled me back there and they moved me onto the table. The nurse put the doppler on my belly and she could not find his heartbeat. She was just moving it all around my stomach and couldn’t find it. I was screaming and crying. I was like, “Is he okay?” And they were just like, “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. Stop screaming.” 

I just felt so unsupported at that moment. No one could understand how I was feeling. The anesthesiologist came in and he was like, “Look, we are just going to have to put you under. We have to get him out now.” I just burst into tears and I was like, “I’m not going to be awake for the birth of my son? Is there any other way to do this?” He eventually agreed. He gave me all kinds of stuff and he was like, “Okay, let’s just try this when you’re awake.” So he gave me all kinds of stuff. I was feeling fairly numb, but not all the way numb. I could feel them doing everything they were doing, but it wasn’t severely painful. I was still screaming. I think I was just so scared. 

My husband wasn’t in there the whole time. They wouldn’t let him in until maybe halfway through the surgery.

Meagan: What?!

Jennifer: Yeah. He came in eventually. 

Meagan: Jeez. That’s scary for him and super scary for you too. 

Jennifer: It was. It was really scary. I just felt so alone laying there on this cold table not knowing if my baby was okay. So he came in and he was freaking out worse than me the whole time. I just have to say that at the beginning of my labor when I was laboring without pain medications, he was puking in a bag in the corner because he was so freaked out. 

Meagan: Oh no. 

Jennifer: And I was getting mad at him. I was like, “I should be the one puking right now, not you.” Yeah, it was sad. But anyway, he came into the room and he was holding my hand. He didn’t say a word. He was just looking into my eyes, crying. I was screaming back at him. Eventually, I felt them lift something out of me and it was him. He was crying and it was the best moment of relief. I couldn’t believe he was okay. 

They put him over the drape and they took him back immediately. My husband went back there and they were weighing him and stuff. I was just asking my husband, “What does he look like? What color is his hair?” I kept asking, “Can I have my baby? Can I have my baby? Can you put him on my chest?” They were like, “No, you can’t see him yet.” It ended up being 45 minutes before I got to see him. I was just so sad to have to be asking what he looked like. It just felt so wrong. 

Meanwhile, they were stitching me back up and that’s when everything started kicking in, all of the numbing stuff they gave me. I started feeling like I couldn’t breathe or swallow. It was numb up to my throat. My husband came back and I was just like, “I can’t breathe. Something is wrong.” The anesthesiologist was standing above my head talking on the phone. I was just like, “Excuse me, help. Help!” and he just kept talking on the phone. I so vividly remember that moment of feeling like I was going to die and no one–

Meagan: Not being acknowledged?

Jennifer: Yes. Yes. I look back at it now and I’m like, “I probably wasn’t going to die, obviously.” But when you’re feeling that way–

Meagan: Yeah, but when you’re feeling that way your mind’s not like, “I’m going to be okay.” It’s like, “I don’t feel like I can breathe.” 

Jennifer: Yes. Yes. 

Meagan: That’s where your mind is and it’s not able to really go anywhere else.

Jennifer: Exactly. It was a scary moment and my husband had to be like, “Hey, help her. Please help her.” So anyways, he gave me more stuff. I don’t know what any of the stuff was. I do have my records, but I mean, it’s all scientific talk, all the stuff I never planned on having. Anyway, they eventually rolled me into the recovery room and when we were on our way there, that’s when they put him on my chest. His name’s August. They put August on my chest and I just remember thinking, “Are you sure this is my baby?” 

I remember everyone talking about this moment of bliss and love. I didn’t feel anything. I just felt like there was a baby on my chest. It was really sad. 

Meagan: Yeah, disconnect a little bit. 

Jennifer: Definitely disconnect. I think I was just so traumatized by the day. 

Meagan: Oh yeah, and medicated. 

Jennifer: Yes, and so heavily medicated that I just couldn’t think at all. You know, once we got back to the room and I started breastfeeding him, that connection started slowly building. I was puking all night because of the anesthesia. It was just hard. 

The next day, I started feeling so in love with him. I started feeling how most moms feel, but I really struggled after that because I just felt like my body was broken. I didn’t give birth to this baby. This baby was cut out of me. Maybe I couldn’t have done it. I’m not a real woman, you know? I struggled with those feelings for a really long time. I also felt like something was missing. I loved him so much the first year of his life, but I was just like, “Why am I not happy? Why am I trying to escape motherhood somehow?” I don’t know. I wanted to be with him, but I just felt like there was just some overwhelming sense of sadness over my life during the first year. 

I had severe anxiety. I was so scared to leave him anywhere. I couldn’t sleep at all because I just wanted to stare at him. It was just not how I pictured motherhood. That’s when I started thinking about VBAC and being a doula and everything. I started going on these long walks every day with my son because that’s when COVID hit. I couldn’t go to the gym or anything, so I just went on walks every day and I would listen to your guys’ podcast for at least an hour, at least an episode a day. It just brought me so much relief at that moment hearing other women who have also gone through the same thing and other women talking about how they felt broken too. I knew I wasn’t alone. So thank you for your podcast. It helped me so much. 

Meagan: Aw, that makes me feel so happy.

Jennifer: Yes, you should. 

Meagan: And thank you for all of those who have shared their stories leading up to yours to help you and just like you are doing right now. Every story pays it forward.

Jennifer: Absolutely. I think there is so much magic in women sharing their stories together. It just makes them feel so much more united. 

Meagan: Absolutely, yep. 

Jennifer: Definitely. So fast forward, my son was– how old was he? 22 months or something? I got pregnant again. It was our first try. We really wanted that age gap, so it was awesome. This whole time, I had been living, breathing, and eating VBAC. All I wanted in life was to have a VBAC. I knew it was going to be different. I was going to go a different route. I was so freaked out about the hospital at that point. I knew I didn’t want to go back. I sought midwifery care and I had this beautiful, amazing midwife. Her name was LaMonica. She was so laid back, so calm, and so trusting of my body. Anytime I had concerns, she would just be like, “You’re fine. You’re going to do fine.” 

She just never made a big deal about anything. It just felt normal. That was exactly what I needed. I spent so much of my pregnancy journaling, meditating, and talking to the baby. I knew that I was capable. I just wanted to cut everything else out from my life that wasn’t serving me, I guess. I didn’t watch any TV or listen to any negative birth stories or anything. I didn’t talk to anyone about my plans who weren’t going to be supportive of them. I just didn’t want anything negative in my head. 

We were planning a home birth and I was really excited about it. I was 40 weeks and 6 days, I think, or 40 weeks and 5 days. I was starting to get a little bit nervous about the time limits and stuff that California has on home birth. For anyone who doesn’t know, you can’t be 42 weeks or over. They would have to transfer care. I was still a week away, but we were talking about it a little bit about what happened if– I was just so freaked out about the hospital. It was starting to stress me out really badly. 

She was like, “Well, I could sweep your membranes if you want me to.” I was like, “Sure. I guess the worst that could happen is nothing.” You know? So I got my membranes swept and then not the next day, but the day after– I was having a lot of prodromal labor that whole week. I had nights where I would have sensations that were ten or fifteen minutes apart or closer all night, and then I would wake up and they would go away. 

This night, in particular, I was having the same sensations all night. I woke up and they didn’t go away. I had a feeling like, “Maybe this is it. We’ll see.” I got my membranes swept, so I knew that it was a possibility. I was just doing my daily things, hanging out with my friends, and taking care of my son. My husband, around 1:00 or so, put my son down for a nap. I’m a photographer too, so I was sitting at my computer editing on my birth ball and I was noticing, “Okay. These are still here and they are getting a little stronger and closer together.” 

I went to the bathroom and my mucus plug came out. I was like, “Yes. Sweet. That means things are happening.” My dad had invited us over for dinner that night and I was like, “Let’s still go. I might be in early labor, but who cares? Let’s still go.” He lives about two miles away from my house. I was like, “Huh, maybe I should walk.” Oh, and just to preface, I had been so weird the whole pregnancy about the baby’s position because I just wanted him or her, we didn’t know the sex, in a good position to come out the right way. We went to Disneyland at around 35 weeks pregnant and I sat in a car reclined the whole time, then I sat in this massage chair reclined and I was like, “This one time won’t hurt,” but it was so weird because after that weekend, he– turned out to be a boy– was OP and he stayed OP. 

I did everything in my power to turn him occiput anterior, but he just wanted to stay sunny-side-up. I decided to walk to my dad’s house because I thought it might help kick things into gear and it might help with his position. I put my son in his stroller and I started walking there. I was having the waves every five to seven minutes. They were definitely getting to the point where I had to breathe a little bit through them, but they were fine. So I walked the two miles, and then I got to my dad’s house. My husband and my dad were talking, my son was playing, and we ordered pizza and stuff. I was just standing in the corner swaying my hips. 

My dad was like, “So is baby might be coming soon?” I was playing it cool. I didn’t want to make a big deal. By the time the pizza got there, I was not hungry. I ordered this healthy pizza with cauliflower crust and stuff and I was like, “I should probably eat something because I have a feeling this will be the last time I want to eat.” We were all sitting at the counter and everyone was eating their pizza. I was standing, leaning over the counter, swaying my hips, and eating my pizza. 

A couple of minutes after that, my husband was like, “You look like you need to go home.” And I was like, “Yeah, I think so.” It was starting to get to the point where I couldn’t keep it on the down low anymore. My dad, once again, was like, “Do you think the baby is coming this week?” We were about to leave and I was like, “I’m pretty sure I’m in labor right now.” He was like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah, I think so.” 

So we went home and we put my son to bed. I was brushing my teeth and swaying. I went to go lay down with him and I was just thinking, maybe I can go to sleep for a little bit. I definitely couldn’t, but I was able to lay for maybe 30 or 45 minutes. My husband was still out in the living room feeding the cats or something. I texted him from the room and I was like, “I think it’s time to set up the birth tub and everything else.” 

He set up our living room so beautifully. He hung up all of these lights and put up the birth tub. It was just exactly how I wanted it. It was so peaceful and beautiful. He went to bed and I really wanted, throughout my pregnancy, to labor by myself for a while. I just think it’s so amazing how powerful women’s bodies are and I just wanted to experience that without distraction. 

So I came into the living room and the kitchen. I was laboring alone and just listening to music, swaying, setting up some last-minute stuff, hanging up my affirmations, and everything like that. The contractions started getting closer and closer. By the time they were four minutes apart, I called my doula and I had her come over. It was probably 11:00 or 11:30 p.m. at this point. I probably started active labor around 7:30 or 8:00. 

So she got there and by the time she got there, I could hardly answer the door. It just seemed that it was progressing so fast. I was handling them really well. I was just on my hands and knees basically the whole time. By the time she got there, they were three minutes apart, so we called my midwife and she came over around midnight. I was just like, “Can I get in the tub? I want the tub so badly.” 

Originally, I didn’t want any cervical checks, but she was like, “Would you want one just to make sure you are far enough along to where it would be a good idea to get into the tub?” I consented to that and she said I was 8-9 centimeters. We were all stoked and all celebrating. We thought that it was going to be sometime soon. So I got into the tub and was vocalizing through the contractions and everything. Everyone was being super supportive. I didn’t want anyone to touch me, but it was really, really awesome having the support just in the room. 

I learned a lot as a doula through that experience because I was like, “Gosh, I don’t always need to always be doing something. I don’t need to always be touching someone or doing anything. I can just be there holding space and it means so much.”

Meagan: Yes. I was going to say that holding space is sometimes one of the most powerful tools as a doula that we can have and bring to the space. 

Jennifer: Absolutely. Just having that feminine energy in the room, knowing that these people are here for me and they believe in me, made it feel just so amazing. So I was in the tub and they were bringing me water and stuff. I felt fine. It was intense, but it’s just crazy looking back at both birth stories and how I wrote out the birth stories. The first one was all about pain and, “I can’t do this,” “This is so hard,” and “I’m dying.” I thought I was going to die. This time, all of my words were just, “It was so amazing.” it just flowed. It was intense, but I didn’t think it was painful, at least at this point. 

So I was laboring all night in that tub. Mind you, I was at 8-9 centimeters at midnight. So at 10:00 in the morning, my midwife asked to check me again, and I hadn’t progressed at all. I was just like, “Oh my god. This is crazy. I haven’t slept. Nothing’s happening.” I wasn’t feeling the urge to push and my contractions, I did notice at the moment, were spacing out. I was just like, “What is the deal?” 

I couldn’t pee by myself. I eventually peed a little bit. It was just so hard for me. I felt like I couldn’t do it and my midwife was like, “You know, nothing is wrong. We could stay here as long as you want to, but do you want to? I don’t want to force you. You’re doing great, but do you feel like you’re suffering?” Because she could tell. The energy was shifting at that point. She was like, “Why don’t we go do some side-lying releases on the bed and we will see if that helps?”

There are so many things that I wish I could have done, but you know, when you are laboring, you can’t doula yourself. 

Meagan: No, exactly. That’s what I was talking about earlier. Even as a doula, you can’t doula yourself. It’s so weird. 

Jennifer: Yes. 

Meagan: There was a time where I should have been like, “I should get up on hands and knees and do shaking the apples with the rebozo.” It wasn’t in my mind. I didn’t think about it and I didn’t have my doulas there quite yet. I had my cousin and I could have had her do that, but I just wasn’t in that space. 

Jennifer: Yes, yeah. When you are in labor land, you can’t think logically. You are just thinking of what’s happening now. 

Meagan: Mhmm, yep. Exactly. 

Jennifer: So that was a bummer, but we did the side-lying releases and that’s when things became painful. I did ten contractions on each side and I was just like, “Nope. Nope. I’m going to go take a nap. This is what’s happening. I need a nap.” So I had this in my head that I was going to go to the hospital and take a nap there, even though I was fully dilated and that clearly wasn’t going to happen, but that’s what I wanted to do. 

So they packed up all of my things for me and got in the car. Wyatt, my husband, had the windows down and I was roaring through these contractions. We were at these red lights and I was like, “Oh my god, these people. I don’t even know what they are thinking right now,” but I didn’t care. 

We pulled up to the hospital and I walked in. We weren’t supposed to be there. They called ahead of time, but I was just walking through the entrance, leaning over on things and making all of these crazy noises. Everyone was staring and trying to get me to sign papers. I was just like, “Dude, no.” We got into triage and stayed there for what felt like forever, but it turned out to be, I think, two hours altogether before I got this epidural that I thought would save my life and let me sleep. 

My head space was thinking, “I’m not going to get a vaginal birth if I don’t get rest,” because I had been up all night doing this. I had been dilated almost fully all night. It was just so tiring. So I got this epidural and it failed. 100%, it failed. I was just so bummed out because I was like, “What about my nap? I was going to take a nap. I need this nap!”

They were just like, “No. That’s not going to happen.” The doctor there broke my water. My water hadn’t broken yet. Not something I wanted, but at this point, I was like, “Do whatever.” He was like, “Well, it looks like we are going to have a baby. Start pushing.” I didn’t feel the urge to push, but I had been dilated for so long. I just went along with what they said. 

I pushed and at this point, my legs were getting numb, but I still felt that the contractions were getting more intense. It numbed my legs, so I got stuck on my back, but I could still feel everything. It just made everything painful. I couldn’t be in my positions anymore. I couldn’t move. At this point, I’m screaming my lungs out, telling my husband, “I am not doing this for one more second. Just cut this baby out of me. I can’t do this.” He was just so supportive and amazing and looking at me straight in the eyes. He had tears in his eyes and he was just like, “You are doing this. You are going to do this. You can. You can do this.”

The nurse next to me was like, “I’m not letting you go into a section. You’re way too close. You are going to do this.”

Meagan: Aww. 

Jennifer: The doctor as well. I was like, “No. Just get him out. Can you just pull him out?” Him, but I didn’t know it was a boy. He was like, “Nope. Nope. You’re going to do this all by yourself. You’re going to get this baby out.” I pushed for two hours forcefully which was definitely not something I wanted to do, but it happened and eventually, he started crowning with the doctor’s manual manipulation. He was having to reach his hands in because my son was OP and his head was kinked to one side. 

That explains why he didn’t want to come out. But eventually, he came out. My husband got to announce, “It’s a boy.” We were just bawling. We couldn’t believe that it happened. It was the best moment of my whole life. It was the sweetest thing ever. I just couldn’t believe it. Everything made sense once he came out. I got that moment that I missed with my other son. 

It was really awesome because this doctor was so amazing. He was asking as I was crowning, “Everything is really tight. You’re going to tear. Can I cut you?” I was like, “Can you not cut me?” I was like, “Can you not?” He was like, “Okay.” No pushback at all. I tore naturally and my husband was like, “Hey, please don’t wipe him down at all,” and they didn’t. They didn’t wipe him down. They didn’t touch him. He was screaming and he was on my chest. The placenta came out right away. It must have been three minutes because someone said the word “Pitocin” and I was like, “No, thank you. I don’t want Pitocin.” 

We just skipped that part and they were like, “You know, usually we do it for hemorrhage management.” I was like, “Yeah, but I’m not hemorrhaging, so can we skip it?”

Meagan: Yeah. 

Jennifer: They were like, “Sure, yeah. That’s fine.” They were like, “Is it okay if we cut the cord?” I was like, “Can you just put the whole placenta on my stomach?” And they did that. They didn’t cut the cord at all. They just left the placenta attached to the baby on my belly for 30 minutes. It was so awesome. I got to see everything in its glory. Everything I missed the first time was happening. They were like, “Well, I’m assuming you don’t want any of these newborn procedures, right?” 

I was like, “No,” and they were like, “Okay, fine.” They didn’t give me any pushback. I was GBS+. I chose with a lot of thought. I decided not to get antibiotics and we didn’t do any of the newborn procedures after. No one gave us any trouble at all. We were just so respected and it felt like family around us. No one made us feel bad for our decisions at all and I profusely thanked the team. I was like, “Thank you so much for letting me still be in charge of this.” 

Meagan: Yeah, yeah. 

Jennifer: The doctor was like, “I wish more that doctors let women have their stories the way they want them to. I wish that more women were respected.” I just don’t think he’ll ever know what kind of impact he made on me and my husband. It was just something we never thought we would get in a hospital. 

The last thing I wanted to add was that even though I was horrified about ending up at a hospital, every dream I had about this baby– I had so many dreams that I was having this beautiful, vaginal birth. The weird thing was that they were all in the hospital. Every single dream, he was born so peacefully in a hospital. I was just thinking, “Why can’t I picture this happening at home?” But I feel like, in the end, it was just the way it was meant to be. I’m grateful for the whole experience. 

Meagan: That’s so awesome. So awesome. 

Jennifer: Yeah, it was so amazing. Thank you. 

Meagan: I love that, especially going from having a transfer, that even though you were in a new environment, they really tried to keep the same feel and desires in place, and they listened. They weren’t like, “Nope. We have to do this. Nope. We’re going to do this. It’s policy.” It was like, “Okay, you don’t want this? We don’t have to do this.”

Jennifer: Exactly.

Meagan: That’s really how it is, but it’s not how it happens a lot of the time. 

Jennifer: Yes. 

Meagan: It’s okay to say, “No, I don’t want that.” Whether you are planning a home birth or not, you don’t have to have these things happen just because you’re in the hospital. You don’t.

Jennifer: Yes. 

Meagan: And so that’s something I wanted to also send a reminder about because you can advocate for yourself. You really can. 

Jennifer: Yes. Yeah, and I thought that it was going to be a fight. The best surprise was that it was a respectful, “Okay,” instead of, “You know, you really should do this. Your baby could die.” Blah blah blah blah. I know the risks. I came in knowing the risks and benefits to everything and no one pushed back on it. They let me do what I wanted to do as his mom. 

Meagan: Mhmm, mhmm. I love that. I love, love, love that. Congratulations. 

Jennifer: Thank you. 

Meagan: Yeah. We have a blog all about how to choose where to birth. I want to talk about how even if you choose to birth at home or a birth center or out of the hospital, and then it happens to go back to the hospital, that’s okay. It’s hard because so many times in our world, we think, “Oh, we failed. We didn’t get to do this.” I even worried about that. I was in labor for 42 hours and things were just moving really slowly. I was stalling out and hanging out there. I was at a 4 and I think at a 6. They were doing NSTs on me at the birth center. I was thinking, “They’re going to transfer me. This is it. I’m going to transfer.”

At that moment, my doula looked at me and said, “Yeah, that’s something that’s being discussed but nothing is happening yet.” In my mind, I said, “Okay. If this happens, you have to be okay with it. That’s okay. You’re just going to change locations. That’s it.” And that’s okay. It’s okay to change locations, so I want to remind anyone out there if for some reason, a home birth or a birth center transfers to the hospital, know that it’s okay and you didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing failed. It’s just that the story is changing. You’re changing the page and it’s going to a new place. It’s okay to have changed. 

Jennifer: Yeah, and I think it’s also important to remember that your story is 50% yours and 50% your baby’s. 

Meagan: Yeah. 

Jennifer: Your baby might need something different than you need or something different than you want. You can’t control someone else’s destiny.

Meagan: Absolutely, yes. Yes. I love that. 50% yours and 50% your baby’s. I love that so much. So yeah, if you want to read more about home birth after Cesarean options or HBAC options, we have a blog about it in deciding what’s best, hospital or home. It’s different for everybody. We encourage all people to follow their hearts, their minds, their guts, and what resonates with them. If a home birth doesn’t resonate and a hospital does, great, and if a hospital birth doesn’t and a home birth does, great. This is your birth. Your birth. You get to choose. 

So congratulations again and thank you so much for sharing your story with us. 

Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me.

Closing

Interested in sharing your VBAC story on the podcast? Submit your story at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. 

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

“Once I knew what it was, that helped. It’s a physiological thing. There’s nothing actually wrong with me. My experience with it was pretty extreme. Our bodies are so amazing and they serve us so well, but there are differences for everybody.”

Brenda’s six births include a medicated hospital birth, a crash Cesarean, an unmedicated VBAC, an HBAC, an emergency C-section, and a gentle, planned Cesarean. Her stories are wildly different but all inspiring in their own ways!

Brenda also gets raw and vulnerable with us as she shares her intense postpartum experiences with Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER). Her choice to fight for healing in a positive way has helped her come out of the fog every time.

Have you experienced D-MER?

Additional links

The VBAC Link Blog: How to Plan for a Natural Family-Centered Cesarean

The VBAC Link Facebook Community

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Hello, hello everybody. Welcome to The VBAC Link podcast. This is Meagan, your host, which is so weird to say that it’s just me by myself. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get used to that, but here I am and I’m still so excited to be with you. 

We have an awesome episode today. We have our friend, Brenda, and she has a lot of stories to tell you. I am so excited to learn more about all of her birth journeys. She is a mom of six and has had a mixture of vaginal, unmedicated, medicated, home birth, VBAC, and planned Cesarean. All of the things, so we are so excited to dive into her stories today. 

Review of the Week

Meagan: As usual, we always have a Review of the Week and I am going to be reading that for you today. 

This is from a mama in Australia. I don’t even know how to actually how to say her username. It’s awesomebarbie. Sorry if I’m botching that, love. Her topic says, “Two angels sent from above.” It says, “Hey, ladies. I’m from Sydney, Australia and I’ve been a silent fan for months now. Ever since having my C-section on November 19th, I have been obsessed with achieving a vaginal birth. Luckily for me, I fell pregnant on July 20th and I’m currently 33 weeks.”

“Listening to your podcast has encouraged me to be strong-minded and educated me so much. It has taught me how to self-advocate and stand up for my body. Thank you, guys. I am going for my VBAC in late March. You guys won’t need to stalk me because I will write you guys either way.”

I love that because we do. We stalk you guys. 

“I hope to be on your show soon. Love, Wendy. Sydney, Australia.” 

It’s so funny because when we read reviews from the past, we do. We love to go back into The VBAC Link Community on our Facebook group and see if they have posted and what the outcome was. So thank you so much, Wendy. We love you back and we are so glad that you have been with us. 

Brenda’s Story

Meagan: Okay. We are going to turn the time over to Brenda. Before we do, I want to just give you a little sneak peek of what we’ve got for the little bit in the end. There’s my son in the background. So like I said in the beginning, she’s had six kiddos and something that we want to talk about at the end is gentle Cesareans. This is something that I personally had as well with my second C-section and it made all the world of a difference in my experience. And then we also wanted to talk about D-Mer. Hang in and listen to this amazing story and at the end, hang in there because we want to talk about D-Mer a little more. 

Okay, cute Brenda, are you ready for this? 

Brenda: I’m ready. 

Meagan: All right. Well, I will turn the time over to you. 

Brenda: Okay. So yeah. I’m super excited to talk. I mean, who doesn’t love talking about their children’s births? And so I guess I’m just going to run through. Like you said, I have six kids and each birth has been totally different. 

My first was over the estimated due date. I kind of went into labor, but I was not progressing very quickly. I basically was induced because they gave me Pitocin. So that one–

Meagan: Spontaneous, but induced. 

Brenda: Yeah and I was a first-time mom. I had been in early labor for two days. I was exhausted. So yeah. 3 centimeters and I was pretty much panicking with the pain. I got an epidural which actually, I think, helped me relax. There were some complications with him. He had aspirated meconium so he had to leave for– I don’t know. I don’t remember how long, but it was fairly uneventful. 

For my second birth, there are 18 months between the two boys. I went in to be induced because I was worried about him being over and aspirating meconium, so I was like, “Okay, from this experience, I’m going to do this with the next one.” I was still not super informed really about anything. So I went in to be induced. Everything was going really well. 

I think right around 6 centimeters, his heart rate started crashing. That happened multiple times, so they took me back and put me under general which was really scary. It was really, really scary. I remember looking up at the nurse who was next to me. I just remember looking at her just like, “Can you please pray for me? I am so scared right now.” And yeah. Then I woke up. My first memory was that I was holding this baby. 

We didn’t know the gender so I was like, “Oh, is this a boy or a girl?” It was just that you are thankful for it and you are thankful for everything turning out okay, but after that experience, I was really disappointed with it. I was really disappointed that I had this experience. It was traumatic and I had mild postpartum depression after I had my son, Lincoln.

And so after that, I was like, “Okay. There has to be something better than this.” I did not like that. And so I started down the road of, “How can I have a better birth?” I completely nerded out on everything. I got pregnant with my third and was just, I mean, I read all of the books. Ina May, I watched all of the movies. I was just like, “I really, really want to have a VBAC.” I got a doula. I started doing all of the things I could do to prepare for that. I went into labor. I think it was five days after my estimated due date. I tried to stay at home as long as possible. I went to the hospital and I was already 8 centimeters. 

Meagan: Oh!

Brenda: I remember tears streaming down my face because I was like, “I think it’s going to happen. I think it’s going to happen.” And an hour and a half later, I had my third son. It was seriously the best day of my life. It was my birthday. 

Meagan: Aww. 

Brenda: Yeah. The sun was shining through the window. It was so cool and peaceful in the room. The doctor came in and he just sat at the end of the bed. I just had my baby. It was perfect. It was amazing. It was the best day of my life, one of the best days of my life. Obviously, the satisfaction of having a natural childbirth and just, “Okay. I did it.” It was empowering. Also, just the recovery, everything was so much easier, and yeah. I mean, it was awesome. I was super thankful for that. 

And so then when I got pregnant with my fourth son, I really was like, “You know what? That went so well.” We lived right across the street from the hospital where I had all of my kids. So I was telling my husband at the time, “Maybe we should just have a home birth.” And so I started looking into that. We had some really difficult things going on at that time and just really liked the idea of having more privacy in our home too. 

So I found a midwife and I went into labor. I think I was nine days over. It was kind of funny because she would check on me and I just was totally not communicating. She would be like, “How are you doing?” Because I had told her that I had started having contractions. She ended up showing up at my house and was like, “We just felt like we needed to come to check on you.” 

And so I ended up being 6 centimeters when she came. At that point, it was just really chill. We just hung out. I was washing my dishes and making them coffee. It was very relaxing and just, I don’t know. It was like, “I just don’t even feel like I’m in labor because this is so chill.”

Meagan: So chill. That’s awesome. 

Brenda: Yeah. I wasn’t even in a lot of pain and it was just really awesome. I really wanted to have him in my tub, so I did go in the tub for a little bit and at that point, my contractions were getting quite a bit stronger. I was pretty tired. There was a lot of emotional stuff going on in my life at that time and I was just kind of checked out. My midwife came into the bathroom because, at that point, she kind of just stood back and let me do my thing. She checked me and I was 9.5 with a lip. 

She was like, “All right. Well, you have a little bit of a lip left. You can try to push a little bit, but if it doesn’t take care of it, you can stop and wait it out.” So I tried to do that for a little while and I got to the point where I was just like, “I’m done. What other option do we have?”

I ended up getting out and going into my bedroom. She manually stretched my cervix while I was pushing which was extremely painful. It was probably the most difficult thing I had experienced during childbirth and very different from my VBAC in the hospital. It was obviously a really great experience and it ended up being fine. The delivery was fairly easy, I guess. I never had any tearing during any of my births. Two of my kids were over 9 pounds, and so my recovery and just the pushing had been really pretty easy for me which I am thankful for. So overall, besides the cervix stretching, it was a really good experience. 

So then fast forward five years. During that five years, I had gotten divorced and remarried. I had four boys and I then was pregnant with my first child, Ruby, with my husband. I was super excited to be having a girl after four boys. I was planning to VBAC. I mean, I had just assumed that’s what would happen. My provider was really supportive. I did have a little bit of hesitation because I knew that I had scarring on my cervix. It had torn when I had my son with the HBAC, and so I was feeling a little bit like, “Is that going to create issues with the delivery?” because I was reading into that and trying to learn all of the things about breaking down scar tissue. 

But I figured, “Well, I’ll just try, and whatever happens happens.” I think I was about four days past due. I had been having contractions for a few days. I remember being in the kitchen a couple of days before I had her and I had to stop doing what I was doing because of my abdomen. I had a contraction and it just was really painful which was really bizarre to me because it came out of nowhere. I just kept going and they went away. For the next couple of days, I had really low energy. I’m like, “Well, yeah. I’m having a baby. This is common. You can get flu-like symptoms and clean out and all of this stuff.” 

And so, yeah. Four days after my estimated due date, I just didn’t feel good. I felt flu-like symptoms but again, I thought, “Well, I am having a baby.” My husband and my parents were over and they were telling me, “You don’t look very well. Do you not feel good?” And I’m like, “Well no, but I’m super tired. I’m not sleeping.” I forgot to mention that I also was very sick with the majority of my pregnancies, so horrible indigestion. Throwing up all of the time, just coming out of both ends all of the time, so I wasn’t in the healthiest spot, but I was like, “Yeah. I’m really tired and I don’t feel good, but whatever.” 

So I lay down and the only time I’ve ever taken a nap in all of my pregnancies was this time. I fell asleep on my bed for over an hour and a half which was so crazy. I woke up and my husband was like, “I really think that we should take your temperature because you are acting funny,” which is another thing. I hallucinate when I have a fever and get super weird. I was like, “Okay, whatever.” So he took my temperature and I was running a fever. 

I was like, “Well, I’m fine. I’m just really tired.” He was like, “No. I really think that we should go to the hospital.” And at that point, my sisters were involved. They don’t live in the area, but they were involved and they were all side-texting him like, “Brenda needs to go to the hospital. Brenda needs to go to the hospital. This is making us nervous.” I definitely was declining rapidly. I did not feel well at well. I couldn’t really walk. My abdomen just hurt really, really bad. 

Meagan: That’s so scary. 

Brenda: It was really weird, but I still was just like, “Whatever. I just am really tired.” They finally convinced me to go to the hospital so I’m like, “Fine. I’ll just go there and get some medicine and then I need to get better so I can have a baby.” 

So it’s thirty minutes from our house to the hospital. From the time we left to the time we got to the hospital, I was a complete mess. Any time my husband would go over any bump or anything, I just was in so much pain. My abdomen hurt so bad. I can’t really even describe the feeling, but it was so painful. I remember getting there and I was so mad at him because I was thinking, “Why are you going over these potholes? This is so painful.” And I was thinking like, “I’ve had four children. What is going on? This is really weird. I should be able to handle this and I’m not handling this.” 

So we get into the emergency room and by this time, I’m shivering. It’s summer in Minnesota, so it was probably 90 degrees and humid. I was in black leggings and a sweatshirt and I was freezing. So we get in there and the ER lady was like, “Are you here for labor and delivery?” And I was like, “No. I’m not.” I’m here. I need to see a doctor because I need some medicine. I was super belligerent. I’m not that way. I’m a very passive, quiet person, but I was basically almost yelling at anyone I came into contact with, which, I don’t really remember any of this. 

They wanted to put me in a wheelchair and I refused. I wanted to walk up the stairs. I was just being really weird and totally out of character. And so we got up to labor and delivery and they said, “Yeah. You’re running a fever and we are going to give you some fluids. We’ll admit you because eventually, you’ll have your baby, but we know you want to have a VBAC so we will just take it slow.” 

Over the course of, I think it was maybe twenty minutes, they were trying to put an IV in which was not working, I guess. It was another thing I don’t really remember. It made me realize how out of it I was because I guess they had multiple people come in and try to put my IV in. There was blood everywhere and I don’t remember any of it. 

And so they came in and they were like, “We are going to do a rectal just to get a more accurate read,” and my internal temperature was pushing 107. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh. 

Brenda: Yeah. I was exhibiting other signs of sepsis. The doctor came in. I was going into septic shock, so they brought me back and did a C-section. It was a really crazy thing. She ended up being– they did come in. I don’t remember this either, but they told my husband, “We don’t really know what the outcome could be because this is really serious.”

It was scary for him, but he did great. He was awesome. I was completely out of it and saying really weird things because of all of the medication I was given. He was just really great and everything turned out fine. She was healthy and as soon as I was cleaned out– my uterus was completely full of green fluid which makes sense about the pain. It was completely infected. Everything was just infected. And so they actually washed me out which was really weird, but as soon as I got back to the room, within probably several hours, I was completely back as far as temperature-wise. My color had returned. When the doctor came in, he was like, “I don’t even recognize you from the person that came in.”

It just was really crazy how one, how quickly things can change, and then two, just how little control we have in those circumstances. I had no control over anything and it was completely different than my previous experiences. I was not expecting to have a C-section because I was septic. I had never even heard of that before. 

I felt like my recovery with that was fine. I don’t think anyone enjoys recovering from a C-section, but I had a really great support system and my husband is really helpful and hands-on, so I felt like it went well. I felt like the postpartum period was good. I don’t know. It just seemed like she entered our family and it was awesome. It was super awesome. I didn’t feel like I was impacted much by her birth as far as being traumatized or anything so that was great. 

So then I got pregnant again. There are about two years in between Ruby and her sister. Her younger sister, Bridget. And so I always thought, I hadn’t heard too much about a VBAC after two Cesareans but it was definitely something I was interested in. As I started looking around and trying to find a provider that would support that, it was pretty much like hitting dead ends everywhere. Oh, and it was during COVID. There was a birth center in Minneapolis that would normally do it but because of COVID, they weren’t able to do any VBACs. If you were a VBAC, you would have to go to the hospital that they worked with. COVID had put a ton of restrictions on that, so that was out. 

And so I ended up finding a provider who was an hour and a half away and she was amazing. She was so reassuring and so positive that this was something I could do. And so from probably four months to eight months, I was seeing her and making the drive. I would go to the appointments and feel really positive about it. I felt really positive. I felt, “Yes, I can do this. This is amazing. I’m going to have a–” my plan was to have the VBAC and I could do a water birth at their center. I could basically deliver my own baby. I was thinking, “I’m going to have a VBAC after two Cesareans and it’s going to be amazing and this is going to be the grand finale of all of my birthing experiences.” I thought, “Well, why not? Because I have had VBACs. I know I can do it.”

And then I would leave and just start feeling uneasy again which I know can happen and I’ve heard other stories, listening to other birth stories like, yeah, you doubt and then you go back and you feel like, “Okay. I can do this. I can do this.” So I basically was on that rollercoaster my whole pregnancy and wasn’t really seeing her very much because of COVID, like, minimal visits or whatever. 

And so I think it was 35 weeks, 36 weeks. I went to an appointment. It was fine. I left and I just had this horrible, uneasy feeling in my chest. I looked at my husband and I’m like, “I shouldn’t do this.” He’s like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “This is not the right choice for this baby.” And he was like, “What are you talking about? This is what you want. We’re doing this. You can do it.” And I just was like, “No. This is not the right choice and we need to change our plan.” I just started crying and he was trying to be helpful like, “Okay, are these hormones? Is this where we need to have another pep talk with our midwife? What’s going on? How can I help you?” 

But it was just this feeling, that mom instinct like, “I need to do something different.” And so I called the OBGYN that I had with Ruby and I just asked if I could come in. So I went in and I just told her everything I was feeling. She was so amazing and so supportive and just tried to even still give me options on having a VBAC after two Cesareans. She couldn’t do it, but she could try to find other options. But at that point, I just felt so strongly that I needed to have a scheduled Cesarean that I just was like, “You know what? No. I appreciate you and advocating for me, but this is what I want to do. I know that this is the right choice,” which was very weird to get to the place of accepting that, but I felt total peace about it. 

She actually started talking to me about the gentle Cesarean and basically said, “These are the things that I can do,” so that was really cool to be able to have a say in that. She was awesome. She pulled Bridget out very gently to help mimic coming out of the birth canal and to try to squeeze the fluids out. She delayed the clamping as long as she could. They put Bridget on my chest right away and so overall, it was a completely different experience than what I had with my other C-sections, obviously. Obviously, I would have wanted to have a VBAC, but it just was very peaceful. I felt respected and I just felt very peaceful knowing it was the right choice for that. 

And so, yeah. Those were all of my births. I guess the next thing would be postpartum. 

D-MER and Postpartum

Meagan: Yeah. I want to just say, way to go following that intuition. We talk about it all the time here on this podcast and it’s something that is so hard to sometimes understand and decipher whether it’s just fear or if it’s truly intuition. Your husband was like, “Wait. No, no, no, no. This is not what you want.” And you were like, “No. It’s not necessarily what I want. It’s what I feel is right.” And it’s so hard. I think it was Julie or somebody who told me a long time ago and I swear by this because I’ve tuned in. It’s something that’s this weird thing. This intuition will not place fear. I don’t know how to explain it. Intuition will not be fearful. It’s just factual, right? It’s, “This is what I should do,” but it’s not fear.

Brenda: Yeah, yeah. 

Meagan: It’s hard to decipher through that, but yeah. So let’s talk about postpartum. Let’s talk more about your postpartum journey. 

Brenda: Yeah, so after I had Bridget, I definitely struggled more and basically went through this period of spiraling into this what I now understand as postpartum psychosis which was really scary because I had no idea what was going on, but I essentially became unsafe. I couldn’t drive because I would want to run into traffic or I couldn’t be left alone with my kids. I couldn’t shower. I was completely debilitated and it was really, really scary. 

And so I had that happen. Thankfully, I have a really amazing support system that rallied around me and I was able to get help, counseling, medication, and family support fairly quickly which helped me get out of that initial psychosis but then shortly after that, my dad passed away from COVID. He had actually come out to help me. He and my mom had come out to help me with my postpartum and then he got COVID and died. So that was really, really hard and threw a wrench in everything because then it was like, “Okay. Well, now I’m grieving, but also, I’m not really stable.” And so that’s been my journey for the last year is trying to come out of that. 

It was a combination of help, asking for help, counseling, and changing medication which is another thing. I’ve never been on medication. I don’t take stuff. I’m very pretty naturally minded, so that was a really humbling experience like, “I need help,” and “Why doesn’t anyone talk about this? What is going on with me?” So I feel like now, I am coming out of the fog but it’s been a really, really long journey that can be connected with the D-MER which, if you people don’t know, it’s Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex. 

I’ve had it with all of my kids starting with my first. My family doctor was the one who first introduced me to D-MER because I told them about the feelings that I was having. He had told me, “Yeah. It’s this condition not talked about, but it’s basically the dopamine is inaccurate. Whatever is being released, there is a glitch.” D-MER can vary for women, but in my case, it was 15 seconds before my milk let down, I had this horrible, horrible feeling where I just wanted to die. It’s this all-encompassing feeling. It lasts for probably a minute and then goes away. Every single time I would nurse and with every single one of my babies, it has happened. 

It’s just a crazy, crazy thing and the only thing that I’ve found to help is once I knew what it was, that helped knowing what it was. It’s a physiological thing. There’s nothing actually wrong with me. My experience with it, I would say, was pretty extreme. I think just realizing that our bodies are so amazing and they serve us so well, but there are differences for everybody. My body clearly has some hormonal glitches just with the C-section and the D-MER and all of these different hormonal chemical things. It was like a perfect storm for the psychosis. I’ve come to that conclusion. 

But yeah. The D-MER is really interesting to me because it can also vary with women. I mean, everybody has some. It goes away. For some, it’s only with a couple of the kids and for mine, it’s just been a consistent thing with each of my kids. 

Meagan: Yeah and like you said, it’s something that not a lot of people talk about, but we have a lot of clients, right? I’ve been a doula for a while and it’s like, “I don’t like breastfeeding. It makes me anxious.” They explain these feelings and it’s just not really talked about. I don’t even feel like a lot of these doctors are saying, “Hey, this is a thing,” either. So when I saw that, I just was like, “Oh, I want to talk about that a little bit. I want her to talk about that,” because it’s unique and it’s something that does happen. What would you say is one of the things that really has helped you through all of that? How long did you nurse your babies?

Brenda: I self-led weaned all of my kids so it ranged from 2-2.5 years maybe. 

Meagan: Wow. 

Brenda: My daughter is almost two and we are still weaning. 

Meagan: Yeah, so do you still have those feelings, or as baby gets bigger and you do it more, does it fade away? 

Brenda: Yeah. It’s definitely more extreme in the beginning when you are producing so much more milk. Yeah. Now that she’s older, it would be less, but I still have the feeling like, “Oh, I feel like crap. Okay, my milk is going to come in.” It’s so weird. That is one of my coping mechanisms is that I would think of it as, “Okay, I can look at this as a positive thing. I can look at this as a warning that my milk is coming in,” especially in those first few months when you are constantly leaking so I’d be like, “Okay, where is my baby? I need to nurse before I leak all over.” I tried to make this game out of it because there was literally nothing I could do about it unless I wanted to stop nursing. 

Meagan: Yeah, yeah. So wild. I also just want to talk really quickly before we end about family-centered Cesareans. With my second, I wasn’t necessarily wanting another Cesarean. I really wanted to VBAC, but that’s just not how the story went. Something that I loved so much was my husband remembered me saying, “If I’m going to have another C-section, I really want to be a part of it.” And so my provider did very similar things and really made me want to be a part of it, and not even to the extent that yours did. 

I think it’s just important for you to know, listeners, that it is okay for you to ask for a different, non-traditional experience in the OR. It’s okay to say, “Hey, do you have a clear drape for a delivery? Is it okay for me to pull my own baby out?” Some moms scrub and sterilize their own hands. “It is okay? Let’s play music. I want music by my head.” Bring a speaker.

I watched it in a mirror and not everybody wants to watch their C-section. I’m kind of weirdly one of those people. I’m weird and I did. I really enjoyed watching it. It felt like I was more a part of my birth watching it. Letting an extra birthing person, a doula, or a photographer be present, cord clamping, or at least milking the cord as long as you possibly can, keeping the vernix on the baby, not trying to wipe them off. There are so many things. There’s vaginal seeding and breastfeeding in the OR. 

I’m going to put this in the show notes. It’s our blog about family-centered Cesareans. That will be in the show notes. So if you want to know about more options for family-centered Cesareans, check out the show notes and give it a click because there are a lot of options. Even if C-section is desired and it’s like, “Hey, I want this planned C-section,” that’s okay too, but there are definitely more ways to make your C-section even more special and gentle, so definitely check it out. 

Thank you so much for sharing all of your beautiful stories. I think they are amazing. I think they are each unique and I love that through all of them– you were sick. It was more your family. They were like, “You are not normal right now.” But you were following your intuition. You were following your gut and you were like, “Okay, something is different. I need something different.” I just want to say congratulations on all of your births and thank you so much for being with us today. 

Brenda: Yeah. 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 Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. 

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

“Every baby, every delivery, and every birth is so different.” 

Rebecca’s first birth was a smooth, textbook experience. Less than 12 months later, Rebecca arrived at the hospital ready to deliver her second baby girl. However, after four hours of pushing, unmedicated manual rotation, and scary heart rate readings, Rebecca knew she needed to consent to a C-section. 

In surgery, Rebecca was told her pelvis was too small to ever birth a baby vaginally even though she already had a prior vaginal birth! She also experienced a cervical laceration. Rebecca was left traumatized after such a drastically different birth experience. 

With her next baby, Rebecca fought for healing and for her TOLAC. Her third delivery was quite unlike either of the two previous deliveries. We can’t wait for you to hear about her wild ride and to learn from her particularly unique experiences!

Additional links

Intrapartum Cervical Lacerations PubMed Article

The VBAC Link Blog: Special Scars

Special Scars, Special Hope Facebook Group

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Good morning, everybody. You are listening to The VBAC Link. Today is the first episode without Julie and let me tell you, I am already missing her so much. It’s going to be a little different not having this podcast with her. I was just telling our guest today how weird– I don’t even know what episode number we are on right now because Julie was such the backbone. She did all of the technical, little-detail things and I am going to have to get used to that.

So bear with me as I am weaning into doing all of the podcast stuff by myself. Today, we have our friend, Rebecca, and she is going to share her story. You guys, she has a special scar, or a cervical extension I should say, that ended up turning into special scar. We don't have a ton of these episodes on the podcast. They are not as common and one of the reasons why I am personally excited for her to share her story is because they are not as common but they are still possible. We really want to get the word out there to do your research and do what’s comfortable for you, but know that it is possible.

Something that’s also a little different about her story is that it was from the cervical extension. I can’t wait for her to share a little bit about this. We are going to talk about what a cervical extension even means, what that looks like, and what it could mean for future vaginal births. But of course, we have a Review of the Week. Normally I would turn the time over to Julie, but we don’t have Julie, so I am going to read you a Review of the Week. 

Review of the Week

Meagan: Today’s review is by Sarah and she said, “One month ago, I had a successful VBAC induction just 18 months after my Cesarean section. I almost called to schedule a repeat on my due date because I was so scared. I found your podcast and listened to it for two days straight. It gave me the courage to go through with induction and I am so glad I did. I’m hoping more people find this as a resource.”

Oh, that’s awesome. It looks like she emailed us that. We love reviews. As you know, we have Apple Podcasts. We have Spotify. We have Google play. We have just Google. You can leave us a review on Google. But just like Sarah did, you can email us a review. So if you’ve had a good experience or something that you would like to share with the world, please email us. Feel free and we will slot this into the review and maybe read it on the next podcast. 

Rebecca’s Story

Meagan: Okay, Ms. Rebecca. We are so excited to have you. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to share the stories of your three kiddos, right? Do you have three?

Rebecca: Yep, three girls. 

Meagan: Three girls! You’re a girl mama. That is so awesome. And remind me, they are all pretty close like 4, 3, and 1?

Rebecca: Yep. Yep, that’s right. 

Meagan: Yes. 4, 3, and 1. That is so awesome. So you are really busy in your life.

Rebecca: Yeah, just a little bit. 

Meagan: Yes. Oh my goodness. Are you guys planning on having more? Do you have any idea if you are wanting any more?

Rebecca: I’ve always liked even numbers, so I’ll probably have one more but we joke that each one gets spaced out further and further apart. So not anytime soon at least. 

Meagan: Yes. But hey, you know what? Julie had this too where all of her kids are really, really close. It might be chaotic right now when they are little, but then they are the best of friends and they are all in the same time. My sister and I are three years apart. It’s still not that very far, but I love that when they are really close, you are always going to school together, you are in the same friend zones and in the same types of things. It might be chaotic when they are little but it will be so fun I bet.

Rebecca: It will be worth it hopefully.

Meagan: It will be so awesome. So awesome. Well, cool. Well, thank you for joining us today and I would love to turn the time over to you to tell us about these beautiful girls’ births. 

Rebecca: Okay. Well, my first birth was very uncomplicated. Pretty much the only strange thing that happened was that my water broke at 37 weeks in the middle of the night. I was totally unprepared because everyone says that first-time moms go until 42 weeks, and so I just wasn’t even in my mind thinking that was possible. 

But it was a great birth. It lasted about 10 hours, labor did. It was unmedicated. I didn’t have any tearing and it was just kind of textbook, I guess, in that way. Then, when my daughter was about 4 months old, I started coming down with what I thought was the flu, and then I also started having some food aversions which was weird. 

And so I asked my doula. I was like, “Is this normal postpartum? Are my hormones regulating or what’s going on?” And she was like, “Rebecca, you need to go take a pregnancy test.”

Meagan: You’re like, “Uhhh.”

Rebecca: It was positive. I was in denial. She said she knew for a week before I did what was happening. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh. 

Rebecca: Yeah. I was just in denial. So that put their due dates within 12 months of one another. So both October and it was just a very difficult pregnancy emotionally and physically. I had to give up nursing because I’m one of those who dry up when I’m pregnant. I just felt a lot of guilt. My husband seemed to be completely unaware of how hard it was going to be where I was like, “Do you understand having two kids 12 months apart? This is going to be very hard.” 

Anyway, so with her, I was expecting to go into labor early. 37 weeks came, rolled around, and no baby. 38 weeks came. 39 and finally, after my due date, I went into labor which already felt like I was three weeks overdue just because my first daughter came three weeks early. It was just so mental at that point. 

We got to the hospital and I was already 9 centimeters so we thought this baby was coming. I pushed for four hours and she would not come out. They called in the senior midwife and she was like, “The baby is OP.” And so they were having me do all of the things. What’s it called? The Walchers?

Meagan: Oh yeah. That’s intense. 

Rebecca: Oh, it was terrible. It was really painful, but they could just not get her to turn into a favorable position. They tried manually turning her and I still didn’t have the epidural at that point. Finally, the midwife was wanting to call it and I said, “What are my options?” She was like, “A C-section.” I was like, “Well, how about we do an epidural and see if that relaxes me, and then see if you can try turning the baby?”

At that point, I was just willing to try whatever so they agreed. They let me sleep for a few hours and then came back in. It was the middle of the night and they started manually turning. She was responding to it, but then all of a sudden, she just started having heart decels down to the thirties and they freaked out. They were like, “Okay, we are not doing that. We will let you try to push her out sunny-side up essentially.”

And so I pushed and she started descending, but then her heart did the same thing down to the thirties.

Meagan: Wow, that is scary. That is scary.

Rebecca: Yes. It still, I mean, I’ve worked through it in therapy now, but yeah. Just the room, you could just tell the mood changed. They were just staring at the monitor with her heart rate. It was at that point where I was like, “Okay. We’ve done it. We’ve given it our all. This is the right call.” So they prepped me for a C-section. Overall, it wasn’t terrible. They didn’t strap my arms down or anything. She had descended so far down, so they had to come back through and push her back up. During that, my cervix tore.

She came out screaming. My husband told me it was a girl because we don’t like to find out beforehand. Then, they were taking out my placenta and I heard the midwife and the OB. They were both like, “That’s weird. I’ve never seen anything like that.” They were just talking back and forth about something going on.

Meagan: And you’re listening to them. 

Rebecca: Yes. I know my baby’s okay because I can hear her and I think I asked, “What’s going on?” The midwife was like, “Oh, I’ll come and show you once you’re in recovery. I’ll show you your placenta.” So they started stitching me back up and I’ll get back to the placenta, but they started stitching me back up and the OB said– he was one of those where he’s a great surgeon but he doesn’t have bedside manner. He made some comment like, “Yeah, you shouldn’t waste your time trying to VBAC. Your pelvis is way too small.” 

I got so angry. I’m on the operating table and I said, “I’ve already had a vaginal birth.” You could tell he was caught off guard. Obviously, you didn’t read anything about me before you gave me the surgery. 

Meagan: And this diagnosis of, “You will never have a vaginal birth.” That happens so often! 

Rebecca: I know. It makes me so angry when I see that because yeah, obviously, my body has pushed out a baby. 

Meagan: Well, yeah. Even mine hadn’t and he was like, “Your pelvis is too small.” The thing is that I easily could have believed him, right? 

Rebecca: Yeah.

Meagan: When you’re laying there, cut open, vulnerable, and you’re told, “Don’t ever do this. Your pelvis is too small,” you want to naturally just believe these providers. I’m not saying that these providers are ever totally wrong or anything, but they give these diagnoses and we just believe it. 

Rebecca: Yeah. 

Meagan: So it’s hard.

Rebecca: I mean, yeah. I don’t know what he was using to make that judgment, but it was obviously wrong as we are going to see. My body had already done it, too. 

Meagan: Yeah. 

Rebecca: I think that when I said that, he tried to recover it by saying, “Well, how much did your last baby weigh?” I told him and he said, “Well, I guess your magic number is somewhere between your first baby’s weight and your second baby’s weight.” I was just thinking, “I don’t think that’s how it works.” 

Meagan: Uh-uh. No. Sorry, dude. 

Rebecca: Yeah, exactly. So yeah. He got reprimanded, I think, for that one by the midwives. It made me so angry. But anyway, in recovery, the midwives brought my placenta to show me. It was wild. She said that she had never seen anything like it. It was a bivalve placenta and there was a velamentous cord insertion in between the connecting tissue. So it was just very exposed and apparently, I had vasa previa too. Their assumption was that when my baby was turning, it was compressing the cord and causing the heart decels essentially.

And so they said it could have ruptured during surgery, or sorry, if I had actually pushed her out, it could have been pretty bad. So it was really crazy. She took pictures of it and texted it to all the people. She thought it was two placentas. The OB disagreed so the jury, I guess, is still out on what it was, but I had had a lot of bleeding during the pregnancy and they had assumed a vanishing twin or something along those lines early on. They couldn’t quite figure it out. It just kind of stopped. So they don’t know what exactly was going on with the placenta if it was just, yep. It was crazy. But that was my second birth and it just was very traumatic. 

After having such a smooth, textbook first birth and feeling so empowered to have this 12 months later was just devastating. Thankfully, my doula recommended therapy. I got into a therapist and really was just able to work through that birth trauma which is one of my big recommendations to people who have unexpected C-sections is to work through your birth story. There is so much healing in that. I am now able to look back at the birth and it’s not necessarily the happiest day to look back on, but I’m able to see it and not cry whenever I talk about it. 

Meagan: Yeah, yeah. 

Rebecca: Yeah. So that was my second birth, and then now leading into my third, I was determined to have a VBAC. One, to prove it to that OB who told me my pelvis was too small, but just for myself. I knew how much I loved my first birth and I just really wanted that again. After we got pregnant, in one of my first appointments, I was just chatting with the midwife and I said, “Oh yeah. The OB mentioned something about a cervical tear during the C-section. Does that affect anything?”

Her face changed and she goes, “I’m going to get your OP report and read it. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She came back in and said that I had a low-lying, transverse scar, but I had a midline cervical extension. So essentially, my cervix had torn and it had torn up to where my C-section scar was, so it was in the shape of a T.

Meagan: So did that cervical scar tear up into your uterus?

Rebecca: Yes. 

Meagan: Okay.

Rebecca: But not into the contracting part. 

Meagan: Gotcha. 

Rebecca: So it was still low. But it was, yeah. It was very hard for me to figure out what exactly it was because I was trying to Google all of these words like, “What does this mean?” And then they were finally able to explain it to me. It was shaped like a T essentially. And she said that she seemed very confident that I was going to risk out of having a trial of labor and I was devastated. I was really upset, but she ultimately left it up to one of the OBs in the practice to sign off on. 

I knew I was going to see him at my next appointment, so I just spent a ton of time researching. I was texting all of my friends that are doctors. Nobody knew what it meant. I was searching for research articles. I joined the Special Scars Facebook group trying to find some more stories. I eventually found a PubMed study that was on cervical lacerations and how they affected subsequent pregnancies. 

It wasn’t really an apples-to-apples comparison. I was like, “You know what? These women had cervical tears and went on to have vaginal births afterward. I’m going to take this to the OB.” I was armed and ready. And then I went to the appointment and he was like, “Yeah. There’s not really any data or studies on how this impacts your risk of rupture.” I told him about the study and it was weird. He was just like, “Okay, yeah. You can have a trial of labor.” And I was shocked because I was just expecting to have all this pushback.

 

I don’t know if he was more comfortable because it was lower and not in the contracting part of my uterus or if he could tell I was very determined and had done my research and was willing to take that risk, but he essentially gave the green light and then I never heard anything about it the rest of the pregnancy. 

So that was really exciting and I just continued. During the pregnancy, I went to the chiropractor. I ate dates. I drank red raspberry leaf tea. I was doing Spinning Babies, HypnoBirthing, and meditations. I was just trying to get in the right head space and get my body ready. And then near the end, I started psyching myself out. In one of my last appointments, I was obsessing about the baby’s position because the baby wasn’t– what is the ideal? It’s like, LOT?

Meagan: LOA. LOA, but OA. We want the baby looking down towards the mom’s back so as the baby comes down on your pelvis, the neck can flex underneath the pubic bone, then they rotate and make room for the shoulders. But LOA is kind of like a great spot to start because the uterus will naturally rotate the baby away. 

Rebecca: Yeah. So I think the baby was ROT, where the baby typically turns posterior during labor.

Meagan: Yeah. They start on that side because they rotate back, to the left, then to the front. And so if you’ve got a baby that’s on the right but looking sideways, which is ROT, it means the baby’s back is on the right side but sideways in the middle if that makes sense. I’m using my hand, but people can’t see me. And then the baby rotates. But then you know, most labors have a high chance at some point of a baby going in a posterior position. Whether they stay there or not, yeah. ROT for sure. Usually, you are going to have a baby there. 

Rebecca: Yeah. I was paranoid, I think, from my previous birth. I said something to the midwife when she confirmed that the baby– I think it was ROT. I was just like, “I can’t birth an OP baby.” She just looked at me in the eyes and was just like, “No. You couldn’t vaginally birth the last one, but this is a different baby and this is a different birth. The majority of these babies turn and are going to get in the right position.” So that set me at ease. 

I started having prodromal labor starting around 38 weeks and then the day after my due date, I started having lower back cramping and aches. It felt like period cramps, super mild. I said to my husband, “You know, lower back pain can be an early sign of labor.” At this point, he just looked at me and was like, “What isn’t an early sign of labor?” And I think if looks could kill, I was so annoyed at that point. Which, in all fairness, I had been telling him every single day for two weeks that I thought I was in early labor and it was all just prodromal labor. 

Meagan: Hey, you were still having laboring signs and prodromal labor is still labor. It’s just not progressive labor. 

Rebecca: Right, exactly. So I didn’t appreciate his smart-alec remark. But I did try timing them. There was no peak. They just fizzled out. That evening, I lost my mucus plug again. I told my husband and my mother-in-law, “I think tonight might be the night.” But I didn’t want to jinx it, so I didn’t send my older kids home with her because I had done that the last time and I had to do the walk of shame where she had to bring our kid back to us because I didn’t go into labor. So I was like, “Okay. We are just going to go to bed.”

I went to bed at 10:30 that night downstairs in our guest bedroom because the struggle was real with the pillows, getting comfortable, and that whole third-trimester routine. One hour later, after I had gone to sleep, I woke up to a contraction. I stood up and immediately heard a pop and my water broke. I went to the bathroom to check the color and make sure it was clear, and the contractions were coming. This was real. And so I just knew that we needed to leave for the hospital as soon as possible. 

The problem was that my husband was upstairs asleep and I literally could not walk past our kitchen. In our kitchen, I fell down to my hands and knees. I thought I was screaming his name, but he told me later that I was just actually whisper-screaming and he doesn’t even know how he woke up. He heard a weird noise and apparently I was whispering, but it was weird. 

He came downstairs and in my mind, I’m on my kitchen floor and I’m like, “I’m totally getting the epidural. I have nothing left to prove. I’m getting that epidural as soon as we get there,” which, hindsight is 20/20. I was obviously in transition at this point, but he called his sister. Thankfully, she only lived two streets away so she was at our house in five minutes. I told him, “You need to call the on-call midwife and let them know we’re coming.” He hadn’t packed a bag yet. He did not have a hospital bag packed. He’s like, “I can’t call.” So he put it on speaker phone, dialed it, and set it down on the floor while I’m on my hands and knees working through contractions and he was running around packing a bag. 

So the midwife, she’s like, “How far apart are your contractions?” And I’m just like, “They’re back to back. They’re double peaking. I can’t get off the floor.” And she’s like, “Okay. You need to come in soon.” “That’s the plan. We’re heading in soon.” 

So somehow, they get me to the car and before we get to the car, I told my husband, I’m like, “Hey, grab one of those puppy pads that we never used in the closet,” because we had just gotten a new car two months before and obviously, my water was leaking. So I was in the back seat riding on my knees holding the back of the headrest and we get in the car. We start driving and all of a sudden, my contractions started spacing out again. I was like, “Oh, this is so nice. I’m getting a break finally,” which, once again, hindsight is 20/20. Contractions start typically spacing out right when you’re supposed to start pushing. 

We’re halfway to the hospital and my body just starts bearing down. We’re in the car and I’m like, “Oh my gosh. I’m pushing and we’re in a car.” My husband was like, “Do I need to pull over?” But at this point, we’re on a bridge. We drove from Louisville over to Indiana to give birth. We’re on the bridge over the Ohio River in between the two states and I was like, “No. You cannot pull over right now.” I said, “You need to call the hospital and tell them to be waiting for us. This is an emergency situation.” 

Meagan: I might have a baby on the side of the road.

Rebecca: Yeah. At that point, I’m like, “There’s no way by the time an ambulance gets there.” 

Meagan: Oh yeah. No, it was probably best to just keep going. 

Rebecca: It was just like, “Keep going.”

Meagan: Yeah. 

Rebecca: He calls the hospital and it’s this lady. She’s like, “Sure. Just come in and you can go up to labor and delivery.” He’s like, “No. You don’t understand. My wife is having a baby,” and she’s just giving him the runaround. I was like, “Tell her that I’m a third-time mom and I’m pushing.” He told her that and she was like, “One moment,” and immediately transferred him to the emergency room department. They said they would be waiting for us and we were like, “Okay good. That’s what we like to hear.” 

We were almost there. My body’s bearing down. I pulled down my pants and stick my hand down to make sure I don’t feel a head because I am pushing hard. Actually, I pooped in the car and it landed on the puppy pad thankfully. 

Meagan: Hey!

Rebecca: I was mortified. Well, I think I was more– it’s so silly. I was like, “It’s a new car and I just pooped in our new car!” But you know. 

Meagan: But we all know that pooping is a sure sign that a baby is coming, so it’s not like it was a bad thing. 

Rebecca: No. I just, you know. It would have been nice to–

Meagan: What did your husband say about that?

Rebecca: Later, he actually left the hospital to go clean out the car a couple of hours after. 

Meagan: “I’m going to go clean that up.”

Rebecca: Yeah. You would not want that sitting in the car. But he said it wasn’t bad because it all was on the puppy pad. 

Meagan: So you just fold it up and put it in the garbage. 

Rebecca: Yeah, it wasn’t bad. So that’s my tip for all you listeners. Have a puppy pad in your car just in case. 

Meagan: Yes. Puppy pad and a bag or something for vomit. No matter how far along you are in labor, something to do that because you never know. Sorry, my dog’s toy is squeaking in the background. You never know when you are going to poop or puke. 

Rebecca: Yep, very fair. I definitely puked in my first labor. So anyway, we get to the hospital and they’re waiting. I can see the team outside. They come up to the door on the side that I’m on. She checks to make sure that there’s not a head and she’s like, “You defecated, but that is normal.” She’s trying to reassure me. I’m like, “I know it’s normal to poop. It’s okay.”

They’re trying to convince me to get on the gurney and I’m like, “I’m not laying down on that. I will crawl onto my hands and knees.” This entire time, I pretty much have not been off of my hands and knees. So they get a sheet and cover me because my pants were off at this point and they wheel me up to labor and delivery on this gurney with me on my hands and knees. 

They get up. I have my eyes closed the whole time. They get up to labor and delivery and somebody whispers in my ear and says, “Hey Rebecca, this is Sarah. You’re going to be okay.” It was my favorite nurse who was there with my traumatic birth and stayed the entire time. She was actually a student midwife too, so I was just immediately put at ease. They get me up. They know they’re not going to be able to COVID test me so they put me in the COVID positive room because they’re obviously not going to stick a Q-tip up my nose at this point. 

The ER people just had no idea what to do. They were like, “Do we need to run a line? Should we run an IV?” Sarah, the nurse, was just like, “There’s no time for that. You’re not running an IV on her right now.” They’re trying to convince me to get over into the labor and delivery bed, but I don’t want to move. They’re like, “We promise you that it’s much more comfortable than the gurney. Please.” So they finally scoot them side by side and I crawl over. I stay on my hands and knees and they get the monitors on me. She checks me and she’s like, “Oh yeah. You’re complete.” 

I was like, “What station is the baby?” She just laughs because, in my head, I was complete with my last pregnancy and still pushed for four hours, but she goes, “The baby’s right there. You’re +3. This baby’s coming.” In the background, I can just hear that they’re on the phone. There are no midwives on the premises and there’s no OB. They’re kind of panicking because the first call midwife is over across the street with a birth center patient and so she can’t leave, so then they had one driving from 20 minutes away, and then the OB that I do not like from my C-section, they called him and he was on his way. He was not the person that I wanted to see either. 

But everybody’s like 20 minutes away. I said, “I have to push.” And she’s like, “Okay, you’re fine. You can push.” I literally pushed. Baby came out in that first push fully. No head molding or anything and I just lay down. I was so exhausted. Then I turned around. They handed her to me and told me it was a girl, which, I was shocked because I thought it was going to be a boy. It was such a different pregnancy. So yeah. The nurse ended up catching her. I think it was 15 minutes after we got to the hospital. She was born at 12:26 a.m. and I had woken up to that first contraction at 11:30 p.m. 

Meagan: Oh!

Rebecca: So it was pretty much exactly an hour and it was just wild. 

Meagan: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. 

Rebecca: I could not believe it. So yeah. That’s the story. It was just a whirlwind. 

Meagan: Yeah, yeah!

Rebecca: Yeah. I’m kind of scared to have another kid honestly because I’m like, “What happens if you don’t get to the hospital?”

Meagan: I know. Well, I mean, it happens and people usually call EMTs and things like that, but yeah. You might have to plan first sign of anything maybe going. I don’t know. It’s totally what you want more.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Meagan: Another thing, too, is sometimes with a history of pretty solid prodromal labor, as a doula, if I have a client that has had a week of prodromal labor, in my mind, I kind of anticipate potentially a precipitous birth. It doesn’t always happen. It doesn’t always happen, but especially for a mom that has had a baby before and her cervix has dilated and effaced and everything, prodromal labor can sometimes be a sign that labor could, not always, but could go quickly.

Rebecca: Well, I think I remember reading that, or what I at least told myself was that every contraction I had then in the moment was, “This is one less that I’ll have later.”

Meagan: Yeah. 

Rebecca: I don’t know how accurate that is but it seemed true at least in my case that I had very few, yeah. I mean, it was just so fast but it was interesting. My body, looking back, did not get off of my hands and knees. I delivered on my hands and knees. 

I think the baby was turning. That’s what my body knew because it felt crazy in my body. I don’t know. I felt like she was banging around. I don’t know if that’s right. She was obviously rotating or something but my body knew that this was the position I needed to be in and I did not get out of it for anyone. That was it. Hands and knees, the whole time.

Meagan: Intuitive. Your body was intuitively going into that position which I think is amazing. I think it’s amazing that our bodies can communicate to us that way where you get into a position and you’re like, “Nope. This is not working,” and then you get in a position and you’re like, “I’m not leaving. This is where I’m staying.”

Yeah. That is so awesome though. I love that your provider– I love that one, you did research and you spoke with your provider and were able to have that conversation of, “Okay, yeah.” And then I also love, this is not in regards to the laceration, but I also love when your baby was in a less ideal– as what the world says is less than ideal– not LOA but ROT, she’s like, “Yeah. You’re baby’s going to rotate. It’s going to be fine.”

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah.

Meagan: You kind of needed that. 

Rebecca: Oh yeah. I think mentally, I had hit a wall even though the whole time I had been listening to affirmations and getting in the right headspace, but then right there at the end, it was suddenly just this mental game of, “Can I do this? I don’t know if I can do this.” I was so thankful because I feel like it really put me over that hump for sure. 

Meagan: Yeah, for sure. Well, awesome. Well, if you guys do end up having more children, hopefully, you make it to the hospital or wherever you decide to birth. Hopefully, it goes well. 

Rebecca: Well, yeah. Somebody suggested a home birth and I’m like, “A home birth midwife would not have gotten there in time and my husband would have been catching that baby.”

Meagan: Yeah. That happened to a friend of mine who had the same thing. It was very precipitous. The midwife was not even that far, but she also said, “I probably waited too long to tell her to come.” She was in denial. She was like, “I just don’t. I don’t really know. I’m okay. I’m doing okay.” And then it shifted so fast and I’m like, “Yeah. You probably should have called her.” She even said that. She was like, “Yeah, I probably should have called her sooner.” Her husband caught the baby.

Rebecca: Oh wow. 

Meagan: The midwife was there to catch the placenta. 

Rebecca: See? Yeah. That’s essentially, I think, what happened. The midwife got there in time for me to deliver the placenta at the hospital at least. But yeah. Yep. Nobody was there for the actual baby. 

Meagan: Nobody was there, yep. And that happens. That happens. Sometimes these babies– and like you said, there was no shaping of the head. Baby dropped, rotated, and came out. 

Rebecca: Yep.

Meagan: Yep. Your body did some awesome work. I love that. So with your cervical laceration, obviously, it didn’t necessarily stop you from dilating. 

Rebecca: No, not at all. 

Meagan: There wasn’t any scar tissue or anything like that. Have you, in your research, found that sometimes where there are lacerations to the cervix, it can delay dilation or cause issues with dilating? 

Rebecca: Well, yeah. There was an article also on cervical scar tissue. I was concerned about that. I remember bringing it up to my midwives and they’re like, “We won’t really know until you’re in labor if you have a lot of scar tissue and if you do, we might try to just break it up or your body will eventually.” They said, “A lot of times, there’s a big jump in dilation.” So you’re showing all of the signs that you’re not very dilated and then all of a sudden, you jump from a 3 to an 8 and that scar tissue breaks up essentially.

So I mean, I guess presumably there could have been scar tissue and it was just–

Meagan: It just broke on its own.

Rebecca: It broke open an hour before the baby was born. I don’t really know but there wasn’t any by the time I got to the hospital that was causing issues.

Meagan: Which is great, yeah. Have you had any problems monthly with pain or anything like that?

Rebecca: No. I need to probably go back to a physical pelvic floor therapist. I did go with my third pregnancy because halfway through, I started feeling some pressure and whatnot. It was really helpful, so I’m all about that soapbox too about pelvic floor therapy. 

Meagan: Oh, I know. 

Rebecca: I have not prioritized it but I was telling a friend the other day, I’m like, “I don’t think things are back to normal after that really fast labor and pushing.” Thankfully, I only had a first-degree superficial tear that they didn’t stitch, but it’s still after three pregnancies. Things are feeling not painful, it’s just that I feel like some therapy could be helpful for me maybe. 

Meagan: Yeah, for sure. We’re going to be recording another episode with a pelvic floor specialist here in the next couple of weeks. 

Rebecca: Awesome. 

Meagan: Yeah, stay tuned everybody for that because it’s going to be really great. She has a lot of really, really, really great info on that. She has, oh my gosh, so many amazing things just on her Instagram. So that will be good. But you know, I think that vaginal or non-vaginal, pelvic floor stuff is really good to do to just tune in, learn how to strengthen and release, and all of that jazz down there. So yeah. I mean, I’ve only had one vaginal birth with two C-sections and I feel like I probably need some more pelvic floor love. I’ve gone, but I probably need more too. 

Well, that’s awesome. So I was trying to find the PubMed article that you were referencing. Do you know the title of it? Is it the Intrapartum cervical lacerations? 

Rebecca: Yes. It’s that one. 

Meagan: Okay. That’s the one I found. Perfect. Yeah. They did quite a significant study. There were just over 81,000 deliveries in this study and it said that 131 or .16% were complicated by cervical lacerations. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it happens. It says that a lot of the time they get cervical cerclages, so I was wondering if anyone ever talked to you about cervical cerclage.

Rebecca: Nope, they never mentioned it. 

Meagan: That’s awesome. Yeah. I have a friend that has a cervical cerclage. When she gets pregnant, she starts dilating really, really, really early. Like, really early. Like, 18 weeks. So they had to do a cerclage. But anyway, it says, “Regression and cervical cerclage precipitous labor.”

Rebecca: Really? I totally didn’t even know that. 

Meagan: Oh, so I saw precipitous labor and I thought, “Oh, that’s really interesting.” But I think that’s probably because it happens so fast and baby just comes out really, really fast, but you had precipitous labor the second time and didn’t have any further complications so that’s really awesome.

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. 

Meagan: So anyway, I’m going to link this article to the show notes and you can check it out if you guys want to learn more about cervical lacerations and how they could impact future vaginal deliveries. But yeah, I mean, it still looks like many people go on and have uncomplicated vaginal deliveries. 

Rebecca: Right. The way it was explained to me is that it could happen a lot more than they realize where they knew because of the C-section, but you could tear your cervix during birth and if you’re not hemorrhaging or bleeding a lot, then they might not even catch it. It might just heal on its own. That could lead to scar tissue so I am curious if it is more common and we just have no idea. 

Meagan: Right. And that’s another thing, even talking about uterine rupture, right? There are different types of uterine rupture. There’s dehiscence and stuff and yeah, obviously, with uterine rupture we usually know, but there are probably many times that people have dehiscences where it’s really thin or windows. We see windows but we see them because you are cut open and you see the uterus. But if you don’t have a C-section, we could still have windows, but we don’t see them so we might have more uterine windows than we know but we are just not seeing them. So yeah. It’s interesting that if things aren’t coming forth in concern or bleeding and things like that, then we may not ever know. 

Rebecca: Yeah, exactly. 

Meagan: But yeah. In this conclusion, it says, “Intrapartum cervical lacerations do not appear to affect the outcome of subsequent pregnancies.” So that’s pretty awesome. And obviously, it went up a little bit. We are going to link the Special Scars Group. We’ll do our Special Scars Blog, and then I’m also going to link this PubMed article in the show notes. So if you guys want to go check that out, click on the show notes below and have fun reading. 

Well, it was wonderful to have you and hear your beautiful stories. I mean, they are all so different in so many ways. It’s really crazy to think about how you’re the same person, but you’ve had three very different deliveries. I think that is birth and that’s how it can always be. I think especially when we are going into a VBAC, it’s important for us to remember that just because one birth was one way doesn’t mean it’s going to be the next birth. That’s not going to be our story for every birth because I know it’s easy to do. We know what we know. We know what we’ve lived through and even you said, yeah. It’s easy to reflect back or maybe be triggered and things, but just know that every delivery is different even though you are the same person. 

Every baby, every delivery, and every birth is so different. Try to remember that as you are going through things. There may be similarities, but it doesn’t mean it’s the same. 

Rebecca: Right, absolutely. 

Meagan: Yes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I can’t wait for the world to hear you. 

Rebecca: Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. 

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 Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. 

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This episode is exclusively with Meagan and Julie, here to answer your burning questions! Topics include due dates, induction, membrane sweeping, diastasis recti, scar tissue, pelvis size, and head size.

We also have a sad announcement to share. Thank you, VBAC Link Community, for being with us through all of our seasons of change and growth. We feel that you are there for us as much as we love being there for you!

Additional links

ACOG Practice Bulletin 146: “Management of Late-Term and Postterm Pregnancies”

Julie Francom Birth Photography

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Julie: Welcome to The VBAC Link podcast. This is Episode 194 and this is Julie. I’m here with Meagan today. We have a not-as-fun of an episode. It’s fun because we are going to do some FAQ’s. We are going to talk about questions that we get all of the time. We had you guys submit questions on our social media pages, questions that we have been getting through our email, so we are so happy to answer your questions as usual. We also have an announcement to make that is not as fun. 

But before we do any of those things, Meagan has a Review of the Week for us. 

Review of the Week

Meagan: Yes, I do. This is from Ashley. She says, “This podcast is a gold mine of knowledge when it comes to VBACs. I have been bingeing these episodes ever since I got pregnant with my second. I have learned so much and gained a lot of confidence on how to find a truly supportive provider. I have enjoyed the birth stories so much. I mostly listen on my commute and can also say that these ladies are my car doulas.”

That’s fun. 

Julie: Yay!

Meagan: I have cried tears of happiness and/or tears of pain and understanding during so many of these stories. No matter what happens in my birth in August, which I hope will be a VBAC, this podcast has prepared me for it. P.S. I am now caught up on all of the episodes and I am sad that I have to wait for just one weekly episode.” 

That is so hard. You know what? I have listened to podcasts like that. I am a big– 

Julie: You just binge.

Meagan: I am a big crime podcast listener. I will wait and wait and wait, and then I will catch up really fast, then I’m like, “No. I need to listen any time I want. All day every day if I need to.” It’s so hard to wait for the next week’s episode. 

So Ashley, you actually posted this in April. It doesn’t say the year. It just says April 27th, so if it was this year and your VBAC is coming really soon–

Julie: I think if you double-click the cell, it brings up the year. 

Meagan: 2021. So Ashley, you– 

Julie: Already had her baby. 

Meagan: No, she’s due in August. 

Julie: Girl, it’s 2022 right now. 

Meagan: Oh duh. It’s 2022. So Ashley, tell us how your birth went. 

Julie: We may need to– our admin, Sarah, has left and she was so good at putting all of the new reviews in our spreadsheet. I don’t think either of us has done that for a long time. 

Meagan: I have not. We need some more, so drop us some reviews. Go to Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever and drop us some reviews. We would love it and very much appreciate it. And Ashley, if you are still listening, we would love to know how things went and we are sending you congrats right now.

The VBAC Link’s Announcement

Julie: Aww. 

Meagan: Okay. 

Julie: Oh my gosh.

Meagan: Ms. Julie, I am turning the time over to you. 

Julie: No, the time is for you. I don’t want to tell them. I don’t want to say it. I feel like I am doing something wrong. It’s the first time I feel like I’m doing something wrong. 

Meagan: So, we do. We have some news and the news is pretty crummy in my opinion. Julie is leaving us. She is leaving us. She is no longer going to be with The VBAC Link, although, let’s be honest, I’ll probably be bringing her back here and there. 

Julie: Will I ever really be gone? 

Meagan: Yeah, will you ever really, really be gone? I don’t know if I’m going to be able to allow that to happen. But that is the truth. So, Julie, I don’t know if you want to share a little bit. 

Julie: Yeah. 

Meagan: I don’t know if you want to share a little bit. I am just so sad. 

Julie: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s sad, but it’s the right choice for me. Oh my gosh. I don’t know how much I should share or how much is appropriate to share. First of all, there’s nothing wrong. Meagan and I are 110% good. I love Meagan. She loves me, at least I hope she still loves me. She hasn’t told me otherwise.  

Meagan: I adore you. 

Julie: There’s nothing wrong with The VBAC Link or with any– there’s no controversy or drama or anything like that. It’s just that there are things in my life that have lined up in a way that it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to continue with The VBAC Link anymore. But I am so grateful to Meagan for keeping it forward and I know that she is going to do an amazing job doing that. I’m still in half of the course. I’m still on half the blogs. There are going to be remnants of me.  

But yeah. I guess we can just talk a little bit about how I came to this decision. I think a lot of people would appreciate some vulnerability and some honesty here. Maybe a lot of people here just don’t care very much and that’s totally fine. If you want to know, then definitely stick around, and then we are going to get to answering some VBAC FAQ’s. I don’t know if it’s FAQ. 

Meagan: Just Q&A’s. 

Julie: Yeah, Q&A’s. Those are the right letters. I don’t know how much you really know about this, but I had a pretty traumatic childhood with a lot of trauma involved growing up. I have recently been diagnosed with PTSD related to that childhood. I know that a lot of people here can relate to that. Trauma is trauma, right? Whether it happens in childhood, whether it happens in adulthood, whether it happens because of this thing, that thing, or childbirth, or whatever, trauma is trauma. Trauma responses are the same no matter what. Everyone’s trauma stories are different, but trauma responses are the same. 

I have pretty complicated trauma from my childhood that happened for many, many, many years. I thought I was doing fine and coping well through life, and I was because I was really good at stuffing things down, not feeling things, just trucking on, moving forward, and pushing through. That was my identity and then I started having kids because kids bring up– you guys can probably relate to this– all of the emotions, all of the feelings, all of the hormone shifts, and everything like that. Having kids started bringing up all of these things that I have been stuffing down and moving fine and doing comfortably not addressing and ignoring throughout my entire life. 

And so slowly but surely, I started having a lot of mental health issues. I was doing pretty well but the depression and the anxiety came. My different triggers with PTSD started showing up. It came to a point last year at the beginning of 2021 where I knew that something had to change. Something had to change. I was so anxious. I felt like everything was out of control and was kind of spiraling. I was not doing very good in life and I knew that I needed to be better for myself, better for my kids, better for my husband, better in all of my relationships, better in my partnership with Meagan, a better doula for my doula clients and now, I’m turning into a birth photographer. 

I started taking charge of my mental health and I went into a pretty big program that took a lot of time which is one of the reasons why we decided to take a break from the podcast because I was investing so much time in my mental health, healing my past, and healing the traumas that I had dealt with so long ago, that we needed a break from the podcast. 

And so anyway, it’s been a little while since things have settled down. I am doing a lot better now, but I am also trying to figure out how to exist. I don’t know if that’s the right word. How to find the right balance between me while I am still healing– it’s probably going to be a lifelong thing. As all people do, we all have our things. We all have our issues to work on, right? I’m just trying to find my balance and what feels right to me. 

I used to be the person that gets a lot of things thrown at her. I get a lot of things done. I knock stuff out. I accomplish so many things and everybody says, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know how you do so much.” Well, I’ll tell you how I do so much. I do so much by completely ignoring my self-care, by having a really unhealthy relationship with work and no boundaries with people and things. I’m rediscovering how to find a balance in all of those things. And so I have a lot of priorities right now. 

First of all, of course, is my family– my husband and my kids. Second of all is myself. My therapist gets mad at me all of the time for not making myself a priority in my life. But I am working on that and that self-care but also, healing and making better and improving constantly those important, eternal relationships to me which are my family and myself. Also, my business is now birth photography so if you are in Utah, I know a girl who can take your birth pictures for you. I’m reidentifying that and giving more to my usual clients as a birth photographer and doula. I am still a doula as well, a doula and photographer together which is called a doula-tog if you didn’t know. Doula-togs are a thing now. It’s pretty exciting. 

I’ve really invested a lot of myself into those areas. I’m improving myself, my relationships, and my other business which has been very fulfilling. Unfortunately, The VBAC Link is the next priority. I say “unfortunately” because after I put all of my time and energy into these other priorities of mine, there’s just not a lot left to give to The VBAC Link and it makes me sad to say. I am so sad to say it. I can’t continue with the unhealthy relationship with everything that I have had going on in my life. 

And so this is me setting my healthy boundaries. It has taken a really long time. I think I started really considering it in January and now it’s July. It has taken a really long time to get comfortable with that because The VBAC Link has been such a big part of my identity and who I am as a birth worker for so long. It’s taken a long time for me to get comfortable with the need to let it go so that I free up myself to put the energy into my higher priorities and the things that matter more and that are more significant in my life. 

I guess that is the best way to say it but t’s hard because The VBAC Link has been so significant. My priorities are kids, the husband, birth photography, and VBAC Link, and then maybe myself, right? So probably that’s not a good thing, right? So I need to, yeah. I don’t know. 

I’m just rambling now, but I love The VBAC Link. I love The VBAC Link. I still will always be a founder of The VBAC Link. I still will always have so much love for Meagan, The VBAC Link, and all of you on your journeys. I’ll still listen to your stories and keep up with everything that’s going on. I’ll pop in probably for a podcast here and there with Meagan. But yeah. There’s been a huge need for a big personal shift in my life and unfortunately, this is the thing. I don’t know what to say.

Meagan: This is the thing. It’s just one of the things that need to be eliminated. It sucks. It sucks. 

Julie: It totally sucks. 

Meagan: It sucks really bad, but I just want you to know how proud of you I am because I know it wasn’t an easy choice or decision at all. I know that. I know that it was not easy. I’m not going to let you go too far. 

Julie: Yeah, we’ll see each other. We’ll be around. 

Meagan: Yes. 

Julie: At births together, probably. 

Meagan: I’m excited that you’re still doing photography and still being in the birth world a little bit and finding your place there, but yeah. I’m going to miss you but don’t worry, listeners. You’ll still hear her every once in a while.

Julie: Yeah, and shoot me a message. You can follow me on, I don’t know. Can I do a shameless plug for my business? You can check me out on Facebook or Instagram. Just search for Julie Francom Birth and you can find my Instagram and Facebook.

Meagan: Yeah, go find her. 

Julie: You can reach out to me. I would love to hear from you still because as of now, I am not involved anymore in the day-to-day operations and the messaging, the emails, and all of the intricate things that we do. 

Meagan: I know, all the things, yeah. 

Julie: It will be sad, but yeah. Come say “hi”. I would love to hear from you. 

Meagan: Yes. Let her know that you are still with her. 

Julie: Yeah. All right, let’s get past the sappy stuff. I don’t do well with it. 

Meagan: I know. I’m like, “Can we just not talk about this right now?” I’m not accepting this right now. 

Q&A’s

Meagan: We do. We have questions that some of our followers have asked and it’s interesting. One of the questions that we saw come up is truly one of the most common questions that we get, I think. I think it’s one of the most common things. It’s about due dates. I shouldn’t say it’s one of the most common, but we had a question asking about a provider who is wanting her to have her baby immediately because they want to avoid a big baby. They want to know how far or if it’s even okay to go past your due date. 

Gosh, Julie. I struggle with this one a little bit because don’t you feel like it’s ever since the ARRIVE study? 

Julie: Yeah. Gosh. You know, I feel like it is. I feel like it’s more so. There’s more pressure on due dates. There always has been, but I feel like everyone wants to induce. Everyone wants to put a lot of pressure on you. Not everybody, but there are a lot of places and a lot of places I wouldn’t have expected to do that. 

Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. It just seems like this due date is such a thing. You know, with due dates, it’s one of those things that you have to do what’s best for you and follow your heart but these providers are wanting to induce. And so I’m actually going to steer away– because there were two kinds of questions in regards to due dates. 

One was “How far past my due date am I okay to go?” But there was another one saying that they want to. I’m trying to look for it right here. 

Julie: I have something about what ACOG says in our files somewhere. I’m going to find it about due dates. 

Meagan: Oh, it was stripping the membranes. It was stripping the membranes because the doctor– and this is at 38 weeks. The doctor was wanting her to go into labor immediately, like ASAP, and wanted her baby to be smaller. It was a big baby versus a small one. It is a small part of VBAC stats. I just want to talk about membrane sweeping, inducing, and due dates. I’m going to talk about three of those things. 

Julie: All of it. 

Meagan: All at the same time because they kind of all go into play with one another, right? So let’s talk about stripping membranes. Sweeping a membrane or stripping a membrane is where your provider will go in and separate the membrane. They go into the cervix, separate the membrane, and sweep around. It releases prostaglandins and hormones to help labor start. 

However, it doesn’t always happen like that. It doesn’t just start all the time. I wanted to talk about what it looks like. I don’t know if there are actually any stats. Julie, you guys, this is going to be really hard because Julie is such a stat person. I’m going to be writing to her all the time and be like, “Are there any stats that you know about this?” I don’t know about the stats or the actual percentage of if it’s going to work or not, but this is just a good rule of thumb for considering membrane sweeping that a midwife a long time ago gave me. I’ll tell you and you can take it with what you want. 

So if the cervix is “primed”, and I am doing primed with quotations. If the cervix is looking ready, this is the rule of thumb she gave me. It’s 2-3 centimeters dilated, 70-80+% effaced, and the cervix has come at least midline meaning your cervix is not really posterior. It’s not really hard to reach. It’s lining up more with the birth canal. It’s mid. If those things are happening, a sweep is usually something or could be something that may be more effective and bring on labor with a sweep. 

However, if we are 1 centimeter dilated, 50% effaced, the cervix is really far back there and really not showing signs of readiness, then the chances of a sweep working are a lot lower. And so at 38 weeks, a provider stripping membranes already at 38 weeks, there is a good chance that the cervix will not be “primed” or in an ideal position for a sweep to bring labor on. 

Some of the pros of sweeping membranes are that it can completely skip an induction because it can work. It can work and people can go into spontaneous labor with that. It’s great, right? We don’t have to use Pitocin and do those types of things. However, if your cervix isn’t super ready and we do a sweep, it could cause something called prodromal labor. Julie knows what prodromal labor is really well because she had, did you say weeks, Julie?

Julie: Yeah, it was three weeks. 

Meagan: Yeah. Three weeks of prodromal labor which is where your body is contracting and acting as though it is trying to go into labor, but it never really turns the curve or the point actually to begin labor. That can leave for very, very, very exhausted mamas, so when labor does kick in, we are tired and do not want to labor, right? 

So it can bring on prodromal labor because it stimulates the cervix and the uterus just enough to think that we are going to try but because our body’s not ready, it can just contract, contract, contract with no real end result of a baby for a long period of time. So those are some cons and pros. 

Also, the more sweeping and the more things we have in there, the more we are introducing potential bacteria and things like that. Back in the day when I was expecting, my midwife actually offered to sweep my membranes and because I have a history of PROM, premature rupture of membranes, with labor not beginning, I was a little nervous because I was worried that it might weaken my sac or introduce bacteria because I had a provider a long time ago, while I was preparing, say something like, “Your membranes may have been weakened and broke,” so I don’t know. There aren’t any stats on that that I know of necessarily, but I just didn’t want anything extra introduced. 

So you’ve just got to take that into consideration as well that you are putting bacteria in and introducing potential bacteria if you are doing a membrane sweep. But it can be something to help avoid induction and if you’ve got a provider that is saying, “Hey, we are going to schedule a C-section because we are not having a baby,” then maybe that is going to be a good alternative. Julie, I’ve heard your mouse clicking. Did you find the stat that you wanted?

Julie: Yes. It’s ACOG’s guidelines for postterm pregnancies and induction. This is Practice Bulletin 146. It’s called “Management of Late-Term and Postterm Pregnancies”. What I think is really interesting is that this opinion hasn’t changed after the ARRIVE trial. They actually reaffirmed their stats on postterm pregnancies after the ARRIVE trial was published. So I really like it. There are two things that I wanted to talk about in relation to the induction of labor. 

First of all, they say at the very last page, it’s the very last section of the bulletin, they talk about TOLAC, vaginal birth after Cesarean, and management of postterm pregnancies. They say right here that– actually, I’ll just read it. Well, I don’t want to read all of it because it’s really long. Okay. 

“For women who desire TOLAC and who have not had a prior vaginal delivery, awaiting spontaneous labor as opposed to undergoing labor induction most likely avoids further additional increased risk of uterine rupture. Thus, TOLAC remains an option for women with postterm pregnancies who have not had a prior vaginal delivery, but these women should be counseled regarding these unusual risks** such as failure of TOLAC and uterine rupture.”

So it says in their bulletin right there that basically these guidelines that they are talking about apply to women even if they have had a prior Cesarean delivery and desire a TOLAC or a VBAC. 

The second one, or actually there are two other things I want to say. There is a Cochrane review that they site. A Cochrane review is a meta-analysis of several studies. I love Cochrane reviews. They are my favorite types of studies and data because they are usually very, very reliable. They talk about the different outcomes between expectant management and induction of labor. Now, this is before the ARRIVE trial, and remember, the ARRIVE trial is just one single study. Cochrane reviews look at many, many studies and gather the outcomes of all of the studies. 

I love this because a lot of times, you’ll hear providers say, “Oh, your risk of rupture increases after 40 weeks. Your risk of stillbirth doubles.” They’re talking about relative risk versus absolute risk. The risks for those are very, very, very small still. We are talking about .002% of stillbirth to .004% of stillbirth. And yes, that technically doubles, but it is still a very small risk. Knowing the numbers and knowing what risk you are assuming is very important when you are making decisions for your birth. 

I like this because it says, “The number of inductions of labor needed to prevent one perinatal death (or one stillbirth) is 410.” So you would need 410 inductions to eliminate one perinatal death. It says, “There are no incidents in the rates of neonatal intensive care admission in this study”, so your baby is not necessarily more likely to need NICU time for induction. That was a review of 10 trials, so over 6,000 infants. 

Basically, they summarize at the end. They say, “In summary, based on available evidence, induction of labor between 41 weeks and 0 days and 42 weeks and 0 days can be considered** and an induction of labor after 42 weeks and 0 days is recommended given evidence of increased perinatal morbidity and mortality.” So here, ACOG itself says that looking at all of the evidence, it’s safe to go to 42 weeks of pregnancy before recommending a routine induction of labor due to postterm pregnancies. But we have this sudden influx of people rushing to induce at 39 and 40 and even 41 weeks. A lot of people, even my clients will say, “I’m not comfortable inducing before 41 weeks, but if I get to 41 weeks, I’ll probably induce.“

All of the evidence out there says you may be safe to go on a little bit longer. But of course, we always advocate for you using your intuition, taking all of the evidence, and making a plan that feels best for you and your baby. But yeah, that’s what ACOG says. Evidence applies. And I love how after, they say, “Sure, yeah. Going between 42 weeks and 0 days and 42 weeks and 6 days, that’s when we are going to recommend it.” And then afterward, they go on and affirm and say, “Yeah. This is even for VBAC too. It’s for people who want a trial of labor after a Cesarean. 

Meagan: Yeah. What’s interesting is that for this follower, the doctor is wanting to start inducing-type processes at 38 weeks. And I’m like, “Why at 38 weeks? Why are we starting so early?” But it’s because we are seeing this shift. It seems like the 41-week mark is just going away. It’s like 39 is 40 and 40 weeks is 41. It’s like 41 is nonexistent. It’s too far. I don’t know. That’s just how it feels to me. 

Julie: Yeah. I see that too. 

Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so another question is “First child was breech, so the C-section delivery took place. Currently pregnant with number two and my doctor moved my due date up one week versus last missed period calculation. Due to baby’s size on ultrasound, from what you know, how much past my due date, whichever one is still safe?” 

Look, I’m reading the same question. So yeah, we just talked about that. Okay, let’s see.

 

“I have had an emergency C-section as my baby had their cord wrapped around their neck three times and their heart rate was dropping. I was not able to go into labor at all, so what is the likelihood of that happening again? I really want a VBAC but am worried as I never went into labor.”

Julie: Hey, I never went into labor. 

Meagan: Exactly. I never was able to have a chance to go into labor either. Just because you didn’t go into labor once does not necessarily mean you are never going to go into labor again. I am a true believer that people’s bodies don’t just hold on to babies for life. I do believe that we will all go into labor eventually. I’m sure there are those random cases somewhere out there that maybe babies were carried longer or something, but yeah. The likelihood of your body not going into labor is low. The likelihood or the chance of your body going into labor before a provider may want you to go into labor– does that make sense what I am saying?

Julie: Yeah your provider might want you to go into labor before your body is going to be ready. 

Meagan: Before your body is ready, yes. And there is a chance that your body will not go into labor by the time your provider is wanting you to go into labor, but that doesn’t mean you are not going to go into labor. You are likely going to go into labor and it’s just a matter of trusting and waiting for your body to get there. 

So yeah, that would be my answer to that. Julie, anything that you would add?

Julie: Sorry, I forgot the actual question. I was just following along with you. 

Meagan: The chances of her not going into labor. 

Julie: Oh my gosh, yeah. 

Meagan: She had a C-section baby. Heart rate was dropping. It looks like the cord was wrapped around their neck. She is wondering what the chances are of her not going into labor.

Julie: Yeah, no. Honestly, I don’t know if there is a statistic for that. I remember one case a really, really old long time ago where there was a woman that had, oh my gosh. I don’t even remember. I can’t even speak educated about this. 

Meagan: Pregnant for a long time. 

Julie: She was pregnant and the baby had passed around the 20th or 30th week and she didn’t know. The baby was in there for decades. 

Meagan: Oh. Oh, I think I remember that I have heard a story about that. 

Julie: Do you remember that? There was one. There was one time that that happened. There might be more, but we are talking about one-offs here. The odds that your body is just not ever going to go into labor are highly unlikely. This is also speculation, but I have a couple of my IVF moms who have had to get pregnant through IVF and needed a lot of help getting pregnant say that their fertility providers, and I am not an expert in fertility anything, but I’ve had a couple of my clients that have gone through IVF say that if their body has problems producing the hormones to get you pregnant, it might have problems with the hormones needed to go into labor. 

Meagan: Yeah, I’ve heard IVF and things like that might need–

Julie: They might need Pitocin. They might need a little nudge or higher doses of Pitocin.

Meagan: Yeah, they are suggested to be induced due to other things. 

Julie: Yeah. 

Meagan: yeah. 

Julie: But even that is a little bit like maybe, like maybe, but I don’t know. I don’t think there is anything inclusive to say one way or the other in that regard. If there is, definitely let us know or let Meagan know. Message me too, I guess. Let The VBAC Link know.

Meagan: Let The VBAC Link know and I will make sure that Julie knows. 

Julie: Yes. I want to be educated still. 

Meagan: Yes. Okay, so another question is “What role does diastasis recti play when it comes to a successful VBAC?”

So if you don’t know what diastasis recti–

Julie: Diastasis?

Meagan: Diastasis. I always say diastasis. 

Julie: I don’t even know how to say it right. You may be right. I don’t know.

Meagan: I bet it’s diastasis. That sounds more medical. 

Julie: You know what we’re talking about, right people? 

Meagan: Yes. That is the separation of the abdominal wall.  

Julie: The abdominal muscles, yeah. 

Meagan: Yeah. I don’t know if it necessarily plays any role specifically as far as having a VBAC. Have you ever heard of anything like that? I mean, I had a diastasis recti and I had a VBAC after two C-sections. You might have more pelvic pain because mine caused pelvic pain. This is actually a really good question for Gina or our pelvic floor specialists. 

I’m actually going to write that down. We are going to have a pelvic floor specialist on. I’m going to write that down and ask that question, so come back to that. 

Julie: Yeah. 

Meagan: Yeah because I don’t actually know if it does. I don’t think it does. 

Julie: I don’t think it does either. I haven’t heard of anything like that. 

Meagan: Yeah. 

Julie: To me, the abdominal muscles and the uterine muscles are completely separate from each other, but it might impact your pelvic alignment. You might need to take extra care to go to a chiropractor and see a pelvic floor specialist to make sure all of your connective tissues are nice and loose to go into labor. That’s just where my mind goes. 

Meagan: Yeah, yeah. It might cause more discomfort but not necessarily make your chances go down of having a VBAC is what’s in my head. I will try and get that confirmed. 

Okay, let’s see. What other questions? I don’t know if you’re on it. Oh, “what happens to Cesarean scar tissue after you’ve had a VBAC? Do the intense stretching and shrinking help remove adhesions or does it re-adhere?”

Personally, I have dense adhesions and they just continue to come. If I don’t actively work out my adhesions and my scar, I just continue to get adhesions and I can feel them. It’s weird but I can feel them. So once you’ve had a VBAC, I mean, I’ve had a VBAC and mine are still coming. I would say that you still probably need to seek pelvic floor specialists or learn how to properly massage your scar. 

It says, “Do the intense stretching and shrinking help remove adhesions?” I mean, it could maybe stretch it out, but I don’t think it removes.

Julie: Yeah. Yeah. 

Meagan: Yeah, but again, I’m going to throw that one into our pelvic floor specialist episode that’s going to be coming up because I don’t know the exact answer on that. I just don’t know. But from my experience of being seen, the answer is no, it doesn’t necessarily shrink or remove adhesions. 

Julie: Mhmm, yeah. There’s a way to make them more flexible. Everything you say, yes. I’m just going to echo everything. 

Meagan: You can work them out. 

Julie: Yeah and make them more flexible and pliable, but there’s no real way to get rid of them unless you go in and surgically remove them, but then surgically removing them causes more of them so it’s kind of a double-edged sword there. 

Meagan: Yeah, that’s a hard thing. Once you’ve got that scar there, you’ve got it. And adhesions come with any type of scar. It doesn’t just mean C-section either. It’s really any type of scar. 

Okay, so it says, “My first pregnancy was last June and that baby was a C-section. I’m now expecting in November. The reason I needed an emergency was because my son wouldn’t come down due to my pelvis being too small. When I spoke to my new OB about a VBAC, she told me that I wouldn’t be–” 

Can you hear my thoughts as I am reading this?

“When I spoke to my new OB about VBAC, she told me I wouldn’t be a good candidate due to my pelvis being small,** that the size will never change, and I will have the same issue as I did with my second child. I just wanted to know if this is true.”

Meagan: Um, no. 

Julie: No. Not true. 

Meagan: Not true. Not true. Not true, not true, not true. I was also told that my pelvis was too small and I would never get a baby out of it. 

Julie: So was I. A 4lb, 10 oz C-section baby. My VBAC baby was 8lb, 9 oz with a 99th percentile head. How is my pelvis too small for a baby that size?

Meagan: Yes. Let’s talk about heads. There was a question talking about head size. Oh my gosh, I want to see if I can find it. Let me see if I can find it. I’m scrolling through. 

Julie: We need to get wrapping up, actually. 

Meagan: I know we do. Oh my gosh. 

Julie: Unfortunately. 

Meagan: So no, no, no. You still have a chance. I’m so sorry. I’m going to be blunt, but your provider’s just not being supportive. It’s really, really, really hard to diagnose a small pelvis and it’s really rare, so I would say it was more likely due to position or maybe just not enough time or something like that versus the fact that your pelvis was actually too small. 

And oh my gosh, there was a head question and I can’t find it, but I want you to also know because I swear it was something about babies with big heads not fitting out. My baby and Julie just mentioned it, but my babies all have ginormous heads. My VBAC baby had a 99th percentile head. I always say that it’s because they are brilliant. He still has a big head and a tiny body. It’s kind of funny. He’s just small but he came out just fine. No tearing, totally fine. It’s a lot of the time positioning. 

Julie: Yep.

Meagan: We have lots of questions that we still didn’t get to, but don’t worry.

Julie: I’ll have to come back sometime for another Q&A.

Meagan: Yes. I will be doing more of these and Julie is just going to have to come back. 

Julie: And seriously, come and say “hi”. I would still love to talk to and connect to people. Especially if you are in Utah and local, come see me at the ICAN meetings, the ICAN of Utah County. Follow my Instagram and Facebook pages and Julie Francom Birth. I still am going to be a major VBAC advocate and a big part of helping women just a little more locally here. 

Meagan: Yes. 

Julie: I’ll come and say “hi”, I promise. 

Meagan: Yes, okay. Well, Julie, I don’t know what it’s going to be like without you. I really don’t. 

Julie: It’s going to be strange. I don’t know what my life is going to be like either. I’m going to have, I don’t know. I’ll spend time with my kids and be able to actually enroll them in sports again. 

Meagan: Yeah, no. I’m not loving it. Not loving the thought of it, but I am proud of you.

Julie: You are sweet. 

Meagan: And I want you to know how much I love you. I’ve enjoyed this journey with you and I just hope that I can keep this afloat without you. 

Julie: You will. I’m 110% confident in you and you know I’ll always help you out if you need it. 

Meagan: Well, thank you. 

Julie: Goodbye, signing off. I don’t know. Bye! I don’t know what to say.

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 Julie and Meagan’s bios, 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 are so happy to be joined by Lindsay on the podcast today who is sharing her birth stories and her chiropractic expertise. Lindsay is a beautiful example of how to create a healing birth experience after a traumatic one. We discuss how making empowered decisions can help you feel more in control in the birth room. 

Also, as the owner of her own chiropractic practice, Lindsay explains the benefits of the Webster Technique during pregnancy, as well as why every woman and baby should seek chiropractic care during the postpartum stage too. 

Additional links

Lindsay’s Practice: Bluebird Chiropractic

The VBAC Link Blog: How to Plan for a Family Centered Cesarean

The VBAC Link Community

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Happy Women of Strength Wednesday. It is Meagan and Julie.

 

Julie: Hello!

 

Meagan: And we are so excited to bring you another story. Today is actually a CBAC story and we were just talking about this before the episode. We are going to call it an elective CBAC. Is that what we decided?

 

Julie: I don’t know. I think we will just leave it at CBAC because she labored. Her plans changed during labor. So I think we are going to keep it at CBAC.

 

Meagan: She did, yeah. Okay, a CBAC story. It was definitely something that she chose and that’s one of the reasons why I love the story so much is that she stood her ground, advocated for herself, and chose something that not even her provider wanted her to choose. I am not going to give away too much, but we have a Review of the Week and then we are going to go into this lovely episode with our friend Lindsay.

Review of the Week

 

Julie: Yes, a Review of the Week. I like this review. I picked the longest one I could find on our spreadsheet.

 

Meagan: Oh good because I can’t read and you know that.

 

Julie: Meagan can read, everybody. Meagan can read. She just has a hard time reading and speaking. But you have actually gotten quite a bit better since we first started The VBAC Link four years ago. You have improved leaps and bounds. I’m actually quite impressed with your skills now.

 

Meagan: Well, thank you.

 

Julie: You’re welcome. But this review is a little mini VBAC story in one. I just think it’s really cool. This is from Abby from, oh my gosh, an email. It’s an email. She said– oh my gosh, we love emails. Guys, email us. Talk to us. We love talking to you and connecting with you guys. We got this in an email which is why it is longer. That makes sense now. 

 

And so she says, “Hi. I’ve been wanting to send you a message for months now to let you know how you have encouraged me. Your podcast was referred to me near the end of my pregnancy and I listened often while cleaning. The facts and stories shared absolutely solidified my confidence in what my body is capable of despite the exaggeration surrounding uterine rupture. It was by far the most important stuff I learned from you gals, so thank you.”

 

Just a side note, we have a podcast episode and a blog about uterine rupture talking about all of the myths and stuff surrounding there. Anyway, I love that. Sorry, where was I? Oh, there we go.

 

“Thank you for doing the work to learn this stuff and sharing it. My first four children are two sets of twins, naturally conceived.”

 

Wow, two sets of twins. I’m going to have a commentary on the story while I am reading it. Okay, I’m going to get back on track now.

 

“I had two C-sections without issue. In the first one, I barely knew anything. For the second, I was pressured by my doctor just doing all of the textbook things to get me to believe that surgery was the only real option. Both were scheduled, but the second time around, I had gained a lot of knowledge about all things natural birth. 

 

“With this third pregnancy and a new doctor, I knew she was giving me all of the typical fear-mongering, ill-informed information that she could. She did not like that I refused to schedule a C-section. I was planning to wait for labor to happen on its own, even if that meant going two weeks beyond “due”. All indicators pointed to her not allowing me a true trial of labor. She waved all the red flags in her words. 

 

“I had planned to labor at home as long as possible and my dear friend who used to work as a doula offered her friendly and experienced support to get me through the home laboring. My husband couldn’t get down with hiring a midwife while we had health insurance to cover hospital birth, so sadly I accepted that we would ultimately not birth at home. Well, I labored at home all day and when the intense contractions hit around the time that our kids were going to bed, my mindset was, ‘These are probably going to be intense for the next four or so hours.’ 

 

“I had bloody show around 9:00 p.m. or so and wasn’t checking the timing of contractions. None of us even thought about that. Someone called another friend to come and stay with the kids and in what seemed like ten minutes' time, something changed. I told my friend that I guess it was transition. I wasn’t going anywhere in the car. My baby boy, Schallom, was born at 10:40 p.m. on the bathroom floor assisted by my friend and my husband. Healthy! That wasn’t the plan but was the original hope with a midwife. Knowing we wouldn’t have a midwife, having a baby at home was out of the question.

 

“At one point during labor on the bathroom floor, I asked, “Is there someone else we can call?” But I knew that even EMTs would just deliver right there and my husband is a first responder, although he has not delivered nor assisted a birth. Thank you for your encouragement and knowledge that absolutely helped and enabled my mind to be at peace enough to smoothly deliver my baby at home, a VBAC after two C-sections. There are so many other details but I really wanted to let you know how grateful I am for your podcast and the integral part that played in my third birth.”

 

We need this girl on the podcast! Who is she? Abby.

 

Meagan: That is an awesome, awesome story.

 

Julie: Oh my gosh. Well, she is in an email. We have got to find the email. It came in on February 2nd, so I’m going to go scoping through emails. We are going to find Abby and we’re going to share her story on the podcast because I was on the edge of my seat just reading the review. I can’t even imagine. Oh my gosh.

 

Meagan: Yes.

Lindsay’s Story

Meagan: Okay. Well, expect a podcast sometime from Miss Abby, but today we are going to share Lindsay’s story. So Miss beautiful Lindsay, let’s turn the time over to you. 

Lindsay: Thank you, guys. 

Meagan: Thank you.

Lindsay: Okay, so for my first C-section, I was induced and then had every induction method/intervention under the sun and nothing was working. I wouldn’t progress and every time contractions came, they tried to up Pitocin to up my contractions, then my son’s heart rate started dropping. At one point they couldn’t get it up, so it turned into an emergency C-section after that.

For my second birth, I was definitely planning a VBAC. I tried to prepare myself. I read all of the natural things, did lots of chiropractic care, and was mentally prepared. My son was 11 days late and then I got to the point where I was almost 10 days late, I believe. My midwife kept pushing, “Hey, we need to induce you,” but everything was looking good with baby and I knew I just go late with babies. 

I kept saying, “No,” but my husband and I had talked and we decided that if I didn’t go into labor naturally or anything like that, then we just wanted to elect for a C-section. With my son, my first baby, everything was so out of control and very traumatic that we just wanted something in our control. We were just not ready to go down the intervention route. We knew that didn’t work for us the first time and who knows? Maybe it would work the second time, but we just didn’t want that. 

Luckily this time, I went into labor on my own. I labored hard for about 12 hours and it got to the point where it was so intent that we figured we should probably head to the hospital. 

Meagan: Yeah, you even sounded pushy and grunty at some points. 

Lindsay: My whole pregnancy, I really wanted a home birth and I just didn’t like the idea of going to the hospital. I still wasn’t fully satisfied with my midwife. I bet I was probably further along when I was at home, but then when we got to the hospital, I think they said I was a 1.5, but 90% effaced. Still, very intense contractions and some were even like, what is it called? Coupling– where they are one on top of the other and no break in between. 

And so they decided to let me labor a little bit longer. Since I was past due, they weren’t going to send me home by any means because, at this point, I believe I was 12 days past due. So I labored for a little bit longer in the hospital. They checked me again and I still hadn’t progressed at all. And so my husband and I decided, “Let’s just do the C-section.” There was no point to push it off, getting an epidural, trying more interventions, or anything like that. 

We were very happy with the decision even though it wasn’t what we exactly wanted. This felt in control for us. My midwife did not like that. 

Meagan: She really didn’t. 

Lindsay: She didn’t. 

Meagan: She was not happy. In fact, tell them about how we were waiting. 

Lindsay: Yeah.

Meagan: We were waiting for her, anyway–

Lindsay: Yeah, so she wasn’t the one on call. They finally called her in and it felt like it took forever. Also, I don’t know if she was mad at me, but she gave me her number too to text her at the end of my pregnancy. I told her I was in labor and she didn’t respond, so it was just one thing after another. But I think I came out of the bathroom and she was standing against a cabinet or the wall or something with her arms crossed and was like, “Are you sure you want to do this?” And my husband and I were like, “We already made the decision. This is what we wanted.”

And so it was just sad that we didn’t have the support from her, but with Meagan and my husband, I had plenty of support otherwise. I mean, all of the nurses were super supportive and I just wanted to make sure we were making the decision we wanted for us. We believed it was the right decision and honestly, it was the best decision. If I wasn’t going to go into labor or progress through labor on my own, then this was what worked for us because the C-section was so healing. 

I know not many people can say that but it made me and my husband feel like we were in control and we got to talk about what we wanted in the C-section. It wasn’t an emergency and it was just a different experience. My husband feels as well just healed from our first traumatic experience and the recovery was better. It was easier. I’m not saying C-section recovery is easy by any means, but it was easier than my first just because mentally, we were prepared. 

I got to hold my baby girl as soon as they cleaned her off. They put her on me and I got to hold her the whole time they were stitching me up. I never let go of her which was so fantastic compared to my first where he was swept away to the NICU. I didn’t get to see him for six hours after birth, so it definitely was a healing C-section. 

Meagan: Absolutely. You came back and even though you were so tired and everything, you came back and you looked so bright. 

Lindsay: Oh yeah. 

Meagan: And free. It was so good. It was so good to see you that way. 

Lindsay: Yes.

Meagan: Because I was with you after the first and it wasn’t necessarily– I don’t want to say you looked bad.

Lindsay: No, I looked bad. 

Meagan: You looked different. You looked different. The first time was really rough and it was a lot and this time, it wasn’t. We don’t know exactly why things didn’t progress. Maybe it was a mixture of feeling stressed when you got to the hospital because I swear to you that you were seeming very progressed at home. Even the labor pattern changed once we got there, but I just was so proud of you. Your midwife, yeah. She was like, “Are you sure though? I could just check you right now.” And you were like, “No.”

Lindsay: Right. I was like, “I don’t want to be checked again.”

Meagan: “I’m good. I am good.” And even after, she was like, “Ahhh.” 

Lindsay: Yeah. I mean she never even came back and saw us. She said she was going to and she never came back and checked on us to meet my daughter or anything like that. 

Meagan: Yeah, which is just so crazy. I just don’t get it. I don’t know. Maybe she had a chip on her shoulder. I don’t know. 

Lindsay: I don’t know. 

Meagan: I don’t know but I was proud of you for making the decision that you felt was best for you and doing it. I love hearing that it was so healing for you because that is how birth should be, you guys. No matter the outcome of what you want, even if it’s not what you desired, I would love for birth to be healing for everyone. I know it doesn’t happen to everyone like this, but I would love for it to be a healing experience.

My repeat Cesarean wasn’t what I wanted at all, but I felt more a part of it and it was healing for me because I felt more a part of it. But I just wanted to drop that message out there to everyone who is listening that it’s okay to make these hard choices and do what you can to make your experience a healing one even if it’s not what you want. We talk about gentle Cesareans and family-centered Cesareans. We have blogs on it. But really, Cesareans can be healing. They really can. 

Lindsay: Yes. 

Meagan: I’m so happy for you. So, so happy for you. 

Lindsay: Thank you. I mean, I definitely couldn’t have gone through it without you and my husband as well. There were definitely hard decisions. I remember laboring in the tub and we went over everything a million times about how this could go. My daughter was also a surprise gender so we got to the point where we were like, “Let’s just figure out what this baby is,” after being 12 days late and everything. So that helped too but I know that with labor and delivery and all of pregnancy, you can’t be in control. That baby isn’t controlled by you, but it just felt nice to be able to make a decision that was something we wanted. 

Chiropractic Care

Meagan: Absolutely. Yep. So we are going to make a little shift. This is a part-birth, part-education episode, but I would love to talk a little bit about what you do as a profession. 

Lindsay: Yes.

Meagan: So for anybody who does not know, Lindsay is a chiropractor. She is amazing. I would love to talk about chiropractic care and anything you would like to share. Maybe discuss why you feel chiropractic care is important, especially in labor and delivery and why it may be important in the postpartum stage. 

Lindsay: Yes, yes. 

Meagan: I feel like in all senses, sometimes, we forget about postpartum. We just forget about it and we forget that there is definitely something that happens after. We still have to take care of ourselves and we still have to prepare for that, so is there anything you want to share or would like to talk about with any of that?

Lindsay: Yes, thank you. I am a Webster-certified chiropractor which basically means I specialize in pregnant mamas. The Webster name gets thrown out all the time and definitely, if you are pregnant, look for a Webster-certified chiropractor in your area. We’ve taken extra education and seminars to prepare us to help take care of pregnant mamas, but that technique, basically, is very gentle on mom and baby. 

First, I’d like to say that I never adjust baby. I’m only adjusting mom, but in turn, to have less tension in the pelvis and motion in your joints and in your spine, you take the tension out of the uterus which then helps baby go head down or just have optimal space. If they have trouble going head down, the Webster technique helps babies go head down. 

But just in general, it’s very safe for mom and baby. We are not adjusting baby. We are just adjusting mom, but it’s the one thing that you can really do for yourself that can take away some pregnancy aches and pains, discomforts, anything from round ligament pain, some SI pain or low back pain, pubic symphysis pain, SPD, but then also, that bra line, midback pain just because of the changes that pregnancy does to you. It puts a lot of tension in that midback. 

Getting adjusted while you are pregnant is– I don’t know how I would have survived pregnancy without getting adjusted myself. It brings so much relief when you are growing a human and you can’t do much about it. You can’t take pain medications or anything like that even if you wanted to. It definitely relieves some pain but is also taking care of yourself during pregnancy. Chiropractic care has been seen to reduce labor times, help with labor, and definitely get baby head down and in a good position so it definitely makes labor a lot easier. 

But also, get yourself checked postpartum because your pelvis went through a huge shift and change to get that baby out. Even if you had a C-section, once you feel up to it, start getting some bodywork because as moms– I definitely feel like we don’t take care of ourselves postpartum. We always get adjusted or get massages or anything like that during pregnancy, and then we just kind of get forgotten about afterward. Chiropractic care, especially some chiropractors can really help postpartum moms as well.

I work on moms during pregnancy and during postpartum. I really push that in my office to come to see me afterward because you are always hunched over breastfeeding. Get your pelvis realigned and feel good so that you can take care of baby and be present because you feel good for your family. But also, get checked for diastasis recti and stuff like that. Some chiropractors, including myself, can check for things like that, so that’s really good. 

Meagan: Question on diastasis recti– we had a question from a follower asking about how diastasis recti could impede delivery. Do you know? 

Julie: Actually, it is on next week’s episode too, so you are getting a little sneak peek. Yeah, so that’s okay. I love it. Ask, ask. 

Meagan: Yeah. I’m just curious if that is a thing because I didn’t think that it did, but I don’t know. Does it? Do you know? 

Lindsay: Well, from a chiropractic standpoint, I would say that it is pressure management. Your belly, from your diaphragm, your abdominals, your low back, and then your pelvic floor is like a canister. It is pressure management. If you have that separation in your abs, the pressure has to escape somewhere. Instead of down through your pelvis, it is probably going to escape out. Sometimes when it escapes, it is pressed into your SI joints, so a lot of moms have low back pain. 

But I would say during labor that you wouldn’t have good pressure management. You just can’t get that good pushing technique that you need to get the baby out. 

Meagan: Mhmm, okay. Okay good to know. Sorry to interrupt that. I was like, “Oh my gosh, we just read that on another podcast,” so okay. Keep going. Keep going. Sorry. 

Lindsay: No, that’s fine. The other thing I was going to say is also baby adjusting which seems crazy if you ever see an adult getting adjusted, all of the pops and cracks and stuff like that, but baby adjusting is also really important as well. Even if you have the most perfect birth and it’s non-traumatic or anything like that, it’s still very traumatic to the baby because they go from this nice warm womb to the outside world. Get them checked because chiropractic care, also, is related to the nervous system. We adjust the spine which, in turn, can affect the nervous system. 

A baby’s nervous system is basically on fire when they come out. We have moms that have babies with colic or they have constipation. Anything like that is usually because their nervous systems are going crazy. It’s in that fight or flight mode because it was traumatic. And then if you have a traumatic birth, that also goes on to the baby too. They are going to feel that stress and everything. And getting their spines checked helps calm the nervous system. 

It can help with colic. Like I said, it can help with constipation, but then also latching difficulties. Always check with your lactation consultant, but I always ask my moms if they are sore on one side compared to the other when they are nursing or anything because it could indicate that the baby can’t turn their heads enough so they can’t get their latch proper and so then, moms get sorer. It could be a combination of some other things too, but it is just one part that you can also check. 

Like I said, baby adjusting is super safe and super gentle. There is no popping or cracking. It’s as much pressure as you put on your own eyeball and it looks like I’m barely doing anything to the baby, but it does so much for their nervous systems and for their little spines. Even though they don’t have solid bones, they still have bones. They are just a little bit softer than adult bones. It’s still much needed. 

But then also, if you had a traumatic birth and maybe their shoulder got stuck or they were pulled out, you’ve just got to get them checked to see if they have a head tilt or anything along those lines. 

Meagan: Yeah. My second daughter had torticollis and the doctor was like, “Yeah, you need to go to PT.” Nothing against PT, but I did PT forever and it wasn’t changing anything. It was actually a fight every day to force her into positions and stretches. We ended up going to chiropractic care. We only went a couple of times and it totally fixed everything. 

Lindsay: That’s awesome. 

Meagan: And so, yeah. It was so awesome. And I also, my son hadn’t pooped forever. 

Lindsay: Oh yeah. 

Meagan: He was having constipation issues and my husband’s buddy, my friend is a chiropractor and it was 9:30 at night. He was like, “Just come. Just come” Because we were crying, just so desperate. 

Lindsay: It’s so stressful. 

Meagan: Yes, and so we went, and oh my gosh, biggest poop ever. 

Lindsay: Yes. 

Meagan: And then he passed out for hours and hours because it took so much energy to get it out. But yeah, chiropractic can be so big, especially for these babies and like you said, they go through so much. They really do and some births are really, really, really hard on them physically. 

Lindsay: Right. Yes, absolutely. Love it. 

Meagan: Love it. Love it, love it. Yeah. We love chiropractic care. We obviously feel that everyone should see a chiropractor if they can. We just love the information. We love what you do. We love that you work on my own personal clients. 

Lindsay: Thank you for sending them to me. I love them all. 

Meagan: Absolutely. 

Lindsay: I get so excited. 

Meagan: I know. I do too. I’m like, “Okay, great. We’ve got chiropractic care going on right now.” So it does matter. Even for births that aren’t VBAC, chiropractic care still matters. It is a big deal and a big component. 

Lindsay: Yeah. I just feel like moms don’t have to live with discomfort. Some discomforts just don't go away. It just happens, but for the most part, round ligament pain, your mid back pain, your low back pain– you don’t have to deal with that. You are growing a human. You should feel good. Not everyone loves pregnancy, but love it as much as you can. Feeling your best and not being in pain is definitely a huge plus. 

Meagan: Mhmm, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. 

Lindsay: No, thank you. 

Meagan: And your advice.

Julie: It was great to see you again. 

Lindsay: Yes, you too. I love you guys so much. 

Julie: Aww, thank you. We have a great community of birth workers here. Chiropractors, midwives, doulas, birth photographers, out-of-hospital, and in-hospital obstetricians. We really do have a great community here. I just love it, especially when we have local people on that we get to love on a little bit. So thank you. 

Lindsay: No, thank you. 

Julie: And how can people find you if they are local to the Salt Lake Valley?

Lindsay: Yeah, so my clinic is called Bluebird Chiropractic. You can go to bluebirdchiro.com It’s c-h-i-r-o and you can find me there. Look at my website and make an appointment online. 

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 Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. 

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

Show notes

“Whenever I see someone that I know who has had a C-section, I’m like, ‘Did you know you don’t have to have another C-section? You can do something else!’”

Mama, you have options! Carolyn shares her Cesarean and VBAC stories with us today about how she explored all the birth options available to her and made informed decisions along the way. Carolyn especially took advantage of optimal fetal positioning resources. She went from pushing for hours with no progress during her first labor to one great push and a successful VBAC with her second. Carolyn’s dream birth experience came true and she cannot stop reliving that sweet moment of catching her baby.

Additional links

The VBAC Link Community

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Julie: Welcome, welcome. You are listening to The VBAC Link podcast. This is Julie. I am here with Meagan and we are so excited to be with you on another Wednesday. It is kind of fun rocking and rolling again with the podcast and hearing all sorts of people's stories. Today, we will have interviewed somebody in each time zone in the United States. I am pretty sure. We are in one and our guest today is from Kansas City. We are really excited. 

I love the Midwest. Everyone thinks I’m crazy. Maybe it is because I haven’t been there for any winter, but I really love the Midwest, especially in springtime. It is just perfect to me. I love it. One day, I don’t know. If I ever get to be rich and get to have multiple houses, I might own a house in the Midwest so that I can have a nice springtime there. 

But anyway, we are talking with Carolyn who is an incredible woman. She has a three-year-old and a one-year-old and she lives, like I said, in Kansas City. She’s a senior marketing manager and we are so excited to hear from her today. Before we do that, Meagan has a Review of the Week for us. Meagan, do you want to go ahead and share?

Review of the Week

Meagan: Yes, I do. This is from holmclaugh90. It says, “I listen every single day. After a traumatic Cesarean with my first baby five years ago and multiple miscarriages in between, this is a breath of fresh air as I await my chance to have a VBAC this October with my second, I love every story I hear on this podcast and it makes me feel so much stronger in knowing that I can do this.”

And I want you to know that this is, let’s see. She posted this actually last July, so I was going to say, “Yes. You are strong enough,” but holmclaugh90, if you’re still listening, we want to know how things went last October. Please, please follow up with us.

Julie: Yeah. We love hearing updates. I love it when people come around full circle. Oh my gosh, Meagan, this week it is mid-June and I had a Facebook memory show up. Our very first podcast episode was published years ago last week. It was the second week of June and it is so crazy to be at four years. Some people have been listening to our podcast and have had one or two babies after listening to our podcast. It is so crazy to think that we have so many incredible stories coming full circle now and it’s just fun to have been on this journey with you guys for so long. I love it.

Carolyn’s Story

Julie: Okay, we are going to get to Carolyn's story and I just love it. I was just reading through some of her show notes here and I just absolutely love how she talks about asking for what you need. Ask for the tub or the nurse who is more VBAC friendly. The last thing you want is to be surprised in the hospital room. 

And yes, ask for everything. I can’t wait to hear all of the incredible things that she asked for that helped her get her VBAC. So Carolyn, do you want to take it over and share your story with us?

Carolyn: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so excited.

Julie: Thanks.

Carolyn: All right well, yeah. So really for me, it seems like forever ago, but in July 2018 when I got pregnant for the first time, luckily I had a very easy time getting pregnant. A really easy pregnancy and actually, my sister-in-law was pregnant at the same time. I will probably reference her a couple of times. That was super helpful to me. 

She had previously been pregnant and her pregnancy actually ended up in an unplanned C-section and not her ideal labor, so I feel like I thought I had a lot of lessons from her. Spoiler alert, she ended up getting her VBAC with her second pregnancy. She actually had a home birth. She is super amazing. 

So I feel like going into my first pregnancy, I was like, “I’ve got it. I know what to do. I have a leg up even.” And so I did all of the things. I ate the dates. I drank the tea. I did prenatal yoga, all the good stuff and I was interested in doing an unmedicated birth. I wasn’t super anti-epidural, but I hoped. I just wanted it to be normal. You see movies and you see TV shows. That’s what you expect, right?

For me, the day after my due date, my water broke. I think I actually laughed out loud because it just seemed so ridiculous that that would happen. I even made my husband come look at the fluid on the floor which is gross, but I needed to show somebody. I had an OB appointment that day, so we actually just went in. It was at eight in the morning so it was really fast from when that happened. She confirmed that yep, it was amniotic fluid.

I was only 1 centimeter dilated and she was essentially like, “Go home. Get labor going. Keep me updated." So we went back home and I couldn’t believe this when I was writing this up. I was at home for 10 hours before we even made a move to the hospital. Those contractions were just on and off. We went on a walk. We made cupcakes. We watched a movie.

At some point, I was getting frustrated. My water broke. I didn’t want to be in a situation where it had been a really long time, so actually, I went to my chiropractor who I had been seeing throughout pregnancy. She also does acupuncture, so I went to her during labor which is kind of wild and got that acupuncture which was bizarre. I had never done that before and that was the first time I had ever had it. I sat on the birthing ball in her office with all of the needles and everything and sure enough, I went home and my contractions were consistently five minutes apart, four minutes apart. 

Around 10, my doula came over. I should have picked up her vibe. She was very relaxed, very like, “I see what’s going on here,” but I was very antsy to start going to the hospital. Of course, there was a huge thunderstorm right when we left. We live really close to the hospital. We got there and I was only 3 or 4 centimeters dilated, so I was feeling “meh” about that. I wish I would’ve been more, but it is what it is. I labored in the room for pretty much most of the night. I eventually got in the tub and that was amazing. It was really relaxing and continued to help me progress. 

I got out at about five in the morning when my OB came in there. I was 9 centimeters and 100% effaced so that was super awesome. She did let me know that I actually had– I didn’t even know this was a thing– a fore bag of waters. Even though my water had broken, there was still more. She asked for my consent to break it. She is amazing, by the way. I will say that a hundred times. I said, “yes”, so she basically broke my water. I think I peed in the hospital bed five times consecutively. I don’t know if that was just the warm water or whatever, so I’m just profusely apologizing to the nurses. 

Sure enough, that did the trick and I was at 10 centimeters. I was so excited. I was unmedicated. I was feeling really positive about labor and everything despite painful contractions. She did let me know that he was still pretty high up and wanted to have me breathe through the contractions for another while before I started pushing, so I then spent several hours in all types of positions. 

Around noon, I started pushing. I actually did try nitrous oxide which put me in a good mood, but it didn’t really help me that much. I think at around 2:00 p.m., I looked at the clock and I just started saying, “This isn’t right. What is going on? How could this be? I’ve been at 10 centimeters since eight in the morning and it is 2:00 p.m.” I just did not understand. 

It’s not that no one was sharing with me information. It was just stalled and I was starting to act a little bit crazy. Each contraction would come and I was bracing the hospital bed saying, “Don’t make me do it,” just kind of getting crazy, so I talked about the epidural. My husband and I had actually made a safe word so that he knew I really meant, “No, this is real. I really want the epidural.” So I did get that and yes, absolutely. It helped me rest. I took a two-hour nap. I was able to also let my husband and doula rest as well. 

So now, it’s 4:00 p.m. My doctor came in. I believe I told her, “I could do this for hours. I am renewed. Let’s rock it.” They turned the epidural down and I pushed for another two hours. My doctor is really straightforward but extremely empathetic. She basically said, “He is not coming down.” I think she said that he was barely at +1 and I didn’t fully know what that meant, but I knew in my heart that it was not happening. I asked her about forceps. I said, “What about the vacuum?” All of these things I am just asking her like, “Is there anything left to do?” 

She was not pushy at all about a C-section. We started to have that conversation of, “Is this direction we are going to go?” For us, the baby was not in distress. I was not in distress. It was not an emergency, but we talked about it for another little bit and finally decided that this was the right thing to do. It was 8:30 p.m., almost two days after my water broke and as they do, they moved really quickly. One bright star in the C-section process was that the anesthesiologist was super nice. I think that sometimes I hear a lot of stories where people don’t have friendly anesthesiologists, but he was really friendly. 

We had to negotiate to have both my husband and the doula in the room. I felt really strongly about that because I wanted someone with me but also someone with the baby, so after the baby came out, my husband went with the baby and my doula stayed up with me holding my hands and everything. Also, the anesthesiologist actually asked me if I wanted any music and played a particular song that I was very into at the moment, and so I always remember that as a good moment. 

Once they started the C-section, I was really uncomfortable and really, really not feeling it. I wouldn’t say I was screaming, but I was making noise to the point where my doctor kept asking me, “Are you okay?” And I just said, “I don’t like it. I don’t like this feeling, the tugging, the pressure, and all of it.” I even asked one of the nurses, I was like, “Am I a little out of the norm?” She said, “Yeah. It was a little hard to concentrate.” Oh well. 

But my son came out that evening at 9:20. He was healthy. Everything was great with him. I was so anxious and shaky. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to hold him and honestly, I was just mentally feeling so out of it. I actually asked the anesthesiologist to calm me down, fully knowing that it meant to just basically give me a little something in there to make me fall asleep, and I did for about 20 minutes.

At the end of the night, I was able to hold my son. I hated missing out on that magic hour right there, but I knew it also wasn’t feeling right for me to take him until I was a little calmer and less shaky, less manic, and all of that. So that was my C-section story.

I was pretty upset about it afterward. I actually even remember watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy three or four days postpartum. There was an episode where someone doesn’t know she is pregnant and gives birth in an emergency–  just a vaginal, unmedicated birth. I was so upset. I had to turn off the TV. So I knew right away that I did want to try for a VBAC and luckily, someone had recommended the Facebook group and The VBAC Link podcast. I feel like so many people say this on here, and now I am saying it too. I listened to every single episode on my daily walks. I was just obsessed with VBACs in my second pregnancy.

With that, when I got pregnant again, my doctor again reiterated, “You are a good candidate,” and I actually didn’t change anything. I had my same OB, same doula, and same hospital and I feel like that is pretty uncommon. I feel like a lot of people who don’t have the experience they desire with a C-section, maybe it’s because they didn’t have a supportive doctor. Maybe it’s because they didn’t like the environment. For me, that wasn’t the issue. He was just stuck, so I stayed with all of my providers. 

I did make a couple of changes. I still did all the same things– the dates, the yoga, the tea. Probably the biggest change I made, thankfully or unthankfully due to the pandemic, was that I was working from home, so I went on a walk every single day. I was active during my first pregnancy, but I feel like the walks were really intentional for me. They were really a good grounding place for me to be in my pregnancy. When you are working, when you have another child, it’s hard to be like, “Hey, I am pregnant right now.”

Meagan: Yeah. Yeah or even just focus on it. Yeah.

Carolyn: Yeah. Whether I was listening to The VBAC Link, music, or whatever it is, it gave me that little 20 or 30 minutes a day of just, “Yep. This is for me.” Something else that I got tipped off from I think one of your podcast episodes was something super specific within Spinning Babies. I know a lot of people love Spinning Babies but for me, because my son with my C-section was just in such a bad position, I got hyperfocused on that. 

One of the things they talk about in Spinning Babies is to rest smart or the flashlight test which sounds kind of weird, but it makes sense when you hear it explained. Basically, your belly button either should be pointing out or down, not ever up. So when you think about sleeping or sitting on the couch or working, I was super obsessed with this. I was watching TV on the ball throughout my whole pregnancy. I was not laying down. I was not leaning back. I wasn’t reclining or anything and as silly as it may seem, who knows if that made a difference or not, but the baby certainly ended up in a good position. So that was one thing that was probably a little abnormal that I hung on to.

Meagan: Well, I will just tell you that you are not alone because I did the same thing with my son. In fact, I didn’t even sit on a couch for nine months.

Carolyn: Oh my god.

Meagan: Like legitimately, I wouldn’t sit on the couch. I sat on the floor cross-legged, pelvis tilted up. That was totally me and driving very properly. That was totally me.

Carolyn: Yep. Yep. Yes, yes. We went on a road trip at one point when I was pregnant and I think I stuffed two or three coats behind me so I was almost leaning forward in the car. I was like, “This is ridiculous, but not if it works.” It’s only weird if it doesn’t work as I say.

Meagan: Oh and if you don’t do it and there is a thing, then you are sitting there questioning, “Well, what if I would’ve done it?” At least that’s where my mind went, anyway.

Carolyn: Oh no I know. No, I’m the same way. At that point, it was not like it was causing me pain. I wasn’t frustrated by it. I was just like, “This is what I do now. This is how I am.”

Meagan: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn: There was an end in sight, so I didn’t mind it too much. Other things I did towards the end, I did do the curb walking which actually was just sort of funny. In my neighborhood, all of the streets are sloped so there are actually no curbs really, so I had to either drive or walk a pretty solid distance to get somewhere that had real curbs. I always ended up in a parking lot of some office park or somewhere weird where people were like, “What is this really pregnant lady doing walking around?” But I loved the curb walking. I did the forward-leaning inversions. 

During the last week of my pregnancy, I was starting to get really anxious. My doctor was not pushy about induction at all. I don’t even think the word came up. She was not concerned about me going over. I was a day late with my first. I didn’t know, obviously, what was going to happen with my second, but I started to get into a bad rabbit hole of negative thoughts. It’s one of the things I actually did– no hate to Facebook and all of the good things that you find in your Facebook groups– but I actually muted or left all of the pregnancy, birth, mom, all of the things that I followed on Facebook and on Instagram. I did stop listening to the podcast for the last week. It was just too much information at that point and I was starting to get so anxious about things not ending the way I wanted.

Meagan: You know what? That’s not a bad thing to unplug. I actually encourage that to my clients. I’m like, “Unplug from social media and from people who may not be providing you support. Just unplug. It’s okay to just be with you, your body, and your baby.

Carolyn: Yeah. So actually it was really helpful and it also let me enjoy the last couple of weeks with my son. It was the last time he was going to be our only baby. Your whole world is going to change when you bring home the second one. So that was really nice. I’m laughing thinking back on that phase because he was just turning. He’s three and a half now almost and a very different child at three and a half than he was at two. At two, he was a little, sweet, big brother. Now he is solid and in the toddler phase. 

I did go a week late this time and again, I tried to just tune everything out. What’s funny is that again, with working from home, I didn’t have a reason to really stop working because I wasn’t commuting to work. I wasn’t going to end up in a situation where you are at the office going into labor. I wasn’t home. So every day, I just logged off being like, “Maybe this is the last day.”

On the day that I had the baby, I woke up to a pretty strong contraction. I had been having some, but obviously, none that ever came to anything. This one did feel a little bit different. I did say to my husband, I was like, “I don’t know, but I am feeling this one.” I kept intending that morning to go upstairs to my computer and start my workday. I just kept having that subconscious nesting feeling I guess. I kept, “Oh, I need to tidy this room. I need to do the dishes.” I don’t even know what I was doing and then I would be constantly interrupted by these contractions. 

My husband was working from home as well and I didn’t even really notice it at the time, but I had already started to vocalize through my contractions, making a fair amount of noise. He is wrapping up his last meeting of the day. Meanwhile, I am downstairs making scary birthday noises so I apologize to anybody who was on that call. But similarly, actually, I had a scheduled appointment that day but we called to go in sooner. We went into my OB‘s office around 10. I probably scared half of the people in her waiting room because I was fully in labor, pacing around and making noise. I was not a pleasant person to be around.

Even when we left the house, I told my husband, Isaac, “Oh, well you are grabbing the bags?” And he was like, “Yeah. We are grabbing the bags. We’re not coming home. We are having a baby.” I just was in disbelief and when I got to her office, she was joking with me. She was like, “Okay, are we having a baby today?” She checked me and this was actually my first check all pregnancy. Again, this OB is so amazing. She does not push checks. 

When I started listening to your podcast, I didn’t even know there were OBs who push for checks that are not necessarily wanted by the patient. I didn’t know that was a thing because my OB never did that. She never even brought it up, so I feel lucky that I never ended up in that situation. Again, if it is something that people want, then you want it. But for me, I don’t want to be checked unless I am being asked to and it is necessary. So she checked me and I was already 7 centimeters dilated. I was in complete shock. I was so happy. And she confirmed, “Okay. You are definitely in active labor. I will meet you at the hospital.” I was like, “Oh. Oh, okay. We are going right now.” 

One thing she did was that she called ahead to the hospital so I got to be directly admitted. I got to skip triage which was amazing. At least at this hospital, which is a great hospital with great nurses and staff and everything, their triage situation was so unpleasant for me with my first son. It is a tiny, tiny little room. You are just getting poked and prodded, and it is really unpleasant. So I just got wheeled all the way to my room. I actually got the last room that was available. It was a busy labor day I guess.

Meagan: I was going to say a busy night or a busy day.

Carolyn: Yes. Yeah. I was given the last room and actually when we got there, I realized it was the same room in the hospital where I had my son. I was like, “Okay, I don’t know if that is a bad sign because he ended up in a C-section or a good sign that this is the same room I was in.” I haven’t confirmed this with my doctor actually, but she must have told the nurses when she called in that I was a patient who was wanting an unmedicated VBAC because no one mentioned the word “epidural”, no one mentioned any interventions, any drugs or anything and it was so amazing. I feel like I was really worried about having to fight or having to push back on nurses who don’t know me, but she must have told them because that was just too good to be true.

Something else that was kind of funny about the room– on the whiteboard, the nurses had put up this standard, “Goal number one: healthy baby. Goal number two: healthy mom.” My husband actually erased it and he wrote, “Goal one: healthy baby, healthy mom. Goal two: baby out of vagina.” We died laughing. We took a picture of it. I think I posted in the Facebook group because I was just like, “Yep, mhmm. That is the goal.”

Julie: I love that.

Carolyn: My doula came in. This is now at 11:00 a.m. This time, I got to use their wireless monitor which was super cool and much less uncomfortable than the other type. The same kind of deal, my doula drew the bath for me. It was really relaxing for me. But these contractions I could tell were getting stronger faster. It was just progressing much more quickly and at about 1:00 p.m., that wireless monitor was being a little iffy. They also wanted me to get out to pee, so I got out at 1:07. They checked me and there were like, “Okay. You are pretty much fully dilated,” but my water was in the way because this time my water hadn’t broken. 

So again, my OB asked if it was okay to break my water. She did and I gave them a warning. I said, “Okay, warning. There might be a lot of fluid just based on how I was last time,” and sure enough, the same thing. An absurd amount of fluid came out. The nurse was calling for more towels and I peed both on the bed and on the ground. I am just a pee machine, I don’t know. So after that, she confirmed, “Yep. You are fully dilated.” I tried to go to the actual bathroom to go pee, but as soon as I sat down on the toilet, I was like, “This is what that feels like, that fetal ejection reflex. This is it.” 

And the panic on the nurses’ faces when I said, “Yeah. I am not trying to push but I am pushing.” They were like, “Get out of the bathroom right now!” I was relieved to feel that because I never really got to that point with my son. This whole time, I kept wanting to say to my OB, “Can you just tell me there’s no going back now and I am getting a VBAC?” But I was too scared to jinx it. And like I said before, she was really straightforward so I didn’t want to put her in a situation to have to tell me, “No. It’s not looking good actually.” 

So I came out of the bathroom and started pushing. I tried a couple of different positions and eventually switched to a sitting-up-throne position. I don’t know if that is really what it was called. It was a lot more comfortable for me. They had all of these handlebars and little props for my feet to go in. To me, I felt like it was taking a long time, but I could tell from the reactions of the nurses and my doctor that things were progressing in a good way. The reactions were really excited and everyone was encouraging me. I was nervous, but I was so excited. 

From what it sounded like, I was pretty much holding my breath while I was pushing. I could see them getting oxygen ready. That freaked me out because that was not something I went through with my first labor. I feel like actually maybe from listening to my podcast, I know that in some cases, that is something that they do when the baby is in distress, so when she came with the oxygen, I was like, “Oh my gosh. Is the baby okay?” And they were like, “No, no, no. You just literally need oxygen.” 

I’m telling you before I knew it, everyone was screaming, “Grab her!” And I’m like, “What do you mean, ‘Grab her?!’”

Sure enough, there she was. I pulled her out and up onto my chest and I was in absolute disbelief. We have a video and I’m saying “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” I just really pictured it being a lot slower of just one push, and then another push, and then another push but really it was– at least to me, it felt like one big push and she was perfectly healthy. I held her almost for an hour before they even took her to go give her the full check-up. 

I did have some pretty severe tearing which was not ideal, but I will take it. I feel like I had nurses and other people be like, “Oh my gosh. I am so sorry about the tear,” and I was like, “Literally, what are you talking about? I do not care about that. I got my VBAC. My baby is perfect. Everything is great as it should be.” That night, I did not even sleep a wink. Not because of the baby, but I was just so happy. I just kept reliving the day. I mean truly, it was everything I wanted it to be and it just made me so happy. 

I feel like it made me become a VBAC spokesperson because whenever I see someone that I know who has had a C-section, I’m like, “Did you know you don’t have to have another C-section? You can do something else!”

Meagan: You have options!

Carolyn: Yes, I know. I’m like, “I need little cards to pass out.” But yeah, that is the whole thing. Yeah. So grateful to the podcast, and to the Facebook group, and friends and family, and my husband, and doula, and OB, and everybody, but just an amazing experience and something, obviously, that I will never forget.

Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know it is funny because one of the other episodes that we were just talking about, I am like, yeah this is Sili texting, like talking about it and you just said the word against you but I’m like it is so crazy how some of these babies just come out like that.

Carolyn: Yes.

Meagan: Other moms, they push for hours and hours. It’s just so crazy how different our bodies and pelvises are, but they all still usually come out. That’s what we want in the end– a baby.

Yes. But huge congrats though. Seriously, so awesome. So happy for you and we are so grateful that you were with us today.

Carolyn: Yeah, thank you so much.

Julie: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing.

Closing

Interested in sharing your VBAC story on the podcast? Submit your story at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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Thinking there was no way she would go into labor with her VBAC baby at 37 weeks, Emily and her husband traveled to a family wedding. It was only a four-hour drive away from her birthing place. It was just for one night. She’d be laboring for the first time. Even if labor started, she’d have plenty of time to get back home. Right? 

Thanks to her physical, mental, and emotional birth preparation, Emily was able to stay calm and present when her birth took a wild turn. She rode each wave gracefully and allowed her body to take over when it needed to. You are sure to be left feeling inspired by Emily’s impressive strength!

Additional links

Gentle Birth App Meditation and Contraction Timer

The VBAC Link Community

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Happy Wednesday, everybody. This is Meagan and Julie with The VBAC Link and we are so excited, as always, to share with you another amazing story. We have our friend, Emily, today and she is going to share her VBAC story. She’s actually in New York if I remember correctly and has quite the story to share, you guys. 

I kind of feel like we have a celebrity right now on the podcast because her story has seriously been featured everywhere. Like, seriously everywhere. People, USAToday, Inside Edition, Good Morning America, and yours truly, The VBAC Link here now. 

Julie: Almost right up there with them. 

Meagan: If we were as all of those platforms, then that would be really cool, but yeah. We are so excited to bring this story to you today. We are going to dive into her story really soon, but Julie has a Review of the Week, so we will hurry and do that, and then we’ll dive right in. 

Review of the Week

Julie: Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I am so excited to hear this story. I love a good– type of story that this is. I almost gave a spoiler alert. This is my favorite type of birth story, so I can’t wait to hear it. 

But yes, our review this week is from Kaytjtvgml on Apple Podcasts.

Meagan: Alphabet soup there. 

Julie: It’s called, “Thankful for the timing of this preparation tool! I have been listening to this podcast as well as following along with the Facebook group ‘The VBAC Link Community.’” Plug-in for the Facebook group.

“I desired a VBAC right after having my elective Cesarean but just started off with a little hope and faith. Having tools and knowledge helps me sooo much mentally. I have learned and continue to learn from every episode. Each one makes me feel closer and closer to that victorious moment when my second baby is born vaginally. Even if things don’t work in my favor, I still wouldn’t trade this knowledge for anything. Hoping for a late June (or early July!)” Oh, that’s like right now! “vaginal birth and to be able to share my story.”

Well, we are so excited about your upcoming delivery, and definitely let us know how things go. If you are listening and you haven’t had a chance to leave a review yet, drop us a review on Apple Podcasts, Facebook, or on Google. We just got a couple of Google reviews last week and that made my heart really, really happy. So if we have helped you in any way, please let us know. You can shoot us a message on Instagram or Facebook. I don’t know. You can contact us in all the ways. We love hearing from you and we love knowing how we have helped you along your journey. So thanks so much “Kaytjtvgml” on Apple Podcasts and everyone else who has taken their time to leave us a sweet review.  

Emily’s Story

Meagan: Awesome. All right well, let’s get into this story. I’m so excited about this story. 

Julie: All right, Emily. Do you want to take it over?

Emily: Sure. Thanks for having me. I just want to say that I listened to The VBAC Link podcast a lot while I was pregnant and I am also a part of the Facebook group and all of that stuff. I actually bought the course as well. I had the book and all of that, so thanks for that. 

Julie: Yay. Absolutely. 

Emily: I think the best place to start is with my first birth because I won’t go into too much detail with it, but I think because of that birth– obviously, I had the VBAC, but I think because of that birth, I don’t know if I would have had the kind of experience I had if that makes sense. I think I had such a positive experience because it really lit a fire under me. I did so much more research and really prepared myself to the point where I just wanted this VBAC more than anything, so I really ended up having a positive experience.

With my first, I was with midwives. I had a doula. I was planning unmedicated at a birthing center. I felt pretty educated and looking back, I honestly was. I did a lot of research. My doula was fabulous. We had a bunch of prenatal appointments. I was reading all of the books, watching documentaries, and listening to a ton of podcasts, so I felt really good about it, and then it turns out that my son was breech. 

For me, I desperately wanted to deliver vaginally. I was very comfortable assessing the risks and benefits of vaginal breech birth and I wanted to do vaginal. But unfortunately, when I found out and when I was due, which was right around Labor Day, anyone who was trained in vaginal breech birth was either on vacation, or they weren’t accepting any more clients, or the hospital put a ban on breech births. At the time of my first birth, I didn’t feel comfortable traveling more than four hours away at that point. So the best decision at the time was a planned C-section. 

I’d also like to mention that I did everything under the sun to try to get my son to turn including an ECV and it was not happening. I was seeing a chiropractor. I did lots of moxibustion. I was doing Spinning Babies and actually, even during the ECV, the doctor was able to turn my son head-down actually pretty easy. As soon as the doctor took his hands away, my son scurried back to head-up, butt-down. And then we tried it the other way. Counterclockwise, same thing. He just went right back into the same position. I am not sure why, but that did happen. 

With the planned C-section, I decided, “Okay, if I’m going to have a C-section, I want it to be the absolute most gentle, best family-centered C-section that I could possibly have. So I did advocate for myself quite a bit. I did have my choice of music playing and my husband had lavender oil that I was smelling. I was basically completely naked because I wanted my son to be on my chest as soon as he was born. They took him out pretty slowly because I wanted to try to have as much of a vaginal squeeze-type experience for him. We did delay cord clamping for about 90 seconds. They wrapped him in a warm towel during that and then put him on my chest so while they were sewing me up, he was on my chest the whole time which was great. I also did vaginal seeding with him and I had some expressed colostrum with me that I brought to the hospital that I used a little bit but he pretty much latched right when we were in the recovery room. My doula was able to come with me to the recovery room before I got to my main room. So all in all, a really great C-section.

It was still an incredibly devastating experience which I think mentally was very isolating for me because to everyone else, it looked like a great experience. I healed really well. I had instant skin-to-skin and breastfeeding was going well. On paper, it looked like everything was fine. It was a planned C-section so I had a good night’s sleep. We woke up, but I did miss all of the rushes of hormones. I missed the experience of giving birth vaginally which I desperately wanted. 

So it really was not the experience that I was planning on. Everyone’s situation is different, but I think for a lot of people, a very common story is they didn’t really do a lot of research. They didn’t know. They just trusted their doctor. They walked into the hospital. There was a cascade of interventions, and then they ended up with an unplanned C-section. That’s unfortunately very common for me. 

I was like, “I am at a birthing center. I have a doula. I know what I am doing.” So when I did have the C-section, it felt incredibly devastating. I don’t know how to describe it, but it just felt like I did all of the work, and also, what I think made it really difficult was that I wanted to deliver him vaginally breach. I wasn’t like, “Oh well, he is breech so that sucks. C-section is the safest route.” 

That’s not how I felt. It may have been. There is no way to know. More than likely, it would have been fine to deliver him vaginally, so I just felt like I didn’t have that experience. So I very much wanted a VBAC. So much so that when the surgeon was sewing me up, one of the nurses was taking pictures of my uterus and I was like, “Do a double-layer closure.” Even as she was closing me up, she was like, “You are going to get your VBAC. Don’t worry. I’m doing great stitching. You’re going to be great.” Because everyone in the room, including my midwife who was actually in the room with me during the surgery, all knew how badly I wanted a vaginal birth. 

So anyway, fast forward. I got pregnant when my son was two. We were team green this time because part of that was that I felt like it was no surprise to us with my first birth. I found out the gender and it was a planned C-section, and I felt that because I didn’t have any of the hormones of labor, I just kind of went in for brunch or something or just an appointment, and then all of a sudden they were like, “Your baby is here,” and I wasn’t feeling anything. 

I did want some element of surprise, so I thought, “Okay. Even if I don’t get my VBAC and I have to do another C-section, at least I will have the element of surprise of finding out the gender.” In hindsight, my birth was plenty exciting and I did not need to find out the gender of my child.

Moving forward, my pregnancy was totally fine. I had the same midwives and the same doulas, and I didn’t get to really use them in labor the first time. They are great. I really like them. And from this pregnancy, some things that I was doing differently: I was very concerned about the positioning of the baby. I was seeing a Webster-certified chiropractor even before I was pregnant. She was doing (inaudible) and dry needling on my C-section scar, and really just making sure that I was in the best alignment and had the most space possible to have this baby get into the best position. Certainly, I don’t want a breech baby, but even if the baby is head down, I wanted the baby in an optimal position for the easiest labor which ended up working. That worked really well for me. 

One other thing that I actually haven’t mentioned when talking about this birth is that I was born with hip dysplasia and dislocated hips when I was born. It was discovered late, so I was put in a cast and then a brace, and then when I was in my twenties, I had something called a Periacetabular osteotomy which was a pretty intense surgery on my hips. So also, in the back of my mind, there is some asymmetry in my hips and I wasn’t sure of the way my pelvis would move and flex during labor. So that was another reason why I really wanted chiropractic work during it. 

I also was doing Spinning Babies religiously. It’s something that my doula mentioned the first time and I was like, “Yay. Okay, cool.” I didn’t really do it too much. I was wearing heels all of the time. This time, I was very careful with all of the Spinning Babies stuff, never leaning back, and getting into the right position. So anyway, all of that is to say the pregnancy went super well and smoothly. 

I had a C-section with my son when I was 39 weeks and 1 day. Obviously, this was during the pandemic and I wasn’t seeing a lot of people during the pregnancy. My husband‘s cousin was getting married in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We hadn’t seen our family in a long time, so I thought, “Let’s go out and go to the wedding. It’s fine.” I live in Westchester, New York, so it’s about a 3-3 1/2 hour drive from our house. The hospital where I was planning on having a VBAC with the midwives was in Connecticut, so from the wedding to the hospital is about fourish hours away. 

I thought, “First of all, I am only 37 1/2 weeks at the time of this wedding. The chances of me going into labor– it’s possible, but it’s not likely. I’m not super far along.” Especially since I was only 39+1 with my son and there were no real signs of labor. So I drove out to the wedding. I figured, “Okay. If I happen to go into labor on this one day, I will just be in early labor. We will just drive back and we will go to the hospital, or I will go home, labor at home for a little bit, call the doula, and then we will head over to the hospital when things are progressing.

It seemed like a very reasonable plan because who has a baby in less than three or four hours for their first-time labor? That just seems like yes it’s possible, but again, I was just trying to look at the statistics as well. How long is first-time labor? I’m thinking, “Okay, somewhere in the realm of 16-24 hours. Something in that kind of range.” 

Anyway, so we went to the wedding. It was great and super fun. We left. There was a hotel where we were where the wedding was, so we went back to the hotel probably around 11-ish at night and we were in bed in our hotel room at 11:30, so it was close to midnight. I maybe had fallen asleep for a minute. I felt like I had to pee which happens when you’re pregnant, but I had just peed at 11:30 so I’m like, “How is it that I have to pee again?” But whatever. I stood up to go pee and I just felt all of this warm liquid rush out of me.

My first thought, like a lot of people's first thought is, “Am I peeing?” But it wasn’t stopping so then I felt like, “Okay. This might be my water.” I went to the bathroom, changed, tried to go back to bed and the water was still leaking. At that point, I was like, “Okay. My water has broken. This is definitely a thing.” The liquid was clear. I was GBS negative. There was no odor. Everything was good. Obviously at that point, no one had checked how dilated I was or anything, so I was not concerned about any kind of infection. Obviously, I was pretty much at term and I had good prenatal care with no concerns. There was no kind of panicking.

So I woke up my husband around midnight. He was just sleeping for a second and I was like, “Hey, my water broke. I’m not really concerned. I’m not really having any kind of contractions. If contractions start, let’s pack it up and head back, but this could be a day or two before contractions even begin and then once that happens, it could be another 16 to 24 hours.” So correct me if I’m wrong, but that seems like how it is when the water breaks and you are not going into labor immediately.

Meagan: It happened with me, three for three.

Emily: Yeah.

Meagan: Every single time. I mean, with the third, I didn’t really go into labor for over 24 hours.

Emily: Yeah. That’s kind of what I thought. Obviously, sometimes your water breaks and you’re in labor, but I was thinking, “Okay. If my water breaks and then I am in labor, will just leave.”

Meagan: Right.

Emily: And then also, I’m in the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. I’m not going to go find an Amish midwife and run into her house or run to a random hospital where they know nothing about me other than I had a previous C-section and just be like, “I am not in labor, but my water broke.” That just seems insane.

Meagan: I know. Yeah. A lot of the times, it’s better to just chill and hang out and monitor your symptoms.

Emily: Yeah and wait for labor to start.

Meagan: For things to start, yeah.

Emily: Granted, hindsight is 20/20. I should have just left, but I figured, “Okay. If this is going to be–” My water broke and I said, “Okay. Here we go. Contractions haven’t started, but I have to get ready. I have to get my head in the game. This is going to be an adventure and I need to save my energy. I need to eat something. I need to try to sleep and just relax because this is going to be a wild ride. This is not the time for me to be awake and freaking out and all that.” 

So I told my husband basically all of that and I said, “Let’s just try to get some sleep and we will wake up at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m.. We will just try to get a couple of hours and then we will drive early in the morning. There won’t be any traffic and we will just head back when we are close or when it is a reasonable time in the morning like 7:00 or 8:00 a.m.. I can let our doula and our midwife know what’s up and they can come in the morning if I am not in labor to see the midwives or whatever they want to do. 

My husband is half asleep and he was like, “Okay. I mean, I guess that sounds good. If the fluid was clear, let’s just try to get some sleep.” All of the midwives and doulas that I have spoken to have been like, “Yes. That sounds very reasonable.” All of the general public is– you know my story went viral. I’ve had some comments here and there of people being like, “Why didn’t you immediately scream and run into a hospital?” I just don’t think that would have been the right decision for me. So anyways, I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn’t understandably.

Meagan: Well, when your mind knows what’s happening, you are like, “I can’t go to sleep.”

Emily: Yeah. So I was trying to fall asleep but I kept leaking fluid. It wouldn’t stop and I didn’t have diapers or anything with me, so the fluid is just leaking, and leaking, and leaking. I’m actually texting with one of my friends who has had two home births and she knows how badly I wanted this. She was like, “Girl, you need to pack up your stuff and get out of there. What are you doing? You are going to have this baby in the car.” I am like, “No. I am fine. It’s fine.” I have all of these text messages of our conversation now with her. It is hilarious.

Meagan: So funny, yeah.

Emily: But again, I was just like, “I’m fine.” I also really understood the pain-fear cycle and I just was so committed to being “chill”-- I’m putting that in quotes– during labor and just being focused, and staying positive, and breathing, and not letting fear sneak in. I feel like that almost pushed me so much that I was in denial a little bit about what was going on.

So anyway at some point, I think it was probably around 2:30 a.m.,, I am up and down every two seconds. My poor hotel room was covered in amniotic fluid. I went to the bathroom and there was the bloody show. I am like, “Okay. Here we go.” Still, no contractions but things are picking up. At some point, I am pooping a lot, TMI, and I am like, “Okay. Here we go. Another sign. We are getting ready.”

Meagan: Yeah. Your body is preparing to begin labor.

Emily: Yes and I was like, “All of these signs are good.” 3:00 a.m. hit, so this is three hours after my water broke and contractions hit. They hit hard, and fast, and heavy and it completely took my breath away. I woke up my husband and I said, “Hey, contractions started. We should go.”

I had maybe two or three contractions at that point and he was like, “Okay. I am going to run to the drugstore. I will pick up some adult diapers because you are still leaking or whatever just to protect the car,” which again, in hindsight, is very funny. So he goes to get the adult diapers and I do have a thought in my mind. I remember panicking for a second and thinking in my mind, “Don’t leave. Don’t leave me.” But I was just like, “Okay.” 

He left and he was like, “You pack up the room,” and I was like, “Okay. I looked over at my make-up, because we had just gone to a wedding, so I had my bra, and my dress, and my fake eyelashes, and my makeup and clothes are everywhere. It was a disaster. Meanwhile, these contractions are coming every four minutes, every three minutes and they are lasting a minute or more.

Meagan: And strong.

Emily: And strong. I am completely bent over on the bed having to breathe and I remember that one of the thoughts I was having was, “Oh my gosh. Is this early labor? If this is early labor, I can’t do this.” I was like, “No.” I shooed that thought away. I was like, “Nope. We are doing this. It’s happening, so get on board. We are doing this.” 

At on point as I am throwing everything into my suitcase, I stumble into the bathroom because I was jumping out of my skin and I felt like I needed some relief, and so I turned on the tub. I was like, “Oh, I will just get in the shower or the tub for a minute just for a second,” and then the other side of my brain was like, “Emily, you cannot take a bath. Get your crap and go. You don’t have time for a luxurious bath in this hotel. You have to get going.” So I had those two sides of my brain chatting with each other the whole time.

I will say one of the things that I found incredibly helpful–  I mentioned a Webster certified chiropractor and having a very supportive team. I had my midwife, my doula and really educated myself so I didn’t have fear. Not necessarily in advocating for myself which of course, education is good for that, but also, I feel like the more you know about birth, the more normalized it is. I think if you don’t know anything about it, there is a certain level of fear of the unknown. I was very much in that world. A lot of my friends have had home births so I’m kind of in the universe, so birth did seem very normal to me. I don’t know if normal is the right word, but borderline uneventful. It is a very natural process most of the time.

Meagan: Right.

Emily: Where things most of the time go well. So that was kind of my mindset but the other thing I think that is incredibly important that I would like to mention is that I was using the Gentle Birth App for meditations during my pregnancy. I really doubled down on it the last couple of weeks. I was doing meditations and then about a week before this wedding, I downloaded their contraction timer which just came out. It was a new app. 

It was the same woman talking through the meditations, but it is with a contraction timer so you press the button when a contraction starts and it’s a woman’s voice. I couldn’t tell you what she said now, but it was all sorts of calming, wonderful things, and you turn it off and you rate the contraction. I forget how they label it, but it’s mild, medium and I forget. Intense might be the wrong word but it is three different levels. I just kept rating them as the lowest level because I was like, “It’s fine. This is fine. We are good. Everything is good,” and I kept rating them as mild even though I am completely doubled over. I am having to breathe through them and can’t talk.

So my husband comes back. We are in the car at 4:00 a.m.. So at this point, it was an hour from when my contractions started. My water broke at midnight. So I was in labor for an hour at that point. We get in in the car. I am texting my sister-in-law. 

The other huge part of this– I feel like, with a lot of the headlines of my birth story, it’s hard. I want to share my story because I feel like I had such a wonderful, and powerful, and empowering experience. I want to hopefully help people, and educate people, and make people feel confident that they can do this, but with sharing something so personal, you do put a target on your back and there are some other comments from people about different things. I had to deal with people just reading a headline and not knowing any of the details of why did I make the decisions I made.

I was at this wedding. I was supposed to drive my sister-in-law back in the morning. There was a brunch in the morning for everyone and we were supposed to drive her back to New York with us. So in my mind, I felt like, “Well, this baby isn’t coming for a day or two at least. I don’t want to abandon my sister-in-law in Amish country. I will wait a couple of hours and then maybe we will wake her up at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. and then we go.” That seemed very reasonable to me. So as I am doubled over, I’m trying to get into my husband‘s car. I have a Jeep that is bigger. He has a Honda Accord which is pretty roomy, but not roomy enough for labor. I don’t know what car would be roomy enough for labor. 

But I was texting her and I was like, “Hey. Contractions started,” or something. “Everything is fine,” and then later, at 4:00 a.m. when I was in the car, I said something like, “This is getting really intense. We have to go. Sorry.” And then a half an hour later, I think she saw the text message. She starts calling me. She starts calling my husband. She was texting us and she was like, “What’s going on? Are you guys okay? What’s going on?” I couldn’t text back or answer and my husband just kept ignoring the call. 

This whole time, I am using the contraction timer not so much to time the contractions, but more for the meditation that went along with it. I was in the car in the front seat for a little bit, and then at some point, I moved to the backseat. But I ended up laboring in the car. We were driving for an hour and 45 minutes. That is the other part of the story that I think—

Meagan: That sounds miserable.

Emily: It was miserable. Yes. It’s so funny because when I listen to these podcasts with any kind of birth story and people talk about how, “I had to go into the car to get to the hospital.” They say that the first intervention is moving spaces when you are laboring and they are like, “That car ride was the worst.” I am like, “Oh yeah? How about almost 2 hours of it?” I mean, not that it’s a competition of whose labor sucks, but it’s very different– spoiler alert– having a baby in the car versus laboring in the car for hours. 

So anyway, I was in the front seat for a little bit. At some point, I was like, “I have to get out. Pull over. Pull over.” I sat up for a little bit and went to the backseat but this whole time, I was listening to the app. Also, I am not sponsored at all. This is just for a reference. 

I was just breathing and I was really focusing on everything that I learned. I was relaxing my jaw. I was doing low moans, nothing high-pitched. I was doing lip trills, like horse lips, when things were getting more intense. For some reason actually, keeping my eyes opened was better for me. At the time I felt like, “Oh, let me close my eyes and go inward,” but that almost made it more intense for me, so keeping my eyes open was helpful. 

However, I will say that at one point, I think it was probably right before transition or during transition, it was incredibly intense. I had those two sides of my brain talking. It was so intense and still, I was never screaming. I was never really loud. In my husband's defense, it just seemed like I was hanging out in the backseat just going, “Ohhhh,” for two hours. So I remember that it got really intense and one side of my brain was saying, “Okay. Your options are, you can open the door and throw yourself into traffic or you can just ride these waves and this is just what it is.” And I just thought, “Okay. This is just what it is. Obviously, I am not throwing myself into traffic, so I just have to breathe. I just have to breathe. I don’t have to do anything. My body is doing it for me. I just have to breathe. This isn’t going to last forever.” 

I think that at one point I said out loud to my husband, “Remind me that there is a baby at the end of this,” because I was so in it. I couldn’t even really remember that I was in labor and there was a baby. It was just a tornado that was happening. Also sorry, the story is jumping around, but again in hindsight, I was having prodromal labor for about a week or two before this night.

Meagan: So plug-in, sometimes a history of prolonged prodromal labor can result in a precipitous birth. I’m going to throw that out there.

Emily: Ah, good to know.

Meagan: When our doula clients have prodromal labor for weeks or even for a week, it is like, “Okay. When things seem to turn, we need to be on full alert.”

Julie: That was how mine was.

Emily: That is so interesting.

Julie: By the time I realized it was real and by the time things actually shifted, it was less than three hours before she was born. My prodromal labor was 22 days. It was awful.

Meagan: Anyway, keep going. So you had prodromal labor–

Emily: I was having prodromal labor and again, I was in denial. At one point, I actually took a Pepto-Bismol. That’s how strong of denial I was in. However, at one point it was happening so much, especially at night. The waves were coming every 15 minutes. I could time it, like set my watch to it, and then they were coming consistently every 10 minutes. I was having a contraction about every 10 minutes but it was only lasting 30-45 seconds. That was happening not every single night but every couple of nights for two weeks before this. I just kept ignoring it because it just felt like period cramps.

Meagan: Kind of stagnant and never really progressed in a forward motion.

Emily: Yeah. It was never at a point where I was like, “Here we go.”

Meagan: “Here we go,” yeah.

Emily: It was kind of just like Braxton Hicks but more intense.

Meagan: I don’t know though. Even when things are seeming, “Here we go,” you didn’t respond like, “Here we go.”

Emily: No.

Meagan: I totally get what you are saying, but I am just joking. You have a really strong pain tolerance or discomfort tolerance.

Emily: Yes. Even in the throes of labor, again in my defense, I still thought I was in early labor because labor started at 3:00 a.m., and here I am and it is 5:00 a.m. in the car.

Meagan: Right, yeah.

Emily: That baby isn’t coming out of me now. That is insane. Of course, you hear of stories like that on podcasts once in a while. You are like, “Well, that is a crazy story. Obviously, statistically that will not happen to me. I’m going to have the normal, long labor that stalls that I need to do curb walking for. That is going to be me because that is the majority or at least that is what it the majority seems like. I did not think I was going to have a precipitous birth. Again, sorry. I am ruining this whole story but I am sure if there is a title on this episode, people already know.

Meagan: I don’t think you are ruining it at all.

Emily: Thank you. Long story short, there was another point. Oh and it’s contraction timer, but you also get it saved in your phone so I actually have a printout and a saved PDF of all of my contractions, and the times of them, and how long they were, and how I rated them. I was timing my contractions up until five minutes before my daughter was born, so that is how much of in denial I was that I was still timing my contractions when I’m literally pushing.

Meagan: Still thinking it’s early, yes.

Emily: Yes, yes. I texted my doula at some point because I knew that she kept her phone off and that if we needed her to answer in the middle of the night, we call her from this other number. But in general, she kept her phone off so I figured, “Okay. I will text her and if she happened to be up, she will see it.” I just let her know what was happening. She called us and I couldn’t talk at that point but my husband was talking to her. At that point, it was maybe 5:00 a.m., 5:15 a.m., maybe two hours into labor and we were still somewhere out of Pennsylvania or maybe somewhere in New Jersey. We were chatting. Well, I wasn’t chatting but he was chatting, “Okay, maybe we will meet at the house. Maybe we will meet at the hospital. Maybe we should meet at the house and pick up the bag, and labor a little bit there and see how we feel.” 

That’s where my mind was. I thought we had time to get from where we were in New Jersey all the way back to Westchester, New York, labor and hang out, grab my bag, maybe eat something, and then go to the hospital and labor there. So that’s where I was.

Meagan: I keep giggling, but that’s where you were. That’s where your mind was. You believed that’s where you were.

Emily: Yes.

Meagan: As a doula, that’s like, “Pedal to the metal! Let’s have a line of cops to follow. Let’s get there.”

Emily: Yes and in hindsight, looking at my contraction timer, it was every three minutes or less for like a minute, a minute and a half long the whole time. At one point, I was rating the contractions moderately which were at a middle zone when they were incredibly intense. I was like, “Oh. These are a little stronger,” during the time, but I wasn’t going to throw myself into traffic. At one point, I think it was 5:15 AM. I have the exact timeline because of that PDF from the timer, but somewhere around there I was like, “I have to get out. I have to get out of the car and pull over.” 

So my husband pulled over and I stood up as soon as I stood up, it felt so nice to just stand and move because remember, I’m in the back of a Honda Accord with a gigantic toddler car seat next to me Also, my toddler was with my parents in New York. He was not in the car. But it was a huge, empty car seat, so I really did not have a luxurious amount of room. Also, mentioning the position that I was in– so I was behind the driver's side. I had my right leg on the floor. My left leg up on the seat. I don’t know how you would describe the position, and then I had my left arm holding the dry cleaning bar. So I was holding myself up and I was consciously thinking, “Get off your tailbone. Get off your tailbone. Let your pelvis open. You need flexibility here. Don’t sit on anything.” 

So I was up on my side, my right hip whole time. At some point, my thinking brain was turning on and I was like, “Okay, why don’t you lean over the car seat, and get on all fours, and lean your arms over the car seat so your hips can really open up,” but every time I tried to move it all, I just couldn’t. It was too much. It was too intense. I was basically just frozen and stuck in that position the entire time. So around 5:15, I get up out of the car. I’m moving around. I put my wrist on the top of the car and I had to remember that being a very nice moment because the car was cold. I was sweating and disgusting and it felt so nice to have the cool car on my wrists. 

I will also say at that point, I took off my adult diaper just instinctually. I think I just needed to take it off and I was pushing. This is, I don’t know, like 5:20-5:30, something in there. I felt myself pushing and I felt like, “Oh my gosh. Why are you pushing if you are in early labor? And even if it is not early labor, there is no way you are at a 10.” So I just thought, “No Emily. You cannot push. Stop pushing.” I just thought that maybe it was so intense that my body was just tightening up because it was so much and I just need to relaxed. I felt like the answer was just to relax and don’t push. Relax. Breathe through it, so I was just relaxing my jaw by doing lip trills and low moans as I’m trying to push and just relax through it.

Which again, in hindsight, just opened me up more. I was concerned about whether I was going to be pushing too early and be swollen. I was thinking like, “Oh my gosh. I’m going to get to the hospital and I’m going to be so swollen,” because I would have been pushing before 10 centimeters, and they were going to try to give me Benadryl, and I was going to be going backward in dilation and I was like, “Okay. I have to not push. Don’t push. Don’t push.” But of course, my body was just pushing for me at that point. I had no control over pushing or not pushing or anything. All I was doing was breathing and in heavy denial at that point. 

My husband didn’t realize that I was pushing either. So that point, I willed myself to get back into the backseat because I thought like, “Okay. Things are really ramping up in this early labor. I have to get back to my house and/or the hospital with my midwives, and my support team, and my doula, and everyone. Also for reference, we did call the midwives at some point. I think it was around when we got back in the car. I didn’t want to call in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to wake them up. I just figured, “Okay. We will call them when we are close to Connecticut. When we are close to the hospital, we will give them a heads up and say, ‘Hey. We are an hour away’ or ‘Hey, we are 45 minutes away. Just want to let you know.’” That seemed very reasonable to me. It didn’t really make sense in my mind to call them in the middle of the night to be like, “Hi. We are four hours away.” I don’t really know what they would have told me.

So again in hindsight, with my water broke, I should have called them and they probably would have said, “Hey, because you are so far away, you should leave now.” But at the time I didn’t wanna wake them up. So I just figured, “I’ve got this. It’s fine. I will call them when something is happening.”

Meagan: When something is happening.

Emily: Yes. So anyway, I am in the backseat and I am, in hindsight, definitely pushing and all of a sudden– this is a little before 5:45 a.m.. So I got into the car at 3:00 a.m. and this is a little less than two hours and 45 minutes after labor started and about an hour and 45 minutes in the car. I suddenly just say, “Pull over. Pull over.” My husband was like, “There’s nowhere to pull over. We are on the highway. There’s no shoulder. I will pull over at the next exit.” I reached down and I said, “There is a head,” because I felt the top of a baby's head. He was like, “Okay.” 

So he just immediately pulled over, or he was trying to pull over, and then a couple of seconds later, her entire body just shot out of me. I caught her and I was holding her onto my chest. I just said, “There is a baby!” My husband looked in the rearview mirror and I am just holding this squishy, little baby. It just happened incredibly fast. It went from, “Pull over,” “There is a head,” “There is a baby,” in less than a minute. I mean really, my body was pushing for me. I was not doing anything.

Meagan: True fetal ejection.

Emily: Yes. I knew that it was a thing, so it was really cool to feel it and to get into it. Also, I am laboring at night so it was a dark environment. I was by myself. I felt as comfortable as you can in a car and I was watching the sunrise, so that was kind of nice. 

Just to jump back, one of the things when I was saying I was going to throw myself into traffic, not to scare anyone, it’s not that bad. It’s very doable. But at the time, I had that momentary transition, looking back, of that “I can’t do it” moment, but I did rally pretty quickly until like, “No. You have to. You don’t have a choice.” 

I do remember looking at the GPS on the screen because where I was leaning over, I could see the screen. It said I had two more hours or some ridiculous number like that and I remember thinking, “No. No, no, no. I can’t. There cannot be two more hours of this. I absolutely cannot do this for two more hours. There’s no way.” And then I thought, “Okay.” Again denial, I was like, “I’m going to pretend like I didn’t see that,” and then I just looked out the window and watched the sunrise. I was like, “That GPS doesn’t exist.” I kind of had my eyes like those magic eye books. I don’t know their name. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Meagan: Yeah I do, but I don’t remember the name of them either. Like iSpy but not.

Emily: Yeah. Not iSpy, but the magnifying glass where you put—

Meagan: Yeah, not iSpy but that is coming to my mind.

Emily: You put your nose to the page, and you slowly move it, and your eyes kind of fuzz, and then you see a different image? I was doing that with my eyeballs with the screen. I was like, “Nope. Can’t see that screen two hours ahead.” So anyway, I caught my daughter and eventually my husband pulled over. I mean, I did it but it was crazy. I remember thinking, “Oh my god. What even happened?” I don’t even know what I was thinking. It was like, “What even just happened? That was insane.” 

So I think we called 911 because after the fact with the birth story, Inside Edition was one of the news outlets that reached out. They were able to obtain the 911 audio, so we actually have that.

Meagan: That’s awesome.

Emily: I am happy to send it your way. But we have the 911 audio and you just hear me in the background saying, “Hi. Hi baby. Hi baby. Can you cry for me? Can you cry? Hi,” and I am trying to get her to cry because she wasn’t. So I am rubbing her back and I somehow had the wherewithal to grab a towel from the hotel room and wrap her. She was skin-to-skin with me but I put a towel over her over us. I am rubbing her and trying to get her to cry, and it probably took a minute or two minutes for her to cry. She was breathing. Her body was moving. I could see her lungs expanding, but it took a little while for her to cry.

One of the things that happened that I didn’t– I am careful with where I share this because the birth was so wonderful and I have such fond, wonderful memories of it so I don’t want to add any kind of fear into the story. However, I do want to be authentic and truthful about it so one thing that actually did happen was when she was born– and I don’t know when this happened in the process– but I am holding her and I look to see the gender of the baby. 

At some point, I looked and I said that it was a girl, but who cares? Because at that point it was, “What even just happened?” But I looked down and the umbilical cord had snapped. So on her, there were maybe three inches and then the rest of the umbilical cord was somewhere inside of me.

Meagan: Attached to the placenta still?

Emily: Yes.

Meagan: Okay, yeah. But still. It still snapped and was not clamped.

Emily: Not clamped but it wasn’t bleeding.

Meagan: Bleeding out, yeah.

Emily: It instantly clotted on both sides so I wasn’t hemorrhaging at all. That was something I was checking. I looked down. “Am I losing blood? Am I good?” And I actually didn’t. I barely lost any blood.

Meagan: Great. That’s good.

Emily: So I was fine. She was breathing. I’m not a doctor, but she was breathing. She was pinking up. She started crying. The umbilical cord wasn’t bleeding but that is– I was a little in shock but looking back, that isn’t ideal for sure. And unfortunately, the 911 operator, although very sweet, had no idea what to say or do which is what I felt at the moment but then afterward I was like, “I don’t know. Maybe I was just out of it,” but then now that I have the 911 audio, I was listening back and I had no idea what was happening. 

He was literally like, “Oh. Okay. Well, I guess you already had the baby so congratulations. I guess you did that part. Let me get my sheet. Why does my sheet say to do? Okay. Can you clamp the cord?” And I am like, “The cord snapped.” He was like, “Okay. I don’t know.” You just hear me saying, “Is someone coming? Is someone coming to get us?” I know. It was wild. And basically a minute into that incompetent conversation, my husband was like, “Okay. We’re going to call our midwives now.” He was like, “Okay. Congratulations. Help is on the way.” Because we’re not gonna hang out on the phone with someone who literally has no idea what he was talking about, although very sweet.

Meagan: Yeah. Yeah.

Emily: So we called the midwives but someone was going to call us back. I don’t know. I think it went to an answering service and I’m not really sure what happened there, but we called our doula and she was like, “Okay. Crank up the heat. Get the blanket. Warm her up.” You know, giving us all these directions. I think we gave her a heart attack for sure because we talked to her twenty minutes before then and we were like, “Maybe we will meet at the house and eat a meal together.” And then we were like, “Hi. The baby is born.” And she was like, “What? What is happening?” So yeah. That is basically the story but she is all good. My daughter is all good. She was fine. I was fine.

Meagan: You were okay?

Emily: Yep. I was doing great. She breastfed like a champ. We rode in the ambulance together and she was on my chest the whole time. Me and the ambulance workers– I was taking selfies with them and they were taking videos for me. I birthed my placenta in the ambulance and I have a video of that. One of the female EMS workers was like, “Yay!” So it was really chill. They wanted to give me an IV in the ambulance and I said, “Why? I am done.” They were like, “Well, the hospital wants it.”

Meagan: Yeah.

Emily: I just said, “Yeah.” I declined that part and they were like, “Okay.” So I didn’t get one. We just went to the hospital and I left 24 hours later and went home.

Meagan: Oh my gosh. That’s amazing. What a rush. Totally not expected and like you said, not out of the ordinary in a lot of things. You were like, “Yeah I’m taking my time,” and then boom bang bam, you have a baby. That is so awesome and so exciting. So exciting. I can’t imagine being in that position but I am sure it would be quite the whirlwind.

Emily: Yeah, and then looking back, I think it was about 15 minutes of pushing maybe?

Meagan: Wow, yikes.

Emily: Her whole body flew out and actually surprisingly, I didn’t tear at all.

Meagan: That’s awesome. So awesome. Well, congratulations again. I know everyone has probably said, “Congratulations.”

Emily: Thank you.

Meagan: That’s so awesome. So awesome to have you on the podcast and excited for the world to continue to hear your story.

Emily: Thank you. I’m super passionate about birth and all of that stuff. So if anyone ever wants to reach out to me, they are more than welcome to.

Closing

Interested in sharing your VBAC story on the podcast? Submit your story at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.

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

Today on the podcast we have one of Meagan’s local doula clients, Aubree. Aubree’s unexpected HBAC story is one of overcoming fears and digging deep when birth moves much faster than planned!

We also discuss the risks and benefits surrounding home birth. Julie mentions criteria you can use to help you decide if HBAC is right for you. However and wherever you choose to birth, our mission is to help you feel empowered, peaceful, and safe in that choice. 

Additional links

The VBAC Link Blog: HBAC

MamasteFit

Julie’s Fear Release Video

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Happy Wednesday, everybody. It is Julie and Meagan and we are so excited for you to hear this story today. We have our friend, Aubree, on and she has got a really cool story to share. And kind of a little side note or a little teaser, I was actually one of her doulas. It was me and my partner, Melinda, and I sadly didn’t get to make it to the birth. Melinda went, but I seriously can’t even believe how awesome this story is. I’m actually excited to hear her share it. We actually had scheduled to go to lunch and hear her story, and we never got to have that happen. So I’m so excited today to hear along with you guys her version of the story. 

As usual, we have a Review of the Week and our amazing Julie is going to share that with you before we dive right in. 

Review of the Week

Julie: Hello, I am so excited to hear this story too. Meagan was just telling me a titch about it before we started recording and it is always fun to have somebody local share their story with us. I do have a Review of the Week. This is from Apple Podcasts and it is from libbywilger. The title is “My Safe Space”. That makes me really happy– “My Safe Space.”

Meagan: And I love her name, Libby. 

Julie: Libby. I know, that’s cute. Okay, so she says, “I have been listening to The VBAC Link from the very beginning and it has carried me through my own VBAC journey (and beyond)! I had an emergency C-section with my first baby in 2017 and knew immediately I wanted to pursue a VBAC with future pregnancies. I tried listening to birth stories on other podcasts, but initially, it was too difficult for me to hear from first-time moms whose stories ended with peaceful, unmedicated, vaginal births. The VBAC Link became my safe space to hear from women who had been through what I had and had come out empowered, triumphant, and healed, even if they weren’t able to have a VBAC. 

“This podcast helped me to heal emotionally from my first birth experience and to surround myself with the research, support, and POSITIVITY that I needed to prepare for my next birth. These stories allowed me to believe in birth again, and they carried me through my beautiful, healing VBAC during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. 

“Julie, Meagan, and all the women of strength who bravely share their stories are changing the world with this podcast. Thank you for giving so many mamas the gift of education, empowerment, and JOY while they bring their babies Earthside. God bless!”

Meagan: Aww, that gave me the chills. 

Julie: I know, me too.

Meagan: That is amazing. I love it so much. Thank you so much for sharing your review, Libby. 

Julie: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love it when people are with us from the beginning. We’ve been doing this for four years now. 

Meagan: I know. So crazy. 

Julie: It’s been a really long time and really fun to see people come around full circle. I was at our local ICAN meeting last night. They are starting up ICAN meetings again here. 

Meagan: Oh yay! That’s awesome.

Julie: Yeah. So if you’re in Utah, look up ICAN of Utah County. There are meetings on the 3rd Monday of every month in Lehi and I will probably come to every single one of them because I just– you know me. I love talking about birth and VBAC and everything. 

It was fun because a lot of the people there– it’s been a while since we’ve had ICAN meetings– and everybody there knew who I was. It was kind of strange walking into a room where everyone knows you but you don’t know them. It was just a little strange. I don’t know. It’s been a while since we’ve been in front of real-life people instead of talking on Zoom. So it was just fun to be able to see and connect with people. 

I’m excited to hear the stories of when people found The VBAC Link. There are people who have found us at the beginning and they had their C-sections, then their VBACs, and VBAC after two C-sections. There was a mom there last night who is preparing for a VBAC after three C-sections and I love that VBAC after three C-sections is becoming more common. We are hearing more stories in our community and more on our podcast. I think it’s incredible. 

Aubree’s Story

Meagan: Okay, Ms. Aubree. We are so, so excited to hear your story. We are so grateful that you’re here with us today. We are going to turn the time over to you to share this beautiful birth story. 

Aubree: Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for having me. 

Meagan: Absolutely. 

Aubree: I actually was going to say that I’ve almost been with you since the beginning. My daughter is three and a half. She’s my C-section and that’s how this all got started. 

Meagan: Mhmm, that’s awesome. We really do. We get emails all the time where it’s like, “Oh, I’ve been with you from the very beginning,” and we are like, “Thank you. Thank you for sticking with us this whole time.”

Aubree: I love it. Thank you for allowing me to share my story. I’m super pumped, actually. 

Meagan: Absolutely. 

Aubree: I’ll just start with my daughter’s birth first. She’s the C-section one. Right off the bat, I went and actually had an IUI which is intrauterine insemination. It worked on the first round. I’m infertile, so that’s why we had to see a fertility specialist but it worked and I had a pretty normal pregnancy with her. Nothing out of the blue or anything. 

I did find out, though, about two weeks before birth that my doctor told me, “Oh, I’m going to be going out of town.” That was a big surprise to me.

Meagan: Shocker, yeah. 

Aubree: I had never even thought of that being a possibility, so I just assumed. She had told me, “Everybody there that will be there will be awesome. You don’t need to worry.” I did not think about it. Fast forward– it actually gets to two days after 40 weeks, so 40+2, and that’s when my contractions started. I was visiting the gravesite of my father and it was really special that my contractions started while I was visiting him.

It was exciting because I had taken a HypnoBirthing class. I had done a lot of work– what I thought work was– mentally to prepare for it, and so it just felt super exciting at first. The whole car ride back– it was about an hour away and every five minutes, or not five minutes at first. It was about every 7-10 minutes apart. We got to our apartment. I decided to do a little bath and that’s when it slowed down and stopped, my labor. 

I just got bummed. I was super bummed. I was like, “You have got to be kidding me. I have been waiting 40 weeks for this.” So I hopped out of the bath. I shouldn’t have. I should have rested. But I hopped out of the bath and I was like, “Let’s get this ramped up again.” So I just started cleaning the apartment, vacuuming, everything like that, and lo and behold, my contractions started right up again. 

They slowly got closer and closer together. Even though I was working on breathing through them, I was managing them so well. About an hour later, I was like, “These are clockwork. Five minutes apart and they are lasting,” I can’t even remember, but they seemed textbook and I was like, “Let’s go to the hospital.”

I didn’t want to wait for them to get even closer. It started to get to the point where I was like, “I’m needing a little bit of help, too.” So we get to the hospital and that’s when my anxiety kicked in. It felt really real. We got up to the tower or whatever where we get checked in and the nurse was like, “Why are you here?” I’m like, “Can you not tell? I’m in labor.” I had to do that little bit even though I had pre-done everything. She still asked me a few questions. We finally got our way back and they said, “Okay, we’ll check you in triage.” I was like, “Joke’s on them because I’m five minutes apart and I’m going to be super far along.” 

But come to find out, I was only 3 centimeters. They said, “Well, we’ll keep you for an hour and then we’ll see,” but an hour later, still no progress which makes sense, but the contractions were just so intense for me. I was asking, I’m like, “Can you do something for me? I need something to help with this” and I had forgotten everything, literally, from my HypnoBirthing class. I just remember being in so much fear. So finally, I think they did administer– I can’t even remember what it was– a little shot to my bum. It kind of took the edge off, but not really. 

Meagan: Maybe morphine?

Aubree: Yeah. 

Meagan: Was allotted or something? Sometimes in that earlier stage, if it’s really intense, they’ll give you a little morphine shot in the bum while you are awake just to take it away a little bit. 

Aubree: Yeah, that’s probably it then. They said, “We’ll allow you that, but since you are not admitted, we can’t even start an epidural or anything.” I was like, “Why isn’t this on-call doctor allowing me to be admitted?” Because they kept saying, “Well, the on-call doctor thinks this,” and “The on-call doctor thinks that.” Already, I’m not liking this on-call doctor very much. And so they said, “We are going to come back in one more hour. I manage through that one hour. I think I progressed to a four. 

Because I had made some progress, they said, “Okay, we’ll go ahead and admit you now.” That’s when my mom had gotten to the hospital. My husband was with me in the room and I still was just very fearful. I couldn’t find a position that was comfortable for me. And so I basically asked for the epidural right as I got to my room. I just was like, “I need rest.” 

Meagan: And relief. 

Aubree: And relief, yeah. I call him a nice, old anesthesiologist because he was pretty old. He actually helped me relax. He administered it and it was actually smooth sailing from there but my body– even though I hated not feeling my legs, I had that relaxation. By I think, so sorry. I should have said. I checked in at about 8:00 p.m. and by 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, they told me, “You are 10. You are complete.” It actually helped me relax so much that it allowed me to dilate which was awesome. They said, “For an hour, we are going to let you rest and descend.” I had no idea what that meant. I was like, “Okay.” 

And then around 6:00 or 7:00, we started practice pushing. I think I knew from the beginning, “That is a lie. This is not practice. They really want me to start pushing.” It was the coached pushing because they had me push, push, push for ten whole counts. I had to hold my breath and it just was awful. I had heard and I had told them. I had my whole birth plan and I said, “I prefer not to have coached pushing,” but I don’t think anyone cared too much to look at it. I definitely didn’t remind them because I was just in the moment. 

So I am in the middle of quite a few practice pushes and this is the first time I saw the face of my on-call doctor. He comes into the room and he goes, “Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push!” He sounded like a barking football coach.

Meagan: I was going to say, “What are we doing?”

Aubree: I am like, “What are we doing?”

Meagan: Are we sprinting up a hill right now?

Aubree: So shocked. My husband said he wanted to (inaudible), but he was trying to help me, so I just dealt with it. I dealt with all of the coaching. I did not like the coached pushing. In fact, I was holding my breath and they were like, “Oh, she needs more oxygen. Let’s put an oxygen mask on her.” That made it even worse. I just felt claustrophobic with that on, and then they would try to rotate me. They were like, “Let’s rotate her to her other side,” because I had been on my left. Every time they tried to rotate me, they were like, “We lost baby’s heartbeat,” or it had deceled, and so I couldn’t move. I had to stay on my left side. I had to keep the oxygen mask on and it just did not feel good. 

In fact, I knew I was pushing because I am one of those people that pooped on the table. It was like, “Come on. You know I am working!” It was so embarrassing.

Meagan: Listen, poop is a good sign. It means you are doing things really well.

Aubree: Okay good. I pushed for an hour and a half and that’s when the doctor said, “Okay. I need to probably give you the C-section talk,” because she had not descended. She engaged but she had not decided one bit, not even with pushing. There was nothing from her. He said, “You look exhausted. I actually see a little bit of blood in your urine output and we can’t get you to move on the other side for your baby's heart rate.” He was like, “I could let you go for another hour and a half,” but he said, “I think the best option for you is just to have a C-section because this will just get even more exhausting.

I consented honestly because well, I took a minute with my husband. We talked about it because I did not want a C-section although I had no idea what it entailed anyway. We decided it was the best for the baby and for myself, and we wanted to go through with it. It did go really well. The C-section went fine. I just did not like that right after the procedure, I was so shaky. Literally, so much to the point I couldn’t even hold her when they finally brought her back from the NICU for her breathing. I couldn’t even hold her. I was violently shaking.

Man, I don’t want to get emotional, but that was the hardest part. I couldn’t even bond with her. I was able to still learn and work through everything and enjoy her afterward. I just feel like I had a rough start, especially being a first-time parent, and especially because two weeks later, we came to find out she had colic. I kept blaming the C-section for her colic because I was like, “She never got the microbiomes from my vaginal canal.” 

I just knew at the end of all of that and the rough recovery of not being able to lift much or walk around as easily at first. My friend is who introduced me to you guys. That’s when I just knew things had to be different the next time. So yeah. That’s my C-section story.

Meagan: Yeah, thank you.

Aubree: Yeah. My son’s story is completely still baffling to me because I did not expect it. We had to go back to the fertility center. He took five or six rounds of intrauterine insemination and we were actually close to them saying, “Hey. You probably need to go to IVF after this.” But anyway, we were so lucky and blessed to get him in the fifth round. We had a pretty good pregnancy with him. The only thing that I had fear about was the birth and choosing the right care team.

And so at first, I knew for sure, I think I contacted Meagan to be my doula right out of the gate. I think I was only five weeks along.

Meagan: Yeah, early.

Aubree: Early, yeah. I wanted to secure you and I wanted to secure my provider. I initially went to a hospital here with a midwife because I wanted things a little bit more natural, but when I went to my first meeting with her– I had given her my whole story and she had said, “I don’t see a reason to not let you try, but I do want you to consider having an induction at 39 weeks and I would like to monitor you as we get closer.” Things didn’t sound VBAC-friendly. It just sounded tolerant and I got that feeling of, “Is this who I really want?” because I don’t do well having to fight for myself during labor. I don’t want to have that as an additional thing to worry about.

I had been keeping this other clinic in the back of my mind and I went and did a couple of interviews with the midwives at a freestanding birth center. They are an amazing team. The thing that made me feel so safe with her was that she said, “The odds are in your favor if you come to be with us.” That sounded really awesome, but I also decided to do one other thing which was that I wanted to go physically stand out in front of each place to see if I could get a feeling. You know, like, “Does this feel right for me?” 

I stood out in front of the hospital and then I stood out in front of the birth center and I did not feel pulled to either one. I was super shocked. I kind of figured out why later because he didn’t get delivered at either. Yeah. I will keep telling my story, but I think that’s the reason why my prayers went unanswered because he did not decide to come to either place. I did not make it. I would not have made it. So I decided, “Okay.” 

Around 20 weeks, you know when you have your anatomy scan, we found out he was not only breech, but that my placenta was anterior and it was also covering my C-section scar at that point. And so they said, “Okay.” This is with the birth center because I had decided to go with them. They said, “We are just going to need to keep an eye on that because we can’t have your placenta covering your C-section scar or sticking right there. It needs to move up and away from it,” as well as, breech, right? I did not want to deal with a breech baby. 

And so I did quite a few things and this is actually something I pulled from your guys’ previous podcast which is why they are so amazing. A previous person had said she started talking to her baby throughout the pregnancy and how she created a bond with them, so I was like, “I need to start talking to him.” That’s when I started having conversations. I was like, “Hey, honey. You are breech. We need you to turn.” I started to keep him informed along the way, even learning things from MamasteFit, or Gina. I kept telling him at night. I kept saying, “Okay. Remember when it is birth day, you have to tuck your chin in. You have to have the pointiest part of your head face down.”

Meagan: Those things work.

Aubree: They do. They just do. It did work. I had to have another scan later because we had to check both his position and my placenta at around 30 or 35 weeks. I can’t remember, but he did end up flipping. So I went and saw a chiropractor because I wanted to do everything to get him to not be breech. I went and saw a chiropractor here. I did the Spinning Babies Daily Essentials most days. Not every day, but I did that. I had the red raspberry leaf tea and dates. I just wanted to do all of the things I could to make this possible for myself. 

About one week before, I actually went into labor. My contractions started in the car when we were on our way back from the lantern festival. I was so fearful. I actually was like, “It can’t happen now. It can’t happen now.” It was a week before my due date. Mentally, I wasn’t prepared. The fear came back. Feeling those contractions put me right back in the hospital remembering how scared I was and it was surprising to me because I just kept saying out loud, “I am not ready. I am not ready. You’ve got to stop. We need to wait.” They fizzled out by the time I got home. That whole week, I worked with, and even throughout my pregnancy, I worked with a life coach about my fears. I did your guys’ fear release from your course. I worked through it. I wrote out everything and then I burned it. I burned my piece of paper with my fears and it felt so good.

Meagan: Mhmm. Listen, that is such an amazing thing too. In fact, Julie has a whole recording on our YouTube channel about that and how to do that. It’s so amazing. It really is.

Aubree: Yeah, for sure. I think that’s partially what helped me get to be okay with whatever could happen because I was so afraid of things like shoulder dystocia, needing to transfer, all of those things, and so it just needed to get out, be said, and be burned because, at that point, I did all that I could and had to let the pieces play out.

Meagan: Just let it go.

Aubree: Yep. Just let it go. So a week later, it was still two days before my due date. I had been feeling kind of nauseous all day and I was like, “I feel off. Let’s go to bed early tonight.” And by early, I didn’t get to bed until 11:00, but it’s fine. I said, “Let’s go to bed early.” At 11:17, I kid you not. I was not even in bed for seven minutes when the first contraction came. It made me go, “Oh no. Did I dream that?” And then five minutes later, the next one came. I shot up out of bed and I said, “This is it!”

Meagan: You can tell a difference.

Aubree: Yes. I told him. I was like, “You have got to stay asleep.” I did not expect to be fast. Knowing my C-section and whatnot, I was like, “We have got at least six hours. I want to labor here as long as possible.” I went and started a shower bath for myself with Epsom salts. It was so great. I let myself go for a whole 45 minutes. I was alone and it was awesome until it kind of really started picking up. They were consistently already five minutes apart. The intensity just grew and grew with each one. So 45 minutes later, I was saying, “Justin, can you get out of bed? I am needing help squeezes. Help me.”

That’s when he was like, “Okay. Let’s text the midwives,” so I sent a sweet text like, “I’ve been pushing for an hour. I’m just going to check–”

Meagan: Contracting, yeah. Contracting—

Aubree: Oh sorry, not pushing. Yeah, contracting for an hour and things are going well. I said, “Just keep us informed.” Seven minutes later though, I had a freak out because they just were ramping up so much. It’s not like the part you want to see in a movie because I was frantic. I was on my knees in my bedroom. I was like, “I can’t move. I can’t go anywhere.” I was like, “I picked the wrong thing. I need the epidural now. Get me somewhere. Fix it.”

Meagan: It was a lot happening really fast.

Aubree: Yeah. So my husband, bless him because he knew how much I wanted the VBAC and he said, “We need to remember what we want to try.” He was like, “What can you remember that you want me to help you with?” I said, “All I can think about is how funny it was that Gina said you can turn around on the toilet and sit there while you are in labor.” He was like, “Okay. Let’s go try it.” 

And so I made it there and it actually felt so good to sit there backward. For every contraction, I do not recommend this. But with every contraction, I pushed my forehead into the wall because it gave me some more counterpressure. He was giving counterpressure behind, but it gave me a counterpressure on my head too. It’s just what I did to cope. 

That’s when my husband was like, “We need to get places.” So that’s when– let’s see. I think it was at 12:21, he was like, “Call your mom.” I finally called you guys, my doulas. My mom quickly came and so did–

Meagan: Melinda.

Aubree: Melinda, yeah.

Meagan: She was really close to you so I was like, “It sounds like it is going fast,” and so she was like, “I’m going.” “Yeah. You’ve got to get to her.”

Aubree: I’m so appreciative of her because I don’t know if you would have made it, Meagan.

Meagan: I don’t think I would have. I mean, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have because I’m not that far, but still, with the way things were going, I was far. Do you know?

Aubree: All right. You were far enough, yeah. So my mom arrived and she was kind of like, “Wow. Don’t you guys have to get going?” Justin was like, “Yes. Yes, we know. We are trying to get everything.” I couldn’t really talk. I just was in the zone and saw my mom arrive. The doula arrived and then he called Adrienne. Adrienne heard me grunting over the phone and said, “Is she pushing?” Adrienne is my midwife and I didn’t think I was pushing. Honestly, I was just, it’s how I was like, “I am just getting through the contractions I am making a grunting noise.” I actually was like, “I think we can make it if you guys just let me go poo really quick.”

She goes, “Oh no. I am on my way right now,” because she knew what that meant and I had no idea. I was like, “Guys. Jokes on you. I really have to just go to the bathroom real quick,” but she knew. Anyway, I’m so glad she was on her way. She called us not too long after saying, “Hey. If you need to, call the paramedics. This is going to be quick.” But she luckily made it. 

So she made it and when she got there, she set up a birthing stool right next to me in my bathroom. It took a little coaxing to get me off the toilet because I did not want to move, but we ended up getting on the birth stool. I was hugging Melinda because I needed to hunch over and hug her. Justin was giving me the counterpressure still on my hips. They just switched back-and-forth so neither one got burnt out, but at one point, and apparently this is when I realized, “Oh, I really am pushing.” At one point during this pushing, I felt my baby boy. I felt him use his legs to push up into my ribs and turn. I felt him twist and turn and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, he’s doing it! He’s doing what I told him to do.”

Meagan: Exactly, yes.

Aubree: I told him to get in the position. I was like, “You do whatever you need to, baby. It’s fine.” I felt him do that and at first– I should back up a little bit before I felt that. They put a mirror underneath me and at first, I couldn’t see anything. I was like, “What if he gets stuck? What if he gets stuck?” I couldn’t see anything, so I decided. I was like, “Stop looking in the mirror to check your progress and just let it happen.” After I felt that push, I was like, “Maybe I will check now.” I looked down and that’s when I could finally see his head crowning. I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is it. He really is doing it.” 

And oh man, the ring of fire. Yes. I felt that so much. In fact, every time I would contract, I would probably push a little too hard to push him out because it was just so intense. I should have eased up. I should have probably eased up on it, but it was just so intense. I can’t tell you how many pushes it took, but man. He made it out and he did that slippery slide out. My midwife prepped my husband to catch him and that was super shocking because he is not the type of person that was like, “I want to catch the baby or cut the cord or do any of this,” but he was just right there raw and real with me.

We were just going through it doing what we had to do with what was presented. I don’t want to share the pictures with you, but if you saw the pictures of my face, I was just exhausted. I looked exhausted because it just was a wham, bam, boom. Two hours, I calculated it. It was two hours and 40 minutes from start to finish. It just blew me away. I did not think that it could be that quick.

But I should say that after he was delivered, they got my bed all set up and put all of this protection down. After I delivered the placenta, I did hemorrhage, and so I was so grateful for my midwife. She administered IV fluids to me. She stitched me up right there. It was such a turnaround, immediate bonding experience that I missed out on so much with my daughter even though I was purely exhausted. I just was so much empowered. Yeah. I’m trying to think if there is anything else. 

The recovery– I should say this. One thing that I have learned going through the C-section and a vaginal, it wasn’t like one recovery was amazingly better than the other. They just each had their pros and cons. Right? I’m not saying, “Don’t have a C-section” or “Don’t have a home birth”, but they just have pros and cons. Everybody is different and it just is okay no matter how birth happens. 

That’s the biggest thing, especially through my life coach that was helping me, my friend. She is now a certified life coach. She is the best. I really think that is what helped me. She helped me push through all of the fears I had and that is what started me on my own journey. I actually signed up now. I want to become a doula and I am going to sign up to be a life coach as well because I want to handle not only the birth, but I want to help people through their mental– it’s such a mind game for birth. So that’s my story.

Meagan: Yay. Absolutely. Oh, I love it so much. We have a client that we just recently were talking to and she had a fast birth the first time. Not fast-fast, but it was a 24-hour first-time birth. She is scared of that happening and it just being so fast. I’m like, “There are pros and cons to fast birth,” but when it’s fast, it’s usually really, really intense. 

Aubree: Yeah. 

Meagan: Yeah, and then you’re exhausted because it was so intense so fast, but yeah. As I said, there are pros and cons. I don’t even know if I would prefer fast and intense or if I would prefer what I had– 42-hour long labor. I”m like, “I don’t think I would prefer the 42-hour-long labor.”

Julie: A nice, happy medium for me. 

Meagan: Yeah, just a nice, happy medium. Even just 8-10 hours. 

Aubree: Yeah. 

Meagan: Oh man, it can get intense. You are amazing. I remember Melinda was like, “Dude. That was insane!” I'm like, “Yeah. That sounded insane.” But so amazing, too. Like, so amazing. You are just incredible and you just let your body and your baby do exactly what they needed to. I also do. We love Gina. Everyone knows we love Gina so much. 

Julie: Gina is amazing. 

Meagan: Talking to your baby, connecting to your baby. There is something to be said about that. It’s so real. I feel like I did that so much with Webster and people probably would be like, “What? You’re just talking to your stomach?” I’m like, “Yeah.” And feeling your stomach and feeling him and saying like, “Okay, buddy. It’s you and me. Let’s do this. I’ll be okay with however you come, but this is how I would love for you to come.”

Aubree: Exactly. 

Meagan: And that happened and it was amazing. I’m so, so grateful forever. I will be forever. But yeah, I just adore you and I am so grateful for you and your story. I am so excited that you are going the doula route and life coach route. There is so much goodness in life coaching as well. I think it’s going to benefit your mamas in the future. You’ve had it, but probably more than you even know, you are going to change people’s lives. 

Aubree: Aww, thanks. Yes, that’s my goal. There are so many friends that I even have that have had C-sections and at first, you don’t believe in yourself because you put a lot of stock in what a professional doctor will tell you. They told me, “You have such a small pelvis” and I’ve been told I’m small my whole life, so I didn’t really doubt them at first. I was like, “Well, they’re probably right. This is just another curse of the smallness.” 

But you know what? There’s also something to be said for educating yourself with other professionals as well and getting second opinions. Like you are saying, trust your body because when I learned, when I took your course, The VBAC Link course, and I followed people like Gina, you empower yourself with more knowledge. Even though it might not work out how you want, the fact that you empowered yourself to know no matter what way it goes, I think that’s what I hope any future client would want. “No matter how it goes, I’ll be okay.” 

Julie: Yeah, absolutely. 

Meagan: I love that. 

HBAC Statistics and Criteria

Julie: Should we talk a little bit about home birth? 

Meagan: Sure. 

Aubree: Yeah, sure. 

Julie: Have a little educational piece about home birth? First of all, if you are interested in our VBAC Prep Course for Parents, we also have a VBAC Doula Certification course, you can find all the information for those courses on our website at thevbaclink.com and we also have a blog about home birth after Cesarean. Surprise, surprise. I’m actually looking at it right now so I can go over some of the data because sometimes it will get all smushed around in my head. 

But it’s interesting because we have all of this data about home birth and its safety and things like that, but during the COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021, preliminary numbers show an increase in out-of-hospital births because I feel like a lot of people were being forced to choose between having their supportive birth team or being really restricted with who they could and could not have in hospitals. So I love that home birth is an option in most parts of the country. You’re not going to face much of a kickback. 

There are a few Southern states that really restrict home birth options there and out in Nebraska. My best friend is getting ready to have a baby in Nebraska and home birth is just illegal there. It’s illegal for midwives to attend home births. They really don’t have any options out there in Nebraska, so you’ve got to work hard to create advocacy and change if you’re in that state.  

In 2019, there was a peer-reviewed meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is a study that looks at a whole bunch of studies together so it’s really a more comprehensive view than an individual study would be. In 2019, there was a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of 20 years worth of studies on home birth that contained roughly 500,000 parents. So it is a pretty good size study. 

The study showed that low-risk parents who have a hospital birth have no difference in the overall birth outcomes than low-risk parents who have a planned home birth. Now, it’s really interesting because a lot of times, we’ll see and hear a lot, even now. Even last night at the ICAN meeting I was at, people were saying, “Oh my gosh. Home birth scares me. It scares me so much” or “Out of hospital birth scares me.” 

When you really look down at the difference in mortality rates and birth outcomes, they are very, very similar between birthing and home or birthing in a hospital. So there’s that if you are a statistic junkie like me. That is really interesting for you to see. But also, you have got to understand there are different risks associated. Sometimes your risk is a little bit different. Of course, if you’re having a home birth, we highly recommend that you have a midwife that has attended many, many home births and that has a solid transfer plan in case of an emergency or if you go the unassisted route that you have a solid transfer plan in case an emergency happens so that you can get to the hospital quickly if it is needed. 

But it’s really cool because this analysis also showed that birthing at home had fewer medical interventions and fewer Cesareans. Meagan, maybe you have a better idea of this than I do, but I know that in some of our birth centers around here and for our out-of-hospital midwives, their Cesarean rate is 5%. Like, 95% vaginal births. 95% successful home births. They go on to have hospital transfers and some clients will eventually need a Cesarean, but we have really, really high VBAC success rates at birth centers and with home birth midwives. Meagan, do you see that?

Meagan: Yeah. I don’t know the exact percentage by any means because I am not good with numbers, but yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Julie: It’s incredible. I love that. Home birth is not for everybody but there are four things, four criteria that you need in order for home birth to be a safe option for you. The first one is that you have to have a low-risk pregnancy. Here is a little plug-in: having a prior Cesarean does not automatically make you a high-risk pregnancy. I’m going to say that again. Having a prior Cesarean or going for a VBAC does not automatically make you high risk in your pregnancy. 

Now, you are at a higher risk for uterine rupture. That is true, but the risk is still fairly low. It doesn’t put you in a high-risk category. You don’t need to see maternal-fetal medicine. You don’t need to see a high-risk doctor or anything like that to manage your pregnancy.

The second criterion is chosen, planned, and prepared for. A home birth that is planned and prepared for has better outcomes than accidental homebirths do. The care provider involved is qualified and experienced in homebirth so you don’t just have your next-door neighbor come and help deliver your baby. Unless your next-door neighbor happens to be an experienced homebirth midwife, then that’s okay.

The fourth birth criterion is that your home birth plan includes a backup transfer plan in case of an emergency, as I talked about before. We know that it is relatively safe and most birth is a natural process but every once in a while, things happen where you are going to need more emergent care and you’re going to need an expert involved so having a backup transfer plan in place is important in that regard.

We have a blog about it. It’s at thevbaclink.com/blog. You can just type HBAC in the search bar and it’s going to put up right there or you can just go to Google and I think it’s the second search result on Google. Meagan, what would you add?

Meagan: I love it. Nothing, you’re just amazing. I guess I should say when I was preparing to have my VBAC after two C-sections, people told me that I was crazy and that I was going to kill my baby. Really, really awful things, and yeah. It can be scary, but if you prepare it can be just as great. I mean, Aubree was planning on going out of hospital but not at home, but she still had her team equipped and ready to help her and it was still really great. And so yeah. I just think that doing what you feel is best for you and being at the place where you feel safest is going to be the best place too. 

All right, well Ms. Aubrey, we are so grateful for you. Thank you so much again. We really love your story and are excited to share it with the world.

Aubree: Yeah, thank you guys so much. Seriously, I’m so glad you guys have done The VBAC Link and keep doing it because it is so helpful for all of us out there.

Closing

Interested in sharing your VBAC story on the podcast? Submit your story at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Julie and Meagan’s bios, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. 

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