Anneke is a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist from Oregon who is a long-time VBAC Link Podcast listener. During her first pregnancy, she would listen to 5+ hours of episodes commuting back and forth from work! Anneke was more than committed to having a vaginal birth with each of her pregnancies, but what she has learned from her births about advocacy, trust, and defining success are beautiful lessons that have changed her forever.At The VBAC Link, we are here to help you achieve your goals of a vaginal birth. But even more importantly, we are here to advocate for empowered decision-making in the birth space. Anneke is an inspiring example of being educated, strong, and finding healing within circumstances that were out of her control.“Since my first birth, I’ve asked, ‘Why? Why not me? Why does this keep happening and why can’t I just be like so many others on the podcast and so many others across the country? Why can’t I just will it into being?’ From these questions, I’m starting to believe that my story actually might begin at the end. I’ve realized that maybe my story isn’t about the mechanism of birth at all, but what it birthed in me which was the ability to see my own strength.”Additional LinksThe Lactation Network WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, hello. Wherever you are listening from, welcome to The VBAC Link. We have three beautiful stories for you today. They are all unique. They all have certain things along the way that add some unique factors. We have our friend Anneke. I keep questioning that, but it’s Anneke and she has had three Cesareans. Her Cesareans really all have been a little bit different and for different reasons. We’ve got IVF. We’ve got low fluid and we have breech presentation. I’m excited to share your stories or have you share your stories today, but as always, we love starting our podcast out with a review. Review of the WeekToday’s reviewer is from a girl named Megan. It says, “Great resource.” It says, “Such a great resource for VBAC mamas to come and listen to women’s stories and get great evidence-based practice information. I do wish these ladies would do a little less interrupting of the storytellers.” Well, I’m so sorry, Megan. We definitely do jump in so hopefully, Anneke, you don’t feel too interrupted. But we do like to be a part of your story as well because we want you to share your story, but we are listening and we are listening for the first time. We are reacting as if someone else would react the first time they are listening, right? So yeah. Thank you, Megan, for your review. We do love your reviews as always. Seriously, anywhere you listen– Apple Podcasts or Google. You can email us. Write us on Instagram. Let us know what your review is because we would love to read it on the next podcast. Anneke’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Ms. Anneke. Welcome to the show. Anneke: Thank you. Meagan: Thank you for being here and sharing these stories. I just want to turn the time over to you and have you share away and educate these listeners. Anneke: Awesome, well I am a long-time listener of your podcast actually. I think I found your podcast before I gave birth to my first child. Meagan: Oh really? Anneke: Yeah. I was doing 5-hour drives. I am a pelvic floor physical therapist. Meagan: Oh yes. I wanted to talk about that too by the way at the end. Don’t let me forget. Anneke: Well, I was contracted to work where I am actually working now. It was a 5.5-hour drive. I would go down once a month and treat patients so I would listen to 5.5 hours of your podcast. Meagan: You would get through quite a few episodes. Anneke: Yeah. Lots of episodes. I always had this dream that I would be able to come on The VBAC Link with this triumphant VBAC– well, with this triumphant story. I never expected to have a Cesarean. I don’t think anybody ever does. But after I had my first, I was like, “Okay. My goal is to someday be on The VBAC Link with this triumphant story.” I’m not here today with the triumphant vaginal birth that I was hoping for, but I really think that my births tell three stories. The first one is about advocacy and then the second one is about trust and then the third one is about defining success. Meagan: Oh, that just gave me the chills. That really did. So let’s talk about this. Anneke: So my first pregnancy started after about three and a half years of infertility. We went all the way through to IVF. I’d been having some mental health struggles getting through all of the infertility pieces so I’d been doing counseling and that was amazingly helpful. We get into the pregnancy. Everything is going beautifully and at about 18 weeks, I had some really bad swelling. I told my provider and he was like, “Well, sorry. Sometimes people just get swelling.” I just went with that. A friend of mine who is a pelvic floor PT– I was seeing her because I was doing all of the things. I had prenatal yoga and I was seeing a pelvic floor therapist because I had some pelvic pain and pelvic tension in the past. She took my blood pressure one day and it had always been normal in the OB’s office. She was like, “Wow, you’re a little elevated.” That was in August at about 20 weeks probably. Baby looked fine and he was growing just fine. I’m just continuing to get more and more swelling. They were like, “Well, shucks.” I probably went into OB triage three times because I had systolic pressures above 150. Meagan: Oh!Anneke: Yeah. The third time I went in, they said, “Stop taking your blood pressure. Stop coming in. You’re fine.” Meagan: Did you have protein at all? Anneke: No, so everything was always really clear. I was peeing in a cup every time I went into the OB’s office. They would take my blood pressure and they’d say, “You’re fine.” I went in sometime in October to get my flu shot and they said, “Oh, your diastolic (bottom number), is a little high.” I had an OB visit two days later and they said, “Just let him know.” He put me on metoprolol, a beta-blocker blood pressure medication, and had me start tracking my blood pressure which was kind of validating because I had been trying to tell them for weeks that my blood pressure was high. So I’m tracking it and the metoprolo was working okay. My blood pressure was elevated, but it wasn’t scary. I went to my 32-week visit and I actually did have a little bit of protein in my urine at that visit. So we were living in Salem which is the capital of Oregon so it’s a big city. The big research hospital is only an hour away. It’s really close. They went and sent me for bloodwork after I had some protein in my urine. They called me later that day and said, “Hey, your numbers are borderline so we want you to come in and get these injections.”Nobody had talked to me about preeclampsia. Nobody had talked to me about, “Hey, we’re concerned about this.” They were just like, “Hey, you’re probably looking at an induction at 37 weeks.” They said, “You’re borderline. We need you to come in for these shots.” I was heading down to Lakeview where I live now to do some contract work. I said, “Well, I’m going out of town this weekend. Can it wait until next week?” I could come tomorrow. The shots are supposed to be 24 hours apart. They said, “Oh yeah, yeah. It’s fine.” Now, looking back, in a movie, that’s where they would say, “Dun, dun, dun.” They sent me 5.5 hours away to rural Oregon where the only hospital there is a critical access hospital that does not have a NICU. It does not have on-call anesthesia. It has nothing. Although now, having been here, it has a lot more than what we think. So anyway, I go down. I work that day. I woke up the next morning and had all of the preeclampsia symptoms. I bet I had gained 20 pounds overnight. Meagan: Oh man. Anneke: My blood pressure was 180/25. I came down and my mom and my husband were staring at me because I was so swollen. Meagan: You didn’t look good. Anneke: Yeah, and because of the attitude I got from triage– my husband had me call triage up in Salem and they said, “You need to go in right away.” But they had sent me home so many times before, so I was like, “Well, I have a hair appointment so I’m going to go to my hair appointment.” My hair looked awesome and I walked into the local ER here. This is where I grew up, so I knew everybody working and they didn’t recognize me because I was so swollen. I had gone from borderline preeclamptic on Wednesday to by Saturday morning, severely preeclamptic. I ended up being life-flighted out to Salem. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Anneke: The ER doc that was here said, “If you were one week farther along, I would deliver you.” I was only 33 weeks at that point. They got me up to Salem and they were able to stabilize me. They said, “Okay. We’re just going to go week by week. We’re going to try to hold you off until 34 and 35 and get you as close as we can.” So Saturday went by. Everything was looking better. Sunday, our game plan was to wait, and then by Sunday evening, I had stopped peeing. I was drinking tons of fluid. That was actually the first time– I mean, I’m a medical provider and that was the first time that I was like, “Okay. Something is wrong.”Meagan: Yeah. My body is not happy right now. Anneke: Yeah. The nurse was like, “Okay, come on. Let’s just go pee.” I was like, “Dude. There’s nothing in there.” Lo and behold, I had kicked over to near eclampsia. They worked for a couple of hours to try to get my blood pressure down and stabilize me. It wouldn’t stabilize. The OB who was at the hospital in Salem came in and said, “I think we are going to induce you tonight and you’re going to have 36 hours to deliver or we’re going to take you to C-section.” That was really scary for me. I had a doula. I had a doula team that I loved, but my whole birth plan was movement. I really wanted to go medication-free, but they said, “Look, no. We’re going to induce you. Cytotec, Pitocin, and you’re going to be in bed.” I got really scared and talked to my doula and my husband, and then the OB came back in probably an hour later and said, “Nope. Actually, we’re just going to take you to C-section,” then basically turned around and walked off. The poor nurse. I remember just bursting into tears because even though I was scared of not moving, I really didn’t want a C-section. That actually– my son was born the next morning at 3:00 AM and they whisked him straight to the NICU then because of all of the magnesium they had me on, I didn’t hold him. That was Monday morning. I probably didn’t hold him until Tuesday afternoon. I got to see him briefly, but one of the things that stands out to me the most is being in the PACU, the recovery from surgery, and the doc staying with me for about 2.5 hours. Looking back, docs don’t stay with you. Meagan: No. Anneke: They are very worried about you if they are by your bedside for 2.5 hours. We were really lucky. We had a very short NICU stay. We had a wonderful NICU team. My recovery was rough, but as soon as I gave birth, the preeclampsia started to fade. I lost all of that water and I felt a lot better. But I walked out of the hospital 10 days later with my baby, looked at my husband and said, “Next time, I am doing a vaginal birth.” He was like, “Pump the brakes for a minute.” Meagan: He’s like, “Maybe let’s just not even talk about that.” Anneke: Yeah. But I was so committed. I had really severe postpartum anxiety that I probably should have been treated for because if anyone comes out of the NICU, you come out of this gruesome schedule of waking your baby up and pumping and feeding. So for about 6 weeks, I just didn’t sleep and had really severe postpartum anxiety. I should have been treated probably, but you’re not really in a headspace to think about that. But I remember, thank God for my mom and my husband, screaming at my mom about washing the bottles incorrectly. Thank goodness my mom loves me because she was like, “Okay,” and just supported me. Meagan: Yeah, but those are actually signs of postpartum anxiety where you need things to have to be just so or you’re really nervous about a binky falling on the ground. Yeah. It seems super irrational to other people, but it is so real to the person going through it. Anneke: Right. Right. I think it just speaks to the lack of postpartum care that we have. They discharged me. I mean, I found out about 5 years later that I almost died that night. The Cesarean was life-saving. That was absolutely what I needed. They discharged me 5 days later with just, “All right. We’ll see you in 6 weeks,” and then at 6 weeks, they’re like, “Well, back in the saddle, Sally.” There’s no coverage there. No coverage of care for me. Meagan: I know. It’s where we’re going wrong. Anneke: Right. Meagan: They’re going wrong in the postpartum area in a lot of ways. Anneke: Yeah. I had trauma and nervousness. It was probably 6 or 7 months before I finally came out of that postpartum anxiety, probably a year before I felt like myself. After about a year, I mean, I think just like everybody, you’re like, “Okay. I could do this again.” You know? I started to get in shape. I started to exercise again, and then I had this weird episode of bleeding. I thought, “Oh, it’s just my period coming back and being stupid. It actually ended up being a miscarriage. I had never gotten pregnant before. I had never gotten pregnant on my own before so it was kind of this weird happy/sad experience. Fortunately, we were able to naturally conceive my second child, my first daughter, about two months later. Meagan: That’s awesome. Anneke: Yeah, it was amazing. I was so grateful. I found immediately that I had this focus on wanting this vaginal birth. I felt very fortunate because the other podcast I listened to all throughout my pregnancy was one by Parijat Deshpande. She had a podcast– I guess she doesn’t record for it anymore– called Delivering Miracles. It was all about high-risk pregnancy and doing all you can to reduce your risks of having a high-risk pregnancy and also recovering. I think I emailed her office person every week for a year because I really wanted to work with her. I finally was able to get in with her right around the time we found out we were pregnant. She does a lot of trauma relief work. It’s a lot less of talking out your issues and more using movements and visualizations to help bring down your sympathetic fight and flight nervous system. I worked with her throughout my entire pregnancy. I felt like a rockstar. There was no swelling. I guess in the meantime, the other part of the story is that we had moved down to Lakeview– the really rural, critical-access hospital place. We moved down here in between my first and second child. There are no VBACs here so the closest place is about 3.5 hours away for a supportive VBAC provider. Meagan: That’s a long drive. Anneke: It’s a long drive. We actually made the decision that we were going to go back to Salem to do a VBAC. I love my provider down here. I actually went with the guy who admitted me to the ER the day I had preeclampsia. He was a totally different personality than I thought was going to be a good fit for me. When he admitted me that day in the ER, he explained exactly what was happening to me. He explained why he wanted me to do the things he wanted me to do. I thought being flown– and he explained, “Look. You could have a seizure. You could have a stroke. This is my very strong recommendation. This is not a prison, but this is a strong recommendation.” I just really liked that approach. I felt like I had a lot of trust there. He had saved my life. I mean, it sounds dramatic, but he had saved my life once. I went with him again and he was very supportive of figuring out how to make the VBAC work and when to go and how to transition, but he also had a backup plan for a Cesarean just in case. At about 28 weeks, they always do a little ultrasound at the visits, and she was breech but everything else looked fine. He was like, “Oh, you have plenty of time.” The weeks go on and she continues to be breech. He’s in the back of his head thinking, “Okay, we need to probably start looking at the calendar and thinking about dates.” I’m just in denial at this point. I’m like, “It’s going to happen.” Like all of the stories on The VBAC Link, you will it. You positively think. You do the stretches and the walking and the whatever and they’re going to turn. Baby is going to turn. We get to 34 weeks and he said, “You know, let’s just check you on ultrasound. I just want to make sure,” because my placenta had been anterior. He was like, “I just want to make sure that your placenta is off your scar in case we have to do a Cesarean.” We were excited because of course, it’s a really small town. Lakeview is where I live and it is a town of about 2,000 people and a county of about 7,000. You literally know everybody. We’re about 100 miles from the closest next hospital. We’re very rural. We know the ultrasound tech of course and she was like, “Oh, we’re going to do 3D,” so we walked in being very excited. She did the biophysical profile and I had a fluid level that day of– my AFI was a 4.1. Meagan: Oh. What week is this? Anneke: 34. Meagan: 34. That’s low. Anneke: That’s low. She was like, “You’re not leaving today.” I was like, “What?” So thank God, I was working with Parjat Deshpande. We immediately kick into all of the things to help keep my anxiety low and help keep it all out of my body. We were tracking so now I was doing biophysical profiles. I think they started every other day and my fluid numbers started to come back up. Our docs here consult with maternal-fetal medicine out of a town about 3.5 hours away. They said, “Okay, as long as you are trending upward, you are fine.” But at that point, we kind of knew that a VBAC was off the table because with that low of fluid, baby is really unlikely to turn. At that point, I was like, “Okay. Let’s just keep her healthy. Whatever we need, whatever we’ve got to do.” So we are chugging along and at about 35 weeks and a couple of days, my fluid level got all the way down to 2.1. It had come up and then it started to come way back down. The earliest that our hospital can deliver babies is 36 weeks. Meagan: You were a week out. Anneke: I’m a week out, yep. Oh my gosh. There’s all of this lore about low amniotic fluid, so I was probably drinking close to 2 gallons of water a day. There is no direct correlation. There is a correlation with hydration and low fluid, but not pathologically low fluid. But there is all of this lore, so I was drinking close to 2 gallons of water a day and also drinking these buttermilk and blueberry smoothies. It was an Indian culture thing to have buttermilk to help with fluids. They are actually weirdly good but I was drinking one of those every day. Meagan: Interesting. I’ve never even heard of that. Anneke: Yeah. I mean, all of the Google things. We were just doing all of the Google things. We made it to– when I was 36 weeks, both my OB and I breathed a sigh of relief. We’re like, “Okay, we made it. Okay, so here we go now. We’re going to keep tracking her to 37 and get her to early term or late preterm.” The MFM was like, “Nope, just go for it.” We ended up delivering her at 36+1 via Cesarean. What was so wonderful about that birth is because of my work with Parijat and really trusting in a medical team that was around me, I felt like that birth was not traumatic. It was scary and we were worried, but she came out of me and just started screaming right away. I was able to breastfeed. She came right to me in the OR and we breastfed in the OR. I mean, the one nice thing about having a Cesarean is that the spinal takes a long time to wear off and you have a catheter. I think I did skin-to-skin for 6 hours. My husband did not hold her for 6 hours. That was one of the things that really left me with some trauma from my son. So I just remembered these goldeny, autumn afternoons and she was just on my chest and I just could not have been happier. Even though it wasn’t the VBAC and it was preterm, it was still like I just had this incredible team around me that ultimately gave me the experience I wanted even though it wasn’t the method. Meagan: Right. That is something that I feel is so important to touch on because sometimes we hear Cesarean stories and we hear trauma. Scary, traumatic. Anneke: Right. Meagan: I don’t want to say that Cesareans can’t be scary or traumatic or that they’re not, but they don’t always have to be. They actually can be very healing. Anneke: Right. Meagan: And redemptive. You might think, “Oh, you didn’t get a redemption birth because you didn’t have a VBAC,” but there are a lot of really amazing beautiful wins that were very redemptive in her birth, right? Anneke: Right. Meagan: That skin-to-skin and being involved and having that team be supportive of the whole team and motivating you, “Okay, we’re going to get to 36 weeks.” All of these things are really awesome stuff. Anneke: Yeah. It was incredible. You know, we’ve had two births now that were– the first one was very scary. The second one was very scary and we almost stopped having kids. I had this dream of having four children. My husband is like, “Well, I wanted two. You wanted four so we compromised on four kids.” That’s what he says now, but at the time, he was like, “No. I can’t go through this again.” I was actually kind of along, especially for the first year, on the same path. I felt so grateful to have a positive experience. Everybody was healthy. Our family was wonderful. About a year out from her birth, maybe 7 or 8 months out from her birth, I really started feeling like I wanted to pursue our dream of having four kids. My husband really struggled with that so he and I both went to counseling. We went separately to counseling because we both had a lot of trauma actually left over from the first birth, my son’s birth. Both of us– he did some EMDR work which was really powerful and I just did some talk therapy which was really good. Ultimately, we decided that we wanted to have a third baby and then eventually go on for a fourth. It took us a little bit longer to get pregnant. At that time, I found out that in my first birth, they were tracking my labs and one of the things they track is sodium. That fluid imbalance, sodium is a very important lab value that we need. I was digging through pages and pages and pages of notes trying to figure out, “Why did they never even give me a chance?” Because even though my daughter’s birth was very redemptive, I still had this fire in me for wanting to know what a contraction felt like. In the meantime, I’ve developed this pelvic floor and OB program at our little local hospital here and I’m a childbirth educator and I’m just touting the virtues of vaginal birth and feeling like we have totally overmedicalized birth. So I’m digging through all of my notes and I find that my sodium had been trending over the 12 hours before even I realized that I wasn’t peeding. My sodium had been trending down. By the time they made the call to go to C-section, I was three data points away from being a 50/50 survivor. My sodium had gotten so low. I didn’t have 36 hours to try to labor. Meagan: Well, and when sodium gets really, really, really low, can’t you actually have a stroke? Anneke: Yeah. Yeah. Meagan: And a major stroke. Anneke: Yeah. Like 50/50 coin flip on survival. It actually gave me a lot of closure to see that. I wish they had explained it to me like that at the moment, but it was like, “Okay, that was the right call.” Meagan: Validation.Anneke: Right. I hate it when you’re given platitudes about, “Well, healthy mom and healthy baby.” It’s like, “Well, obviously.” I wouldn’t wish for something different, but there’s also an experience that I’m looking for. So rolling into our third pregnancy, shoot. Being pregnant with two kids is no joke. I kind of had a harder pregnancy. We were able to conceive naturally again. Meagan: Yay!Anneke: Yeah. This time, we started with maternal-fetal medicine. They were tracking us from 16 weeks on. I had monthly visits with them all the way up to 36 weeks. Again, everything is going swimmingly. She looked lovely. My fluid is great. My blood pressure is low. We get to 28 weeks and she’s breech. Along with being a pelvic floor PT and a mom of two at the time, I am a varsity volleyball coach and my husband is a wildman firefighter. If you haven’t been out west for the last couple of years, it’s been insane or I guess living under a rock because it’s made national news. So this is during the summer rolling into volleyball season. I’ve got a breech baby. I’ve got this whole plan for a VBAC. I’m going to go into labor. We’re going to drive 3.5 hours. I’m going to labor in the car with my husband driving like a grandma. We’re going to do this. I was back to every day listening to a VBAC Link podcast and just willing it into being. I hit about 33 weeks and I’m doing uterine ligament mobilizations on myself. I bought a Spinning Babies class and was doing close to 2 hours of exercises a day to do inversions and side-lying and all of the rebozo sifting. At about 33 weeks, a friend of mine told me about this postural restoration physical therapist over in Grants Pass which is about 4 hours away from here and I went. I got an appointment with her and drove 4 hours one way to go see her. I got in with an acupuncturist. We did all of the things. Meagan: Literally, yeah. Anneke: Literally all of the things. A little after Labor Day, my husband was home. So firefighters work for 2-3 weeks on and then they get 2-3 days off. Usually, in busy fire burn season, they will turn and burn and go back out. He came home after Labor Day and I was a wreck because I was so stressed out with trying to get her turned. It was the middle of volleyball season. It was a busy fire season. They were supposed to leave the next day to go on another 2-week assignment and I just burst into tears. He was like, “Do you need me to stay?” I’m not very good at asking for help, but I knew that if I didn’t leave everything out on the table, I would always wonder if she didn’t turn, I would always wonder, “What if?” We made the decision that he was going to stay back from what would have probably been his last fire assignment before she was born anyway and we did, like I said, 2-2.5 hours of exercises daily to try to get her to turn. I drove back and forth to Grants Pass several more times and then finally, I was really nervous about doing a version, but that was something that my OB in Medford had suggested as a possible thought and my OB here was like, “Look, we can’t offer you a VBAC here. I don’t feel comfortable doing a version here because we just don’t have the resources.” So at my 36-week appointment, I said, “Look. I don’t know how comfortable I feel with a version. Is that going to be too much?” This is what I love about my OB. He leaned forward and said, “I have never known anyone as committed to wanting a VBAC as you. I think you need to do everything.” We drove over to Medford. We took all of our bags just in case it threw me into labor or something. Meagan: Right, or you had to stay. Anneke: Right. We went over and saw my OB there. He was like, “Okay. You’re going to go to the hospital.” He explains the whole procedure. They couldn’t give me the uterine relaxing medication because I had a little cardiac event in the pregnancy earlier that was just a one-off but he didn’t feel comfortable giving that to me. For anyone who has been through a version, those are really uncomfortable. I mean, it wasn’t the worst pain I’ve ever felt, but it’s like being squished, very heavily squished by a full-grown man. You could see it in his face. He gets a hold of my daughter and he turns her 90 degrees and then she slips back. You can see that he’s like, “Oh yeah. We’ve totally got this.” He hooks his hands on again and turns her 90 degrees and she slips back. So he’s like, “Okay. Third time’s the charm. Third time’s the last time. We’re not going to do it anymore, but we’re going to get her.” He gets a good grip on her and he gets her to 90 degrees and gets her a little bit farther. I felt her jerk and her heart rate dropped to 60. We all just held up our hands and we’re like, “Nope. Nope.” I didn’t know this guy very well. He came very highly recommended. He was very friendly, but I’d only seen him a couple of times. He was just like, “Okay, well you can drive back to Lakeview and go schedule a C-section. We’ll see you later. I have more patients to see.” I really liked him, but I’m starting to get a little sniffly and teary. He was just like, “I’m really sorry,” and left. I think I cried the entire way home and then I cried the whole next day. I told my husband, “I’m not calling my local OB. I’m not calling him.” He was like, “Yeah, but the baby’s got to come out at some point.” I did finally see my OB the next week which would have been close to 38 weeks. I mean, the poor guy. I know he felt so bad, so he was like, “Okay, what can we do?” I really wanted to go into labor. I mean, this OB puts up with a lot of my shenanigans, but that was a hard no. He was like, “Absolutely not. You’re not going into labor. We’re not going to introduce bacteria when we don’t need to.”I’d read a lot about a gentle Cesarean where mom gets to pick baby up or baby gets to go straight to her chest. Meagan: Mother-assisted Cesarean. We’re seeing it happen. Anneke: I know. I’m very committed to the next one to maybe making this happen. I’ve got to work on this guy for a little bit, but that was a hard no on this one. One week was not enough time to prepare him, but what we were able to do is I had good friends who were OB nurses. We were able to schedule it on a day that they could be there. Our normal procedure for Cesareans here is that baby is born and then they do the cord clamping and then baby goes to the warmer, but my OB for delayed cord clamping instead of just laying her on my legs, held her out with full arms extended, probably burning to let me see her. She was a big kid. She was almost 9 pounds. That’s actually the picture that I sent to go along with it. Then he took her over to the warmer and my friend, the nurse, was right behind him and swooped her up and brought her right to me. It was as close to that immediate skin-to-skin as we could have gotten. My struggle in the week between the version and her birth was that I just felt so broken. I really felt like my body had failed me and that for whatever reason, I wasn’t destined to ever feel a contraction or to even try to give birth vaginally. I worked with my therapist over that week and actually did some EMDR myself because I just really felt like what I had done was valuable. I did everything I could to give her a vaginal birth and I under no circumstances wanted that feeling of brokenness to be passed to her even via osmosis. I worked really, really hard to have that open, brave feeling the day of her birth. When she got put on my chest, I didn’t want any of my insecurities to get passed on to her. It was difficult after her birth too. I really struggled with feeling like I was worthy and like I had done enough. The other thing too is that I felt like I was going to have difficulty teaching childbirth education. Who am I to teach in this space? Meagan: I get that. When I became a doula, people would say, “Oh, so how was your vaginal birth? Did you go unmedicated?” I’m like, “I had two C-sections.” They’re like, “Well, how do you feel qualified to support me through a vaginal birth then?” It’s like, “I totally do.” Yeah. It was really something hard to overcome not having ever had a vaginal birth. Anneke: Right. Right. I had one patient. She sticks out to me. She said, “Well, okay. What do contractions feel like?” I had to be like, “Well, people describe them as–”. I wasn’t able to tell her and that tore me apart. Since she was born, I’ve taught two series of childbirth education. I’ve had a bunch of pregnant patients and I’ve helped patients labor and helped teach them positioning and counterpressure. I realize looking back, I’m a pelvic floor PT and I threw my entire base of knowledge into my drive and journey to achieving a vaginal birth three times. When that failed, I literally went with blind faith. Anything that the internet or anyone suggested to me, I tried. I prayed and I meditated and I positive-affirmed myself every day and it still didn’t happen. So in the end, I’ve never had that chance to be able to actively tell her or from experience tell my patients what a contraction felt like. Since my first birth, I’ve really asked, “Why? Why not me? Why does this keep happening and why can’t I just be like so many others on the podcast and so many others across the country? Why can’t I just will it into being?” So from these questions, I’m starting to believe that my story actually might begin at the end. After my belly has been cut into for the final time after the scar tissue knits back down and I can cough without pain, I’ve realized that maybe my story isn’t about the mechanism of birth at all but what it birthed in me which was the ability to see my own strength and give that to my people who are in a world where victimhood and fragility eat away at our resilience and our grit. I thought that not being able to labor to not meet my children has broken me but I can’t be broken. I can’t be a broken mother to them. I want my kids to be strong, confident, and powerful. I can’t teach them that if I can’t model that. So I didn’t get a vaginal delivery. I didn’t get to experience labor pain and comfort measures and to have my partner doing counterpressure and using a comb and work together to bring my babies through my pelvis. I didn’t get to look adoringly at my husband as I pulled my baby onto my chest myself, but what I did was I made the choice to put my child’s needs before my own desires and I sacrificed my body in order to protect theirs. My labor was really giving my control and placing trust in my medical team and God to bring my babies into the world. I’m not broken by my births. I really feel like I’d been remade into what a mother is supposed to be. Meagan: Absolutely. I’m just crying over here. That was beautiful. That was absolutely beautiful. You know, I’ve talked about this before, but the way we give birth doesn’t define us. It doesn’t say that we are a successful mom for giving birth vaginally or by a Cesarean. It doesn’t mean that our children are going to be weak or struggle because they didn’t come out vaginally. Anneke: Right. Meagan: Wow. I just love everything. I’m seriously crying here. That was just beautiful. You are beautiful. Anneke: Thank you. Meagan: Every single one of these births is beautiful. You don’t have to give birth vaginally to have a beautiful experience and to be a powerful mom. Like you said, “I’m not coming here today to share the vaginal birth that I wanted so badly and that I longed for,” but look at what you have done. Look at how you’ve grown. Look at how strong you are. I believe that our children– right now, they are little. They probably don’t really understand the magnitude of what a Cesarean birth or a vaginal birth even looks like and what that means, but I promise you that no matter what, these babies are going to be grateful for you. Women of Strength, as you are listening, know that the way you give birth does not define you. You are incredible. Anneke: It actually hit me during the last childbirth education series that we taught. We go around and we talk about all of the interventions for birth– epidural, IV meds, Cesarean, or vaginal. So often, we have people who say, “Well, whatever baby needs.” It actually struck me during this last class. I said, “Look, of course, it’s whatever baby needs. What you need is to cope. You need to know your strength and what will keep you strong because that is what takes you through this without trauma and takes you through feeling stronger and successful no matter the mechanism, no matter the medications, or the delivery method. It’s about how you approach your birth and how you are going to continue to be strong whether you are pushing them or whether you are being brave and being cut open. No matter what it is.” Meagan: No matter what, yeah. Well, thanks for that. That was amazing. Anneke: You’re so welcome. Meagan: Sorry for the sniffles, guys. That was beautiful. Congratulations. Anneke: Thank you. Meagan: Huge congratulations to all of your growth. Even through your journey with pelvic floor, you are going to help so many people. And with pelvic floor, tell us a little bit more about what you’ve learned even both ways with vaginal and Cesarean and how the pelvic floor actually is connected to both, and how even Cesarean mamas need guidance through pelvic floor. Anneke: Yeah, absolutely. I actually see a lot of the same issues post-vaginal and post-Cesarean birth. With vaginal birth, usually what happens is you’re pushing a watermelon through a quarter-sized hole so those muscles and your joints are designed to stretch. There are lots of movements and things that can help. It would be like overstretching your hamstring. It just reactively spasms and tightens back down. That’s even in the absence of tearing and things like that. Pelvic floor tension is really, really common after a vaginal birth but also after a Cesarean birth. Now you’ve lost stability from your abdomen. You can’t even sneeze for 8 weeks without feeling like you’re going to burst open. My nose actually wasn’t better for a year after my first son because it was just so fast. Oftentimes, I actually see a reactive spasm of the pelvic floor in women with Cesarean deliveries as well because your pelvic floor is overcompensating through your lack of abdomen support. I actually treat those women a lot of the same and then of course, we do a lot more of scar tissue work with Cesarean. It’s a lot more like abdominal training early on in women with vaginal delivery, but yeah. I mean, it’s almost identical. The initial recommendations are a little bit different, but by 6 weeks, I’m treating women the same. What I actually love, I wanted to mention this about rural hospitals. People get scared to deliver in rural hospitals, but what’s beautiful about our situation is that your OB will also likely be the one to come deliver and will also see you for the 3-day weight and color check, the 2-week visit, the 4-week visit, and the 8-week visit. They’ll see you at the 6-week visit for you too. We have so much better follow-up for mom and baby here than I got in a big, fancy hospital in the city. I think I see people way sooner than I would see them in the city. I’m seeing people easily 4 and 6 weeks out where in the city, it might be 6 or 8 months. Meagan: Right. There are so many of us that it’s 6 weeks out. That’s when we are going in for our first visit and they’re like, “Oh, what birth control do you want?” That’s what we’re asking. We’ve gone weeks and weeks and weeks with the pelvic pressure and that bulge or the leaking or that disconnect when we could have been doing something. Maybe 2 weeks out, we’re not doing the exact same things, but there are things that we can do even through breath with our scar or mobilization for a Cesarean and all of these things that we can do. If you are like the many of us who don’t get seen as you have which is the way it should be in my opinion, I think that we should be seeing people 3 days out or 2 weeks out and all of these things because that’s when so many things are not caught. Know that it’s okay. You can still turn to a pelvic floor specialist and therapist even while you’re waiting. Anneke: Yeah. I’ve started a program at our hospital where I actually try to catch C-section moms in-house. I’ll give them laying on your stomach and early abdominal work and how to get out of bed. Nobody teaches you how to get out of bed after a Cesarean. You can really screw up your scar tissue by straining on it too much or just be in a lot of pain for a really long time. The other really great thing about PT and insurance companies now is that you actually don’t often have to wait for your doctor to refer you. If you are 2 weeks out and you are still leaking or you have a lot of peeing, you don’t have to wait to see your doc. You can actually just call a pelvic floor PT and a lot of insurances will let you self-refer. It’s pretty awesome. Meagan: Right. It is awesome. I just think, like you were saying, we just don’t talk about pelvic floor after a Cesarean very much because we just don’t think about it. We haven’t pushed a baby out of our vagina so probably are okay, but the disconnect with our abs– Cesarean birth really is quite intense internally. So yeah. Don’t hesitate. Go out. Can you tell everyone where to follow you?Anneke: Yeah, so where I talk most about pelvic floor and PT stuff is actually called @teamgriffith2011 on Instagram. If you are interested in finding a pelvic floor PT near you, if you go to the section on Pelvic Health, just Google that on the internet and there is actually a PT locator. That is how you will be able to find someone close to you. Meagan: Fantastic. Do you suggest people do it even before birth? I know you did with yours, but as a pelvic floor PT, do you suggest people go before?Anneke: Especially if you don’t have a program in your hospital where PT tries to snag you before you leave, I would think it would be helpful. I do what I call a labor and delivery biomechanics visit. I’ll have people come in. We’ll talk about positioning and counterpressure and then I almost always give them vaginal delivery and Cesarean early-stage exercises. That would be something that a PT would be able to tell you what are the very first things you should start doing, when to start doing kegels, or how to get back. A lot of times, it’s just teaching you how to diaphragmatically breathe because that will teach you how to coordinate your pelvic floor to the yoga breath. Meagan: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for giving me a good cry today. Anneke: You’re so welcome. Meagan: And educating us on pelvic floor. Seriously, it was beautiful, and congratulations to all three of your babies. Anneke: Thank you so much. Meagan: Yep.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

After 24 hours of laboring with broken waters, dilating to 10 centimeters, and pushing, Wendy’s first baby was still not descending. She was exhausted and consented to a C-section. When her baby came out at 11 pounds, 3 ounces, the entire medical team told Wendy that her baby would have never come out vaginally due to his size. Wendy’s second baby was ALSO 11 pounds, 3 ounces, and was indeed born vaginally. We are inspired by all of the obstacles that Wendy overcame to achieve the birth she wanted and love how she is already inspiring those around her to fight for their rights in the birth space too!Additional LinksNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, hello. This is Meagan. I have an episode. Well, we– I should say– me and my friend, Wendy. We have an episode for you today that’s all about big babies, and not all about babies. We’re going to be talking about induction and things like that but big babies, you guys. This is one of the most frustrating things to me. I’m sure, Wendy, maybe it would be to you because you did have larger-sized babies so maybe you heard it and felt it, but I remember when I was pregnant with my first. I definitely gained more than I anticipated. I swelled on top of that. I remember going to work and my coworker– I was going to the kitchen to get something. I don’t even know. He was like, “Whoa. Do you need a wheelbarrow?” I was like, “Jeez Louise.” He was like, “You’ve got a really big kid inside of ya.” I was just like, “Wow. Thank you so much as I am 7 months pregnant and you are telling me that I am ginormous.” Right?I just know that through doula work, we have clients all the time being told, “You’re probably going to have a big baby.” They start the big baby fear really early on. So in our minds, it’s like, “Well, am I going to have a big baby? Do I not want to have a big baby? What do I do to not have a big baby?” Our minds just spiral and it’s not healthy for us to be stressing over the size of our baby but we do find ourselves being stressed. We find ourselves being stressed without being told that we have a big baby, and then when we are constantly told, “You might have a big baby,” that can be daunting or scary. If you were told or if you believe or are being told that they believe that you have a big baby today, this is an episode for you for sure. We talk about big babies and we’re going to talk a little bit more about what would be considered a big baby because I’ve also heard of 7-pound babies being told that they were big babies and they are not big babies. So buckle up, we are going to be talking about big babies, induction, and all of the things. Review of the WeekBut of course, we have a Review of the Week so I want to get into that. This is from Kelly and she left it on Google. If you didn’t know, you can Google “The VBAC Link” and you can leave us a review right there. Of course, you can do it on Apple Podcasts or you can message us on Facebook or even on our personal Instagram or at [email protected]. Definitely check out Google because we love your Google reviews. Kelly says, “Julie and Meagan are fantastic. They are truly dedicated to providing the most up-to-date information on VBAC. A great resource.” I agree. I mean, not to toot our own horns, but I do believe that we are a great resource. We are honored to be a resource for you if you are listening. Wendy’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Ms. Wendy. Wendy: Hello. Meagan: Hello. So you are from Michigan? Wendy: Yep. Meagan: You had your babies in Michigan so born and raised and stayed forever. That’s how I am. Born and raised in Utah. I haven’t ever left. Wendy: That’s right. Meagan: But you have two boys and you love being outdoors and doing all of the fun things. So yeah. Tell us more about you and how these cute little boys brought themselves into the world. Wendy: Yeah, well thank you for having me. I have two– I was about to say little– but as you are about to find out, they were very large. Meagan: Not so little when they came out. Wendy: Not so little, no. Although my older one now has kind of tapered out. His charts are coming down which is crazy. So yeah. I guess I can just get into it. My older son just turned two last month. My little guy is two months now so they are just about two years apart now. Meagan: Two and two months, awesome. Wendy: Yeah, and they are great together. It’s amazing to watch. Okay, so I guess I’ll start with the story of Isaac who is my firstborn and then I’ll get on to Levi who is my second guy. Since we already know this is about big babies, I’ll start by saying that I myself was a very large baby. Meagan: Were you?Wendy: I was. I was 11 pounds, 9 ounces. Meagan: Okay. Wendy: My mom is a very, very petite woman. I was the third-born though, so I guess that’s a little bit more likely than your first being really big, but that was really shocking. She did have me vaginally. Meagan: I was just going to ask that. I was going to say, “Did she have you vaginally?”Wendy: Yeah, yes. She did have an epidural though. It’s funny because after she had me, the doctors were like, “Wow. We’ve never had a baby this big. If we knew, we would have had you have a Cesarean.” She did it. Meagan: But why?Wendy: It just goes to show that there are a lot of mentalities that it should be that way. So for my first guy, I planned for a home birth because I got pregnant right when COVID started. I think it was June 2020. The hospitals were crazy. In some places, you couldn’t even have your partner in the hospital. I also have never really feared birth that much so I was like, “Okay, with that and these COVID restrictions, I’m going to do it at home.”From the beginning, he was measuring big. At the 20-week ultrasound, he was in the 99th percentile which was not concerning to my midwife. She was like, “Oh, you know. Those could be off. It’s all good.” I’m like, “Okay.” At 33 weeks, I had a small bleeding incident. It wasn’t anything crazy, but it was enough that I went to the emergency room and I got checked out. The doctors at the hospital said I had a marginal placental abruption. Meagan: Oh, okay. Wendy: It actually never showed on the ultrasound. That’s what they said but they didn’t really know. It was just a one-time thing that happened. Meagan: It was just a possible diagnosis. Wendy: Yeah, right. But it was scary. They sent the NICU doctors in when I was there. They were like, “Just in case. We might have to induce you.” It was scary. I talked to my midwife and she did say that she would continue to take me if I wanted but that there were risks involved so I ended up changing to a birthing center that was about an hour away. That’s the Ann Arbor Children’s Hospital. They are a reputable, really great hospital so I felt really good going there. My midwife became my doula. That was nice to have her alongside me. I did the gestational diabetes test. I did it at home with my finger picking and on that, it actually showed that my levels were high, so for a month, I had a really healthy diet but then I eventually did the 3-hour test and my levels were totally fine. I guess the monitor was faulty. I don’t know. That’s what the midwife said. She was like, “I guess you don’t have it.” I was like, “Okay.” Meagan: You’re like, “All right, great.” Wendy: Yeah. I was like, “I guess I’ll go back to eating–”. I mean, I didn’t eat terribly but I was not eating carbs or sugar. Meagan: Do you think it was because you ate so clean that time that maybe it was like you were getting rid of it?Wendy: I don’t know. Right. I’m not sure. She just said that I didn’t and she said that sometimes those monitors can be faulty. Meagan: It is very true. Yep. Wendy: Anyway, so I felt really good. I tend to have pretty smooth pregnancies according to the two that I have so it was great. People always ask, “Oh, you must have been so uncomfortable with a huge baby.” I felt fine. Meagan: That’s good. How tall are you?Wendy: I’m 5’9”. Meagan: Okay. Yeah. Not that tall. Wendy: Right, yeah. Not that tall. Meagan: Yeah, very average. Wendy: Half of me is Dutch. The other half is Japanese so it’s very petite and very large people. I think I just got more of the Dutch. Maybe. I ended up going– I had him at 41+6 days. So at 41+4 days, I took the midwives’ brew which I know is super controversial. Meagan: It is. Yes. Wendy: But it’s okay to do. I was so far along. I see people doing it before their due date or something. I think that’s when it becomes super risky but I won’t get into that just because it is controversial. I ended up taking it twice that day because the first time, I calculated it wrong. I didn’t do enough then I was like, “Oh, shoot. That was not right,” so I did it again, and then 4 hours later, my water broke. I was at 41+4 days. My mom and sister both labored really quickly. Their labors were so fast so my doula assumed that I would as well because I guess it’s typical to follow in line. Meagan: It’s very possible especially when it’s your sister.  A lot of people think it’s more when their mom, but through my doula work, I’ve seen that the sisters' births a lot of the time align. But if it was your mom and sister, I would have been a little bit more on alert. Wendy: Yeah. You would think especially because we had to drive an hour away.Meagan: Super possible, yeah. Wendy: Yeah, my sister’s second birth was literally like 30 minutes. Meagan: Holy smokes. Wendy: Really fast, yeah. Meagan: Yeah, and her first was a few hours so she was like, “We’ve got to go now.” Wendy: We went. Contractions didn’t really start. I ended up being in labor for 29 hours which was unexpected and the contractions came and went. One of the reasons I wanted to go to Ann Arbor was because they had hot tubs and you could actually labor in there. In the other hospitals in Michigan, you can labor in the hot tub but you can’t actually birth in the hot tub but at this place, you could actually birth in them. But the hot tub did not do good things for me. It slowed down my contractions both times. They completely stopped. Meagan: That can happen. Sometimes it’s because it relaxes you so much. Wendy: I literally felt like I was drugged. I couldn’t stay awake. I just kept falling asleep.Meagan: So tired, yeah. Wendy: Yes. I was very tired. So that was kind of a bummer that that happened. I don’t know if that’s the reason that things didn’t go as planned, but let’s see. Yeah. So later, I did get to push and I got to 10 centimeters. I was able to push. My little guy just did not descend. I pushed for an hour and a half and he was in the same exact position at the beginning that he was after an hour and a half. I had also passed that 24-hour period from when my water broke.Meagan: Did you have signs of an infection or was it just that they were like, “Hey, you passed this mark.” Wendy: Yes. I think the more concerning thing was the fact that he had not descended. It was that and the 24-hour mark. Meagan: Were they saying anything about your position or his position? Were they talking about that?Wendy: I don’t think that he was in the best position. I don’t think my doula was as supportive in position changes as I thought she would be. She is a midwife. I think she’s more of the medical side of it and I didn’t really think about that. Meagan: She was like a monitrice a little bit coming in. Wendy: Yeah, right. So that was a little bit of a bummer because when the doctors came to me and suggested that, she was like, “Yeah. We should do it. Do a Cesarean.” I was like, “Okay.” She didn’t even say, “Let’s try another hour.”Meagan: Interesting. Wendy: She was kind of throwing in the towel. She could have also been exhausted because she had been up for over 30 hours too. We ended up going for it. I was also going to say that laboring for me– contractions were not horrible. I did not get the epidural or anything. This is another thing. My sister would tell me that her labors were also chill. She was like, “Oh, contractions weren’t that bad.” Before I went into labor, I was like, “Oh, you’re lying. There’s no way.” Labor is so painful. That’s all I’ve ever heard. But I do think that I did get that a little bit genetically from her too because it wasn’t horrible. I was checked at 10 centimeters by one of the midwives there and they actually sent another one in because they didn’t– Meagan: They wanted to confirm. Wendy: Yeah. They were like, “We have never seen a woman so calm before in labor.” I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.”Meagan: You’re like, “Thank you.” Wendy: Yeah, I was in labor for so long, but it was okay because it wasn’t excruciating for me. Meagan: It wasn’t over the top. Wendy: Yeah, yeah which was nice I guess.Anyway, I ended up having him by C-section. He was 11 pounds, 3 ounces. Meagan: What were they all saying? Wendy: They were all like, “Oh, that’s why he didn’t come out. Your pelvis was too small.” Meagan: Your pelvis was too small. Oh yeah. Wendy: Yeah and all the while, I’m like, “I could have done it.” I know I could have done it because my mom did it. Just having that mentality is frustrating especially because the midwife didn’t do a whole lot. I wasn’t angry about it or anything. I was a little bummed. I got the healthy baby. He was all good. His blood sugar was fine. Meagan: You were feeling good about your decision. Wendy: Yeah. Yeah, I’m glad it wasn’t an emergency C-section. I was able to be aware. But I didn’t have– I had my birth plan and I didn’t have anything in there for a Cesarean which when we get to my second birth, I had a section for that because I just didn’t even think about it with my first. Meagan: A lot of us don’t, right? Wendy: I’m bummed that I didn’t because I didn’t even think about lowering the drape or having a clear one. They didn’t suggest that to me at all so it was kind of just a run-of-the-mill Cesarean. It was just what the standard was. Meagan: Yeah. Wendy: Yeah, so that was my first guy. That was Isaac. Then for this second guy, we conceived about 15 months after Isaac. Meagan: After having him? Wendy: Yes, after having him. I’m sorry. Did I say Isaac? Yeah, after Isaac, we waited 15 months. We were kind of shooting for 18 months but it happened the first time and we were like, “Okay, we’re going for it.” It was kind of a bummer though because my home midwife can’t legally take you after a C-section unless you wait 18 months. Meagan: Really?Wendy: Yeah. Meagan: That’s a law in Michigan. Wow, okay. Wendy: Yeah, so I was just like, “Okay. Well, that’s a bummer. All right.” Meagan: I didn’t know that. Wendy: Yeah. I didn’t go back to Ann Arbor because I didn’t want to do all of the long drives with the little guy. We stayed local. I found a new doula who aligned with my Christian and medical beliefs so we clicked pretty fast. I started at the basic hospital OB/GYN practice but I ended up switching after one of the doctors was like, “You’re really going to try for a VBAC after having an 11-pound baby?” and she laughed. I was like, “Okay.” Meagan: This is not the place. Wendy: We’re done here. I switched. I did a little bit of research and there was this one practice that had really great reviews on all of the local Facebook groups with these moms. Everyone just said a lot of really great things about them. So I went there. They were a lot smaller and they had 5 providers. They had a midwife who was going to be starting a month before I was due. That was encouraging too. The first appointment I had was with the OB. We’ll call her Dr. A just because I eventually don’t have the best experience with her so I don’t want to use her name, but this first appointment was awesome. I was like, “Oh, she is the best.” I went through all of my wishes and she was extremely supportive. She was like, “Oh, yeah. We will do that. We can do that and that.” It was awesome. There were no red flags. I felt so good after not having a great experience at the last place. Yeah, so this pregnancy also didn’t have gestational diabetes. Baby measured smaller. He actually measured 60% at my 20-week scan so I was like, “Man, this baby is going to be tiny compared to my 99th percentile kid.” I just was really– I don’t want to say hopeful because I don’t want to make it sound like my babies are bad but I was like, “Oh, it’s just going to be easier.” Meagan: Well, it’s the stigma on big babies. Wendy: Yeah, I just thought that if it was a small baby, my chances of VBAC would be way bigger. No complications during the whole pregnancy. It was fairly easy for me and then around 32 weeks or so, my fundal height started measuring 3 weeks ahead which is once you go past the 2 weeks ahead, they’re like, “Uh oh. Big baby alert.” So they suggested a growth scan at 38 weeks which I was like, “Okay. He’s going to be small though. Don’t worry about that.” Meagan: Right. Wendy: Yeah, and then at 36 weeks, I met with one of the male OBs there. I just casually asked about inductions and what my options were just because I knew with a VBAC that they are limited but they still do them. He laughed at me and was like, “You can’t do an induction.” I was like, “What? Why?” He was like, “Because your chance of uterine rupture is so high. We don’t do that.” I was like, “Okay.” I just didn’t even know what to say because I don’t know. I didn’t have any information to support myself. I was just taken aback. That was a bummer. I was like, “I’m never going to see him again.” I’d make sure he was not the one that was at the hospital. Yeah. I did get the growth scan at 38 weeks. He was measuring 8 pounds, 11 ounces which was the 96th percentile. Even at that time, I was still like, “Oh, the calculations are wrong. I know it can be off by 2 pounds. I’m sure it’s just off.” I also just again didn’t feel like he was big just like with Isaac. So yeah. I took it with a grain of salt. I’m like, “Whatever,” but at the same time, I was like, “What if he is big?” Meagan: What if he is? Yeah. Wendy: That’s the week I started listening to The VBAC Link religiously. I constantly had an AirPod in my ear always listening. But before that, I was just like, “I don’t need help. Small baby. We’ll be fine,” then I was like, “Uh-oh. Big baby. I need support now.” So I listened to all of the big baby stories and positive induction stories, and there were a couple that just really resonated with me. I wish I could remember which one it was but there was one that you had where a lady had an 11-pound baby. I don’t remember what it was but all of the things that she went through were what I was going through. Yeah, so that was just really awesome to hear. I’m very grateful for you guys and that I found you. I just really feel like it’s all mentally. Part of it is physical and the people who support you, but I don’t know. Meagan: Yeah, and when you hear stories that even remotely resonate or kind of follow the same path, you’re like, “Okay. I’m not alone. I’m not the only one in the world who is feeling this way or who is going through this or who might have an 11-pound baby or who had an 11-pound baby.” It’s like, “Okay. She did it. I can too.” Wendy: I can do it. Right. Yeah. Right. So that was really good to hear. Okay, so then at my next appointment– this is 39 weeks– it was again with Dr. A from the very beginning. Meagan: The one that was really supportive. Wendy: Yes and again this time, she was really supportive and I just felt really comforted by her. She was like, “You know, I kind of suggest an induction but no pressure. It’s okay. You don’t have to.” I was like, “Okay. Thank you for that.” She was like, “Leave this appointment today. You can call back if you want. Again, no pressure.” I was like, “Okay.” She checked me that day and I was 1 centimeter and 30% effaced. Baby was super high up. She was like, “Okay. It’s fine. Things can change.” I feel like I’ve done my research too and I know that can change really quickly. I was not concerned about it at all. Also, leaving that day, I felt super conflicted about an induction. I was like, “Why wait until my body goes into labor naturally? Do I do an induction?” I feel like I’ve never felt so– I don’t know. I couldn’t be at peace with either of those options. I talked to my doula and she was like, “Well, yeah. The longer you wait, your baby will get bigger. It could be harder.” I don’t know. Eventually, we talked about it. She was like, “Okay. Let’s just wait until your due date at least. Let’s just do a ton of natural induction methods.” I was like, “Okay.” I felt good about that. I was like, “Another week, I can do this.” I did a ton of things, all of the classic things– red raspberry leaf tea, dates, sex, walks, curb walking. Meagan: Working out. Wendy: Yes. All of the things, but the one thing I wasn’t going to do was the midwives’ brew because of the Cesarean. My doula was like, “That can be really intense on your uterus.” She didn’t suggest that so that’s the one thing I did not do. Let’s see. Okay. At my 40-week appointment, I met with the midwife who had just come on the month prior. She was super sweet. I liked her a lot. She was very down to earth and also very supportive of me but she pulled out the VBAC Calculator two days before my due date. Meagan: You’re like, “Really?” Wendy: Yeah. She was sweet about it. She wasn’t using it as a scare tactic. She was like, “This might make you feel better to see.” It was a 52% chance of success. “50/50.” She was trying to be more supportive about it, but I found out later that Dr. A was there and she was the one who had it printed out for her and brought it out to me so I was like, “Hmm, interesting.” I don’t know. Meagan: Dr. A was behind it. Wendy: Yes, she was. I feel like because the midwife was newer and Dr. A is the head of all the OBs there so that was interesting that she would do that. I don’t know. I just feel like it’s so outdated. Meagan: A little bait-and-switch beginning. Wendy: Yes. Yes. That was the first little red flag. I’m like, “That’s strange.” I was checked again. I was still at 1 centimeter, 30%. He was still really high up. She acted all concerned about that. I wasn’t because I was like, “I can go into labor tonight. That doesn’t really mean a whole lot.” I guess my outer cervix was still hard but the inner was soft. I don’t know. Meagan: Yeah. That is a thing too. The outer side is 2 centimeters but the inside further up is closed. Wendy: Yeah. Right. I just never heard of that but it was a huge concern for them I guess. I was like, “I don’t really know, but okay.” We started talking about an induction just because my due date was coming. They were like, “Well, maybe we can get you in tomorrow,” and then the midwife left and went and talked to the doctor who would be on-call at the hospital that day. She was like, “So, she’s not going to support you with the induction because she thinks it’s too dangerous and she thinks that a Cesarean would be the safest.” Meagan: So she was saying that she would induce. Wendy: Yeah, well this was a different one actually. I haven’t talked about this doctor. Meagan: Okay. This is a different doctor. Okay. Wendy: Yeah. Dr. B. I don’t know. Meagan; Dr. B, okay. We have Dr. A and Dr. B. Wendy: Yeah, different ones. But yeah, I was like, “Ugh.” Then we looked into the next two days because she straight up wouldn’t even– Meagan: Wouldn’t even consider it. Wendy: Yeah. She wouldn’t even consider it just because of my cervix not changing and big baby. I was really frustrated at that point, but it is what it is. We found a doctor who would support me there. Meagan: In the same practice? Wendy: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t necessarily want a male just because I’m more comfortable with females but I was like, “If that’s the only guy that’s going to take me–” Meagan: I’ll do it. Wendy: Yeah. After that appointment, I actually felt weird and down about it. I called back to the office and I wanted to talk to Dr. A because I still had all of these positive experiences with her. I just wanted to hear what she had to say about it. She was so weird on the phone, like super short, and weird with me. She was like, “Well, you’re probably going to end up with a Cesarean. The odds are stacked against you. Your cervix hasn’t changed. Big baby.” I was really taken aback just because I had all of these really great conversations with her. I was like, “Okay. That’s kind of crappy.” I just wanted to hear– I kind of feel like I was testing her to see where she stood on this. I was like, “What would you do if baby had shoulder dystocia?” Luckily, from your podcast and other stories, I kind of know what they do if that happens. Her first response was, “Oh, we’d have to break the clavicle.” Meagan: Automatically?Wendy: Literally, I was like, “That’s your first step?” Then she went all scientific and said, “There are these other techniques and blah blah blah. We’d literally have to jump on your belly and ignore your screams.” Meagan: Jump on your belly. Wendy: Yeah. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” She was like, “And you know, you could die or your baby could die.” I was like, “Okay.” I know shoulder dystocia happens and I know it can be scary and yes you can die, but the chances of that are very slim. The fact that it was the first thing she would bring up. I’m so glad that I knew already a little bit about shoulder dystocia because if I didn’t, at that moment, I would probaby be like, “All right. Schedule the C-section because I’m not going to risk that.” Meagan: Well it sounds really bad. They’ll just have to jump. It sounds very scary. Wendy: She really said that word for word. She said, “We’ll just have to ignore your screams.”Meagan: Jump on your belly and ignore your screams. Wendy: After that, I was crying. I was so distraught about it just because I was like, “Man, the one doctor who I felt was supportive the whole time just totally bait-and-switched on me.” She was just not friendly anymore. At that point, I was like, “I’m never going to see her again.” I was just really upset. So on my actual due date, two days later, I called back to the OB office and I wanted to talk with the midwife because she had actually been sweet and kind to me the whole time. I just wanted reassurance and just someone to talk to. Meagan: Yeah, someone in your corner. Wendy: Yeah, exactly. So I called that morning at 8:30 and the lady on the phone was like, “All right, we can get you in with a phone appointment at 9:30 because she is here today.” I was like, “Awesome. That’s great.” I’m waiting for a call. It’s 10:00 and I still haven’t gotten a call so I call back. Also, to backpedal a little bit, when I first called, I was like, “Let’s schedule the induction for tomorrow.” I felt at peace with that finally so that would be Friday. She was like, “All right. We scheduled you in.” Anyway, I called back at 10:00 and I was like, “Hey, I know things can get behind, but I was supposed to have the phone appointment with the midwife. I just haven’t heard anything back. I wanted to know if it was still happening.” She was like, “Well, she’s busy now. She can’t talk with you.” I was like, “Okay.” She just kept asking, “What do you want to talk to her about?” I was like, “I don’t really want to tell you all of my fears and concerns. That’s not just a black-and-white question or a yes or no question.” She just kept pressuring me to tell her what it was. I was like, “I just want to talk to her.” She was like, “Well, you’re not going to be able to talk to her today.” Meagan: Today, at all. Wendy: I was like, “It’s my due date.” I just wanted to talk to someone. That was really crummy and I felt like if the midwife had known that I was trying to talk to her, she would have made it happen because she was super supportive so I just felt like they were doing this behind her back. I don’t know. It just felt so weird. Meagan: Yeah. Wendy: Yeah. Very strange. Meagan: A little weasely. Wendy: So actually, okay. I’ll get to this later, but the induction method that we were going to do is Dilapan which is like a Foley balloon. I think you’ve talked about it on a couple of episodes, but it would be an induction Friday and then I’d probably go into labor on Saturday. Saturday was actually my husband’s birthday so I was kind of like, “Well, maybe we should try for an induction on Saturday so that I could give birth on Sunday just so they each have their own special day.” On the phone, I was like, “Actually, do you think we could induce on Saturday?” She was like, “Well, those are only reserved for emergency cases.” I was like, “Okay. What about Monday or Tuesday?” She was like, “Well, let me go ask the doctors.” She left and went and talked to them. She came back and she was like, “They said either Friday induction or scheduled Cesarean.” Meagan: Nuh-uh. Oh my gosh. Wendy: I was like, “Oh my gosh.” That was a true bait-and-switch because I’m like, “What does one or two days change?” That was another thing that was the cherry on top. Meagan: Frustrating. Wendy: Yeah, I was just like, “Fine. I’ll do Friday.” It was funny because I felt at peace with that at some point, but now I was like, “I don’t know.” I just felt so angry about it just because it wasn’t my choice anymore. I was being forced into it. So we scheduled that. Yeah, so the next day which was Friday, we got to have a nice family day together which was good. It was relaxing. We went into the hospital Friday night at 4:00 PM and did the Dilapan which, just for people maybe listening that don’t know what that is, is kind of like a Foley balloon, but they are tiny little tampon sticks that they stick into your cervix then they take up liquid and will expand so it manually expands your cervix or opens it up and dilates it. They got seven in there. They said four onwards is typical. Before that happened though, I was 1-2 centimeters and 50% effaced. I had gotten a little bit better since a few days ago. Meagan: Yeah. Wendy: That was exciting. They ended up doing that. It was funny. I actually had a very young male student do it which I wasn’t super psyched about. He was about to do it and didn’t put lubrication on the spreader things. The person training him was like, “Umm, did you put lubrication on there?” He was like, “Oh no.” So I was super tense the whole time like, “Oh, this is the worst.” That wasn’t fun.In hindsight, I wish I would have been like, “Can I not have the student? Can I just have the RN do it?” but I’m not very good at speaking up for myself so I didn’t do that. I went home that night. It didn’t feel uncomfortable. It just felt like pressure. You can’t really feel it in there. That is the benefit, I guess, to Dilapan versus a Foley balloon because most of the time you have to be in the hospital. Meagan: Some hospitals will do it and send you home. Wendy: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard but I don’t think it’s actually the norm. Meagan: It’s a little more rare. Yeah. It’s a little bit more rare. They kind of want to have you there so they can monitor you. Wendy: Yeah, which makes sense. I think the Dilapan is a much slower process so they can send you home. We went in that morning at 7:30 AM on Saturday. They took it out and I was at 3 centimeters and 60% effaced so it had done stuff. Meagan: Great progress, yeah. Wendy: Yeah, so I started getting Pitocin at 10:00 AM. The OB cleared me to do two units every hour. He okayed me to do 30 units which I feel is a lot. Meagan: Wow. Normally it’s 20 before they have an MFM. At least here in Utah, it gets to 20 and they have MFM come in and review. A lot of the time, IUPCs are placed so they can know exactly what’s going on and really manipulate that. Wendy: Yeah, so I was a little surprised. I didn’t reach that, but I was like, “That seems like a lot.” Meagan: Yeah. Wendy: My doula came pretty quickly after the Pitocin started. I didn’t really feel major contractions for a while there. It was nice just to have her there to talk and stuff. We did a lot of hallway walking. We took a lot of naps. I know it’s like, “You want to be active and on your feet and doing stuff.” I’m like, “I’m just tired.” I did not sleep the night prior because I thought I’d go into labor and I didn’t so I was just going on zero sleep. So we just did a lot of walking and hanging out. By 4:00 PM, I started having pretty intense contractions where I couldn’t talk through them then I maxed out on Pit at 18 units. That was my cut-off. They were consistent and good. Meagan: You didn’t need anymore. Wendy: Yes. I didn’t need 30 which was good. Meagan: Really good. Wendy: Yeah, so the doula and my husband did a ton of counterpressure pushes for me which was a game changer for me. I know the classic counterpressure is on your hips squeezing but for some reason, I wanted them to use their thumbs and push right next to my tailbone. That felt the best. Meagan: Your sacrum, yeah. Probably in that sacrum area. Wendy: They pushed super hard. They kept checking on me. “Are you sure you’re okay? Because this is really hard pushing.” Yeah. I was like, “Push harder, as hard as you can.” Meagan: I had a mom have that one time. She was like, “Can you just use your elbow?” We were like, “Okay.” Wendy: Yes. As hard as you can. It’s kind of funny actually, maybe not funny. My husband doesn’t think it’s funny. His thumbs are still kind of messed up from it. He has issues with his thumb now. Yeah. I’m like, “I’m sorry, but it was great at the moment.”Meagan: Thank you so much. Wendy: Yeah, sorry you’re maybe messed up forever. He’s like, “I need to go to the chiro for my thumbs.” Meagan: Just a reminder that you were an active participant in our son’s birth. Wendy: Exactly. So at 6:30 PM—Meagan: A couple of hours later. Wendy: Yep, I threw in the towel for hallway walking. I was like, “I’m exhausted. I just want to come back.” My doula did one more big counterpressure squeeze. My water broke and it was just the classic movie scene everywhere. So that was fun. I was like, “Yes. Finally, he’s coming.” At 8:00 PM, I was around 7-8 centimeters. I was progressing very well compared to my last kiddo. I know the rule of thumb is that usually the time is split in half for each next child so I was expecting 12 hours and this was a lot faster than 12 hours which was awesome. At 9:00 PM, I was 9 centimeters and 90% effaced. I felt super pushy. Everything in my body was like, “Push this baby out,” but I wasn’t fully dilated or effaced. They were like, “You cannot push.” That was literally the most painful thing. I don’t know. When everything in your body– it was hard. I was really shaky too. I felt a little bit nauseous at some point. Yeah. I was curled up on the side of the bed. I just couldn’t even move. I don’t know how people could keep moving through labor. I couldn’t do it. It was very painful. My doula told me to do horse lips throughout the contractions to not push. Meagan: Yep. Yeah. Wendy: Which did help. I was surprised. Meagan: Just for you guys all listening, if you are not quite progressed to a 10 and ready to push but have that urge, horse-lipping is a really, really great tool to help you avoid pushing and causing a swollen cervix or something like that. It can actually help you cope in general, but yeah. It’s a really great tool. Wendy: It was. The only thing is that every time I would take a breath, my body would start pushing again so I would take really short breaths. That was hard. My nurse also gave me a tiny comb to squeeze. At first, I was like, “That’s stupid.” But I was like, “Okay, fine.” That was my lifesaver. I held onto that thing. Meagan: It’s so amazing, right?Wendy: It is. It was a little tiny plastic one. I think it’s for the babies to brush their hair afterward to get stuff out, but maybe I should have bought one before. Maybe for my future births, I’d get a hardcore one. Meagan: Yeah, we have one just from the beauty supply store. We actually have a tall one and a short one in my doula bag so for people who have a little bit bigger hands, it’s taller. Wendy: Yeah. It is a good tool. Meagan: It’s really awesome. You know, your hand definitely feels it after depending on how tightly you squeeze but yeah. It’s a really, really great coping tool. Wendy: Yeah, for sure. It makes your brain focus on a different pain that’s a little bit more manageable. So at 10:00 PM, I was ready to go so not much longer. It felt like forever but it finally came so I was like, “Okay, let’s go.” I wanted to be on my hands and knees because from what I’ve heard, that’s the best position if baby does have shoulder dystocia so I was like, “I want that,” but baby’s heart rate would decelerate when I was in that position. They were like, “He doesn’t like that so we can’t have you there.” Yeah. I ended up on my back with my knees up and I did the pull bar with the sheet. Meagan: Yeah. I call it tug-of-war. Wendy: I was sore for days after that. My arms were so tired because I was pulling with all my strength for an hour straight. Meagan: Yes. You were literally doing assisted pull-ups. Sometimes the neck muscles hurt so if you are doing that, have your birthing partner or your doula or whoever supports the back of your neck so you’re not straining your neck. Wendy: That’s a good point. I didn’t think about that. But yeah. I didn’t really work out that much, especially not my arms. I wouldn’t have thought of that, but I’m like, “Okay. You should work out your arms next time if that happens again.” But in the moment, I did not feel that pain in my arms at all. It was just afterward. So that was awesome. They gave me a mirror, like a full-length mirror in front of me which was awesome. I loved that. Every time I pushed, I could see his head coming out. I could see his little black hair. Meagan: It can actually reduce the time of pushing because you can see. You can connect with your eyes what you are feeling. It’s really cool. Wendy: Yeah, because every time you’d have a really good push, you could see him coming out a little further. It was just very empowering. It was on wheels though and it kept moving. I was like, “I can’t see him. Move the mirror back.” But no, it was good. I had a nurse that was there that was really intense and kept yelling at me. The other ones were very soft spoken but she was like, “Keep pushing. Don’t give up.” It was really intense energy but I loved it. I needed that. Afterward, my doula was like, “I wasn’t sure if I should step in or if she was crossing any lines.” I’m like, “Oh no. I needed that woman. She was great.” I ended up birthing him at 11:03 which is funny because he ended up being 11 pounds, 3 ounces. Meagan: Stop!Wendy: Yeah. Isn’t that funny? The time. Meagan: Yeah. I was going to say the time. You were 7-8 centimeters around 7-9:00. I was 9 centimeters at 9:00. I’ve been noticing that. Wendy: Isn’t that funny? He was also the exact same weight as Isaac so I don’t know. Meagan: And born vaginally!Wendy: And on my husband’s birthday. Meagan: Yes, I was going to say on your husband’s birthday. Wendy: Yeah, so that was awesome. Meagan: So no shoulder dystocia?Wendy: No. He shot out very quickly. I guess all of the nurses were in shock that he was so giant. My doula was like, “He just kept coming out. He was so long.” She just never has seen such a big baby. She was also in shock. She was like, “This baby just kept coming and coming.” Meagan: Like, how did you fit him in there?Wendy: I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s funny though because my first guy was basically 42 weeks and this one was basically my due date so I’m like, “Man, if I did go another 2 weeks–”Meagan: 42 weeks, you might have had a 12-pounder. Wendy: At least, or 13 or something. Because I did have such a positive induction experience, I am glad that I went that route. It was good. Meagan: Yeah. Wendy: I know it could go bad as well. I’ve heard both sides of the induction story but it worked out for me and I got a healthy baby so it was all good. Meagan: So grateful, yes. Wendy: Yeah, so the next not-so-fun part of the story is that I tore really bad which is probably expected. Meagan: Because he came out so fast. Wendy: Especially because they were trying to prevent shoulder dystocia, as he was coming out, they shoved my knees up really fast. It was probably a good thing, but I think that also probably didn’t help with the tearing. They tore me apart. Note to listeners, you really don’t feel the tear. I know everyone says that and I feel like people still fear it, but you don’t feel it. Maybe later in healing and stuff, but in that moment, it’s not anything. I didn’t have an epidural either so I did feel all of it and it was fine. I got him on my chest right away. He was covered in blood. I did bleed quite a bit. They were like, “You’ve got a 3rd-degree tear. It’s pretty bad.” They started stitching me immediately so I had to give my baby to my husband. I didn’t get my golden hour which is what it is. I was just so joyous that I was able to have him vaginally that I was like, “Everything else is okay.” He’s here. He’s safe. Meagan: Yeah. That mattered to me so much that it’s okay.Wendy: Yeah. Our time will come. It was actually the RN that was stitching me, not the OB doctor. Meagan: That’s interesting. Wendy: He didn’t even step close to me. He was off in the dark corner. They had a spotlight on me. The room was dark. Meagan: Interesting. Wendy: Yeah, so it was this RN. The stitching took an hour and a half. She did not seem very confident is what my doula said. She’s been to a ton and she was like, “She just seemed like she was stressed out about it.” She was confused that my OB never stepped in. In hindsight, she wishes she had gone to my OB and been like, “You need to take over.” Meagan: “Hey, what’s going on here?”Wendy: Yeah. I get that they need to learn how to do these things, but you should be watching her. Meagan: It’s weird. I’ve never seen an RN. Wendy: Yeah, well that’s great. I didn’t have the greatest experience come to find out. It was an hour and a half. I felt so much of it. I could feel the needles. They were giving me lidocaine shots. Obviously, you can feel the shot going in but it wasn’t numbing anything. I probably didn’t feel it 100% but I felt it enough that I was not comfortable at all. They were like, “Just stop moving. I’m like, “I can’t. I’m in so much pain right now.” So they did a ton of lidocaine shots then they were like, “Well, do you want to do the nitrous oxide?” I was like, “I guess so,” but that doesn’t make the pain go away. It just makes you feel high. I still felt it so they tried putting some pain stuff in my IV and that also didn’t really do anything so I just kind of sucked it up for the hour and a half. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Wendy: Yeah, it was super long. Then at the very end for some reason– I was at the very end. They checked my rectum and they were like, “Oh, you have another tear up there. We’re going to have to undo all of it and redo it.” Meagan: *Gasp* Oh, no. Wendy: Because it was so deep and internal that they couldn’t get to it. I was like, “Oh, that’s great. Awesome.” So they were like, “Well, we should probably take you to the OR to do it because it’s just too much.” Yeah, I didn’t want to go through that again. That’s what we decided on. The anesthesiologist came in. He was on the phone and sounded kind of stressed out. He looked at the lidocaine bottles on the table and was panicking about it. He was like, “I just don’t have any options left,” is what he said on the phone. My doula was saying that they probably gave me way too much lidocaine. There was too much in my body that he was trying to figure out the numbers. Meagan: How he could, yeah. Wendy: Right. I don’t know. How he could be able to take me into the OR? So that wasn’t fun. He came in later and he said, “So spinal tap or general anesthesia?” We went with a spinal tap so I could nurse baby right afterward. It was kind of crappy though because it felt like I was getting another C-section because I went to the OR. I got a spinal tap. It felt like it was happening again which is what it is. Oh, before I got wheeled off, this nurse came in and she was like, “Here’s a consent form for you to sign to give your baby formula.” It wasn’t even a question. She was just like, “Sign it.” I looked at my doula because I was like, “I don’t want that?” She was like, “Can you just give her 10 minutes to nurse her baby before we go in the OR?” The nurse was like, “Yeah, it’s fine.” Meagan: Oh my gosh. Wendy: She was annoyed by it. I was like, “Okay. It’s not going to take that long.” So I was able to nurse him. He latched really well. He was a great nurser. Meagan: Good. Wendy: That was nice. I went to the OR. It took maybe an hour or an hour and a half, then afterward, as soon as he was getting hungry, they were able to join me in whatever the room is that you go to after. Meagan: Yeah, like mom and baby. Yeah. Yeah. Wendy: Yeah, so that was great. Oh, and then the RN came to me later. She was like, “Actually, it’s really great that we took you to the OR because you did have some retained placenta in you.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s good. I just wish we had done that first instead of the other stitching.” Yeah, so Levi ended up being super healthy. They kept track of his glucose of course because he was big. He was fine. All was good. It was a very redemptive birth. Meagan: Absolutely. Wendy: It was way better than I could have ever imagined. It was just awesome. Now I could prove people wrong who thought I couldn’t birth an 11-pound baby with my first but I’m like, “I did it.” Meagan: Yes. “I did do it.” Wendy: It is possible. The day that I was going to be discharged, Dr. A was supposed to be there, or was there, and the whole day before, I was like, “I’m so excited to be like, ‘I did this even after you tried to scare me’”, but she never showed up so that was great. Meagan: Maybe she didn’t really want to be told she was wrong. Wendy: Yeah, probably not but I hope I see her one day so I can tell her that I did it. Meagan: Yes. I’m sure she knows. I’m sure she knows. Wendy: I know. Maybe she would still stand by what she said. I don’t know. Meagan: Yes. Well, congratulations. Huge congratulations. The medical term for big baby or macrosomia is so hard because researchers show that it’s 8 pounds, 13 ounces up to 9 pounds, 15 ounces, and then babies are called extremely large if they weigh more than 11 pounds. So congratulations on having an extremely large baby. Wendy: Oh, thank you. Okay, I want to share one more little thing. I had a friend who was due a week before me that also had a C-section with her first and then she was also trying for a VBAC so the whole time we were encouraging each other and stuff. She wrote me this letter afterward and I wanted to share it because it was really sweet. I’ve always been so passionate about birth, especially with a home birth. We are planning for a home birth with my last baby. I’ve done a lot of research and I’ve heard a lot of stories so I would always tell her those things. I thought it was just talking, but anyway, I’m going to read this little card because it just made me feel really good that your words do matter especially with birthing. She said, “I will forever be grateful for your friendship. I would not have had the confidence to go through the process of fighting for my right to have the birth that I wanted. I will forever credit your friendship as the reason that I had my VBAC and for that, I can’t thank you enough.” So yeah, that was really sweet and gave me the power to be like, “All right. I’m just going to keep sharing my story.” I was really grateful that I was able to be on your show, so thank you. Meagan: Thank you. Thank you so much and congratulations to you and your friend. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing this because we know that so many times, people are left in that corner of defeat of, “Oh, I guess I’ll just schedule a C-section.” Wendy: Right. Right, but there are options. There are always options. Meagan: Yep. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“We are pieces of an important puzzle and there are a lot of pieces. Working together, we can effect a lot of change.”Joining Meagan on the podcast today is Dr. Elliot Berlin, a renowned prenatal chiropractor based out of Los Angeles who is making a huge impact on the birth community. Dr. Berlin is extremely knowledgeable and experienced in holistic birth preparation and advocacy. He is a birth doula, hosts the Informed Pregnancy Podcast, and his most recent project is the Informed Pregnancy Plus streaming service where birth documentaries and other educational videos can be found on one online platform. Dr. Berlin and Meagan discuss TONS of topics that come from your questions! Topics include: What happens during an adjustmentWhen to start prenatal chiropractic careBodyworkAdjustments during laborCPDBreech PresentationPubic SymphysisSupport at homeBreastfeedingAdditional LinksDr. Berlin’s WebsiteInformed Pregnancy PlusPediatric Chiropractic Search WebsiteNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, hello everybody. You guys, we have a very special episode for you today. We have Dr. Elliot Berlin with us today and he’s actually live with me so that’s pretty cool that I actually get to see his face live via Zoom. Dr. Berlin: It feels like we are in the same room. I’ll be honest. Meagan: Right? As live as you can get through a computer. I feel like this is our new norm these days. This is how live works. Dr. Berlin: Yeah. And you know, we got used to it. Meagan: Yeah, we did. We got used to it pretty dang fast actually. We’re so excited to have you on today and we have so many amazing questions that our listeners and followers have asked. But I first want to just talk a little bit about you and who you are so if anyone doesn’t know who Dr. Elliot Berlin is, you need to know and you need to go follow his page right now. Push pause unless you are driving. You can do that later and go follow @doctorberlin on Instagram because he’s amazing and has so many incredible things and has done—I mean, for years—so many incredible things in the birthing community. Dr. Berlin is an award-winning pregnancy-focused chiropractor. If you don’t know yet, on this podcast, we love chiropractic care. He’s a certified birth doula and host of the Informed Pregnancy Podcast. So again, if you haven’t followed his page or his podcast, press pause. Go follow along and go—what’s the word? Subscribe to his podcast— Informed Pregnancy Podcast. He combines his passion for entertainment with his desire to educate and spread awareness about important issues in the birth industry. We know that in the birth industry, we have a lot of issues that need to be talked about. His latest project is the brand new streaming channel on Informed Pregnancy Plus dedicated to all things fertility, pregnancy, labor, and parenting. Informed Pregnancy Plus So, Dr. Berlin, I would love to actually start right there before we get into these questions. Will you tell us more about this new project that you’ve got going on? Dr. Berlin: Thank you for having me and for the incredible work that you do. I was just telling you recently that I feel like we are pieces of an important puzzle and there are a lot of pieces. Working together, we can effect a lot of change. The Informed Pregnancy Plus is a streaming platform. Everything grew organically from me really being a very medical-minded person wanting to go to medical school. Sometimes little arrows pop up. I see my son play video games and he’s not sure where to go, then a big arrow pops up and says, “Go this way.” I get those arrows sometimes and it led me on a more holistic path. I fell in love with chiropractic and massage. I smooshed them together to make chirossage. I ended up with my wife and I having a fertility struggle. We ended up overcoming that with natural means when medical options ran out— and she is a psychologist. We started this mind/body program together, wellness care, with an eye on helping people boost fertility. Over time, that turned into babies and pregnancy. Again, coming from a much more medical background—I used to work in ambulances and emergency rooms—everything was brand new to me on the more natural front. Meagan: Mhmm, yeah. Dr. Berlin: I had never heard of doula. So I would get questions a lot that I didn’t know answers to. It still happens regularly. I would go on to research. I’d talk to experts, read, and try to prepare an answer that was not, “This is what you should do or not do,” but “These are the facts as we know them. What do you want to do?” As I’d get the same questions over and over again, I started to write that as a blog. It became a magazine for a minute when people still printed stuff and then before I knew anything about podcasts, I was doing a podcast. Then I made a couple of documentaries, one of them about VBAC, Trial of Labor. It’s a beautiful film and when we finished it, I realized that the only thing I know less about making a documentary is what to do with it once you have one. How do people get to see it? Right when it came out, there was this big flash of excitement about it. There were screenings and all sorts of people were buying it in lots of different ways and showing it in lots of different ways, but then that excitement fizzled out. It was out there in the blogosphere and the webosphere but people weren’t finding it. I was getting these crushing emails saying, “Hey. I saw your movie, Trial of Labor, and I really loved it. I just wished I would have seen it before I had my baby.” I was like, “No, I made it so you could see it before you had your baby.” Meagan: Right. Dr. Berlin: So after talking to some of the other filmmakers in the space, I realized that I’m not the only one having this problem. There’s not an easy place where people can go and get iconic films like The Business of Being Born, Orgasmic Birth, The Mama Sherpas, Breastmilk, so on and so forth. So I just decided, “Why not make it easy for anybody to access from anywhere without having to pay $25 for each film?” and just boom. You can have it on your phone or your TV. That’s how Informed Pregnancy Plus was born. Every day, we are working on acquiring licensing for more great content. It’s expanded from film to also web series, also mind and body like yoga and meditations and workshops. My wife has a workshop on there on relationships how to still like your partner after you have a baby together. We have one on birth plans. We have one on sleep. It’s just growing all the time. Anybody can try it absolutely free at informedpregnancy.tv. It also has apps for Apple, Android, and Roku. After that, it’s very affordable. It’s $7 a month. Meagan: That’s what I was going to say. It’s $6.99 a month or $59 a year. That’s pretty dang affordable. Dr. Berlin: That was our goal. If you have an internet connection, a device, and $60 for the year, you have access to all of this great content. That’s what we were hoping to achieve. I don’t know how I’m going to survive. It’s like each element of this is a full-time job. Meagan: A full-time plus. Dr. Berlin: Full-time plus like Informed Pregnancy Plus but thankfully we have a small crew here but very dedicated to the project and very hardworking, very savvy. It’s growing both in terms of content and in terms of viewership. The films are finally having an avenue where they can make a greater impact. Meagan: Absolutely. I love that so much. I wish I had something like this back when I was in my childbearing years or having babies, I should say because even the time. In my opinion, how much time I spent researching VBAC and all of the things during pregnancy, even those courses like yoga classes and all of these things, I spent way more time than I would have money. It would have been so much more worth it to just buy a subscription like this and have it all in one great platform. Dr. Berlin: I mean, that’s the goal. Especially for people who live in areas where there aren’t prenatal yoga classes. We don’t have a ton yet, but we are always adding more. We have Baby by Simone on there for people who can’t go to a prenatal workout class. She’s got great workouts. The whole idea is that no matter where you are, these tools should be accessible to everybody. Thankfully, they are trickling their way through the internet and people are finding them. I’m getting fewer messages about, “I wish I had seen your film before I had my baby,” so that’s very rewarding in the way that finances can’t reward. Review of the Week Meagan: Okay, so we do have a Review of the Week so we are going to get into that before we jump into all of the amazing information that Dr. Berlin has. This is from 471046246me and it says, “My Labor and Delivery Nurse Told Me About The VBAC Link.” Oh my gosh, that makes me so excited. If you’re a labor and delivery nurse, thank you, thank you, thank you for the love and we would love for you to continue sharing with your patients. It says, “I had an emergency C-section six months ago with my first baby. I planned and prepared my entire pregnancy for a non-medicated, vaginal birth with midwives in a hospital. I had an amazing team. Labor was going great. Hard, but I felt strong. But my son had other plans that involved wrapping himself in his umbilical cord so the sunroof exit he went. Ha ha,” she says. “In my recovery room, my nurse told me that she had an HBAC and told me to listen to The VBAC Link. I am so thankful that she recommended y’all to me because I already am stoked for my VBAC and I’m not even pregnant yet. Thank you for the work you do. I can’t wait for y’all to come back from your break.” This was back in 2022. It says, “These stories fill my day with so much joy when I take my son for my daily walks.” Oh, thank you so much for your review. You guys, we do love these reviews. We appreciate them so much. We always welcome them in wherever you leave them. You can Google “The VBAC Link” and leave us a review. You can do it on Apple Podcasts. You can message us. You know it. Wherever, we love your reviews so bring them over and maybe they will be read on the next podcast. Q&A Meagan: If you guys are wondering, we will make sure to have all of his links for his platforms in the show notes so make sure to check out the show notes. Dr. Berlin: Thank you.What Happens During an Adjustment?Meagan: Without further ado, I mean there are so many questions. I don’t know if we’ll get to all of them today, but I was shocked, but then I thought, “Oh well, from someone that had never gone to an adjustment before during pregnancy, I didn’t know either.” One of the questions is, “What happens during an adjustment? What does that look like?” Dr. Berlin: These, I’m sure, are going to be amazing questions because they come from real people who are very curious. This is a great question. The answer is it’s different from chiropractor to chiropractor. Generally, the one thing we all have in common is that we’re all looking for restriction in the bones—so where two bones come together, they form a joint. There should be good movement between those two bones, a certain amount of good movement. If they become restricted or totally locked up, they can create problems for you. It may be a problem like you feel like a loss of range of motion or swelling around that restricted joint that starts to become an issue that presses on nearby things like nerves or other tissue. Or it may be a problem that you don’t feel. It might just be restriction where you should have fluid movement. If you’re talking about your low back, hips, and pelvis, those kind of restrictions, that’s the baby’s studio apartment. So where the baby should be able to move freely, your body may not be able to accommodate that. So what we all have in common, really, is that we look for those restrictions and we try to release them. We try to restore motion between those restricted bones around the joint. There are a lot of different ways to find them diagnostically, a lot of different ways to restore movement therapeutically so if you go to a bunch of different chiropractors, you might have very different experiences. Then sometimes, chiropractors also add on top of that other modalities that they do whether it’s a physiological therapeutic thing like electric stim or heat or ultrasound or other types of body work like massage. We tend to combine those two together in our practice. What the adjustment is a restoration of movement where it was previously restricted where two bones come together. Any two bones in the body can pretty much be adjusted but many chiropractors primarily focus on the spine and pelvis and maybe the major extremities. Meagan: Yeah. Like you said, it’s the baby’s apartment. I remember my chiropractor telling me how my pelvis shifted. My right side would shift forward, so it would kind of be off. She was like, “You need to have it aligned for the baby to come out of the apartment.” Dr. Berlin: Yeah. Meagan: I actually wasn’t having a ton of pain. I couldn’t have told you that my pelvis was wonky like that, but she was like, “It’s so easy. You can do it getting in and out of a car or walking up stairs or putting a laundry basket on your hip.” There is so much that happens during pregnancy. Dr. Berlin: That’s before the baby gets there sitting on your hip. Meagan: Right. Your body can get out of alignment through pregnancy. Dr. Berlin: That’s one of the interesting things though. If you come in even if you do have pain but there’s nothing restricted, then on the pure chiropractic front, there’s really nothing for us to do. Sometimes it’s the opposite. You can have hypermobility where things are moving too much. There are ways we can treat that as well, but the adjustment wouldn’t be one of them in that direct area. But on the other hand, you could have restrictions that you don’t feel. We would still want to address them if that’s what you want to do.Bodywork Meagan: Yeah. You touched a little bit on bodywork. That was kind of a question that was answered a little bit farther down on our list, but what all does bodywork look like with that? You talked about massage and things like that. Is there more to it or is it just more like prenatal massage and then a chiropractor? Dr. Berlin: Bodywork is a vague term, even more vague than chiropractic. There are a lot of different kinds. In our office, what we do is massage therapy. It’s more of a clinical massage therapy so it’s focused. It’s usually 25 minutes long. It’s targeted in a specific area. When it comes to musculoskeletal health in general, I see myself as WD-40. I look for things that are stiff, tight, and restricted, and try to get more motion in there. The other side of that coin is duct tape where things are too weak or unstable, somebody’s got to help bring that back together again. That’s more like a personal trainer or a physical therapist. When we are working together, we can get really good balance and function and strength around the muscles and bones of the body. You can really feel wonderful even through all of the different stages of pregnancy, sometimes even with multiples all the way until the end. When things are out of whack, sometimes not even a month into pregnancy, you start to feel weird things happening to your body. Bodywork can be a lot of different things. For us, it’s that more clinical medium to deep tissue, finding muscles, tendons, and fascia that are too stiff, tight, and rigid and trying to use massage strokes to elongate them, lengthen them, and restore normal tone. Other things that we infuse are trigger-point therapy. Sometimes you have a tendon coming to a bone or the center of a muscle where there’s an accumulation of all of the tension in one area so we use trigger-points to release that. Back when I was doing birth work, we would also do a lot of reflexology, cranial massage, craniosacral therapy, jaw releases, and anything that’s going to release the mind and the body through the process. Not so much in the office, we do craniosacral therapy a lot. We have two pediatric chiropractors that work from newborn through adolescence and they do a lot of craniosacral. Meagan: Yeah, my daughter had torticollis from my C-section actually. Dr. Berlin: Oh, interesting. Meagan: It was literally after birth when she was little. Then it just kept getting worse and all of a sudden, her ear was touching her shoulder but her shoulder wasn’t going up. Her ear was going down. Dr. Berlin: Right. Taco neck, they call it. Meagan: Yeah. It was pretty dang bad. We went to PT and that was great, but ended up finding a craniosacral one. Anyway, it was amazing. They did this adjustment and suddenly she was back up. She wasn’t fussy and having acid reflux and all of these amazing things. It is really cool. Dr. Berlin: It is so gentle yet powerful at the same time. Meagan: Right! PT was actually hard on us. It was a lot of forcing her to get in these positions and things then just a few chiropractor adjustments of craniosacral work was a game changer for us. Dr. Berlin: That’s amazing. Meagan: And a lot more sleep for this mama, right? Dr. Berlin: Yeah. It’s not just great for the baby. It’s great for the parents. When to Start Chiropractic Care During Pregnancy Meagan: Yeah. Well, awesome. So when should someone start chiropractic care during pregnancy? Is it something like, “Hey, I’m thinking about conceiving. I should start now.” Should we always be seeing? What does it look like? Dr. Berlin: A lot of that depends on your goals. If you want to optimize your body for pregnancy, it would be great to know ahead of time when you’re definitely not pregnant because there’s a lot of stuff that we can work on that we can’t get to once you’re pregnant like all of the core muscles, psoas, hip flexors, and the ones that go behind the baby. Loosening that stuff up if it’s tight before you get pregnant is ideal. That happens in my case more frequently either if people are on a fertility journey or they had a pregnancy that was either difficult or birth that was difficult and now they’re thinking about getting pregnant again. They’ll come in for some pre-pregnancy bodywork. Once you’re pregnant, it really depends on the goals. If you’re coming for maintenance, in my view, there’s not really a time that is too early. We do make modifications in the first trimester then we make modifications again at different times as you get bigger and your body changes, but there are always ways that we can, almost always, get you comfortable, situated on a massage table and/or a chiropractic table and find those restrictions and release them.I would say our typical patient comes in the second trimester so maybe somewhere around 20 weeks unless they are coming for something specific like sciatic pain or positioning issues or just getting ready for birth and they come later. They tend to come maybe twice a month during that middle part of the pregnancy then at the end in the last month or two, they’ll come once a week to get ready for birth. We don’t prescribe a hard and fast number of visits or frequency of visits. It really depends on your goals, how you’re feeling, and what your life looks like—what kind of resources you have or want to put into it. Meagan: Yeah. That’s what I did at the end of my pregnancy. I did every other week so twice a month then in the very last few weeks, like my 39th to almost 41st, I ended up going a couple of times because I started getting some discomfort and feeling some sciatica pain and things like that. My baby proved his point. He was hanging out in my back. Dr. Berlin: Ouch. Meagan: Yeah. In labor, he did that for 42 hours. Dr. Berlin: Oh my goodness. Ouch. Ouch. I’m sorry. Meagan: It was fine. I was adjusted twice during my labor. Dr. Berlin: Wow. Meagan: I full-on believe—I mean, I believe that my team and everything and that space I had created was an impact, but I swear that my chiropractor really did impact my VBAC. Dr. Berlin: Some people swear by us and some people swear at us. Meagan: I know. Dr. Berlin: I’m really grateful that you were able to have the VBAC. Structure and function are important when you’re trying to get a baby through.Can We Get Adjusted During Labor? Meagan: Yeah. I mean, I saw switches in my labors with both adjustments. It’s so awesome. That was one of the questions. Can we get adjusted during labor? As a doula, I’ve been to a few births where we’re seeing this lag in this labor and the same thing. We’re working through all of the positions, but something is not quite working. We say, “Hey, let’s go get an adjustment.” We’ll go to the chiropractor with them and things big-time shift and we’ve got a baby. But yeah, are there signs that someone could use an adjustment? Maybe we’ve got people in a rural area where they can’t have access to a chiropractor or maybe they’re already in the hospital and sometimes chiropractors can’t come in. Dr. Berlin: Yeah, nowadays they don’t let too many people in. Always, ideally, that’s why we switch to once a week as you’re getting closer to the end so that ideally, you go into as a labor freely moving ball with enough WD-40 to carry you through. But yeah, there’s no problem generally doing adjustments during labor. Some people just schedule it and say, “Hey, will you come check on me when I’m in labor?” Other times, we get called when there are some signs that labor slows if there is no progression like things don’t progress in a “reasonable time frame”, if the baby’s not in a great position, and if there’s back labor like what you were talking about. Those are all signs that it’s worth checking. Are there restrictions here in the pelvic bones? Your pelvis is not a solid bone. It is a bunch of bones connected by soft tissue. It has the ability to expand and contract and accommodate or even facilitate the baby’s movements but if everything is just in a vice grip, then it may not be able to do that the same way. It can be more resistant to the movements. So we don’t do anything to the baby. We’re musculoskeletal specialists. We do things to your muscles and bones and make them more functional. That could make you a lot more comfortable. It could provide an environment in which the baby is better able to line up with the runway and things like that. Yeah. So you know, it’s never a guarantee. Sometimes I’ll get to a birth and there’s really nothing to adjust. In my case, I also do body work so at the very least, I can do some body work. There are a lot of reflexology points that are just calming. There are those famous hip squeezes or counterpressure on the sacrum and lots of different massage stuff we can do to open up muscles. A lot of what I do in the office I’ve learned from birth. When someone is in labor and they’re having these weird muscle spasms during contractions, you realize, “Oh, that is so tight.” I never would have guessed ahead of time that it was going to be so then as part of labor prep, I’ll explain to somebody, “Do you want to release these muscles because they can play a role?” Sometimes you can’t see what looks like the direct effect. It’s all anecdotal. No one studies on this but all of a sudden, things start to loosen up where those spasms are occurring during labor and they loosen up, then all of a sudden, you start to see a healthy progression. The other thing you see a lot with bodywork is somebody, especially in unmedicated birth—I don’t think there is anything like unmedicated birth. Either you get medications or you make your own. The ones that you make look pretty cool. But if there’s someone who’s not medicated medically, there’s this major transition that you can see when a surge comes through and she doesn’t feel totally safe or relaxed and she’ll start to tighten up and sort of not consciously but fight the surge and fight herself, really. That can look pretty violent sometimes. With bodywork, you can sort of help the nervous system relax to a point where it doesn’t feel like it’s in danger. It doesn’t feel like it has to fight even when intensity comes. That’s the most rewarding thing to me from being at a birth. When I see that shift is when it’s like, “Wait a second. This is more tolerable, much more tolerable if I don’t fight it.” They get the confidence to relax into it and they realize, “Okay. I’ve got this.” So it’s not always, in my case at least, the adjustments and bodywork. Things that people can do on their own, there are all of the doula tricks if the baby is not wanting to come down with the peanut ball but sometimes you can actually roll different parts of the low back, glutes, and piriformis if they’re acting up. There is some stretching you can do. Some of the Spinning Babies exercises come in really handy. There is other stuff that you can do even if you can’t get a chiropractor over there. Meagan: One of the clients that I went to, her chiropractor went during labor. He showed me this-- I don’t even know what it was—tight ligament or something right down next to the bone. Dr. Berlin: Yeah, above it? Meagan: Kind of on the side. It was honestly by the butt crack. That’s where it was, this tight thing. He was like, “Do you feel that?” I would feel it and it was so tense. Dr. Berlin: A spasm, mhmm. Meagan: He said, “During a contraction, press on that.” I would press and eventually, it just released and all of a sudden, we had transition coming. It was really interesting. I don’t even know what that is. He said, “Press right here.” I could feel it. It was tight. It was really interesting. Dr. Berlin: Yeah. You’ll find little things like that in labor. With permission, a little trial and error, you can sometimes really find a gem that is helpful for birth or that you can do ahead of time or that you can train a partner or doula to do. It can make a huge difference.CPD Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely. So we were just talking about our pelvis and how it moves and shifts and all of these things. CPD, cephalopelvic disproportion is a common, as you probably know, diagnosis in C-sections and people wanting to have a VBAC. It’s given a lot. In my opinion, too often. I was given it myself. I was told I would never get a baby out of my pelvis. Dr. Berlin: Oh wow. Meagan: So that’s a big question. How can someone tell the shape of their pelvis? Does it matter? How can we make our pelvis “bigger” during birth and what can we do to help these babies navigate through this pelvis without getting this diagnosis of, “Your pelvis is too small”? Dr. Berlin: Well, I think the first and most important thing always with a VBAC is to line yourself up with a provider who is really VBAC supportive, not just tolerant. If you feel really trusting that your provider is like that, then they are only going to tell you things. They know your goal and they are supportive of your goal. They are only going to tell you things that are well thought out or that aren’t just fear-based. There are a few things coming together here. Number one, there is the pelvic paradox. You see someone with really tiny hips give birth to a 9 or 10-pound baby with no hiccups really smoothly. Then you see somebody who has big hips. Maybe they’ve been told their whole life, “Wow. You’re going to have great hips for birthing,” and a 6-pound baby gets stuck and doesn’t come out. How do you explain the pelvic paradox? One of the explanations is that there is a big difference between structure and function. Structure is your pelvis, the bones themselves, the soft tissues themselves, and how big they are. It is measurable to a degree and your baby and how big they are is measurable to a degree. But if you’re just looking at structure without function, you’re going to see what looks like cephalopelvic disproportion a lot partially because we don’t have great measurements on these things. We have approximate measurements and partially because you’re not taking into account function. The baby’s head is not a solid bone. It’s a bunch of bones meant to smoosh through a smaller passageway than it is at its full size and the pelvis is not a solid bone. It’s a bunch of bones meant to expand and transmit something bigger than itself through while you’re in labor. If those functions are working, then for sure, a larger baby can get through a smaller space even though on paper structurally, you have what looks like a baby that is too big to come through a pelvis that’s too small. Sometimes they are too big and that’s the issue. That’s why it’s really important, I think, to be with a provider who really gets you and supports you and is on board with you because if that provider is saying, “Wait a second. You have a head that is like this or the entryway to your pelvis is a concern,” then you’re really going to not be second-guessing them in the moment which is really important, I think, for safety. That’s the number-one thing is if you want to have a VBAC or even a vaginal birth the first time, is to have a provider that is really supportive. Number two—this is again really anecdotal. I see a lot of pregnant people every single day. What I did was a little poll on social media like, “How many people told you that your baby was going to be 9 pounds and it was substantially smaller?” A huge number of people came up. I don’t think it’s nefarious at all. I think that doctors in general and obstetricians in particular are trained to look or what might become a problem at some point which is sort of good. We want them to predict those things. But then it could get carried a little too far away because it’s like, how likely is that to become a problem and what are the interventions that we take to prevent that and what are the side effects of those interventions? That’s a much more complex equation where there’s not always a clear answer. It is sometimes presented as a clear answer rather than, “These are the pros and cons, the risks and benefits as we know them. What would you like to do?” I think that’s something all practitioners can learn over time. I’m certainly still a student every day 25 years later learning how I can do things better and more comfortably and more effectively. I think towards the beginning of practice for me too is that you know what you know and you want to be so helpful, but sometimes, the person on the receiving end of that doesn’t want that and that’s okay. That’s your choice. It’s 100% your choice. Even if it’s not the choice that I would make, at the end of the day, I’m supposed to support whatever choice you want to make. That’s a lesson that at least for me, took time as both a chiropractor and a massage therapist and as a doula especially. Meagan: Yeah. That’s what I was going to say. It’s taken a lot of time for me as a doula. Dr. Berlin: Yeah. Meagan: It can be really hard. Dr. Berlin: Yeah. It’s really hard. And very well-intentioned practitioners who want the best for you, who would do the same exact thing for their wife or their daughter are trying to help you, but at the end of the day, it’s an informed consent situation. What happens with the measurement is that there’s no scale for the baby before it’s born. It’s a computer doing calculations. The calculations have a margin of error. Let’s say that margin of error is a pound or a pound and a half. If I tell you that your baby is going to be 7.5 pounds at birth, based on those calculations, that means it could be anywhere between 6 and 9 pounds if the margin of error is a pound and a half. A) I could have probably told you that without the ultrasound. B) The problem with that is if it’s ticking upwards if the baby is measuring 8 pounds in there, now all of a sudden I’m thinking, “What if it’s 9.5? That could be too big. It might get stuck. We might have problems. We don’t want an injured baby.” Nobody wants an injured baby, so maybe we should just induce you or do a C-section or whatever to prevent that. How many of those babies are actually going to come out at 9.5 pounds? That’s the end of the margin of error on that side. On the other side, you have the same issue. If a baby is measuring 6.5 pounds, you start to think, “What if it’s 5?” because of the margin of error. Maybe the baby’s not getting enough nutrition. These are all logical things to think about and important things to talk about, but we can’t forget that there is this margin of error and that there is a person who really should be the one at least involved if not making the decision. So that, I think is what happens and anecdotally what I see in the office happens with cephalopelvic disproportion. Either we’re doing measurements and we’re guestimating that the baby is a certain size but they may not really be that size and we’re not really looking at function. There’s a great episode of our podcast called “Labor Day Surprises” where there are two women who have both had surprises at the very end of their pregnancies and they are sisters-in-law. One of them had a breech baby and had quite a very interesting story there and the other one had a surprise 11-pound baby. Meagan: Whoa. Dr. Berlin: Now she is 5’8” or so. She is tall but very petite with tiny, small hips. She gave birth to the baby vaginally, unmedicated and are you sitting down? She didn’t even tear. Meagan: Oh my gosh. See? That’s amazing. Dr. Berlin: It was the most incredible thing to watch and it’s one of the few where you saw a very ecstatic birth almost orgasmic birth at the hospital. She really talks about how she got into that mind frame. Her doctor knew the baby was going to be on the larger side and said, “What do you want to do with this?” She said, “I want to try.” He goes, “Well, if you don’t try, we won’t know.” Meagan: Oh, that just gave me the chills. If you don’t try, we won’t know. Dr. Berlin: We won’t know. Meagan: Like you were saying, it’s informed consent. It should be up to that mama to decide if she feels that it’s a good thing to try, but we also have to respect that if we have a provider who is not comfortable with it, we have to respect them too. Maybe that’s finding a new provider or working with their partner or something but yeah. It’s interesting. Dr. Berlin: I mean, I know that I’m not a good match for everybody out there who is looking for a pregnancy chiropractor. I’m not a good doula for people who are looking for a doula. What’s really important is that you find providers that you feel are on the same page and that they are a good match. This happens with dating all of the time. It’s like, “You’re not for me but I have a friend and they would love you.” I don’t think– I’m never insulted if I meet somebody and they’re like, “I don’t want this type of care.” Great. Let me find someone you would love to see. It’s the same with obstetricians. There are some obstetricians who are very paternalistic. They make all of the decisions for you and there are people who love that who don’t want to make the decisions and who don’t want that responsibility. You guys are a great match together, but you’re not going to be a great match for my Prius-driving, vegan, hippie mom, who wants to have her baby hanging from a chandelier over a tub. You know? She’s not going to be a match for them. Meagan: Not so good of a match. Dr. Berlin: It’s not an insult. Neither one of you wants to be with someone who’s not a great match. I always encourage people that if you’re not with a provider that you feel comfortable with, if they’re not on the same page or your interests are conflicting, then try to find a provider who is on the same page. It makes a huge difference and you don’t get to do this very often. Meagan: I know and it’s worth finding that provider. Just like it’s worth dating and dating and dating until you find the one, it’s worth going out and continuing to find that provider because like you said, my best friend went to a provider that may not be the best for me. I’m happy that she found him, but I might need to find someone else and that’s okay to take that time and find that provider. Dr. Berlin: Totally and if you’re going a more natural route, even psychologically if you end up having a Cesarean, which I don’t think is the worst thing on the planet. I think it’s a great thing. I’ve been known to say that I think one thing worse than a Cesarean being forced on someone who doesn’t want one and doesn’t need one is not having one available to somebody who does need one. A Cesarean is a great medical marvel of our time. The doctors who learn how to do them perfect them and do them with very little risk and a lot of skill. They’re heroes to me. But you know, if you want a more natural birth and you end up with a Cesarean and you’re not with somebody who you felt like you are on the same page with, you’re very likely to leave that birth feeling like, “Did I really need that?” It leads to a lot of not-good mental thoughts at a time that you are already going through a tough– for most people, a big transition. Meagan: Yeah. Dr. Berlin: I can’t say it enough. Having a provider that is good for you and that is a match for you is so important on all fronts. Breech BirthMeagan: Beautiful. I love that. I couldn’t agree more. Finding that provider is so important. We were just talking about these two cute sister-in-laws. They had a surprise breech and that is a question. If the baby is breech, what things could someone do on their own to help their baby turn? How soon should they start to worry? How could chiropractic care truly help that baby turn? We know that there’s not a lot. Breech is kind of dwindling away. It’s unfortunate and it’s really unfortunate that we’re not having as much support in the breech world, but we’re not.  A lot of people get put in a corner that if they have a breech baby, they feel like they have to have a Cesarean whether they want one or not, but they want options. How can we work with these breech babies? Dr. Berlin: It’s truly interesting. I think if there were more options for safe, vaginal breech delivery– not everybody’s a good candidate for that– but if there was more of an option, primary Cesareans would be down. Meagan: I wonder too. Dr. Berlin: Substantially and as a result, secondary Cesareans would be down because all of those people who had C-sections are told, “Once a Cesarean, always a Cesarean.” They don’t even get a chance. I think it would bring down the Cesarean rate greatly as a whole. The question is, what is a safe breech birth? There is a lot of debate around that but one thing is for sure. There are some people who are much better off seemingly having a Cesarean birth but they’re breech and other people who are much better off with the option to try and deliver vaginally but they’re breech. Meagan: You have an episode on your podcast talking about that specific topic with Dr. Brock and some other providers talking about what that looks like. Dr. Berlin: Yeah, we have a 3-part series called Breech 101. It’s two midwives and two obstetricians just talking everything breech from all angles. With Dr. Brock, we have another episode called “Vaginal Breech After Cesarean Breech” with a mutual patient, Dr. Donna Lou who had a breech with her first and ended up in a Cesarean because her doctor didn’t. She went into labor and didn’t have the chance to meet Dr. Brock. At the hospital, her doctor just doesn’t have the confidence or the comfort to deliver breech babies. He was very apologetic but she had a C-section. One of the few people I have seen over 20 years who was breech again with no known reason, with her second, Dr. Brock also equally baffled said that she is a great candidate for VBAC and a great candidate for breech birth. The two, the risks that come along with those, don’t compound each other. It’s just two different sets of risks. What would you like to do? She opted for the vaginal breech birth after a Cesarean breech birth. I have them both on and they talk about the decision-making that went into it and what the process was actually like. When it comes to breech, I have a premise which is that– let’s talk about a singleton baby in a first pregnancy. That’s where we have the most data. I have a premise that at the end of pregnancy, babies generally want to be head-down. The reason I have that premise is because according to Williams Obstetrics, these numbers are a little bit old, but still seemingly relevant. At 28 weeks into a singleton first pregnancy, about 50% of babies are not head-down yet. Meagan: 50%. Dr. Berlin: 50% at 28 weeks. Now, at 32 weeks, about 10% are not head-down yet. You go from 50 out of 100 babies that are not head-down to only 10 out of 100 babies in a 4-week period of time. Meagan: That’s a lot of babies that turn in a very short period of time. Dr. Berlin: It’s a big migration and it’s seemingly because they run out of space. When they have space to move around, they can move all over the womb. It doesn’t really matter. Nobody really cares. They are exploring so no big deal. As they start to run out of space, they have to pick a position that is most accommodating in the space that they have and generally in a typically-shaped uterus for a typically-shaped baby, that is head down. That is where they try to go. At birth, at 37 weeks and beyond in that first pregnancy, the breech rate is 3-4%. So it goes all the way down to 3-4 out of 100 from 50. That’s where the premise comes from at the end of pregnancy, babies generally want to be head-down. If they don’t go there, there must be a reason for it. There’s usually a reason. It could be something structural. It could be something functional. Sometimes when we have no idea why, like in the case of Dr. Donna Lew. Why would babies structurally? Well, there’s a lot to consider. Maybe the cord is wrapped around them funny. Maybe the placenta is in the way especially when it’s on the front wall, it seems to pose more of a getting-in-the-way factor. None of these, by the way, are absolute factors. I have a lot of people that come in with a placenta in the front and the baby does turn. But it seems like of the ones that don’t turn, more of them have the anterior placenta. Amniotic fluid seems to play a role. So if the amniotic fluid index normal is somewhere between 8 and 24, with all of those being normal is a big range. 8, 9, and 10 are healthy but not so much fluid volume for baby to move around. 18, 19, and 20 are also healthy but so much fluid volume that even after 32, 33, and 34 weeks, your baby may have a lot more room to move around than other babies and not have a trigger to pick a position and get head-down. If you add other things to that like it’s your third pregnancy so there’s more room in the uterus anyway and if you’re tall and if the baby’s measuring small, you can take all of those things into account. Not all breeches are exactly the same. The shape of the uterus is a big deal too. Sometimes if the shape is different, it seems not conducive for the baby to get head-down or for the baby to be able to. Functionally, it’s your body. Your lower back, hips, and pelvis are supposed to be pretty loose, relaxed, and open at the end of pregnancy. Your body is doing that hormonally in several different ways but if everything is stiff, tight, and rigid for various different reasons– injuries or excessive workouts or other things like that without enough stretching, then especially if you’re strong, you can have a pelvis that is strong, tight, and rigid. As the baby’s running out of space, maybe down there is not where they are being invited to go. Maybe the end of the rib cage is a lot more inviting or if they’re trying to move as we said before, the body may not be able to accommodate the movements the same way. When I work on breech, I’m not doing anything for the baby itself. I’m not doing anything to the baby. I’m not trying to turn a baby or move a baby. I’m working on the musculoskeletal structures of the baby’s surroundings which is the mom and if they’re stiff, tight, and rigid, we’re creating more functional space using massage to loosen up the soft tissues and chiropractic adjustments to open up those restricted joints and maybe gravity. We have tables that invert so maybe a little bit of gravity if something is really stuck trying to give the baby an opportunity to move naturally with gravity. We also in our office have acupuncture so we also do moxibustion which seems to stimulate more natural movement so it’s synergistic. I can create more functional space and they can create more movement in that space. It gives those babies a chance to turn more naturally. When do we start? Usually around 32 weeks but I always tell people, “Look. At this point in that first pregnancy, 10 out of 100 babies roughly statistically are breech, and in birth, it’s only going to be about 3.” If I was a betting person, I would still bet that your baby’s going to turn. The stuff that I’m doing is really insurance. It’s going to be helpful for birth anyway but I tell them not to panic at that point. And then of course, you have to look at all of those factors that we mentioned to see who is more or less likely to turn and you can tell based on the fluid, the uterine shape, the placenta location, and so on. Meagan: My VBAC baby kept going breech. At 32 weeks, he was going breech. She would motion him and he would flip then the next visit, I was like, “His hiccups are up here again.” He would be breech. He did that until 36 weeks. I think it was 34.5 or 35 and she was like, “We have to trust this baby. We have to trust that this baby needs to be head-up for whatever reason” and I was kind of grouchy because I was like, “I don’t want to have another C-section just because I had another breech baby.” I really wanted this VBAC, but yeah. At 36 weeks, I went in and he was head-down and he stayed head-down. Dr. Berlin: Do you remember if your fluid was toward the more generous side, middle side, or lower side?Meagan: It wasn’t super high, but it was on the higher of the normal. He did have a shorter cord when he came out, so I don’t know if maybe something was bugging him there, but yeah. He flipped head-down. It was great, but it was hard. It was hard not to get panicky. Dr. Berlin: Sure, yeah. That’s the thing. A lot more people have to think about breech than actually have breech at the end. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Berlin: So if there are 4 million births in the United States every year and 10% of them are breech at 32 weeks, that’s 400,000 people every year thinking about breech but only about 3-4% are breech at the end like 160,000. Meagan: Yeah, I even had a client. I’m going to jump off of the breech topic, but I had a client who was breech and was scheduled for a version the next morning but went into spontaneous labor that night. We went in at 1:00 AM and baby was head-down. She was 9 centimeters when we got there. Her body just needed contractions to finish rotating the baby. I have no idea but sometimes it can happen. Okay, so let’s see. Post C-section. This is in regards to cupping fasical release and stuff like that that you guys do in your office as well. Is that something that you would suggest? This is another type of bodywork essentially. Dr. Berlin: New mama TLC. I think whether you have a Cesarean or a vaginal birth, it’s a lot on the mind and body, and nervous system, so I try to do a longer session soon after usually by two weeks regardless of the mode of delivery unless there is some kind of injury then you are good. We can do most things. The goals are to– sometimes there are smaller injuries from birth like injury to a tailbone or pubic bone or something like that. We can address those right away. I’ve had people pop a rib out pushing so hard so we obviously can pop that back in after a vaginal birth right after birth. Meagan: Wow. Dr. Berlin: The goal is if there are any injuries, we deal with them right away. After that, it’s sort of like the sports massage when you’ve run a marathon. Just wear and tear on the body and trying to move that excess fluid around and have it be reabsorbed so we do some lymphatic work and finding those overworked muscles and to relax those muscles and at the same time, if we can work it in, a little sensual nervous system relaxation work to help reboot the system. Meagan: Yeah. Dr. Berlin: And to come back online with calm and quiet. So either a little meditation and/or some cranial work. While our normal visits are 25 minutes at that point, we do an hour-long session to try and get all of that in during the first one or two postpartum visits. There’s also a great opportunity at that point, especially for people with more chronic things that they deal with pain-wise. You still have the pregnancy relaxation hormone for a bit. You don’t have the baby inside there pushing on you 24/7. You’re kind of more moldable clay. I’ve had several instances of somebody who had a lifelong chronic thing from an injury and during that period, we have a better shot at making a lifelong correction there. Meagan: I’ve never even thought of that. I’ve got this long-term back issue. I’ve got this relaxin and great stuff in my body. Let’s work with that. Dr. Berlin: Yes. Let’s use that advantage. I had a patient who was really eager to do that and then she got COVID and she couldn’t come back. It created a whole bunch of problems for her and she’s like, “Damn. I’m going to have to have another baby.” Meagan: I was going to say. That’s what I would say. Now I have to have another baby. That is really awesome. Like you said, it doesn’t matter. C-section or vaginal, our bodies go through quite an event and take a lot of shifts and changes so chiropractic care can be beneficial after as well. We’ve talked about it with babies as well. They go through a lot and that can be impactful. My little boy didn’t poop forever. It was 9 or 10 days. We got him adjusted and he had the biggest poop in the world. Dr. Berlin: We see that all the time. Meagan: He passed out and slept all night. I woke up all engorged and I was like, “Oh my gosh.”Dr. Berlin: I know. It’s the number-one feedback. “My baby slept so well after the adjustment.” Meagan: I know. We need it. Babies need it. It’s so impactful. Back in the day, way, way, a long time ago, I didn’t love the idea. Chiropractic care scared me. It can be scary because you can hear some people talk about it. Like you say, someone is yelling at you. It can be scary sometimes how people talk about it but it doesn’t have to be scary and if you find that really good, skilled chiropractor, they’re going to take care of you. They’re going to help you through this process. Pubic SymphysisThey’re going to help you with pubic symphysis which is another question. I know we’re running out of time but if you have anything you’d like to share on pubic symphysis, that is a really big one. The more babies we have, sometimes it starts earlier. Dr. Berlin: Yeah. And then it’s weird also. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. It’ll plague somebody in the first pregnancy and then not be there. Just a comment on the scared about chiropractic bit, certainly chiropractic isn’t for everyone, but it comes back to finding a good match. As I said at the beginning, there are a lot of different ways to find and release those restrictions. Some of them are very, very gentle. It doesn’t have to be that cracking noise that a lot of people are off-put by or violent-looking maneuvers. If you want the benefits of chiropractic but that’s what’s holding you back, find someone who does a low-impact technique or network or activator. Meagan: Drop table. Dr. Berlin: Drop table. Meagan: Yes, I was going to say the activator. Dr. Berlin: Sacro-occipital technique. There are so many that are gentle. The neuro-emotional technique. Okay, so in terms of the pubic bone, there is a right and a left side to the pubic bone. They are separated by pubic cartilage. I’ve learned over time that there are different types of pubic pain and they present differently. It’s still definitely a work in progress. I’m learning new things all of the time. The most common one that presents during pregnancy is pain on sort of the lower pubic bone, the underside of the pubic bone where the fine meets the bone. It’s usually only on one side or substantially worse on one side and it’s like when you separate your knees. When you bring that pubic bone apart, that right and left side apart, so if you get out of bed one leg at a time or if you get out of the car one leg at a time or when you engage it to roll over in bed if you haven’t been moving for a while. A very common one is to lean over to put on pants and lift one leg then ouch, it’s very painful. What seems to be happening there in most cases is that you have an imbalance in the right and left side of your pubic bone. Let’s say that you have the muscle coming up your thigh attaching to the underside of that pubic bone and pulling harder on one side than the other side. When you’re totally stable, your body can accommodate that. But as the relaxation hormones kick in and they kick in pretty early, the pubic cartilage that is holding it together maybe can’t compensate for that imbalance so the right and left sides end up not lined up with each other anymore but they torque so every time you engage it and pull them apart, it’s very painful. If you could get them to line up again, then it would be either not painful at all or less painful. The combination that I use in that case that tends to work pretty well but not always is either massaging out the upper adductor like a deep massage to lengthen that adductor so it’s not pulling so hard and then a trigger point right where that adductor inserts to the underside of the pubic bone. It’s sort of an act of release trigger point as I’m pressing into it. They engage the muscle and then release the muscle. Engage and release a couple of times and then there’s a little test that I do for it also which is if you’re laying on your back or in a semi-reclined position and your knees are bent, feet on the massage table, or a yoga mat, or anything like that, I’ll try to gently pull the knees apart against resistance from the mom. If that is weak, first of all, it doesn’t really have a lot of strength. It elicits that sharpness in the place where the pain has been bothering them. That’s a pretty good sign that this is the mechanism and that doing that combination of massage and trigger point and then adjusting the pubic bone with a drop table will give significant relief. Meagan: Wow. Okay, so that could be a test to say, “Okay. This could be impactful if you do this technique.” Dr. Berlin: Right. Then if it’s not, I wouldn’t do it necessarily because it’s not the most comfortable thing. It’s always up to them. I could still offer it and see if they want to do it even if it’s a long shot or not do it even if it’s a sure bet. But other types of pubic pain that I have identified are definitely the pubic symphysis cartilage itself sometimes gets inflamed. It’s not one side or the other. It’s right in the middle and it’s higher up on the pubic bone. Oh, that’s you. Meagan: That was me. It was ow. Dr. Berlin: I find acupuncture and I’ll tell you something else in a second. Acupuncture, icing, and a support belt that lifts the belly up off of the pubic bone are some of the things that are more relieving there. The third type is the round ligament. They attach to the soft tissue right near the pubic bone on sort of the top ledge of it towards the outside, the upper corners of it. If you have a round ligament that is tight and pulling all of the time, then that becomes very sensitive. In those cases, we try to massage out or gently stretch the round ligament until it relaxes. That usually takes the pressure off there. One thing I would also say if you’re feeling it there in the pubic symphysis cartilage and especially if you’re also feeling it in the back by the sacrum or tailbone is to look for hyperactive pelvic floor muscles, a hypertonic pelvic floor. The pelvic floor runs from the back of the pelvic floor to the front of the tailbone. When it gets really tight, it will pull on both of those areas. Especially athletic women but not only– sometimes you have a hypertonic pelvic floor from all of the activities to strengthen and tighten. You might also be doing that to your pelvic floor. Up until not that long ago, all we knew about pelvic floor was that it can get weak so everybody is instructed to do these kegels and strengthen them but if it’s already hypertonic and you strengthen it, you might be making it worse. So thankfully, we have these pelvic healthy physical therapists as a specialty now. People are just training on that and how to strengthen the weaker ones and loosen the tight ones, making pregnancy and birth more comfortable, more functional, and postpartum wellness. Postpartum sometimes can be treated. Meagan: Yeah. So as you are saying this, I have a weird question. I had all of that during labor and then since, I am really active. I am a road cyclist and I like to lift and all of these things. I get adductor pain now where it’s not as tight and burning right in that pubic symphysis but right in that adductor. Do you think something could still be connected through that pelvic floor?Dr. Berlin: It’s always worth checking if you haven’t had it checked. The adductor by itself could just be the adductor. Sometimes just from the workouts that you’re doing– lifting especially could make it really tight and it just needs to be rolled out or dug out and you might benefit from those trigger points too on the ends or the inserts on the top and the bottom. Pelvic floor could be a factor. There sometimes are other factors too. Even a little drop incontinence when you get the urge, it’s like, “I’ve got to go right now.” Meagan: Yeah. Dr. Berlin: Or pain during intercourse or things like that or if you jump on a trampoline or you sneeze and you pee, those are signs that something is up with the pelvic floor. It’s not functioning quite right and worth investigating with a specialist. Meagan: Yeah. I think a lot of people don’t even remember that even C-sections can impact that pelvic floor and our whole body and create that tension and restrict us from having good mobility. Dr. Berlin: That is an amazing point because it is absolutely true. The end of pregnancy puts a lot of strain on the pelvic floor no matter how you deliver. Body Support at HomeMeagan: Yeah, so again, definitely check out the chiropractors in your area. So for those who maybe can’t have chiropractors or can’t have access, are there any tips or maybe places on the Informed Pregnancy Plus channel where people can learn not to adjust themselves but do stretches and do those things that can help create that mobility and help them have these vaginal births that they’re wanting? Dr. Berlin: Yeah, there are tons. Spinning Babies has a whole bunch of great exercises that you can do. It’s a good idea. We have a course that we do called Labor Kneads. We only do it live right now, but it’s where we’re teaching partners and doulas and other support people to do bodywork before, during, and after birth. That’s a great idea for us to shoot that and put it up on the streaming service. I can’t promise it for one, but I will certainly try to do that. The other thing is that there is a great listing of chiropractors with separate post-graduate training. You should know that anybody who is a licensed chiropractor can work on pregnant people. It doesn’t have to be a specialty. Meagan: Or Webster-trained. Dr. Berlin: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be Webster-trained or it doesn’t have to be somebody who is a prenatal chiropractor. There are some chiropractors who don’t feel comfortable working on pregnancies. Some don’t have all that much experience, but there are a lot who are not prenatal. They are just family chiropractors and as a result, they see a lot of pregnancies. You don’t have to have a specialty to do it. So unless there’s no chiropractic in your neighborhood, then there might be people who can work on you even if it’s not a specialty clinic like in our case, we call it pregnancy-focused chiropractic. The other thing is that there’s a great website by the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association that does a lot of postgraduate training in pediatric and prenatal chiropractic care. They have a listing by zipcode and their website is icpa4kids.com. You can search by zip code in the United States and Canada and maybe some other international options. Meagan: We’ll make sure to also put that in the show notes for everyone listening. Last but not least, the big question is does anybody not qualify to receive chiropractic care? Dr. Berlin: Yeah, I mean, I would almost say that there are some conditions during pregnancy that come up that are delicate. During those very delicate conditions, I love to work together with the obstetric provider. At that point, it’s usually going to be an OB/GYN or a maternal-fetal medical specialist and just access their comfort level with the things that we do. Almost always, it’s going to be modifications. It’s not that we can’t adjust them at all or do any bodywork with them, it’s going to be modifications. Sometimes we’ll just wait a couple of weeks and then do the treatments but for the most part, you can do something for everyone who has things that are stiff, tight, and rigid and are either uncomfortable or want to improve their function. Meagan: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking this time out of your day with all of your projects. You’ve got so many hands in buckets. You wear so many hats these days so it’s really been such an honor to have you on the show and answer all of these amazing questions. I full-on believe in chiropractic care. Like I said, a long time ago, I was like, “Ah!” and then I started getting into chiropractic and I’m like, “No, this is really impactful on so many levels.” Dr. Berlin: It is. Meagan: I mean, I’m not even pregnant or planning on conceiving but I still go to the chiropractor because it really does impact my life in a better way. Dr. Berlin: We have moms come in here and they make an appointment. They say, “I want to make a postnatal appointment with Dr. Berlin.” The reception team will say, “Oh, how old is your baby?” They’ll say, “13 years old.” I’m like, “Yeah.” You don’t have to only be pregnant or postnatal to come here. Meagan: A postnatal visit. How old? 13. Okay. That’s just called a chiropractic visit. That’s all that you have to say. Dr. Berlin: It is, but once you have the baby, you have all of the bending, lifting, holding, feeding, emotional stress, and things like that. The maintenance during that active phase of life is important. BreastfeedingMeagan: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I just said I’m going to end. I feel like I could talk to you all day. Dr. Berlin: Same. Meagan: But something I feel that impacted me and I know a lot of our doula clients is breastfeeding. When we’re breastfeeding, we’re hunched and curled. Our neck is down and we’re in wonky positions then we’re out and we’re stretching then we’re like, “Oh, this is painful” or all of a sudden, my milk supply is not that great, and weirdly enough, chiropractic adjustments can help your body and you nurse better and help your production because your baby is going to nurse easier. You’re going to nurse easier. Everyone’s going to be better. Dr. Berlin: When you’re in a lot of pain, the stress hormones put you more in emergency mode, and making milk is not an emergency function. There’s that and there’s literally just the– here’s one tip I would say that seems to help a lot of people. If you have a nursing station, especially in those early couple of months, you can put a full-length mirror in front of you so you can see what’s happening without looking straight down. That seems to be helpful for a lot of people. Meagan: Absolutely. Yeah. To just be able to see and not be curled over. I mean, you are looking at your baby, but you can look down at your baby versus– Dr. Berlin: Across. Meagan: Yeah. Dr. Berlin: Yeah. One thing that gets a lot of people is that you’re trying to get some sleep and the baby is in a comfortable position and it’s not comfortable for you but you don’t want to move because you don’t want to wake them up. That’s gold for the chiropractors. Meagan: It is. It is. Oh, well thank you so much again. It’s such an honor. We’re going to make sure to have all of the links to your channel, to your page, and to your website. This chiropractic search forum and everything. Everything will be in the show notes so everybody will be able to find you. Dr. Berlin: Thank you. Meagan: Like I said, if you’re listening and you haven’t been able to yet, hopefully now you’re not driving if you were driving. Stop and go follow Dr. Berlin. Dr. Berlin: Thank you so, so much for having me and the incredible work you do. I could also talk to you all day and I’m going to have you back on our Informed Pregnancy Podcast and I can’t wait to hear your full story. Meagan: I would love to share it. It’s quite the story. Dr. Berlin: Awesome. Thank you. Meagan: Awesome. Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today on the podcast, Sarah joins us from Minnesota. Sarah got COVID-19 very early on in her first pregnancy during the height of the pandemic. The protocol at her practice was to recommend a precautionary 39-week induction. Sarah trusted her doctor and consented to the induction along with other interventions that were suggested. Her birth ended in a Cesarean under general anesthesia. During recovery, Sarah’s knees would buckle to the point where she needed assistance walking and fell until the problem slowly resolved. When she achieved her VBAC, Sarah was able to immediately walk unassisted. She wasn’t groggy from just having had anesthesia. Her throat didn’t hurt. She got the immediate skin-to-skin she missed the first time.Sarah is such an amazing example of how powerful a VBAC birth can be, especially with the right prep and the right team. We just love how hands-off and supportive her doctor was. Sarah went into her birth mentally and physically strong. She labored hard, stayed calm, and pushed her baby boy out in 20 minutes!Additional LinksNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Welcome to The VBAC Link. We have a story for you today coming from Minnesota. We have our friend, Sarah. And Sarah, tell me. Did you have your babies both in Minnesota or have you moved since then? Sarah: Yes, both in Minnesota. Meagan: Both in Minnesota. All right, so Minnesota parents, listen up. This is a wonderful episode in your area. Review of the WeekAs always, we have a Review of the week but first I want to talk a little bit about COVID-19. Sarah and I were just talking about how we have seen so many COVID-19 stories coming through. They had their C-section through COVID-19 or even had their VBAC during COVID-19 and then now they have gone on to VBAC. There is definitely a trend of situations that we are seeing so I’m just so curious today. Go comment on today’s episode and let us know if you have any relation, but a lot of providers are wanting to induce if you have the virus, COVID-19. Sarah, that was kind of the case with you, right? They wanted to induce because you had COVID-19. Sarah: Yes. That was kind of the standard of care at that point. Meagan: Yes, which is kind of interesting to think about the new standard of care. I really am curious to see one day what the Cesarean rates did during COVID-19. You know, there is some evidence here and there on it, but I’m really curious to see what the Cesarean rate did because we do have a lot of people saying that they were induced because they had COVID and then they ended in a Cesarean. So we’re going to talk a little bit. She’s going to share her birth and her induction story that then led to her VBAC. But of course, we have that review. It is by Raving Abbeh and the title is “Confidence.” It says, “I found this podcast at 34 weeks pregnant and it helped me gain the confidence to fight for my chance and get a VBAC. I hope to submit a success story in a few weeks.” And guess what? This was also during 2020, so Raving Abbeh, if you haven’t submitted your story, we would love you to and as always, you guys, we’re always accepting stories. We definitely record in chunks, so know that if it takes time, that doesn’t mean you haven’t been chosen or you will never be chosen, but if you want to submit your story, go to thevbaclink.com/share. Sarah’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Sarah. Welcome to the show. Sarah: I’m so excited. Meagan: I’m so excited. I’m so, so excited. Well, tell us more about this 39-week induction and why they were saying it was the new norm. It was the protocol, right? Sarah: Yes. So at this time, I was working full-time in the hospital where I gave birth as a radiographer– an X-ray tech. I was kind of in the world a little bit. It was definitely not a fun time to work in the hospital. I actually tested positive when I was 8 weeks pregnant, so very newly pregnant. I was seeing family med for my provider and what they were doing at that time, they said, “Okay. This is what’s going to be different. You’re going to meet with a high-risk OB who specialized in COVID.” I would have growth ultrasounds every 4 weeks and then also, they were recommending this induction at 39 weeks. When I asked about that, what she said was that they had seen issues with the placenta. That was the reason that they had. I actually looked back on it now and I think in the study, they really only had 16 pregnant people so that was what they were basing this all off on. Meagan: Which is really nothing to start making a protocol so wide-ranged. Sarah: Right. Right. And actually, right now, my sister-in-law had COVID and she’s pregnant. She had COVID at the same time I did at 8 weeks, but now it’s 2023 and her doctor is not doing the growth ultrasounds. They’re not recommending induction. There actually is nothing different with her current, right-now pregnancy which I find interesting. Meagan: Interesting, right? Right? Sarah: But again, it can range. Meagan: In 2020, it’s interesting because they were like, “Oh, we’re going to have you with this provider who specializes in COVID pregnancies,” but how does someone specialize that fast? Sarah: Right. The person that was the specialized person was the highest-up person in the department of OB. Meagan: Okay, so definitely a specialized OB. Okay. Sarah: Right. I actually only ended up meeting up with her one time because if there was anything abnormal, that’s when I would go to her but my pregnancy was completely normal. I had no issues related to COVID or related to anything else which was obviously a blessing, but kind of also a bummer because now, I’m going to have this completely unnecessary induction at 39 weeks.Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: She did mention at the time that if I wanted to go past 39 weeks, I could definitely make that choice but she would do NSTs. Now after learning so much and being where I am now, I would have been like, “Okay. Let’s go longer and do NSTs,” but at the time as a first-time parent, I was like, “That sounds kind of weird. Let’s just do what you think.” Meagan: It sounds intense with all of these extra visits. It’s a lot. It sounds like a lot. Sarah: Yeah. Otherwise, about that pregnancy, being a first-time parent and having this medical background, it’s no surprise probably that my attitudes towards the doctors were that I completely trusted their knowledge with the COVID stuff because it was so new. Meagan: Oh yeah, and scary. Sarah: Yeah, definitely, but I was completely unaware that there was such a wide range of ways to treat pregnancies and so many different attitudes on how to birth babies. I was just clueless to the whole thing about the cascade of interventions and why do inductions have an increased risk of C-section? I was completely clueless to it. I am just used to with a doctor, you have a certain condition and there are ways to treat it. It was very narrow. But with birth, there are midwives. There are doulas. There are so many different ways to treat someone’s birth and pregnancy that was just over my head. When people would ask me, “Oh, why are you having an induction?” and tell me that maybe I shouldn’t do that, I was like, “Oh, well why wouldn’t I when they say that is the best thing to do for this COVID situation?” For me, it was like, “Well, they know better than me.” Meagan: Right, yeah. Sarah: I think you say all the time that you don’t know what you don’t know. Meagan: You don’t know what you don’t know and you can’t judge yourself for not knowing what you don’t know. Sarah: Yes. I definitely had to work through forgiving myself for sure. Meagan: Yeah. You have to take the information. I think I talked about this too. My husband had said this. We took the information we were given and made the best choice that we felt we had with the information provided. Sarah:  Yes. Meagan: Right? And that’s what you did. Sarah: Right. Honestly, it’s funny now. Even just preparing for birth in general, take away the COVID part, it’s kind of funny how I did basically nothing to prepare for birth. I just focused on my registry and other things like that after the baby got there. It was kind of because I had this, “Oh if I go with the flow, I’ll have the best outcome. I don’t want to put too many expectations on myself. I don’t want to pressure myself. I’m just going to go with the flow. I don’t know how my body is going to handle it,” which does have a place. There is a goodness to that, but I think I was a little too extreme where I was like, “My mom had C-sections. I know if that happens, it happens.” It was just very, “Whatever happens, happens.” Now, I look back and I’m like, “Well, now all I did was have no tools in my toolbox to deal with pain, labor, or resources to help make those hard decisions that I was going to have to make.” I had nothing in the background to help me with that. Meagan: No tools in your toolbox. Sarah: Exactly. That’s why it was very different for my second birth but at that time, I was like, “Okay, whatever happens, happens. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me or how my body is going to take it, so we’ll just see what happens.” I was scheduled at 39 weeks on a Monday and actually, that Friday before, they called me and said, “Hey, do you want to come in early? We have a lot of people scheduled on Monday.” I was like, “Oh, I’m excited to meet my baby. I’ll go in even earlier,” which is like, oh. Okay. That weekend, we were actually moving into our new house an hour away. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Sarah: We actually spent one night at our new house and the next day we drove back to Rochester to have our baby but we were so excited. Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely. Sarah: I wasn’t even thinking about anything else. We were scheduled for a 7:00 PM Saturday appointment then. When I got there, I was completely 0% dilated. Closed. 0, 0, 0, -3 station. Furthest from ready. Meagan: Not ready to have a baby, yeah. Sarah: No. So they started me with Cytotec overnight and in the morning, they placed the Cook catheter then they started Pitocin right after. I faintly remember watching Beauty and the Beast bouncing on a ball, but that was the extent of any movement in my labor. Like I said, I didn’t prepare for anything. I just was like, “Oh, bounce on a ball. Everyone says that’s good.” I didn’t do much. But what did start happening was the baby was having decels, not liking the Pitocin, so I had to get moved from side to side. I was lying on the bed– not the best position to have the baby not be so high up. Meagan: Right. Sarah: But then by 10:00 AM, they took out the Cook catheter. I was 4 centimeters dilated. Things were moving along. But then at 11:00, they had to turn down the Pitocin because again, the baby was still not tolerating it very well. Then I felt a big pop in my belly and I was like, “Oh, is this what it feels like when your water breaks?” I was excited. I’m like, “Oh, that sounded like a balloon popping.” So they came in and they were like, “No, we don’t see anything. Your water didn’t break.” I was like, “Oh, okay sure.” Meagan: I felt something. Sarah: So then a half hour later, they came back in because they had to actually turn off the Pitocin because the baby still wasn’t happy. They checked me and they’re like, “Oh, there’s all your water,” and it gushed out on them. So I was like, “Okay, well at least I know that I can trust my intuition even though you didn’t quite believe me.” Meagan: Yes. Sarah: But I’m not crazy. It did break. The contractions were getting really intense at this point. I tried laughing gas. It didn’t really work. At that point, I decided, “Okay. I’m ready for an epidural. I feel like I’ve gotten as far as I can with what I prepared,” which was nothing. I actually found out this after the fact, but at this point, they actually gave me medicine to stop my contractions. Meagan: Like terbutaline or something?Sarah: Yes, exactly. They gave me that at this point. I actually have no recollection of this, but I was able to look at my records after the fact and I was like, “Oh, I never knew they even gave me that.” Apparently, they gave me that to stop things or slow them down or whatever. I was about 5 centimeters dilated at this point and they placed the epidural. Everything went smoothly with that and then an hour later, they were like, “Oh, we’re going to start the Pitocin again.” I was like, “Okay.” I was 5 centimeters at that point and then 40 minutes later, they checked me and I was 9 centimeters. Meagan: Whoa, so your body went into total relaxation mode and dilated. Sarah: Yes. Yes. I was like, “Cool. That was fast.” They had just sent away the doctor. They had to call her back. Shortly after that, I was at 10 centimeters, ready to go. This is when they had me start pushing. One important part that I know now is that I don’t remember ever feeling pressure or the urge to push or anything like that. They were just like, “Okay. It’s time to push.” I’m like, “Okay.”I did end up pushing for about 3 hours. They did let me try a few different positions. They tried to turn down my epidural to help too, but she never really progressed past that zero station. So nothing was happening. I was mostly on my back for all of it.I remember them saying that they would let me push for the most at 4 hours, but at the 3-hour mark, I was exhausted. I felt like we had made no progress. I was just like, “Nothing’s going to change in another hour at this point for me. I don’t know what I’m doing. You try to tell me how to push. I still don’t know.” Meagan: Yeah. You’re just like, “I’m tired.” Sarah: Exactly. The contractions were beginning to be really painful. Again, I didn’t really have a way to cope with them. The pushing wasn’t working so I consented to the C-section. I just remember feeling so defeated and just crying, being wheeled into the OR. My doctor stayed right by my head and talked to me until my husband was supposed to come in because I kept saying, “Hey, I feel these contractions. They are strong.” They were trying to give me all of the medicine to numb me enough. They were doing the prick test to make sure that I couldn’t feel it and I just remember it was really hard because my nose was plugged up from crying. I felt like I couldn’t breathe anyway. I wasn’t sure about the pokes. I was like, “They are sharp to me. I feel them. They don’t feel like pressure. They feel sharp.” They were like, “Okay. Well, we’re going to have to put you under.” They put the mask on me. I breathed in and went to sleep. Meagan: And you were gone. Sarah: Yep. Then I was gone. Meagan: Your husband probably never came in then? Sarah: So he did get to go into the OR. She was born. They let him go in so he was all gowned up. He was in the OR. He kind of tells it like, “Yeah, it was so weird. I looked over and there you were on the table.” He wasn’t so close to me. Meagan: Sleeping. Sarah: But yeah. I was sleeping. He did get to do skin-to-skin. They let him do that in the OR which was really nice. They got a bunch of pictures of her getting weighed and him cutting the cord in there so it was nice to have some of those pictures that I can look back on. Meagan: Right. Sarah: That’s something. Meagan: Right, yeah. It helps you relate, too, when you’re not awake. Sarah: Exactly. It was definitely a weird experience. But when I did come to, apparently, I had been awake longer but you know how that works. When you’re waking up from anesthesia, it’s kind of weird. But apparently, when I woke up, they told me that I was just like, “Where’s the baby? Where’s the baby? Where’s the baby?” They rushed me back. I don’t remember any of that, but what I do remember is when I woke up, my throat was so sore and hurt so bad. But she was on me and she latched immediately and started feeding so that was really special. Meagan: Yes. Sarah: Just how she was able to eat right away and I didn’t have any problems with that which was really nice. I know that can happen sometimes. That’s basically that birth. Meagan: An unexpected ending and a less-ideal situation, but then to come out and have things work out really nicely was probably really healing and comforting. Sarah: Yes. Right away, I was definitely happy. She was healthy. I was okay. She was eating. But I remember just recovering from a C-section, you’re in a fog. I remember my legs being in those machines to keep the blood flowing, having a catheter, having my sore throat, and whispering to talk. That kind of thing was definitely not a fun recovery in that aspect right immediately after. Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: I actually had a really weird thing. I had problems with my knees. Meagan: Oh. Sarah: I have never heard anyone else talk about this. Meagan: Interesting, like wobbly and strong? Sarah: So what happened was once they took out the catheter and then they give you the, “Okay, it’s time to try to go to the bathroom for the first time.” When I tried to stand up, my knees would just buckle. The first day, I had to have two people assist me to the bathroom. The second day, it was also a two-assist. Slowly, they started to not always buckle. I was in the hospital, I think, for four days. Four or five days. Eventually, they wouldn’t buckle but when I got home, they would buckle when I went upstairs. I did fall twice but slowly, they did get better. It was fine. It was just if I unexpectedly took a step. My cat scared me and I stepped and then I would fall because my knee wasn’t expecting it. Meagan: I just looked it up because I am legitimately curious. It says, “Acute lower limb compartment syndrome after a Cesarean.” Sarah: Oh. Hmm. Meagan: Interesting. So it can happen. Sarah: Interesting. I was just kind of assuming it was a mix of me being numbed from the waist down for hours and then my legs being up in the air for hours and then being in the C-section, and then also laying down. Do you know what I mean? Something with that, but no doctor or anything ever said anything to me about it. They were just like, “Oh, okay. That’s weird.” Meagan: Yeah. Really, really interesting. It says that it’s rare. Sarah: Oh. Meagan: It’s pretty rare, so you get to be in one of those rare groups. Thank you for sharing. Sarah: Yeah, so otherwise, I hadn’t really fully processed the birth but every time I would tell my birth story, I would choke up or cry and that’s when I realized, “Oh, maybe I didn’t really like that very much” because at first, you’re just happy the baby is okay and you’re okay. I actually remember right afterward, I was like, “Oh, okay for any other baby, I’ll just schedule a C-section. This time it will be planned and I’m going to be awake for it.” I honestly wasn’t even thinking about VBAC right away. I was just like, “Oh, the future will be easier. It will be fine.” But when my daughter was around 6 months old, I started to listen to The Birth Hour and I found myself searching C-section stories, looking for things like mine which led me to hearing VBAC stories, searching those out, and then finally finding The VBAC Link. That was the big game changer. I am so appreciative of you guys having this podcast and keeping it going on and all that. Meagan: Absolutely. Sarah: Such an inspiration. I learned so much even from both podcasts about interventions, doulas, birth teams, and most importantly, trusting in a woman’s body. It kind of leads me to this big thing. It’s like, why do we have to go through some sort of trauma to become an advocate for women and educate ourselves? Meagan: Right? Sarah: I feel like that’s such a theme. Meagan: It’s so true though. It’s so true. Why do we have to go through a really crappy experience? It doesn’t always have to be crappy. I’m not saying C-sections are crappy, but a big experience to have passion and to feel that motivation behind that.Sarah: Exactly. Yep. Sometimes, it’s so hard because it’s like when you talk to someone who hasn’t been affected by this kind of situation where it doesn’t go their way in the hospital, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. “You can’t trust the doctors.” That’s not what we’re saying. It’s so much more than that. Meagan: It is. It really is. It’s not even just in birth. Truly, right? My husband does not do what he does, I think, mainly just because he didn’t want to do it one day. It was like, “Hey, this really unfortunate situation happened to someone I love and I want to be available in a different manner to help them or help anybody else.” So he took on his profession. It’s like IBCLCs– I’m sure a lot of them have had unfortunate or poor nursing experiences and are like, “We want to help other people have better experiences.”Sarah: Yes, because it’s the information that, “Oh, wow.” It makes complete sense that, “Oh, things might go a little bit better if you let your body naturally do it.” Oh, well yeah. That makes sense. It makes sense that, “Oh, if I have someone who’s trained in positioning, maybe if I move my body in this way, then I can get my baby in a better position to come out better. Oh, that makes sense. Why didn’t I know that? Why didn’t my doctor say, ‘Hey, there are some positions that can help.’” It’s confusing to me. It’s like, well that makes sense. Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. So obviously, I just dove right into all of the VBAC stuff and learning all about that and listening to different stories. I was super excited for my next pregnancy because I had made the decision, “Yes. I’m going to go for a VBAC and I’m super excited about it.” I was ready to do all of the things to make it more successful. We got pregnant when my daughter was around 15 months old. We wanted a two-year age gap and they’re both two years apart in April so that worked out for us. Meagan: Perfectly, yeah. Sarah: So the things I did to make it more successful– they are all things that people on this podcast talk about. For physical things, it was workouts that focused on birth prep. I didn’t do anything crazy like walking for miles and miles every day. I just did the minimal which was doing some exercises every day for hips opening, cat/cow, and all of that stuff. I did the Miles Circuit later on in pregnancy every day. I ate my dates every day. I drank my tea.Then I think the biggest thing, too, is mentally preparing. For mentally preparing, I got my doula. I really love that the doula does the meetings before the birth. I didn’t even know that when I had heard people talk about doulas but meeting before and talking about what birth plan I wanted, what things– Meagan: Your desires. Sarah: Exactly and what things could happen. I’m like, “This would be so helpful for a first-time parent to know all of this stuff.” I wish I had gotten her with my first. Also, just talking about coping mechanisms, what are some positions that we are going to do, talk about scenarios. It was great. Then I also, for mentally preparing, I looked up a bunch of different coping mechanisms. I actually did Hypnobabies. I wasn’t consistent with the meditation, but it was very helpful to practice the breathing and visualization. Meagan: I did too. I did it as well. Sarah: I was really bad at the meditations so that didn’t stick with me, but it was really, really great to practice the breathing and all of that. And honestly, just listening to birth stories is mentally preparing because I would really only focus on positive stories toward the end of my pregnancy. I was like, “Okay, now we are in the home stretch. We are just going to stick to all of the positive ones.” The big thing, too, was finding my provider. I joined The VBAC Cesarean Support Group on Facebook way earlier and everyone had all of the recommendations of who to go to. My provider is actually family med, but he is more like a midwife. Actually, my doula said that he’s actually more crunchy than a midwife as a family med. For all of the births that she attended, she said, “He is more hands-off than a midwife.” I’m like, “Wow.” Meagan: Wow, that’s cool. Sarah: And what’s great is that he attends all of his births so there is no rotating call schedule. Meagan: Which is huge. Sarah: There’s no, “Who’s going to be there?” He’s very trusting of women’s bodies. I did my due diligence and I asked him, “How often have you personally seen a uterine rupture? How often do you use the vacuum? How often have you done episiotomies?” You know, so just asking him all of the things. He had really great responses and I felt really solid with him. Meagan: Which is really important, right? To have those conversations also. We know that when they come in and they say, “Hey, do you have any questions?” It’s really okay to ask questions. Sarah: Yes. That’s the big thing. So because he’s not an OB, I had to go do a consult with the OB that he works with in the hospital. The OB who works in the hospital definitely wasn’t making me fearful, but there’s a certain form you have to fill out that says, “Hey, obviously if you’re successful with your TOLAC, that’s going to be the safest option for you. But if you’re not successful, that’s the least safe.” It’s easy to plant doubt, but after I saw him again, I asked my provider, “How often do you see it?” It was such a small amount and since he’s one of the VBAC go-tos, I felt very confident with him. It was really nice to have that fear taken away in that way. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Sarah: And then this is kind of interesting. Just for fun, I did message my old provider at my previous hospital just to see what she would say about my chances for VBAC. I actually messaged her before I was pregnant. I said, “Hey, I am kind of processing and struggling from my C-section. What do you think about my chance for VBAC?” It was just on a message. What she said was, “You did everything you could at that time to have her vaginally, but she just didn’t fit your pelvis for whatever reason. We think of fitting as a lock and key situation. Both pieces have to work together to open, so there’s no way to know if a future baby would ever fit your pelvis better than she did.” Then she kind of went on. I thought, “Nope.” I’m like, “Nope. I’m not taking that in.” Meagan: Yes. Sarah: It was interesting. Meagan: Thank you so much, but no thanks. Sarah: Exactly.Sarah: Exactly. I’m like, “I don’t think she didn’t fit my pelvis. That’s not a thing.” Meagan: But you know, it’s an easy thing for people to say or diagnose. It’s like, “Oh, well your baby was perfect. You were perfect, but the two together didn’t really match that time.” Sarah: Right. Meagan: That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s true. We just don’t know. Sarah: Again, we can’t go back in time and have me try something different. Meagan: Yes, yes. Sarah: But I think it’s interesting that she said that. Meagan: It is. Sarah: Again, I talked to my doctor. He’s like, “Oh yeah. Great. Let’s do it.” Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: He said, “You’ve got this.” So you know. Otherwise, I’m preparing. This is the funny thing too, again. At first, I didn’t have any intention of trying to go unmedicated. At first. I was like, “I definitely want to VBAC,” but I wasn’t trying to do that. I was just focused on the VBAC part. But once you hear enough birth stories, you know that if I do all of this preparation and I go as long as I can without this intervention, I’m going to have the best possible chance of a healthy vaginal birth. If it still ends in a C-section, it’s because that was what had to happen not because I didn’t know any better. Meagan: Right. Sarah: So that’s when I was like, “Yes, okay. It makes sense for me to try. I should just try to go unmedicated. I should just do it. Whatever happens, happens.” I still am keeping my go-with-the-flow but with a lot of preparation. It was kind of funny because when I would tell people that, “I’m trying to go unmedicated,” people will say the craziest things to you. Meagan: Right? “I could never.” Sarah: Yes, or “I know someone who did and it was the worst thing they ever chose to do. They said, ‘Never do that.’” It’s like, I know and I’ve heard many, many stories of people doing it and are very happy with the outcome. So definitely right before, I was 37 weeks. I was like, “I’m going to read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth.” Everybody talks about it, but I just wanted to hone in and focus on those unmedicated birth stories and just say, “How did you guys do this? How was it successful?” That was really helpful. I really liked that book. That was really good. Meagan: Yeah. I really like it too. Sarah: Yeah. Otherwise in this pregnancy though, I physically felt really good. I got Braxton Hicks contractions which I didn’t have in my first pregnancy. That was definitely new. Meagan: Yes. Probably exciting. Sarah: It was exciting. I was like, “Okay, yeah. Every birth is different.” That was one of the Hypnobabies thing that stuck with me. Each baby is different. Your birth is going to be different. Don’t let that fear creep in on you. But at 33 weeks, I found out the baby was breech so that was scary. Meagan: Yeah. It throws you for a loop, right? Sarah: Yes. When I found out that he was breech, I immediately messaged my doula. She gave me Spinning Babies exercises to do every day. I was making sure I was sitting forward and all of that stuff. Then I went to see a chiropractor first and then she also gave me this massage therapist who was trained in breech balancing massage. I went to both of those and the baby was flipped at my next appointment at 35 weeks. Meagan: Yay. Sarah: So I was very happy. The coolest thing with the massage therapist—in our state, I’m pretty sure she is maybe the only one who does this breech balancing massage. She told me because I actually went to do a follow-up appointment. Even though he was already head down, I was like, “Let’s just go again to make sure.” She said that she was treating six other breech moms at that time and they had all flipped when I came back from my second appointment. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Sarah: Yeah. I’m always in the groups. I’m like, “If anyone is breech, try this specific breech balancing massage. Yeah.” It’s really interesting just listening to her talk about it because she is so knowledgeable about, “Hey, your baby is breech for a reason. You have these muscles that get tightened. Your pelvis is this bowl and if things are in the wrong position, the baby wants to be head down. If I can release all of these muscles and make more space in there, even if the massage might not on its own make your baby flip, but giving your baby that space, then your ECV is more successful if you do that. Meagan: Right. Sarah: I was very happy because I had done all of this work and hyped myself up. I wouldn’t want to have to schedule a C-section for this reason after all of that but if it happened, it happened. Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: So everything was going good then until my 39-week appointment. I had a high blood pressure reading so I was like, “Oh great.” But my doctor was not worried. He had me do an NST, labs, and monitor at home. I came back in a few days and everything was good. That was nice. Actually, the day that I went back for my follow-up for my high blood pressure was the day that I got my birth records. They had my birth records there for me. I had gone this whole time. I was almost 40 weeks and I was like, “I still really want to see.” Meagan: You had requested them? Sarah: Yeah, and it just took a really long time to get them. When I had that appointment, I was able to get my birth records earlier than I thought. I didn’t think I was even going to get them by the time I had the baby. I was able to read through them and kind of work through it. My doula was like, “Oh, do you want to call and talk about it?” I was like, “Yes.” It was kind of like a fear release for me because that night I went into labor. Meagan: Yeah. Did you find anything in there that you didn’t know before? Sarah: I mean, that one thing was that terbutaline. I didn’t know that. And then I was just curious about some of the dilation. Also, I saw on my records too that the surgeon who did my C-section put, “This patient is a candidate for a TOLAC.” Meagan: Oh yeah. Sarah: It was nice just to have that and to see that the surgeon who did my C-section would put that on my note like, “Yeah. They are a candidate.”Meagan: Yeah, it’s helpful. Sarah: Just working through it too was nice to see it in a timeline. So that night was the night I went into labor. At 2:00 AM, I woke up with my contractions. Right away, they were 3-7 minutes apart. I had the same situation three weeks before where I woke up and had contractions that were 3-7 minutes apart, but they fizzled out and didn’t come back. I only had that situation one time earlier. So I was like, “Oh, this could be another practice. This could be the real thing.” But they were stronger than the last time. That’s the biggest thing too. Even though they were so close together, I was handling them so well that I was like, “I think I’ll just wait this out,” which is interesting because if you’re a first-time mom, you’re like, “Hey, this is 4-1-1. I’m having them.” Meagan: You have to go! Sarah: And they’re long. A lot of them were long like at least a minute, but they just weren’t strong so I was like, “Okay, well I’ll wait.” Then my husband woke up at 4:00 AM. I was like, “Hey, I’m having these contractions.” His response was, “I’d better hurry up and go work. I’ve got some work to get done.” He’s like, “Oh no. I gotta go.” So then he went away to go work on stuff. Then by 6:00 AM, I was like, “Okay.” I had a couple really strong ones so I was like, “Oh.” Then I was also getting back labor so I was like, “All right. Time to text the doula.” I was like, “Hey, this is what’s going on.” She was like, “Well, your back pain might be because of the baby’s position, so try to do the Miles Circuit. Eat a good breakfast. Hydrate. I’m preparing you for possibly a long day.” I said, “Okay, sounds good.” I had my bagel with cream cheese. I got my Body Armor drinks out, but when I tried to do the Miles Circuit, it was so intense. I could not. The minute I laid down and I had a contraction in the Miles Circuit position, the laying down one, it was like, “Whoa, no.” Meagan: Not gonna happen. Sarah: I’m like, “I think this is time for me to start going into some prep mode here.” So I dimmed the lights in my room. I had my ball but I actually didn’t like bouncing on it so I never bounced on it. Meagan: Was it uncomfortable? Sarah: Yeah. For me, that seated position was uncomfortable. For me, I was in a forward-leaning position. I’d lean against the wall and sway or I’d have my husband come. I’d hug him and sway. I’m like, “This is working out okay.” The back labor was a different aspect that was like, “There’s got to be something I can do for this back labor.” I messaged her and she’s like, “Okay, well obviously have him try to do hip squeezes,” but he wasn’t really getting the job done with the hip squeezes. She recommended the shower to also help us see if it’s going to calm down or if it will keep going. I got in the shower and it was magic. The heat on the back was perfect. My favorite thing ever, but the hot water ran out after 15 minutes and I was so sad. Meagan: Oh shoot. Sarah: So the hot water ran out and I was like, “Oh man.” I got out of the shower and I was like, “Now we might just have to go to the hospital right now because I need hot water. I want to get in that tub.” That was my dream was getting in the tub. Meagan: Right. Sarah: So my doula checked in with me at this point and asked about the shower. I was like, “Yeah.” I think I was kind of in denial because I was like, “Oh, it’s medium intense,” but they were still happening. She was like, “Okay, well maybe you should start heading in as long as they are staying 3-4 minutes consistently for an hour. Go ahead and start heading in.” At this point, she also tells me that she is actually in another birth. Then she joined me with the backup doula so she was at another birth. I was like, “Oh bummer.” But my backup doula ended up being amazing as well. But you know, when you’re preparing with someone— Meagan: Can I just say right there that is a real thing? It’s usually if you have to have a backup doula, it usually works out so well. Right? Sarah: Yeah, it was so good. Meagan: But like you were saying as I was cutting you off, as you were preparing with someone else, it’s hard. Sarah: Yeah, it’s kind of a bummer because you know this person so well and you had worked with them, but it worked out perfectly fine too. I really like my backup doula. She’s great as well. She told me, again because I was like, “Hey, what can I do for now? We’re going to head in probably soon but what else can I do for this back pain?” She was like, “Do you have a heating pack?” I’m like, “Ooh, yes.” I was putting a hot pack on my back which again, wasn’t hot enough for me. Meagan: You needed a hot tub. Sarah: It did something. At this point, my daughter had actually woken up because we were still at home. It was about 8:00 and she was so sweet. Every time I’d have a contraction, I’d go into my room. I’d have my calming music on and my swaying but then I would leave and I’d come back out with her. She was just so sad. She wasn’t crying, but she had these big tears welling up in her eyes. I would hold her and she would pat my back. She was like, “It’s okay.” It’s like she knew that something was going on. I was like, “I’m okay. It’s okay.” She was just kind of like, “What is going on?” I wasn’t making loud, loud noises but I would be doing horse lips through them or moaning. Meagan: Coping. Sarah: Yeah, nothing too crazy, but for her, she could tell that something was going on. Luckily, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came over shortly after that around 8:30ish. My sister-in-law took my daughter and was like, “Let’s go play,” so she was good. She was good. My mother-in-law saved me because she said, “Oh, I will boil hot water.” So she got a big pot and boiled hot water. She put cloths in them and put those on my back. That was amazing. Meagan: I bet that felt really good. Sarah: Right. So at this point, my husband probably should have been getting the cars ready for us to go to the hospital, but instead, he was cleaning the house frantically. Meagan: That was probably his way of coping. “Oh my gosh, this is happening. I’m going to go work and then I’m going to go clean the house.” Sarah: Yes. Yes, so we’re like, “Okay, it’s time. We’ve got to get going.” I’m like, “Yeah. I’ve got to get going.” So finally, we get in the car. My back is soaking wet from these hot towels but they are saving me. Luckily, the drive was only 10 minutes. I had my hot towel in there. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but we got there. They checked us in and they moved us to triage. At this point, again, the sitting position was not my position for labor. It was, “Nope, not happening.” I was always kneeling, facing the back of the bed. The back of the bed was up. I held onto it. Then when I was in triage, though, I didn’t have my coping mechanisms. I didn’t have my hot towels. My next plan that I had was the comb technique. I had packed a couple of combs. I was telling my husband, “All right. Your hip squeezes—” he was trying to find the combs and of course, he couldn’t find the combs that I brought. But he did remember that he brought his own comb. Meagan: Hey! Sarah: So I was able to take his comb which I can say RIP to his comb. I used it. There were little comb tings, whatever they are called, the teeth of the comb were everywhere at the end of my birth but it definitely worked. So then every time I would have a contraction, I was pushing on the comb and breathing as they were checking me into triage. But they were able to kind of get the band on me. They gave me an ultrasound to make sure the baby was head down while I was in triage. Then they checked me. The nurse checked me and when she was down there, she was like, “Oh, it’s really hard to tell how dilated you are because you have a bulging bag of waters and I really can’t tell what you’re doing.” She was like, “I think you’re almost complete.” I’m like, “Okay.” Meagan: Whoa. Sarah: I’m like, “Okay.” This whole time, she’d been trying to call someone on her radio, but they were really busy. At that point, she was like, “Okay, let’s get this room.” She was like, “I’ll just wheel you on this bed unless you want to walk.” I’m like, “Actually, I want to walk.” I was actually thinking, “You know what? I think I want the bed that is in the room. The triage beds aren’t probably as comfortable.” That’s where my mind was so I was like, “Let me just walk.” Meagan: No. Sarah: So they get me in the room and again, my doula is on her way but she’s not there yet. It’s about, I think, 10:00. My doctor comes in. They put the little IV on my arm in case I need any medicine. All I’m doing right now- Meagan: Hep lock. Sarah: Yes, exactly. All I’m saying is that I just wanted to get in the tub. This is me the whole time in triage. Meagan: I just want the water. Sarah: I want to get in the tub. I want to get in the tub. The comb is helping, but I want to get in the tub. So he comes in. I’m like, “Hey, can I get in the tub?” He’s like, “Well, you can but I should probably check you first if you want me to. If you’re really close like the nurse thinks, then you’ll have to push soon possibly.” I’m like, “Yes. Check me because then, if I’m not, I can get in the tub.” That was in the back of my mind. He checked me. He’s down there for a while and I’m finally like, “Okay, you’ve got to get out.” He’s like, “I understand why they are having a hard time. Yes. You have a big, bulging bag of waters. I can tell why she had a hard time and I think you’re maybe 7 or 8 centimeters but I can’t tell. As soon as the water breaks, you’re going to be fast.” I was like, “Sounds like I can get in the tub.” He was like, “Yes, you can.” Meagan: You’re like, “Perfect.” Sarah: Perfect. This is when my doula came around this time. She helped get the tub in motion because they were like, “Well, it’s going to take a while. We’ve got to get you on these mobile monitors.” She went in and she got the water going and I was able to get in the tub. The only problem is that once I got in the tub, I was like, “Oh, I think I have to poop,” which is the magic— Meagan: Means you’re going to have a baby! Sarah: She was like, “Well if you want, you can sit on the toilet and see if you actually do poop.” I was like, “Sounds like a plan.” I sat on the toilet facing the back of the toilet. I had my hands on my comb. My comb was with me everywhere. That’s when I had the scary, scary transition contraction. I was so happy I had her there because she was saying all of the right things and at this point, I can’t remember any of them except for her saying to me, “This is the hardest part, but it’s also the shortest. You are in transition.” When I heard her, I was like, “Okay, that makes sense.” I was a little shaky. You just feel so out of control. I was like, “Whoa. I don’t know about this. I’m not sure about this.” Meagan: You start questioning. It’s weird. Sarah: It is really, yeah. But she was saying all of the things I needed to hear, so I was good. So then I was like, “Okay, no poop is coming. Let’s get back in the tub.” So I got back in the tub, and then I had probably one contraction and then a lab person came to the door and was like, “I’ve got to take your blood.” We’re like, “Uh, okay. Let’s just wait until she’s in between contractions.” I’m like, “That’s a good idea.” So she comes in. She turns on the light. I’m like, “This is throwing off my vibe.” She sits down next to me and she scans my band and then they were like, “Okay, let’s wait for the next one.” The next contraction came and it was the, “My body is pushing! I’m pushing. Help!” I had that fetal ejection reflex, but my water was still intact so it was more of the water ejection reflex. Meagan: It was pushing that, yeah. Exactly. Sarah: My body did the thing where it pushed on its own. I’ve always heard about this when I’ve listened to the podcasts that this happens. I was always like, “Oh, I want that. That sounds nice. Do it for me,” but I did not like it. Nope. Especially because I was in the tub, maybe that’s why, but I just felt so out of control. I was like, “Whoa. I’m not controlling this pushing,” but I was also very excited because I knew that meant it was time. The lab person promptly left the bathroom and they never got my blood. I don’t know why they needed it, but they never got it. Meagan: I know. It’s so weird, “We need your blood right now.” It’s like, “Really? Why?” Sarah: Yeah. Especially when, “Oh, I’m in transition about to have a baby.” I think you’re okay. Meagan: Seriously. Sarah: I had that. So that happened and then my doula was like, “Well, do you think you want to get in the bed?” I’m like, “Yes. If a baby is coming, I need to be on the bed.” So again, my favorite position—even my tub position was my hands and knees. I was draping my hand on the back of the bed kind of in that—I wasn’t really hands and knees because I started that way and then I ended up hugging a pillow and kind of squatting back. Meagan: Yeah, okay. Sarah: Yeah. I started pushing. Again, my waters hadn’t broken yet which was obviously, this is a big thing with my provider. He is hands-off. Any other provider would have said, “Do you want me to break your water?” Meagan: Absolutely. Sarah: That would have been a thing. It was kind of interesting that “Nope. I’m just doing it all on my own what my body wants to do.” I was pushing for about 10 minutes and then my waters exploded. They all knew it was coming, so no one got drenched, but it was so loud. Meagan: Everyone was probably a little sensitive in that area. They were probably like, “I’ll walk over here.” Sarah: Yes. They expected it. My doctor was like, “I might get drenched, but I’m ready for it.” But he didn’t. Meagan: That’s okay. Sarah: It was so loud. I was shocked. It was like a gunshot. It felt like it was just like BAM when I pushed it out. So that was great. Then about 5 minutes after that, he was born. I pushed the waters out and then pushed him out. His head was right there and they were like, “Oh, you can reach down and feel the head.” I’m like, “I can’t.” I had to reach down. I’m like, “My arms are too short.” So then I pushed him out. It was about two pushes I think.Yes, as soon as that water was done, yeah. He was two pushes after that. It was about 20 minutes of pushing total. Meagan: Whoa. That’s like nothing. Sarah: Yeah, then I got to flip around. They put him on me and they didn’t cut the cord until it was done pulsing. They did delayed cord clamping. They did the golden hour. He was just on my chest the whole time. I birthed my placenta which was fine. I did have a small tear which was just something I was scared about with an unmedicated birth. I’m like, “Oh, that will be not pleasant. I hope I don’t but again, no idea. I probably will. Most people do.” It was a very small, I guess, second-degree tear but he numbed it. It just felt like a bunch of little bee stings. He numbed it and stitched it. It was fine. Baby was on my chest for that whole hour. What was crazy to me—I also consented to having the Pitocin drip afterward to get the— Meagan: The uterus to contract down, mhmm. Sarah: Yes, yes. I had that. Once that was done, I was able to just stand up and go to the bathroom. Meagan: Amazing, right? Sarah: I could just get up to go to the bathroom. I felt good. I felt fine. This was about 10:50 in the morning, so yeah. I was at the hospital for an hour and a half before he was born. Later that night around 5:00, we had family come over to see the baby that night. I felt as great as could be with still normal postpartum stuff. Meagan: Right. You did just push a baby out. But you weren’t knocked out and coming too and all of those other things. Sarah: Yes. So yeah. That’s about it for that.Meagan: Aw, yes. Well, congratulations. I’m sure that was a very different experience. I mean, I’m sure both babies were, right? We all cherish our babies’ births but to be more present in your baby’s birth, I’m sure definitely left an impact. Sarah: Yeah. Even my husband told me that for this time, he actually teared up and felt like it was just such a more of an emotional experience even for him which is completely understandable. It was actually really scary for him with the C-section he told me. They tell you, “Hey, we’re going to go put your wife out. We’re going to come back and get you and then you’re going to come and be part of it.” He’s sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting. They just kind of say, “Hey, you can’t go in anymore. We knocked her out. You have to wait here. It’s going to be a while.” Then he’s just like, “Oh, is she going to be okay?” It was a little scary for him too, that first one. This was a lot, obviously, more emotional and just a really cool experience for both of us. Meagan: Yeah. I’m sure it was very healing for both of you like you said. That couldn’t have been easy for him walking in and seeing you in that manner. I mean, the fact that he even brought it up. “It was weird when I walked in and you were laying there but then I’m over here doing skin-to-skin with this baby.” Sarah: Yep. Meagan: I’m sure it was so healing for both of you. Huge congrats. Sarah: Yeah, thank you. Oh, and one thing to mention with the doctor is that because I gave him all of my birth plan too, at no point in this hospital situation was I ever offered anything. They knew what my preferences were. They never said anything about any interventions at all. They never said, “Do you want us to break this water?” Everyone was on board. It was great. Meagan: Yeah. You really didn’t feel like you had to fight along the way. Sarah: Yeah. It was all supportive which is what I wanted. Meagan: Yeah, and what you deserved. Sarah: Yeah. It was really great to have that. Honestly, the thing I also really liked about pushing in that position where you are facing the back of the bed was that I didn’t see all of the people staring at me. It was nice because—and not that it would have mattered—but I’m kind of socially anxious in that situation so it was nice to just be focused on my husband’s hand holding me. I’ve got my comb. I’m breathing. I’m totally in it. I’m not looking around. With the C-section, that labor was like everyone was staring at you. You’re pushing and trying and nothing is happening. It was so nice to just be here in my world. I never even saw anyone. Meagan: Yeah. Sometimes you see people’s faces and they are not wanting to communicate with their mouths so they communicate with their faces. So when you are just staring at all of these people surrounding you, you find yourself, “What are they saying?” Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Meagan: You start questioning it. It pulls you out of that space. It sounds like you were really able to stay in that space because maybe you didn’t see any of that. Sarah: Yes, exactly. When I was pushing, it was really hard. I’m not saying it was easy. “Oh, unmedicated in 20 minutes.” No. It was hard work. There were times when some doubts would creep in and I was like, “What if he’s in the canal too long? Will he be okay?” It would be easy for those doubts to creep in, but my doctor and my doula were all saying the things that I needed to hear. “You’re doing it. Your body knows what to do. Keep pushing this way. Push like you’re going to poop.” They were saying all of the things to keep me focused. It would be so easy if you’re not ready to give birth to a baby, that feeling would be very scary. You would feel very out of control. I could see how easy it would be for that to be very, very scary. Having the people there that knew what to say to me was very helpful. Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely. The team is really that powerful though. It really, really is. Sarah: Mhmm. Meagan: So get a team. If you’re looking for a doula, we’ve got doulas on our website that are VBAC-trained and certified. Get a good provider who is supportive and loving and willing to just like Dr. Ryan, just yeah. “Let’s do this. Let’s do it.” Super supportive from the get-go. “Yeah, we have to have this consult, but I’m not not supporting you by sending you to this consult.” Sarah: Exactly. Yep. He’s like, “This person knows that I do a lot of VBACs. They’ve been through this before.” Meagan: Yes. Yes. Sarah: Yeah. Meagan: Well, huge, huge congrats.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Women of Strength, believe in yourselves!Brittani shares her inspiring two VBAC stories with us today-- one where she mostly prepared physically and one where she focused on intense mental preparation.While all three of her birth stories are wildly different, each taught Brittani valuable lessons.The image of Brittani standing in her bathroom being held up by her husband and doula while she pushes out her baby girl is absolutely unforgettable. We are so proud of you, Brittani!Additional LinksBrittani's Clothing Website - Nunuy ApparelHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello. We have another VBAC story. We actually have two VBAC stories for you today. We have our friend, Brittani and she is in Oregon. She has had two VBACs. Brittani, tell me. You grew up in Florida. Did you have your babies in Florida or were you in Oregon when you had your babies? Brittani: All three babies here in Oregon. I lived in Florida until I was 21-22. Meagan: Okay, all right. So all three babies in Oregon, so Oregon parents. Brittani: We are. Meagan: Listen up here. We have some VBAC stories for you. I don’t know if you will share along the way but feel free to share where you gave birth. We have a lot of people a lot of the time write in and say, “Oh my gosh. I heard this story. I am in the same area. I would love to find a provider. Do you know their provider?” So if you feel that you want to share, feel free in your story to share. Brittani: I am happy to give shoutouts, yes. Meagan: Perfect. Perfect. Well, Brittani is a stay-at-home mom with her three children. They are all under the age of four, right? Brittani: Four and under, right? Our oldest will be five at the end of June. Meagan: Yay. Oh my gosh. You are busy. Brittani: Yes, we are. Meagan: Not only are you busy with three beautiful children, but you have created an amazing business. I just want you to share a little bit about this because I think a lot of people will for sure want to go check you out and make sure to know that if you guys miss it while you’re driving or something, the link for all of her stuff will be in the show notes. So yeah, Brittani. Tell us a little bit about your clothing line. Brittani: That’s so kind. Thanks, Meagan. I don’t know if it’ll come up in conversation but I had a really, really tough go at breastfeeding. All three babies, but especially with my first, I was really self-conscious about nursing in public. I got really into sewing at home and just had the inspiration to create my own line designed for breastfeeding. I have three pieces currently. They are all ethically made in my husband’s home country of Peru. We use organic pima cotton which is the world’s finest cotton. I’m working on two new designs, a jumpsuit, and a sweater. It’s called Slow Fashion for a reason. It’s taken forever because I need to let go of the perfectionism. Meagan: I know. But at the same time, it’s your baby. Brittani: Yep. It’s my fourth baby. Yep, yep. Maybe fifth if you count my husband. Meagan: Right. Brittani: Yes. I would even be happy to provide a discount code special to the listeners of this podcast, but yes. It’s called Nunuy Nursing Apparel. I have an Instagram that I wish I could be more active on, but I have all of these babies. Meagan: You have three kids under the age of four. Brittani: Yes. Yes. I will get there. I will get there. The baby is going to be a year old next month, so yeah. Thank you for letting me touch on that. Meagan: Yay. Happy birthday. Brittani: Thank you. Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. I think It’s so important. From one entrepreneur to another, I think it’s so important to share. Especially, this is something that really does apply to all of our moms out there who want to breastfeed. Brittani: Yes, totally. Meagan: Well, thank you. Brittani: Thanks, Meagan: Review of the Week Meagan: Yeah, yeah. We’ll get into a review and then we’ll get into sharing these babies’ stories. Obviously, they’re all amazing. Okay, so we have a review and it was on Apple Podcasts from sydmobley. It says, “Grateful to have found The VBAC Link. I was recently able to have a successful home VBAC—” so HBAC. H-B-A-C. “—due to a large part of Meagan and Julie and the stories of the ladies featured in The VBAC Link. I cannot say enough about the comfort I found in knowing I was not alone in what I was doing and going through. That so many ladies had come before me and found peace in their empowered birth. What a lifesaver these testimonies were for me.” Oh, I love that. I love that so much. You know, we were talking about this before. I wish—there were birth story podcasts and things like that out when I was going for my VBAC after two Cesarean births. I wish so much that there was something like this that was more specific to VBAC. Something that I can relate to and not feel alone just like Syd because the VBAC world can feel very lonely. Brittani: It is. Meagan: It can feel really lonely and then if you’re in an area that is really not supportive—I mean, I felt lonely in Utah where VBAC is supported. I can’t imagine how those who are in rural areas or non-supportive areas or even where there are VBAC bans where they feel— Brittani: The bans blew my mind. Someone made a comment to me, “They let you have a VBAC?” I was like, “Let me?” Meagan: Let me, yeah. Yes. You’re like, “Hold on. Hold on. No one let me.” But so many people feel so stuck that they have no option. If financial means or whatever are not to a place where you can just pick up your family or yourself and go to another state and have a baby, that can really be terrible. So anyway, thank you for your review, Syd. I really appreciate it and as always, if you love the podcast as well, we’d love your review. Brittani’s Stories Meagan: Okay, Brittani. Let’s share these baby stories of yours. Brittani: Thank you. I do just want to start by saying thank you for inviting me here. It feels really surreal to tell my—I also never thought I’d have three babies—but to tell my three stories on this podcast that literally gave me all of the strength and guidance to get through my VBACs. Meagan: Oh, it warms my heart. Brittani: We always have a VBAC story because of a Cesarean birth story. I had a primary Cesarean with my oldest, Olivia. The pregnancy was so easy and I did feel like one of those women that were like, you’re just glowing and everything’s fantastic. But around 28 weeks, my well-established OBGYN told me that she was breech. I didn’t really understand what that meant. I’m a very anxious person so I went into full-on panic mode. Meagan: Research mode? Brittani: Yes, yes. You don’t really think about Cesareans. I was more terrified to get the epidural because I hate needles. I did try everything. I followed Spinning Babies techniques. I was tortured with needles in my toes and moxi with the acupuncture. I did chiropractic work. Meagan: Bladder 6. Brittani: Yes, yeah. I lay upside down on an ironing board. I did inversions on the stairs and she just was determined to come into the world feet first. My OB wanted me to schedule a Cesarean for 39 weeks. I somehow talked her into going to 39 weeks and 5 days. Her due date fell on a Sunday and they “refused to let me go past 40 weeks.” If I knew what I know now. So we did it on a Friday super early in the morning. I was so terrified. They would not let my husband in for the spinal injection so thankfully, I had established rapport with my doctor. She held my hand through the whole thing. The spinal was done. They did all of the things. I had written a gentle Cesarean birth plan. My doctor followed most of it, but her colleague just started chitchatting her up asking about summer plans. I wish I had the—I don’t want to say the guts, but I wish I had spoken up for myself and said, “Yeah, this is my baby’s birth. Can you just walk me through what’s happening?” because it’s so bizarre for half of your body to feel numb. Meagan: Ability, yeah. Brittani: My heart was racing. Oh my goodness. So baby was born. Everything was fine. They did take her from me and wiped her all off before they gave her to me. While the experience wasn’t traumatic rushing into the OR, it was planned, but the actual Cesarean experience was pretty traumatic for me. I’m sure some of that still carries on in my nervous system today but because of that experience, we knew we were going to have a second. I just knew. I was like, “I’m never going through that again.” I found your podcast and started preparing. About 15 months after our first was born, I got pregnant with our second. I started out with the same care team, but my doctor had moved on then you get rotated around. I stayed for the first trimester, but every new midwife or OB that I got was just saying all of these bad things about VBAC. I was like, “This is not the place for me.” Meagan: Good for you for recognizing that. It’s a really hard place to be. Brittani: Yeah. It’s not easy to switch. Meagan: It’s really not. It’s daunting. It’s scary, right? Yeah. Brittani: Totally. I do live in an amazing place with very supportive providers and lots of options. We have several free-standing birth centers. There are birth centers with midwives, so I chose to do an out-of-hospital birth center. The birth team there is called “Omnum Midwifery” and they are just right there in southeast Portland. So they had four midwives at the time. Also, appointments were an hour long. They cared about you and asked you questions. The OB appointments were just so fast. You forget to ask things. It’s kind of like a whirlwind. This was a much slower pace. You feel really involved. Meagan: Really, really cared for. Brittani: So different. I wish I knew more about this, but my husband says, “Hindsight’s 20/20,” so you just work with what you’ve got. This pregnancy was really bad with nausea in the beginning, so I kind of had this feeling, “I hope it’s a boy,” because we already had a girl. We had two so we thought— Meagan: One girl, one boy. Brittani: Perfect, yeah. He stayed head-down. They found him at his anatomy scan head-down. He stayed there the whole time which was awesome because I was so worried about that, another breech baby. I naturally went into labor at 40 weeks and 2 days. It was pretty early in the morning. I went to the bathroom. I had been having—I don’t love the work Braxton Hicks—practice contractions and when I wiped, I had some blood-tinged mucus. I just knew it was different. I called my mom. She came over to be with our oldest. I touched base with the midwives. They actually came and did a home visit to check on me and baby first and then said, “Okay. Let’s meet at the birth center in a few hours.”I was already experiencing contractions where I had to hold onto something and I couldn’t talk and had to breathe through it. I think that kind of psyched me out. I was like, “If it’s this hard right now, what’s going to happen in active labor?” I really did trip myself out that way. But we got to the birth center which was so lovely. They had the bath ready for me. I was in and out of the bath, but after struggling pretty hard, I think I was in labor at this point for 15+ hours, I asked for a cervical check. They hadn’t even offered or touched. I was at 7 which was pretty exciting. Meagan: Wow, yeah. Brittani: Yeah. It was the first time I had been in labor. I didn’t labor with our first. However, things started to get really, really difficult and I had double-peaking contractions for hours on end. Meagan: You weren’t getting a break. Brittani: Not even close. And oh, Meagan. I lost my doula because of COVID. They stopped letting people come into the hospitals as a “guest” or “visitor”. I’m putting that in quotation marks because I feel that every single birthing woman on this planet deserves support. It’s not a visitor. It’s part of your birth team. Meagan: It’s essential. Brittani: I agree. Meagan: I know. I know. I was the doula on the other end during COVID dropping at the door just bawling my eyes out— Brittani: Because you feel so invested, yeah. Meagan: Or feeling very angry because someone was like, “Hey, they just told me that you can no longer be with me.” But our hospital did start finding that people were dropping the hospital, so they started making doulas essential. That’s why they were like, “They are essential to this plan.” Brittani: So essential, mhmm. Meagan: That is so hard to have a plan and then lose your doula. Brittani: Yes. I guess I should backtrack slightly. I hired a birth photographer because that was super important to me and then I hired a doula. The company my doula was working for offered virtual services, but I’m like, “I’m going to end up throwing the computer at the wall.” Meagan: It’s really hard. It’s really hard. Brittani: I wanted hands-on. I wanted to be touched. I wanted to be talked through it. So I did lose our doula, but anyway, I really believe that if she had been there, it would definitely have given me a little more strength because nobody was there to just be like, “You can do this.” Meagan: Yeah, your cheerleader. Your husband probably needed her too. Brittani: Yeah, doulas are totally for the partner as well, my goodness, because sometimes they feel totally lost and just don’t know what to do. When I was going through contractions, I just started rhythmically tapping on things. I wasn’t counting out loud, but I would count in my head because it just helped me feel really present and grounded like I was in control of something. But that counting and tapping in my head turned into pounding on the wall and every time I knew that second surge was coming, my butt would just clench. Meagan: Just tense up, yeah. Brittani: I just couldn’t relax. I had some glute pain throughout the pregnancy and at this point, it felt like there were just electric shocks going down my legs. I don’t want to scare anybody, but it was so taxing that I literally begged to transfer to the hospital. It took a lot longer to get a call back from the hospital than I expected. When I first asked to transfer, by the time we got there, it had been 4 hours with these double contractions. It was awful, Meagan. So the midwives also couldn’t transfer with me because of COVID, so my husband and I were on our own— Meagan: With a new team. Brittani: Yeah, just the two of us there. We get to the hospital. The anesthesiologist was busy so even if you transfer, it still takes a long time to get the epidural. Meagan: So prepare for that mentally, for sure. Brittani: Yes, absolutely. I also forgot to mention they gave me some of the laughing gas at the birth center. Meagan: Oh, nitrous oxide? Brittani: It didn’t help. It didn’t help. I think I was just too deep into it to get my rhythm back, unfortunately. I prepared so much physically for the VBAC that I really didn’t take the time to prepare as much mentally as I could have. So we get to the hospital. I go. I get in. They hook me up to the IV. The nurse offered me Fentanyl. She said it would take the edge off. Meagan: Even at 7 centimeters, I’m shocked. Brittani: It was brutal. I wish I hadn’t done it. It made me so dizzy and really disoriented. Meagan: Kind of foggy. Brittani: Yes. I hadn’t eaten since the morning and here we were at 7:00 at night. So we’re moving on. Everybody’s like, “Oh, you transferred from the birth center.” At some point, I wanted to slap somebody. I’m like, “Can we just let me have my baby instead of telling me where I came from? I know that I transferred to the hospital.” Meagan: I just came here to have a baby. That is where I came from. I came here. Brittani: Let’s just do this. But really, Meagan, I felt like I should have just gone in with this flashing neon sign, "Danger VBAC, Danger VBAC.” Meagan: Really? Brittani: So I got the epidural placed. I had the machinery hooked up. If you’re not breathing well or if you move a little too much, those machines get so wonky. They wanted to break my bag of water to put the little internal monitor on. I really educated myself when I knew our doula wasn’t coming. I made a hospital birth plan. I made a backup Cesarean birth plan. We really just advocated for ourselves. We declined the monitor. They ended up bringing in closer to full dilation a piece of paper saying I had a 79% success rate for my VBAC. Meagan: What? In the middle of labor, you’re at 7 centimeters. Brittani: I think at this point I might have been at 9 because she checked me and my bag of water hadn’t broken yet. Meagan: Oh my goodness. Brittani: So I happily signed saying that I do not want a repeat Cesarean. They did give the risks of VBAC and a repeat C-section which most people don’t talk about the risks for both. Both carry risks. Yep. So I agreed to let them break my bag at 9 centimeters. There was some meconium in the water. My poor baby had just been put through the wringer with these double-peaking contractions. She tells me, “Let’s do a practice push,” and when I did that, I felt my stomach acid come up into my throat. I was so exhausted, Meagan. I was just like, “I’m going to end up in the OR.” I just was ready to give up. Meagan: You just felt defeat. Brittani: Yeah. My husband was so tired but still there the whole time. I did again advocate for myself and was like, “Look. You guys have been in and out of this room. I’ve had zero rest. I’ve been in labor for over 24 hours.” She said, “Well, we’ll give you an hour.” But someone was probably in every 15 minutes because they were getting all of the birth stuff ready and there was meconium in the water so they were prepping the NICU team. Somebody was supposed to be there for the actual birth to make sure he didn’t need to be suctioned. So they let me rest but I didn’t really rest. Then the midwife comes back in and says, “Since this is your first vaginal birth, we’re going to prepare to push for 2-3 hours.” I was like, “Nope. That’s not happening.” I had this whole vision of me birthing the baby. It was not in a supine position with both of my legs in the air and a nurse on one side and my husband on the other. She’s telling me, “Hold your breath. Push as hard as you can.” They call it purple pushing because— Meagan: Your face goes purple. You lose your oxygen. Brittani: Sometimes blood vessels will break. Yes.  So thankfully—my son’s name is Enrique—he handled the pushing really well. I got him out in 45 minutes. Meagan: Which is awesome. Brittani: Yeah. The weird thing was—my poor little guy. He had a really rough start. My midwife stepped away. I must have watched dozens of birth videos. My baby is crowning. She asked if I wanted to touch his head which gave me so much more strength. I was like, “Oh my gosh. I’m right there. I know I can do this.” They turn the epidural off when you start pushing, so I got to feel all of that pressure. I felt like I needed to take a really big poop. It was kind of scary. So as he is crowning, I could just feel everything stretching. I don’t know why, but she stepped away. We had been doing three pretty valiant pushes. We. I was doing pretty valiant pushes with each contraction. I hated that feeling of him just sitting right there and I needed him out. Usually, just the head is born, so I gave a fourth push even though the midwife had walked away and my little boy just came shooting out. Nobody was there to catch him. Meagan: Oh my goodness. Brittani: His cord was so long and I’m so grateful because they take the bottom of the bed off and what if he had fallen on the floor? My little dude-- Meagan: So did he stay on the bed? Brittani: He did. He did not fall, but my poor little guy. He screamed and screamed for a whole hour. He didn’t want to breastfeed. The staff wasn’t super duper attentive, but the recovery from that birth was just so much different. I had some pelvic floor damage that I’m still dealing with a little bit today but it’s because I’ve had back to back to back babies and I really do think that athletic pushing just might not have been the sole cause, but it did some damage to my pelvic floor. Meagan: Yeah. Brittani: So after his birth, my husband got a vasectomy. Meagan: Yeah, I was going to say are you going to mention what happened after? Yeah, okay. Okay. Brittani: It was so crazy. In November 2020, he got a vasectomy. We were just two babies, that’s it. A boy and a girl. A couple of months go by and he’s taking his samples back to the lab. They were like, “You still have lots of activity and it’s really plentiful.” I’m just like, “How does this happen?” Meagan: How does this happen? Brittani: Oregon is a great state though. They cover sterilization at 100% when you have insurance so at least we didn’t have to pay a ton of money to have it done, but as odd as it sounds, I just kind of felt like I questioned everything in my life. I have two siblings. My husband, Gonzalo, has two siblings and so just literally joking, Meagan, one night, I said, “I think I want another baby.” I thought he was going to say, “We got a vasectomy for a reason. Why would we go for a third?” Meagan: No! Yeah. Brittani: He was like, “Well, we probably would need a bigger car. If it’s a boy, he’d have to share a room with Enrique. So he started talking about all of these things and I was like, “What?” Meagan: The logistics of it almost like he had thought about it before. Brittani: So it took us a couple of months and we agreed to have one more baby. I never thought I would have three children ever, but our little girl just really wanted to be here so we did get pregnant with our third. This was by far my hardest, most unpleasant pregnancy. I gained a ton of weight but I was nauseous almost to the end of the second trimester. Awful. So I’m actually really glad. I’m going to miss having life inside of my belly because it’s just amazing, but that pregnancy was rough enough that I’m like, “Okay. I think that’s good. I’m satisfied.” Meagan: You’re like, “Let’s make sure that vasectomy is 100% this time.” Brittani: That’s right. So this time around, as I stated in my earlier VBAC birth story, I prepared so much physically, so this time unfortunately, the weight gain got the best of me, but I was really dedicated to mental preparation. Meagan: Yeah. Brittani: I chose a home birth midwife team. Their names are Alicia and Nicole and they are with Flourish Midwifery also in Portland. They are amazing home birth midwives. I started with them really early on and my whole deal with this home birth was that I changed my language. I stopped using contractions. I said “surges”. I was just using different terms to describe birth and I went in just feeling like, “This doesn’t have to be scary. This could be an amazing experience.” Surges just feel like really intense period cramps and you can literally feel the energy coming down. I don’t know if you’re a Bruno Mars fan but his 24-karat Magic was like, “Don’t fight the feeling. Invite the feeling.” So I just kept saying, “I can do this.” I have a friend. She’s a hypnosis coach turned friend and she does Hypnobirthing. My husband also wasn’t super involved in the prep for Enrique’s VBAC, but he was very involved with this one. So I did Hypnobirthing with my friend, Christy. Her business is called Enter Into Calm. She’s also local-ish. She’s a couple of hours away from me here in Oregon. So I just meditated to their rainbow—it’s Hypnobirthing—relaxation every day. I listened to birth affirmations literally in the car back and forth anywhere I was going. Ina May’s Spiritual Midwifery book—I rented it from the library three times and I read all of those birth stories. I dedicated myself so much to all of these positive, amazing birth stories and just gathered that collective strength. I just truly felt it in my bones. I was like, “I’ve got this.” Then 36 weeks, I had an anterior placenta. I didn’t feel—Sophia’s her name. I didn’t feel Sophia move as much during this last pregnancy, so I was always a little like, “What’s going on?” Meagan: Yeah. Brittani: At 36 weeks, we had the placement of my placenta checked and baby was breech. 36 weeks. I have chills all over my body right now just saying it out loud. My husband didn’t go with me because it was just going to be a quick check of my placenta. I felt so defeated. I broke down crying and called my midwives. I took a day to just feel really crappy and sorry for myself. Then I decided to do something about it. I was like, “You know what? I prepared so hard for this. I’m not just going to give up these last four weeks or whatever.” Meagan: Right. Right. Brittani: Again, I’m so lucky to be where I am. I declined an ECV, external cephalic version-- I think I’m pronouncing that right—where they manipulate your belly to move the baby with our first because the OB just straight up told me that I’m going to want an epidural placed. “We’re going to numb you, give you muscle relaxers and by the way, I have less than a 10% success rate.” So I was like, “I’m not going to do that.” But this time around, my midwives knew another home birth midwife who has her own acupuncture and chiropractic practice as well as delivering babies. Meagan: Breech babies? Brittani: Well, I did find breech home birth midwives but she does ECVs and she’s incredibly successful. Meagan: Awesome. Brittani: So I went to her office at 38 weeks. I had done Spinning Babies. The information is all free on their website, but they have a specific program where you can pay a little bit of money to have it all on one sheet. My husband helped me do some belly sifting. I did all of these things for six days which is supposed to give more space in the womb. It’s not always going to turn the baby because she didn’t turn, but also just creates that extra space to help the ECV have a higher success rate. Meagan: Right. Brittani: So we get there. One of my midwives came with me which was so lovely. We brought some oil. The midwife put those darn needles in my pinky toes and it does hurt. She left us for 10 or 15 minutes. Alicia just massaged my belly and we talked to the baby. It was actually really beautiful. I took some really deep breaths. Meagan: Sounds like it. Brittani: While it was incredibly intense, I ended up with some bruising around my ribcage because she got Sophia transverse then she slipped back. So we had to do a second go and I was really worried it wasn’t going to work, but she just had some kind of magic. I remember the rhythmic rocking when I knew she was just getting to the head-down position. My heart is even racing just retelling the story. So when she gets her head down, just busted into tears of relief and disbelief. Then I sat on the stool and she checked the baby’s heart rate. Her heart rate never dipped and I just accredit that to me being so calm. I talked to her. I practiced for 5 months at this point doing this meditation and breath work so it was such a crazy, amazing experience. I ended up going into labor on her due date. During my meditation—you can’t plan, but in my mind, I was like, “I’d love to go into labor when the older two are asleep and they wake up to a new baby sister.” I went into labor just as the kids were going to sleep. It picked up really quickly. I had the tub, but we didn’t have time to fill it up. I was in my tub. I ended up getting out and we called the midwife around 3:00 AM. The midwife and doula got there between 4:00 and 4:30. I was on the bed at this point. I remember feeling this—I don’t know how to describe it right at this point, but it was just such an intense feeling in my back. I now know it was her coming through the birth canal, but I screamed and I was like, “Somebody squeeze my hips!” I can’t remember how many hours, but instead of doing the tapping like I did with my other when I was unmedicated at the time, it was really crazy. I was so loud. I can’t believe the kiddos didn’t wake up. It was like, “I can do this,” with this really low voice trying to bring the baby down. Meagan: And opening your throat. Brittani: I was such a low almost like a growl. Meagan: Yeah. Brittani: It was either, “I can do this” or “I’ve got this”. I felt it in my body, Meagan. I was like, “This is happening.” Meagan: Oh, that’s amazing. Brittani: They somehow got me off my bed because they wanted me to move. I think they could tell I was getting ready to push and I was like, “I can’t do it.” So the three of them somehow helped me to the short walk into my bathroom. This big birth tub is in there with four adults and they get me to sit down on the toilet. I’ll never forget this. My doula who also was a VBAC mama and my acupuncturist for both my second and third pregnancy, she came to be our doula. I was completely naked also which I never thought would happen but that’s just what happened. She wiped my sweaty hair off my face and told me how beautiful I looked. I can’t even describe how that just changed everything because I was feeling really scared and I said at one point, “I don’t think I can do this.” Those women just—I could not have done it without their presence. Anyways, I sat on the toilet and I heard this really loud pop. My water released then the rest of it was kind of just a blur. She’d only checked Sophia’s heartbeat twice. I didn’t have one vaginal exam and here I am and my baby’s getting ready to be born. They asked me to stand up and I was like, “Not happening.” So I’m holding on with one arm on my husband, my doula on the other and I actually sunk my teeth into my doula’s arm as I was standing up. It was so intense. Meagan: I was bit one time as a doula! Brittani: Oh my gosh. Meagan: After, she was like, “Did I bite you or did I imagine that?” I’m like, “Yeah, you did. That’s okay though.” She bit into my hand. She grabbed my hand. Brittani: It’s just such a primal thing. You’re not really in control. Things happen. Meagan: Yeah, that’s what she said. She said, “I thought I maybe did it but then maybe I imagined it.” Brittani: Crazy. I actually felt the same way. I was thinking about it, then I did weeks later apologize to her, but it was just like, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Sophia was born so quickly. When I stood up, my legs were shaking. I had my husband and my doula. Alicia was like, “Do you want to reach down and touch your baby?” I just couldn’t gather the strength to let someone’s arm go, so I said, “No.” Then she offered to let my husband catch her and I was like, “You’re not going anywhere.” Meagan: He’s holding me up! Brittani: I really thought that I pushed for a long time, but she told me it was less than 5 minutes. Meagan: Whoa. Brittani: She just came right out. She had a nuchal cord. She had a really short cord too and she was just placed directly on my belly. They helped me walk from there to the bed and I just couldn’t believe I did it. It was so surreal. Then I went through this—I had really bad shakes after. They said, “It’s just the hormones.”Meagan: Adrenaline. Brittani: But it was wild. I felt so cold. They popped towels in the dryer for me and got me all warm. Wow. Just what a crazy experience. And Meagan, the second vasectomy worked. Meagan: See? This baby girl just wanted to be in your family. Brittani: Not even kidding. She just made our little family complete. Meagan: So complete. Brittani: Yeah. She really did want to be with us, our sweet Sophia. Meagan: Oh my goodness. I love that too that you were all in this bathroom, everybody hands-on right there and you could feel their strength obviously. Brittani: Amazing. Meagan: Yes, and then just boom. Baby’s out. Brittani: I still can’t believe it. Intact perineum actually. Both births, intact perineum. Meagan: I think that has something to do with position and control as well. Brittani: Totally. Gravity was so in my favor. Meagan: Mhmm and then not being stuck on your back in a crazy position. Brittani: Yes, which goes against all of the laws of gravity. Yeah. Being on your back is hard but for an epidural, it’s kind of the only choice you really have, unfortunately. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. They can move you side to side but a lot of the time, the providers don’t feel comfortable with that. They really don’t. Brittani: Of course. They want you in a laid-back position. I totally understand which is bad for what do they call it? Biological birth. I can’t think of the word right now. Meagan: No, I was going to say physiological birth. Brittani: Yes, thank you. I think you’re right. I think you’re right. Yep. Yep. Meagan: Physiological. Yes, anyway. Yes. That is also to say if you guys are wanting an epidural and you’re like, you know, you can still fight for other positions. Speak up and like she was saying in the OR, we wish that we could. It’s just hard. We want. We’re here in our heads saying things, but we can’t vocalize it so if you are one of those people that feel like you would get there, I was too. My doctor was also in the OR talking about how sad they were that it was snowing outside and how they just got back from Hawaii. Brittani: Oh my goodness. Meagan: But have someone else, your birthing partner, your husband or your doula, or someone else there to say, “Hey, I know that this would mean a lot to her,” and communicate that, right? Brittani: I love that. Yes. You absolutely can and should. Meagan: And should. If you feel like you can’t articulate it or there’s not someone with you, just move as much as you can, right?Brittani: Right. I should have mentioned that I did ask for a peanut ball and we rotated while I had the epidural back and forth. They wanted me to push. I asked for some rest. I didn’t get great rest, but you can absolutely advocate for yourself and ask for what you want. And yes, doulas or birth partners are the ones that get to be the bad guy. Let them do it. You do your thing and let somebody else do the uncomfortable things. Let’s do it this way. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. We talk about it. I’m happy to be the bad guy. I’m happy to be the bad guy. It’s not bad for someone to say something, but unfortunately, sometimes we are looking like the annoying ones but I’ll be annoying for you. Well, congratulations. Brittani: Thanks, Meagan. Meagan: Congratulations on the completion of your family. I mean, I would usually say that would suck to not have it work but it sounds like it did not suck to not have the vasectomy go through. It’s perfect and is exactly what you needed. Brittani: I quite possibly might have the world’s best husband so I wouldn’t have done it had I not married him. Meagan: Yes. Well, congratulations. You talked about how with the second VBAC, the third pregnancy, you really focused more on the mental aspect. This is where it’s really hard because we want to find this balance between physically and educationally preparing for our VBACs but then also emotionally preparing. So is there anything that you—I mean it sounds like you did a lot. But is there anything that you are like, “This is something that I did that I truly felt I carried through my entire birth?” Brittani: Definitely believing in myself. When you have that self-efficacy, nothing can really stop you. It is important to prepare physically as well because our bodies go through a very physical process and it is physically taxing to be pregnant and then give birth regardless of how your baby enters the world. So just finding that balance of also not overwhelming myself because I get overwhelmed really easily. I just picked one main thing to focus on and where I found the most strength was reading all of the birth stories and listening to your podcast. I even went in the Facebook community, your Facebook group, and told my son’s birth story and just sharing things because you really aren’t alone. There is somebody else going through it. You can find your little village of people and my biggest thing is I always didn’t entertain any negativity. If I talked about, “I’m going to have my baby at home,” or getting the looks or, “Ooh, is that safe?” I’m such a “Let me tell you why I’m right” kind of person. I chose silence at that point. I was like, “I believe in myself. I know I can do this,” and I just kind of put a wall up if you will to any of that negativity. And just know the facts. There is plenty of great information on your website. I knew all of the statistics and I was so educated and when I ended up in the hospital, it worked to my benefit because I was able to advocate for myself. Meagan: Yeah, especially with your team changing. Crazy. I love that. Believe in yourself. Brittani: Women of Strength, yes. Meagan: Women of Strength, you are strong and you can do it. You can get through anything. It’s okay if plans change. Brittani: Totally. Mine did several times. Meagan: But also, know that if plans change, it doesn’t mean that everything is just out the window. It doesn’t have to be that way. We know that sometimes, things happen and it feels like everything just went out the window. It feels defeating and it feels frustrating but know that there are still options. There are still options. Brittani: Always. Meagan: And you are strong.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Have you heard of radical acceptance? Julie Francom leads our episode today alongside Meagan as they discuss what this concept is and how it is helping them process their births even now, years later. Meagan gets especially vulnerable today as she shares a part of her VBA2C birth story that has never before been shared on the podcast. Women of Strength, birth can be all of the things– empowering, euphoric, intense, and traumatic. We want you to know that we are processing and healing right along with you. We all have work to do and we are all in this together. Has radical acceptance helped you process your births? We would love to hear your experiences!Additional LinksAccepting Reality Using DBT Skills ArticleHow to Embrace Radical Acceptance ArticleNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsJulie: Heyo, it’s Julie here, your co-host for the day of The VBAC Link Podcast. I am joined by Meagan Heaton, the ever-wonderful, always amazing, always uplifting and inspiring. Man, did I already say your name? I forget. I went on a tangent. Meagan: You did. Hello, everybody. It’s so fun. When we were just talking about it, I was like, “Julie, you lead the episode today.”Julie: I’m out of rhythm. Meagan: It’s great. You did a great job. Julie: We are here today. We were just hashing over topics that we could talk about something that I am working through always in my life and different things that we could possibly introduce today and we landed on the topic of radial acceptance. I think we’re going to tell you about why we chose that topic here in just a little bit, but I’m really excited today because birth is complicated. I feel like everyone coming here in this space with us has probably had a complicated birth or witnessed a complicated birth. Hello, birth workers. Review of the WeekWe’re going to talk a little bit about that and what happens when you just can’t get over it or overcome it. But before we do any of that and before I ramble on my merry little way today, Meagan’s going to read a review for us. Meagan: Yes. Okay, so we have this review from Apple Podcasts. This is from our friend, Tiffany. She said, “VBAC After Two Cesarean” as the subject. She said, “After two C-sections, I doubted if it was possible to VBAC for my third. I listened to your podcast my entire pregnancy and it gave me the strength and the knowledge to advocate for myself. I changed my provider three times before finding a supportive OB. My third baby came into this world on her due date with a successful VBAC after two Cesarean and I couldn’t thank The VBAC Link enough.”Oh, I am so happy for you, Tiffany. Huge congrats. This podcast is literally meant for exactly that– to give you the knowledge, to give you the strength, and to just give you the connection and this community. This community is so beautiful, so vulnerable, and obviously so near and dear to both my and Julie’s hearts. That is exactly what we want this podcast to do– to build you up, to strengthen you, to educate you, to go on and have the birth that you desired, and if you don’t have the birth that you desired, to have a better birth outcome. We don’t have to have a VBAC in order to have a better birth outcome. That’s really important to talk about too. Through this podcast, we share all of it. We share CBAC stories and elective inductions and all of these things because we know that one size does not fit all. That’s exactly what we are going to be talking about today during the episode. Julie: Yep. I love that. Meagan’s going to get a little bit vulnerable. Meagan: I am. I’m going to talk about a thing that I don’t think I’ve fully opened up to yet years later. Radical AcceptanceJulie: I’m getting old now. I know that everyone is like, “Oh, you’re not old.” I’m 38 though and I’m feeling it. I can’t even come home from a birth now without creaking my bones in the shower and into bed. I am feeling it. I know 38 is really not that old, but I feel like I look at my friends who are 28 and I’m 38. That’s a 10-year difference, right? I’m starting to see some differences between myself and them just in the space on the time lived and the amount of life lived and the amount of time spent on this twirling rock in the universe. It’s interesting because I know it’s not a secret here that I’ve had a huge mental health journey over these last two years. I feel like a lot of that has helped me grow and evolve as a human. Maybe I’m a little bit older and wiser than I was when I was 28. Oh my gosh, I hope so. I don’t know. Yeah. I’ve come a long way since then. But, we wanted to talk today about a term that I learned in therapy called radical acceptance. I’m just going to get right into it. I don’t know. Do you want to say anything, Meagan, before?Meagan: Yeah, so are you going to define it? I was going to say that radical acceptance is something that can be defined as the ability to accept situations that are outside of our control without judging them which in turn reduces the suffering that is caused by them. I think, Julie, what we talked about before is that you should start right out there and talk about radical acceptance, how you learned about it, and how it came about. Julie: Yeah. Gosh, I love it. I remember when I was going through my big trauma-processing journey a few years back, that’s when I really learned the term “radical acceptance, radical acceptance” and I love it because radical acceptance is where you have to stop fighting reality. You stop responding with impulsive behaviors or destructive behaviors when things aren’t going the way you want them to or looking back on the way things happened. You’ve got to let go of the bitterness that can be keeping you trapped in this cycle of suffering and to truly accept the reality, to radically accept the reality, we have to understand the facts about the past and about the present– like what’s going on now– even if they’re uncomfortable or if there is something that we didn’t want to happen or to be happening. We can examine the cause of this suffering that we have encountered, the events surrounding it, or all of the situations that we went through that have caused us pain or are causing us pain. But by radically accepting them, stopping fighting them, and stopping living in this cycle of suffering, we are better equipped to move forward into a life that is better and that is more promising, and more hopeful and causes us less anxiety and less pain. I feel like it’s just all about embracing things as they were, embracing things as they are, and being able to live in that even though you haven’t changed any of it. I was telling Meagan before we started– I am saying this. This is a perfect example. I will never, ever, ever, ever know if my Cesarean was necessary. I won’t. I think I can list ways and reasons why it probably was and I can also list reasons why it probably wasn’t. I’m just never, ever, ever– I can say ever so many times– I will never know–Meagan: Never, ever, ever. Julie: –for certain whether it was necessary or not. Was my induction necessary? I think so, but I mean, I don’t know really. That used to really bother me because I’m a very analytical person. I liked fixed facts and data. I like to know things with certainty. I do. That is something I won’t ever know. I’m okay with that. I feel like getting to the point of being okay with not knowing and with the certainty that I will never know is very freeing. It’s freeing. I feel free. I am not haunted by it. It doesn’t keep me up at night. Moving beyond that, I know that I am a good mom even though I didn’t know everything that I wish I would have known going into my first birth. I have radically accepted the fact that there were things I didn’t know and that’s okay. I am okay with that fact. I have radically accepted the fact that I cannot be a human superwoman who can juggle all of the things in my life that I need to– my kids, my husband, my birth photography, doula work, The VBAC Link, and all of these other things. I had to drop these other things and I had to radically accept that I could not keep going in the life that I was doing. It doesn’t mean that anything has changed. My C-section was the way that it was. There was no change there, but I have changed the way that I thought about it, the way that I continue to receive it, and the way that I respond to those circumstances. I feel like that’s what radical acceptance is all about. You can’t just turn on a switch and be like, “All right. Radical acceptance. Schwink”, but I feel like if you move forward with the desire of that radical acceptance, then that will impact how you respond physically and emotionally to the thing that you’re trying to accept. I don’t know if that makes sense or not. Meagan: No, yeah. It does. This is going to apply to all things. In all things in life, it’s really hard because like you said, it’s not just a “schwink” like you say. It’s not a switch you can turn on and off like, “Okay. It’s gone. I accept it. Moving on.” It’s not like that. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of mind-power and will. You have to be okay to let it go and to let the attachment to the painful past or the pain that you are holding onto go because really what is happening in so many ways is that pain is overcoming you. It’s taking over you. Like Julie said, she’s not staying awake all night thinking about it. It’s not consuming her thoughts anymore. She’s let it go and it’s in a healthy place. “Okay. This happened. It’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I would have chosen, but it happened. I don’t know if it was needed. I don’t know. I really don’t know, but I’m going to accept that it happened and I’m moving on.” Yeah, so I think it’s so important to know that you can’t expect yourself to just do it. Right? But it can be done. So yeah. Keep going. Julie: Yeah, no. I feel like another simple way to say it, and it’s not simple, but a simple way to say it is understanding what you have control over and what you will never have control over. I can control how I respond to things. I can control how I do my self-care. I can control whether I meditate or not. I can control what type of clients I take on and what my travel radius is. I can control what provider I choose. I cannot control what provider I chose. It’s already happened. I cannot control how Meagan thinks or acts in any situation. One of the things that radical acceptance term really clicked and the first thing that I radically accepted was my sister-in-law and I butt heads a lot sometimes. It’s gotten better over the last year and a half because I have radically accepted that she is the way she is. It took me a long time. It sounds easy, but it took me a long time where I just don’t worry about it anymore. She does this. She says this and I don’t worry about it. I interact with my children the way I want to interact with them. I teach them how to treat other people. I respond to people how I do. I know how to treat other people and try my best to treat other people well although I am not perfect at it because none of us are perfect, but just radically accepting it– I remember the day where I was just like, “Yes. She is the way she is and I’m okay with that.” It felt like a light switch at that time, but it was a lot of things building up to that moment. I feel like we should probably say that we are not medical professionals. We are not mental health professionals. We are just talking about our real-life experiences so I feel like if you have things that you need to process through, you should see a therapist or you should see a mental health professional or somebody that can really help you. Meagan, I just sent you an article. You can link it in the show notes. Meagan: Yeah, I have it. Something that I really love is what is reality acceptance. Julie: Yeah, so drop this in the show notes. I feel like this has got lots of helpful tips there, but I want to skip to the end where it says, “10 Steps for Practicing Acceptance”. I’m using DBT. DBT is just a different type of therapy, but I feel like the first one is such a big deal. I could go off on another therapy tangent, but I won’t. The first one is “Observe that you’re fighting against reality.” It shouldn’t be like this. Every time you say, “I should” or “I shouldn’t” or “He should do that. My doctor should know better. I should do this. My kids should go to bed.”Those are requirements that you have for the world and requirements are not usually healthy. They’re just not. I could go off on a whole thing, but I won’t. “I should do this. He should do that. I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t feel sad. I have a healthy baby. I shouldn’t feel sad about it.” No, that’s a requirement and that is fighting against reality. You’re fighting against reality when you say things like that. That’s a sign that you’re fighting against reality. I feel like sometimes awareness is the first part of it. Or “so-and-so shouldn’t post triggering things like that. Those things trigger me. They shouldn’t be posting that. They should post a trigger warning with their comments.” Those are all signs that you’re fighting against reality, right? Some type of reality that exists somewhere inside of you. And then the second is just reminding yourself when those things happen, instead of sitting with that, “It shouldn’t be like this. She shouldn’t have said that,” remind yourself that that reality, you cannot change it. You are not in control of it. Sometimes that awareness, being like, “Oh, I’m doing this. Okay no, you’re right. This is fine. It’s not going to change. I can’t change this. I have no control over that.” That’s the first step into your radical acceptance path. I’m just going to read through the rest of these really quickly and I highly recommend that you sit with these if you can. “Acknowledge that something led to this moment.” Something happened to you to lead you to have this kind of response. The next one is, “Practice acceptance with not only your mind but your body and spirit.” Be mindful of your breath and your posture. Use your self-care skills. Use half-smiling and take deep breaths. That’s a big thing for me. I take deep breaths when I feel those sensations and that tightening and tensing in my body. The next one is, “List what your behavior would look like if you did accept the facts and then acted accordingly.” Imagine what it would be like if these things didn’t bother you. Meagan: How would you look? How would you feel? How would you be living your everyday life?Julie: How would your environment change? How would your body feel? How would your breath feel? “Plan ahead with events that seem unacceptable and then plan how you should appropriately cope.” Oh my gosh, we go to my in-laws for Sunday dinner every other Sunday. It was like, every Sunday dinner going in, I would see my sister-in-law. We’ve had moments where we’ve been grumpy with each other and moments where we’ve been fine. But during those grumpy stages, I would walk in bracing for a fight, but when I became aware and was working on my radical acceptance, I would just meditate before, breathe deeply on the way in, and walk in with a posture of lightheartedness and airyness and it helped so much. “Remain mindful of your physical sensations” because your body will respond before your mind catches up to what’s going on. So being more mindful of your body is so important. “Embracing feelings of disappointment, sadness, or grief.” It’s okay to have those sad feelings and those hard feelings. It’s okay. You should sit with them. You should sit with them and explore them and let them move through your body, but don’t stay there. Don’t stay there with them forever. “Acknowledge that life is worth living even when there is temporary pain.” Things are worth moving forward and moving through. And then the last one is, “If you feel yourself resisting, complete your pros and cons exercise to better understand the full impact of your choices or your experience.” I feel like all of those things, wherever you’re at in the process, moving through these steps or these little feelings are going to help you grow and become better. You’re going to be released from these things that are burdening you, this reality that you don’t like or that you don’t accept. But yeah. Meagan: Yeah. That’s what I was saying. Radical acceptance doesn’t have to mean that you agree with what happened. Julie: Yes. You don’t have to endorse it. It doesn’t mean you have to like it. Meagan: Right, but it gives you a chance to accept things and not fight against it because it is insane how much we don’t realize that sometimes these things will bring us down. They’re going to bring us down. There are many times– we were talking before we were recording about how sometimes it’s not even to us. As birth workers, we see things and we’re like, “No!” You know? Or we have friends and we’re like, “No, don’t do that.” But we can’t control them. We have to know that we can’t control them and it’s okay that we can’t control them. We may not agree with the choice that they are making, but it’s okay. We have to accept that. That is a choice that they feel is best for them. That is what they are doing whether or not we would do that or not. So, kind of in the beginning, Julie was talking about, “I will never, ever know if my Cesarean was truly necessary,” and something when we were talking about this is that I’m never going to know blank, blank, blank. I don’t know if I’ve ever really, deeply talked about a part of my birth story that happened and that does affect me. It’s really hard. As I’m learning about this radical acceptance, it’s like, “Have I done radical acceptance? Have I practiced this or is it still eating at me?” I think it probably is still eating at me. I probably fully haven’t. I’m working that way and I’m waiting for my light switch to go on and off, but I’m working up to it. It’s like my light switch is half on. It reminds me of Hypnobabies. My light switch is dim. It’s coming down but it’s still there. So yeah, I’m going to open up to you and just tell you guys. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this that I know of. Julie: I’m so curious. Sorry. Meagan: You’re just fine. So after I had my son, Webster– he’s my VBA2C baby– I was so happy. I was so happy and I will never forget that moment of, “You guys! I did it!” and just ugly crying, screaming, and looking around the room and everyone– not a dry eye in the room– looking at me just smiling from ear to ear. And then what happened after is what I may need to work on accepting. I remember sitting there holding my baby and hearing everyone talking and then all I heard was, “Riiiiing.” Yep. I heard ringing, just like that in my ears, high, high-pitched. My ears were just buzzing. I’m sitting on a horseshoe thing holding my baby. We’re waiting for my placenta. I’m hearing it and it’s getting louder and then everybody started going fuzzy. I woke up on the floor covered in blankets confused. My husband said, “You passed out.” I said, “Okay. I thought I was going.” I knew what was happening, but I didn’t want to say anything. He said, “I looked over,” because he was right behind me. He said, “I looked over your shoulder and your arms just went limp so I hurried and grabbed the baby and said, ‘You guys, she’s passing out.’” I pass out. I’m on the ground. I wake up and I’m like, “What just happened?” Everyone is still so happy. They’re not acting really any differently. They’re just like, “You passed out.” I’m like, “Okay, well I did just go through a long labor. 42 hours of labor, pretty intense pushing. I hadn’t eaten a ton. I hadn’t eaten a ton the day before either because I was not feeling very good.” Anyway, so I was like, “Okay, cool.” A phone was handed to me and they’re like, “Your chiropractor is on the phone. You’ve got to tell her,” so I’m like, “Hi!” I’m telling her how I did it. I’m so excited and back to normal. But laying on the floor, I guess pushing out the placenta, I don’t remember. Then they’re like, “Okay.” I hang up the phone and they’re like, “Okay, let’s get you to the bedroom.” I’m at a birth center. I’m like, “Okay great.” We stand up. We walk to the bed and I’m not feeling very good. I’m feeling really funny. I can just feel my heart. It’s pounding. I think I made it to the bedroom and I was in the bed. I just remember not feeling very good. They were taking my vitals. My vitals were off, but I was just so happy. I was so elated. I was nursing my baby. He latched really fast and I was so happy. Then they’re like, “Okay, we’ve got to get you to the bathroom.” This was a couple of hours later. They fed me some food and I was hoping that maybe it was blood sugar or something. Anyway, they fed me my food and were like, “Okay, let’s go to the bathroom.” I get up and before I know it, I’m waking up. I wake up and the first thing I say is, “I’m on the ground again.” They’re like, “Yeah, you just passed out again.” Did you know this, Julie?Julie: Okay, so it’s kind of ringing a bell a little bit, but I don’t remember.Meagan: You don’t remember all of it, yeah. Julie: Well, I remember other little parts, but I just don’t want to get ahead of you. But go ahead, you’re fine. Meagan: Yeah, you’re fine. I’m like, “I’m on the ground again.” They’re like, “Yeah, you just passed out again.” I was like, “That’s weird.” So I sat on the ground. We’re talking about random stuff, you guys. I still remember to this day. Serial podcasts, Adnan Syed, if anyone likes crime, that was my favorite podcast. I was like, “What do you guys think? Is Adnan guilty or is he innocent?” We were just talking about all of this random stuff. They were probably thinking, “What?” It was like my fight or flight was like, “I can’t deal with what is happening right now. I have to talk about something else.” So we talked about that. We talked about such random stuff. I was like, “Okay. I feel better.” I had sat up and I was like, “I’m feeling really good.” So I sat up. I walked to the toilet. I sat on the toilet and I was like, “I’m going again.” I could feel it. I communicated it. My doula and my husband run over. I’m literally falling off the toilet and I wake up to an alcohol swab. My doula had an alcohol swab on my nose. I wake up and I was like, “What the heck? What is happening?” I go to the bathroom. I go back in and I’m just not doing very well. My vitals are not good. My pulse is really high and my heart rate was actually really low. My blood pressure was low. I’m actually showing signs of shock is what I’m showing, but it’s not clicking in my head. “What in the heck, right?” Needless to say, I go home. I’m not doing really well. The next day, I’m really not doing well. I’m white as a ghost. I have this weird, crazy thing. I stand up. I’ve got ringing in my ears. I feel like garbage. I’m very dizzy. I can’t get my breath. It’s just really weird. Anyway, I went to the hospital because I had gone to the midwife the day before. We did a blood draw and she said, “Yeah, you’ve got low blood counts.” I was like, “Okay.” It was the Fourth of July. I’m really not feeling good. We go to the hospital. We do my blood tests. The doctor comes in and has a very serious face and I’m actually really mad. It’s the Fourth of July. I just had this beautiful VBAC and I’m in the hospital emergency room without my baby. Without my baby. My mom stayed with my baby. I’m pissed. I’m like, “What the heck is happening?” So he comes in and he’s got this very serious look on his face. He says, “Well, we’re going to have to run some more tests.” I said, “Oh, okay. What’s going on?” He said, “Well, half of your body’s blood is missing.” Julie: This is the part that I remember. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. He said, “Half of your body’s blood is missing. You said you’re not really bleeding, right?” I said, “No.” After you have a baby, you’re bleeding, but it wasn’t bad. I was like, “No, yeah. Pretty normal.” He was like, “Okay. Well, we’re going to do some tests to see if we can find internal bleeding and if you’re bleeding internally.” I said, “Okay.” So anyway, we did all of these tests. We can’t find my blood. It’s gone. It’s missing. I have no blood– or half of my body’s blood. I look like a ghost. I feel terrible. I can’t function very well and he’s like, “We can’t find it. We don’t know. You’re not bleeding internally. You’re not bleeding externally. We have no idea what’s happened to you.” I’m like, “Okay.” So they said, “You need four bags of blood. Two blood transfusions. Two bags each.” I don’t know why. It freaked me the heck out. It was a lot of someone else’s blood. I know we’ve come a long way. I thank all of the donations. I thank all of the donations out there, but it freaked me out so I actually declined and to this day, I need to have radical acceptance. I question, “Why didn’t I get blood? I would have felt better.” Julie: It took you forever to feel better. Meagan: It did. My levels were back to pretty much just above normal at six weeks. Everyone told me it wouldn’t happen. Sorry, I’m weird. Yes. I ate my placenta. I did placenta encapsulation. I swear it helped. Everyone told me I was crazy. They were like, “You’re not going to be able to breastfeed. You’re in bad shape. You’re really bad.” And I didn’t do it. So I had that. Why didn’t I do that? But all in all, I still have this, “What in the heck happened to me? What happened? How did that happen? Why did that happen? How does someone lose half of their body’s blood?” Julie: And don’t know where it goes because you didn’t hemorrhage afterwards. Meagan: No. No. I had very little, normal blood loss after. Anyway, I have lots of questions. I have lots of hypotheses. I have a lot of things. Could this have happened? Could this have happened? I don’t know. Maybe this happened. And some days, Julie, it does take over my mind. I get angry. I get confused and I sometimes question my team. Is there something that they know that they’re not telling me? I don’t know. I struggle. So I need to practice radical acceptance. Julie: Radical acceptance. Yes, you do. Meagan: Because that did happen to me and it is frustrating because I did say– so the signs of lack of acceptance is “This isn’t right. It’s not fair. It shouldn’t be like this. I can’t believe this is happening. Why is this happening to me? Why did this happen?” I have all of those feelings still. It’s not fair. I had this beautiful VBAC. Now, I have this shitty– yes, I’m saying the word shitty on the podcast– postpartum experience. It was really hard and I was mad. I couldn’t believe it was happening. It shouldn’t be like this. I should be screaming from the rooftops, “You guys, I had my vaginal birth after two Cesareans!” But instead, I could barely walk. So I need to practice this radical acceptance. I need to recognize these signs and I need to get better because I am angry with the situation and confused. Julie: Yeah. Meagan: I feel stuck. I feel stuck. What happened? But like you don’t know if your Cesarean was ever necessary, I may never know what happened to me. Julie: You will never know where all your blood went. Meagan: I will never know where all my blood went. Julie: Nope. Meagan: I will never know why I had ringing in my ears and why I passed out three times after I had him. Right? I will never know. So I have work to do. Julie: We all have work to do. Meagan: I was going to say, it’s okay if you have work to do too. Women of Strength, we all have work to do just like Julie said. We have to take one step at a time moving forward and working through it and letting go of the painful past of the unknown. Julie: Oh my gosh. Okay, so I have something to say. Surprise. My therapist is obsessed with his wife. Obsessed. You wouldn’t want anyone to be more obsessed with you if you are married to this guy. A few months ago, she came to him and she wanted a divorce. They are getting divorced now. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Julie: I know. It took everybody by storm. I was like, “What is happening?” Anyway, the details are not important, but he came to one of our trauma support groups the other night. He’s not affiliated with the company anymore, but he just came because I told him to come and he listens to me because I’m his favorite. We were all going around the room sharing how we were doing and he wasn’t going to share, but everyone got done. I came a little bit late and I was like, “Oh, did I miss his check-in?” He said, “Oh no, I wasn’t going to share.” Then somebody else came in and they shared, and then he said, “You know, actually, I think I will share.” He was like– anyways, he had some concerns about sharing or not and he decided to share. What he said, I think, will always stay with me. But while he was sharing, he said, “This is the most pain I have felt in a long time, but I am sitting with it and I am letting myself feel it because I know it is the fastest way for me to get through it.” I was like, “Yes. Yes.” Sitting with that pain and that hurt and that discomfort is hard. It is so hard. So, so, so hard, but allowing yourself to sit with it and feel it and hurt and suffer is going to be the fastest way for you to get through that suffering. It’s going to shorten the amount of time you have to suffer and it’s going to stop it from controlling your life– maybe not right now. Probably not right now, but as you move on and as you go throughout your life, if you don’t let yourself sit in that pain and struggle, then it will continue to control you and you will continue to be miserable. I just thought that was so impactful that he said that. I know that is the fastest way for me to get through this is to feel it. Meagan: Yeah, and that’s scary, right? That’s scary to say, “I’m going to open up and I’m going to welcome this pain.” Julie: And be vulnerable and receive it and hurt from it. Meagan: Yes. Women of Strength, as you are going through your births, you may run into this where you feel cheated or lied to or you are starting to question your own decisions or whatever. We’ve had an undesired birth outcome or experience and we hurt. They sting. They sting. But it’s okay to one, sit with it like she said, and two, be vulnerable and be mad or angry or sad. It’s okay to feel the feelings and then it’s okay to have radical acceptance and move on. It’s okay if it doesn’t happen overnight. I love that. He sat with it or he’s sitting with it. It’s the fastest way for him to heal. Julie: Yeah, because he’s a therapist, right? He obviously knows a thing or two. But sometimes it’s hard even when we know. Meagan: Even when we know. Yeah. Yeah. So as you walk away from this episode today or drive away or wherever you are listening, we hope you know that we love you. We love you and you need to love yourself too. Offer yourself grace. Sit with it. Sit with it and find radical acceptance. Julie: We wish that for you. Meagan: Mhmm. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

You don’t hear VBAC stories with gestational diabetes very often, but we want to change that! Charlotte joins Meagan on the podcast today sharing her experience with gestational diabetes and a surprise preterm delivery at 32 weeks. Though she had some pretty significant curveballs thrown at her, Charlotte’s commitment to controlling what she could along with an amazingly supportive team allowed her to have an empowering birth experience. Charlotte knew she wanted a VBAC for an easier recovery. What she didn’t know was truly how much of a blessing in disguise it became during the intense weeks she spent as a NICU mama. Additional LinksReal Food for Gestational Diabetes by Lily NicholsReal Food for Pregnancy by Lily NicholsNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello. You are listening to The VBAC Link and I am excited to be sharing a story with you today that we have gotten a lot of requests about. It’s something that we don’t see very often and my question is why? I don’t really know why we don’t see these stories popping up. Even in the community, I’ve had to search through our VBAC Link Community on Facebook to find these stories. There are three I think.So I’m excited to talk about this story today because I know that it’s very much requested. We’re going to be talking about gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes again, is something that we don’t see but it’s actually pretty common. Crazy enough, we’re seeing a rise in fact. Last year, in 2022, there was an article published talking about the actual rise that we’re seeing. They said, “The new analysis of 3.25 million birth records follow a string of studies that suggest gestational diabetes has become increasingly prevalent over the last three decades,” which is kind of crazy. Every year anywhere from 2-10% of women will be diagnosed with gestational diabetes. We know that the Cesarean rate here in the U.S. is just above 32%. If you think about the 32% and 2-10%, you’ve got to think that people who are going for a VBAC are having gestational diabetes. My question is, are we not seeing VBAC with gestational diabetes because providers aren’t allowing us? That’s my question. Charlotte, today, welcome to the show. She is going to be sharing her story about gestational diabetes and her VBAC. Right, Charlotte? Charlotte: That’s right. I’m super excited. Meagan: Yes. Yes. I’m so excited. I’m so glad that we connected. Charlotte lives in South Carolina in Greensville specifically. They have two baby boys– not baby, baby but they are young. She has a very baby and then a younger baby. She works in healthcare administration for a very large healthcare system and has truly become a birth nerd outside of work. This is something that birth just does to a lot of us. It captivates us. Right, Charlotte? Charlotte: Totally. Meagan: Do you feel that your birth is what brought you into your obsession with birth and VBAC in general? Charlotte: It’s life-changing. Once you’ve been through it, it was such a seismic shift for me and it opens your eyes to what women are going through. Then you hear people’s stories and everyone has something that has stuck with them. People who are years and years older remember exactly how their birth story was. I’m very Type A, so I just turned to research. I love it. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s why I became a doula, through my own birth experiences and I know that’s why a lot of other doulas become doulas or midwives or why OBs become OBs. It’s really awesome and we are really excited to have your episode on the show. So thank you for being here today. Review of the Week I have a Review of the Week as usual so I’m going to get into that and then we will share Charlotte’s birth stories. Today the review is from Blanely and it says, “There For Me When I Needed Support.” It says, “I got pregnant right at the start of the pandemic in 2020. It was a very lonely time isolated with my toddlers. I couldn’t even hug my mom or get her support in the beginning. I had to switch providers due to insurance changes and I was scared. The VBAC Link became my companion at this time. Julie and Meagan, my friends, I would listen with one earbud while caring for my boys. It was educational and encouraging just when I needed it. I learned tons about birth and how to advocate for my VBAC. “In January 2021, I had my successful VBAC. It was a wonderfully redemptive process. Even though they aren’t being produced right now, it is still the first thing that I recommend to any of my friends who are expecting. VBAC or first baby, I just love it and I hope it comes back soon.” Well, this was back in the pandemic and we did take a break and we are back. So thank you, Blanely. I hope you are still with us and I hope you just heard your wonderful review. We really do appreciate these reviews so much so if you haven’t had a chance, I always ask. Stop and go check out on Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever you’re listening, and leave us a review. We absolutely love them. Charlotte’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Charlotte. Oh my gosh. I am serious– you’re going to be the first episode, I believe. I don’t recall any other episodes of gestational diabetes. Charlotte: I think that’s right because I looked when I was diagnosed. I found a birth story that was a VBAC not on a VBAC podcast about gestational diabetes. It was one that I could listen to. Meagan: Yes. Yeah, and we’ve got some that had diabetes previously before pregnancy, but none with gestational diabetes. So congratulations on being our first. I hope you are not the last. If you are listening out there also, and you had gestational diabetes and you had a VBAC, we do want to share your story. We want to help people just like Charlotte when she was out there looking for these stories and only found one, we really want to add some stories because it’s really not something that we are seeing or hearing. I’d like to turn the time over to you. We know that every VBAC has to start with a C-section, so if you want to talk about your firstborn’s birth, we would love that. Charlotte: Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. I, once again, was telling you that this podcast really started my journey. There was the C-section and then some conversations with providers that fueled the fire. Then after that, The VBAC Link was one of the first things that I turned to. It’s super surreal being here today. I’m married to my husband, Hunter, and in 2020, my father had– before the pandemic started– two back-to-back major surgeries which put things into perspective. Then the pandemic hit and a lot of things got canceled. It’s the same story for a lot of people. We were like, “Okay.” We had been putting it off. We’d been together for 11 years at that point and we were like, “Let’s just go for it.” We got pregnant very quickly in the first month. We were super excited. It was an uncomplicated pregnancy other than just the general stuff from the pandemic. It’s tough to be pregnant and not have the support or feeling like you can go and be out with your friends or see your family without potentially killing them or being scared of that. Meagan: I know. There was all of this fear. And even then, for a lot of my doula clients here in Utah, they were being told that if they went out and they got COVID, they were threatened. They were like, “You won’t have your baby. You won’t have your husband. You could kill your baby.” They were saying these very, very scary things. Charlotte: Yeah, so that wasn’t great. In hindsight, with that pregnancy, I had a lot more time to myself worrying. Overall, it went very well. Right around the time that they were making sure with no questions that you had a birth support partner and all of that you were starting to see– even though he was delivered in January 2021 which was almost the worst of it. We were at a normal OB practice. As I mentioned, I worked in healthcare administration and academic medicine. I work remotely now, but back then, prior to the pandemic, I was going to the hospital. I was very comfortable with physicians. My mother was a physician. So yeah, I had no issue with that. I really had no reason to question medical care. Meagan: Right. Charlotte: There was also a new birthing center, a new birth wing of our hospital. They had always delivered babies but they had delivered at the other hospital in town for whatever reason. I was one of– within the last year, it had opened 11 months ago. They were still– I mean, it was amazing. Meagan: Getting on their feet. Charlotte: They were. I think there were just some growing pains but they had everything you could think of in this new center. So anyway, I was 30 weeks pregnant so I did deliver a little early with this guy. My son, Auggie. Augustus is his full name. Meagan: I love that. Charlotte: Yeah, I had a trickle come out in the middle of the night around 38 weeks and I was like, “What is that?” It could be pee. It could be whatever. Nothing started. We went back to bed, no big deal. I finished up some things with work the next day. We just said, “You know, why don’t we just get this checked out?” We went to labor and delivery. They tested it and it was negative for amniotic fluid so we were like, “Okay, great.” We went back. We got home around 9:00 PM that night. I went to bed early. I just was tired from being in triage. It always takes longer than you expect and then woke up at 1:00 AM to pee as everybody does in the last trimester of pregnancy. There was more of a gush at that point. That’s when I knew for sure that the startings of my labor started with water breaking. Now I know, that can be the start of a ton of positioning issues which is what happened with me. Yeah, so then I really quickly went into labor. I had actually done a birth class virtually with a doula. I didn’t have a doula, but I felt like, “Okay, I’m going to try to go as long as I can without an epidural.” That was always my thing. “I’ll go as long as I can, but I’ll still probably have one.” I always had this disclaimer. I started laboring. It felt very primal and very natural. It was dark. I was on all fours, but it felt intense from the beginning. I say this now to my husband, “I never feel like I’ve had early labor with either of these labors. It just goes straight to intense for me personally.” So I was feeling really like, oh my gosh, grunting and moaning and doing all of the things. We did that for about 4-5 hours. Then I started to feel nervous. I wanted to go ahead to the hospital. We made our way there. When I got there, they checked me. They checked the amniotic fluid. It was the amniotic fluid. I believe it had been the time before as well. They checked me and I was 4 centimeters so I was super excited. I felt like, “Oh, this is moving super quickly and I’m going to have this baby today.”I was on the birth ball. I was prepared, or so I thought. I got to my room and felt, “This is super intense. I am nervous that this is going to move super fast that I won’t be able to get an epidural, so I’d better go ahead and get anesthesiology to come. There were a bunch of people coming in and out. I’m sure it slowed things down at that point, but I had a medical student and an attending come in and ask if I wanted to be part of a cervical check study. I work in academic medicine so yeah, of course. Definitely. Let’s sign up because that matters for students. You learn all of these things after the fact. You don’t want to say no to things like that. Meagan: It’s kind of awkward because you’re like, “I know you need to learn and I want to help you.” Charlotte: Yeah, but it’s like, “No. I don’t need more checks. I don’t need more people interrupting me.” Meagan: Especially with your water broken. Charlotte: Now I know. Right. Right. So anyway, there were things like that and they come in. I’m feeling very intense still and I’m 7 centimeters. Meagan: Wow! Charlotte: I’m feeling amazing. I’m going to keep moving this along. This is great. I’m texting all of my family and friends, “Hey, this is easy. I’m getting my epidural and in a couple of hours, this is done.” So they gave me my epidural. It worked great and I just chilled. I knew about the peanut ball and I did do the peanut ball, but I think I just laid around. I had my catheter. I was drinking all of the fluids and the popsicles, and just the normal things. You’re hooked up to everything at that point. We were just chilling and then time passed and it was the whole day. They checked me again, “You know, okay. You’re taking some time but it’s still normal.” I actually had a midwife that was the person on call, or the 24-hour provider, so I did have a midwife caring for me. They just kept saying, “This is normal for a first birth.” I was like, “Okay.” More time passed. They decided, “Okay. Let’s get some Pitocin to keep this going.” So I started Pitocin. I’m sure you’re hearing the same old story, the cascade of interventions. Meagan: You know, it does. It does happen like that. Not always, but it does where it’s like, “All right. We’ve been going. We’ve been going. We do need to get this labor going.” Pitocin is the next option, right? Charlotte: Yep. And so yeah, then it started with that. I knew, “Okay, let’s do the peanut ball. Let’s move around.” I didn’t know. I thought a peanut ball was enough. It wasn’t with the right positions and had I known all of the positioning issues I came to find out my son had, if I had a doula and if I had the right tools at my disposal, I would have held off on the epidural. There are so many things I would have done and that’s tough for me. That’s something I struggled with. What if I could have done better if I had known? Meagan: But you can’t blame yourself. You can’t blame yourself. Charlotte: No, you can’t. So anyway, time passes. All in all, the labor was 27 hours. I don’t know exactly the duration of time, but at one point we got multiple checks. “Okay, you’ve gotten a little farther. Great. Let’s do internal monitoring. Let’s do this. Let’s see. Okay, the baby is not coming down as much as we would like. He’s OP, asynclitic.” I come to find out that I think he had a nuchal hand because he came out like this and his hand was super bruised up. Meagan: Oh yeah, so when your water broke, he just [inaudible]. Charlotte: Yep. And asynclitic, your head is tilted to the side. He had all of those things. He was not coming down. An OB manually tried to push him up and switch him and was sweating and working hard for 30 minutes on that so you can imagine my body going through it. My epidural kept breaking through so I’d go from zero to 100 Pitocin, 9-centimeter contractions, and just pain. Meagan: And messing with things. Charlotte: Mhmm. Tons of meds. They’d try to get it all back and I’d be fine again. But it’s like, in hindsight, we did throne position. They let me push on all fours. They let me push. I did end up getting to 9 centimeters or so when we started pushing. They let me push for 4 hours. So in hindsight, there is a lot that they let me do with an epidural, just things I think would be part of a positive story. All in all, 27 hours passed. I’m exhausted. Nothing is wrong with me. Nothing is wrong with the baby, but the midwife comes in and says, “Look. I think we need to call it. I don’t think he’s coming down. He’s super high still.” Right or wrong, I don’t know if more time would have helped, but he was starting to get a swollen part on his head and they just said, “I think it’s time. You can definitely have a vaginal birth one day.” She said that to me and I was like, “Okay. I’m done too.”I definitely was tearful. You always have those angels in your story. I had an angel nurse that came and said, “Oh, honey. I’ve had 3 C-sections and it’s great.” At the time, it’s what I needed just the right person at the right time to comfort you. Meagan: And being able to relate. I think being able to relate and be like, “Okay, you did it. You’re here.” Charlotte: Exactly. I was whisked away into the C-section. Usually, the husband doesn’t follow you right away. They do all of the things and then they come in. Well, my husband never comes in. Meagan: Oh. Charlotte: My husband had not eaten and had not slept. He ended up getting lightheaded and almost passing out in which case he was being cared for by the midwife that was caring for me in the PACU. Meagan: Oh no. Charlotte: He never came in. They got his phone which was a godsend and I had this amazing CRNA that took the most amazing pictures of the C-section that ended up being a big part of my healing process, being able to see everything. Meagan: Yes. Yes. Yeah. It’s weird because sometimes you don’t even think or know if you want to see that, but it is so healing, or at least it was for me. Charlotte: Mhmm. It helps you piece things together. Once again, parts of that were a really positive thing. I had a clear drape. I didn’t ask for that. They did the clear drape. They did skin-to-skin to some extent, or delayed cord clamping– not as much as you would want, but they did all of that. But I was so out of it by that point. I was shaking. I was passing out constantly, so I was holding my baby, but I thought he was suffocating on me, so I was just like, “Just take him to his dad.” It was uncomplicated and exactly what we thought. It was all positioning issues. No big deal, really. They take me to PACU and wheel me in. The Type A person in me goes, “Okay, forget recovering from that. Now I need to take back control of my experience. Hunter, get me a cold brew coffee.” I just shake my head like, “Why didn’t you just sleep when you could have? I drank a cold brew in PACU and put that kid to my boob and they were like, “Wow, you know how to do that already?” I just was like, “Yep. I want to be the mom now. I want to get back to normal.” Well, that was the beginning of a very traumatic couple of days when I didn’t sleep at all in the hospital. I got very engorged. He had latch issues. I was told to start pumping. I got an enormous oversupply, like 90 ounces in one day. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Charlotte: A couple of weeks in, yeah. It changed our experience. Obviously, he ended up getting a milk protein intolerance. It layered on. I don’t blame the C-section on that, but I do blame my mindset a little bit– and probably got some bad advice from lactation. They didn’t know I was going to have an oversupply and go crazy like that. But yeah, I had trauma from that too. I’m like, “Okay, I’m recovering from a C-section and I’m pumping around the clock and all of that isn’t coinciding with me caring for my baby.” My husband learned to do everything in the hospital. Meagan: Or caring for yourself. Charlotte: Yep. It was all focused on my recovery. Anytime he needed to eat, it coincided with me needing to pump. It was heartbreaking, really. The second I allowed myself to stop, we started bonding luckily. After that, our relationship truly began. But yeah, it was a traumatic experience. You don’t expect that you’re going to have this life-changing thing and then have to have you recovering from a C-section too. Meagan: Right. Charlotte: That’s kind of that story. I definitely feel good over time with therapy. I’ll give a plug to EMDR therapy. It’s a type of eye movement therapy. I had one session of that and it helped me get down to a rational level why I was so upset by that experience and just starting to talk about it with people and watch everything helped over time. Looking at those pictures, it no longer became such an emotional thing as time went on. But I still felt sad when I saw people having what I wanted– a good breastfeeding experience and a typical birth. But more and more, I did have a typical birth. In my close friend group, maybe four or five of us have had a C-section. Several were breech, but it started to be like, it wasn’t that I was feeling alone. It was that I started to question, “What’s going on? Why is this happening?” Meagan: Right. Yeah. That’s how it was in my tight friend group. There are four of us from high school. Three out of the four of us have had multiple C-sections. Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah. And more and more so, I’m rooting for people to get a vaginal birth. I’m like, “Get a vaginal birth, please. Have a routine situation.” Meagan: I know. Charlotte: You don’t see it very often, at least not in my close group. That’s what really made me question things. Fast forward to January 2022 and I’m not quite thinking of having a baby yet, but I had a routine OB appointment. I asked about VBAC. I said I wanted to probably stop taking my birth control and that maybe sometime this year, we would start trying. They said, “Yeah, we’re a VBAC-friendly practice.” I told her maybe a one-minute spiel on what happened to me. She said, “Just based on what you’ve told me, I would say you have a 20% success rate.” Meagan: Oh. Charlotte: I guess she can calculate it in her head without even doing the calculator. I guess they’re super friendly like that. They do so many. Come to find out, they have a super high episiotomy rate and a lot of other things, and they’re not friendly really at all. Meagan: You’re like, “You are ‘friendly’.”Charlotte: Yeah. So I felt completely gutted by that. I hadn’t even really committed that I wanted a VBAC, but feeling that I was told that just was so upsetting. It made me start listening to The VBAC Link. Through a couple of episodes, I heard about requesting your operative notes so I did that which was amazing. On that note, it said a bunch of things that I didn’t know. I didn’t know asynclitic. I didn’t know some of the terms which made me able to speak to it in a more educated way. Then yeah. I messaged the doctor. She was like, “No, absolutely. Nothing was wrong. You could totally do it.” She still gave me a success rate of 54% but she was like, “That’s just a conversation topic. You can absolutely do it.” I was like, “Okay, great.” She told me I was 10 centimeters, so they saw. I got there. I can do this again. I started interviewing doulas even before I was pregnant. I just started to hear positive things like, “If you can get through an OP, asynclitic baby, water breaking, 27-hour labor, you’ve got this. With a well-positioned baby, it would not be like what you experienced.” Hearing these things, I started to get hyped up like, “I can do this.” Meagan: Excited, yeah. You felt the empowerment back. You were feeling empowered. That is what is so important because on that first visit, any empowerment that you had was wiped like an erase board. It’s like, “Oh, you’re 20%.” Okay, great. So that’s so good to hear that you were being built back up. Charlotte: Absolutely. So yeah. So then months passed and then in July-August we decided to start trying again. Luckily, again, we were pregnant again and came to find out we were having another boy, another son. We were very excited and that’s when my preparation started. I did all of the things. I joined a midwife practice. It was a midwife practice that delivered at the most acute hospital. They were actually affiliated with the big health system here. So that gave me comfort that I would be able to birth in a suite that had a pool but it would be in a hospital right down the hall from an OR if I needed it. That was great. I hired a doula that had VBACs, that was the VBAC whisperer in town. I went to Webster-trained chiropractic and did prenatal yoga. I did everything I could think to do. I tried not to go overboard with eating and then yeah. I even went to a pelvic floor specialist to practice pushing. I did everything I could think of. That was how I could control it. My control thing with me– I just wanted to feel like I did everything in my control to get this. If it doesn’t happen, I think I could come to peace with that. That’s what I felt would be the case.  So anyways, fast forward. Routine pregnancy up until 28-29 weeks when you get the gestational diabetes screen. Did it, failed it. I was bummed by that, but also heard, “Oh, so many people fail it.” So then I did the 3-hour test. I think I failed three of the four that you needed in the time. You needed two to pass. So yeah. I failed it. I was surprised how gutted I was. I was devastated by that because I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole pregnancy because I hadn’t had any barriers. You know all of the barriers that people have where you have to advocate for yourself. I hadn’t experienced that even having a VBAC consult with their OB group that helped them out. I supposedly went to the doctor who is all pro-C-section. He was even surprisingly very supportive. So what’s going on? Meagan: What’s going to give? Charlotte: Yeah. The midwife said, “Nope. You can still see us. You can still come to us even if you have to go on insulin, but you really need to try and stay diet-controlled.” That was what I heard. “Diet control is what will help you stay a normal-risk patient.” That’s easier said than done I’ve come to realize. It’s challenging too because time passes. You have to get an appointment with the dietician. You have to get your supplies through insurance so it takes a while to get in the routine of taking your blood sugar multiple times a day and then maybe weeks pass before you can figure out what’s causing you to have spikes.So it’s a whole new thing. I’m trying to focus on VBAC, prenatal yoga, and all of the things that help you be super zen, but now I have multiple appointments and tracking logs. It was very stressful for me. There are certain things– your fat and blood sugar, for example. There is very little you can do to control that. It’s very challenging to get that control because it’s all about your placenta and how it is metabolizing quicker. It’s not what you ate in pregnancy. There are a lot of misconceptions about it. The best thing that I can share is Lily Nichols has Real Food for Pregnancy and then Real Food for Gestational Diabetes and maybe you can link to those, Meagan. Those two books were super helpful for me because of what I can find out– they probably work for some people, but the dietician stuff you get just from the hospital in one visit, and the handout is really high carb. Considering it’s the carbohydrates and the sugars that are causing issues, it doesn’t work. The plan just on paper doesn’t work for everybody to control their gestational diabetes. That was too high for me. When I followed that plan, I wasn’t in control of my diet. Lily Nichols, you can take bits from each, but I found that that book, and that’s what my midwife suggested, was lower carb and all about real foods. It had stuff about supplements and all of that. I found that super helpful to staying diet-controlled. In hindsight, even though I probably had it the whole time, I ended up only doing diet control for two weeks before I gave birth. So lucky for me in some ways, it was one of the silver linings. I didn’t do the diet for very long but I did get all of the information I needed. Eventually, they were telling me, “If you became insulin-dependent or needed insulin or were out of control,” I think it was 90% of your readings needed to be in control. You could have a one-off here and there. If they weren’t then you needed to start seeing a maternal-fetal medicine doctor who could consult on your diabetes and insulin. You could still deliver with the midwives, but my perspective was if you’re on insulin, you have to start having NSTs weekly. You have to start having– I can’t remember what it is called– BP or some other weekly testing for the baby. I can’t remember. It’s some acronym just to check their heart rate and all of that. I can’t remember what it’s called but there are two types of weekly testing you would have to have if you were on insulin. I don’t think you have to have growth scans, but I think they would probably start to offer them to see how baby was doing. That’s where I feel like maybe people start to get discouraged by their providers when their growth scan is large or when they start to have NSTs obviously. There’s much more surveillance and then they encourage you to get induced. If you are on insulin, it’s a lesser time that they allow you to go. They make you go anywhere from– I’d have to look it up but it’s like 37 if it’s really out of control to 39 if it’s insulin-controlled. Diet-controlled, you’re treated like any other birth. That’s where, I think, maybe you’re seeing not as many VBACs. You have a lot of barriers that come in. Meagan: Yeah, because they’re not in control or they’ve been transferred to MFMs and they’re like, “At this point, it’s just better to get this baby out earlier and control blood sugar and have a repeat Cesarean.”Charlotte: Yeah, and I might have made that decision myself. You just start to get medicalized again and it’s discouraging. You worry, “What’s happening to the baby? Is it okay? The NST is not looking good.” I just think it takes that from you. It’s needed sometimes, I’m sure. In some ways, it was a blessing in disguise. I would have had a C-section if my son could have stayed in for two more months. It was a blessing in disguise in some ways that it happened when it did. So anyways, I guess I’ll continue unless you have other things you want me to talk about. Meagan: No, I just pulled up the book and sent it to myself, so we’re going to make sure that we have it in the show notes. Charlotte: Yeah, great. Meagan: Because I think that’s really important to have. Charlotte: Yeah, yeah. Just more tools at your disposal. Lily Nichols is a dietician and she even says, “Some of the stuff that they are still teaching is archaic. We’ve found that there are better ways to do these things.” She helped develop the gestational diabetes stuff for the ADA so she has major credentials. Yeah. I think she is legit. Anyway, two weeks pass. 32 + 2 and I feel huge. I’m not, but I feel pressure low. I told my mom, “I can’t do this for much longer,” the night before which is weird. I had also bought some Easter stuffies with names on them for my son and I bought one for my other son which was foreboding. He was here by Easter and wouldn’t have been otherwise. Meagan: Yeah. That is interesting. Charlotte: I don’t know if my body knew or if I knew in the back of my head that he was going to come early. I started to feel pressure and just weird but nothing like I would have noticed. I just started to feel like, “Oh, gosh.” I had a pedicure for later that day. That weekend, I was going to have my baby sprinkle. I didn’t have an in-person shower with my son and didn’t end up having one with my second son. But I had all of these things planned. I had a pedicure, of course, and all of that stuff coming up. I don’t think that’s what put me into labor, but it was kind of funny. I’m like, “If I ever have another kid, I probably wouldn’t get a pedicure.” Meagan: Yeah. You’re like, “It’s a little coincidental for me.”Charlotte: Yeah, so I was just like, “I need my back massager,” because I was already feeling something in my back. I was like, “Oh my god, it feels so good.” I get home. My husband and my son are home and we have just learned about rebozo. I was taking a Hypnobirthing class. That was the other thing was my hypnosis class. So he was doing rebozo shifting for me and it felt so good. I was like, “Okay, great.” I was practicing my hypnosis and I was just like, “This is Braxton Hicks I think, but man. These are crazy.” I never remember someone saying that Braxton Hicks hurt. It’s waves. It’s definitely a wave each time. I lay down and I told my husband, “I’m just going to rest for a second and I’m going to get in the bath.” Well, when I get to the restroom, there’s blood. That freaked me out, obviously. I still don’t think I’m in labor, but I’m like, “Something might be wrong.” Meagan: Especially at 32 weeks, right? You’re like, “Uhh.”Charlotte: So I go get in the car. I told my husband, “I just need to go to triage.” It’s 30 minutes away. I always knew we were going to have a little bit of a drive to get to the hospital. I drive myself to the hospital in labor now that I’ve come to find out. I was doing my hypnosis techniques. I was just like, “Let me just get there as fast as I can.” Luckily, I got there fast. I think I got there in 25 minutes. I got there super fast. My mom had me a month early and drove herself to the hospital. That was always her claim to fame. I had to do it too. Meagan: You’re like, “I’m going to do it too.” Charlotte: Yeah. I had to do it too. My parents live in town, so they came over to watch my son so my husband wasn’t far behind me. I get to triage and they put me on the monitor. Baby was fine. It doesn’t look like I’m having contractions which is good news. They’re like, “Okay. Let’s get the midwives in. I’ll check you if that’s okay.” She’s like, “Oh, yeah. These are not really typical waves.” Then she checks me and I see her face go white. She’s like, “You’re 5 centimeters, so I’m going to need to call the doctor because we can no longer help because you’re preterm,” which was a bummer. I’m like, “Okay, great.” Then she says, “Ope, there’s a contraction.” For whatever reason, it wasn’t showing contractions, I think that happens sometimes in preterm births apparently because they are so far up or small or something. Meagan: Yeah, I was going to say that they are used to tracking them lower and it’s not. The uterus is smaller. Charlotte: So anyways, the doctor comes in. He’s a resident. All of these things could have been bad, but it’s so funny. I ended up having the most amazing providers. It was just interesting to me. All of the things I was worried about– I don’t know if VBAC is becoming more of a thing now or because they work so closely with the midwife practice and they see it happen and they see it happen well with success— the midwife group in town has an 80% success rate. Meagan: That’s awesome. Charlotte: Anyways, yeah. So they come in and they’re just like, “We’re so sorry. You’re 5 centimeters. You’re having this baby. We can try and just slow it down. There’s not really anything we can do but you can just lay there and let’s just hope you stay in labor for 24 hours.” Meagan: Did they try to stop your contractions or anything like that? Charlotte: No, I think I was right over the cusp of when they would do magnesium. I don’t know exactly why they do or don’t, but they said they do it with younger than that or I think cerebral palsy or something like that. Meagan: They didn’t try to do any steroid injections for lungs? Charlotte: They did do steroid injections, but– it went too quickly for it to matter. I go in. We’ll just see what happens. I didn’t know what to do. I was like, “Should I be doing labor things or should I just be sitting here?” The nurses were like, “Don’t go to the bathroom. We don’t want you to start going on dilation station.” I was like, “I need to go though.” So I was feeling conflicted. We called my doula. She was in a four-day induction supporting another person, so she was not able to come and she said, “Well, do you want me to send a back-up doula?” I said, “Yeah. Bring them on. Whatever.” That doula ended up being amazing. She gets in. She gets right in. I’m starting to feel really uncomfortable. They checked me again. I’m 7 centimeters. This is moving so much faster than my last birth. This all started around 4:00 PM with not really anything except for the waves. By the time I got there at 7:00, it was starting to feel more intense and I had the baby by midnight, so 12:30. It was fast for me. I wouldn’t say precipitous or whatever. Meagan: But still, 27 hours, right? Charlotte: Mhmm. She gets in there. The doctor says, “No, you can do whatever you want.” Oh, let me back up for a second. When they said, “The baby is coming this early,” I said, “Do we need to do a C-section? Whatever. If we need to get the baby out, let’s just get the baby out.” They said, “No. If you want a VBAC, that’s totally fine,” and that it would be beneficial for the baby at this point. Having a vaginal birth at this gestation is better for the baby’s lungs than doing a C-section. Of course, they’ll do a C-section, but there are some benefits to pushing out. I was so excited by that and then they were like, “You want to go unmedicated, right? Do you?” I said, “Yeah, I do. Can I move around?” He said, “Yeah. There is no stopping this baby at this point. Just do what you need to do.” So I was able to get on the birth ball. I wasn’t in a birth room with a pool, but I was able to do my thing and move around at least. This time, I had really committed that I was going to do unmedicated because of the hypnosis and all of the things that I had done. So yeah, I labored very quickly. I had a very intense transition pretty much the whole time I was there. There was a lot of blood coming out which was scary. I was out of it, but I was like, “Is this okay?” There was blood dripping everywhere and they were like, “Yeah, you’re probably having a placental abruption.” Meagan: Did they say anything about your placenta?Charlotte: Yeah. They said, “This is probably a placental abruption, but if you’re having it and the baby is fine, it’s fine. If the baby is not fine, you’d go to a C-section.”Meagan: Then it’s not fine, yeah. Charlotte: That was interesting. I had never heard of placental abruption. That was probably why I was going into preterm labor because the placenta was starting to separate. So yeah. I just kept moving around and doing my thing. All fours were most comfortable for me and then I was 10 centimeters and the doctor came back in. The NICU staff came in and they never freaked me out about how preterm he was. That was the comforting thing. They said, “32-weekers do amazing. They do well.”Luckily, we were at a hospital that takes care of 22 weekers. We were at the best hospital for this so that was super comforting through the whole experience. I think I would have had a lot more fear had they not said those things to me. So yeah. They broke my water and they were like, “This might take a second for him to come down. We’ve got the squat bar up.” I did two practice pushes. I was feeling so much pressure. It’s like pushes that were semi-productive. And then all of a sudden, I just felt this fire in me to just push him out in one push. I pushed so hard and apparently, I screamed. I don’t remember screaming, but I screamed so loud and he shot out. Meagan: Oh my goodness. Charlotte: We got all of this on pictures too, so yeah. He came out. I don’t know if he was screaming, but he came out. Leo is my second son. He was 5 pounds, 2 ounces so he was a big boy. Meagan: Okay, yeah. That’s a good size. Charlotte: I don’t know if it was gestational diabetes or whatever, but he was a good size. They did bring him over to me briefly. All of these things, I understand. Meagan: Right, right. Charlotte: They let me hold him for 10 seconds because they needed to go get him some oxygen of course. Meagan: They needed to make sure that his little lungs needed some extra care. Charlotte: Yes. He was whisked away to the NICU where once again, there’s trauma and things. Of course, I wish that my baby could stay with me but in the moment, it was rational. He needed to go to the NICU so in the moment, I felt back to myself. I was a little stunned, but I was like, “Oh my god. I feel my body. I feel no drugs, no fluid.” I mean, I think I did have a little bit of fluid, but it was just so different than my last experience where I was so drugged up. Meagan: Yeah. Charlotte: I got to see my placenta which they sent off for pathology and they found nothing. There’s no answer. It was just challenging like, “Why did this happen to me?” But it just happens sometimes. I did have COVID two months before. The gestational diabetes even– no symptoms from it, but I just wonder. I had it in February. I was diagnosed with gestation diabetes in early March and I had him in late March. It just feels like as time goes on, they’re finding placental issues. They didn’t see anything obvious.So yeah. He came. He’s healthy. We spent 39 days in the NICU which was a challenge. It really was. I don’t wish that experience on anybody. You’re postpartum and pumping and going home without your baby, being there for my son but having to be at the NICU all day every day. It was a huge challenge for us, but he had a very routine time in the NICU. He just needed time to grow. He came back to us not this past Sunday, but the Sunday before and we were just so happy. He’s eating well. He’s 8 pounds. He’s amazing. Meagan: Wow, good! Charlotte: So yeah. Now we’re on our healing journey of now it’s postpartum, the typical postpartum things. But I just can’t be thankful enough that I didn’t have to deal with all of these challenges with a C-section recovery on top of that. I mean, I felt physically back to myself very quickly. I had a very small two-stitch tear up, not down but I felt fine. I’m just grateful for that and I’m grateful for all of those providers who let me do my thing and trusted me and my boy to work together to get him out safely so yeah. That’s the story. Meagan: Yes. Your team sounds really, really awesome. Charlotte: Yeah. Meagan: Like really awesome. We hope that those types of teams are cloned all over the world, but we know that it doesn’t always happen that way, so if you’re listening and you’ve got gestational diabetes and you don’t have as supportive of a provider, know that you can always keep looking, but too, know that you can do exactly what Charlotte did. You can control what you can control. Control what you can control. You read the book. Learn how to control your diabetes. Learn all about that and then try and just take baby steps along the way even when random things are thrown at you like early term or preterm labor. That could have been where you are like, “Here’s the boot. Instead of a shoe, here’s a boot. It’s being dropped. Now I’m going into preterm labor.” But you didn’t let it. You just put those boots on and kept walking. Right? Charlotte: Mhmm, yep. Meagan: That’s so awesome. So, so awesome. Did you have any symptoms of gestational diabetes before you got tested? Charlotte: I don’t think so. No. I tried to think back on if I did. I think I caught it so early. I got the testing done. That’s another thing too. I would recommend trying to get your screening done as early as possible because the earlier you catch it, the earlier you can control it with diet. It becomes harder to control as time goes on, but you can stop that baby potentially. You can maybe diet-control enough that the baby doesn’t get too big. There’s a lot of really supportive Facebook groups. Gestational diabetes, nutrition, and all of these things because it’s hard to find information out there and it’s helpful to hear those stories of, “Hey, my baby came out and was small or was 8 pounds,” just not these huge babies that you hear of. I’m sure a lot of people aren’t diagnosed or are borderline and maybe have similar things. Meagan: Yeah, there are undiagnosed where we are like, “Whoa.” I had a client whose baby was 11 pounds. Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one way I started to feel was that this may be a blessing in disguise. Had I not just been on the borderline, maybe I would have had an 11-pound baby, and whoa, to be honest. Leo would have been big if he had gone to term. But the earlier you find out, you can diet control. You maybe can control your weight gain and have a healthier pregnancy overall. Meagan: And have fewer issues after. Charlotte: Because I felt amazing. Just the fact that I had such a high-protein diet and things in that time period, I feel like that made me even better equipped to have a vaginal birth. So yeah. I think there are positives if you can get past that initial challenge of it that, “Okay, this is just going to keep me on track to have a healthy pregnancy,” you can do it. You really can do it. I think as long as you just say, “Look. They’re going to do screenings. They’re going to offer things.” It may end up in an induction but I think it’s still worth pursuing if it’s something that you want to do. Meagan: Yeah. That is one of the things. It may end up in an induction and that is still possible. They may be telling you that your baby is big. That doesn’t mean that vaginal birth is not possible. Right? Big babies come out of pelvises all the time. Inductions and VBAC– Yes, it’s not as ideal as spontaneous labor but still very possible. Know that if you are listening, you’re not alone out there even if you might feel alone because there are not a ton of stories out there. That makes me sad so we are going to change that here on the podcast. It’s starting right here with Charlotte. Awesome, well thank you so much for sharing your story today. Charlotte: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“This is going to change the course of your life forever.”Ashley’s first Cesarean was after a 48-hour labor at almost 42 weeks. She deeply desired and prepared for a VBAC with her second baby, but consented to a second Cesarean after another 48-hour labor at just over 41 weeks. With her third baby, Ashley pulled out all of the stops. She was committed to having a VBA2C in all the ways she knew and didn’t know before. Perhaps the most impactful part of her preparation was processing fears more intentionally than ever before. She proactively went to therapy to heal from her previous births and to preemptively combat postpartum depression. She released the weight of failure and inadequacy that she didn’t realize she was carrying.With exciting twists and turns, Ashley achieved everything she hoped she would in her third birth. She says that this VBAC experience has forever changed her and her belief in what she is capable of. Additional LinksBaby Bird Birth and Doula ServicesHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello you guys. We are at the end of August. I hope you guys have had a wonderful summer and that it’s still great weather wherever you are listening from. We have our friend, Ashley, today and we are going to be sharing her stories. Something that we had requested or asked on Instagram is “What kind of episodes are you wanting to hear?” It seems that every time we ask that, a lot of people are saying, “VBAC after two Cesareans” and even extended to that, VBAC after three or even four multiple Cesareans. So today we have a VBAC after two Cesarean story. As always, we’ve got to get into a review but I am really wanting to talk because there is something about Ashley that she wrote in her bio. She said, “Her birth experiences have given her the passion for all things pregnancy, birth, and postpartum and have even led her to be a doula.” I just resonate so much with that because that’s exactly how I became a doula, Ashley. I think that’s how a lot of us in the birth world find that passion and that drive to support and help. So congratulations on becoming a doula and finding your passion through all of these experiences. Ashley: Thank you. Meagan: I full-on believe but I sometimes say that we experience these not-so-desired birth outcomes, right? Not-so-desired birth outcomes, but sometimes I think that we have those because we are meant to do something more and meant to experience those to help inspire and encourage and empower someone in the future. So congratulations on all of that. I am so excited for you to join the doula world. It’s a journey, but it’s awesome. Ashley: Yes, I’m excited. Thank you. Meagan: Yes. And then a little snippet also, a little secret– by the time this episode airs, she’s probably going to be holding a newborn because her due month is August. That’s really, really exciting. I’m just going to congratulate you right now in advance. Review of the WeekWe also have a review, of course. This review is from– I actually don’t even know how to say this– I’m going to spell it out. It’s bshsjbxbd. The title is “Life Changing.” It says, “This podcast is AMAZING. I just had my VBAC two months ago and I can honestly say that it is thanks to everything I’ve learned by listening obsessively to this podcast and joining this community. I am still listening even after my VBAC because I love hearing the stories of these amazing women and the loving support the hosts offer. Julie and Meagan clearly care so much about what they do and it feels like they truly care about each and every mama they talk to and connect through with the podcast and the community. I recommend this podcast to everyone who will listen when they are going for a VBAC. An amazing resource for those of us who are on our upcoming journeys to birth after a Cesarean. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”And thank you, bshsjbxbd, for your review. We always love your reviews coming in. If you haven’t had a chance, I will never shy away from asking for a review. Your reviews are actually what helps people just like you listening to find this podcast. It is what helps the algorithm and especially in Apple Podcasts and on Google. It helps the algorithm know that people like hearing these stories and want to give you more. So if you haven’t had a chance, leave us a review. We would love it so much. Ashley’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, cute Ashley. Welcome to the show. Ashley: Thanks. I’m so excited. I’m so grateful. Meagan: I’m so grateful for you. VBAC after two Cesareans is so hard because I’m sure as you know through this journey– both of us specifically are VBAC after two Cesarean moms– it can be a really hard road. It can be really hard and really lonely, so we don’t want anyone to feel that. I think that through sharing stories and relating, it’s going to help people out there know that they’re not alone and it is possible. Ashley: Yeah, 100%. I don’t know that I would have been able to achieve that without listening to all of the podcasts and searching your site religiously. There is so much power in sharing your story. Meagan: There really is. There really is. Well, let’s turn the time over to you to share your stories. Ashley: Cool, well thanks. I’ll try to keep it pretty concise but as you know, there’s a lot of background that you have to get to. We dealt with infertility for about five years. It was really unexplained. There was no specific reason. I actually had a bilateral ectopic at one point. Meagan: Oh, okay. Ashley: One of two they were able to repair. With the other, I had to have that one removed. So when I miraculously got pregnant in May of 2015, we were shocked and over the moon and just super, super grateful. Really, from the beginning, I knew that I just wanted a husband-coached natural birth. We did the Bradley Method class and we created this cute little birth plan to share with our provider. I really had a healthy and normal pregnancy and I thought, “I know what I want, so I’m going to get it.” C-section didn’t come out of my mouth. It wasn’t on the birth plan. It just wasn’t anywhere around. Then at 40 weeks and at 41 weeks and at 41.5 weeks, the appointments showed nothing of concern, but I still had an unfavorable cervix. At all of those appointments, we had to sign an AMA saying that we did not want to get induced. We kept trying to do normal, regular things. Then on March 1st, I was 41+5. I woke up with a slight abdominal pain. I just did the normal routine. I went for a walk and all of the things we were doing. I did have a dance party that day instead of my normal yoga. I was like, “Let’s get this started. Let’s get moving.” Then those pains intensified throughout the afternoon and I finally was willing to call them contractions at some point that evening. They were about five minutes apart and we decided to go to the hospital. And like normal, not normal but for a lot of people, I got to the hospital and everything stopped. We decided to go home, but a nurse told us that because I was about 42 weeks and it would be against medical advice, my insurance would not cover my labor and delivery cost if we went home and then tried to come back. Whether that is true or not, at this point it is 3:00 in the morning and we are like, “What do we do? I don’t know.” So we were like, “Let’s just hunker down and just try to relax a little bit then in the morning try to get labor moving again.” So that was what we did. We decided to stay at the hospital. At about 8:00 the next morning, my OB came in and she wanted to strip my membranes. She accidentally broke my bag of water at the same time. I refused any other interventions at this point except they said that they did require that I have an IV and some monitoring. So after a lot of pressure from every nurse that came in the room and my OB, we agreed to a Pitocin drip at about 5:00 PM. Then I labored throughout the night. Things got super intense at about 2:00 in the morning. I was frantic. I remembered feeling like I couldn’t handle the pain. I remember that the room was pitch dark and I’m just laying in the bed super frantic, super exhausted, no idea what to do. I tried getting in the tub. I hated it with all of the wires and the monitors around me so I just hated it. The nurse suggested that I try Benadryl to help me rest. I didn’t rest but I got super groggy and I think that just made it worse. I was just physically, mentally, and emotionally– it was bad. There was all of this constant pressure to do things that I did want to do or I didn’t want to do. I just felt so isolated and frustrated. I was dilated to about a 7 the next morning. It was 7:00 AM and I agreed to an epidural just to try to relax and get some rest and some relief. Then my OB came in and checked me. She said that my cervix was swollen at that point and that I started to regress.  Knowing what I wanted, she said that she was going to try to hold open my cervix and let me push. I tried but nothing really happened. Looking back, I’m like, “I don’t know if she thought that would really help or if she was trying to appease me and try to give me a little bit of a confidence boost or something. I don’t know.” At this point, I’m in labor for about 48 hours. I’m done. I was out of it. She highly recommended a C-section and I remember before I signed the paperwork, I looked at her and said, “Will you let me try for a vaginal next time?” I already knew. Again, also looking back, I’m like, “I can’t believe I asked her permission.” But we do because we think that it is in someone else’s control. Meagan: We do. Yes, yes. Ashley: So anyway, we had a gentle, normal, healthy C-section. Perfectly healthy baby girl. Recovery was fine. It was normal. It was good, but I had that defeat in my head and in my heart. It just stayed there and I moved on. So then about two years later, in January 2018, I was pregnant again thankfully and we moved. That first birth was in Florida and we moved to Michigan which is where we are now. I did a lot of research just on social media and things like that to try to find who is the VBAC-friendly provider in our area. I was super excited when I got in with one of the most VBAC-friendly practices in the Grand Rapids area. I was really happy that I could work with their midwife team for a VBAC. This time I just felt like I did more research and that I knew what went wrong last time, so I was like, “The same thing is not going to happen. I know what happened. Been there, done that. Moving on.” But that was kind of all we did. I did a couple of meditations. I read a couple of more books. I just was like, “I think we’ve got it.” Then 40 weeks came. 41 weeks came again. I just felt like– you know, from providers that you start feeling the pressure, especially with VBAC. Meagan: You do. Ashley: So then at my 41-week appointment, we denied the induction again. We endured a pretty fear-based lecture from the OB that was practicing there, but he did do a membrane sweep at that appointment. A couple of days later, nothing had happened. He did another membrane sweep and then I was like, “Okay.” I started getting that frantic feeling again. He did the membrane sweep. I went straight to acupuncture. I went straight home and had a castor oil lunch. Then contractions started about an hour later. They were about three minutes apart the entire night and then the next morning, my parents arrived from out of state to watch our daughter and things stopped. They pretty much totally stopped. We went on a long walk. I did more castor oil. I took a nap and woke up with super intense contractions so I felt like, “Okay. It’s time we call the midwife.” She was like, “Try to just do what you can at home until things are unbearable.” I got in the bathtub at home and that’s when I remember things caving in. Mentally and emotionally, I went totally dark. The fear of things I hadn’t totally worked through from the first birth just came tumbling in. I remember laying in the bathtub being like, “I’m done. I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t do this the way that I want to.” We did end up going to the hospital. We were admitted there at about 6:00 PM and I was dilated to a 5 so that was a little bit reassuring at that point. But as we got to the hospital and all of the tests and the monitoring and all of that stuff, I just was so scared. The fear and the worry and all of the anxiousness crept back in. I did agree to an epidural again even though that wasn’t something that I had originally planned. I just felt like I needed something to help calm me down. At around 11:00 that night, I was dilated to an 8. I tried to rest. We did some nipple stim. The next morning with little progression, I did start Pitocin at about 10:00 AM. I just remember being in the bed. The midwife would come in and we would try a couple of different positions, but that was really it. I didn’t know any different. We didn’t have a doula with us. My husband is a great support, but we didn’t know what else to do. I ended up trying to push. I pushed for about two hours because my midwife thought that I was ready for that. There was no progression. I remember her saying that the baby’s position was why he wouldn’t descend. Again, looking back now, I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That makes sense,” but at the time, I’m like, “I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what to do about that.” So later, after I pushed for a couple of hours like I said, the OB came in, the same one who gave us the scary talk. He came in and he offered a vacuum, forceps, or a C-section. I think at that point, again, I was in labor for 48ish hours at that point and just tired. A C-section felt like the thing that I knew. I didn’t do the research on the other things and I didn’t have a great relationship with him, so I was like, “Let’s do the C-section,” so we moved to the C-section. It was the same experience. It was gentle. It was safe and healthy and everything went fine. Our little guy was born at 9:00 at night. He had some breathing issues but nothing of concern. It was great. But this time, I struggled mentally for months after that with just that feeling like I failed again. I don’t know if I’m going to ever get a chance again to have my VBAC or to redeem what I thought was possible for myself and for my family. Anyways, two years later in May of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, we had a third miracle pregnancy and again, it was a very healthy, normal pregnancy. I decided to stay with the same practice because one, I knew that they were still one of the most VBAC-friendly practices, however, their midwife team is not able to support VBACs after two C-sections. Meagan: Just after two C-sections. Ashley: Mhmm, yep. I listened to an episode of The VBAC Link and there was someone on who is from this area. I ended up connecting with her and she told me about a great OB who worked who now had transferred into this practice that I was at. She was amazing so I was able to work with her instead of the other person who again, is a great provider but I just wanted a little bit of a different experience. Meagan: Right. Ashley: This new OB was a doula actually before she got into obstetrics. I just felt so much at ease and comfort with her. I remember her telling me, “You’re in charge.” She would offer me things or tell me and give me information and then she would say, “You’re in charge.” That changed the game for me. It just made me realize, “Oh, you’re right. I am.” Meagan: It’s crazy to think what the words, “You are in charge” did for you. Ashley: Yeah. It was amazing. I knew that with this birth, I was like, “This is my chance to get the VBAC.” We didn’t know if we would have any more kids. I pulled out all of the stops. I hired a doula finally. My husband and I were on the same page. He’s always been really supportive of what I want, but we had to sit down and have some pretty in-depth conversations about why I wanted it and why it was so important. I listened to every VBAC Link episode and every Evidence Based Birth episode. I did as much research and educating myself as I could. I started chiropractic care. I did Spinning Babies and nightly meditations. I started mental health counseling. At the time, I did it mainly because I think looking back, after my second, I went through a pretty intense period of postpartum depression. I didn’t know it at the time, but I knew that this time, I needed to get ahead of it so I connected with a counselor just so I had that relationship built for after my third baby. What I didn’t realize until after I started therapy was the mental block that I had from those first two births and so much defeat, failure, and fear. They were so heavy and I quickly realized them after just getting into regular therapy sessions. My therapist really helped me work through a lot of that which I am so thankful for. So fast forward through all of that prep that we do for months and months, this time I was like, “Okay. I’m sure I’m going to go to 42 weeks. That’s just what my body does and I’m cool with it. It’s going to be fine.”Meagan: Right. Right. Ashley: I went in for my 40-week appointment. Everything was normal except I did have a slightly elevated blood pressure which was abnormal for me. We did the NST. They did lab work and then I agreed to a membrane sweep. My OB was a little bit concerned that if my blood pressure would continue to rise or continue to be elevated then I would need an induction so she thought that the sweep would be the most gentle way to just try to get started. I was already dilated to a 3 so she was like, “I think it’s a safe way to go. It’s not too much intervening,” so I felt good about that.I did really normal things for the next 48 hours. With the other two, I got the frantic, “Let’s get started.” Castor oil is a pretty intense thing, so this time I stayed away from that. I did a lot of inversions and curb walking. I went to the chiropractor and then at my next appointment, everything was normal. Blood pressure was back to normal and I was so thankful. I went home. That 40-week appointment was a Wednesday and we had a couple of days. Then on Sunday morning, I woke up and I had some slight contractions so I went for a super long walk. I did a lot of curb walking. I started an abbreviated or my own version of Miles Circuit just to keep things moving along. Contractions became pretty regular around 2:00 that afternoon. I was still hesitant to call it labor because I had experienced such long labors before that I was like, “Eh, this is a long road.” Meagan: Right. You’re like, “Whatever. We’ve got this.”Ashley: But I did ask my husband to come home. He was at work and I asked him to come home just to help with the other two. That was about 4:00. I was like, “I just need to focus. I need to get in my space.” He took them to Target and they roamed around Target. I stayed home. I sat on my birth ball. I put my birth playlist on and I actually colored pictures for them just to calm myself and get in the right frame of mind. By the time they got home, I was just laying in bed trying to relax through the contractions. I managed to make it to dinner and have dinner with them and help with the bedtime routine, but I had to keep stopping through reading them their bedtime story just to breathe. After that, I just moved to our bedroom and I was really struggling. I was laying in bed and just walking around the bedroom. I remember that I felt sick but hungry, but cold, but hot and all of these different feelings were coming in. I had to just lean into my husband and hold onto him through every contraction. We did that for about an hour and he was like, “I think we’d better at least call the doula.” I was like, “Okay, okay.” She just listened over the phone to a few contractions and I remember her saying, “I think it might be time to go into the hospital.” Even though I was really struggling to cope with the contractions, I was super against going in because with my other two, I got to the hospital and everything stopped. I was like, “I’m not doing that.” Things kept progressing through. It was probably another hour and so I finally agreed, “Okay. Let’s go in.” My husband was making arrangements for someone to come stay with our kids and pack the car. My water broke. I hadn’t had that spontaneous experience before so that was kind of cool. He helped me get changed and get into the car. I remember I couldn’t sit down. I was kneeling over the front seat on my knees and he was like, “This is probably going to be the hardest part of the whole labor, the drive to the hospital.” I was ready to push. I remember yelling the whole time, “I’m ready to push.” He was like, “It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. We’re almost there.” He’s driving through– it was February and there was a snowstorm here. He was trying to stay as calm as possible. We pull up to triage. It was about 9:50 PM. I got into my wheelchair still on my knees. They wheeled me in and I’m like, “I’m ready to push. I’m ready to push!” yelling at whoever was with me. A nurse checked me in the wheelchair. She came running out and checked me. Meagan: Turned around just backward.Ashley: Yeah. I heard her yell, “She’s complete!” I was like, “Thank you, God.” It was the best thing that I could have ever heard. They wheeled me into a delivery room and they helped me onto the hospital bed. I was on all fours and I just started pushing. At that point, everything is kind of a blur. I was so focused on just pushing her out. I knew everybody there was looking at me like, “Is she going to do this? Is this actually going to happen?” I knew that until I was holding her in my arms, a C-section was still a possibility. Meagan: Yeah. Ashley: It was never off the table and I was like, “I’ve come this far. We’re doing this.” I do remember that I got a saline lock. At one point, they put a monitor on baby’s head. My doula put my hair up for me. They kept giving me oxygen to help me breathe. People kept urging me to change positions and I was like, “Nope. I’m good right here. I’m not moving.” My OB made it there for about 10 minutes of pushing and helped me through the last few pushes and then I heard her say, “The baby’s head was out and then her body,” and then I just reached down and pulled her up and yeah. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Meagan: Absolutely. That’s so flipping cool that you could get there and be that far progressed. For you mentally, I’m sure– like you said, “I knew it wasn’t off the table,” but that had to have just been so huge and put you in a space. Even when they were doing all of these things, you were able to stay in your space and keep going. 10 minutes! Ashley: Yeah. It was crazy. I remember after things, I had pretty significant blood loss and pretty severe tearing just because it was so fast, but my husband said, “This is going to change the course of your life forever.” And he’s right. It does because when you follow your intuition, right? And you really experience something so redeeming like that, that can change you. So yeah. I’m really grateful. Meagan: Yeah. It totally does change you. I hadn’t had my baby yet. I was still in labor and I remember one of my doulas saying, “If this doesn’t go the way she is wanting, I’m worried about what she’s going to do with her career and if she’s going to be able to keep going,” because I wanted it so badly. Then I had my VBAC and everyone was like, “This just changed you forever. This just totally did something for you.” I remember that it’s the weirdest thing. It’s really hard for me to describe, but to have a birth– and it’s not even just a VBAC in general– but to have a birth where you feel like you were more in the driver’s seat and more in control and like you said, following that intuition and trusting your whole soul, there’s something to say with that. There’s a power that that gave me. Ashley: Yep. Absolutely. Meagan: And it did. It’s changed my life for the long term. It’s just so amazing. It’s so amazing. Ashley: And look at all of the community that you guys have built. Meagan: Yeah. Ashley: Your experiences have changed so many people’s lives. It’s just really cool. Meagan: It’s really cool how it all circles around. And every single one of these stories– I mean, we’re hearing it through these reviews how these stories are changing people’s lives. This community and I may be biased, but there is something about this VBAC/CBAC community that is so special. We are so vulnerable.Ashley: I think so. I think also, people don’t really get it. I mean, I have a great family and friends, but there aren’t many that understand it. Meagan: There aren’t, yeah. Ashley: So to be able to come somewhere like this and find other people who really get it and it’s really important to them and it’s really valuable and it just creates this sense of confidence and meaning. Meagan: Absolutely. It’s so true. I remember that there were very few. I could count on one hand people that I could really go to. I love the people that would listen. I would always want a listening ear, but these guys didn’t just listen. They heard and they felt. They felt it when I said, “I don’t know what I should do. I have this provider, but I’m feeling called to this out-of-hospital birth. What should I do?” They could feel the struggle that I was going through. They could feel the desire, the want, and the hurt. I had a mother’s blessing and I will never forget. I was in constant chills because I could feel their energy. Ashley: Yeah. That’s amazing. Meagan: This community is absolutely amazing and you are amazing and then you’re just going to keep going on. You’re going to have this other VBAC and then you’re going to keep going on as a doula inspiring. That’s one of the reasons too why we love having our doula community. We have our certified doulas. When Julie was with me, she and I couldn’t change the VBAC world. We’re just here in Utah. Through this community and all of these birth workers out there and all of these parents inspiring, we have people on our team that haven’t even had a VBAC and they’re like, “Hey guys, did you know that this is an option? Did you know that this is a thing?” It’s so cool the conversations that are sparked and can change someone’s outcome completely. So thank you so much for being here and for sharing your story. Good luck right now and congrats in advance. And yes! Do you have a doula page yet where people can go follow you?Ashley: I do. Yeah, yeah thank you. It’s Baby Bird Birth and Doula Services. So yeah. I have a website and Facebook and Instagram and everything. I’m getting things kicked off and I’m very, very excited to really start working with other families and helping them realize that your intuition is powerful. Your birth experience really matters. Meagan: It really does. It really does. It is not that it matters of the method, but the experience is impactful. Ashley: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Meagan: Right? Well, thank you so much again. Ashley: Thank you. I really appreciate your time and everything that you guys do. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We are so honored to have today’s guest, Henci Goer, joining Meagan today. Henci has made it her life’s work to help women make informed decisions about their care in the birth space. She has written multiple books, received countless awards, and has made current obstetric research more accessible to women worldwide. Henci defines uterine scar separation and talks about what factors may contribute to or help prevent this from happening. Meagan and Henci talk extensively about VBAC, VBA2C, birth plans, induction, and epidurals all using evidence-based research. We love that Henci’s mission is to empower women and families to make the choices that are best for them. Here at The VBAC Link, our mission is the same!Additional LinksHenci’s Blog: Is VBAC Safe?Henci’s WebsiteLabor Pain: What’s Your Best Strategy? By Henci GoerOptimal Care in Childbirth: The Case for a Physiologic ApproachNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello. Welcome to The VBAC Link. This is Meagan and you guys, we have an amazing, amazing, amazing episode for you today. This episode has actually been kind of a long time coming. We have our friend, Henci Goer. She is just a wealth of knowledge. You’re going to absolutely pick this episode apart. I know it. You’re actually probably going to want a notebook so if you’re one of the listeners that goes on walks or is driving, you might want to press pause or listen to it and come back with a notebook because I know you’re going to want to write these stats down. We’re talking about uterine scar giveaway, you guys. I know that this is something huge. All of our listeners, every single one of our listeners that has had a VBAC is aware of uterine scar separation so this is going to be a really great episode filled with wonderful evidence and all of the things for you. So buckle up. It’s going to be amazing. Review of the WeekBut of course, we have a Review of the Week so I am going to quickly share that with you. This review today is actually on our How to VBAC: The Ultimate Parents Course. This is from Rosie. It says, “As someone who had an unplanned Cesarean myself and as a doula, I really appreciated how well-balanced this course is. There’s no shaming. There’s no bias. It’s just the facts.”Thank you, Rosie. I’m so glad that you are enjoying the course or have enjoyed the course. And if you didn’t know, we do have a How to VBAC Parents Course and a Doula Course for all of you birth workers out there who want to learn how to support your VBAC clients. We have this course. You can check it out at thevbaclink.com. Henci GoerMeagan: Okay, Ms. Henci. I am so honored to have you on the show today. I mean, really, it seems like we’ve been talking for months. I really think it was the beginning of the year, right? Henci: Something around there, yeah. Meagan: Yes. Oh my gosh, it’s been so long. Just for anyone out there who wants to know a little bit more about Henci and why we are having her on the show today, she actually started out as a Lamaze teacher and a doula. Her life’s work soon became analyzing and synthesizing obstetric research in order to give pregnant women, birthing people, and birth professionals access to what continues to be optimal care in childbirth. Just that right there, that little bit right there, I’m telling you guys, it really is her life’s work. If you Google her name, you’re going to find a ton of research. She’s an author of four books. Four books, you guys. Labor Pain, What is Your Best Strategy?, Optimal Care in Childbirth: The Case for Physiological Approach with co-author Amy Ramana– is she on MSN and CNN or has been mentioned? Tell me about that. Henci: She’s a nurse-midwife. That’s Master of Nursing. Meagan: Oh, I was thinking CNM in my head. MSN, so what is that? Henci: It’s a Master of something. I don’t know what that degree is. She’s a nurse-midwife. Meagan: She’s a CNM. Certified Nurse-Midwife, yes. In my head, I read CNM. The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth and Obstetric Myths Versus Research Realities. You guys. In addition, she has written numerous blog posts, articles, given lectures around the world, and here she is today on our podcast. I’m so honored. In recognition of her work, she has received among so many others, the American College of Nurse-Midwives’ Best Book of the Year. Henci, congratulations on that. Henci: Yeah, that was a thrill. Meagan: That is amazing. Lamaze International Presidents Award, DONA International Claus– Henci: Both of their memories are a blessing. Meagan: I know. Seriously, a research award on that. Life Achievement Award, I mean, you guys. She has so many awards and here she is to talk with you, Women of Strength, all about one of the biggest topics in VBAC. Right? Uterine separation, also known as uterine rupture. When I started talking with Henci, I love that she was like, “You know, I don’t love to call it uterine rupture. It’s uterine separation.” I have really grown to love that over the last few months that we have been talking. Yeah, so let’s talk about it. What is uterine scar separation, Henci? What is that? Henci: Well, before we get started because I think we are going to be giving a lot of information. I want to emphasize that one of the things that took so long is that what we decided to do is that I would do a blog post that had all of the detailed information in it.Meagan: And it does. Henci: So, not to worry. I imagine that with the notes for the podcast, you’ll post a link to the blog post which will have detailed numbers in it. My life’s work– and I love the review of your course because just sits where I sit. My life’s work has been wanting to give women and birthing people the ability to make choices having all complete, accurate information on the pros and cons of their option which is really difficult to get as you probably know and your people probably know. Meagan: It is. Yes. Henci: What they choose to do with it, it’s just that I’m there for the information. No judgment. I’m here to help people decide they want to plan a repeat Cesarean. Whatever it is, I want people to have accurate, balanced information to the best of my ability to create a space where they can make the choice that’s right for them and their families. Meagan: Absolutely. I love that so much and that is really what we are here about at The VBAC Link. There’s no shaming in choosing a repeat Cesarean. There’s no shaming in choosing an epidural over unmedicated, right? There’s no wrong way to birth, but the most important thing to us here at The VBAC Link is that you know the facts, you know the options, and you choose the best route for you. Henci: And then the other piece which is part of my work as well is to go beyond the information and say, “So now you have this information, what can you do with it?” What are the tips, ideas, and recommendations that will help you craft a plan that will help take you in the direction that you want to go? I’m very careful. This may be one of the more important things that I say to your group and it’s not informational. I’m very carefully not saying “goal”. I think it’s very important to distinguish intention from goal. Goal assumes that you have you get somewhere and if you don’t get to that place then you failed, right? The intention– is this is the direction that you want to go in?To have that in mind helps you, first of all, to plan the journey in a way that’s most likely to succeed in getting there, but it also helps you have your priorities so that if things happen along the way, you’re able to be flexible to know what’s really important, to navigate the space, but to understand that sometimes life has other plans so if you don’t take anything else away from what I say today, please take away that because I think that’s really key. Meagan: Yeah. As a doula, when we’re doing prenatals with our clients, a lot of people will be like, “Can you help me write a birth plan?” I love the idea surrounding birth plans. Let’s have this idea of how we want this birth to go, but I like to reference it more as birth preferences. “Here are my preferences and I’m going to label them from A to D, most important to less important, and have this idea and this plan, but then also know that there are other options and it’s okay if I choose those. It’s okay if my birth goes another route because I have these preferences and we’re going to do everything we can to have them, but we know it doesn’t always pan out that way. We know that. Henci: I think too that something has gone wrong. I talk about this in the introduction to my latest book. I think “plan” has gotten a bad rap. So a plan isn’t a laundry list or a blueprint. It’s more like, “Are you planning for a career? Well then, you’re going to decide what you’re going to do to take steps in that direction. Are you planning a vacation?” But it’s not something that has checkboxes on it. Meagan: It’s not a list. Henci: I think, if I may be so bold, the problem with preference is that at least, I think especially if you talk about preferences to medical staff, it becomes like, “Well, I think I’d rather wear a blue gown or have chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla.” It doesn’t have the same strength as saying– Meagan: “This is my plan.”Henci: And that can be internal to the woman or the birthing person. But yeah, let’s get into the meat of what I want to say today. Meagan: No, I love that message though. I do love that message. I think it would be really good if we did stop because the reason why we change “plan” is because if things don’t go as planned, we failed. That’s how our minds work and it’s not how it is, but that’s how the world has–Henci: Right, but this I think is what happened when birth plans became a thing in the medical environment. It became a checklist. But when you say, “I’m planning a vacation,” if your plane flight gets delayed and you miss your connection to the cruise boat, you don’t say, “Oh, I failed.” Right? Meagan: Right. Henci: It’s a plan. “All right. How am I going to get to Costa Rica?” It’s a very different mindset and I’d just like to relieve the audience from the idea that a plan is too limited. Meagan: Yeah. I love that. I love that. Let’s talk about how when we are planning to have a VBAC and when we are going for a trial of labor after a Cesarean, we have a lot of providers talking about–Henci: I’m going to plan a VBAC trial. I think language is just so key to all of this. Meagan: Right? I know. Henci: A trial suggests that– Meagan: We’re trying. We’re trying. Henci: The other word that I’d just like to take out is “success”. You either plan a VBAC and have a VBAC or you plan a VBAC and you have a repeat Cesarean. Meagan: Like you say, those words are so important. We talk about VBAC and TOLAC language in our course and talk about how you might hear TOLAC and that actually might be triggering. It is to a lot of people because you are like, “I’m not trying to do anything. I’m going to have this baby. My goal or my plan is to have a vaginal birth after a Cesarean.” I don’t love trial, but we talk about how that is how medical professionals will label it so we try to get comfortable with the term TOLAC so when we hear it at birth, we’re not triggered, but knowing in our minds, we are planning to have this VBAC. So when we are planning for our VBAC, one of the number one things that focuses on that from a lot of providers is uterine separation. Henci: Right and even there, the language that the medical practitioners use is right with the language of failure. So let’s even take that. You hear, “What are my odds of–” even if they don’t call it uterine rupture? The thing is that there are a couple of really big studies, like 50,000 because now we have these big databases and in one of them, the likelihood of the scar giving way was 5 out of 1000 and in the other one, it was 3 out of 1000. What you have to think of is, in one of those studies, the odds were 995 out of 1000 that you wouldn’t have a problem with your scar and in the other one, it was 997 out of 1000 that you would not have a problem with your scar. The other thing that people have to understand is that even if you do, even if the scar gives way, yes, it’s an emergency. The odds of having something bad happen to your baby– Meagan: Catastrophic, yeah. Henci: Catastrophic happen to your baby are again, 997 out of 1000. When that problem happens with your scar, 997 times out of 1000, your baby is going to be just fine. You’re going to have an emergency Cesarean, but your baby is going to be fine. Meagan: Usually Mom is fine too. Henci: Yes, absolutely. So you have to think in those terms so that the numbers are very low. The thing there is that it’s a general number. Meagan: Right. It is a general number. That is something that we really, really need to keep in mind. This is a general number. Henci: I want to drill down and look at some things that affect that number. The first one, and don’t worry, I go into details and give all of the numbers in the blog post. The first one is what I noticed when I started doing the research for this is that you have two factors that pull in opposite directions. One of them pulls towards having a problem with the scar and that is the use of induction or augmentation. The other pull in the direction of not having a problem with the scar and that’s having a prior VBAC. Before we get to, “Well, my last baby was big. Does that increase my chance because I might have a bigger baby this time?” Those two things are key and one of them, you sort of have control over. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, not inducing. Henci: What I can tell you is that it’s pretty clear that the stronger the stimulus to the uterus, the more likely you are to have a problem with the scar. In other words, particularly the highest risk is if you are induced at all just with oxytocin and then if you’re induced or augmented, it really goes up– this is really the key point– if you are induced when the cervix isn’t favorable for labor and they give you an agent. Meagan: To help soften the cervix and get you ready for induction. Henci: Right. It does a great job of softening the cervix, but there actually may be a reason why the agents that soften the cervix are problematic for the scar because the cervix is made of connective tissue. What those agents do is that they cause the cervix to soften by pulling in water and softening the way you’d wet a sponge. Meagan: I love that analogy. I’ve never thought of that. Henci: Guess what the uterine scar tissue is made up of? Connective tissue. That could be where the problem is. But anyway, so the more you augment the uterus, the more likely you are to cause a problem with the scar if the contractions are stronger and longer and for longer periods of time. One thing to keep in mind is that induction is never an emergency or a necessity. If, for example, you do have a medical issue like your blood pressure is going up, there’s a real reason that induction and getting the baby out sooner rather than later is possible. I’m going to put this on the back burnerhere are studies that show if you are really careful to induce to mimic as much as possible what the body does naturally, you can induce without overstressing the scar. That’s something to say if, “Oh my god, if my only choice is induction or a repeat Cesarean, I guess I’d better choose repeat Cesarean,” then I would say, “Yes, there are ways to do this.” Like the wicked witch says, “These things must be done carefully.” That’s one thing. The other thing is that there is very strong evidence that if you have had a VBAC, you are much less likely to have a problem with a scar. Having a prior vaginal birth, a vaginal birth before a Cesarean doesn’t seem to have as much of an effect on that, but if you get a VBAC under your belt, you are very, very likely to go on having uneventful VBACs if you choose to have more children. Meagan: Why do you think that is? Just because the uterus has progressed and it has pushed a baby out? I read that question a lot and in my head, I know there is a showing that you are more likely, but in my head, I’m like, “Why? Why is it exactly why you are more likely to have a VBAC if you’ve had a vaginal birth and if you’ve had a VBAC, you’re less likely to have separation when the uterus is doing the same chemical functionality?” It’s contracting and squeezing and pushing a baby out.Henci: If that were true, then it wouldn’t make a difference whether you’ve had a vaginal birth before you’ve had a Cesarean or you’ve had a VBAC after you’ve had a Cesarean. Meagan: It’s really weird. Henci: So I have no idea. I’m just the literature lady. I just can tell you what the research says. Meagan: Yeah. Right? I don’t know that either. I can’t figure it out myself either. I don’t understand why. Yeah. Okay, I had a vaginal birth and then I had a C-section and then now I don’t have as high of a risk. It’s just interesting. It’s really interesting. Henci: Yeah, certainly. If you have had a VBAC, for anybody to say, “Oh, we just don’t do VBACs and you really need to have a repeat Cesarean,” your best option is to plan a repeat VBAC. I mean, that is a really strong link there. Meagan: Right, but we’re not having providers suggest it. We’re still having providers saying, “It is your best option to have a scheduled repeat Cesarean.” Henci: Do they say why?Meagan: We have people writing all over. One, we just don’t support it. Two, the vaginal birth that you did have– say if they had a vaginal birth– wasn’t until 41 weeks so if you have a baby by 39 weeks, it’s fine. You can have that but after 39 weeks you can’t. Henci: Yeah, that’s what I call a Cinderella VBAC. You can have a VBAC if you go into labor before 40 weeks and if your previous baby wasn’t too big and if you make progress in labor, but you know, the basic reason is, “We don’t do VBACs here because we can’t handle obstetric emergencies.” Oh, wait. Let’s think about this. You’re a hospital. You have women coming in in labor. Some of them have high blood pressure. Go down the list and you’re saying that you can’t handle an obstetric emergency 24/7? You shouldn’t be doing births here. Meagan: You shouldn’t be having babies here. That happens a lot where you’ve got more rule areas like, “We can’t support VBAC because we can’t handle an emergency Cesarean.” It’s like, “Well, if you can’t handle an emergency Cesarean, then that’s a big concern for anyone to give birth because VBAC or not, we know emergent Cesareans can be needed for first-time moms.” If they can’t handle a VBAC Cesarean, then how are they totally able to handle someone who has an emergency Cesarean just in general?Henci: Unfortunately, this isn’t something that your audience can change. They’re not going to talk that hospital into changing, so it just hurts my heart that people are put in this sort of form of dilemma where they don’t have a good option. They have a least worst option. Meagan: They feel stuck. That is the same thing with me. It hurts my heart that so many people feel so stuck out there. We have mamas that travel out of the country or out of the state just to find somewhere but that option isn’t for everyone. So it’s really hard if you feel stuck and you’re not feeling supported in your community. So yeah. It hurts. That’s a whole other type of podcast. Henci: That’s a whole other topic. Meagan: Yeah, so let’s talk about what uterine separation is. We talk about uterine separation. I’m going to use the word that a lot of providers use as rupture. So when we hear this really big word, when I picture a water balloon breaking– Henci: That’s why I don’t like that word. Meagan: That’s what we hear. That’s what we hear. We hear “rupture” and that’s what I hear is a water balloon breaking and popping. That is really terrifying to hear and to think of when in actuality, it’s not usually how that happens, right? Henci: Right. Meagan: Our uterus doesn’t just break open and explode. It doesn’t so let’s talk about separation. What does it mean? What does that mean? And there are multiple types of separation. Henci: Actually, it’s been interesting to see because I’ve actually been involved in this work since the 1980’s so to watch the evolution when VBAC started coming in and went out again, as the research has grappled with an agreement on a definition of exactly what that meant because they find this all the time in repeat Cesareans that little windows can open up in the scar. It’s not a big deal. Scars are tough. They don’t cause any problems so what they finally ended up with is the scar completely gives way to form an opening in the uterus between the uterus and the abdominal cavity. That would be in combination with symptoms, usually heavy bleeding or the baby being in distress. Meagan: Or baby going high up. Henci: There is no clinical significance to a window. There are no symptoms. Nobody is hurt. Nobody is at risk, but if the scar gives way to the extent that there is heavy bleeding and in very rare cases, the baby or part of the baby can actually be in the abdominal cavity, that’s a scary situation. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, and talking about the uterine window– as she was saying, it’s where it thins out so we’ve got this thinning. The crazy thing is that there really aren’t any symptoms. Henci: There are none. Meagan: You really wouldn’t know if you had a uterine window unless you were opened up. Henci: Unless you had a repeat surgery, yeah. So there is the interesting thing about that. One of the things they tried to do– and I hope that none of the doctors they are encountering are doing this– was they thought, “Hmm. Why don’t we do an ultrasound to see how thin the scar is? Maybe that will help us predict whether the scar will give way.” It turns out and there is absolute agreement on this that you can’t use that. It isn’t accurate enough to tell you anything and what’s more, the correlation in that study was when she was pregnant, we did this ultrasound and we measured the thickness of the scar. Then, when they had their surgery, we looked to see if in fact there was a problem with the scar. They found some little windows, but that didn’t mean they would have had a problem if they would have gone into labor. So that whole idea of, “We have some way of predicting when the scar will give way so that we can advise whether it’s a good idea to try a VBAC,” all of the studies that have been done of that have said that they aren’t accurate enough to be used to counsel a person about VBAC. So anybody that’s using that one is not scientific. Meagan: Yet we get those messages all the time. “Hey, my doc said I can’t have a VBAC because my uterine thickness is too thin.” We get that reason all of the time, being told that they cannot VBAC because of that. It’s so disheartening when we’ve got evidence showing certain things, but we have providers not following evidence-based information. Henci: Yes. You can always find a reason to do something you don’t want to do. Meagan: Yes. That is what I was going to point out too. Sometimes when we have providers saying things that are completely opposite of what evidence even says or just don’t support evidence in general. We got a message saying that they had a 60% chance of uterine rupture. Henci: Oh sheesh. Meagan: Yeah. They said that their uterine scar would give way 60% of the time. I’m like, “No way. No.” Where do we even get that? But a lot of the time, these providers are, like you said, saying things because they don’t want to do things or they’ve seen things that make them scared so they put people under this general umbrella and they’re like, “Oh, you’ve had a C-section. You’re under this umbrella and this umbrella is not going to let you have a VBAC.” Henci: I have a dear friend who was interested. She was a marriage and family counselor and she was doing work with PTSD, child-related PTSD. We were sitting at a conference and there was an obstetrician who was lecturing who started actually talking about an emergency birth where things went wrong and she actually started to tear up. My friend had an epiphany. She said, “Oh my god. It’s not just women who develop PTSD.”Meagan: Yeah. It’s these providers. Henci: It’s birth professionals as well and if you’ve been at a crisis birth even if everything turned out right, but if it was that sort of an emergency, “Oh my god, we might lose this mother or we might lose this baby,” that’s going to change the way you practice because what is the signal effect of PTSD? It’s intended to be protective. Your brain says, “I never want to be in that situation again. What do I need to do to avoid it?” Meagan: Right. Henci: I have compassion for that, but it doesn’t help your audience who is stuck with these people who have no idea what is actually driving their decisions. Meagan: Right. I guess I want to mention that just because sometimes I feel like, and even on this podcast, we’re guilty of saying things that make it feel like we’re painting bad pictures of providers and putting them in a bad light. That’s not the goal here in this podcast. That’s definitely not what we want to do but we do know that a lot of people have been let down. Henci: Yeah. Meagan: I mean, here’s this failed word but there are a lot of people out there who have been failed. Henci: They’ve been failed by their care provider. I will use failed in that case. Meagan: They’ve been failed by the staff or by their care provider or their location. A lot of the time, it’s really hard because we don’t know what that other person has experienced. We hope that those professionals will work through those and stop putting these general umbrellas over people, but we know that it’s probably not going to ever stop happening. Henci: No, unfortunately. But I want to move back to how we just talked about a case where the research doesn’t back up what the doctor says, but I want to talk about a couple of cases where- and this is where being more critical of what the research has to say. It does on the surface back doctors up. So now let’s get into some of the categories for induction. The big one is, “We don’t want you to get past 40 weeks because we know that with longer pregnancy duration, there is more chance for scar rupture.” That sounds good and it’s actually in the research, but here’s the catch. Underneath that is what happens at 40 or 41 weeks? They induce labor and there is research that shows that the reason that you get more is that all of the scar ruptures were in induced labor. We know that induction increases the risk of scar rupture. It creates the illusion that it’s pregnancy duration. It’s not. It’s pregnancy management. The other one where that happens and it’s actually in the research is women who are expecting a big baby or they think the baby is big. Meagan: Suspected big baby. Henci: First of all, if your doctor says, “Oh, you know. This baby is going to be on the big side. We did the ultrasound. I’ve been feeling your belly.” You might as well flip a coin because there is a 50/50 chance that that is incorrect and your baby isn’t going to be on the big side. So number one, they may be anxious about something that isn’t even true. Meagan: It’s so true. Henci: The second thing is, then what happens next? Let’s induce before the baby gets bigger. So again, you find an association between VBAC labors with bigger babies and an increased risk of scar rupture but that’s not the root cause. The root cause is those laboring women were induced. So that is something to take into account when you hear those things and again, I’ve got the numbers. The reason I keep coming back to the importance of the blog post is one of the things that I think is less than helpful is vagueness like, “There is a chance.” The first question I’d have is, “How big?” so I wanted to as much as possible give people the numbers so that they can do what feels right for them but also know how those numbers are distorted by management. The VBAC rate itself is distorted by management because VBAC studies outside of the hospital coming from home births and birth centers show a VBAC rate in women who have not had any prior VBACs– the first birth was the Cesarean and this is the second delivery. The VBAC rate was 81%. Out of the hospital-based studies, they range up to the low 70 percentile, but the hospital studies don’t get up that high.Here’s the important thing. If it’s at all possible, find a care provider who’s really comfortable with VBAC and knows how to manage them because where do you see the bad outcomes? To a huge extent, they’re in labors that were induced and labors in which there was a problem with the scar which is much more likely if they were induced or augmented or she wasn’t given enough time and then she went to C-section.The complications happen in C-sections so the more you are able to have a birth that proceeds at its own pace with no stimulation and there is a spontaneous vaginal birth, your birth by your own efforts, that’s when it’s minuscule in terms of having complications. Meagan: Right. It’s so hard because yes. We talked about this earlier. Oh, we’ve got hypertension and oh, we’ve got this thing and we have options. Do we induce or do we have a C-section? It still is very possible to have a VBAC with an induction. We’re just talking about uterine giveaways and the chances. You increase your chances by choosing to be induced. That doesn’t guarantee you’re going to have that happen or anything but you have to know walking into it, “Okay, I have this, this, and this, and I’m going to choose to induce.” You have to know the risk that you are taking. We have to weigh out the risks and say, “Okay. I know it increases a little bit. I’m comfortable taking that risk or I am not comfortable taking that risk.” Henci: Right. Or how can I minimize my risk? Because it still is possible. You have to do it diplomatically but if you have a care provider who is willing to be flexible and is like, “Yeah, I’m not sure about this one,” but you’re able to have that conversation where you feel like they can hear you and you’re going to be respectful and hear them, then I think there’s a lot that can be done. You can say, “No or not yet.” Meagan: Yep. We just made a post on Instagram and Facebook about that saying, “I appreciate the time that we just took. I’m going to choose to wait” or “Thank you so much for that, but I’m not going to do that.” Henci: The other thing I would suggest if you’re in a situation where you’re saying no is to have a discussion around which new information would change your mind because that again creates space with, “Oh, I don’t have one of these patients that’s just being difficult,” but to say and talk about, “If my blood pressure goes up–”. I don’t know what it might be, but to have a conversation about under what circumstances might you consider changing your mind. Meagan: Right, yeah. It’s powerful. Conversation and information are powerful. I always encourage someone to ask questions and to get their research. If we have a provider saying you have a 60% of uterine scar giveaway, let’s talk about that. “Wow, that seems really high. Is there any way that you can provide me with that information so that I can study that and see what’s comfortable for me?” And then you’ll look and it and go, “Oh, there aren’t statistics showing that I have that? Okay.” Then you might make a different choice, but if you just hear that number and don’t ask any questions, then you automatically might say, “That seems really scary. I’m not even going to go there.” We have these myths and these numbers and if we don’t ask for information, we’re doing ourselves a disservice. Henci: I’ve got the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists practice bulletin. I wonder if there is any way– I mean, a summary of recommendations and conclusions backed by level A evidence, good and consistent scientific evidence. The first one on the list is, “Most women with one previous Cesarean delivery with a low transverse incision are candidates for and should be counseled about and offered TOLAC.” Meagan: Yes. Henci: My eye goes down and I want to talk about women who’ve had two prior Cesareans. I know we wanted to talk about that. Meagan: We do want to talk about that. Yes. Henci: I will say that they’re not enthusiastic about it, but nonetheless, this is under level B evidence which is limited or inconsistent scientific evidence, and what it says is, “Given the overall data, it is reasonable to consider women with two previous low transverse Cesarean deliveries to be candidates for TOLAC and to counsel them based on the combination of other factors.” They have all of these VBAC predictions which I’m just going to be blunt, they’re crap because they’re evaluating the wrong thing. What they should be evaluating is the doctor’s propensity to care for VBAC and their confidence in VBAC. Then you’d get the numbers that would really correlate with whether labor would end in VBAC or they wouldn’t. Meagan: Right. Right. I know. Then just going one step further, vaginal birth after two Cesareans, then we’ve got people talking about vaginal birth after three or more. There’s no evidence in there because we’re not doing them very often. Henci: The evidence is not there for three. It is there for two, although again, you can get very low, again, the equivalent of sort of the average. There are some Israeli studies where there is a very large population of women there who have large families so you do get people with two Cesareans, but the thing there is they need to be managed carefully. In one case, it was like, “We don’t do inductions other than by rupturing membranes in someone whose cervix is ready to go.” There are ways to do that. But what I wanted to say is that now here’s a case where you have to look at the other side which is that there are studies that show there are consequences because as you accumulate uterine scars, the complications in subsequent pregnancies go up. So when you get to two prior Cesareans and there are studies that looked at the branch in the road. You had two prior Cesareans. Did you plan a VBAC or did you plan a repeat Cesarean? And guess what? The severe complication rates were identical. It was an identical rate of hysterectomies. There was the same rate of perinatal mortality so it’s not like, “Oh, I’ll just choose that safe third Cesarean.” There are increased risks, but there are also increased risks to taking another Cesarean on board. Meagan: And then to add to that, future pregnancies. With each Cesarean that we have, we have also risks in future pregnancies that are not discussed when we’re counseling in this medical world from what we’re finding. We’re being counseled for VBAC. We’re being counseled about the risk of uterine separation and the VBAC issues, but we’re not talked to about the blood loss or the risk of hysterectomy. We’re not talking about those things. Henci: Or chronic pain. Meagan: Chronic pain or dense adhesions or placenta accreta. We don’t talk about these issues or even deeper issues. We’re not talking about them. That is where I think is one of the places we’re going wrong in this medical world. We’re not truly counseling on all sides of things to really give people the opportunity to make that really informed decision. We’re kind of just prefacing over here, but like, “Oh, but we could schedule your baby’s birthday and get your hair done the day before because you know exactly when your baby is coming.” We’re not counseling. Like you said, there are issues and there are risks. So with VBAC after two C-sections, through your education and ACOG not saying, “Yeah, go for it for sure, for sure,” But they’re saying, “It should be reasonable.” Through your uterine scar separation research, is it substantially larger? I know there are going to be numbers in the blog and we talk about it in our course and things, but is it like you have a 0.4% to what? To 10% if you’ve had two to 1%? We’ve got people being told things all over the place. I guess my question is through your research with VBAC after two Cesareans, we’re going to specifically talk about two Cesareans here, is it increased and truly that much higher? I mean, I know the answer, but let’s talk about it. Is it really that much higher or is it pretty low statistically? Henci: Well, I actually turned to that page in the blog post and I had a couple of different studies. There was an increase in both studies. It was quite small. The difference in these studies, I really think, had to do with the fact that in one of the studies, that was the one where they would only allow the rupture of membranes as a means of induction. So in one case, it went from 3 per 1000 with planned VBAC after one Cesarean to 6 in 1000 with planned VBAC after two Cesareans, and in the other one, it went from 7 to 1000 to 16 per 1000. But that’s still a 98% chance of not having a problem with your scar. Meagan: Right. Henci: The thing is, there is a consciousness, but if you’re planning a large family, that maybe I think a lot of care providers will say, “Well, if you’re only planning on having two children, it really is not that big of a deal to have another Cesarean.” But the thing with that is that I think it is really important to understand that you may plan to complete your family with two children. That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what’s going to happen. Meagan: That’s true. That is so true. Henci: I think unless you or your intimate partner are planning on doing something permanent about your fertility, you have to consider the fact that you may choose to have another baby or you may find yourself pregnant and decide you’re having another baby. Meagan: Right. Henci: I think you always have to take that possibility into consideration when you’re making that first decision. Personally, this is totally my opinion and my judgment. No pressure here. I think the best thing that you can do is get off the Cesarean track if you can. Meagan: Mhmm, yeah. I mean, it really is. There’s proof in the pudding that a vaginal birth is the ideal route in the long run overall. Henci: Yep. Meagan: I guess as we’re wrapping up here, let’s talk a little bit about, well, how you do you decide? How do we decide? Henci: I know that I wanted to get to something because we talked about this. I wanted to get to the epidural issue. Meagan: Epidurals yeah. Let’s talk about that too. Yeah. Henci: What you are saying is you’re hearing both sides. One is that you can’t have an epidural and the other is that you have to have an epidural. Meagan: Literally, they say that you have to have an epidural to have a VBAC. Some of them are like, “Well, yeah. You can VBAC. Just know.” I feel like it’s used as this fearful thing. “Just know that you can’t have an epidural so you’re going to have to go unmedicated.” Henci: Let’s take care of that one that you can’t have an epidural first because that’s the easy one. Again, I go back to ACOG. Level A evidence. “Epidural analgesia for labor may be used as part of a TOLAC.” I mean, I was jaw-droppingly shocked because it’s at least two decades since that myth about, “Oh, we can’t give you an epidural because then we won’t know if there is scar separation.” So that is totally bogus. But let’s get to the, “You have to have an epidural.” The thing about that is that there are two problems, I think. First of all, the idea is in case there is an emergency, we can deal with it faster. The thing is, an epidural is problematic in a couple of ways. One is, one of the more common side effects of an epidural is that there is a drop in the mother’s blood pressure and the baby’s heart rate. Guess what is the best predictor that the scar has given way? The number one predictor that the scar has given way– and again, in most of those cases, it hasn’t but nonetheless, it’s a better predictor than pain, is the baby’s heart rate. You are adding, number one, something that will possibly provoke concern and a Cesarean you don’t need. But the other thing is that it interferes with mobility. I think the number one reason– I mean, you want everything in your favor in terms of making good progress and an epidural interferes with that. Plus, you then have the problem of epidural fever because obviously, they want to give you that epidural early. You’d maybe have it for hours and then you’d start to develop a fever and they’d be like, “Mmm, it’s time to get the baby out.” An epidural actually decreases your chance of a VBAC. But about the emergency piece, the thing is if you have a sterile water lock where you’ve got the business end of the IV, the needle is there but it’s not hooked up to anything. Meagan: Are you talking about the “just in case” epidurals? Henci: Right, the “We want you to have an epidural because of the emergency possibility. We’ll already have you anesthetized.” We first talked about, “We’ve given you a procedure that may lead to an unnecessary Cesarean,” and they decreased your probability of progressing to a vaginal birth. So that’s already like, “Umm, really? Do you want to do that to me? Why?” The answer is, “Well, in case there’s an emergency.” You can do a spinal a lot faster than an epidural. It is perfectly possible to get you numb within a very short period of time and sufficient to do the Cesarean surgery. It really is kind of bogus. Meagan: Yeah. I want to talk about this too because if it is a true, serious, serious surgery where we’ve got minutes if that, we’re going to usually be put under general anesthesia. Henci: Well, that’s a possibility too. Meagan: Yeah, so that’s the thing. Henci: The other thing is that I also want to move into that gray zone of, well, I just talked about the drawbacks of having an epidural, but I mentioned that there’s a fair number of members of your audience who are thinking, “I’d really like to have an epidural.” For some of them, depending on what their first labor was like, it may have been like, “I can only contemplate VBAC if I can also contemplate having an epidural.” This is where my new book comes in. The full title is, Labor Pain, What’s Your Best Strategy? Get the Data. Make a Plan. Take Charge of Your Birth. In that book, I give all of the evidence, pros, and cons of all of the different other methods of do-it-yourself comfort measures to epidurals and then the last chapter is again, the fork in the road. You would like to avoid an epidural and here are all the ways of doing that, and you would like you plan an epidural. You want to make an epidural plan A and then here are all of the ways of maximizing your chances of having one that goes smoothly. I don’t think I need to go into all of the details here on the show, but if anybody is interested in finding out more about the pros and cons of their pain-coping options including epidurals and how to plan to avoid an epidural if it is plan A or the reverse, then I think my book could be helpful. Meagan: That is amazing. Just to let you guys know, we’re going to have so many things in our show notes here. We’re going to have, of course, the blog with all of the numbers going deeper into what we’re talking about today. We’re going to have a link to all of her books because I think it is important to know things from all of them. Henci: I mean, I would actually stop you because I think Thinking Women’s Guide was a great book. It was published in 1999. Meagan: Yeah, so it’s a little older. It’s a little dated. Henci: Optimal Care was really intended for birth professionals. Meagan: We have a lot of birth professionals. Henci: Even that was in 2012. Meagan: We have a lot of birth professionals listening. Henci: So I really want to preface the new book. It’s been out less than a year so it’s really current. Meagan: Mhmm. We’re definitely going to have that number one. I haven’t read it yet, so I’m going to read it myself because I think it’s important too. I know you and I trust you but I want to know even more so I can keep referring it out and also learn by reading it myself. Henci: Yeah, I think you’ll get some ideas for your classes. Meagan: Yeah, for my clients, and keep referring them out. I mean, you guys. The more information you have, the better. The more knowledge that you have under your belt as you are entering into these births, it’s going to help you along the way. It’s going to help you feel more prepared, more educated, and more confident. Right, Henci? Don’t you feel like confidence is something that no matter what, VBAC or not, just with birth in general that we need? Henci: That’s why the name of my new series– I’m working on a book on induction– is Take Charge of Your Birth. You can’t take control of your birth because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Life happens. But you can take charge in terms of having the information, having thought through what is really important to you, and there is actually research on this. Feeling in charge is the key component in having a positive experience. If you felt helpless, if you felt like you didn’t have any say in what was going on and you were scared and you didn’t feel supported, you could have a lovely, uneventful vaginal birth and be traumatized. If you were in charge, you were a full participant in all of the decisions, you felt like your options were presented, you made the best choices you could, the people around you were encouraging and supportive of what you were trying, and you could have a very difficult experience in terms of what actually happened and it would still be a positive experience. Trauma is a very personal experience. It’s what you feel in the moment. No one can say of you that you shouldn’t have been traumatized by that birth because it wasn’t traumatic enough. It’s subjective. Meagan: Right. Right. Henci: But as a whole, feeling like you are in charge is powerful.Meagan: It’s really powerful and there are actual stats behind that. My second birth didn’t go the way I desired. I still to this day believe that I wasn’t allowed enough time or wasn’t given enough resources that I deserved. But at the same time, once the decision was made to have a second Cesarean, a repeat Cesarean, there were a lot of things that I communicated. I took charge at this moment. “If this is how it’s going to go, this is what I need and want.” My providers were really receptive to that. With my second Cesarean, although still not desired at all or even felt that it was necessary, I actually have a very different viewpoint on it because I was actively involved in that birth and in the decisions that were being made. Again, even though I didn’t feel that the decision that I made for the repeat Cesarean was really warranted, it was a decision that I made. I accept that. The other decisions along the way, I literally can look back at that birth and say that it was healing. A lot of people are like, “Wait, what? You’re saying that you didn’t want your second C-section but it was healing?” I can say, “Yeah, absolutely. It was healing because I was able to really participate in this birth in a different way.” I just think it’s so powerful because I could have looked back with a lot of anger and hate. I probably could have beat myself up even more, but I viewed that as a positive, healing experience. I think that’s what I needed to end my C-section journey. I needed that birth to say, “Okay. This is a better experience. I’m ending the C-section journey now. VBAC from here on out, but I needed this experience to have a different view on the C-section experience as a whole.”Henci: I think I heard something else which is key and correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like when you agreed to the second Cesarean, you were making the best decision that you could at that time. You still had a decision. It sounds like you weren’t sort of bullied into the repeat Cesarean. It sounds like there was a discussion and you felt like, “Yeah, I think I’ll go along with the repeat.” I think that’s key too is when you do make a decision and it is your decision and you can own it, I think that helps too because later, you can say, “You know, if I were in that same spot again, I might do something different. I’ve learned something from that. But you know what? That was also what made sense to me at the time and now I can let go of it.”Meagan: Yeah, you know, when I got my op reports when I was going to interview all of the providers for my VBAC after two Cesarean baby, which I wasn’t even pregnant, but I started interviewing before, I was reviewing my op reports. As I was reading them, I did get a little triggered and I got a little bit angry. My husband looked at me as I had a tear rolling down my face saying, “These were unnecessary.” He said, “Babe? We made the best choice we knew at the moment with the information that was given to us at the moment.” Henci: Mhmm. Meagan: He said, “Do not ever shame yourself for making these choices because you were not given the information and you were not in a space mentally where you could be in that– oh, the statistics say–”. Right? That’s one of the reasons why I think doulas are so important because they can help remind you of those things, but I wasn’t in a space where I could go through my journal of information and say, “Oh, but this and this.” I was given these facts, this information, and I made a choice based off of the information that I was given. I can never shame myself for that. When he said that, I was like, “You know what? You’re right.” I would go back and do things differently if I were to look back. If I were there again, I probably would have made different choices or I would have done different things, but I’m loving the journey that those experiences have given me and brought me to. Does that make sense? Henci: Yes. Meagan: This journey that I’m on right now, I probably wouldn’t be on if I didn’t have those experiences. I wouldn’t be with all of you here today talking about VBAC and repeat Cesarean and what the evidence shows and sharing these absolutely amazing stories and bringing on these incredible professionals without those experiences. So yeah. I had two births that I didn’t desire the outcome of the Cesarean, but I will be forever and ever grateful for those experiences. Henci: I will add that I wouldn’t be who I was here today if I hadn’t had an emotionally very negative experience. I talk about that in the prefaces of who I am today and why I wrote the book and the difference between my first birth and how I experienced my second. Well, the first one, I was delivered. The second one, I gave birth. That in a nutshell is the difference between the two and that started me on my journey. I wanted other women and birthing people to know that the choices that they made were crucial to how they were going to end up feeling about themselves, their partners, their babies, and their everything, that it was not trivial, and making my life’s work looking at the research, because that’s my skill so that they would have that information. Information that I didn’t have until I started reading stuff after my first delivery. Meagan: Yeah. That’s how a lot of us doulas and birth professionals start based on an experience where we want to help people have a different experience. We want to empower people. Henci: I’m so glad that you’re in the world. It sounds like you are doing a great service for a lot of people out there. Meagan: Aww, well thank you so much, and likewise. You are incredible. All of your blogs are amazing. Seriously, people could spend hours and hours and hours on your blogs just picking apart the information and the stats and putting these large studies into English because honestly, that’s one of the hardest things about studies. You go through and you’re like, “I don’t even know what this means. Can I just get a clear conclusion?” But your blogs make sense. They’re English to me. Henci: Oh, thank you. Meagan: I know they will be for so many of our followers as well. Well, thank you so much for being here today. Seriously, I am so, so grateful. If you guys want to go follow Henci, like I said, we’re going to have all of the links for all of the things in the show notes but you can also go onto Instagram and Facebook @takechargeofyourbirth.Henci: Yes. That is correct. Meagan: Or hencigoer.com. Henci: And actually, I think there are places on social media but if you go to hencigoer.com, you can also sign up for my newsletter. I have a monthly newsletter. Meagan: That’s what I was just going to say, hencigoer.com. Like I said, we’ll have this in the show notes. Go in there. Sign up for the newsletter. Sign up for all of the amazing things that she’s putting out because you really are. You’re a wealth of knowledge and it’s really so fun and I’m so honored that you took the time today to be with us. Henci: Well, it’s been my pleasure to be here. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Meagan and Julie talk about the ARRIVE trial and compare those findings with new research released from a retrospective study conducted at the University of Michigan. Many first-time moms and VBAC moms are being told by their providers that an elective induction at 39 weeks will reduce their chances of a C-section. Is this really true? Meagan and Julie will empower you with information about elective inductions to help you make decisions about your birth that are right for YOU.Additional LinksUniversity of Michigan StudyThe VBAC Link Blog: The ARRIVE TrialARRIVE TrialHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello you guys. Guess what? Julie is on today. I have kind of, well not kind of, really missed Julie. I reached out to her a month or so ago and was like, “Hey, would you like to come on with me and we can do episodes?” And she said, “Yes!”Julie: Yes. Meagan: I should have brought chocolate cake. Instead of her proposing to me with chocolate cake, I proposed to her with my smile. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know. I don’t know. But she said yes and I’m so glad that she said yes this time. So welcome, Julie. Welcome, welcome. Julie: Welcome. It’s good to be here. Meagan: Yeah. It’s good to have you here. It’s good to see your face. Julie and I are going to be talking about the ARRIVE trial today. That is something that if you’re not familiar with, it was done in 2018, and I think it was published in 2019. Does that sound right, Julie?Julie: Yeah, I think the final analysis was published in 2020. Meagan: Yeah. Julie: The study was completed in 2018. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. It is where they did a trial to see if elective induction at 39 weeks reduced a lot of things. Not just Cesarean, but because we are in the Cesarean world, it was definitely, I would say, one of the most important topics. Does it reduce Cesarean? But also, does it reduce the chances of preeclampsia, hypertension, and other things? But the big question was does it reduce the chances of Cesarean? So we are going to talk about that today. We have a blog on it today, but there is actually an update. That was done in May of 2023 so we are going to talk about that. Review of the WeekBut of course, we have a Review of the Week and Julie is going to do the honors. Julie: Yes. I’m so happy to be back and joining the podcast anytime. All right. This review is from bethanystaggart or something like that. The title is, “Podcast Was Part of My VBAC After Two C-Section Journey”. She says, “I am so thankful for this podcast. I listened to so many episodes in preparation for my VBAC after two Cesareans. Listening to other women share their stories gave me the courage to keep working and fighting for my upcoming birth. I just gave birth to my third boy and the birth was everything I could have asked for. I am so thankful for this podcast and blog and refer every expecting mom I know to it in hopes that it gives them the courage and confidence it gave me to get the birth they want and deserve.” That just makes me so happy to hear those things and to know that the podcast is making a difference in everybody’s lives. I feel like there is such a feeling of solidarity when we sit and listen to other people’s birth stories. There is so much we can learn and there is so much that we can be inspired by and there is so much that we can use as we navigate our own birth journeys. So thank you, Bethany, for leaving that incredible review. ARRIVE TrialMeagan: All right, Julie. ARRIVE Trial. I feel like when this came out, you and I– I’m going to say for sure I– was just a little grumpy. I was like, “This can’t be. This cannot be.” Being in the birth world, especially since COVID, but this is pre-COVID, we definitely see induction and it can happen just fine, super smooth, with no problems, but then there are a lot of times too where it doesn’t. We see the cascade that leads to that Cesarean. I remember when Julie and I started the birth course and the How to VBAC Prep Course, we were teaching in person. We had a mom who came and when we talked about this, she was like, “I was in that. I was in that trial.” We were like, “Oh, how did it go?” She was like, “Well, I’m here prepping for a VBAC.” She had a Cesarean. She talked to us a little bit about it, but Julie, what do you remember about your first feelings when this trial came out?Julie: Well, I had a really hard time because you and I have been to many, many, many, many, many births in a hospital, out of a hospital, inductions, unmedicated, medicated, scheduled C-sections, emergency C-sections, crash C-sections. We’ve been to all of it. I think that’s really the unique perspective that we have as doulas and birth photographers because we get to see the biggest range of births, I feel like, of all of the people that work in the birth world. My first reaction when the ARRIVE trial came out was that it did not reconcile with my real-life experiences and living in all of these types of births. There was this disconnect between what this study said and what I had witnessed. Before I even got into the study and saw all of the flaws and the different little nuances that people be considering that they don’t because I just knew that something didn’t feel right. This cannot be right. This cannot be right. Meagan: Mhmm, yeah. That is kind of how I felt too. It didn’t click. I was like, “So, what? What did they do?” This was my first question as I was reading. I was like, “What did they do to ‘lower the Cesarean rate’? What did they do differently?” I think that one of the most frustrating parts is that we don’t really know exactly all of the protocols and all of the exact nitty-gritty details of this study. They haven’t released it from my knowledge anyway. Julie: Yeah, and I looked too just a little bit before we started recording. Yeah, sure. It’s really interesting because in the study results, the elective induction group had a Cesarean rate of 19%, and the expectant management group, which we’ll go into all of the reasons why that is a little bit crazy, had a Cesarean rate of 22%. But here’s the thing. The national Cesarean rate is 30% so I feel like already, they were doing things in the study that impacted the chances of having a C-section anyways. But we don’t know what those protocols are. We don’t know how they were induced. The results said, “When this induction protocol is followed, then the Cesarean rate is reduced,” but the problem is that we have providers all over the country inducing willy-nilly not knowing what the protocol is, and probably being more aggressive in their inductions. We know the providers that led this study. We know who they are. We have worked with them in their space. We know how they practice and we know that the induction protocol was probably– and again, this is me speaking with no real knowledge, just my assumptions. Take that for what it’s worth. They probably had a pretty gentle, slow induction process. They were probably pretty patient along the way just from what we know of those providers and the hospital that it originated from. That was also a thought. 22% is not a low Cesarean rate, but it’s 8-9% lower than the national average. So that’s something I think to consider as well into that. Meagan: Yeah. It is interesting to me because it was 50,000 patients that were screened for this study. Of those 50,000, 22,000 were eligible but only just over 6,000 actually accepted to be in this trial. Those numbers to me are pretty dramatic. 50,000 to 22,000 to 6,000 is a really big thing. I wish I knew more. We know what people have said who were in the ARRIVE trial. They had to do certain things, but I wish I knew more about why all of those people were declining and then why from 50 to 22,000 were eliminated. Why were people eliminated? But maybe it’s just because, “Yeah, we don’t want to,” because what we had seen is that induction raises Cesarean deliveries. Like Julie said, yes. We are going to share some studies and some numbers and things, but this is all just us brainstorming this out loud really because it is really interesting to me. Like Julie was saying, how long were these people able to be induced? Because induction– I mean, even if you go listen to all of these stories, Julie. Induction is not something that is able to be carried out for days and days and days usually. Julie: But sometimes it is. Meagan: Sometimes it is. Julie: Sometimes and that’s what we were talking about or I was talking about earlier. At this hospital where the study originated and where the providers practice that were the authors of this study, I have been to many, many, many two and three-day long inductions there that ended in vaginal deliveries. Meagan: So have I. Julie: And not all hospitals are that patient. In fact, I don’t know of any that are that patient in our area. Meagan: Yeah. No. I mean, the hardest thing is that if your client doesn’t want to be induced, you want them to not be induced because that’s not what they want, but if they are going to be induced, you almost want them to be induced at this specific hospital because we know that they will let these inductions happen. I think the longest induction or the longest birth– well, it is the longest birth I’ve ever been to, but at that hospital specifically was 52 hours. Julie: Yes. Meagan: I remember crawling up on the ground, putting a towel on the ground and falling asleep trying to take a nap because I as a doula had been there that long. They had called me in the very beginning. That is just not normal. Right? It’s not that normal. What kind of piqued our interest in wanting to talk about this again– I mean, we’re talking about something that happened in 2018. Now it’s 2023. It’s that the University of Michigan just released an article talking about this. It’s called “Labor Induction Doesn’t Always Reduce Cesarean Birth Risk or Improve Outcomes for Term Pregnancies”. So we want to talk about that and update you guys because we believe that updates, as we get more information, is important. So yeah. It was a 14,000– Julie, you were kind of analyzing– births. Julie: Yeah, so what I really liked about the Michigan study that was released is that it was a sort of analysis. This study was looking back at births and how they ended. Births that did not enter into a study. Births that were not set up in order to track. Births that just happened without any care in the world in this regard. They looked back at the data that they had already had. I love that because that’s what I love about Cochran reviews. I’m a big Cochran review junkie because Cochran reviews look at a whole bunch of data and a whole bunch of studies and put them together instead of creating a study and moving through it. The ARRIVE trial study was created in order to show if induction reduced the risk of Cesarean or other maternal or fetal mortality rates. How does induction impact that? That’s what this study was designed to do, but this study, the Michigan State study, looked back at data that had already existed without any type of bias going into it. Yes, there were 14,000. They looked at 14,135 deliveries in the year 2020. They analyzed all of those to look at the outcomes. Who ended in a Cesarean? Who ended up with hypertension? Who had postpartum hemorrhages? Who had– what was the other one– oh yeah, high blood pressure? Did I say that already? Operative vaginal deliveries– vacuum and forceps? That’s how they pulled it. There are different ways of looking at data as accurate so I don’t want to say that it’s more accurate, but I love that they looked back and that reflection on it. They showed that the group that was induced in the 39th week had a 30% rate of Cesarean which is what I was just saying. What was I just saying? The national average is 31.2%. That fits more in line with the national average of people that went in and got inductions versus 24% of the people who had the expectant management. 24% is not a great Cesarean rate either but it’s just a 6% decrease in those amounts of Cesareans. Also, for people that are wanting to know, the rest of it was people who were induced had higher instances of postpartum hemorrhage, so 10% versus 8% for the expectant management group. When we say expectant management group, those are the people who were not induced. They were just going through taking pregnancy as it came and then delivering whenever that looked like. When it was medically indicated to have an induction after the 39th week, those are probably included in those numbers as well. Operative vaginal delivery, vacuum, and forceps were 11% in the induction group versus 9% in the expectant management group. Although people who were induced were less likely to have hypertensive disorder which is high blood pressure. Those numbers are 9% in the expectant management group versus only 6% in the elective induction group. There were no significant differences, no other differences, in neonatal outcomes. No differences. Nothing dramatic, nope. Meagan: Nothing dramatic. The researchers mimicked the exact same framework used in the national trial. A CNM said, “We designed an analytic framework mirroring the previous trial’s protocol using retrospective data but our results didn’t reinforce a link between elective induced labor in late pregnancy and a reduction in Cesarean births.” Julie: Yep. Meagan: It did not. It’s so interesting because even now, today, we are still– as a doula still working in the field– seeing these inductions not even just being offered but flat out just being scheduled. Like, “Hey, we are going to schedule your birth at 39 weeks.” They do. They say, “Because that is going to lower your chance of Cesarean rates.” Julie: That’s what they tell you. Meagan: Yes. They do tell you that. When you are expecting for the first time, the second time, or anytime, most of the time, someone is not necessarily wanting to go in for an elective Cesarean, right? I don’t want to say that it doesn’t happen because it does and that’s okay. But it’s really not what’s happening. People don’t just start raising their hands and sign up for Cesareans, especially first-time moms. Julie: Do you mean inductions? Meagan: No, Cesareans. Julie: Oh, okay. Gotcha. Meagan: No. They’re not like, “I want a Cesarean. I want a Cesarean.” So when you have a provider say, “Hey, at 39 weeks, we’ll go ahead and schedule an induction because that is going to lower your chance of having a Cesarean.” Julie: Then they’re like, “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Go for that.” Meagan: They’re like, “I don’t want a Cesarean.” Right. So that’s where we go but then we’re looking at this and we’re like, “Mmm, but does it really lower our chances of Cesarean?” Julie: Mhmm. Meagan: That is where it’s frustrating and that is where I feel like–Julie: People are being misled. Meagan: Yes. I was just going to say that we have misguided people into doing certain things that actually don’t have the most solid data out there. I don’t want to discredit the ARRIVE trial. I’m not saying that it’s completely false or wrong. I’m just saying, “Let’s look at it deeper and why don’t we release more about this trial?” It’s been how many years now and that hasn’t been released but we are still inducing at 39 weeks. Julie: Yep. Well, it’s so funny because– okay. I’m going to change my thoughts actually. Strike that. I feel like I want to go back and talk a little bit more about what you talked about in the beginning about how the number of people that were eligible in the trial versus those who elected to be in the trial. 72% of women who were approached to be in the study declined to be in the study. Meagan: Declined it. Julie: So this is what happens. Your doctor comes up to you and says, “Hey, we’re doing this study.” Some people are just not going to want to be in studies and that’s totally fine. It doesn’t matter, right? But your doctor comes up to you and is like, “Hey, we’re doing a study. We’re going to randomly assign you to a group. You can be induced at 39 weeks or you can be in the expectant management group, but if you hit 40 weeks and 5 days, we’re going to induce you anyways,” because that is another thing that they did. They counted those in the expectant management group. If they got to 40 weeks and 5 days and hadn’t had their baby, they were indued. Now giving intel, ACOG recommends 42 weeks and 6 days before induction is absolutely necessary. They say it should probably be considered in the 41st week so between 41 and 42 so why are we not waiting until 41 weeks? Why are we not giving them two more days? Why are we not giving them nine more days to get to 42 weeks? But that was the cutoff for whatever reason. Meagan: 75% of the group overall had their babies by that day. Julie: Yeah. That’s a big percentage of people that are still being induced at 40 weeks and 5 days. So your doctor comes to you with these two options and you say, “You know what? Sure, that sounds great” or “No, I don’t really want to.” 72% said, “No, I don’t really want to,” for whatever reason. I know for me– well, first of all, you had to be a first-time mom so there are no VBACs included in this at all. It was all first-time moms. So it doesn’t apply to anybody else. This study’s risk findings do not apply to anybody else. Same with this Michigan study. The Michigan study only looked at first-time birthers. So as a first-time mom, I know that as I was planning for my first birth, I wanted a Hypnobirth. I was planning on going unmedicated. That was what I wanted. That was my birth plan and my birth desire. It obviously didn’t end that way, but I wouldn’t have elected into or opted into that study because it went contrary to the things that I knew I wanted for my birth. I feel like the ARRIVE trial automatically excludes it. People will automatically not do it if they are a more naturally minded person who wants a more hands-off birth experience. I feel like you are going to get really honed into a medical demographic that is okay with the medical system, that trusts their doctors, that wants to just go in, get hooked up to an epidural, and have a baby. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I feel like the mindset going into birth can influence how you respond during birth and how your body responds during birth. That’s the other thing that I really like about this Michigan study. I feel like you have a wider demographic in the mindset department of how these people birth. I feel like there are going to be more types of birth plans involved there. There is going to be a bigger variety of people and of experiences that are sought after in the birth space in the data set for Michigan. Meagan: Yeah. You just kind of talked about this. So how does VBAC and the ARRIVE trial even apply or does it? Julie: It doesn’t. Meagan: It doesn’t. That’s the answer, but you guys, we are still seeing so many, so many of our VBAC mamas being told that they have a higher chance of Cesarean or they have to have a baby at 39 weeks in order to have a vaginal birth because they have a higher chance. The ARRIVE trial is actually brought up to these people because they are viewed as first-time moms because they haven’t had a vaginal birth. But that’s not the case, right Julie? So many people who have had a Cesarean actually labored and dilated to some degree, if not all the way, right? Julie: Yep. Meagan: So why are we applying it at all to anyone– I mean, if I had my way? Julie: They shouldn’t. I feel like there is probably something a little bit unethical about doing that. Saying, “Hey, look. There’s a study that came out saying that inducing you at 39 weeks reduces your chances of having a C-section.” I feel like when that alone is being said and offered, it’s a little bit unethical. Meagan: Yeah. I just don’t love it. I don’t love it at all. So let’s talk about some other ways. I guess let’s wrap it up. Does inducing at 39 weeks as a first-time mom or according to the ARRIVE trial, does it really reduce your chances of Cesarean? What would you say, Julie? Based on what we’ve got, what would you say? Does it really? Julie: I would say, if somebody asked me that, this is exactly what I would say. I would say maybe, but there are a lot better things that you can do to reduce your chance of having a Cesarean besides being induced at 39 weeks. Meagan: Yeah. That would be my thing. Possibly. Possibly. However, it depends on how it’s done. It depends on the hours that you’re going to be given. It depends on the patience of the provider. Julie: On your doctor, on your provider, on their Cesarean rate. Meagan: Yep. It depends on a lot. So could it actually lower your chances of Cesarean? In my opinion, maybe. Maybe. But does it yes or no? I would say there’s not an answer there. No. There’s not a yes or no here. Could it? Maybe. But okay, what are other ways to reduce your chances of Cesarean? Right? I think induction really is a hard one because sometimes there are things that are coming up. In this ARRIVE trial study where it’s like, “Okay, it seems to lower chances of hypertension and hypertension can be an issue for vaginal birth so if we can reduce our hypertension levels, maybe an induction at that point can reduce a Cesarean.” Julie: Maybe. Maybe, yes. But maybe– here’s the thing though to consider because I think this is so individualized. It should be individualized but it’s not being individualized. Here’s the thing. If you have a history of pregnancy-induced hypertension, then maybe elective induction at 39 weeks is something that you heavily consider. I guess if you’re a first-time mom, then it doesn’t matter. You don’t have a history of anything because it’s your first pregnancy. But if you have a history of hypertensive disorders in your family, if your blood pressure is starting to creep up a little bit, if you’re having signs of preeclampsia or something like that, if there’s a reason where you might be at a higher risk for pregnancy-induced hypertension, then maybe that’s something that you consider. Meagan: Right. Julie: If there are other ways to manage hypertension, first of all, there are lots of dietary things that you can do. There is medication that you can take, pharmaceuticals, and things like that if it starts to creep up. That’s why I’m saying that it’s such an individualized thing but I hate how we apply– we as in our healthcare system– the same standards to every single person. That’s my biggest peeve about it I think. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It’s the same thing when we look at VBAC. It’s like, “Oh, well this, this, and this. The calculator or whatever.” You cannot do that. You have to look at the individual. You have to. You have to. You have to. Because guess what? Julie and I are not the same person. We do not have the same body. Our cervix isn’t the same. Our uterus isn’t the same. Any of that, nothing is the same. We might have similar characteristics in our bodies or the way our cervix does things, but we are not the same. You cannot say. I don’t love and I don’t feel comfortable that they are grouping so much in this wide range because it’s not necessarily the case. So let’s talk about it. What are other ways to reduce your chances of having a Cesarean? I know that Julie and I got a little passionate on an episode in the past about home birth but there is something to be said about home birth and what it can do to a Cesarean rate. We know that it’s not for everybody, but it is there. It is there and you are going to have fewer chances of having induction or interventions which can lead to reasons for a Cesarean. So choosing a home birth and a provider. A provider is one of the biggest things you can do to have a vaginal birth and to lower your chances of Cesarean. Mine and Julie’s– if you’re just new to us, Julie and I actually had the same provider who performed our Cesarean with her first and my first and second. I mean, I don’t know Julie. Did you know about him that he had such a high Cesarean rate? I didn’t. Julie: No, not until years later. Meagan: Me neither. Yeah, I didn’t either, and then obviously, years later when the numbers were actually there for a little bit but also seeing other people go to him and them all having Cesareans. I was like, “Hmm. That’s weird.” I still to this day know people who are having babies with him and are still having Cesareans. Julie: Yeah. Meagan: He’s not all Cesareans, but he’s very high in the Cesarean rate. So choosing your provider who is comfortable with birth, who trusts birth, who trusts you as an individual to make decisions for your baby and body, right? What are some other suggestions, Julie, that you would give? I mean, there are so many. Julie: We know that having a doula decreases your chances of having a Cesarean by 25-39%. I think it’s actually 39% but in our blog, it says 25%. It’s interesting how they break it down. There’s a study about doula support. They break it down by having continuous support and then continuous support from a doula. I feel like the numbers probably got switched out. I think 25% by having anyone with you continuously like your mom or somebody and then a doula is even higher at 39%. Having intermittent monitoring versus continuous fetal monitoring reduces your chance of having a Cesarean by 39%. I could go off on a whole soapbox on continuous fetal monitoring, but I will not so I don’t want to turn this into an hour-and-a-half-long episode. But obviously, your provider, like Meagan said, is so, so, so important. Look into alternative methods of pain relief like laboring in the water, different types of counter pressures, different types of birthing positions, and laboring at home as long as possible. I think you already talked about that a little bit too. All of those things– having a supportive environment and being able to move freely is going to help with all of those things. I would also argue that waiting for labor to start on its own and waiting for spontaneous labor is also going to decrease your chances of having a Cesarean just by the things that I have seen in my own practice as a doula and now birth photographer as well. It’s not going to get rid of your chances all the way doing any of these things or even doing all of these things are not going to guarantee that you’re not going to have a C-section but they’re going to drastically reduce your chances of needing lots of interventions including a Cesarean. Meagan: Right. And really too, in all of this, education is so, so important because as you’re going through this, you’re vulnerable you guys. It’s hard. Especially when we are actually in labor, it is not easy. If you have a provider coming in and saying this, this, and that, it’s not easy to say, “Oh yeah, well the evidence says this.” It’s not, but at the same time, if you have the education in your mind and a provider comes in and says something, you’re less likely to get spooked or scared because you’re going to know the evidence. Whether or not you’re in a spot where you can actually talk about the evidence, you mentally are prepared because you’ve educated yourself to know that what they are saying is maybe true, maybe not, but you know the alternatives to those things or you know the evidence against those things so you can say, “Okay, I really appreciate the conversation. I’m going to need some time.” Maybe you feel comfortable with that because you know the evidence. I think all of these things along the way are so impactful for you to truly have a better birth experience. Even if it does go the Cesarean route, again, with being educated, feeling supported, and all of these things, you’ll likely have a better Cesarean experience because you’ll have the options. You’ll know and you’ll feel better about making the choice and the decision. Julie: And you’ll feel like you have made a choice. Okay, so except we’re in extreme circumstances where there’s a really life-threatening emergency, you will feel like you did everything you could. You will feel like you were in control of what was happening. You will feel like you called the shots. I just had a client a few weeks ago. She was going for a VBAC after two C-sections. She felt like she wanted to be induced in her 39th week. She followed her intuition. She leaned into it. She trusted her doctor. Her doctor was super, super supportive and he was really just trusting her. He had his recommendations, but he also felt good with the choices that she made even though they weren’t necessarily always in line with her recommendations. He supported her and it was a really beautiful relationship to see that happening. But she chose to be induced at 39 weeks. Her provider was comfortable with her going beyond that, but she felt like it was time for baby to come. I won’t talk about all of the reasons why. So she ended up getting induced and they went for almost 24 hours. She told me the night before– the induction was, she wasn’t dilating. They started Pitocin. She wasn’t dilating. She told me, “If I’m not dilated to a 3 which is the farthest I’ve ever gone in my other two pregnancies and my other two inductions, then I’m calling it in the morning.”I was like, “Okay. I support you in your choice.” I was doing doulatog for her, so doula and birth photography. “Just let me know when you want me to come. I will be there.” She ended up not dilating at all overnight so she called it and she had a C-section. Her provider was there along with her the whole way supporting her and he was like, “Okay, well we can do this. We can keep going if you want. We can call it if you want. Whatever you want.” She was literally calling her shots the whole time. I was also her doula for her last C-section and it ended similarly. She was induced a couple of weeks earlier for preeclampsia and she labored for a long time and just didn’t dilate. Both of these two Cesareans were relatively calm for her even though it wasn’t the end goal that she wanted. She feels confident that she made the right choices all along the way. She had all of the information and all of the knowledge.Here is the thing. On another note, I had another client. No, it wasn’t a client of mine. I’ve had many similar clients. I was just talking to another birth photographer friend a few weeks back. She had a client who was a first-time mom who was 39 weeks. This client didn’t have a doula but she was her birth photographer. She called her up one day and she said, “Hey, just so you know, I’m going to be induced at 39 weeks. This is the day that I’m being induced. I’ll let you know along the way when I’m ready for you to come.” The photographer said, “Oh, why are you being induced?” She said, “Well, my doctor just told me that it’s going to be better for me to avoid having a C-section. It’s going to be safer for my baby.” I don’t know why they said that. Keep in mind, this is also secondhand information. Then my photographer friend was like, “I just don’t know why she’s being induced because she says she doesn’t want to be induced but she also trusts her provider.” Okay, we trust people too. You have to let people make their own path. Anyways, the long story short is that my friend’s client ended up having a C-section. My friend was allowed in the operating room which is really good when that happens, but it’s really funny because who knows if it would have been able to be avoided or not? We just will never have the answer for that by waiting but I feel like I tell these two stories. They both ended in Cesareans after 39-week inductions because one didn’t want an induction but she was just doing what her provider said and the other worked with her provider and her provider trusted her and she made the choice. Who do you think is going to be the one that has questions about how the birth went or one day wakes up and says, “Wow, I feel like I just got railroaded by the system”?What I wish more parents could understand is that we have a responsibility for our education around birth. Meagan: Yes!Julie: I feel like it’s a big disservice that we aren’t teaching parents more about these options and choices and what’s available to them, but you have a responsibility to step up, to learn more, to figure it out, to trust your intuition, and to ask questions of the people supporting you and if they will not answer them or if they make you feel uncomfortable, then you have the right and the responsibility to seek care elsewhere. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We know it’s not easy. We know it’s not easy, but you have the right. You always have the option. There are so many times when we get hired as a doula and we hear, “This is what happened. I just didn’t know I had an option. I just didn’t know. I just didn’t know.” It’s hard because you can’t blame yourself for not knowing but at the same time, it is our responsibility for getting an education. It’s the hard thing because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but at the same time, I could have learned more. It’s a really hard topic but get the education. Get a good, supportive provider. If you can, hire a doula. Eat really healthy. Do all of the things you can to lower your chances of having a Cesarean and know that if you are induced at 39 weeks as a first-time mom or a first-time vaginal birther, that doesn’t mean that your Cesarean percentage is absolutely factually going to be lower. It just doesn’t mean that. We hope that through listening to this, you’ve gotten some information. You’ve learned more about the ARRIVE study. As updates come through in all aspects of birth, we want to be here. We want to update you and share these. Julie, thanks for being with me today.Julie: Absolutely. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

After finding wonderfully supportive midwives who were willing to deliver a breech baby at home, Jaime was sure that her first delivery would be peaceful and empowering. Things quickly turned traumatic, however, when she developed a fever and was rushed to the hospital where she was treated poorly and sent straight to the OR.It took seven years for Jaime to finally get to a peaceful place where she felt ready to birth again. Jaime shares her different approaches to this birth and how she found the courage to prepare for another home birth. Jaime was able to stay grounded, present, and in control during her labor and delivery, allowing her to achieve the beautiful HBAC she desired!Additional LinksBirthing From Within by Pam England and Rob HorowitzReclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage by Rachel ReedHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, Women of Strength. It is another day for another amazing story. We have our friend, Jaime, here and she is from Nashville, Tennessee so if you are from Nashville, Tennessee, you’re going to want to listen up. I know that people have been wanting to know where some of our listeners are coming from because they are looking for providers and hospitals and all of the things like that in their area. So today is coming from Tennessee. She had kind of a traumatic birth which a lot of us do and then was able to set a good path and redeem her story with a VBAC. We are so excited to be sharing this story with you guys today from Jaime but of course, we have a Review of the Week. We could never go without sharing one of these amazing reviews, you guys. Review of the WeekThis is from Apple Podcasts and it’s from erind39. The subject is, “Planning Second VBAC with Confidence.” It says, “I am planning my second VBAC in July and I’m so happy that this podcast is back.” This was actually left in 2022 so last year when we came back. That was awesome. It says, “The VBAC Link is a great resource for anyone considering a VBAC. The stories are empowering and the data presented is affirming. I feel like I am so well-prepared for my second VBAC and have this podcast to thank.”Erin, thank you. We have you to thank for leaving this amazing review and if you guys haven’t had a chance, drop a review for us. We love them. We absolutely love them. We read them on the podcast. We have our amazing crew that drops them into this amazing spreadsheet. I see them and seriously with some of these reviews, I bawl. They are so long and so detailed and so amazing. I get chills and I bawl. So thank you, all for leaving your reviews. Jaime’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Jaime. Welcome to the show. Jaime: Thank you for having me. Meagan: Thank you. I am excited for you to share your stories and talk more about– well, we’re going to talk more about your story but not get discouraged along the way. So let’s talk about it. Tell us where it all began. Jaime: Yeah, so Eloise is my first daughter who is now 7. We have a very large gap between kids but Eloise’s birth was like you said, pretty traumatic for me in a lot of different ways. We wanted to do a home birth with her which off the bat, I’m just a crazy person for wanting to do a home birth. We were in Michigan at the time. I was pretty gung-ho about it. I felt very prepared. Maybe midway through my pregnancy, she ended up being breech. There were a lot of things that we tried to do to get her to flip. I spent a lot of time and energy worrying that she was a breech baby and what I was going to do. My midwives were like, “If you’re comfortable doing a breech, we’re comfortable doing a breech.” Meagan: Oh wow. That’s amazing. This is in Michigan. Jaime: Yeah, it was. It was in Michigan. So they literally handed me their midwifery books which are three inches thick, two of them. They were like, “Read this section.” So they had me read everything about breech birth in their midwifery books. I feel like I’m still overeducated on breech birth just from doing that. Meagan: Yeah, that’s amazing actually, though that you had that opportunity. Jaime: Yeah, so they were like, “After you read this if you’re comfortable doing a breech birth, we’re comfortable doing it too.” I read through everything and I was like, “Yeah, okay. This feels good.” It was. She was born in 2016 and it’s crazy to say this, but the information we have available today was not like what it was back in 2016. Just having those books, I didn’t have any other resources to really go to for breech birth or home birth or anything like that. But yeah. So I was comfortable doing it. I knew from reading if one single thing went wrong, that I was going to be going to the hospital. That was the midwifery thing. Typically, you’ve got multiple chances in a regular, normal pregnancy but with breech, it was one thing. So I go into labor. We had thought she flipped, but then I had my waters break and then it was all meconium. I was like, “Umm, I think she is still breech.” From there, I was kind of freaking out. I ended up getting a fever and one of the assistants walked in and she was like, “How are you feeling?” I’m like, “I feel awful. I just feel sick. I have chills. I don’t feel normal. This doesn’t feel good.” Her jaw hit the floor. I’m like, “Oh no. What did I say?” She took my temperature immediately and she was like, “You’ve got a fever.” They tried to get it down. They gave me one hour to get it reduced to a normal temperature and it wouldn’t. I knew right away that we were going to the hospital. We ended up in the hospital. Michigan isn’t very friendly when it comes to home births and midwives. I know everyone’s been working on that relationship between hospitals and midwives, but Michigan at the time had no cooperation. So we just had a really bad experience. We are there. The doctor at one point is like, “You’re going to be put under,” when the whole time, everyone else was telling me I was going to be awake. Then he comes in– I basically said, “I would like to hold my baby. I would like skin-to-skin as soon as possible.” Then he’s like, “Well, that’s not possible.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He goes, “Well, you’re going to be put under.” I was just like, “What? What are you talking about?” My husband looks at me and he’s like, “Are you okay with that?” I was not trying to be any sort of way when I said this, but I just was like, “I don’t really think I have a choice.” I was just saying, “I have to be okay with it because I don’t have a choice.” I wasn’t being snarky. The doctor was like, “You have a choice.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, I do? Tell me more about my choice.” He basically looked me dead in the eyes and he goes, “You can leave.” I was like, “What?” So it was just a really traumatic experience. I had the C-section. I got to be awake which was great, but Eloise ended up being in the NICU for 10 days. It just felt like we were trapped. We had CPS called on us. Meagan: Stop it. Are you serious?Jaime: There was a lot. There was a lot happening. It’s like the horror story that you think of when you hear someone trying to have a home birth and then they end up in the hospital and anything that could go wrong went wrong. Eloise is perfectly healthy. It was just the dynamic of it all that went wrong, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. But yeah. I had a lot to work through. We didn’t get pregnant for the longest time. I had no desire, really, because I just was terrified. I’m like, “I don’t want to experience this again. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” It wasn’t necessarily a bodily thing where I was feeling like my body failed me, it was more so just true traumatic, mental PTSD I guess. I’m not really sure how to put it. We got pregnant in 2020. I had a miscarriage with that baby, but when I found out I was pregnant, I was immediately not ready. I was terrified. There were so many things running through my brain. I just didn’t know how to handle it. I started the course, that pregnancy course, going to an actual doctor. Off the bat, I was like, “I’m just going to go to a doctor because I don’t want anything like what happened last time to happen again. I just want to avoid all of the hoop jumping. If I’m going to end up there, I’m just going to go there from the start,” basically, was kind of my mindset.We lost that baby and then with Delaney, the new baby, we got pregnant in 2022 with her. It was just different from the get-go. I think my husband was actually more nervous this time about everything than I was but I felt just very grounded. I felt confident about it. I was like, “I want to do a home birth. I definitely don’t want to be in the hospital.” Things were still very weird with COVID so that was another big thing because I’m like, “I don’t want to be in the last hour telling me that my husband can’t be in the room,” or just weird rules like that happening around everything. So yeah, I’m like, “I’m going to do a home birth. I’m going to find a midwife.” It took me forever to find a midwife. I think I called everyone in the Nashville area and they were either busy, they were all booked up, or they wouldn’t take a VBAC, or just not a good fit. I had one lady. I get on the phone with her and she’s like, “Well, you know uterine rupture is not something to be just pushed under the rug.” I literally hung up the phone and I go to my husband Matt. I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m a crazy person. What am I doing?” Meagan: You’re not. Jaime: It just freaked me out. Yeah. So I found my midwife around 11 weeks which I felt was pretty late in the game. From that point, it was just a rollercoaster of ups and downs battling doubts within my headspace. My pregnancy from a physical standpoint was a little bit rough. I don’t know. I just felt like my body was old and not functioning well. I was the person that couldn’t tie their shoes towards the end. I couldn’t wear any rings because all of my fingers were so swollen and everything. It was just a rough pregnancy physically compared to my first, but also, just dealing with the mental aspect of everything, I would be super confident one day that I’m going to do this and I’m going to have this home birth– not even a home birth, but just have a VBAC. Like, “I can do this. We were made to do this,” and then the next day, I’m like, “What am I doing? Who wants to do this? Maybe I should just sign up for a C-section again.” Meagan: Just all over the place emotionally. That’s so real though. So many of us doing that. One day, we’re like, “Yes.” The next day, we’re like, “What am I doing? Is this right?” and questioning ourselves. Jaime: Yep. Yeah. 100%. So I really went into this birth. I tried to protect my energy as much as I could. I didn’t tell a lot of people I was trying to have a home birth because it was already enough trying to do a VBAC. It was already weird enough. I’m like, “I don’t want to tell everyone what I’m doing. No one needs to know what my birth plan is besides the people that really matter.” I read a couple of books that I felt were really pivotal for me. One was Birthing From Within by Pam England. I didn’t even finish the whole book. I got through one chapter but it changed my life because, in the beginning, she says that every woman has a question that needs to be answered before they can birth their child. You might find your answer to your question during pregnancy or you might find it in transition or you might find it when you’re about to push the baby out. She basically was like, “What is your question? When you think you have your question, you have to dig a little bit deeper because that’s probably not your question. Your question is underneath that question.” So I spent 7 months trying to find my question and at the end of it, it felt like it wasn’t so much a question, but I felt that I was punished anytime I tried to go outside of the norm of what society deemed normal. That was my big, pivotal thing where I was like, “Wow. I can do this. That is a lie believing that I am going to be punished for trying to do something abnormal.” There was another birth, Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage by Rachel Reed. The whole beginning of the book was talking about “herstories”, so history but for women, “herstory”. Rachel is a medical doctor. She is an MD and I felt like this book wasn’t super crunchy and it wasn’t super medicalized. It was very much right in the middle which I felt was what I needed to hear. I didn’t feel like she was biased in one way or another but she laid the facts out of where we started to how we got to where we are now within the birthing industry. It helped me to realize. I knew this already going into it, but it helped me to realize that I actually had really deep-rooted, preconceived ideas about what birth was just from how I’ve grown up in the society that I’ve grown up in watching movies, listening to stories, and all of the stuff that we just see on TV. Birth is this crazy thing that happens. The woman is always out of control. The doctor is always there to save the day, all that kind of stuff. I was like, “Wow. I have these opinions of things that aren’t even my opinions. They’ve just been given to me from movies and society and culture.” It really helped to weed through some fear that I was having realizing that I don’t have to have this anymore. I don’t have to believe this because it’s not my story. It’s not even real, actually. It’s just culture. So those were the two big things. And then obviously, I found your podcast. I also started listening to a free birth podcast. I had no desire in my life to ever free birth ever, but I had read something on Instagram that was like, “If you’re preparing for birth, prepare to do a free birth so that way, you are aware of everything that could happen and what you can do to go through obstacles or you know the steps and the phases that you’ll go through when you’re in labor.” So basically, be overprepared even though you’re going to have people there to help you. That helped a lot. I just listened to everything I could about any positive experience of someone having a VBAC. I hired a doula not for any other reason other than it would increase my odds of having a successful VBAC. I still joke to this day that I have no idea what a doula actually does, but I hired one. It helped me have a VBAC, I just think, by doing that. I was just doing all of the things that I could come up with to try and get my head in the right spot and to set myself up for success. I did The Bradley Method with my first daughter and Bradley Method is like a 12-week course if you’re not familiar. It is hours long so it is very in-depth. But I found this lady on TikTok and I took her virtual train-for-birth class. Her name is Crisha Crosley. It was, I kid you not. I think it was an hour and a half and it was the most informative thing I’ve ever done. It helped me. The whole premise is “Train for Birth” so movements and different things that you can do to become ready to birth your child, to get the baby in the right position, pushing, how to push, and different things to do while you’re in labor so when I actually went into labor, she was in the forefront of my mind of, “Okay, I can’t stay in this position for too long. Let me go to the bathroom every 5 seconds. Make sure I’m drinking my water,” lots of movements when I was actually in labor. It was all because I took that class. It was amazing. That was around 38 weeks when I took that class. My brother and his wife, so my brother, Michael, and Ashley came when I was around 40 weeks because Ashley was going to help with Eloise during the birth. All in between that, I’m curb walking. I’m on the ball doing figure 8’s. Just to backtrack a little bit, when I hit 37 weeks just to give you an idea of where I was at, I went to Costco and ran into one of my midwives. She’s like, “How are you doing?” Because I’m like, “I’m so depressed. It’s 37 weeks and I haven’t had this baby.” I just was in my brain, I’m like, “Okay, it’s 37 weeks so it means I can have the baby when I haven’t had the baby yet. I need this baby out of me. It’s time to go.” She’s like, “What? You’re depressed?” I’m like, “I’m kidding, sort of. But yeah, I want to have this baby.”Meagan: You’re like, “I really just wish I could have this baby right now.” Jaime: Yeah. Yes. So yeah. We’re nearing the end. My brother and sister-in-law come around 40 weeks to help with Eloise. Delaney, the new baby, was LOA if that’s right. She was on the left side. Meagan: Left occiput anterior. Jaime: Yeah. I think the optimal is ROA. Is that correct? Meagan: Well, it really depends but LOA– so it moves the uterus usually clockwise. LOA is really good actually because then they just kind of go forward and down. But it all depends on the shape of our pelvis too. Some babies need to enter a ROA position. Some of them need to actually enter posterior which is frustrating that we have posterior in any sort of labor, but sometimes that is how. So yeah, LOA is a really great position. Jaime: Okay, then she must have been the other way. She must have been ROA and I was trying to get her to go to the left, LOA. Yeah. I was trying to do movements to give her some space so she could turn. The midwife told me that the right side is okay, but the optimal would be LOA because it’s just easiest. When you said posterior, that reminded me that I was actually very nervous about back labor because I had felt like every podcast I listened to where someone was having a VBAC, all they ever talked about was back labor so I was just terrified of it. On top of doing a VBAC, if that’s not hard enough, I’m going to deal with back labor and all of this stuff. That didn’t happen to me at all. I had no back labor so it was perfect. In Tennessee, my midwives were licensed by the state. They cannot help me past 42 weeks due to their licensure. We were nearing the end. I had a clock ticking. My brother and Ashley were here which was stressing me out, not in a bad way, but I was kind of under a clock if that makes sense. I’m like, “I need to have this baby because they are here and then I need to have this baby because I’m nearing 42 weeks and at that point, I’m either going to be a crazy person and do unassisted which doesn’t make you crazy, or I’m going to have to go to a hospital. Those are my two options because I can’t do it with them.” Then she wanted me to do that test where they test for movement, heart rate, and practice breaths or something like that. I needed to do that in my 41st week just to show if something happened early 42 weeks, that it was okay for me to birth at home with them still. I scheduled that for Friday, so September 2nd. I reluctantly scheduled it. I was like, “Fine. I’m just going to put it on the books and see what happens.” Then my brother actually had to leave on Sunday to go. My brother leaves on Sunday to go do an interview. Delaney is born on Thursday. I scheduled that test for the next day on Friday. The next Sunday was my 42nd, so that was my hard out if that timeline makes sense.Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Jaime: Michael, my brother, left to do an interview that they scheduled for him that Monday then he was going to come immediately back. He’s like, “If I miss this birth, I’m going to be so mad.” Then Sunday, Ashley and my husband and my daughter, and I went to the splash pad. That was the first day I had a contraction where I was like, “Oh, okay. Something is happening.” I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to be put under a clock or to feel pressure to have this baby when I wasn’t ready or anything like that. I just kept to myself. I had a couple of contractions Sunday and then that just led to me having contractions every single night. It was all night, every night and then it would die off in the early, early morning. Meagan: Prodromal labor. Jaime: Yeah. I’d get a few hours of sleep so I’m just getting exhausted. I told Ashley actually maybe Monday or something. She woke up Tuesday and was like, “So, did Jaime have any more contractions?” She was asking my husband. I didn’t even tell my husband this. My husband was like, “She was having contractions? What are you talking about?” I literally kept everything. My lips were sealed. I kept everything to myself. I texted my midwife on Tuesday. So Sunday I had no sleep. Monday, I had no sleep. I texted her Tuesday and I’m like, “Hey. I’ve been having contractions. Nothing is sticking around. Everything stops. I have nothing all day and then it starts again at night.” She’s like, “Cool. Nothing to worry about. Everything is normal. Sounds good. No big deal.” My brother did make it back because he came back Monday evening so he was here for everything. Then Wednesday was my absolute breaking point. Wednesday comes. Michael and my husband go shooting and then the girls, all of us, go to this park just to hang out. I had a massive contraction as we were leaving that stopped me in my tracks. I literally just hung back and I’m like, “Yeah, you guys just keep walking. Go ahead and I’ll just meet you there in a second.” I’m just stopped in the middle of everything. Ashley, my sister-in-law is like, “Okay.” They just keep walking to the car and then I catch up later. She’s like, “So I think we want to go to the grocery store to get some stuff for dinner.” In my head, I’m like, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it.” I’m emotionally at the end of my limits and then physically also, the contractions were intense, but it was more an emotional thing where I’m like, “I can’t do this again. I’m going to have another sleepless night. It’s already starting. It’s 5:00. This is awful.” We go to the grocery store and it was my full focus just to not have a mental breakdown and start hysterically sobbing in the middle of the grocery store. We go. I make it through and we get home. I immediately go upstairs just to be alone. I put a movie on to start watching and have these random contractions that happen. Looking back, it’s funny because in the first stage of labor, they always say that the woman goes into a cave and wants to be alone. In my brain, I was ready. I’m like, “I’m going to pay attention so I can see the signs and make sure that I know I’m going into labor.” It never once crossed my mind that I was entering a cave to be by myself. It never crossed my mind. I just was thinking, “I’m going to have another sleepless night and I’m drained emotionally.” I think I cried, then dinner was ready. It’s 6:00 so I go downstairs. I shovel dinner into my mouth and then have another massive contraction at the table. I sit there silently then I’m like, “I’m going upstairs.” I run back upstairs and literally, I put this movie back on and I’m in hysterics. I’m sobbing uncontrollably. I just don’t know that I can do this again. I get very crazy when I don’t have any sleep. I just was future thinking about how this night was going to go where I’m going to have these crazy contractions and then I’m not going to sleep on top of it. I was just a mess. I go back upstairs. I have a couple of breakdowns. I’m extremely exhausted. I started timing my first contractions around 7:06. Not my first contraction, but my first timed one where I was like, “Maybe I should see what’s happening here.” Delaney was born at 1:20 AM so it was six hours from start to finish basically. Meagan: Wow. Jaime: Nothing was consistent whatsoever. I’m upstairs with the peanut ball doing all of the moves trying to go through the Miles Circuit to make sure she’s in the right position and all of that stuff. I texted the night midwife. They have a 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM and then a 7P to 7A so depending on when I went into labor is who I’d be talking to. So I texted the night midwife around 8:30 with a picture of my contractions, my timed-out stuff. I wanted to take Benadryl so I could go to sleep. I’m like, “Is it okay if I take Benadryl? Will I be okay? I just don’t know if it picks up, am I going to be exhausted and trying to push a baby out?” She’s like, “No. If you take a Benadryl and you actually go into labor, you’re going to be fine. Trust me.” I was like, “Okay.” She’s like, “Take a bath then if things slow down, go to sleep. Try to get some rest. If they don’t slow down, call me and let me know.”So I took a bath. Nothing really happened. I kicked my husband out of the room multiple times because I just wanted to be by myself. I don’t think I let him stay until 9:30-10:00 at night. I was waiting for these clues. I lost my mucus plug. I don’t even know if this is accurate but in my brain, that meant I was around 3 centimeters. My husband was like, “Do you want me to call someone?” I’m like, “No. I’m 3 centimeters if anything so I’ve got 24 hours of labor to go. I’m in trouble, basically,” is what I was thinking. I was waiting for my bloody show which meant I’d be 5 centimeters. Again, I don’t know if that’s accurate but that is just what was in my brain. Almost immediately after I lost my mucus plug, within an hour– it felt way more immediate than that– but within an hour, I had bloody show happening all over the place. My doula was an hour away. I’m like, “Okay. Fine. Call the doula.” This is me caving to my husband. I’m like, “Call the doula. She’s an hour away so just have her come, I guess.” He calls the doula and in my brain, I’m like, “I hope I’m still in labor when she comes here.” I just was very nervous that everyone was going to get to the house and then I was either going to stall out or this wasn’t really it and then they’re all going to leave and I had wasted everyone’s time or they’re all just sitting around twiddling their thumbs watching me go through labor. I did not want that to happen at all. But he calls the doula and talks with her. She says, “Okay.” Then he calls her again. She hears me in the background and she’s like, “Okay, I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m on my way.” So that happened. I’m telling Matt. I’m like, “Can you go fill up the tub, please? Not so I can have a baby in the tub but just so I can get some relief,” because again, I’m thinking I’m going to be here for many, many more hours. He calls the midwife and tells her that the doula is on the way just to give her an update. That’s probably around 11:30. She was like, “Okay, great. Let me know when you need me to come.” He goes down, fills the tub up, and then comes back upstairs. Again, time is lost in this space. He comes back upstairs, calls the midwife again, and the midwife hears me in the background and she is like, “I’m on my way,” and then just hangs up. She was only 30 minutes from us, so she hears me and she’s like, “Oh my gosh. I’m coming.” At that point, I’m trying to go down the stairs. It takes me three full contractions to get down the stairs. Matt’s talking to the doula. She’s like, “Does she feel pushy?” I’m like, “I don’t know what pushy feels like because I’ve never done this before.” At some point on the stairs, I felt Delaney change position. I don’t really know how else to say it, but it just felt like she dropped down and was right there. I’m still not thinking I’m about to have a baby. Even that, I’m just like, “Okay. I’m in it for the long haul here.” Meagan: Right. Jaime: I finally get down the stairs. I get in the tub again, just to find relief. I’m not trying to have a baby here. Matt’s trying to make a smoothie. I’m chaotic. I was not a calm laboring person. I was very loud. At this point, when the bloody show happened, I stopped timing the contractions at 11:32 PM. At that point, I was just like, “Forget it. I don’t care.” But then when the bloody show happened, it was one on top of another on top of another on top of another and I had no relief, nothing whatsoever. It was wild. I get into the tub. I’m yelling every time a contraction comes. Matt’s trying to make a smoothie and I’m yelling, “I need you here right now.” My daughter is crying because I’m being so loud. I get into the tub and I had three contractions in the tub. On the second contraction, I push her head out. I’m just like, “I’m having a baby.” The coolest part about it was that there was no fear. It was very natural, very primal. I never for once thought, “Oh my gosh. No one is here yet and I’m pushing this baby out.” I get her head out and my brother is right there. He sees the head and he’s like, “Jaime, the head is out. You’ve got to push the rest of the baby out now,” because he’s thinking that the head is out and she’s drowning underwater. I’m just like, “No. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I have all of these things in my brain from what the midwives had told me. I’m like, “Okay. So I birthed her underwater so I have to stay underwater. I can’t get out and go back in.” I have all of these things going through my head. The next contraction comes and she’s out and on my chest. No one was there except my brother, Ashley, my husband, and my daughter. The midwife walked in literally one minute after she was born, then the doula ran in, and then the assistant ran in. Meagan: The whole team, boom. Jaime: Yeah, so it was one after another and everyone walks in with their jaws on the ground like, “What just happened?” I’m like, “I don’t know. We just had a baby and here we are.” So that’s my VBAC story. I did it and it was great. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. It would have been nice to have a team of people there, but that wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. It worked out perfectly. Meagan: That’s okay. Yeah. I’m so glad. I love how your brother is like, “Uhh.” Jaime: It’s time to go. You’ve got to get the rest out. Meagan: Yeah, but you would see that and that would make sense. Jaime: Yeah. Yep. Meagan: Oh my gosh. I love that. So first of all, huge congratulations. Jaime: Thank you. Meagan: So awesome. So, so awesome. And yeah, let’s talk about overcoming your fears. Talking about your first birth, CPS, all of the things. Yeah, you have options. Oh yeah, let me tell you my options. Go. Leave. You have no options other than to leave. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. Meagan: So much surrounded it that could have carried forward in this next birth. What are some tips for the listeners that you would give? You were reading. You were taking this course. What other types of things would you say are some key components to overcoming your fears and getting to the point where you were literally birthing– not alone– but you were here birthing alone? You were like, “I’ve got this. I’m strong.” So yeah. Any tips that you have?Jaime: Yeah. I mean, for me, I would suggest really, really, really protecting your energy and what that looks like– not even watching a movie with a crazy birth scene in it, not talking to people who have opinions on how you’re going to birth your baby, just trying to stay within the scope of healthy, positive stuff. Even some of the Instagram accounts will give you statistics and they are trying to be helpful, but sometimes reading those statistics send you on a spiral so it was just really trying to hone in and stay close to what you know to be true, focusing on the fact that you want to have this VBAC, that it is safe to have a VBAC, and everything else just kind of block it out. Unless it is a positive experience, don’t listen to it. Don’t talk about it. Just focus on yourself and what you’re trying to do. Meagan: Yeah. Hold onto what’s important to you because yeah. There is a lot of outside static. Like you said, right here at The VBAC Link, we are guilty of posting statistics, right? Statistics can be very helpful for some and it can be something that creates fear or angst as well. If you know that that is not something that can keep your space safe and will cause angst, then yeah. Like you said, don’t read it. Don’t look at it. Jaime: For sure. For sure. Meagan: Put it away. If you’re wanting to know those numbers to make you feel better, okay then there you go. If you’re wanting to not hear any– we’ve had listeners who are like, “We couldn’t listen to any repeat Cesarean stories because they were not what we could have in our space.” That is okay too. You can filter through. Some people are like, “I wanted to know all of the possible outcomes.” You’ve got to find what is best for you and like you said, protect your space because your space is what matters. Jaime: For sure. Meagan: Oh, well thank you so, so, so much for being with us today and sharing with us this amazing story. Totally unexpected. I bet your team was just freaking out driving. Jaime: Thank you for having me. Yeah. Meagan: I wish we could have had a dash cam looking at them or even just there to see their pattern of driving. I bet they were weaving in and out and really, really, really rushing to you.Jaime: That’s funny. Meagan: But like you said, it all worked out how it was supposed to be. All was well and here you are sharing your story and inspiring others. Jaime: Thank you. Well, thank you again so much for having me. I hope it helps. Meagan: Oh, it will. It will. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Kelsey would title her VBAC story, “When Everything Goes Wrong”. This episode is a must-listen as she shares her VBAC birth after testing positive for Group B Strep.Kelsey’s first provider: Pushed a scheduled C-section due to a possible big babyChose elective C-sections for all of her own birthsKelsey’s second provider:Wasn’t concerned about Kelsey’s blood clotting disorderDidn’t push for induction upon borderline amniotic fluid levels Limited cervical checksSuggested a Cook’s Catheter at 0 centimeters dilated with ruptured membranesDidn’t push for C-section after 24 hours of ruptured membranes with GBSWe are incredibly grateful for all of those VBAC-supportive providers out there! They make ALL the difference. Additional LinksThe VBAC Link Blog: Group B Strep Prevention and Your Options for GBS+ BirthHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello you guys. Welcome to The VBAC Link. This is Meagan, your host of The VBAC Link. We have a story for you today that has been something that we’ve been seeing trickling in our inbox a lot. So I went onto our VBAC Link Community on Facebook and said, “Hey, I’m looking for some stories with this specific topic.” That specific topic is GBS, so Group B Strep if you don’t know what GBS means. That is something that we’ve been seeing in our inbox of people being told they cannot have a vaginal birth if they test positive for GBS which we all know, I hope through listening to these episodes that you’d know by now, is false. If you are told that you absolutely cannot have a TOLAC, a trial of labor after Cesarean because you have Group B Strep, that is not true. That is just simply not true. We have our friend Kelsey today from outside of Dallas, Texas is that right? Kelsey: Yes. Yes, yeah that’s right. Meagan: Yes and she is going to share her story just proving that. Another fun twist to her story is that she had a rupture of membranes. One of the things providers fear more or worry most about is GBS and rupture of membranes and the longevity of the membranes being ruptured increasing risk of infection. So a lot of providers will say, “If you have GBS, the second your water breaks, TOLAC or not, you need to come in and start antibiotic treatment immediately.” There is definitely some evidence with treating with antibiotics and we’re going to talk about some of that in the end and also some ways that you can try and avoid testing positive for GBS, but one of the crazy things or cool things I should say about Kelsey’s story is that her rupture of membranes was 24+ hours. So a lot of the times, we have providers also saying after a certain amount of hours and they have a cutoff or a certain number of doses of antibiotics, we’re at a high risk for the newborn getting GBS and then we need to have a Cesarean. So I’m excited to hear Kelsey talk about her journey with 24+ hours with a rupture of membranes with GBS. Then another twist to her story is when she did arrive, she was a certain centimeter that a lot of people also think can’t be helped. I’m just going to leave that right there and we’ll let Kelsey talk about that. Review of the WeekBut of course, we have a Review of the Week so I want to dive into that. This was back in 2021, so a couple of years ago actually from mckenna_123 and her subject is “You’re Not Alone, Mama.” It says, “When I had my first baby 7 months ago via C-section due to placenta previa, I was left discouraged and sad with little to no tools to help me process all that had happened. It was hard for me to tell my story to others confidently and joyfully because I felt so isolated by the experience. Enter The VBAC Link.” Ooh, that just gave me chills actually.“I spent my early postpartum months listening to an episode every day while I nursed my newborn. When I came across the placenta previa story on the podcast, I felt so seen and understood. This podcast gave me the opportunity to feel bound to other strong mamas who have healed from similar experiences. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so alone. I’m not pregnant with baby #2 yet, but when that happens, I will be armed with invaluable tools and knowledge for my journey to have a beautiful and redemptive VBAC. Thank you ladies for being the voice for moms who feel alone and unseen.” Whoa. I got chills all while reading that whole thing. She is so right. You are not alone. We are here with you. I know I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it a million times again but here at The VBAC Link, we truly love. I know we don’t know you, but we love you and we don’t want you to feel alone. That is why we created The VBAC Link because we felt alone. We were in that spot. Julie and I years and years ago felt alone wanting to have this vaginal birth which seemed so normal. Vaginal birth just seems like it should be normal. That’s what happens, right? But then we had these C-sections, unexpected and undesired and we didn’t know where we belonged. We didn’t know what we could do. We didn’t know who was saying whether that was true or not. That is why we are here. That is why The VBAC LInk exists. So thank you, McKenna, so much. Congratulations on your baby that is now probably almost two. Kelsey: And we need an update, McKenna. Meagan: We need an update. Are we having another baby? Where are we at? Are you still with us? Let’s hear that update. Definitely email us. If you haven’t had the time or a chance to put a review in, we would love that. We love getting them in the email box, on Apple Podcasts, and on Instagram. We love seeing your reviews. I’m not kidding you. When I was reading this review, I would get chills and then they would go down and then I’d get chills again and then they’d go down. They mean so much. So definitely if you haven’t, drop us a review. Kelsey’s StoryMeagan: Okay, Kelsey. Welcome to the show. Kelsey: Hey, thanks for having me, for having me on the VBAC podcast. I’m so excited to be here. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Well, I am so excited that you are here and sharing, like I said, such a great topic because I don’t know. Tell me what you have heard about GBS. Have you heard that you can’t have a vaginal birth with GBS? Or have you heard anything like that?Kelsey: Oh absolutely. Not from my doctor per se and I’ll give you some more info about that as I share my story, but I believed that everything had to go according to plan despite listening to y’all’s episodes, despite hearing other VBAC stories, I just felt like there is no way that I can have this vaginal birth after a Cesarean unless everything goes just as it should. My story is one that should be titled, “When Everything Goes Wrong”. Meagan: Okay, “When Everything Goes Wrong”. Kelsey: Yes, yes. I definitely heard that. One of the things that I kept in mind and I’ll mention this too is that when you have ruptured membranes longer than 24 hours– I mean, I Googled this last night just to be sure. You’ll see all over the place, “You’ve got to get baby out. You’ve got to get baby out. You’ve got to get baby out,” and that just wasn’t the case for me. So yeah, I’ve got a lot of fun to unpack with you. Meagan: Yeah, and actually, my water was broken for over 24 hours too and so I connect so much to that because I hear it so much with our clients, “Within 24 hours, if you haven’t had a baby, we’ve got to get baby out.” Some people are like, “Oh, within 8-10 hours, if contractions haven’t started, we have to induce.” But that’s not necessarily the case and we are two people that are living proof of that. Kelsey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Can I start by giving you just a little rundown of baby #1?Meagan: Absolutely. I was going to say, let’s unpack where it all began. That’s exactly where it began, right? Kelsey: That’s exactly where it began. My son was born via scheduled Cesarean in July of 2018 at 40+2. I had never felt a contraction prior to having my son. I was diagnosed with polyhydramnios in the latter weeks of that pregnancy which of course as you know, leads to increased ultrasounds, and the more ultrasounds you have, the more– I don’t want to say that things can go wrong, but he did get the big baby label because he was seen so much. Of course, you guys have shared that those can be up to 2 pounds in either direction. I remember somewhere along the 36-38 week mark, my provider because discussing delivery with me and she mentioned that she would hate to see me run out of the clock on a 24-hour labor which should have been red flag #1. Meagan: Uh-huh. Kelsey: She said that I would be so tired from laboring all day only to have a newborn that would not let me get any rest. She mentioned shoulder dystocia and that he would get stuck. She pulled out all of the stops. Then she even said– and you’re going to die when I tell you this– she said, “I’ve seen too many things go wrong with vaginal deliveries during my residency and it’s why I chose elective Cesareans for the births of my own children.” Meagan: Oh, dear. Oh, dear. She is in the wrong field. Kelsey: I don’t want to demonize her. I trust that she was–Meagan: Probably speaking from her heart. Kelsey: Yes. She was. She was not out to get me. Meagan: No, and this is the thing. A lot of the time, these providers have this bad rap. I’m like, “Oh dear, red flag.” They do take, a lot of the time, from what they have maybe seen. She was mentioning shoulder dystocia. Maybe she’s seen really hard shoulder dystocia so she fears that. She fears that but she’s labeling every other birth that way to the point where she even scheduled her own Cesarean because she was that scared of vaginal birth. Right?Kelsey: Right. Meagan: If you have a provider that is that scared of vaginal birth for herself, then that is a red flag for sure. Kelsey: Yeah, absolutely. Meagan: But we don’t even think about that. Kelsey: Yeah, and I didn’t have the knowledge or experience to present a case for vaginal delivery for myself nor did I feel like I had the ability to so I walked in and had a scheduled Cesarean. It was very routine, very rote. My son did weigh 9.5 pounds, but there I was a first-time mom. I felt like this experience that I so desired to have, this vaginal birth, was snatched right out from under me. I had never felt a single contraction. I don’t know why that was so important to me, but I just felt like I was missing something. Meagan: It’s a signal to our minds and our brains that our baby is coming. Kelsey: Yeah. Meagan: It’s a sure sign when we start having contractions and experiencing labor that, “Okay. We are now entering this stage.” I swear because the same thing, I remember the last time I felt a contraction with my second and I was sad. I’m like, “Wait. Where did they go?”Kelsey: Yeah. So that feeling really set the stage for the birth of my daughter. She didn’t come until about 4 years later, but I knew that the first weapon in my arsenal would be to find a new provider. I conducted some interviews with two providers here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. You are a part of the Facebook pages like DFW VBAC and you see names pop up over and over again. I chose Dr. Downey who you guys actually, one of your very first episodes was with a gal named Rachel and she used Dr. Downey for her VBAC. I remember there were 13 months between her Cesarean and her first VBAC. Meagan: Wow. Kelsey: So we’ve got a repeat doctor on here. Meagan: Yeah, that is really good to know. Dr. Downey. Kelsey: Dr. Downey, yeah. He was amazing. He never batted an eye. He briefly mentioned induction by 41 weeks due to health concerns on my end. It was nothing major, but I had a few markers for antiphospholipid antibody syndrome. Meagan: I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that. Kelsey: It’s a blood clotting disorder. Meagan: Oh, okay. Kelsey: So I was on Heparin shots. Lovenox shots and then moved to Heparin shots closer to delivery. But he was largely very patient. Very, very patient. He said, “You’re going to be getting a call from the hospital to schedule an induction by around 41 weeks.” I kept waiting, waiting, and waiting for the call. I hated the waiting. I wanted to decline the induction, but I also, to be honest with you, wanted to follow my doctor’s advice so I felt like I was in a really weird place. Anyway, I never got that phone call. I never got that call to schedule an induction. I never had to make that decision because the hospital was packed and they didn’t have room for me and it was not truly medically necessary so I left my 40-week appointment with my next appointment scheduled for 41 weeks and he was like, “Okay. I guess we’re just going to wait for you to go into labor.” I said, “Great. I love that.” So fast forward to my due date, I texted my doula that afternoon an update, and at about 9:30 PM that evening, to my surprise, I started cramping sporadically but because I had never felt a contraction as I said, “I just kept thinking, is this it? This can’t be it. This is it. It has to be. It can’t be. What is going on?”I even got out my contraction timer just to see. My sense of time was so distorted because I was excited but confused. So I got out my contraction timer just to see how long were these cramps. How much time was between them? I didn’t expect any regularity, but I did continue to cramp until early morning. I woke my husband up. Talk about excitement. That guy got showered, packed a bag, and was fully dressed in 7 minutes. Meagan: Oh my gosh. That’s awesome. Kelsey: I very kindly reminded him that this could take a while. He should probably rest. I was resting as best as I could, eating, and drinking, and at 3:21 AM the next morning, I felt that little pop that everyone talks about that you just don’t really know until you experience it. I was glad. Is there such a thing as TMI on this show? Meagan: No. No. Kelsey: I had a pad on by that point because I had some bloody show. I was so glad because I didn’t have this massive gush of water. It was just some leaking. When I went to the restroom, I noticed that it was not clear. I think one of the things that I hope people glean from my story is that you have to do what you’re comfortable with despite risk and statistics and all of the numbers. I knew that yes, I could stay at home and I could continue to labor but I just felt more comfortable going to the hospital with the fact that my waters were not clear. Meagan: Yeah. Kelsey: I called my doula. I send her pictures, God bless her, and with my own gut feeling, my husband’s urging and her advice, we headed to the hospital about 2 hours later and we were admitted by 7:30 AM that next morning. Meagan: Yeah. I just want to talk about despite what evidence may say, “Oh yeah, I’m safe to be here but my heart says that I shouldn’t.” That is so important to listen to. We talk about it on the podcast all of the time. What does your heart say? What does your gut say? But it really, really, really is so important. I love that you had a doula to validate you and say, “Yeah. That’s totally fine. That’s a great idea. You can go on in.” Kelsey: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think you have to take into account all of your experiences in the past too. What is going on in your life as you’re experiencing this labor, as your baby is coming into this world? I kind of felt like I was taking a risk by having a VBAC. I know that I wasn’t necessarily, but that was big enough for me so I needed to mitigate the other smaller risks by just going to the hospital and being in a place where I felt comfortable. That might not be the case for others listening and that’s okay. Something else I decided fairly early on in my pregnancy was that I did not want to know how far dilated I was. I didn’t want to know baby’s station. I knew that this was a mental game, so whether I was a centimeter dilated upon admission or 6 centimeters, I just did not want to know. I wanted to do what my body was doing, lean into that. My husband was told how far dilated I was. He relayed that info to my doula until she was present and then obviously, my doctor knew as well. You mentioned at the beginning of the show, I was a certain centimeter dilated when I was admitted and that was 0. Meagan: Not dilated at all. Kelsey: Not dilated at all. Meagan: A lot of the time, with people who are wanting to VBAC, if you walk in with ruptured membranes, nothing is really happening, and you’re not dilated at all, Pitocin doesn’t help when not much is happening. It helps us dilate but usually, they want it to be something. Do you remember how effaced you were? Kelsey: I don’t remember how effaced I was. I don’t know if I even was at all. Meagan: Okay, yeah. See? And then right there, a provider sometimes might say, “There are no options here.” Kelsey: Yeah, and let me tell you. Because I was not having any contractions, I didn’t know how dilated I was, but I do remember my labor and delivery nurse saying, “Because you’re not having contractions, Pitocin is really your only option.” My doctor came in right after that and said, “I don’t see why I can’t insert a balloon catheter. He was the one who was like, “Wait a minute. I’m the doctor. I’ll make that decision.” Meagan: Let’s not let the nurse call the shots. That’s good that they were willing to give you Pitocin because sometimes, we’ll have providers say, “We’ll try to give you Pitocin and try and help you efface and open just a little bit to help us get a Foley or a Cook in,” but some providers are like, “No. No contractions, no dilation, no effacement, rarely is Pitocin going to help.” But it can. Kelsey: We didn’t do Pitocin yet. We started with a balloon catheter. Meagan: Can you tell people how uncomfortable or comfortable it was and how you could get through it? Because not dilated at all, you’re literally putting a catheter through a closed, hard cervix. Kelsey: Absolutely. It was painful. It was painful getting it in, but the real painful part– and I’m sure that your listeners know and you’ll have to correct me if I’m wrong– the balloons are inserted. They are pumped with saline to manually being to dilate the cervix. They fall out by themselves somewhere around 4 centimeters. Is that right? Meagan: 3-4 centimeters, yep. Kelsey: Putting it was painful, but the real pain came when my nurses would try to put some tension on the balloon to tug on it to see if it would come out. My husband will say, “That looked like it was the most pain that you were in the whole time.” That was so painful. And of course, I don’t have an epidural at this point. It’s not coming out, lady. It’s not coming out. Give it a minute. So that was pretty painful. Meagan: Yeah. And they pull and push and put pressure on it to try and encourage it and see because sometimes it will just slip out but it also needs to come down and put pressure on the cervix but it’s obviously not the funnest. But could you say manageable or worth it or would you say, “I’d never do it again in my life”?Kelsey: No, absolutely. No. I would absolutely do it again because it worked for me and really, only one of the balloons that came out was painful. I got up to use the restroom at about maybe 5:00 PM that night. It was inserted at 9:30 in the morning. I got up to use the restroom one time at 5 and the second one just popped out like that. It was easy peasy. So I would absolutely do it again. It was not that miserable but it was certainly not comfortable. Meagan: Yeah, not pleasant. Kelsey: Yeah. And I love what my doctor said. He came in whenever that second balloon fell out and he said, “You’re dilated. We know you’re dilated to a certain point at least.” I was very conservative with cervical checks. I was like, “You can check me when I’m admitted but other than that, I really don’t want anyone up there,” because I know that increases the risk of infection. So he said, “There’s no reason for me to check you. We know that you’re at a certain point, but now we’ve got to work to get your contractions to match your dilation,” which was such an easy way for me to understand what was going on. And you’ll have to forgive me because I don’t remember when they started the antibiotic drip. I was diagnosed with GBS as we mentioned and I did choose to go the antibiotic route just because– and this takes into another point that we talked about earlier– I had a friend whose daughter did contract GBS during delivery and she was very, very sick, hospitalized the first week after she was born. So I knew statistically the odds were very small for my little one to experience any adverse consequences but that was a risk I just didn’t want to take. I wanted to mitigate it. Meagan: And that’s great. Kelsey: So I did take antibiotics. I don’t know how much, but I did go that route. Meagan: Yeah, most people do. Most people do. Kelsey: Yeah. So we did begin to work to get contractions to match my dilation. I pumped a little bit. I moved around. We began Pitocin and this was honestly my favorite part of labor. I would do the hours from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM when I did get an epidural over and over and over again. I put my headphones in. I got in the zone. I spent a lot of time on the birthing ball and on the toilet. When people say the toilet is a magical place to be when you’re in labor, they’re not wrong. They’re not wrong. Meagan: I loved it too. I loved it. Kelsey: I loved it so much. Meagan: It was this weird way to put counterpressure, open the pelvis, take off the pressure, but also at the same time, get the good pressure. I don’t know. I loved it too. Kelsey: Yes, and my doula had set up candles in the bathroom and the lights were turned off. It was a moment when I was unhooked from the machines. She had some essential oils in the toilet. I don’t know. I never knew the hospital restroom could be so relaxing, but it was great. Meagan: I love that. Kelsey: It was so great. I did work through contractions for about 5 hours. I was getting so tired by this point. I had been up for 24 hours without a drop of sleep. I didn’t have the same fortitude that I maybe would have had 12 hours prior, so I began to no longer work with my contractions. I was just fighting against them. I was yelling, “No” a lot. I was saying things that– I don’t know. Laboring brings out a whole other individual within a woman I believe. At about 10:00 PM that night, Pitocin was up to a 5. I was dilated to about 7 centimeters and I decided to get the epidural which is something that I necessarily didn’t plan on, but I’m glad that I did. It was a good decision. Meagan: I love that you say that because I think that there’s so much shame sometimes about having this goal and desire, but then “giving up” which is not giving up, just to let you know, listeners. The epidural can really come in as such an amazing tool when you’re exhausted. Sometimes we’re holding so much tension, so getting an epidural actually offers relaxation. There are other pros and cons to epidurals, but the epidural can be such a great tool and you should never feel bad or question your decision to change your mind. Kelsey: Yeah, absolutely. And this is another thing that I learned as I was laboring or really reflecting on the labor and delivery process is that first of all, for the most part, none of your decisions have to be instantaneous and I remember my doula telling me this. She was like, “You can take a minute. You can ask everyone to step out of the room and it just be you and your husband. You can think through the pros, cons, risks, and advantages. For whatever decision you make, for the most part, you have time.” I was always afraid that I would be pressured into, “Okay, you’re in here. We’ve got to make a decision. What do you want to do?” and I wouldn’t know what to do. So I was so glad that there was time and that there were options. I feel like my epidural was one of those things. I remember asking everyone to leave the room and it was just me and my husband. We were talking through it, but it allowed me to rest. I got to sleep a little bit. Because of my doula and nurses, they positioned me just so that baby moved several stations. I dilated to 9 centimeters and I was 80% effaced in a matter of hours. Meagan: Wow. That is awesome. Kelsey: Yes, it was great. I still didn’t know how far dilated I was until this point. My doula, nurse, and husband decided it would be– I mean, they let me make the ultimate decision, but they thought it would be a good idea to know that I was 9 centimeters because I was 24 hours into this thing and kind of discouraged to be quite honest. Anyway, we were quickly approaching the 24-hour mark since my water broke. That was another thing that I was starting to freak out about. I felt like, “Okay, because my water is broken and it’s been 24 hours, this is going to be an automatic C-section,” but that was not the case. I remember– my doctor didn’t really come to see me that much, but he just seemed so unbothered by it. Meagan: So what you’re saying is that he didn’t even treat you any differently? Kelsey: No, no. Meagan: That’s amazing. That’s amazing.Kelsey: He is so– if you’re ever in the DFW area– Meagan: That’s what we want. That is what we want. If you in your mind are like, “Oh, I’ve got this C-section. I’ve got this and I’ve got that,” and your provider is just acting like you are any other person coming in and having a baby, yeah. That’s awesome. That’s what you want. Kelsey: That’s how my nurse was too. I remember telling her, “I’m so scared every time you come and take my temperature because I’m afraid that I’m going to have spiked a fever.” Meagan: That you’ll say I have an infection, yeah. Kelsey: Yes. I remember she put her hands on my knees and she looked me in the eye and she said, “Even if I come in and you’ve spiked a fever, a C-section is not the only way to get this baby out. She’s right there. She’s right there. There are other options. It’s going to be okay.” Meagan: Yes. That’s awesome. Kelsey: So we just kept on keeping on. I slept. I kept sleeping a little bit. I rested from about 2:00 AM until 6:15 AM when I was complete. We started doing some practice pushes, but on the first practice one, the baby’s head started coming out. Meagan: Ah! That first practice push. Kelsey: Yes, so my nurse was like, “Can you hold on a minute? Let me go get the doctor.” I’m pretty sure he came from home. This is probably one of those do as I say not as I do situations. I was so tired of waiting and I was so tired in general. I just started pushing even when contractions weren’t necessarily helping me, but that girl came out in 30 minutes. She was born and put in my arms. It was the very best. I never heard a single, “Well, you’ve got Group B Strep or your waters have been broken this long.” I mean, none of that from my doctor, from nurses, no one. Meagan: Awesome. Kelsey: I feel like they treated me as an individual case because I was. I was not a textbook that they were reading in nursing school or medical school or anything like that. It was, “At this moment, how is your baby doing? How are you doing? What are the signs that we have from data and all of those kinds of things and experiences? I think we’re okay to keep going.” So that’s what we did. Meagan: I love that. This team sounds really awesome. Kelsey: They were great. Meagan: It would be really cool if we could just replicate them and send them all over the world. Kelsey: I know. They were awesome. Meagan: There are providers just like them for sure, but that just sounds so awesome and so non-pressuring especially when you have all of these little factors that could really impact a provider’s view. Kelsey: Yeah. Meagan: Ah, it’s so awesome. Well, I am so happy for you. Huge congrats. Huge congrats. Kelsey: Thank you. Thank you. Meagan: I’m so glad that along the way you were one, supported, and two, you were able to follow your heart and feel validated for following your heart, and being able to shift gears based on what you were giving. This is so important to know. Plans can change. Things can change and you didn’t go with the same exact provider. A lot of the time, we do so that’s another little tidbit I would like to talk about it providers and how important providers are and can really impact. This is even before having a C-section. From the get-go, right? If we have a provider that is really against vaginal birth in the beginning or really prone to induction and pressing and pushing Pitocin really hard and then we stress baby out and then we’re not doing well and then we have a C-section, we needed to be supported and not pressed from the beginning. Know that if you are feeling these red flags as a first-time mom if you’re listening because I know we have first-time moms listening. Know that if you’re feeling weird about a provider, it’s okay to change at any point. It’s really okay. Find a provider like this that supports you and says, “Okay, this is what we’ve got. Everything is looking okay. Here we are. Let’s keep going,” and really helps you as your guide. Kelsey: I remember there were two things. I guess I just want to rave about him more. Towards the end of my pregnancy, we were doing– oh gosh. What is it? A non-stress test. We were doing that at every appointment because of my blood clotting disorder and just making sure that baby was doing okay. My amniotic fluid level was kind of decreasing. It was getting pretty close to that line where most doctors would say, “Oh, it’s getting too close. You’ve got to come in tomorrow. We’re going to induce at 39 weeks.” He just said, “Oh, we’ll check it again next week. Just make sure you’re drinking a lot of water.”When I came in to be admitted, there was meconium because I had that rupture of membranes and there was meconium. It wasn’t clear so I was freaking out and he said, “That’s actually pretty normal for full-term. We’re not going to be worried about it.” And I didn’t know that!Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, it is. The longer-term the baby goes, it’s common. I mean, it can happen really anytime, but yeah. Meconium is more common than the world knows. Kelsey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Meagan: There are so many babies that are born with meconium that the nurses and the staff pay attention to a little more after birth but have no complications. Kelsey: Yeah, yep. That’s exactly what happened with us. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. That’s important to know. Well, I want to talk a little bit about GBS. Let’s talk about the actual evidence. The risk of a newborn getting a GBS infection– you kind of mentioned that it’s pretty low, but based on your own experience you’re like, “Yeah, it wasn’t worth the risk to me.” It’s the same thing when we’re talking about TOLAC. Okay, uterine rupture risk is pretty low, but then we have to evaluate what risk is acceptable to that individual. Kelsey: Absolutely. Meagan: Not treating meaning no use of antibiotics which is usually Penicillin via IV and it’s usually done about every 4 hours, especially after a rupture of membranes. The risk of serious infection including so serious death is 1-2%. Kelsey: Yeah. It’s small. Meagan: It’s very small, but again, it’s what risk you are willing to take. Some people are 100% willing and say, “I would really rather not receive antibiotics,” and that is okay too. There’s not a ton of evidence with Hibicleans and stuff like that. It’s a vaginal wash. Honestly, it’s like a douche. Sorry for saying that word everybody, but that’s what it is. You put it on up there and it cleanses the canal. So the risk of infection with the treatment of antibiotics is about 0.2%. So, still very low.Kelsey: Also small.  Meagan: Also very small. But still, there you go. And then one thing that– and it’s from a small trial and it was quite a few years ago. I think it was 7 years ago maybe in 2016. They did a small trial and they found that women that were GBS positive that took probiotics decreased their chance by 43%. 43% of them became GBS-negative by birth. Kelsey: Okay, interesting. Meagan: So really interesting. Probiotics. I believe in probiotics not even pregnant, just all the time. I think it’s really a good thing because there is so much in our food and everything these days but that was kind of an interesting thing. Again, like I said, it was a smaller trial. It was done quite a few years ago, but 43% of them became negative by birth. That’s pretty high. Kelsey: Absolutely. Meagan: 43%. So knowing also that if you test positive, you can retest closer to birth because it can go away. It doesn’t always though, so don’t think that if you get positive and you start probiotics that you are for sure not going to be positive, but know that there are things that you can do or the garlic and things like that. We’ll have a blog in the show notes today linked about GBS. We’ll have these trials and things linked as well so you can go check them out for yourself and make the best decision for you. Kelsey: Yeah, I think it goes without being said too that there is going to be a risk with antibiotics as well. Where there is risk, there has to be choice. I made my decision but probably hundreds of thousands of women listening to this are going to choose differently. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s okay. That’s one of my favorite things about this show. We all have opinions and we all have things that we would do versus someone else, but there’s no shaming in any decisions that anyone makes. I was actually never GBS positive so I never even had to make that choice which I’m grateful for. A lot of people will say, “No. No way. I don’t want antibiotics because there’s risk with antibiotics.” But then a lot of people will say, “Well, I’d rather have the risk of taking the antibiotics than this risk too.” So you just have to weigh out the pros and cons and decide what’s best for you. But yeah. I love your story. I love that you had a long birth, premature rupture of membranes, walking in at no dilation, and a less-ideal cervical state. Kelsey: Yes. Adding that to my resume. Meagan: A less-than-ideal cervical state with my VBAC. And a Cook catheter and that took time and all of the things. Here you are and you had a vaginal birth. Kelsey: I did. I did. I would do it all over again. Meagan: A lot of people ask me that. “Would you do it again?” because I had a really long labor as well and I’m like, “Yeah. Yep. I totally would do it again. 100%. Absolutely.” Well, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your story. Kelsey: Thank you for having me. It was great. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“Because of that VBAC, it has opened a new me. I did not birth my daughter. I had a rebirth of myself, a stronger self."Nurul joins Meagan on the podcast today all the way from Singapore! She shares how finding The VBAC Link gave her the hope she needed to believe a redemptive birth could be possible after a traumatic C-section experience. After interviewing 11 doulas and many doctors, Nurul fought to build a safe, supportive birth team which made all the difference in the end. We are SO proud of how Nurul achieved her VBAC and found a safe, supportive team with limited resources. We know you will be inspired by Nurul and her beautiful family just like we are!!Additional LinksNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello VBAC Link listeners. This is your host, Meagan and I am so honored to be here today with our guest, Nurul. Am I saying that right? I always feel like I say it Nurul. You guys, she is in Singapore and right now, it’s 11:00 PM her time. She was so gracious to stay up super late and record her story. We have an amazing story. I know they are all amazing, but I think that this is a story that a lot of people are going to connect to because we know sometimes how hard it is in the VBAC world to find and really get the support that we deserve. So make sure to buckle up because this episode is going to be so wonderful and Nurul, I’m so, so grateful for you to be here with us today. Nurul: I think, like I started this journey, honestly I started with The VBAC Link. The moment I found out I was pregnant, I’m like, “I’ve got to find something that understands how I feel inside,” so I went straight to finding something. I found you on Instagram and was like, “Oh god, they have a podcast.” I went straight to Spotify and I’m like, “Okay. I’ve got to listen to this.” I’m hitting play and playing and playing. I listened to episodes all the way down to the day before I gave birth. Meagan: Oh my gosh. I love it. So all of these stories carried you through your whole pregnancy journey and inspired you. Now here you are going to record your story and inspire someone else in the same way. Nurul: Yes. I definitely wanted to come here so bad because I do not know how many of you know how so important it is, but I’m sure you’ve watched Crazy Rich Asians knowing that Singapore literally is a dot on the map. It is so tiny but it is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It is probably one of the top five, so it is very crowded here. The pollution is terrible but if you’ve been to Singapore, it’s completely clean. It’s clean and beautiful and what comes with all of that is convenience. That’s the thing with convenience. When you talk about convenience and how we talk about morning times and everything, come to Singapore and it is really about convenience. It’s terrible to say but I was proud to see that we don’t want more than say five or ten minutes to a bus stop and to travel from one end to another in Singapore, it takes no more than one hour. Meagan: Whoa. Nurul: That’s how tiny Singapore is. And with how tiny Singapore is, you’ve got 9 government huge hospitals that are heavily subsidized by the government and we’ve got 9 equal hospitals that are private. Meagan: Wow. So 18 hospitals. Nurul: Yes. If there are more, I’m not sure, but these are the hospitals that are quite known amongst *inaudible*. And with all of these hospitals, I have to say that there is a culture that comes to see people being comfortable. It’s the culture of, “I want the best doctor. I want the best hospital. I want the best of this and I want to be treated well. I’m giving you the dollar. I want to be treated–”Meagan: Like royalty. Nurul: Yes, really. It’s terrible. So it happened in 2019. I was married in January 2019. I found I was pregnant in March 2019. The due date was in November. Of course, I was one of the few of my friends that got pregnant. I didn’t know who to really talk to about this. So then my husband introduced me to some of his friends and wives and all of that. This doctor, I’m not going to say his name, popped up many times. I’m like, “Okay.” This doctor was famous even when my mom was pregnant with me. Over 30 years ago–Meagan: That’s how it was with me. My mom’s doctor delivered me and performed my first two C-sections. Nurul: Oh my. Meagan: Yeah, but he did me. Yeah. Nurul: Really? Crazy, yeah. I think it’s also crazy that these doctors are carrying these names with high Cesarean numbers. I know. So, Dr. A., I went to Dr. A. My husband and I are people who are very honest. We like honesty. We want it. He had this joking tone. He made me feel comfortable. He was like, “Do you have any questions?” and this and that. I said, “Okay, then I’ll see you again next month,” and next and next. There were many red flags which, of course, I didn’t know to look out for these flags. That’s why when you are first pregnant, I strongly say that many of us are like, “Oh, I’m pregnant. What am I going to do? How am I going to get everything?” Ask any mom and they will say, “Oh, you’ve got to get this crib and you’ve got to get these wipes and you’ve got to get this swaddle.” No one really talks about, “Hey, do you want to talk about your birth plan? How are you going to prepare for everything? Are you thinking of going to this class or this birthing class?” No one asked me that. I even had a friend who said, “Oh, I wasn’t reading until 38 weeks.” I thought, “Okay, I’m just going to stop work for a while and then get myself ready.” But you know, no. We don’t want to read about birth. Not a single person. Even my mom and you know? Now, in 2023 in modern Singapore, talking about birth is such a taboo. No one really talks about it. Meagan: Really?Nurul: Really. I asked my mom. I said, “How did you give birth to me?” “Oh, I ended up there. They induced me. I put a pill on top of my lip and then you came an hour later.” I said, “Oh, it’s that easy?” She said, “Yeah, you just push.” I said, “Oh, okay.” Nothing about how there are some that you might get this way and nothing like that. So then pregnancy was all good. I’m now at 37 weeks. He said, “Oh, your baby is growing well and is very healthy. I like that. Your blood sugar level is good. Everything is fine. Iron was a little low, but manageable.” At 38 weeks, he said to me, “Do you know that if your baby is out now, your baby can breathe on his own? You don’t have to *inaudible* and your baby doesn’t have to go into the NICU, nothing like that. Your baby will be healthy.” I said, “Oh, it’s okay. I’ll go a little bit more.” At 39 weeks, he was like, “Oh, your baby is getting a little big. I’m sure he’s getting very heavy.” I said, “Yeah, I am feeling heavy, doctor.” He said, “But if you want to wait, go ahead.” All of these signs were all conditioning which I did not know. And then at 40 weeks, so we came in at 40 weeks and he was like, “Do you know that when your baby hits 40 weeks, your baby doesn’t grow anymore in your tummy?”Meagan: Oh!Nurul: Yeah, he told me that. He spoke *inaudible”. He said that the baby is not going to grow anymore. It’s like, there’s nothing more that your baby is going to absorb. He said that if you feel like you want to haste things up and you want to make things faster, come on in. You can induce. If you want, I can check you to be in. I was like, “Great.” I got my son checked. I was high, high, and 0 centimeters dilated. Everything was telling me, “You are not ready for this.” He said, “I’m sure you’re tired.” I said, “Yeah, I am.” He said, “You know what? If you think that you want to get induced, drop me a text. I’ll come down that morning myself.” So at 40 weeks, at clean midnight I was telling my husband, “I am really heavy. I don’t want to be like this anymore. Can we just go?” It was a few minutes after midnight and he said, “Oh, let’s go to the hospital.”We go to the hospital with *inaudible*. I said, “I want to get myself induced.” They sent a text to my doctor. He came in that morning and said, “All right. Let’s get you induced.” They got me induced. 18 hours later, nothing. Nothing. Every check they did, I was on the highest level of Pitocin, nothing. I felt nothing. Even though they said, “Oh, look at this. Look at the numbers. They’re so high. Are you not feeling anything?” It was like, “I think your baby is really big and this is what needs to happen. The passenger is big. Your passage might be small. That’s why baby’s not coming.” Meagan: Oh, barf. Your passenger may be big. Nurul: Yeah. Your passenger is big but your passage is small. Meagan: Your passage is small. Nurul: You know, he used these words. I said, “Oh no.” It was like, okay. He was like, “It’s been 18 hours. It’s getting dangerous.” But I did not know how to ask him all of the questions I should have asked. I didn’t know because it was like, “If you are going to wait any longer, you can go ahead. I’ll give you 6 more hours. 6 more hours. If you don’t go into labor, I’m taking over.” Then I’m like, “Taking over?” He said, “Yeah. It’s getting dangerous. If you don’t feel comfortable, you can find another doctor.” I was like, “Oh. I’m really here, you know.” I was like, “No, no. Of course, I don’t want that.” He said, “Okay, then if you want to go ahead with 6 hours, but I can’t guarantee that baby will come in 6 hours.” He said those words and I’m like, “Oh god. I’m really so tired. I want to rest. I just want to see my baby.” I said, “You know what? I don’t know what I should do now.” I asked him, “What should I do now?” He said, “If you want to think about Cesarean, easy. We’ll do a Cesarean. You can wait 6 hours. I can’t guarantee your baby will come but you can wait and see all that time.” And I went through it. My husband went down with the payment. There was *inaudible*. Now that I’m looking, I don’t see any emergency Cesarean. When you see the word emergency, it means that you can’t wait. My husband had time to go down to the counter, make payment, and come back up. We had a little talk and all of that. There was no emergency to this but I still went for it. I went for it. He was born–Meagan: I just want to say that that is okay too because the same thing with me and so many out there, right? With my second, it was like, “I can give you another hour,” and what was an hour going to do when I was having this pressure? What it did was it stopped my contractions. I don’t remember feeling a contraction out of that because I was so stressed, so overwhelmed, so defeated. I was like, “Let me just walk,” so I started walking and I just remember breaking down and I was like, “Fine. I feel pinned against this wall.” It’s not, again, mine wasn’t an emergency. I walked down to the OR and climbed onto the OR table. It wasn’t an emergency. They actually called it an elective. I wouldn’t even call it an elective. I mean, yes. I did elect, but it wasn’t like, “Sign me up. Sign me up. Take me down.” So many of us are in that situation where we’re like, “Okay, all right. Let’s do it then.” Nurul: Yeah. He didn’t even explain to me, “I’m going to cut this many layers.” The only thing he said to me was, “When I call out your name, wave up and give the hardest cough that you can because you will be intubated with this.” Meagan: Oh, they intubated you. Nurul: Oh, because I said, “I don’t want an epidural.” Meagan: I got you. Nurul: It was when we decided on the C-section, I gave myself just a few seconds to shed one or two tears. I’m like, “I can do this. I’m strong. Let’s get through it.” I told my doctor that I wanted GE. I don’t want to go through it. I woke up. He woke me up and then he said, “I was right. Your passenger was big but the passage is small. Baby isn’t big but your baby’s long.” I’m like, “Okay.” Meagan: Oh my gosh. How big was your baby? Nurul: He was 3.47 kilos only. Meagan: Okay, okay. Nurul: So pretty average, yeah. Then I wanted to breastfeed badly but I mean, when you go through such trauma that then I didn’t know was trauma, I ended up going through a lot of that. You’re just not happy. Milk didn’t come. I jumped back into work because I just wanted to drown myself from the weight of all of this. I had this feeling of, “I’m not good enough. Why couldn’t I birth my son? Why couldn’t I do it?” There is this saying in Singapore, in my race, I believed and aunties would say, “Oh, yeah. Baby went out the window instead of the door.”Most are shocked. As much as women mean to jokingly say it, they are shocked. They hit you at the most vulnerable state because you’re already at your lowest. I was really down but I constantly had a smile on my face. I was keeping it all in. My husband knew that I was going through a time where it was just postpartum depression with postpartum anxiety. But I was so lucky because I had the support there at home. I had my husband there. He played such a huge role in just being there with me and trying to understand what it was that I was going through. But the thing was that he was also going through it. We went through such a difficult time together. We didn’t even want to talk about having a second one because that was how bad it was. I think it was almost two years later and we got pregnant with my second one. I remember when after I gave birth to my son, my first one, I saw this TV star who was talking about VBAC. I was like, “What’s VBAC? What’s VBAC?” I wanted to listen and then I was like, “Oh, you can have a vaginal birth after Cesarean?” I didn’t know that was possible. No one tells me that. I thought once you cut yourself, you have to cut yourself forever. I went to see stories. I read about her story. I’m like, “Wow. She is amazing.” But then she was full of *inaudible* mind. She was strong and she was loud. And yeah. She was a TV star. Meagan: Still, she’s a human being doing that. Nurul: Exactly. It was like, that was how much my self-esteem was completely gone. I thought that I was not sufficient. I’m not mother enough to birth my son. It was so sad. When I found out I was pregnant with my second, I was like, “I don’t want to go through that.” It took me so long to get up on my two feet so that my son would have the best version of me. I cannot. I cannot do that again. I remember those words VBAC. I went to Google VBAC, what is that? I’m like, “This is interesting.” Then I went onto Instagram and I went to search on the hashtag VBAC. Already, it was just right on and then I found The VBAC Link. I found you guys. I started to listen. It was like, “Okay. I can do this. I can listen.” The next thing I know, I was on episode 5 and I think it was the husbands. Meagan: Oh, uh-huh. We had our husbands on. Nurul: Yeah. I remember I was like, “Oh my god. This is the best thing. I can do this. I can do this.” So then I was thinking. Also, I met a friend. She tried to VBAC three times. She tried to VBAC two times. It was a complete failure. She was really sad. I was talking to her saying, “What do I do?” I even talked to her husband. They said, “Get a doula. Make sure you get the right doctor.” This was my in. I was like, “I have got to get a doula. Someone’s got to help me. Someone’s got to get me and my husband on track. I’ve got to get the right doctor. I’ve got to get the right doctor.” And from then on, I actually interviewed 11 doulas. Meagan: Yeah, okay! You’re like me where I interviewed 12 doctors and you interviewed 11 doulas. But that’s awesome to hear that you guys have that many doulas in your area. That’s awesome to hear that you have a good amount of doulas. Nurul: Okay, but with the amount of doulas, there are only a handful. There are a lot in hospitals. Meagan: Oh, really?Nurul: Really. Only a handful. Only a handful. So with every interview that I did with doulas, one of the first questions I asked was, “Can you be there with me during my active labor?” There were so many that said, “I can’t be there. I’m not registered with the hospital. I’ve not worked with this doctor. Not all doctors will want to work with a doula.”Meagan: They have to be registered. Interesting. Nurul: Mhmm. You have to register. There are only two hospitals that allow doulas in and with these two hospitals, only a handful. I think it was 4 or 5. It was during COVID with my second one. It was so difficult. No water birth. There were only a handful of doulas. There were so many barriers that I had to cross. I was like, “You know what? I’m going to take this step by step.” I interviewed 11 doulas and I think it was doula number 10. She gave me this incredible vibe. She was calming. She had so much knowledge to her. I’m like, “Okay. I might actually have something.” There was this voice inside of me, “I’ve got to interview one more doula.” I spoke to her and she was like, “Yeah, go ahead. Say my name on The VBAC Link. Yes please.” So her name is Doula Lorraine. She is fantastic. Everything about her is just calm and all so when I spoke to her, I felt so much warmth that I have not felt in the longest time. It was such an incredible conversation with her. I asked her which doctors she had worked with and which are pro-VBAC. I asked whether she had done any VBACs. She said that she has. She is so humble. She’s incredible, I’m telling you. When I first met her, she gave me this hug and rub on my shoulder. It was during COVID and it was like, yes. We had to keep our distance but she was fantastic. She went through all of the things. She didn’t really give me all of this information at once. It was slow and steady. I took her up. I was like, “Okay, Lorraine. I want you to be my doula.” It was like, “All right. Fantastic.” She knew that I wasn’t quite set up with the doctors so the first doctor I went to, he went through everything and I said, “Yeah, but doctor, I want a VBAC.” The first thing he said to me was, “Yeah, I have extra charges for VBAC.” Then I was like, “Oh, okay.” Why are you telling me you have extra charges? I was telling my husband after the appointment, I was like, “No. I don’t want this doctor. I don’t feel comfortable. If you’re going to talk to me about money, I don’t really want to talk to you anymore.” The second doctor, you would be shocked. I went back to my first doctor, Dr. A. I went to Dr. A. Dr. A. was like, “Wow, welcome back. You came by.” I was like, “Yeah.” He was like, “Wow. Expecting number two after two years. That’s good. That’s good after a Cesarean.” I said, “Yeah. I really want a VBAC, doctor. I really want a VBAC.” He said, “Oh, we will have to see. I can really only determine that you are a candidate at a later part of your pregnancy.” I said, “How much later?” He said, “30+ weeks?” I said, “Oh, okay. All right.” But he had conditions. He said, “Yeah, but there are conditions.” I said, “Yeah, what are the conditions?” You’ll be shocked. He said, “The condition is that your baby cannot pass 3.4 kilos.” I’m like, “What? My first one was 3.47. That’s not possible.” He said, “You can’t pass 40 weeks.” What? My body wasn’t ready at 40 weeks with my first one. Meagan: Nope, yeah. Nurul: And he said, “You can’t be overweight. You have to be healthy.” There were so many of these conditions, but I could do this. I was like, “Okay.” I went okay, okay, okay with it. I went to see another doctor as well. This doctor is one of the pro-VBAC doctors in Singapore. There are only a handful. Literally, you can count with one hand. I went to see him and he asked me, “What happened with your first one?” He knew Dr. A. He was in a completely different hospital. He knew Dr. A. I said, “Oh, Dr. A. said that the passenger was too big and the passage was too small and also there was no progress in my labor or something like that.” He said, “Okay. Why was there no progress?” I said, “I went in to get myself induced at 40 weeks.” He asked me, “Why did you get yourself induced?” I was like, “I didn’t want to wait. My doctor was telling me there was no point in waiting and I was feeling really heavy.” Meagan: He also told you that your baby wasn’t going to grow anymore so at that point, you’re like, “Okay, I guess it’s pointless to keep this baby in here.” Nurul: Yeah, I know right? So he said, “If you want a VBAC, we are not going to induce you. If it didn’t work the first time, it is not going to work the second time with you. Your body wasn’t ready at 40 weeks. We are not going to do anything until 42 weeks, then we will see what we can do.” I was like, “Yes. Yes. I have found someone who is actually going to go all out with me in this,” and they are so little. I’m telling you that you can count the amount of doctors that will allow you to go to 42. There are all kinds of excuses that they will give you. You are putting baby in danger and all of that. It was so hard and this was only the first level trying to get a birthing team that I could trust that would respect my wishes, that would listen to me, and that would understand that, “I hired you and I will fire you if you don’t listen to me.” I was going into this with so much heat. I was angry. I was like, “You know, I can do this.” Meagan: I’m sure. Nurul: Yeah. I told myself, “I’ve got to get a trusted doctor.” And then I remember Lorraine asking, “Why do you want a VBAC?” I was telling her, “I want the best version of myself for my number two, my number one, my husband, and especially for me. I don’t want to put myself for that again.” I told her that it was like, it’s not about proving to society or to family members or to friends, “Hey, I can do a vaginal birth too, you know.” It wasn’t about proving that. It wasn’t about proving myself. I wanted it. I wanted it because I needed it badly for myself. I needed it so badly. Yeah. And then she was like, “All right, then we will do this.” I went to her Hypnobirthing classes. I told her, “I’m a person who is always stressed.” There were all these things in my mind with micro stresses from work and all and being a stay-at-home mom. There was so much. She said, “All right. We’ll take it step by step. Slow.” I said, “Okay, let’s do this.” I went for her classes. I learned to let go. The whole process of it was just letting go. It was to forgive myself and to show compassion. It was to tell myself, “If you’re going to go to Dr A. and say ‘This is all your fault’, he is not going to take a single responsibility because he’s going to say ‘You hired me. You hired me to tell you what you want to hear deep down inside.” Yeah, he’s not going to take any responsibility. And what’s the point of me wanting to tell him, “You are wrong”? There’s no point. I told myself that I would take ownership of what happened. I have to. If I don’t, then there’s no way out of this. I have to live on it and then Lorraine reminded me that you have to have gone through all of that because if you did not then you would not be where you are right now. Meagan: Yes. I agree with that so much. So much. Nurul: Yeah. And into that whole journey of Hypnobirthing and private sessions with breathing and everything, I learned to really let go and really relax. Even at, I think it was 36 or 34 weeks when I shows that I still had tension. “You have a lot,” she was saying. “You have to get everything out of the way.” I remember in my class that there were two other moms. One of them wanted to try for a VBAC and the other one was wanting to try labor without an epidural. The lucky mom, she went into labor on a full moon– something I read about a full moon– and Lorraine told me her birth story. She was saying, “You have to get everything out of the way. When your body is ready and when your body goes into labor, everything should be out of the way. It should only be you and your birthing partner in that safe space.” She was telling me. I said, “Okay.” I went home and I did a full list. I had this list and I gave it to my husband. My husband is a very, very busy man. I said, “I need you to go through this list and tell me what you don’t understand because if you don’t understand, I’m just going to put it in more words so you will do it when I go into labor or before I go into labor and after I give birth, I need all of this done. I don’t want to be thinking and have all of these micro-stresses stress my body out and not allow my body to go into labor.” He said, “All right.” So my husband, even though he wasn’t present at most of Lorraine’s lessons or at the doctor’s appointments, I didn’t mind that at all because he did his work. He wrote up what he had to do and how he had to prepare himself and I loved that. At week 40, he said, “So how are you feeling?” I said, “I’m heavy, but I want to wait. I really want to wait.” He said, “Oh, okay.” He still went off to his meetings. He went to settle with our toddler. Everything was still on its way and everything like I wasn’t pregnant. Meagan: Right, normal life. Nurul: Yeah, normal life. Completely normal and that was exactly what Lorraine told me. “You have to live your life normally. If you want to go somewhere go. If you want to eat something, eat. Nourish yourself. If you want to have fun with your kid, go. Don’t stop yourself. There should not be any limitations to what you want to do. You have to feel happy. When you’re happy, all of these happy chemicals will help you.” She was always there with me. She was always checking on me. At 40+3 or 40+4, I was feeling very nervous. I felt a lot of anxiety. I was like, “Oh my god. Things are taking so long. I should be going into labor.” The thing is, yes. It was 40+5, but I had another week plus two days. I don’t know what I was stressing. I don’t know why I was stressing but when you put yourself in that situation, one hour feels like ten million years. “Oh my god, when am I going to go into labor.” It’s like, “Oh, my tummy feels hot.” It’s just gas. I’m not going into labor tonight. You wake up and it’s like, “I’m still pregnant. Water is still in me.” There were no signs showing that my body was ready to go into labor. I did so many things. You name it, I did it because my belly did not want another Cesarean. I ate spicy food. In this part of the world, Southeast Asia, the food is extremely spicy so I ate international spicy food. I ate the Chinese mala, spicy. I remember eating so much. I ate pineapple core. I drank pineapple smoothies. I ate dates every day. I remember one of the episodes, you guys were saying raspberry leaf tea and the 3:1 rule. In the first trimester, one bag a day. In the second, two bags a day. I did that every day. I did Spinning Babies. I sat on my yoga ball, tilting on my hips and thrusting and everything, mostly everything. The Miles Circuit is so long. She was like, “Give it a try.” I was laying down and adjusting here. I did curb walking at 3:00 in the morning, literally. Meagan: Oh my goodness. Nurul: Yeah, because I wanted to get into labor so badly. She said, “You need to just relax. Rest.” Meagan: Just do nothing. Nurul: Do nothing. She’s like, “Do nothing. Spend time with your husband.” My husband’s name is Shah. It’s so much easier. I spent so much time with Shah. It was 40+6. I had sent my toddler with my in-laws. I said, “You know what? Let’s stay in and watch a movie.” I remember it was in the afternoon. I was watching a movie with him. I’m watching something funny and eating spicy food, nothing. And then I reached 41 weeks and Lorraine was saying, “How are you feeling?” I said, “I’m afraid that as much as I’m trying to relax, my body I think could be halfway there or maybe not but these stresses are getting to me.” She said, “All right, there’s one more thing. You can do it.” I said, “What is it? I’ll try anything. I’ve tried even Chinese acupressure on my foot.” She was like, “Do you want to try the midwives' brew?” I said, “What is that?” She was like, “Give it a try. If you’re afraid, you can have half the portion.” Midwife’s brew is peanut butter with castor oil. I was so afraid because I told Lorraine that I was afraid. I read so many things that I might get diarrhea or something bad might happen. She said, “Well, have half of it then.” I said, “All right, I’ll have half of it.” I had half of it and there were really good surges that came. I woke up and Lorraine was like, “You know what? If you want, you can try the full dosage but you’ve got to prepare yourself.” I said, “I’m prepared. Everything is prepared.” She said, “Come over. Get the oil and drink your smoothie.” But yeah. Before all of that, I wanted to spend time with my son. I wanted to let all of these happy hormones kick in and spend time with my toddler, spend time with my husband, my in-laws, and my parents. I took it at home with just my husband. He really stepped up. I gave him that list to follow so that I could focus on laboring. He dimmed up the whole room. He turned on the essential oils. He had lights and music turned on. The sheets were new and clean. Everything was nice and calm. Then he was like, “Are you ready?” I said, “Yeah.” I sat in the room. I drank the smoothie. I said, “I’m really tired. I just want to sleep.” He said, “I’ll join you in a little bit.” He went to do some house chores or something. I remember he crept in. I was already sleeping. I woke up. I think it was close to midnight. I drank my smoothie at about 8:00 in the evening. I woke up at about 11 or something and I felt really, really strong surges. I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to time them.” I timed them and they started to get really intense. I’m like, “This is two minutes apart.” Then it was 65 seconds, 70 seconds. I’m like, “Okay.” But my husband was dead sleeping. He was snoring. I was like, “I’m not going to wake him up.” I remember suddenly, everything I learned in Hypnobirthing class like getting into the shower. It might not be really, but maybe you just need to relax. I got into the shower. I stood in the shower. I’m like, “This is not going anywhere.” I said, “You know what? Just try to go to bed. Let’s just try to go to bed.” I couldn’t. I grabbed my yoga ball. I put it on the bed. I rocked myself on it. I kept thinking of all of these things that I learned. It was instinctive. Listen to your body. Just trust it. What it wants to do, just listen. Go along with it. Don’t go against it. So I took my ball and I put it on the bed. I’m on all fours and I’m just rocking away. I didn’t even realize that I was actually timing myself. After giving birth, I don’t even know what I was timing. It was all over the place. I think my husband woke up to me moaning really badly. He said, “Are you okay?” I didn’t know what to answer. I just remember showing him the phone. I took this to him and he was looking at it. He said, “I’m going to send this to Lorraine.” I said, “Yeah, yeah. Send. Send it to Lorraine.” So he sent it to Lorraine. I said, “Can you call her, please?” He was like, “She’s not picking up.” Then I was like, “You know what? I’m okay. I just want to rock on my ball. I feel comfortable.” He called again, I think. Lorraine asked him because he told me all of the stories that Lorraine asked him. She was like, “Is she talking?” “Not much. She’s just moaning.” She said, “Okay. Time for you to go to the hospital.” There are no birth centers in Singapore. Zero. So it was the hospital. I remember he was like, “Okay, you know what? I’m going to get the car. You do what you want.” He was talking to me so gently. I said, “I’m going to be in the shower.” So I popped into the shower again. I was just rocking in the shower and enjoying the warm water and everything. All then suddenly, he was like, “Are you ready, okay? I’m going to bring you to the hospital.” I was like, “Okay.” I was there and I just stuck on my dress. I walked slowly. I remember it was the longest walk to the car even though it was just downstairs. I had to take the lift down because we live on the fourth floor. I had to take the lift down and it was 7:00 in the morning. Like I said, in Singapore, it’s densely populated. You don’t meet someone in the lift in the morning. I went in and I remember there was this middle-aged guy and an auntie in the lift. She looked at me and she looked at my husband. She said, “Is she going into labor?” He was like, “Yes.” He was just nodding his head and I did not want anyone to annoy me. I was just facing the door, rocking myself. I walked and then she was like, “I’ll say a little prayer for you. I’ll say a little prayer for you.” I just nodded my head. I didn’t want to talk. So I went in the car and my husband already had the seat reclined all the way to the back because I put that in the list. He did everything. He is so, so sweet. I went in the car and I sat in front. There was a little pillow that was ready for me. I hugged the pillow. The journey from my place to the hospital that we chose is about 25-30 minutes. Meagan: Okay, not bad. Nurul: But it was the weekday in Singapore, peak hour. Oh my god. I told him to blast the music. I wanted him to blast the music. He turned on the Hypnobirthing music and he blasted it completely. But with how loud it was, I could hear the motorbikes passing through. I was like, “Oh my god. Stop that. It’s so loud.” I was telling my husband. I didn’t say anything but I was moaning. I was putting myself in that zone. You have to let the body receive the surges. I could feel him mumbling because I think he was cursing at the traffic. Meagan: I bet he was like, “Come on. We’ve got to go. Come on.” Nurul: Because I could feel the cars going past. I remember that we were probably just one U-turn away from the hospital and there was a bus coming. He didn’t care. He just made the U-turn. I was one minute away from the hospital. I’m not going to get one bus in my way. He turned and he went in. When I was stepping out of the car, I was actually annoyed with a lot of people to be honest. I was annoyed with the bikes. I was annoyed with the auntie. I was annoyed with the valet. The valet was asking me, “Do you need a wheelchair?” He kept asking my husband, “Does she need a wheelchair? Does she need a wheelchair?” “I don’t want a wheelchair. I want Lorraine. I want Lorraine.”Then suddenly, I heard this plop, plop, plop, plop and there she was, my doula. I said, “Oh my god.” She was there. She was running in her flip-flops down the stairs and with her yoga ball. She came straight to me and she was like, “You’re doing an amazing job. You’re beautiful and you’re incredible.” I felt so much love from my husband and with her there. My space was protected. I can feel so much love here. She asked me, “Do you want to walk or do you want to go in the room?” I said, “I want to walk.” I had to go up three flights of stairs. Meagan: Oh my goodness. Nurul: Yeah. She said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yeah. I want to walk.” In my mind, it was like, “I don’t want to sit down. I don’t want to sit down. I do not want to be pushed. I want to walk.” Every one and a half minutes that the surges would come, I put my face against the wall and I put my hand on my forehead. It was like, “I can do this. I can do this.” She was just like, “It’s okay. You’re doing fantastic. You’re doing great.” The labor room was full. It was a full house. We had to wait for a room. While I was waiting for a room, I was checked. While I was checked, I was so defeated because the nurse was so pushy. I did not want any noise. She was like, “Oh.” She checked me and was like, “Oh, you are 1 centimeter dilated, -2, and high and hot.” I was like, “No, how can that be?” Everyone was like, “This can’t be it. You are 1.5-2 minutes apart.” I was like, “Just get me a room. Get me a room. I want to get into a shower.” They managed to get me into a room. I got into the shower. My doula was reading to me scripts. I remember that my husband was there. It was getting really intense. The surges were getting so, so intense and I refused the epidural. I had my birth plan and my birth plan was down to every little thing that you can imagine. In the birth plan, I was like, “No artificial lights. All monitors turned off. No CTG allowed.” I didn’t allow any monitors on me because I didn’t want to feel that on my body. I didn’t want to wear their coats. I went in wearing my dress and I wished to go out wearing my things.I’m in there, I’m like, “I’m not a patient. I’m not sick. Being pregnant is not a medical condition. I’m just birthing my child. I don’t need all of this. Yes, I’m thankful for modern medicine but rescue me when I need rescue.” I don’t need you to tell me, “You’re pregnant. I’m going to help you birth your baby.” No. Yeah, so I remember going down there laboring in the shower. My husband was behind me. I was standing and he had the showerhead behind me. I got down. It was on my shoulder on the left and on the right. They tried their best to comfort me. It was getting so bad that I started begging my husband, “Just get me the epidural. Get me the epidural.” Meagan: Which is a sign. Nurul: Yes, it was a sign. You know, but when you feel all of that, I remember my doula telling me the day before, “You are going to be a force of nature and nothing is going to get in your way.” I didn’t believe her until I was there at that time. I turned to my husband and I said with serious eyes, “Get me the epidural. Get them in here and get me the epidural now.” I was angry and crying at the same time. He looked at me dead on into my eyes and he looked at my doula. He looked at Lorraine and Lorraine looked at him. They kept giving exchanges with their eyes and they were just ignoring. I was like, “Why are you ignoring me? Listen to me. Listen to me. I want an epidural now.” I was crying. Then Lorraine tried to talk to me. She tried to go on like, “Just try to lay down. I’m going to breathe with you.” I didn’t want to listen to her. I turned to my husband. I spoke in my mother tongue to my husband because she wouldn’t understand. I was like, “You don’t want to listen to me? Fine. I’m going to speak to my husband. I’m going to speak to him in the language that he and I share.” Can you believe it? I was a real force of nature. He just kept on looking at me. He didn’t want to respond. I said, “Why aren’t you listening to me? Why is nobody listening to me?” I think he was close to giving up because he kept looking at Lorraine. They kept giving exchanges and all. I said, “You know what? Okay. You don’t get me an epidural? Fine. Get me gas. Just get me gas.” She was like, “All right. I’ll get you gas.” I remember Lorraine stepping out and coming in with the gas mask but I wasn’t listening to the instructions. I didn’t know how to use the mask. I thought it was to just breathe, put it on your mouth over your face and breathe. I did not know that when it vibrates, it means that you’re not breathing in right. So the whole time I was breathing, it was vibrating. But I just needed something to hold tightly. There was nothing to the gas.I was telling my doula, “I want to sleep. I want to sleep. I’m so tired already. Please just get me the epidural.” She was like, “Just try to breathe through it all.” I was holding onto the mask but I wasn’t breathing right. I told her, “Get the nurse. Get the nurse and get her to check me. I think the baby is coming.” She was like, “Okay, okay. I’ll get the nurse.” She got the nurse at about 11 AM. It was just a few hours, but time distortion makes you feel like it was forever. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Nurul: Yeah. So the nurse checked me and she said, “You’re soft, but you’re only 1, maybe 2 centimeters dilated. Meagan: What?!Nurul: I felt even more defeated. I’m like, “This can’t be.” I was close to giving up. Even Lorraine saw that I really struggled to sleep. She was like, “Tell me what you want to do.” “I just want to lie down.” She kept putting a peanut ball between my legs and I kept kicking it. I remember a nurse coming in, one of the L&D nurses. She spoke in a really high-toned voice and I specifically said in my list that no one is to speak loudly in the room. I turned to her and was like, “Can you talk softly?” “I’m sorry, I’m just excited for you.” I rolled my eyes. I said, “Oh my god. What is happening to me?” It’s just not me. But like Lorraine said, “You are going to be a force of nature and no one’s going to get in your way.” She checked me again and I was 1-2 centimeters. I laid down. I’m like, “This is getting away. I give up. I want to sleep. I don’t care. I want to sleep.” I kept thrusting my hips in that squat that Lorraine told me. She checked me and I think was at 12:30. It was only an hour later. Can you believe it? She was recording with her phone. She checked me and she was like, “I see hair. I see hair.” She was like, “I see hair. I see hair.” She ran out. I could hear her slippers. She was like, “The baby is coming. The baby is coming!” The nurse came in and because I was laying on my side– everything I did, I did not want to be strapped down. I did not want to lay on my back, nothing. She checked me and she had the audacity to take a piece of gauze and put it on my perineum and say, “Mommy, don’t push. Your baby is it.” She pushed a little on my perineum. Meagan: She pushed baby up. Nurul: She pushed baby in, in fact. I’m like, “I’m not pushing. I’m not pushing.” She’s like, “I’ll get the doctor. Calm down.” The doctor came in at 11:40. They were busy putting on his clothes so they were facing the wall, three of them. Two nurses and one doctor. Two nurses putting on his gloves and his, I think robe thing. His gown. I was like, “I want to push but I feel like she’s coming.” I remember Lorraine was reading a script about a hot air balloon, imagining yourself in a hot air balloon breathing and going higher. I was just putting myself there and I felt like I needed to just sit up. When I sat up, the next thing I know, my baby was out. I just breathed out. I didn’t push. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Nurul: I didn’t push. I felt like I needed to sit up. I breathed out and I sat up and she just came. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Nurul: Yes, the doctor wasn’t there. The doctor was facing the wall. My husband was like, “Oh my god.” Lorraine said, “She’s here, she’s here.” I remember Lorraine screaming or shouting, “Take your baby. Take your baby.” My husband went to wrap my daughter and he just placed her on me. I even took off my dress and was like, “Put her on me. Put her on me.” I even asked Lorraine, “Is she really here? Is she really here?” I didn’t even realize it because I just breathed out. I didn’t push. I didn’t know how to push. There was no cutting or nothing. When the baby was on my chest, the doctor turned around and was like, “Oh, congratulations. You did such a great job.” My husband was so happy. I was crying. I remember saying to Lorraine, “I was on a hot air balloon. I was on a hot air balloon.” I was looking down on my daughter and she was on me. I was like, “I can’t believe she’s here. I did. I can’t believe I did it.” I kept on saying, “I can’t believe I did it.” The doctor was like, “Okay, I will leave you for a while with skin-to-skin.” I didn’t allow them to clean her. I didn’t allow the cord to be cut until it was completely white. All of my wishes were completely respected until it came to my placenta. This is ridiculous because they left me alone. They left me and my husband and Lorraine alone for our time with the baby. It was amazing and fantastic. I had one hour with my daughter and then my husband had one hour. Before my husband had that hour, the nurses came in and were like, “Mommy, your placenta is coming out. I think you need help with it because you’re bleeding a little.” I’m like, “It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m holding my baby. I’m talking. I’m fine. It’s all right. I don’t need help with it.” She was like, “I’ll give you another ten minutes.” I said, “No. Give me more time. I want more time. Give me another 30-40 minutes, okay?” She said, “Okay.” She came back. It wasn’t 30-40 minutes. She gave me, I think, another 10 minutes and said, “Mommy, you really need to get this placenta out. I’m going to just pull and tug it.” I said, “No. No. Give me time. Can’t you wait? Can’t you wait?” I saw how Lorraine was looking and it was like, “Oh, okay.” It was like, “No.” She was proud that I stood up for myself. I advocated for myself because going into this journey, I thought my doula would need to help me advocate my wishes, but no. I advocated strongly. She was like, “Okay. Let her birth her placenta.” I went into Hypnobirthing again. The placenta came out beautifully. There were no complications. I tore naturally. There were 35 stitches. I think you have one of the episodes where the mom was saying about the birth high. I did not understand it then, but when I gave birth to my daughter–Meagan: You understood it now. Nurul: Yeah. It’s been with me and I refuse to let it go. It’s a different kind of euphoria that you cannot explain because mine came along with working so hard at trying to have that birth and having that goal, fighting every battle just to have the baby the way I wanted. It was every fight. It was exhausting. Meagan: Yes, but you did it. You did it. You just sat up and baby came out. That is so amazing. Nurul: I sat up. Thank you. I remember my husband saying, “She looks like she came out on a waterslide.” He was like, “Do I need to pay the doctor now because he didn’t deliver the baby?” Meagan: Because he didn’t catch the baby? Oh, yeah. Nurul: Yeah, he was like, “Ahh.” It was and still is a wonderful thing for me. I’m going to say this for every mom who is going to try a VBAC or even given a chance to TOLAC or those who have had a VBAC. You have to really look at it and think of the journey that you had because for me, because of that VBAC, has opened a new me. I did not birth my daughter. I had a rebirth of myself, a stronger self. I’m starting a new healing journey. Even my doula– and I’m so close with my doula. Whenever I feel like I’m having a hard time, I will talk to her. She was like, “You’re having another healing journey. It is fantastic.” I say, “Yeah. It was because of that big step that I made advocating for myself. Fighting for myself.” It doesn’t have to be because everything is all laid out for you. No. Just do it. Meagan: Oh, well huge congratulations. Nurul: Thank you. Meagan: Thank you so much for sharing with us today. We are so happy for you and I encourage you to continue staying on that birth high and going out there and sharing your journey just like you are right now is only going to inspire and motivate others as well. Nurul: Yes, definitely. Thank you. Meagan: Thank you. Nurul: It’s been amazing. It’s actually midnight now in Singapore. Meagan: Yep, it’s midnight. Oh my goodness. But seriously, thank you so, so much. Nurul: Thank you. Thank you. Meagan: Okay. Nurul: And every mom who asks me, “How did you get onto this journey?” I say, “Listen to The VBAC Link.” I’m serious. So much information, so many things you are going to learn. Meagan: Aw, well thank you. We agree. This podcast still even educates us, right? So yeah. Well, thank you so much. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Dr. Kimberly Spair does it all! She holds a Ph.D. in Holistic Natural Health and Nutrition along with lots of additional certifications and degrees, all of which have helped her create an amazing career around helping others find holistic healing. Dr. Spair specifically helps postpartum women find ways to naturally combat symptoms like anxiety, exhaustion, and overall depletion. She is a VBAC mama herself and knows personally what kind of support birthing women deserve. Dr. Spair is so lovely and gracious. We know you will love this episode like we do!Additional LinksDr. Kimberly Spair's WebsiteFree Postpartum RecipesNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello Women of Strength. We have a special episode for you today. We have our friend, Dr. Kimberly Spair. Is that correct? Did I say it correctly? Dr. Spair: That’s correct. Yep. Meagan: Okay. That’s how I say it in my head. Sometimes I say it and it’s totally wrong. Dr. Spair: Yep. You’ve got it. Nope. Meagan: I said your name wrong like three times. Kimberly. Let me start sounding it out.Dr. Spair: You’ve got it. Meagan: You guys, she’s amazing. I was really drawn to her page a while ago because of something I had seen. I think it was a post about nutrition. Nutrition is something that is huge for me. I saw such a change when I dialed in on my nutrition, especially for my VBAC. I really dialed deeply into nutrition for my VBAC. I do believe that it helped me so much. So as I started digging into her and following her posts more, I was like, “I love her. She’s amazing.” So it is so awesome to have you today on the podcast. Dr. Spair: I am so excited and I love looking at your pages because you’ve got all of the statistics to give moms that home. The moms, and the resources like, “Oh, I had a C-section? Guess what, I can still have a vaginal birth.” I love it. I’ve been quoting you left and right in my posts so I’m glad we’re here today. Meagan: Well, thank you. We actually just shared one of your posts which was amazing. So you guys, definitely want to check her out. We’re going to have all of her links in the show notes today. Review of the WeekWe do have a Review of the Week today and then we are going to dive into this yummy episode. This is from wallabygirl and the subject is “We Got Our VBAC”. It says, “Meagan and Julie, after my first birth turned into a C-section, I knew that I wanted to try for a VBAC with my next baby. When we found out that we were pregnant in January 2022, my husband and I started doing a ton of research. I found The VBAC Link Podcast and was so inspired and encouraged. I love the mix of data, birth stories, and interviews with experts in the field of your podcast shares.”Well, guess what? That is exactly what today’s episode is. A podcast with a VBAC story and data and amazing information from a professional. It says, “I listened to your podcast on my commute to and from work and learned so much. My husband and I took Spinning Babies and I started seeing an amazing chiropractor who specializes in pregnancy and bodywork. Our midwives and OB team were so supportive and awesome and the podcast helped us know the right questions to ask. Finally, after a long labor and an unmedicated delivery, we welcomed our baby girl postdates at 41 weeks + 1 day.” That was in September of 2022. It says, “I feel amazing and I cried when I got home and was able to pick up my two-year-old son. Thank you, thank you for this awesome podcast. I will be continuing to listen and highly recommend this valuable information for friends and family.” I love reviews like that, wallabygirl. Thank you so much for leaving that review. And if you haven’t had a chance to leave a review, push pause right now. Head over to Google, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you are listening, and leave us a review. Dr. Kimberly SpairMeagan: Okay, Dr. Kimberly. Dr. Spair: I have to say you know you’re in the right field. That review just gave me goosebumps and tears not just because I’ve seen so many VBACs now but it took me back to the first time that I VBAC’d. It’s just a full body, tears, chills, emotion, and all of it. It’s the best. It’s the best. I love that. Meagan: I know that. Anytime we get these reviews or when we’re doing consults because we have one-on-one consults as well. We work with people and they tell us the update. It just makes me so happy seriously down to the core to hear these amazing people being inspired. Even if it doesn’t end in a VBAC, right? Dr. Spair: I love that. They’re still empowered. Meagan: They are empowered and educated along the way so we are making the choices and sometimes we know. We are going to talk about how sometimes emergency Cesareans happen and sometimes they’re out of our control but if we can feel empowered along the way, it truly does help our outcome in the postpartum stage which again, we’re going to talk about today. You guys, we have such a great episode for you. So, Dr. Kimberly, I would love to turn the time over to you and just let you share your story and how you got going. Dr. Spair: All right. So why I’m here is because I’ve had two VBACs myself. My first birth, I was planning for a natural birth. I had the Webster Chiropractic. I did the Hypnobabies. I was doing prenatal yoga. All the things. Massage. I just wanted this beautiful water birth. That’s what I was planning. For my first birth, I decided to birth in a birth center. Thank God it was attached to a hospital at the time. My pregnancy was beautiful. I had no issues. When I was 37 weeks, I stepped out of the shower one day and my water broke all over the bathroom floor. I called my midwife and I said, “My water broke.” She said, “You probably peed.” I’m like, “Nope, I’m pretty sure I didn’t pee. It literally was a burst all over the floor.” I went into the midwife’s office. She was like, “Yeah, I don’t really think your water broke. I don’t think you’re in labor.” Okay, I went home. I was having all of these contractions. Again, I was a first-time mom. I didn’t really know what was going on. I also was doing Hypnobabies so my threshold was in a good place with it.Long story short, the day progressed and I’m still thinking, “Man. These are a lot of Braxton Hicks. Something’s going on.” I called the midwife again. This was 8-9 hours later. She was like, “All right. Head over to the birth center.” I go to the birth center. They’re like, “You’re not in labor. You’re dilated but your water didn’t break.” They used those little strips. They’re like, “You know, you’re water didn’t break.” Okay. I go home. Now, it’s 3:00 in the morning and I wake my husband up. I’m like, “We’ve got to go now. We’ve got to go now.” So we get in the car and had a 45-minute drive. I didn’t know until after but I went through transition in the car. Meagan: Okay. Dr. Spair: I got out of the birth center and I stood up and my son’s leg was out. Literally out. I waddled into the hospital. I should have started with this. I don’t like to share war birth stories with moms that are about to give birth so I should have said before I started if you are about to give birth, listen to this later. I don’t like to scare moms. It’s such a rare occurrence that these kind of situations happen. Emergencies do happen and when emergencies happen, we are so grateful for modern medicine and we’re glad that we were okay. My son, I’ll go back to the story in a minute, but I just wanted to say that if you’re a mom that’s ready to give birth, don’t listen to any negative stories. So anyway, I got out of the car. My son’s leg was out. I waddled into the birth center. The midwife on call came in and she’s like, “Yeah. You’re 10 centimeters.” Then all of a sudden, everyone was like, “Don’t push!” They’re screaming at me. She was like, “Can I just wiggle him out? What do we think is going to happen here?” And he was stuck. So leg out and his body was basically–Meagan: Doing the splits. Dr. Spair: He was in a split. If they would have tried to let him come out vaginally, he would have broken his hip, his leg, his shoulder, and maybe his neck. Meagan: Complications. Dr. Spair: It was a very, very complicated situation. So of course, it was the coldest day of the year and there’s no doctor in this birth center even though it’s attached to a hospital. So they were like, “All right. We’ve got to get to the OR now.” They’re prepping me. They’re screaming at me not to push. I’m traumatized completely because here I’m thinking that I’m having this beautiful water birth. It’s going to be peaceful and nice. Here I am strapped down to the table which I never knew was a thing until I went through it myself. They’re saying to me, “If the doctor doesn’t get here soon, we’re going to have to knock you out.” I’m like, “Knock me out? What is happening?” Long story short, my son came. Thank God he was fine and I was fine but it was one of the most traumatic things that I have ever been through in my life. The healing was really hard. I remember trying to change my newborn son’s diaper and being in excruciating pain. All around, I just had this postpartum, we were just talking about this how people say postpartum depression, but to me, it was postpartum depletion.Especially after a C-section, we’re so depleted because we’ve had all of these medications and all of these interventions. We’re not getting that natural oxytocin that we get with a vaginal birth because your baby’s right on your chest and you can nurse right away. There are gentle C-sections, but in my case, they took the baby. I had some complications. He had a fever. There was a lot going on because my water did break. It was broken for all of those hours that they kept saying, “Your water didn’t break. Your water didn’t break.” My water did break and my son had an infection. So the bottom line is that I ended up with a C-section even though I was planning for this beautiful, natural birth. Again, I do believe that God gives us these situations because it makes us who we are and just like you shared, we go through– that’s why I share my other birth stories. I have experienced a lot of different birth scenarios and I think it helps us relate to other women who are going through similar things. Meagan: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that’s a really unique thing about us here at The VBAC Link. Me and my team have all of these unique situations where we can really personally relate. Dr. Spair: Yes. You personally relate. But then I like to bring women back to say that if you are someone that is planning a natural birth, a home birth, or whatever, these situations are really rare. Like yes, I went through it. Yes, she went through it, but it’s not that we shouldn’t be trusting our bodies and knowing that they know what to do. Just that emergencies can happen just like with anything. Things can happen and we’re grateful for lifesaving measures when necessary. Now, are C-sections overdone and are they done just because it’s Christmas morning and the doctor wants to get home? I mean, that’s a whole other conversation about how C-sections are definitely performed way too often. Moms who have had one C-section are basically put into this box of, “Okay, you’ve had a C-section. Now you should have another C-section. Now you’ve had two C-sections. You definitely should have another C-section. Why would you even try to have a natural birth after that?” Meagan: Yeah. Dr. Spair: I love that you share that you had two and then you had a vaginal birth. That’s just incredible and I think that provides a lot of hope even for my community. It’s never too late to trust your body and give it a shot. Meagan: Absolutely, yeah. Dr. Spair: So then two and a half years later, I got pregnant again and I’m like, “I’m going to have a VBAC. I want to have this natural, beautiful birth.” And I did. I had my daughter right next to the hospital. It was a home birth but it was not in my own home. Because of the state that I live in, I actually had to cross state lines. And that’s another thing. People say to me all of the time, my women will say, “Oh, well near my house, there’s not this resource or there’s not that resource.” Sometimes we have to go get the resources. The state that I live in does not allow VBACs to happen outside of the hospital, so I went to another state. These are things that we can make happen if it’s that important that we don’t go through another C-section. For me, I knew that if I went through another C-section, I never would have had a third child. It was that traumatic for me. It was that hard to heal from. It was something that I never wanted to experience again and I knew if it happened a second time that I was done. I knew that I wanted more babies. So my second one was a home birth VBAC literally a mile, two miles from a hospital at a location with midwives and it was a beautiful, healing birth. He was 42.3 weeks and that’s the other thing I would love to talk about. People who get induced at 38-39 weeks depending on what’s going on, 41– oh my gosh. We have to give medication. When you wait until your body is ready and your baby is ready, your chances of having a natural birth, especially a VBAC, go way up. Way up. My third birth was a VBAC at home right here, right over there in a pool right in my own bedroom. I went from a very traumatic, horrendous birth to a second birth where I was hanging onto hope but I was still a little nervous about this whole situation, to a third birth where my midwives literally got here at 11:00 at night and I stepped into my pool and at 1:08, my baby was here. I was in labor all day long. I was at the park with the kids. They were scootering around. I was walking. I was doing squats on all of the play equipment. I cooked dinner. I was just holding the counter going through my pressure waves. I took a shower and was oiling up my belly and the whole thing. I went down and had a snack. I’m on the ball. The kids are with me and then I was like, “It’s time to go upstairs.” They got here. I went through a couple of birthing waves. I got in the birthing pool and there she was. There she was. It was beautiful. With the third one, I truly visualized my birth and this is part of what I’m going to be helping women do in the future. It’s a whole visualization process because it’s so true when you can take your fears which, with that first VBAC, I had fears of all of the things because they brainwash you into thinking you’re crazy and that you actually want to go ahead and do that. But I love seeing your statistics because it’s like, wait. You actually have a better chance of a VBAC. But what I was going to say is the process of visualizing what you want your birth to be like is so powerful. That’s what I want women to hang onto. Even if you come into a situation where interventions have to happen or the birth plan changes because they do, coming from an empowered and relaxed state is completely different than showing up at the hospital in this raging fear, terrified mode. There’s so much to be said about the education and the empowerment piece when it comes to successful VBAC. Meagan: Absolutely. Yeah. I think, like you were saying, there are so many people out there, not just providers. Providers are sharing things and sometimes they share things that may sound fluffed a little bit because of maybe one of their experiences so they have trauma. Dr. Spair: Yeah. Always. Meagan: They see these things and sometimes the way they say them is like, “Oh, whoa. That’s really scary. Maybe I am scary.” Then they twist our thinking. But it’s not just providers. Many people out there– friends or family. Dr. Spair: Family. All the time. Yep. Yes. Meagan: Everybody, right? I mean, I was in a VBAC-supportive group on Facebook and I was still being told, “How would you even?” It’s so hard so that’s why it’s so important for us to really learn those stats and then figure out what’s acceptable to us. Dr. Spair: Yes. Meagan: What’s acceptable to us?Dr. Spair: What risk is acceptable and then how can I make myself feel comfortable? My second birth was a VBAC. I didn’t want to be in the hospital, but I live very far from a hospital, so what can I do to make myself feel comfortable? If I’m a mile away from the hospital and something goes wrong, am I okay with that? I’m right there. For some moms, it’s a VBAC in a hospital situation. What would make me feel comfortable? Meet that with your risk. That way, you’re not in a situation where you’re feeling fear and trying to birth because that doesn’t work either. We have to be comfortable and confident with the decisions that we’re making. I think that women out there are swayed in all of these different directions. They’re either in the category of a C-section camp over here, repeat C-section, or in the natural birth community which I will say that the natural birth community, after you have a C-section, is extremely unsupportive. Even if you are a mom, like I was my first time, I was planning for this beautiful, natural birth and after, it’s like, “What did you do wrong?” It’s like, “Wait. I didn’t do anything wrong. An emergency happened and I had a C-section because it saved my son’s life.” There’s a time and a place for that but you feel this guilt from this community that’s looking at you like, “Oh, you didn’t have this rainbow and butterfly birth?”Meagan: Oh yeah. I will never forget the feeling that I had when my second birth, I was going for a VBAC and I didn’t obviously end up in a VBAC. I ended up in a repeat Cesarean. I will never forget the feeling inside of my head of, “Great. Now, I have to tell people and they’re all going to think I failed.” Especially those people who didn’t support me in this in the beginning. They’re going to be like, “Yeah, I could have told you that five months ago.” I just remember that feeling and then when I talked about it, I did get some comments like that. Dr. Spair: Yes. Yep. Meagan: I encourage our community to never be that person. Dr. Spair: Whichever way you end up in your birth, birth outcomes are birth outcomes. Women need to be supported no matter what they decide. No matter what they decide. Even if they are in a fear-filled state and they choose a C-section again, we have to support those women too. Meagan: Yes. Dr. Spair: Even if we don’t agree with that choice because a woman who is giving birth whether it’s vaginally or Cesarean, they’re a mom and they have to feel loved and supported so they can love and support that infant. Tearing women down in this very, very vulnerable state that we are in after we give birth is setting them up for postpartum depletion, depression, anxiety, fear, and all of these crazy things that again, women don’t talk about. We put people in this camp of, “Oh, well you’re just anxious. You’re just depressed.” Meagan: This is normal. You just had a baby and this is what you’re supposed to experience because you’re tired. No. Dr. Spair: No. You’re depleted. You’re depleted. It’s depleted in nutrition, depleted in sleep, depleted in resources, depleted in support. Sometimes it’s just someone to say to you, “You did a great job. You brought this baby into this world. You went through Hell. You can’t even laugh or sit up but you did a great job.”It is hard when you have people surrounding you and say, “Well, see? You ended up with a C-section.” It’s almost like they’re proud to tell you that you failed at what you were going for. I had that experience too. Meagan: Exactly. Yes. That is how I felt from a lot of people and then when I chose to VBAC after two Cesareans, oh boy. Dr. Spair: Oh gosh, now you’re really in trouble. Meagan: Now I’m a nutso, right? It’s so hard. I just encourage our community to build one another up. I’ve made posts on this. I challenge every single one of you to love everyone for who they are and what they decide even if it’s not what you would decide, right? Dr. Spair: Yes, exactly. Meagan: Let’s dive more into what you do and talk about that postpartum and how we don’t talk about it enough. We don’t share. Dr. Spair: We don’t share. We don’t talk about it. I have a practice primarily, well, almost all women. I do say that I get the husbands and the sons when women heal and they go through something. I work a lot with women with chronic illness, postpartum, and those kinds of things. When they heal, they do send me their husbands and their sons, but it’s mostly women and a large majority of pregnant and postpartum moms. What I can say is 90% of postpartum women go through some type of depletion period. It’s part of becoming a mom. When we go through a birth whether it’s a C-section or a natural birth, there is a load of adrenaline that happens. Massive adrenaline. Massive cortisol as we are birthing a baby either way. It doesn’t matter if it’s a vaginal or surgical birth. What happens is that women become completely depleted especially if they don’t have support. They don’t have someone there cooking meals and making sure their toddler is taken care of. They’re running around the house trying to do all of these things instead of resting. That whole thing “sleep when the baby is sleeping” is the silliest thing you’ve heard in your whole life because your kitchen would be covered in dishes and all of that. We all know that. Meagan: And then we feel anxious when we look at those kitchens. Dr. Spair: And then we’re anxious when we look at that or we’re anxious because our toddler is not being taken care of correctly or eating things that we don’t want– those kinds of things. I think it comes down to women sharing and talking. Women postpartum have really crazy, irrational fears. We all, most of us, have had those feelings. When women talk about it, they think, “Oh my god. Someone’s going to think I’m crazy because I’m sitting here watching my baby sleep all night long. People are going to diagnose me with PPA or all of the things because I’m going through this.” If women would just share so that other women could say, “Oh my gosh. I definitely went through that too. I felt that way too. I was terrified. I had those crazy thoughts where I was just afraid something bad would happen,” they would say, “Okay. This is part of postpartum. I’m just depleted. I need to nourish myself with nutrition. I need to make sure that I’m hydrated and I need to prioritize sleep someway, somehow, when I can.” I think a lot of our anxiety would go from here to down because we hold ourselves and compare ourselves to other women out there who may have a lot of other support or they may have someone that’s taking care of their every need and not every woman has that, then we are afraid to talk about our experience when we’re trying to hold up all of these different things. I remember with my first birth, my husband went back to work right away so it was just me and this newborn. I had a C-section. I had a straight staircase up and down and they’re saying, “Don’t go up the staircase.” I’m like, “Well, I’ve got a newborn.” I did set myself up downstairs so I could mostly be downstairs, but things happen. You run out of diapers, all the things. I had an enlarged uterus because I was going up and down those damn stairs even though I wasn’t supposed to be. The dog is up there. So it’s just a matter of really looking at support and then talking with other women, women that are honest though. Women that are in a place where they’re comfortable sharing what they have gone through because a lot of women will just tell you, “Oh yeah, my birth was beautiful. It was la, la, la, la, la,” and they’re not really going to share that peace about, “Oh, no.” Meagan: The vulnerable part. The vulnerable part. Dr. Spair: Yes, yes. Meagan: The stats show about 1 in 7 which I think is about 15% or so will actually be diagnosed. I think we sometimes hear that– you just said it again– they get scared to be diagnosed or labeled. Dr. Spair: Some women go through more than others, but for most women, it’s just that TLC piece. If we had someone to really nourish us with the food we need to recover, I’m really big on infusions and herbs and teas, and those kinds of things. If we had that and we could set ourselves up, which is what I do. I help women to prepare for the postpartum period so that they can– I can’t say that I’ll eliminate it completely, but mitigate that and have those things on hand so that when they start to feel a little anxious, they know what to do. That’s where it comes into play. Instead of going into this thing that women don’t talk about postpartum, women don’t really talk about the birth so much, they just talk about this beautiful baby and that’s the great part. That’s the amazing part but nobody really talks about walking around in a diaper for 3 weeks. Meagan: Right? Dr. Spair: But that scar and feeling that scar and peeing your pants and all of the things that women don’t want to talk about. So that’s my mission is when I have a mom who is newly pregnant, it’s not a fear thing. It’s just like, “Hey. You’re a woman. I’m a woman. These are some of the things that a lot of women go through postpartum and it’s normal. It’s normal.” You go through it and you come out the other side. You really nourish your body. You’ll feel like yourself again, but there is a period where we don’t really quite feel like ourselves and that’s okay too because you just birthed a human.” Meagan: Yeah. And it is okay. It’s also okay to talk about when we don’t feel normal or don’t dismiss something because you think, “Oh, this is normal,” if you’re having those scary thoughts. I had an adorable client that called me and she was really struggling. She said, “I’m not having scary thoughts about hurting my baby. I have this irrational fear of me dying.” Dr. Spair: Yep. A lot of women go through that. Meagan: Right? She was like, “I just need to talk about it.” We just talked and I just listened. After, she was like, “Oh, thank you.” It’s like, if we’re sitting there inside of our mind thinking such scary things like we’re going to die– Dr. Spair: Yes. A lot of women go through that and then think that something will happen to their child. That happened to me after my first child. I was so afraid that something was going to happen to him that I was hyper-vigilant. That put me in a very anxious state. It wasn’t depression. I wasn’t sad. I had to be with him every second because I was afraid that something would happen. I think a lot of women go through that and they don’t talk about it. Then you think something’s wrong with you. You think something’s wrong with your brain. Meagan: Yeah, a lot of times we are scared to talk about it because we’re scared of being labeled or diagnosed with things. Dr. Spair: You don’t want to be labeled or diagnosed or have someone trying to shove things down your throat, right?Meagan: Yeah. Let’s talk about that. What are the steps to talking about it? You talked about herbs and teas and feeding. I love the analogy of depletion. Depression and depletion, right? Dr. Spair: We’re just depleted. We’re depleted. We don’t have to stick a label on it. There’s a huge thing around nursing moms and that depletion piece where they usually get this information of, “Okay, well you should just wean your baby and stop breastfeeding and focus on yourself,” where there are hormones involved for moms that choose to breastfeed. We have a lot of oxytocin just from being skin-to-skin when we are nursing our babies. So instead of saying, “I’m not going to do this now,” a lot of times, if moms get the right support and they choose to do the skin-to-skin and they nurse, they do start to feel better mentally because they are getting that oxytocin. It does bring the cortisol down when we nurse a baby. For me, it’s always been an instinct. When I’m nursing a baby even now, if I go through something stressful and I nurse my kid, it’s like, “Ahh.” You feel calmer. Now in the beginning, it’s not always like that because it can be a struggle for women– the latch, the this, the tongue ties, the lip ties, this, that. We’ve got to get those things right and those are other things that I help to identify in women because that part can be challenging but once we get over that hump, those hormones are really important to our bodies, to our immune system, and to our recovery. If you’re not a mom that’s nursing, that skin-to-skin is still very important for that feel-good hormone production to help your brain feel better. Holding your baby tightly, skin-to-skin and all of that is just very, very, very important to how we feel. Yeah. It’s definitely part of that. And then in terms of herbs and nutrition, a lot of us and I’ll say us because I went through it myself the first time, we are so into this “Everything is about the baby. Everything is about the baby,” and I put myself aside. Meagan: We forget. We forget to take care of ourselves. Dr. Spair: We forget to take care of ourselves and we will go hours without eating or we aren’t drinking and then we’re nursing and we’re using up all of this hydration and we’re not replenishing. So we’re dehydrated. We’re having skyrocketing blood sugars and plummeting blood sugars because we’re going so long without eating then we are eating a huge meal and then we’re not eating again. When our blood sugar is down, or cortisol is up so we can have anxiety and jittering and things like that. What I always tell my moms is every two hours, make sure you’re having something. Small bites, small sips. Make sure that something is going in. Even if it’s, “Oh, I don’t have time for myself,” make a big smoothie on your counter and every couple of hours, fill it up. Sip on it. Keep your blood sugar steady throughout the day. And then the things post-birth that I love– nettle infusions. People talk about nettle a lot, but they’re using a tea bag. I’m talking about an infusion in a mason jar. A couple of tablespoons of herbs that you soak for a good hour or two and you’re sipping on it. That’s like an infusion. That’s a vitamin and mineral infusion. When we say that we are depleted post-birth, we lose blood when we give birth. Even if it’s a natural birth, we are still losing blood so we are depleted in minerals. We are depleted in vitamins. So nettle infusions and I like the raspberry too because it helps to tone the uterus which means those post-birth contractions. So infusions with red raspberry leaf and nettle is a wonderful tonic for all women, not just to balance the hormones and to help with breastmilk, but to also help to give us back some of– we’ve really done a job of growing a baby and we’re depleted. The other thing that I love post-birth and some women will argue, “Oh, it decreases breastmilk supply,” but I’ve never seen that in my practice, is a little bit of lemon balm in that infusion because it, again, helps to bring down those feelings of anxiety. It’s really good for the nervous system. The total nervous system calms everything down because again, post-birth, we’re in an adrenaline surge. The body went through all of that adrenaline. Some women feel that for days, weeks, or months before they start to calm down again. Those are some things that I find really helpful. Meagan: You said that a lot of people think about a tea bag, but you’re saying herbs. Where would one something where they make this? Dr. Spair: Mountainherbreserves.com is my favorite. You just take a mason jar. You can get these at the grocery store, Tractor Supply, Amazon, or anywhere. They make a little infuser that goes at the top. It’s about this high. It sits at the top. You put the loose herbs in there. Fill it with hot water and steep that for an hour or two hours. The longer you steep it, it will be stronger. So if you’re just starting out, do a little bit of herb. Let it steep for 20 minutes and see how you do with it. I like to let it sit for a while and sip on it. Meagan: This would be good for anyone, Cesarean or vaginal. Dr. Spair: Yes, to help us recover. We need to recover either way. Either way, we need to recover. Meagan: Is it stinging nettle? Dr. Spair: Yes. Yes. Stinging nettle and then red raspberry leaf. Meagan: And then some lemon balm. Dr. Spair: Some lemon balm if you’re not afraid. It’s in the peppermint family so some women say, “Oh,” but in my practice, I’ve had postpartum moms on lemon balm for the last 8 years and I’ve never had one that has had issues with milk production. I wouldn’t say a ton of it off the bat, but a little bit will help to take the edge off. I always say that there is this risk/benefit thing. If a mom is really struggling, she's probably not going to make it with breastfeeding anyway, so if we can help her central nervous system, we can deal with other things.I love Ashwaganda post-birth. I think that’s another one that’s really beautiful for the adrenal glands. Magnesium is so good. It helps, again, with post-uterine contractions. Women are feeling that. They’re feeling uncomfortable. Magnesium is great for that. It helps with fluid retention in the body. With C-sections, you know what happens with that. I didn’t have an ounce of swelling during my entire pregnancy. I had that C-section and my feet, I was like, “Oh my gosh,” and I had zero swelling. Meagan: I sweat. I had severe night sweats. Dr. Spair: Yes, because you know what those night sweats are? It’s all of the drugs that have to come out of the spinal. Meagan: It’s everything coming out of my body. Dr. Spair: It has to come out and that’s a problem too. What I love for that postpartum is milk thistle. A milk thistle tincture for moms that have C-sections to get rid of the drugs that we have to have when we have a C-section. Even if you’re a mom that has a VBAC and you have a spinal, and you’re feeling like your system is a little gunked up, milk thistle is amazing. We can do a lot with nutrition. If you don’t want to use herbs, there are a lot of other things you can use. Green juices, cucumber juices, those kinds of things are wonderful too, but if you want a tincture, milk thistle is a beautiful way to gently cleanse the body. Meagan: Cleanse the body. Awesome. Well, let’s talk a little bit about nutrition. So many times, we have a baby, and then any extra support that we have, they want to bring meals and they bring things like lasagna. Dr. Spair: I know. Meagan: And bread, and pizza. Dr. Spair: I know. It’s not something that you’d be like, “Okay, this is good.” It’s easy. Meagan: You’ll take anything. Dr. Spair: You’ll take anything. Meagan: I don’t want to ever shame anyone who has ever made lasagna for someone who has had a baby. Dr. Spair: No, exactly. Meagan: I’m guilty of that. But at the same time, there are so many nutrients that we are lacking that we need for our brain functioning, our body functioning–Dr. Spair: There are some key things that we really need. Raw, leafy greens are one of them and it’s like, “Who the hell wants to eat a salad after they birth?” I get it but there are easy ways to bring greens in. I’m going to go back to the smoothie again. My favorite way is frozen mangos, spinach, and coconut water. You can throw bananas in there if you want. You get those greens in your body, you are a different woman. Again, we’re depleted so those raw, leafy greens are just– again, it’s like an infusion. Moms feel better mentally, physically, all of it pretty much immediately because of the leafy greens. Again, when we lose blood, our iron reserves go down. So low iron, fatigue, and all of that, raw, leafy greens help to bring that up. So does the nettle. The nettle helps with raising the iron. Raw, leafy greens are so important. Again, you can do them in the smoothies if you don’t want to eat a salad. The other thing I do if I have a warmed soup or even if you had something like a lasagna, chop them up really small. Put them on like a garnish. At least you’re getting something in. You can fold raw, leafy greens right into a warm soup or a stirfry so you’re still getting warm food, but you’re bringing some greens in. Some women postpartum have a hard time with that, so we have to find alternative ways. It’s not always just black and white. Go eat all salads. Sometimes we have to meet women where they are and say, “Okay, you’re going to eat that warm meal. Let’s doctor it up a little bit.” Meagan: You can still have your comfort meal. Dr. Spair: Yes. There’s a way to do it. There’s a way to do it. Meagan: With empowering, enriched nutrients. Dr. Spair: Yes. Yes. There’s a way to do that. And you know, things like selenium and iodine, there are simple ways. A little bit of seaweed for iodine protects the thyroid. It really helps moms recover and then selenium, one to two brail nuts a couple of times a week really helps again with that thyroid function for moms postpartum as things start to fluctuate. There are really easy little tricks that are like, “If I just did these few little things, I’d be in a different place.” Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Spair: I’m really big on freezer meals. I have a free thing on my website. It says preparedness, be prepared and it’s a bunch of meals that moms can make ahead of time. Meagan: That’s huge. Dr. Spair: They can freeze them. I’m guilty of it though. With the third baby, I was like, “Oh, I’m going to make all of these things,” and whatever. She didn’t come until 41.5 weeks and I still didn’t have too many things in my freezer but if you’re a planner and you want to do things ahead of time, we have a resource there that’s free. Meagan: I love that. We’re going to be sure to drop that in the show notes right now because there are a lot of people who are saying, “You’re coming up on your due date. What can I do to help?” You can send them that link and say, “Can you make this meal for me?” Dr. Spair: Yes. “I would love for you to make some of these things,” if there are people that would be open to that. That would be great. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. That would be so awesome. So cool. Is there anything else that you feel is important to share? There’s just so much. As a specialist in health and nutrition and seeing the postpartum and knowing your own journey, is there anything that you’re like, “This is the biggest takeaway for you as a listener”? What is your biggest takeaway?Dr. Spair: For me, it’s that moms have to take care of themselves. I understand because I’m a giver. People still tell me. I’m guilty of it. “Kimberly, you have to take care of yourself.” But it’s my baby, my middle kid, my big kid. We’re giving, giving, giving, But when we don’t take care of ourselves, those babies need me. Our babies need us so if we don’t take care of ourselves with the same love, compassion, and consideration that we take care of them, then they have half of us or a shell of us. We have to take care of ourselves. We need to prepare with the nutrition. If herbs are something that you are into, I highly recommend that for that depletion stage and just really take care of yourself. Even if it’s just, “Okay, I need to get outside for 10 minutes. Fresh air. Put my feet in the yard.” Those kinds of things make us feel alive.With my second, I remember my midwife saying to me, “No matter what, take a shower every day. Once a week, put on make-up.” It’s like, make-up? I never thought of, “Put on make-up? Why would I put on make-up?” But let me tell you something, you do it and you’re like, “Oh. I know that woman in the mirror. There she is.” There’s a feeling to that. There’s a feeling that comes with feeling like yourself. So if you can get in a shower and once in a while, put on some make-up and put on some clothes that make you feel like a human even if you’re dealing with diapers and poopy hineys and all of those things, every once in a while, take care of yourself. That’s the most important thing. Meagan: Yes. Yes. So Women of Strength, as you’re listening, I can’t agree more. Use this as a takeaway. Take care of yourself. Make sure you are knowing that you are important too because I think naturally, it’s weird but naturally as moms, sometimes we get in that, “Well, this baby and this baby and this and that,” and we just think about all of the things. Then like you said in the beginning, we get to the end of the day and we’re like, “What have we eaten today?” Dr. Spair: And sometimes we get to, “Who am I? Who is this person in the mirror?” Meagan: Yes. Yes and at the end of the day, we’re like, “I don’t know, but I’m too tired to think about it so I’m just going to go to bed.” So it’s so important for us to remember that we exist and we’re important. You have classes that help people along this journey. I know you’re creating more classes too. Do you want to tell everybody before we go a little bit about your classes? Dr. Spair: I have a course called Empowered Moms. It’s coming up in May. It’s a month-long course and it covers everything and anything that you want to know as a mom. Literally, I learned all of these things on my journey about holistic health and nutrition. Moms come to me that have kids with chronic ear infections or chronic symptoms or illness or they just want to do things a better way. They feel like they’re always in the pediatrician's office and they want to take their power back. They want to learn how to use herbs and homeopathy and use things medicinally so that it’s not that you’ll never need your pediatrician again, but maybe you can break free from the cycle of things that you’re– if you can catch my drift– having to give over and over again for chronic symptoms. My course helps to help moms. Again, it’s called Empowered Moms. It’s empowering moms to take their power back and giving them the tools necessary to help their families nutritionally and herbally. Again, I get into homeopathics. I also get into self-care and things for moms and what they can do for nervous system healing because that’s all of us. And then I have a birth course that’s going to be launching by the end of the summer. I’m super excited about that. It’s going to be all about preparing for birth, birthing itself, and then the postpartum part which I think is so important. And then I have one other course called Empowered Women. That one is only for women for all women’s health issues, so moms who struggle with anything from hormonal issues to thyroid issues. All the things are covered in that course. Meagan: Adrenal fatigue. Yes, when I was looking through, I was like, “Dang. I think I might need to take this course myself.” Seriously because I know that there are so many things hormonally that I haven’t figured out yet. I am in that routine of, “Okay, I’ll go get my blood drawn again. Let’s go and do this. Let’s go and do that.” I’m not figuring out what’s really going on at the root. Dr. Spair: Because a lot of the time, they say it’s hormones but we all have this viral and toxic load. I’ll just briefly explain. When we keep the viral and toxic load here under the bucket where we all have, there are no symptoms. When it starts to bubble over and now we’ve got lots of toxic load and lots of viruses and pathogens in our body, we see symptoms. My job is to help people get all that back down. We are cleansing. We are taking care of viruses, pathogens, and latent infections in the body, and then symptoms disappear. That’s what it is. It’s not always that people think, “I need a diagnosis. I need a diagnosis.” I think everyone should go to their doctor. I think that people should definitely go but a lot of those people are searching and they’re getting all of the bloodwork and they’re going through all of these things, but I recovered from Hashimoto’s, a neurological disease, myself. Meagan: Yes. There’s a whole story. Dr. Spair: Yes. I went through all of that. I had a $15,000 book of labs and notebooks and all of that. We lost our first home because of my chronic illness and it wasn’t until I took my own power back and said, “All right. There are things that I need to learn about my own body and I can cleanse my way out of this.” Again, it’s not telling people not to go get the labs and figure it out, but if you’re in a situation where you’ve done all of those things and you’re like, “Well, shit. I’m not feeling better,” sometimes, there’s something else going on. Meagan: Yes. Your story is just amazing. It’s so empowering. I encourage everyone to go to drkimberlyspair.com and spend hours on this website because seriously, you have so much. You have product guides. You have testimonials. You have the fertility and pregnancy and your amazing blog. I know you offer not only these courses but one-on-ones and more about you and your history and your journey and why you are here today empowering these women to again, take things back and have the power in their pocket. “To reclaim your health, empower your family’s future” is what you say. I think it’s amazing and what you’re doing is so amazing and I just am so grateful for you today. Dr. Spair: I’m grateful for you. We’re going to be sharing this too and I’m going to be sending all of the people to your page too because moms need the information. They need the statistics. They need the support and they need to feel seen and heard. Thank you so much. Meagan: Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We have a very special guest on the podcast today, Julie Sawaya, who is one of the co-founders of Needed, a company that focuses on providing women with the highest quality of vitamins needed during the entire perinatal period.Julie shares with Meagan the research behind Needed's prenatal vitamins and supplements. She talks about why you need a prenatal vitamin in the first place, the optimal dosage and forms of specific vitamins in pregnancy, how supplementing proper nutrition in the best ways can positively impact your entire birth experience, and so much more!Use the code VBAC20 to receive 20% off at www.thisisneeded.comAdditional LinksNeeded WebsiteWhat to Look for in a Prenatal VitaminFolate vs Folic Acid. What's the Difference?Ryann Kipping: The Prenatal NutritionistReal Food for Pregnancy: The Science and Wisdom of Optimal Prenatal NutritionHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We have a very, very special episode for you today. We have our friend, Julie Sawaya, and she is the co-founder of Needed. If you haven’t heard us talking about Needed yet, go listen to the other episodes and get on Instagram. You guys, Needed is incredible. She is a mama of two young girls. We were just talking before the episode and her youngest is nine months. She is a lifelong nutrition nerd. I love that she calls herself this, a nutrition nerd. I’m a birth nerd. When we find ourselves passionate about something, we just nerd out, right? It’s so amazing. Julie grew up in a family of medical doctors and learned at a young age the power of nutrition and how it can influence or help. Julie went on to study the issue of nutritional access in college and got her Master’s in business from Stanford where she met her Needed co-founder, Ryan Of the most nutritionally aware of their friends, Julie and Ryan were shocked to realize that through nutrient testing, they were seriously major deficient in key nutrients. We don’t think about it, Julie. We just don’t think about this, I think, enough. We think we’re taking something and we think that we’re good. They found out that there was really much more needed for a healthy pregnancy. They dug into the research and they realized that they were not alone. 97% of women take a prenatal, yet 95% have nutrient deficiencies. Let me just say that again. 97% of women take a prenatal, yet 95% have nutrient deficiencies. Most prenatal vitamins just weren’t cutting it and Julie and Brian started Needed to create a new, higher standard for perinatal health. Working alongside a collective of more than 3,000 perinatal nutrition and health experts, together they have redesigned the products, education, expertise, and experience that women need. Welcome to the show, Julie. I seriously am reading this and I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” This is amazing because like I was saying when I was pregnant years ago, I did not pay attention to anything. I got the bottle. I took it. Check mark.Julie: Yeah. No, I mean, I think it’s a problem. The core underlying problem that we’re solving at Needed is that women are nutritionally deficient in this life stage. It’s a problem both with the products that are available. Most prenatal vitamins are designed to meet just the bare minimum nutrient needs, not to set you up for optimal health, and it’s also an awareness or an education problem because, in some way, it’s a problem that you don’t know you have until you feel the effects of it. We’re told it’s normal to feel depleted, that it’s normal to not feel your best, to feel like yourself during pregnancy or postpartum. So many of the complications of pregnancy have a nutritional root to it whether it’s gestational diabetes or preeclampsia or hypertension or nausea even, or more severe nausea like hyperemesis. There is a nutritional component to it. Not to say that nutrition is a cure-all, but it’s a reasonable first step in supporting your body optimally. Meagan: It’s huge. Julie: What Ryan and I found when prior to starting the company is that despite how important nutrition is and yes, I am a lifelong nutrition nerd. Ryan and I are also trained nutritionists. It was truly and utterly shocking to us that we had these deficiencies but what we realized once we looked under the hood is that this problem is widespread and part of the problem stems from the fact that it’s so common for women in the U.S. to see an OB. I come from a family of MDs and I have huge respect for the medical profession. But most doctors aren’t trained in nutrition. It’s actually not a requirement in most med schools. I think somewhere in the range of 50% of med schools don’t require one nutrition course. The average OB appointment time in the US is 7 minutes long so even if an OB is trained in nutrition and has the intention to help educate their patients. OBs are generally very well-meaning. They’re just people who are constrained on time and with the curriculum as we like to say, the curriculum is flawed, not the people. But even if all of the stars align in 7 minutes, you can’t get all of your nutrition questions answered. What we hear again and again, the most common recommendation is, “Take a prenatal vitamin,” and then you ask, “What kind?” and then they say, “It doesn’t matter. They’re all the same.”Meagan: Just take one, yeah. Julie: “Just take one. Make sure it has folic acid in it,” which I’m sure we’ll get into. That particular nutrient and nutrient form. But there is so much more to prenatal nutrition than vitamins and minerals. But even if you just focus on vitamins and minerals, it’s really hard to pick a prenatal. There are over 100 on the market. There is a vast difference when it comes to quality. The quality of the nutrients, the quality of the nutrient forms, and dosages. We spent over three years formulating our first products with a collective of health and wellness practitioners that study perinatal nutrition and looking at all of the available clinical research on nutrient dosages and forms, and what pregnant and lactating women need. The reality is that there are a lot of nutritional gaps. That’s where this collective of practitioners that are testing women’s nutrient and hormone levels every single day really, really matters to understand in practice what does it take to dose? What dosing of Vitamin D do you need to give your patients to be in optimal nutrient ranges? It seems like such a basic question, but no prenatal company had done that legwork to understand what’s actually optimal. Meagan: That is what I was going to say. There are so many things about Needed that I love. Honestly, one of them is how this company came about. It’s two women that found that there was something lacking out there and had a passion from themselves and had passion to share it with the world. That’s how The VBAC Link started. Myself and my old partner, Julie, same thing. We just found this passion so I love the heart that comes behind this company and then really what you guys have done. You’ve built it from somewhere where it was really mediocre if you could even call it that is incredible. Like you said, not only getting ingredients but the optimal amount. As I have compared in the past, there are so many out there that are even recommended on Amazon or wherever and they don’t even have the ingredients at all let alone that optimal amount. I am so excited and honored for you to be here today and be talking to our community because I think that it is so important. Like you were saying, it’s not that my provider had any ill intent to not give me that information, but it really was as I was walking out, he goes, “Oh, and by the way. Make sure to start a prenatal right now.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” That was it. That was it. I did. I found myself Googling it and found one. I was like, “Okay, cool. That one has some okay reviews.” I got it and I really didn’t know the impact that it was leaving or lack thereof. Julie: Yeah, totally. I think some of that comes from there is misunderstanding that a prenatal vitamin is for the baby. By and large, unless you have massive nutrient deficiencies, the baby’s going to get what he or she needs to develop properly, but often at the expense of your own nutrient reserves. As a mom of multiples, you know that oftentimes, women experience and understand the pain point more as a second-time or third-time mom than as a first-time mom because once you’ve been through pregnancy and birth and if you choose to breastfeed or pump, you can feel it viscerally how depleting that experience is maybe more so than a first-time mom that hasn’t yet been through it all. In some ways, it’s an experience that has to be lived to fully appreciate the problem probably much like the topic of VBACs. You go into a first birth maybe not fully understanding how one birth choice or one birth outcome will impact the second birth choice or birth outcome. What we’re really trying to do at Needed is to raise awareness so that you can make the best choices possible with the information that you have. That’s all that it’s about. It’s not about what I would have done differently with one pregnancy versus another. It’s not at all. Any of the information we share is not in any way meant to shame or add guilt. There is so much of that mom guilt, so much of that fear-mongering out there. That is the antithesis of who we are as a company. But we find that when you’re empowered with the right information, you can make better-informed decisions so that’s a huge part of what our mission is here at Needed. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, I mean we can relate to so much of that over here. I didn’t know what I didn’t know when I had through perinatal care to birth to recovering after a C-section. We grow from our journeys. Yeah. There’s never any more shame. Mom guilt is way too thick. We lay it on way too thick, especially with social media. So here we are today to have this episode so you can start learning and growing and finding that information so you can make the best choice for you and your growing baby or maybe through your fertility journey or nursing journey or whatever part of the journey that you are in, Needed has so many incredible things, really it all. I’m sorry, but you kind of have it all out there. It’s just amazing. So thank you so much. Yeah, let’s get into some of these questions. Julie: Yeah, I’m excited. Meagan: Me too. Okay, so one of the questions is what is the importance of a prenatal vitamin? Really, why? We’re being told to take these prenatal vitamins and we were just a little bit talking about how there are a lot of things that we need, but why do we really need them and does it matter if we don’t take them?Julie: Yeah, that’s a great question. I like to answer it with a look back at context from nature because first and foremost, I think people are right to have skepticism about supplements in general. Do I need them? Why do I need them? Is it just snake oil in general? I think something that was an aha moment for me as someone who was a little bit of a, “Food is my medicine, not supplements.” That’s the perspective I came into before starting Needed. I think it’s really helpful to understand that one of the main reasons we need supplements generally and then specifically at the life stage of pregnancy or the perinatal stage is because our soil is depleted. Food isn’t as nutritious as it once was and it tends to take a lot longer to reach us than it used to. We’re not generally growing our own food. We don’t necessarily know who is growing our own food. Even if you shop at the farmers market as Ryan and I did at the time. We were testing our nutrients way back 6 years ago when we started Needed. Your food can still be depleted because the soil quietly is depleted. We’re also subject to a lot more environmental toxins which that toxic load increases baseline nutrient requirements. Your body has to consume more nutrients to operate at homeostasis because of the burden of toxins it’s trying to process effectively. Meagan: Yeah. Julie: We have a great book posted on our website. The title is “Why Your Grandmother Didn’t Take Prenatal Vitamins But You Should.” It’s really talking about these factors that are an evolution of modern life.We also now know as we didn’t previously how important some nutrients are, especially nutrients like folate which is vitamin B9. It’s really critical for babies’ brain and neural tube formation. Folate’s sister nutrient is choline. It’s a super important nutrient for many of the same reasons– brain development, cognitive function, neural tube formation. Those are nutrients you don’t want to skip out on in that even with your best intentions, you might be deficient it. 95% of women are deficient in– sorry about that. I have a rowdy dog. 95% of women are deficient in the nutrient choline. It’s most abundant in eggs, liver, and foods like that but in the first trimester, many women have a food aversion to eggs. I certainly was not consuming any liver in my first trimester. Meagan: Yeah, I was going to say that liver never crossed the path of my pregnancy, unfortunately, or fortunately. Julie: Yeah, not at all. Yeah, but in any event, at a high level, prenatal vitamins are there to fill the gaps in your diet. I think that a misunderstanding and the way that prenatal vitamins have been formulated historically is that they’re dosing around a concept called the RDA level which is basically a dosage framework that came out of World War II when the government was trying to determine how to set nutrient levels to avoid serious diseases like scurvy, like a significant deficiency of vitamin C. The entire concept of an RDA is rooted in this idea of, what’s the bare minimum amount of a nutrient I need to give someone to avoid a disease or worse like famine or starvation. Minimalistic, not optimal. There’s a big order of magnitude of difference of what amount of vitamin C your body needs to avoid scurvy versus what it needs to support postpartum tissue healing and repair and optimal immune health during pregnancy or optimal reference ranges. But at a high level, basically, prenatal vitamins are there to fill in the gaps in your diet. They are, unfortunately, a necessity because of our modern food system and they are especially important at a life stage like pregnancy and breastfeeding when your body will never have higher nutrient needs than it does in these life stages. It’s really, really critical that you’re getting the right nutrients. As I said earlier, it’s not just for the baby. It’s for you too. I think that a concept that we’re really passionate about is centering women in this journey because ultimately, your baby is most likely going to get what they need but you might be left depleted and that depletion can have long-term impacts. If you want to have two kids or three kids or ten kids, your body has fewer nutrient reserves to give to the next baby with each sequential baby unless you are replenishing those nutrient stores. If your family feels complete, it’s still important to supplement throughout the postpartum and a time period thereafter to support your hormone health and your thyroid health. Just general vitality and overall well-being. I think it’s super common for women to say that it took them several years to feel like themselves post-pregnancy and a lot of that can be tied back to nutrient deficiencies. Meagan: Yeah, something that you said that resonated with me is that through each pregnancy, my life became busier because I had little toddlers and newborns. You know, all of these things around. So like you were saying at the beginning, you were like, “I can get it through my food. I can get it through my food.” Yes. Food definitely is impactful but obviously, as we know, is not as great as it used to be. Not only was it not as great as it used to be, but when I was really, really busy running around, I’m going to tell you right now that I was not eating correctly. I wasn’t even getting enough calories at the time let alone the right foods. I was like, “Oh. There’s a Nutrigrain bar. Let me just grab that because I’m hungry.” I wasn’t grabbing the right things or enough. It just goes to show that as we keep going on too, it’s so important. Julie: Yeah. That’s absolutely the reality. I think where it’s almost more important to take supplements with each subsequent pregnancy for that reason or even in the postpartum period because when you’re pregnant with your first, you generally speaking have more time than you do in postpartum with your first. And in postpartum with your first, you generally have more time than pregnancy with your second or third or fourth so that’s absolutely right. Meagan: Yeah. I would also remember breastfeeding my baby even in the middle of the day and just feeling sucked. Literally dry of energy and everything. Julie: Hydration and nutrients. Meagan: Hydration, yep. My mouth was getting dry. It just goes to show that you are feeling it. You are literally feeling your body change right there. Okay, so now we know it’s definitely important to take prenatal vitamins in the perinatal/postpartum stage and everything. But what ingredients should we focus on? We talked a little bit about folate and choline. What should we be looking at when it comes to the back of our bottle? Are those really the two main ones or are there more ingredients that are like, “Hey, we really need to be focusing on these and if we don’t see them on the back of our prenatal, we should have our alarms going off”? Julie: Yeah. There are really 24 vitamins and minerals that Needed has chosen to include in our prenatal vitamins because they are the ones that have the most clinically validated need for them. Choline and folate are two really important ones. I think they are really easy ones to scan a bottle for or a supplement facts panel and see not only does this have choline in it, but what’s the dosage? The most common dosage of choline– it’s a nutrient that has had an RDA. We talked about RDAs. It’s a minimum amount. It’s at an RDA of 450mg in pregnancy for 20+ years, 550 for lactation. The most common dosage of choline in a prenatal vitamin is 0, followed by 55mg which is 1/10 of the breastfeeding RDA. RDAs are the minimum. They’re taking 1/10th of that in most prenatal vitamins. The reason for that isn’t because you’re getting all of the extra from your diet. It’s because choline is a bulky nutrient that is hard to fit into a one-a-day prenatal. It’s hard to fit into a gummy. You just really can’t effectively do so. To dose it optimally, you need to include it in multiple capsules or in a powdered form like we offer. One of our options for a prenatal vitamin is a powder which is really, really great, especially for those bulkier nutrients like choline. The other bulky nutrients that are really important are calcium and magnesium. I would look for dosages of at least 200mg of those two ingredients. Ideally, magnesium and other minerals are in the glycinate form. Sometimes that’s on a label as magnesium bis-glycinate or magnesium bound to glycine. Glycine is an essential amino acid that just helps with absorption, keylation basically, the usability of that nutrient in the body so that’s a really important one. Other nutrients I suggest scanning a panel to see if they are in there– vitamin D is a telling one. I think nearly every prenatal vitamin will have vitamin D in it but the dosage matters and the form. Some prenatal use a less-absorbed form called vitamin D2. We recommend the D3 form. We also suggest looking for at least 2000 international units, IUs or more optimally would be 4000. Our prenatal vitamin capsules and multi-powder have 4000 and then our essentials multi which is a paired-down version in only three capsules has 2000. Those are the ranges that we typically like to see for vitamin D. Vitamin D is best absorbed with vitamin K. Make sure that vitamin K is on that supplement facts panel and 90 is the dosage that we tend to look for vitamin K. It should be in the K2 form. That’s the best-absorbed one. Those are some key ones. The other things to look for are– I think we’ll probably get into the question of what form of folate so let’s have that’s conversation. Meagan: Yeah.Julie: If you’re told nothing else about prenatal nutrition, you’re probably told to take folic acid which is the manmade synthetic form of the nutrient folate. Folate is naturally occurring in food. It’s an essential nutrient. We talked about its use in the body. It’s really important for babies’ neural tube formation so for spina bifida. That’s why it’s emphasized usually in the first trimester because the neural tube fully closes during the first trimester. It’s a nutrient that is so, so important and many women don’t know they’re pregnant until well into the first trimester so it’s pretty common to hear that you should start taking it preconception which we definitely agree with, with one caveat which is that the synthetic form of folic acid is not readily used by the body. Many women have a genetic variation, MTHFR which makes it impossible for their bodies to convert synthetic folic acid into the usable form of folate. Instead, Needed uses methylfolate which is a naturally occurring form of folate. It’s the active form meaning it doesn’t have to go through the conversion process. It’s been shown in clinical research to be better utilized by the body, especially for those with the MTHFR. There is controversy out there of folic acid versus methylfolate. Primarily what the controvery stems from is the fact that the clinical studies on folate for neural tube defects was done with folic acid. That’s because the research is old. It’s 30 years old. Now that we know how important folate is to neural tube defects, it would be unethical to do a clinical study with a double-blind placebo controlled study where you’re putting women on a placebo that has no folate in it versus one that has folate in it. We know the risk factors. We don’t want to induce spinal cord issues or neural defects. So a lot of those who are pro-folic acid are relying on stale research. Really, this argument is that all of the clinical research around neural tube formation is on folic acid. We’re not arguing with that. That’s actually a true statement. But there’s a huge wealth of research showing that head-to-head comparing methylfolate versus folic acid, methylfolate is better absorbed by the body. 96% of the circulating folate in your body is methylfolate so that’s pretty clear evidence in support of it. Mechanistically, in the body, how we’re preventing neural tube formations is the serum folate status of mom. There is research showing that methylfolate raises serum folate status in mom in the same way or better than folic acid does. We have a really well-researched blog post on this topic on our website. It’s dense. Maybe we can link to it in the show notes for those who want to learn more, but there is a reason why many of the higher-quality prenatal vitamins are including methylfolate, not folic acid. I would tend to distrust– there are some out there who are saying, “Oh, it’s a designer prenatal vitamin. They’re just trying to charge you more.” The reality is that methylfolate is so much more expensive than folic acid. You could make a lot higher profit margin if you used folic acid than methylfolate. I think it’s around 100 times more expensive which is also why most of the clinical research is relying on folic acid. Folic acid is a nutrient that is often fortified in cereals and bread, so there’s also a food lobby that has an interest in keeping folic acid in things and not methylfolate because it would be cost-prohibitive to include methylfolate in a $3.00 box of cereal. Meagan: Interesting. Julie: Yeah, there are a lot of factors. I don’t want to bog listeners down in all of this information, but this is a really good nutrient to highlight how much information and nuance and research goes into selecting optimal nutrient forms and optimal nutrient dosages. It’s a quick way of saying that we did a tremendous amount of research and there is a lot of evidence behind what we’re including in the Needed prenatal. We include references for every single nutrient that we use for those who are, like me, nutrition nerds that want to go many layers deep. For those of you who are like, “Oh my god. This is over my head,” I would say that the core message is that we’ve done extensive research and these nutrients have been utilized in practice with perinatal nutrition and health experts for decades. This isn’t newly redesigned. We did design our prenatal vitamin from the ground up, but the insights, expertise, and recommendations behind it have been put into practice for many, many decades. Really, what Needed did was bring together all of this inside of a single product instead of previously how practitioners were having to say, “Okay, go take this magnesium and this vitamin D and this prenatal and this amount of choline,” because no prenatal had everything that you needed in one package. Meagan: Right. That is another reason why I love and trust you guys so much. Literally, it’s all of the research that has gone into creating such a solid product for the birth community so I love that. Thank you so much for explaining that because yeah, it definitely is a hot debate sometimes. Julie: Yeah. I think it’s good to have that. We love a healthy debate. We work with practitioners. We actually have now almost 4000 practitioners in our community. It includes OBs. It includes reproductive endocrinologists but it also includes a lot of registered dieticians and naturopathic doctors and functionally-trained practitioners. We’re collaborating with all of them when designing products. We appreciate that some people come from different training backgrounds. Some people might have different skepticism and all voices are welcome. We want to have a construction conversation on this specific topic of folate versus folic acid, sometimes, the status quo argument is unwilling to hear the other side. It’s nuanced and that’s why we have a great blog post on the topic. Also, if you’re just early in your research and want a basic primer on what to look for in a prenatal vitamin, we also have that free resource available on our website as well as a review of over 75 of the prenatal vitamins on the market. It compares the pros, the cons, and overall recommendations. So if you love your prenatal, but it doesn’t have choline or it doesn’t have magnesium, we’ll give you those recommendations on how to supplement or how to get more of those nutrients from your diet. Again, we’re really not trying to tell you, “Everything you’re doing is wrong.” It’s really about how you can upgrade what you’re doing or make small changes on the margin that can have a huge benefit for you and your baby. Meagan: Yeah. I was going to say, All I can see is that it’s an improvement. We’re making improvements. We grow and make improvements in everything in our day-to-day lives. This is one that is really important so that’s why we’re doing this today. We’re sharing this so we can make improvements. Sometimes just it’s just small tweaks to benefit ourselves. Okay, so now we’re talking about all of the things that we really should be looking for nutrient-wise during pregnancy. Are there any nutrients we really should be avoiding taking during pregnancy and through your guys’ research, have there been some of those ingredients even in prenatals out there? We were just talking about folic acid and folate, but are there any where you are like, “Okay, if you see this, this is one of those tweaks that you really should make”?Julie: Yeah, it’s a great question. We talked about folic acid. We would suggest avoiding that nutrient. The other very common nutrient form that we suggest avoiding is a form of B12 called cyanocabalamin. It’s easy to remember because it’s actually derived from a cyanide molecule. There is just not research to substantiate. It’s a synthetic nutrient form. It doesn’t exist in nature and there’s not safety data to suggest why you’d want to consume cyanocabalamin. We’re leveraged the two naturally-occuring active forms, methocobalamin and adenosylcobalamin. We use those in a 50-50 ratio. Try to avoid cyanide if you can. Try to avoid synthetic folic acid. We’re always using nutrient forms that exist in nature and we think that that’s the best way to make sure that we’re on the side of safety. It’s often contrary to cost. Those synthetic nutrient forms tend to be cost-effective but they really don’t necessarily perform as nature intended. Meagan: Right. Julie: And then another one that’s maybe a little counterintuitive or nuanced is the nutrient iron. Most prenatal vitamins have iron in them. We chose not to include iron in our prenatal for a few reasons. Iron is absolutely an essential nutrient for pregnancy and postpartum. It supports your blood volume. Your blood volume effectively doubles in pregnancy and you lose blood postpartum. It’s a super important nutrient for avoiding anemia and for just overall blood volume expansion during pregnancy. The reason to not include it in a prenatal is that your needs vary by trimester or by stage. We wanted to make a prenatal vitamin that was safe to take before, during, and after pregnancy and safe for all women to be taking. Iron also competes with calcium and other nutrients for absorption in the body. Oftentimes, prenatals will just include both calcium and iron and you can be pretty well-assured that the calcium that you’re taking isn’t going to be absorbed in that case. Or sometimes they just leave calcium but they don’t tell you that you should take calcium at a different time of day. We’ve kept calcium in our prenatal and we offer iron as a separate add-on. The advantage of that is that you can take exactly what you need. If you’ve done any iron testing, which is pretty common in pregnancy, you can tailor the dosage to your ferritin levels. That’s the type of iron testing we recommend. And then taking it at a different time of day ensures you’re absorbing all of the calcium that you need as well as all of the iron that you need. We like delivering iron in the kelated form bound to glycine. It’s much gentler on the stomach. A lot of prenatals have a really high dose of iron in a form that’s not well-absorbed. It can cause GI issues and then women will stop taking their prenatal because they say it makes them nauseous. Meagan: Yes!Julie: There are many reasons why we think that iron in a prenatal is suboptimal. I think if you don’t know that information, you might scan prenatals like Needed’s and say, “Oh, it doesn’t include iron. That’s a problem,” and it’s actually a really intentional choice so I like to call that nutrient out. Meagan: I love that you talked about that because as a doula, we actually do have a lot of clients who pee on a stick, see it’s positive, and start looking for a prenatal. We have clients that do hire us in that stage and we’re always there for our clients. They’ll be writing us and be like, “We’re just so sick and it seems to be after I take my prenatal,” so they stop taking their prenatal because it makes them sick or their nausea gets so intense when in fact, it’s not what we should be viewing. Again, not to shame anyone if you’ve stopped taking your prenatal. We should be taking our prenatal, but we don’t think about that. I love that you guys have done that. I’ve been sharing it since I learned about this. I’ve been sharing that with my clients really early on because I think it’s really important. Something also I love about your products is that there is a lot that can help with nausea as well. Julie: Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s one of the key reasons why it’s really, really beneficial to start taking a prenatal vitamin before you try to conceive. We suggest up to 6-12 months before conception getting on a high-quality prenatal vitamin for a couple of reasons. One is that it can support cycle regularity so ovulation and healthy ovulation. It can also support egg quality. We have now a separate add-on, egg quality support, which is amazing in helping your egg follicles as they mature into egg cells before ovulation which is great. And then it can help you to build up your nutrient stores. Oftentimes, and I’ve been there. I’ve had first-trimester nausea despite all of my best attempts and taking all of the right supplements. Sometimes it just happens. You can minimize nausea by having adequate nutrient stores prior to conceiving. And then if you do find yourself with severe nausea in the first trimester, if your nutrient levels are optimal pre-conception, it’s more tolerable to skip a day or two of your prenatal vitamin because your levels were already in a great range before so your body has enough nutrient stores. I’m not advocating not taking your prenatal in the first trimester, but if life happens and you skip some days, the fact that you started early on means that your body is going to have enough of those nutrients to draw upon to get you through to the second trimester when hopefully you’re feeling much better. Meagan: Right. If we have really bad nausea and vomiting and we’re throwing up all of the time, we’re also losing nutrients, so it’s a whole cycle. It all goes together. Julie: Yep. It sure does. It sure does. Not to push our products, that’s not what this is about, but I would say hydration, hydration, hydration for nausea. We have hydration support if you are interested at all in trying it, I suggest trying it. It has the right nutrient ratios for pregnancy. It’s made without artificial sweeteners. It just has monk fruit which is naturally occurring. It comes in three flavors, three very first-trimester-friendly flavors. They are citrusy so grapefruit, lime, and lemon. But you can also make hydration stuff at home. You can just take a glass of water and put in some sea salt. You can add a squeeze of lemon. You can add in– you probably have your own recipe for a labor aid, but that’s another use of our hydration support during labor. Hydration can really impact. It’s like the chicken and the egg. “I’m nauseous. I don’t want to drink water. Water makes me nauseous,” but also if you’re dehydrated, nausea is worse. I would really recommend trying to stay hydrated during the first trimester if you can. Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. From the first trimester to the end, sometimes we can have early prodromal labor and stuff like that when we’re actually dehydrated. Julie: Exactly. Meagan: It’s just so, so, so important the whole time. Julie: And just to support that blood volume expansion that we were talking about that takes place in the second and third trimester. It has to come from nutrients but largely water. Your amniotic fluid levels increase. Sometimes they decrease too and they risk you out of a VBAC or a home birth and the things that you want for your birth outcome. So yeah. Hydration is key. It’s your mom’s advice, “Make sure you’re drinking enough water,” but it’s really true. Meagan: It really is true. My kids all roll their eyes at me. They’re really big into sports and I’m like, “No, your body, your muscles, and everything needs that hydration.” Okay, so we’ve talked about when it’s good. We’ve talked about taking it before. One of the questions is, “Oh, I’ve had my baby. I’m done with my prenatal vitamin, right?” But we talked a little bit and skimmed the surface about why it is important to take it during breastfeeding. We talked a little bit about how it’s still depleting our bodies, but after having a baby, how long should we be taking these? Then if we want a close baby, is it something that we should just continue?Julie: Yeah. Yeah, great questions. The minimum that we would recommend is 6 months after delivery and that is whether or not you are breastfeeding. So from your choice or from how things turn out and you aren’t lactating, it’s still beneficial to give your body that time to replenish because pregnancy and labor are really depleting events on the body. It just takes time to rebuild those nutrient stores. That’s the minimum. So yes. Please, keep taking a prenatal vitamin postnatally. There are postnatal vitamins on the market. Generally, that is a marketing differentiation, not a product-quality differentiation. Most postnatal vitamins are almost identical to their prenatal counterparts except for a couple of nutrients where they take maybe 25mg more vitamin C which is less than you would get from one strawberry. It’s basically a marketing play. We skipped that step and we just offer one prenatal vitamin that’s appropriate for the entire perinatal, before, during, and after stage. And then if you are breastfeeding or pumping or otherwise producing milk, we recommend staying on a prenatal vitamin for that full duration of time. If you can give your body a couple of months once you stop lactating, that’s really beneficial for the same reasons we just discussed. It gives your body a chance to recuperate. There is a concept known as the recuperative interval when we’re thinking about pregnancy spacing if you’re having multiple kids. I myself did not do this. I breastfed my first daughter basically until the day my second daughter was born. Maybe not optimal– optimal in some ways, not optimal in others. Meagan: Really common, though. Julie: Really common. Yep. Meagan: A lot of people do it and then they want to feed both babies. Julie: Exactly. Or maybe you can breastfeed until you’re pregnant with the second. In any event, that is a reason why you should keep taking your prenatal vitamin because it ensures that your body has enough nutrients to give to your baby. Basically, the order of operations is going to be growing baby gets first, older baby gets second, and mom gets last. So if you are nursing while pregnant, if you are tandem feeding, that’s what your body is going to do. It’s evolutionary. Your body is really smart. Except for in the example that we talked about in the recording about severe postpartum hemorrhaging, your body’s first priority will be surviving but second to that, your body is going to give to baby before it gives to older baby before it gives to itself. Make sure to take your prenatal vitamin all throughout. I think that’s a general misunderstanding. A lot of women are like, “I’m not pregnant anymore.” Men, when looking at the category when Ryan and I were starting the company, they’re like, “It’s 9 months. You’re going to have a customer for a maximum of 9 months.” We were like, “Just frankly, you’re wrong,” because this is a life stage that women are in for five years, or seven years, or ten years. It’s a much longer life stage when you account for trying to conceive, pregnancy, postpartum, breastfeeding, trying again, or preparing to conceive again. That’s why this is a consequential decision and taking care of your body during those five or ten or one or two really intensive nutritional years can set you up for long-term health and your babies up for long-term health for the rest of their life. Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. I was one of those after my first. My provider didn’t say, “Continue taking these vitamins.” That wasn’t even a discussion. It was, “How are you feeling? What birth control would you like?” That’s really the conversation that we had. Again, we’re not shaming the provider for that but that’s just following the script. “Okay. We’re six weeks. This is what we’re doing.” I just needed so much more. Julie: At six weeks, honestly, nutritionally depletion-wise, you are nowhere near recovered even if your scar is healing well from a Cesarean or if your stitches are healing well from a vaginal delivery. Emotionally and physically, we are very much postpartum at that point. Even at the stage I am now at 9 months postpartum, this is still postpartum. We call it the fourth trimester sometimes which at least allows for three months, but in a lot of years, it’s two years after having a baby that your body is still returning to homeostasis, whatever that homeostasis is for you. Meagan: Right, and then by then, we’re kind of entering that prenatal stage again. Julie: You could be. Exactly. Meagan: Right? A lot of people are. I love this. Okay, so a couple more questions. I know we are kind of running out of time, but collagen is a big thing that I never really heard about when I was pregnant. The words didn’t even come out of anyone’s mouth. I honestly didn’t even read it online. You guys have prenatal protein collagen or collagen protein. I think it’s important to talk about that too because it can impact us in a really positive way not only during but especially after healing from surgery or anything. We’ve got tissues that are healing so I don’t know if you’d like to share a little bit about the protein. Julie: I’d love to. I think that this is something that we are super passionate about and something I learned a lot about when we were in the formulation stage. We know that protein requirements increase substantially in pregnancy. You need 80-100g of protein a day. That is the low end of the range. There is newer research showing that you need upwards of 140g of protein a day. That’s a lot to hit when you’re pregnant. Those needs are there because you’re growing a baby obviously. Amino acids are the building blocks of life, the organ that you’re growing, the placenta, and blood sugar regulation. Especially as your blood volume is expanding, protein is really important for stabilizing blood sugar and for a lot of other things. We love collagen proteins specifically because it’s a single ingredient. It’s really cleanly sourced. Plant-based proteins can be high in heavy metals whereas we don’t find that to be the case with collagen protein. The amino acids in collagen protein are specifically really beneficial for pregnancy. Two of them, glycine and proline, are conditionally essential meaning that your body can’t synthesize them on their own. They have to be consumed by food and many of us are not consuming the foods that are high in glycine and proline like the carcasses of animals and the skins and bones. It’s just not very common, especially in pregnancy. We tend to eat boneless, skinless chicken breast. Maybe some even have animal protein aversions during pregnancy. Collagen is an awesome form of glycine and proline and overall meets your protein needs. It’s effectively flavorless. You can blend it into smoothies. It blends really well with our prenatal multivitamin powder. You can mix it, especially for those first-trimester mamas, into mac and cheese. You can mix it into just about anything to get some protein in even when you’re feeling a bit nauseous. Then for postpartum, why it’s beneficial is that your skin tissue stretches. It needs to recover whether that’s because you had a vaginal delivery or a Cesarean. Collagen can be really, really helpful for tissue healing and repair and recovery in that regard. The last thing I should mention is that the placenta is actually comprised of collagen so it really makes a lot of sense to be consuming those building blocks when you’re making your new organ for pregnancy. Meagan: Yeah. I want to share with you guys that I love it in my oatmeal. Julie: Yeah, that’s awesome. Meagan: I put it in my oatmeal. I’ll put some apples and a little bit of cinnamon and it works really well. I actually put a little bit of yogurt. It’s amazing. Julie: I sneak it into my daughter’s oatmeal. She calls it sprinkles. Kids have lower protein requirements than adults of course, but it helps to balance out their blood sugar too in a really beneficial way. Making sure she’s not bouncing off the walls more than necessary. Meagan: I love that. I love that. That’s something too I love. A lot of this is really good for kids. We could go into it. There are so many other products. There are a lot that my kids love as well. Okay, so the last question, we kind of talked about this in the beginning how we can get this through food. It’s hard to get that because we’re not typically eating carcasses and skin and liver, right? Julie: Yep. Meagan: So what are some foods that we can drop for this audience to eat that help us during pregnancy just in general and in postpartum that will help us in addition to Needed and other products? Julie: Well, I would say that in general, we are huge advocates for food. You can’t out-supplement a bad diet. Food should be a critical component of your nutrition plan. It’s just really hard sometimes to eat optimally. But foods to focus on during pregnancy, are lots of organic if you can, leafy greens, vegetables, and fruits. Eat the rainbow. I think some people tend to be afraid of fruits because of the sugar content and gestational diabetes but there is fiber in fruit. Unlike fruit juice, there is actually fiber in fruit. You can pair it with something like nut butter to add a little bit of protein and fat to help with blood sugar stability. Other things to focus on are prebiotics and probiotic-rich foods like kimchi and depending on your stance on it, I drink kombucha during pregnancy. There is a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of alcohol in it but the benefits to me outweigh any potential risk of alcohol content. Sauerkraut is another really great one and fiber. A lot of women during pregnancy have hemorrhoids or they’re constipated so foods that are rich in fiber are generally very good for you and your baby. Probably one of my favorites when I’m pregnant– I tend to fall off the wagon a little bit postpartum because you have a newborn and whatnot, but I’m usually really good at smoothies during pregnancy. Smoothies are a great way. You can put our collagen in it or our prenatal multivitamin powder. If you are not a capsules fan, you can even take our pre-probiotic and add it or vitamin D. You can add in a lot of our capsule products. Just break open the capsule and dump the powder contents into the smoothie. That’s a really great way to put in greens and fruits and whatever else– nuts, seeds. That’s a great way to get in your fat content. That’s definitely one of my favorites as well as depending on the season. If you’re pregnant more in the winter months, you can make soups. Stir the collagen protein into the soup. Try to load it with those other fruits, vegetables, and fiber-type-rich foods.But I think we’re really, really passionate about debunking some of the concerns around pregnancy like pregnancy weight gain. You are eating for two. It doesn’t mean you should go load up on ice cream and pretzels and chips. Some of that in moderation is totally fine, but think about nutrient density. That’s what you’re going for both for you and your baby. It’s going to help you avoid depletion, to feel better. Pregnancy, even if you’re eating well, is pretty uncomfortable so I think eating foods that are going to nourish you and leave you feeling good is definitely the priority. We do share some really great recipe ideas over on our Instagram. A couple of people in our network that you can check out if you’re looking for more food recommendations, the prenatal nutritionist, Ryann Kipping, has a prenatal nutrition library that is full of really great food-based nutrition ideas. We also love the work of Lily Nichols. She’s really popular with midwives and doulas also. She wrote a book called “Real Food for Pregnancy” that has some great, practical tips for nutrient-dense meals. A lot of what she’s recommending is going to sound familiar from this podcast like collagen and eating more meat than you might think you need and eating more. Honestly, I say this coming from the perspective of having been a vegetarian and a vegan for a long time. I think that you can do that during pregnancy but you have to be really intentional about protein and about nutrients like vitamin D and choline. It’s much more difficult but it’s possible. I would not advise undergoing a vegetarian or a vegan pregnancy without working with a dietician or a nutritionist to help you figure out what those nutritional gaps could be. Meagan: That’s a really good point because we do. We know we all eat differently and we all have different allergies and things that have developed so that is really, really important to know. We are going to have all of these links that she is mentioning like the blogs, the recipes, all of this linked in the show notes. So if you want to go and dive in–Julie: Nerd out with us. Meagan: Nerd out and get your teeth sinking into this, then check it out because you guys, Needed is just amazing. Really, it’s such an honor to have had you on today to be talking about this. Julie: Thank you for having me. Meagan: Because it is so important. With my first and second pregnancies, I was healthy-ish but each pregnancy got better because I learned more. Julie: Isn’t that amazing that there is this concept of, “Oh, you’re too old or you’re subsequent.” If I have a third, I’ll be a geriatric mom but it’s so much more about your health span or your health status than it is about age in some ways you can have your healthiest pregnancy at 40 if you’re doing the right things and taking care of your body in the right way. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. My best pregnancy was the older one. The oldest that I was. I was the oldest in my pregnancy and it was my best pregnancy. It just impacts. I wanted to touch a little bit on what you said that sometimes we hesitate to eat or we are eating the right things. Women of Strength, if you are listening, I know that as a person wanting to have a VBAC and as a mama wanting to have a VBAC, sometimes we get scared of the world out there saying, “Your baby is too big and you can’t have a vaginal birth.” I saw just today three posts in our community, “A doctor said that my baby is too big.” Then we sometimes tend to hold back and not get the right nutrients, right? Not purposely, but purposely because we’re trying not to make too big of a baby because we really want this vaginal birth. It’s all twisted and I don’t love it, but it’s really important to remember like she was saying, get these nutrient-dense foods in you and don’t be scared to supplement. Don’t be scared to supplement because our bodies and babies deserve it. We deserve it. Julie: Yep. And on the other side of birth, I tend to feel that bigger babies sometimes sleep better. They sometimes eat better. My second daughter was almost 9 pounds, but the first daughter was late. She was born almost at 42 weeks. I was so nervous about it, but she was a champion sleeper and feeder. I think there is a lot of natural wisdom in that your body knows how big of a baby to grow and your body knows how long to carry that baby for. But I loved this conversation. I think it’s so important. It might not be immediately intuitive why nutrition and birth outcomes go so hand-in-hand, but they do.Oftentimes, what risks women out of the birth that they want whether it’s a VBAC or just a primary first-time vaginal birth is a factor that can be traced back to nutrition like preterm labor or gestational diabetes or whatnot. We are very aligned on the idea that nutrition for prevention and for optimal outcomes. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. I had a client during COVID who had pre-eclampsia. She got it at 18 weeks. She had a home birth planned and all of these amazing things planned. She had to completely shift gears. The second one, she was like, “I’m going to start trying soon and I’m going to dive in.” She did. She dove in and changed so many things and had an incredible, incredible home birth with her second. She was like, “I really do feel that because I fed my body and fueled my body, it gave back.” We know that sometimes we do all of the right things, everything, and still, we have undesired outcomes. But if we can do everything within our control, if we can do what we can within our control– Julie: That’s exactly it. Yeah, I’m nodding my head here because we keep saying to ourselves and are starting to say more externally that there is so much on this journey that you can’t control. You can do everything right and still have things not go as you want. That’s just a reality. But nutrition is a big one that you can control so why not focus on the things that you can control and let go of the rest? Meagan: Right. Absolutely. Well, we will end on that note because I think that is such a powerful ending point. I want to share with everybody that we are going to have the link in the show notes, but if you want to go check out Needed and all of the amazing products because we just barely touched on a few today, you can go to thisisneeded.com to learn more about Julie and Ryan and go learn about their partners. There are a lot of partners that we’ve actually had on the show. We just love you guys. We appreciate you so much so thank you for taking the time today.Julie: Absolutely. It was really fun.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“Doulas are great. How do I get one?”‘Hope you’re rich, bye!’“Wait, now I can’t have one?”We are so happy to be joined once again by our friend, Kaitlin McGreyes with Be Her Village. Meagan and Kaitlin talk all about the benefits of doulas and what they love most about being doulas themselves. Not only that– they also talk about how to actually afford one. Every mama deserves continuous support during her labor and birth. Kaitlin has created the platform to make it a reality. Additional LinksBe Her Village WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello you guys. It is Meagan from The VBAC Link and guess what? We have our friend, Kaitlin from Be Her Village, back. I am so excited to have you, Kaitlin. Kaitlin: I am so excited to be here, Meagan. Thank you so much for having me. I love this little friendship that has burst out of our VBAC love and our desire to get everybody their VBAC. Meagan: I know. Our passion around birth. It’s just so cool to see how people from different parts of the world can connect so deeply. I just adore you and love you and I do hope that I get to meet you one day soon in person. Kaitlin: Oh, for sure. We’re going to make that happen. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Last time we shared her VBAC story and this time we are going to be talking about doulas. So if you didn’t know, we are both doulas. Obviously, we are very passionate and heavily involved in the birth world. We are going to talk about, okay great. That’s wonderful. We know about doulas. Now what do we do? We are going to talk about that today so if you are wanting to know more about doulas, the stats around doulas, and how to pay for a doula, you want to hold on and listen to this episode. Review of the WeekBut of course, I have a Review of the Week so we are going to get into that and then we are going to talk all about wonderful doulas. This review is from txliberty92 and it was in 2020 and it says, “From Fear to Confidence.” It says, “When I found out that I was pregnant for the second time, I instantly felt so confused about how to birth this baby. I had heard so much conflicting advice about repeat cesareans and just wanted to hear the facts and hear from people who had been down this road before. I am now 36 weeks into my pregnancy and prepared and totally confident in my upcoming VBAC. I don’t know if I would ever have gotten to this point without this podcast and community.” Oh, that makes me so happy. Txliberty92, if you are still listening, because that was in 2020. That was three years ago. If you are still listening, write us at [email protected] and tell us how things went. And hey, we want to share your story. Be Her VillageMeagan: Okay. Let’s talk about doulas. First of all, I think it’s fun to talk about why us doulas become a doula because I know that when I was in high school, I knew I loved babies. I always wanted to babysit. I always wanted to be close to a baby, holding a baby, and then through high school, I was like, “I would love to be a labor and delivery nurse,” because hello, they get to be close to babies and hold babies all of the time, right? And then I started having babies of my own and learned more. I decided that I did love the idea of becoming a labor and delivery nurse but to be honest, I hate math. That’s literally one of the reasons why I decided not to become a labor and delivery nurse because they have to do so much math. Kaitlin: There is so much math in nursing, yes. Meagan: So much math and I just hate it so much. For those listening, you guys, I actually had to take Math 1010 three times. Kaitlin: Oh my goodness. Meagan: That is how much I hate math. I hate it so bad. I suck at it. I hate remembering it and still to this day, I’ve been a doula for over 8 years and I still have a hard time. I have to Google how to calculate mpu’s every single time because I hate math. So that is something that steered me away, but the thought of being able to love and support and educate and hold space for somebody and not do the math–Kaitlin: Sign me up. Meagan: It sounded amazing. It sounded so amazing. So through my first birth, after my undesired, unplanned C-section, I definitely had more of a passion for birth, and then after my repeat and learning more about doulas, I was like, “Yeah. This is it.” I remember the fire lit inside of me that day just like, “This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to love people. I’m going to support people. I’m going to educate people and let them know what their options are.” I have loved it ever since and I am so glad to be here today. So where did your fire ignite?Kaitlin: Oh my goodness. My fire ignited from my VBAC actually. I love that your story was like, “I always knew that I wanted to work with babies and mamas.” I had no idea. I was a special ed teacher in New York City. My husband still works as a special ed teacher in the school where we met when we were 22. That was the path. It was getting out at 3:00, working with kids, and feeling good. It was not being a maternal healthcare advocate at all. It was not doula work. It was not changing the baby industry. It was just not any of that. But then I went and I had a baby. My first birth, as you can listen to on the other episode, was on a spectrum from underwhelming on some days. I would reflect that it was underwhelming and other days, it was full-blown traumatic. It really depends on where I am in my head space. But it was kind of awful and the C-section wasn’t what was awful about it. It was how people treated me. It was the powerlessness. It was being dictated to and people making decisions around me and not acknowledging me as a human being and as an adult, grown-ass woman who could make decisions about myself and my body. Meagan: We’re having another human, right? Kaitlin: Right? How dare they. How dare they disempower me so quickly and then less than two years later, I had this incredibly different VBAC experience that was transformative before the baby ever came out of me. It had nothing to do with the vaginal side of it although that was amazing and kickass and I totally recommend it. But it was really about how I went in. I researched. I decided for myself that I wanted a VBAC first off. I hired a doula. I hired a VBAC-supportive provider, a doctor actually, and I just walked into that birth powerful and in charge. I ended up having a vaginal birth which was spectacular but that was the fire in me. It was sort of, “Wait a minute. How can I have two completely opposite experiences over the past two years?” So that was where I was just like, “I think the doula was a big part of it,” because I took childbirth education. I hired midwives. I did the things I was supposed to do and the doula, having someone in the moment when you’re in that crucible where you’re just being challenged and tested and you’re in crisis, for many of us, and where you have this deep desire for your baby to be safe and for you to be safe yet you know. You know because you’re listening to The VBAC Link. You know that this system is sort of rigged against us. How do you make sense of all that? The answer for me was in my doula. I knew that I needed to become a doula so that I could help more people. I have to be totally transparent. I definitely started out with a little bit of a savior complex. I was like, “If you hire me, I can save you from trauma,” which is not true or healthy for any of us. Meagan: It was probably you coping with your trauma. Kaitlin: Absolutely. There was this idea that my doula saved me in my birth so I could save somebody else. But it’s true in that sure, we can have an incredible impact but we can’t save anybody. You can’t just hire a doula and like, “Okay, that’s it. It’s done.” You have to hire a doula and work with them and ask questions and still be very much an active participant in your care. The doula is the tool to learn how to advocate. The doula is the tool to set yourself up for success and that was why I got into it because I just thought, “Man, I have had two completely opposite experiences and I want to help more people have the second one, have the empowered one, have the voice, have built the team around myself.” So I thought, “I’m going to be a doula.” Little did I know how that would all end up but it’s just amazing. It’s the best thing there is. Meagan: Yeah, exactly. I would have never told you when I was becoming a doula, or it was nine years ago in September. Right now when we’re recording, it’s almost June. So almost nine years and I would have never said, “Oh yeah, in nine years, I’m going to have a podcast and be a VBAC advocate and educator and all of these things.” I never would have guessed that, but man. I am so grateful for this journey and where it’s led us. You know, we talked about that. Doulas are there to help you. They’re not there to rescue you. I think sometimes even I would say if I would be really honest. I was kind of like that too. I would have a client where they would be going in having these really deep goals and I was like, “I am going to make sure that happens.” I would go in and then sometimes if they didn’t happen or if births went differently or we had unexpected events or something like that, I remember going home and I remember feeling like I failed as a doula. I felt like I failed them. Kaitlin: Yeah. Oh, it’s a horrible feeling. Meagan: A really bad feeling. For your birth workers listening, it’s important to know that you are there and you love your clients but we can’t save everyone. Just like the clients that are hiring us need to know that we’re not there to save but we’re there to help educate, guide, love, and help you facilitate the things that you need along the way. It’s just an extra crutch. Kaitlin: Yeah. I feel like it’s really the work of labor and birth happens in the pregnancy. That’s why you should get your doula as early as you can because it is in your doula’s ability to help understand what your true desires are and help keep you connected to them because one of the things so many of us do and I’m speaking really about myself here too. I’m projecting my own experience. We abandon ourselves. We know what we want. We know that we want XYZ for our birth and then we sacrifice ourselves because as mothers, this is what we do. We sacrifice our time and our energy and our bodies for our babies but that gets used against us sometimes. It’s really great to have somebody dedicated to your team that can sort of continue guiding the entire experience back to you back to those original goals, back to that original desire, and reminding you of what is possible and helping you stick to that. Then if you have to shift away from it, they are helping you navigate that shift in a way that feels intentional and purposeful and that you are emotionally able to shift as well so that we avoid that feeling of, “I don’t even know what happened. I felt like I got hit by a bus and now I have a baby and I’m not sure how it happened.” We can’t control a lot of things that happen in birth and doulas can’t control them either which is a journey we go on as professionals. But we absolutely can help people navigate their births in a way that feels empowering regardless of the medical factors that end up happening. Meagan: Yeah. One of my favorite parts about being a doula is actually helping the partner along the way because I mean, obviously, Mom is the star of the show. She’s having the baby and she’s a very important person. She’s definitely the MVP in that room but guess what? So are these partners. It’s so fun like you said to circle around and help these partners feel more a part of birth as well because they sometimes have that same feeling where all of a sudden they are like, “Oh my gosh. My wife has a baby. What just happened?” So it’s so nice to help dads and birth partners feel more involved and more connected and in control in a way of their own birth experience as well because it is their birth experience too. Kaitlin: Absolutely. I would argue that doulas are more for the partners in a lot of ways than they are for the birthing person. I personally didn’t hire a doula for my first birth and I regret it. I can say pretty blatantly and bluntly that I regret it because I was afraid that it would take away the intimacy. I was afraid that it would be too many people and that I wouldn’t have this intimate with my partner but what ended up actually happening is that my partner was so panicked by this mess of labor and by his wife being in so much pain. He wasn’t of any help to me. I mean, he was as much help as he could have been. I’m not trying to attack my partner but he was really in this place of being a deer in the headlights. I was flipping out. He was a deer in the headlights. Everything was going wrong and he didn’t have the tools. He had never done it before and that’s in a birth that was very stressful. Even in a birth where you’re not in a medically-induced place, it’s still really hard to have the entirety of the responsibility of this experience to see your partner who is for the most part– this is a little stereotypical, but it’s true– the women who are giving birth are making the lists and they’re choosing the doctors. They’re setting up their doulas. They’re doing all of the things and they’re making a birth plan. They’re dotting every i and they’re crossing every t and then what happens when they go into active labor? They retreat. Their minds retreat into their bodies and then all of a sudden, they’re not communicating much of anything which can be really disorienting to a partner who feels to them that they need to keep their partner and their baby safe. This creates this feeling of alarm and can really not make the whole thing not feel good for everybody. When we have a doula that can come in for the partner and normalize the entire birthing experience whether it’s in the hospital really medicalized or at home during early labor to transfer or have a home birth, it’s so cool to have somebody who has walked this path before to be able to tell your partner, “Hey, this is all fine.” To have someone not react when you have somebody vomiting or contracting or shaking or all of these things that happen in the throes of labor, can be so relaxing. What is does is that it helps the partner then join his woman or his birthing person with intention and with this presence without all of the anxiety. It actually creates this beautiful expression of love. Not to mention, it’s so cool to have someone show you how to touch your partner. One of them when I was teaching childbirth, I remember he was half joking but he was only half joking. He was like, “I just want you to teach me how far away to stand from her,” because he was just so nervous about the whole thing. It’s like, imagine having someone come in and be like, “Hey, when she does that, just press here,” and it’s like ooh. You get to learn and have a coach that helps you take on that care. It’s the opposite of what so many of us think, myself included, was that a doula would replace my partner or get in the way. Really, what we do is help partners get more hands-on in such a helpful way. Meagan: Yeah. Exactly. My husband was really not keen on the idea of hiring a doula. He was like, “I’m not good enough? You’re going to replace me?” That’s where he snapped too. It’s like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s not like that.” But it wasn’t until we had a doula that he was like, “Whoa. Okay. I see what you do as a profession. I love this and we would never do this again without one.” So yeah. Doulas are there for you. They’re there for your birthing partner, but guess what, you guys? They have actual stats on how impactful doulas can be. That is so cool to me to think that there are stats on the profession that I do. It sounds silly. Kaitlin: It’s science. It’s science. Passionate science. It’s science. Meagan: There are actual statistics that what I do and what I love is helpful. Okay, so let’s talk about them. Doulas can decrease pain medication so epidurals, fentanyl, and stuff like that by 10% which seems little, but if you think about all of the people giving birth. Kaitlin: 10% is huge. Meagan: 10% is huge if you have 24-hour labor or more. I was 42. Yeah. It’s wonderful. There’s a 38% decrease in the baby’s risk of a low 5-minute APGAR score. Kaitlin: And that, I really want to pause on that because that’s a really big deal. The APGAR is your sign of life. That’s literally like do you have muscle tension? Are you pink which means there’s oxygen coursing? Do you have a pulse? It’s literally, is this baby thriving? The APGAR is an enormous measure and what’s wild about this is that doulas are not medical providers. We’re not medical providers. I can understand the epidural being applied. It’s like, “Yeah, we have some tools and tricks up our sleeve to help you manage pain. That makes sense to me.” But influencing an APGAR? This means that if you hire a doula, a non-medical provider, whatever magic thing that we’re doing is not really magic. It’s just being present and helping people advocate for themselves, can have health impacts on your baby. That’s wild. Who we’re not touching, who we’re not making medical decisions on. We have no medical training and yet we’re impacting medical outcomes. That’s a big, big, big deal. Meagan: It’s pretty stinking huge. In this study, it doesn’t necessarily single out doulas. It’s continuous support which guess what doulas do? Continuous support. Kaitlin: Yeah. Well, no other provider is doing that. Meagan: No. I mean, they’re in and they’re out. Midwives and OBs, we love them all. Kaitlin: Yes, we do. Meagan: But they can’t. They can’t. Kaitlin: The system is not set up for continuous support. Absolutely. Meagan: They can’t. They might be in there for a little bit but then they’re in and they’re out. So a 31% decrease in the risk of being dissatisfied with the birth experience. Kaitlin: That’s a big one. That’s a big one. Meagan: You guys! 31%. So one of the things that I love about being a doula– I mean, there are a lot of things– but I want someone to walk away from their birth, even if it didn’t happen exactly how they wanted on their birth preference sheet or birth plan, to have a good experience. I want them to look back and say, “You know, I didn’t get this or that or this happened and wasn’t my ideal but overall, that was an amazing experience and I’m happy with my experience and I don’t reference my experience as traumatic,” and just have an overall better view on their birth. Kaitlin: That’s the thing though. We all know there are uncontrollables but having respect and feeling in control and feeling like you were part of your birth in a powerful way has ripple effects and implications well beyond that day of your birth. That’s a huge metric and that’s really, really important. Meagan: Yeah, huge. Another one, I think, that is really cool is that they have one showing continuous support such as a doula can shorten labor by 41 minutes. Kaitlin: Um, yes. They shorten labor. They shorten pushing time and reduce your risk of C-section or surgical birth, forceps, or vacuum, up to 25%. I think there is a saying and I’ll have to find the quote but it’s like, “If doulas were a drug, it would be unethical not to use them. It is clinically proven that continuous support by a non-family member– that’s the doula part, right?Meagan: Yes. Yeah, I want to talk about that. Kaitlin: Yes. Continuous support by a non-family member is wildly impactful not just on your emotional experience but on your pushing time, your laboring time, your surgical birth risk, and your baby’s health. It’s really something that every single person in the United States deserves to have. I also want to just put this other steed in here that doulas are not the cause of surgical birth. We are not the cause of longer labors or lower APGARs. We’re not the root cause of these issues but we are one of the solutions that our healthcare system is looking at. It’s hard to talk about this because I do want to talk about how doulas are awesome. Everyone should have a doula. Meagan: They’re seriously so awesome. Kaitlin: But we are very much also a bandaid on a broken system so yes. We’re all currently giving birth in this system so we all should have access to doulas and that’s part of the work that we’re both doing is getting people connected to the doulas in their area and getting people connected to the funding to pay for them because that’s sort of the elephant in the room. It’s like, “Okay. All of these doulas are great and they’re highly impactful.” You listen to a podcast like this and it’s like, “Oh, that’s great. How do I get one?” It’s like, “They cost $2000 out of pocket. Hope you’re rich, bye!” It’s like, “Wait, now I can’t have one?” It’s all a really messy stage in the American maternal healthcare system that we’re in right now, but the idea of having a doula or not having a doula when you think about what we all think about as we are preparing for our birth is, “What’s best for my baby?” It’s best for your baby to have a doula-supported birth both for their health and for their parents’ health and their parents’ experience. If anyone’s on the fence about it, I hope that this will spark you into researching and talking and looking into it because there are a lot of misconceptions about doulas. They are for everybody even if you are planning a C-section. Even if you’re listening to this podcast because you’re like, “I don’t know. VBAC’s not for me.” Even if you’re listening because you’re a hater. Doulas are for everybody. They’re for every kind of birth. You can plan a C-section. You can plan an epidural. You can plan a home birth. You can plan a birth in the middle of the woods and a doula can be really instrumental in being an advocate for yourself throughout that. Meagan: Yes, and I have been to scheduled C-sections. I had two and I wish that I had a doula to be there. So I love that you were talking about, “Okay, wait. We know that doulas are awesome.” Sorry guys, but doulas are awesome. Kaitlin: But we are. Meagan: Okay, where do we find them? There are websites all over. You can search “Doula Near Me”. The VBAC Link has specific VBAC doulas. You just go to thevbaclink.com and search “Find a Doula”. Type in your zip code and boom.But yeah, then what? Then what? How do we pay for $2000 doulas? Kaitlin: Yes. $2000. I’m in New York. $2000 is kind of run-of-the-mill. Medicaid is covering $1900. They’re paying out for doulas. That’s just the cost of doulas in New York. It really varies according to market but it’s expensive. If it’s an $800 doula, then that means the salaries in the area and the cost of housing and everything else in that area is low. I think it’s safe to say that it is a heavy lift for most people to be able to access a doula and not just a doula, but all of the other care that comes with it as well. Postpartum care, tongue tie clips, breastfeeding care, pelvic floor care, maternal mental health. How many insurance companies are covering those things? There’s just an enormous amount of funding that needs to happen in order for us to get the care that we deserve, the baseline of care that is happening in other countries for other mothers. One of the things that I love to talk about because it’s sort of my life’s work–Meagan: Listen how to solve this problem!Kaitlin: Drumroll, please! It’s really your baby registry. It’s using Be Her Village which is what I created. It’s our platform, our baby registry platform so that you can use this event where all of your loved ones are opening their wallets. They’re going to buy you thousands of dollars of gifts. Literally, the stats are 12 billion dollars divided by almost 4 million babies. It’s a lot of money, a lot of money being spent by communities and well-meaning, well-intentioned, so generous– everyone wants to support a new mother. Everybody does. But right now, you can just go to baby stores and get a bunch of baby stuff. I don’t know. We’ve all bought gifts before and I guess the swaddles can help but it’s not the same as knowing that this gift is going to be impactful. One of the best things that we’ve done is we’ve created this platform where you can register for and find the practitioners in your area– the doulas, the lactation consultants, the pelvic floor specialists, the childbirth education, the acupuncturists– everybody who is supporting mothers in their birth and their postpartum time. You can find them and add them directly to your gift registry.Your friends and family can send you funds, cash, cold-hard cash to pay for them so it’s totally flexible. We’ve had $165,000 funded on our platform so far just from communities who are generously opening up. It is such an amazing tool and funding opportunity that is already happening. We already know about baby showers. They’re happening. We already know how to use a gift registry. What if we use it to pay for doulas? What if we use it to pay for that care? It’s really, really cool so I just highly recommend every single person that’s listening to go to Be Her Village. Click on our shopping guide. Click to get started. If you’re a doula, add your services there. We’re reclaiming the baby shower because the baby shower has become this place where we get carloads of boxes where we get all of this stuff. For me, I had to haul it back to my tiny apartment. I’m like, “Where am I going to fit all of this stuff for my baby?” I was living in New York City at the time and we’re really saying, “You know what? Moms need stuff for their babies, sure. We’ll find them and how to pay for them but there’s this real need for care for ourselves.” It’s like the conversation we just had. Who doesn’t want a doula after listening to that? Who doesn’t want a doula after knowing the stats of how impactful it can be? What better gift than to say to someone, “Hey, I’m going to help you find that so you can have a better health outcome and so you can have a better experience so your entire transition into motherhood can feel better than it would have otherwise.”Meagan: Absolutely. I’m going to pull it up. Seriously, it’s so easy. This website is so incredible. You can go and create your registry. You can shop for services. You can give your gifts. Anything, right here. Also, there is virtual. That’s something too. Doulas and birth workers, if you are offering virtual courses, help people find your course so they can get more educated. They can go more prepared. There are tons of virtual services. You can go in. There’s childbirth education. There’s a fourth trimester. There’s restoring your body. There’s heart and mind. You guys, this is such an amazing platform. To say I’m obsessed is an understatement. It really is an understatement to say how much I love this platform and how genius you are for creating this space for people. I didn’t hire a doula with my second baby because get this. You’re going to laugh out loud. Everyone’s going to die. I thought that $150 was too much at the time. Kaitlin: Oh gosh. Meagan: We didn’t have a lot of money. Kaitlin: I get it. Meagan: Yeah. Kaitlin: Meagan, it’s all so backward. We have our babies when we’re making the least amount of money. Then when we have a baby, for many of us, you stop working. At least temporarily, if not for a long time. Meagan: You do. Yes. Kaitlin: You get squeezed financially and at the earliest time in your career. You’re barely established and who wants to wait to be established? I’m 39 and I don’t even feel established right now. But it shouldn’t be that we have to choose how much care we receive because of our income level or because of the disposable income that we have. It’s not enough. My doula cost $1200 and that was nine years ago. It was the same amount as my mortgage. Meagan: Right. Kaitlin: It was a huge lift for us but luckily, I knew. I was so driven for the VBAC. Actually, my VBAC approach was to do everything the opposite. I didn’t take the childbirth education. I hired an OB instead of a midwife. I hired a doula instead of not. But it’s a big, heavy lift and we have to start thinking about not just, “Can I afford it?” but “I deserve this. How do I do this?” So we have to be more creative as a collective. It’s really cool. This baby shower is sort of this untapped area that we’ve just been going to for decades. You go. You buy the stuff at the store. You give it to parents. They return half of it. It’s this thing that we’re doing on repeat and I think it’s time for some serious evaluation about, “What do we actually need? What does a mother actually need?” If you were to make a list, which we do. We have the top ten things you need on your registry and none of them can be found at a store because it’s all about support and care from the community which often looks like professionals as well as friends and loved ones and family members and neighbors. Meagan: Absolutely. I am so grateful for what you do. I encourage everyone. If you are looking to hire a doula and you’re just not sure or the funds are hanging over or maybe a postpartum doula. Maybe you’re really needing that support educationally or whatever it may be, this is the place for you to go and check out. You could even hire a birth photographer if you’re wanting to capture your birth. I mean, you guys. They have everything. So definitely, definitely, definitely check them out at behervillage.com. We’re going to make sure to have all of the links in our show notes. Go to Instagram. Follow Be Her Village. You’re amazing and I’m so grateful for you. I’m so grateful that your births have taken you on this journey honestly, just like I have with mine. It’s such an honor to be sharing this space and this beautiful community with you. Kaitlin: Thank you, Meagan. I feel the exact same way. I’m really, really grateful for you. As much as I hate that we have had these hard birth experiences, it’s all worthwhile because of how we are using it and how we’re using it to help the next person, so thank you for that. Meagan: Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Abby Inman is a pelvic floor therapist, a soon-to-be mother of four, and one of the authors of the book Baby Got VBAC: An Inspiring Collection of Wisdom for Better Births After Cesarean. Located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Abby is advocating for hospital policies to make pelvic floor therapy more accessible to all birthing women. As a VBAC mom herself, Abby talks with Meagan about why every woman should have a pelvic floor physical therapy consult in the hospital before going home. Abby also tells us some obvious as well as more commonly missed signs indicating that you could benefit from pelvic floor physical therapy. Additional LinksBaby Got VBAC: An Inspiring Collection of Wisdom for Better Births After CesareanAbby’s WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello you guys. This is Meagan with The VBAC Link. I apologize that I sound a little hoarse today. I have totally caught a darn bug. I have been trying to get away from it all year not getting sick and apparently, I couldn’t get away with it. So here I am. I sound kind of froggy today but that’s okay. We’re still going to carry on. You guys, we have our friend, Abby, with us today and I’m really, really excited because I was just telling her before we started recording, she is just a big ball of everything. She’s got a lot of amazing things to talk about and share so it is such an honor, Abby, to have you on our podcast. Abby: I am so excited to be here. Meagan: Yes. Oh my gosh. I just want to talk a little bit even before we jump into the review. I don’t want to talk too much about your story because I want to give you all of the time but have you guys heard, Baby Got VBAC? Have you guys heard of that book? If you haven’t, go check our highlights or on our blog because we have it on there and it is such an incredible, uplifting book. And guess what, Abby? I don’t know if you know this. I don’t know if you were actually the one that contacted us, but forever ago, someone contacted Julie and me about being in this. We had so much going on. We were in our course and we were like, “We can’t take anything more on,” and we declined the opportunity and now we are kicking ourselves in the pants. We’re like, “Dang it. We should have been in this incredible book.” It has so many incredible people and stories and information in it. I mean, it’s amazing, right? Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?Abby: Yes. Baby Got VBAC. I don’t exactly know what is the subheader. It’s like, “A Collection of Wisdom for Better Birth After Cesarean.” Meagan: Yeah. “An Inspiring Collection of Wisdom for Better Birth After a Cesarean.” Abby: And it was the brainchild of a VBAC mom herself who is also a writer and an independent publisher, so she just got us all together, found us likely through various social media channels as things are done these days–Meagan: Yes, yes. Abby: And yeah. It’s a combination of VBAC stories from all different kinds of people as well as some awesome chapters done by various birth professionals so some birth educators, some doulas, some chiropractors, PTs–Meagan: Brittany is in it and we love it. I’ve taken her course. She’s on our podcast. She’s in it. Brittany Sharpe, yeah. Abby: Her chapter is awesome. So even though the stories are all VBAC stories, I mean really, a VBAC is the first time going through the whole process and having a successful vaginal birth so I also think it’s a great resource for first-time parents who haven’t necessarily had a Cesarean in their past as well. Of course, it’s awesome for if you’re preparing for a VBAC. Meagan: Yeah. I love that you touch on that. We talk about this on the podcast. This is a VBAC-specific podcast. We discuss vaginal birth after Cesarean, but all of us on this podcast– I’m telling you, except for maybe the providers are people who haven’t had a Cesarean, but all of us were in that spot of preparing and had these Cesareans. It is a way to learn how to avoid a Cesarean, your options for birth, your options for location, and all of that. So yes, it is VBAC-specific, but just like this book, it is for all parents that are expecting and working and wanting to learn and grow their education. I love this book. It’s amazing and it’s so fun to have you today on the podcast. Review of the WeekMeagan: Before we jump in, we have a Review of the Week so I want to hurry and review this and then I will introduce you. Abby: Sounds good. Meagan: Okay, guys. This actually came in 12 days ago via email and this is from our friend, Jessica. She says, “Hello, VBAC Link. I wanted to write about my appreciation of The VBAC Link Podcast. I had a C-section in September 2020 due to an arrest of descent. It definitely affected my postpartum mental health. When I found out about being pregnant in July 2022, I Googled VBAC resources and found your podcast. I signed up for your emails, read your blogs, your Instagram, Facebook page stories, and listened to your podcast on my morning jogs and walks. I cried. I smiled. I empathized with the moms telling their stories and more importantly, learned so much. I followed many of the tips from you and the moms. “On 3/14,” which was not that long ago from the day that I am reading this today, “I was on my morning walk listening to the last VBAC Link episode and switched to my birth music playlist. Five minutes later, I started having contractions. After getting home and calling my doula, my husband took me to the hospital and I was able to achieve my VBAC and had a baby girl. Thank you for setting up this resource. I will continue to listen to the stories even though I don’t plan on having more children. I love the stories, the information, and all of the passion for helping women like me. Thank you, Jess.” Oh my gosh. Jessica, congratulations on your VBAC, and a little part of me is so happy that we got to be a part of your birthing day. That is so awesome that you were listening to these amazing stories and went into labor. So congratulations, Jessica, and yes. Just like Jessica, you guys can too. You can VBAC too. Just like she said, we have blogs, Instagram, and Facebook. We even have a private Facebook group so if you are looking for a special space that is protected and filled with people just like you wanting to learn more about your options for birth after Cesarean, head over to Facebook and search “The VBAC Link Community,” answer the questions, and then we will get you in so you can start learning. Abby Inman, PT, DPTMeagan: Okay, Ms. Abby. Abby: That was awesome. Meagan: I know. Wasn’t that so awesome? That was such an awesome review. I got it and I just left it in the inbox unread because I’m like, “That’s going on next week’s podcast.” It was so amazing. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” And we love reviews. We love the reviews so I always encourage people. Maybe you don’t want to drop it on the podcast app. That’s fine. You can send it in an email, but we would always love a great review so that we can read it on the podcast because it makes me smile so much. So much. I remember when Julie and I were together, we would get a review and we would just be texting. Our cheeks would hurt. They would hurt because we were like, “This is what we are wanting to do. We are wanting to inspire and motivate people to find their options,” because so many people around the world feel that their options are taken away or that they are robbed of them and that is not how we ever want anyone to feel. I do feel that through this podcast, you get to learn your options and you get to take back that power that maybe once was lost. Abby: Mhmm. Meagan: So oh my gosh. Well, Abby. You guys, I tell ya. She is just a ball of it all. She is involved in pregnancy and postpartum and pelvic health, writes in a book, and teaches classes. She works in the hospital system. Abby, you’re just amazing. I’m going to turn the time over to you. You’re in Milwaukee, is that right? Wisconsin? Abby: I am. Meagan: Tell us it all. Share your story. I would love to know more about working in the hospital system and teaching birthing classes and stuff like that as well. You guys, she does this all while having little kiddos and is expecting. So seriously, good on ya girl. You’re killing it. Abby: Yeah. I like to describe my life as beautiful chaos. Meagan: I love that. Yes! Can I just take that with me and be like, “Yes. Beautiful chaos. That is what I live.” Abby: So yeah. I am a physical therapist. I specialize in pelvic health. I’ve been doing that for almost 8 years. Crazy how time goes by. Nobody at the time that I was going to PT school goes into PT school thinking they want to do the pelvic floor. People definitely do because it’s becoming more common which has been such an awesome progression in the 8 years that I’ve been doing this. But I was lucky in that I was able to do an internship in pelvic health before I graduated which again at the time was super rare. I’ve been treating, again, in pelvic health my entire career. Really now though, my specialty or even my niche is pregnancy, birth, and postpartum just because that’s the season of life that I’m in and just where my passion is drawn and where there is such a need. I could for sure argue that there’s a need for all pelvic health, but this field is growing so there are a lot of other people doing all pelvic health and there are not quite as many people focused pretty fully on pregnancy and postpartum and just that specific time. Meagan: Yeah. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and you know how we have a six-week gap like, “Oh, you have your baby. Okay, see you in six weeks! Hope you’re doing okay.” The two things that I wish that we could fill the gap with are mental health and pelvic PT. Abby: Yeah. Meagan: Right? There’s such a gap that needs to be filled so it’s so good to hear that there’s a little bit more and that it’s starting to come around where people are focusing a little bit more on pregnancy and postpartum. Abby: Yeah. I have a lot of theories about different things related to how we get here but I just think that there is still this saying, “It takes a village,” but a lot of people really don’t have the village–Meagan: I know. Abby: I think that’s what has created the gap. You used to have your other female relatives around who would make you dinner and help you with your baby. Obviously, we just have to live in the reality and that’s why people need help and need services because that’s just not the norm anymore. Meagan: It’s not and we’re expected to just bounce back like, “Oh, you had a baby. Okay, great. Keep going as fast as you can.” That’s how it feels. We just had a mom hire us for 80 hours of postpartum and I was like, “Wow. That’s amazing that you are focusing so much on your postpartum.” She’s like, “I want continuous for 80 hours,” and we’re like, “Great,” so we made this work because her mom is from Korea. She was like, “People don’t leave their bedroom. They don’t leave their bedroom. They are with their baby and just like you said cleaning the house and making food,” but here we are. So many of our birth stories, our couples, and our parents, literally have to go back 3 weeks later to normal life or work. Abby: I know. It’s crazy. That’s not normal. It’s not how it was meant to be. Yeah. I work at a hospital-based clinic part-time and one of my projects is just now really coming to fruition. We’re still in the pilot phase but we’re already seeing really great results and an increase in referrals and again, these are people we would have otherwise not seen. The program is for a PT to see moms in the hospital before they go home, not necessarily as a rule, not as, “You can’t go home until you see the PT,” but just as a support service. We started it to be a standard or trigger a referral for anyone who has had a Cesarean and anyone who has had a third or fourth-degree perineal tear. I mean, obviously, this is The VBAC Link so we talk a lot about the birth after the Cesarean, but a Cesarean is a major abdominal surgery. Some people, of course, are expecting it and have been through it before and that obviously makes it easier a little bit because you know what is going to happen, but there’s just about no other surgical example that you can compare to the care of a Cesarean. It’s possible that you could have an appendectomy and see a PT in the hospital before you go home. Such a benign procedure is often done laparoscopically now. There is just nothing that compares to the gap in care after a Cesarean. It’s literally like, “Oh, we just cut open several layers of your body.” Again, whether you were expecting it or not, you’re also just recovering from being pregnant or if you labored at all and then having this major surgery. Oh, and you’re going to stay here for two days or three days, but now you have to take care of this other human. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. But don’t forget to take care of yourself. Abby: But also, here’s no direction about how to do that. Meagan: Exactly, yeah. Abby: That’s slightly not fair because I don’t mean to imply that postpartum nurses–Meagan: They send you with nothing. Abby: Yeah, that they're not doing their job or taking good care of you. It’s actually that I’m making the argument that it’s why there is room for this kind of program because PTs are movement and rehab and recovery experts. That is what we do. That’s what we are trained in. All PTs graduating now are doctors in physical therapy. I have a doctorate. Just like your dentist is a doctor, I am a doctor. Like I said, it’s really an expertise in this area of care and that’s why we’re just the most well-equipped to do that. You don’t have to actually even be a pregnant or postpartum or even really pelvic health trained PT to do this work. You could be a hospital-based acute care or inpatient therapist it’s sometimes called because you really teach people the same sort of things that you would teach your other patients in the hospital like early things about scar tissue healing and scar tissue work. Meagan: Scar tissue massage. Abby: How to lay flat in bed because guess what? You’re going to have to lay flat in bed when you go home but sometimes they don’t even do that. Meagan: And then how to get up. Abby: That’s right. For sure how to get up, how to hold your baby when you walk, if you’re having pain, how to go upstairs. Again, if that’s painful, what to do? Just really practical things that people are going to have to do after they are discharged from the hospital and go home. I just think it is invaluable. Obviously too then part of our program is to at least get the scheduled for outpatient pelvic PT as well to make that transition really seamless. So yeah, it’s been really cool. So far, it’s going well. Meagan: That’s awesome. So awesome. I hope that all around the world, a program like this can be implemented as a standard, just as a standard thing because like you said, it’s invaluable. I also want to say that my nurse and my doc sent me home with a paper that was like, “Keep your wound this. Keep your wound that,” with wound care and instructions like, “Don’t lift more than 10 pounds,” and stuff like that. That is so wonderful but no one told me about the things I was going to feel or even encouraged walking. Abby: Or breathing. How to breathe.Meagan: Or breathing. It wasn’t encouraged. Yeah, get up and go to the bathroom, but it wasn’t like, “Get up and move as much as you can within a certain range and that’s going to help recovery and breathing and scar massage.” Never. Not once in either of my C-sections did anyone ever talk about the adhesions that could happen and the scar mobilization and things like that. That is where it lacks. We just lack so much so I would love to see programs like this happening all over the world. So if you are listening and you are in the medical world, this is something that you could try because it is so important. Abby: I’ll send you some articles that are being published about it. There is just a handful of PTs who are really pioneering this work and again, trying to get stuff published because obviously, that’s how it works in this medical world, so yeah. Just to have some scientific journal articles. Meagan: Yeah. We’ll drop them in the show notes too. Awesome. So yeah. You’ve got the PT. You’re influencing this amazing program. You’ve had a VBAC. In the book, you talk about– and this is not word for word what you are saying– recognizing your birthing plan and then also recognizing your birthing location and making sure that they match because if you are wanting certain things and then you choose– say you want an epidural. You’re not going to have a home birth. You’re not going to have a birth center birth. Maybe you’re like, “I absolutely do not want to be induced with Pitocin. I don’t want it to be discussed,” then a hospital birth may not be your best option. I want to also say that sometimes it is possible to avoid that, but it doesn’t always go super easy. It’s often times where you have to fight about it. So yeah. I would love to know if there are any highlights of your birth story or talking about birthing location and how it impacted your– remind me, you were induced with your first for, was it IUGR or was it preeclampsia?Abby: Yeah, I think it was a pretty common story. I was trained in pregnancy, pelvic floor, and postpartum before the first time I got pregnant. I had taken some coursework about all of this stuff so I don’t want to say that I was cocky at birth, but I felt like I knew more than the average person. Meagan: Confident. You were confident. Abby: But as we know, birth is a very humbling experience. My first daughter was, I think I went to my 38-week appointment and I had been measuring fine. Her 20-week ultrasound was fine. I don’t think I had another one since then, but it was 38 weeks. My OB did the portable ultrasound to see if she was vertex. I don’t even know. I really should probably ask her. She probably doesn’t even remember at this point because my daughter is about to be five. She saw something that she didn’t like. Her suspicion was that maybe the amniotic fluid was low or something. So she wanted me to have a real ultrasound which I ended up doing. All of those things came back fine. The blood flow was fine. My fluid levels were fine, but of course, they measured her as well in the full ultrasound and they said that she is very small and we don’t know why. That was their reason for wanting to induce me. Again, being the stubborn person I am, I was scheduled to give a presentation at the Wisconsin State PT conference later that week. I was like, “Well, I’m not staying to be induced because I have a presentation to give in four days so I’ll do that and then we’ll talk. I’m not having a baby before then.” I’m sure my team already didn’t like that so I gave my talk on Friday and then we went for the non-stress test on Saturday afternoon and that’s when they told me, “Yeah. You should stay and be induced.”I was really not super early or anything.Meagan: Two weeks?Abby: Yeah. That was a Saturday, so she would have been 39 weeks on Monday, I think. But really, I mean, my induction story is just that my body was not ready. I mean, I tried to do everything I could to make it slow. It just, like I said, that’s just really what it comes down to. My body really just was not ready. I did not progress. I was doing all of the things that I know how to do and teach people how to do, but at that time, because I hadn’t gone into labor myself, she just was nestled in there. I obviously have some qualms about the saying that you hear a lot, “Well, at least you have a healthy baby and at least the mom is healthy.” That should be the low bar. That’s the minimum. That’s not the goal. Meagan: I have feelings toward that comment too. I want to be honest. I kind of want to punch people when they say that because I’m like, “Yeah, duh. Duh.” Yeah. Abby: Yeah. The birth itself again, was not necessarily traumatic in that I did actually choose. They were like, “Okay. I guess you could keep going. I’ll let you do this for however many more hours, but we’re not getting anywhere.” I was tired and just was like, “Okay. I’m just ready to meet her. Let’s have the Cesarean.”Meagan: Let’s do this. Abby: It wasn’t like she was in distress and they rushed me to the OR, so it was not an emergency in that sense, but again, just like this is going to happen whether it’s right now or in a few hours and then it probably would have been more of an emergency things just because of the timeline of how that goes. I would say that my trauma from the birth was more just mental and emotional. Yeah. Really from there, I knew I wanted to basically get pregnant again relatively soon. I knew as we were starting to grow our family, we were going to do that by several children if we could. I knew I was not going to elect to have a repeat Cesarean. So basically, my mindset was, “Well, I have to be somewhere where that’s essentially not an option unless it is absolutely necessary.”Meagan: It’s an emergency, yeah. Abby: I made the choice then when I got pregnant again. My two older ones are almost 18 months apart to the day, so also about as close as you’re supposed to have babies after a Cesarean. I chose to have my care with midwives at a birth center in town which is not an option for everyone because sometimes it doesn’t exist. Meagan: I know. Yes. We’ve got states right now taking midwives away from the hospital even. Abby: Oh, totally. That’s all kinds of crazy. I’ll get on that fight. Actually, so now I’m pregnant again. We are expecting our fourth in July and that’s why I’m still with the midwives at the same birth center and preparing for my third VBAC. Even though I’ve now had two successful vaginal deliveries, I’m always considered a VBAC patient which is just crazy. Meagan: We’re always going to be a VBAC, yep.Abby: I mean, it’s not crazy. Obviously, it’s a definition but it’s crazy that there is risk associated with it. Meagan: It’s hard to think that it’s still considered, yes. Abby: So that risk, I don’t know. I mean, I’m assuming that this is just the insurance that my midwives use but their insurance company charges them $1500 just for accepting a VBAC client. Meagan: Are you serious?Abby: Right? It’s completely insane. That’s new. That wasn’t true for my last two. It’s new for this one. So that’s crazy. Like I said, it’s a definition but it’s always going to be with me no matter how many children I have. I just think that’s one of the things that’s sort of a part of informed consent, too. You just don’t realize how that’s going to affect you. You know? Anyway, not that again, I would have chosen differently in the moment but things that you don’t think about and don’t realize are going to affect your childbearing experience for then the rest of that time. Meagan: Yes. And on the other end, could potentially affect a provider’s ability or choice to accept, right? These midwives could say, “$1500 a person, we’re not going to do this because we don’t want to up our prices,” or whatever. “We can’t take the risk that the insurance is putting on us.” Not that they're scared of the risk of birthing out of the hospital with a VBAC, but that could change. That could impact things so much as well. Abby: Very much. Meagan: Yeah. Abby: Yeah. Meagan: Interesting. It makes me sad. Abby: Yeah. When my kids are maybe a little older or just after I have this one and can think about things, after that, that’s my next thing. I need to get embroiled in the legal battles of this then I can be like, “This is totally ridiculous.”Meagan: That is what I want to do. I always say that I have a bucket list of if I have all of the time in the world type thing. I have this bucket list and there are so many things surrounding it. It’s birth. It’s where I’m at in birth. I’m even done having kids, but as a doula and stuff, I’m seeing this. I’m listening to these podcast stories and I’m like, “We need to make a change.” I’d love to start facilitating more change in policies and things like that. One day when I have all of the time in the world, we’ll get there together. Abby: We’ll get together again. Mhmm. Meagan: Yes. We’ll get together again and start to make some changes. I mean, we are moving in a forward progress. There is change happening. Abby: We are. Meagan: Okay. I’m going to bounce really quickly back to some PT. I would love to know any tips that you would like to share with your listeners. You mentioned, “Yes. We’re The VBAC Link so we’re talking about birth after Cesarean,” but what kind of PT things can we do prior to? Because I know for me I didn’t even think. It didn’t even cross my mind that I should consider a pelvic floor PT before giving birth and then of course, after having my Cesarean, again, I told you that there was nobody to tell me anything about anything and then here I go, and have another Cesarean and then even with that, nobody. So I had two Cesareans without knowing anything. Any tips for previous and/or after that you can give anybody?Abby: Yeah, so really in my ideal world, every person sees a PT in her first pregnancy and the reason for that is because your body, of course, just has to make these natural changes in your posture. Your various muscle groups have to change to accommodate the growth of the baby. That changes your center of gravity and center of motion which affects how you move and aspects of movement. Again, like I said before, PTs like me are the experts in movement. Again, it’s not to imply that somebody currently is not doing their job, but nobody else is looking at that. So right now, I would say that providers are generally pretty good about offering a PT referral, and again, with things like social media, people are advocating for themselves better as well. But they’re pretty good about putting something in if a patient raises an issue. “Oh, I’m having this back pain” or “I’m having pubic symphysis pain and I’m having hip pain. I’m having bladder leakage,” or whatever. XYZ things.Again, yes. If you are experiencing some symptom in your pregnancy like that that you think would be muscle or posture related, you should see a PT. But like I said before, I really think that everyone deserves that consultation because again, the natural changes that are happening are natural and we’re not going to stop them, but I can teach you strategies to mitigate the effects of that. How do you consciously move your abdominal muscles and the connection between your diaphragm and your deep abdominal muscles and your pelvic floor and your glutes? How are you sitting at your desk or how are you standing? Starting those things when you’re pregnant then carries over to how you move postpartum. Obviously, postpartum is a lot. It’s hard for a lot of reasons, but to also have pain or these other symptoms, any bladder or bowel/pelvic pressure sort of symptoms is just going to make it harder. Again, I really think by learning about these things consciously and applying specific strategies even if you’re the pregnant person who is exercising and running right up until the day she gives birth, that’s obviously wonderful and I support you. Maybe it’s just this one-time consultation sometime around, I usually say around the beginning of the third trimester is a good time to do it. You meet the PT. We talk about these strategies and things to implement for the rest of the pregnancy, and then now you’ve met that person and have a relationship with them, so you at least have a resource then postpartum to then be like, “Oh, Abby mentioned this could happen and guess what? It’s happening. Now I know that I’m just going to call her and get on her schedule,” instead of Dr. Google in the middle of the night when you’re nursing and all of this XYZ stuff comes up. Meagan: A lot of the time, it says that it’s normal. It’s normal to have these things. It’s like, “Oh, well duh. It’s normal. Yeah. You just had a baby. Yeah, it’s normal.” But it’s like, “No. No, no, no.” Too, I want to mention that sometimes athletes have these tighter pelvic floors and we need to actually learn how to calm and release for effective pushing so that we won’t have more damage. So one of the big things that I think is really good, even if it’s just once, is coming in and learning about your pelvic floor. Your actually pelvic floor, not just the pelvic floor in general. Your pelvic floor and learn where you’re at. Do some practice pushes and learn some breathing techniques and learn what’s normal. Learn what’s not so you’re not on Google thinking that your uterus is falling out. Do you know what I mean? It can go that extreme where you’re like, “I’m having this.” You Google it and it’s pure panic which is not going to help anything. It’s not going to help recovery. It’s not going to help our mental health. It’s not going to help breastfeeding if you’re breastfeeding because we’re stressed. It’s crazy how there’s a cycle. It’s a domino effect, so yeah. I think it’s so, so, so important as well. I wish I would have known that. I wish I would have known that.I did that with my son, with my VBAC babe, and yeah. There was a lot to learn. Abby: Yeah. You know, I mean while I’m so grateful when I get clients that are done having children and they’re like, “I’m finally prioritizing me. I’ve been having these symptoms since I was pregnant or since the birth of my first,” or whatever. I’m like, “Yes. Good for you. I’m so glad that you’re here.” But it also just breaks my heart because I really think that maybe the symptoms are not entirely preventable. The dysfunction is not entirely preventable, but potentially it could have been less. Or again, now these women have lived “x” number of years– 1, 3, 5, 15, 20 years–Meagan: I know. Abby: Like I said, I really think that early intervention is key. Again, the changes happen in your first pregnancy. Even if you don’t necessarily have symptoms in your first postpartum period. Meagan: Yes. Yes. That’s the thing. Is it possible to not have any symptoms but to have some pelvic dysfunction or pelvic issues or scarring? Especially with C-sections, I have a friend who was like, “I have never had a diastasis recti. I’ve never had pelvic floor issues. I’ve never had adhesions. I don’t have adhesions.” She’s had multiple Cesareans and is like, “I do not have adhesions.” I’m like, “Yeah. Yeah, you probably do.” But you know, she says she has no symptoms. Then sometimes I wonder, “Do you know what symptoms to look for?”Abby: Right. Are you just living with things?Meagan: Yes. Yes. Abby: Right. Obviously, yes. That can definitely be true. The symptoms don’t have to be so severe that they are really affecting your day-to-day life or quality of life. Of course, usually, people seek care when they’re so fed up with it. But there can be sneaky symptoms or again, things that people view as not that bad, I would consider as not normal. Meagan: It’s just our new normal because we had a baby and we’re being told that. Abby: Knowing where every bathroom is in the stores that you go to is actually not normal. That fact that you have a map of where the bathrooms are in your brain– now again, the same argument could be made for people that are potty training their children. But okay, they’re learning for the first time. Meagan: Or the second you walk into a store, the first thing you say is, “Where’s the bathroom?”Abby: Right. “Where’s the bathroom? I’ve got to go to the bathroom.” That’s a symptom. Again, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can change that. This was certainly true for me and I did lots of scar work and stuff, but I basically could not wear normal pants or jeans– definitely not jeans– until I was postpartum with my second, and that had been all stretched out again and everything was slightly less sensitive. That’s a modification that I made and that lots of people make. That becomes your new normal that you sort of forget about, but it’s like, “Oh, well I would just never wear jeans.” Well, that’s not normal. Meagan: Why? Is it because you didn’t want to or is it because you didn’t feel like you could or you weren’t comfortable? What types of signs? Just for our listeners because we’re in this spot of, “Do I have anything?”. What kinds of signs or symptoms would be a sure sign? If you are finding the restroom the second you walk into a store, this is a sign. Yes, 100%. Maybe we’ll go from an extreme guarantee that this is a sign to more of the subtle, hidden, could this be a sign? Abby: Sure. Meagan: Yeah. What symptoms and signs would you say for people listening? Abby: So anything obvious would be any sort of daily pain. Just pain every day anywhere. Related to pregnancy and postpartum, hip pain, low back pain, people will say SI pain which is your sacroiliac joint which is the back lower down in your butt, pubic symphysis pain, and tailbone pain. If you feel like you cannot sit on any surface for any given period of time and it’s because your but is hurting, again, not normal. Meagan: Yeah, or even pressure. I remember after I had my baby I would be standing up and I would want to sit. This is so weird, I know. But I would want to sit on the corner of something right at the vaginal opening to support it or feel my hand like, “Oh, I just look like a little girl that needs to go pee but I’m just pushing,” because I’d have this pressure after more than 30 minutes or standing after more than 30 minutes. Or sometimes even just going to the restroom, I’d be like, “Oh, I have some pressure down there.” Abby: To support it. So that’s a common symptom of the medical diagnosis we call pelvic organ prolapse so if you Google that, it can seem like, “Oh my gosh, things are falling out of me.” But again, that’s not necessarily abnormal especially in postpartum because all of those organs were shifted while you were pregnant so some of it is the settling back into place. Some of it is that your ligaments are still relaxed from again, what your body does in order for us to have babies. Some of that for sure continues postpartum especially if a person is breastfeeding, that laxity. But yeah, it’s like learning strategies about how to help that. So certainly, yeah. Pressure, heaviness, any obvious bladder and bowel stuff. If you for sure had to go change your underwear and pants after you sneezed, again, not normal. Meagan: Not normal, yes. Abby: If you’re a year postpartum or six months, a year, 18 months, 2 years, 5 years, whatever and you are one of those people that’s like, “Oh, I can’t go jump on the trampoline with my kids. I can’t run. I had to stop running.” Again, that’s not normal. We can help you. Meagan: Yeah. What about even the inability to hold your core? Abby: Uh-huh. Meagan: It’s like a big plumb line. It’s all connected. If we had this ability to maybe hold a plank or run or ride a bike and we were able to hold our core in and not feel it release and start taking pressure in our back, but now all of a sudden we’ve had this baby and we’re a year, two years, even three years or more down the line and we’re like, “Jeez.” Abby: Why do I still look pregnant? Where are my abs? Meagan: Why do I still look pregnant? Where are my abs? Why can’t I hold a plank for 60 seconds anymore when I could hold it for three minutes? Would you say that’s connected to your pelvic floor? I feel like I know the answer. Abby: Yes. You mentioned diastasis. It doesn’t matter how you say it. Meagan: I know. Everyone says it differently. Abby: That’s the condition you’re describing which again, almost everyone has a little bit of that the last several weeks of pregnancy because it’s related to the baby growing. But it’s a pressure management problem and tissue laxity, muscle coordination problem postpartum. Meagan: I recently was reviewing my op reports over some things and so talking about Cesarean, we don’t think pelvic floor naturally because we didn’t have a baby come out of our vaginal canal. We don’t think that. We don’t think about abs as much either. I think a lot of the time, even though we were cut down low, I feel like our minds are like, “I wasn’t pushing and using my abs in my Cesarean,” but listen and sorry as a disclaimer, it’s a little blunt. It’s a little aggressive. Abby: It’s okay. I mean, all of the pelvic floor therapy is TMI. Meagan: Yes. Abby: It’s a no-judgment zone and no topics are off-limits. Sometimes you’ve just got to put it out there. Meagan: Yes. I don’t want anyone to feel triggered by the words that I’m using because the words that I’m using are directly from my op reports, but this is how they describe my first C-section. It says, “The fascia opened in the middle and extended laterally with mayo scissors. Fascia was separated from the rectus muscles superior and inferior with sharp and blunt dissection. Rectus muscles were entered sharply and opened and then extended bluntly.” Abby: Yep. Meagan: And then a low incision was made above the bladder. That’s where they go on. But I read I was dissected bluntly with sharp scissors. Abby: Yep. Meagan: Right? My abdominal muscles were literally stabbed and cut through. As I’ve been reading this, this was my first C-section and she’s 11. 9 years ago tomorrow as of this recording is the anniversary of my second Cesarean, the birthday of my second Cesarean daughter. 11 and 9 years later and I have abdominal issues and I have pelvic floor issues and I’m working on things. I have pain with intercourse sometimes that I would have never related to my pelvic floor, right? And sometimes I read this and I’m like, “Well, no flipping way. No wonder I have a diastasis recti way above my belly button because I was manually cut with sharp scissors.” Listeners, I want you to know that if you’ve had a Cesarean and you’re not having any pain, that’s wonderful but that doesn’t mean your body hasn’t received trauma like this. It means it has if you’ve had a Cesarean. You may benefit from pelvic floor PT more than you ever know. And if you haven’t learned about scar mobilization and things like that, it’s time. It’s time to learn about it. So yeah. Any other symptoms? I know we’re cutting short on time, but any other symptoms that you would say to listeners, “If you’re experiencing this, go check out your local PT”?Abby: Your C-section scar can cause shoulder pain because of that word you used “fascia”. Fascia means connective tissue. It’s basically the thing that connects the whole body. Any good pelvic floor therapist is going to look at your whole body. They’re going to look at you from head to toe. People typically, you mentioned pelvic floor tightness can have dropped. Feet issues, so plantar fascia issues. Your pelvis is in the middle of all of these areas. It’s a highway interchange for things to happen. So again, yeah. You might have a collection of weird symptoms that you maybe didn’t put together as related to pregnancy and birth and postpartum. Maybe you’re even seeing another PT and you’ve made some progress, but there’s still whatever sort of issue. You know, it might be worth it just to have a consult and have that area checked out. Or to just be looked at from that perspective. Meagan: Absolutely. Such good information. Always, women of strength, remember that you never have to deal. You never have to deal with this. You can take care of yourself and I encourage you to do things for you. Like Abby was saying, she’s like, “Yay! You’re finally coming in. You’re finally taking care of yourself.” But dang it, it’s taken so long. I am guilty of that in so many areas. Abby: Yeah. Again, that’s not your fault though. Meagan: Nope, nope. Abby: Like I said, it’s a problem with our healthcare system. Meagan: And not being informed. Abby: And not even the individual provider’s fault. That’s why I’m working so diligently and passionately to make it more of a standard because I think that everybody deserves this care. Just because you were pregnant, it doesn’t even matter how your birth went. How it went will mean different things, will do different things, and address different things. Some of it will be similar because the common denominator was that you were pregnant. You grew a baby in your body. Meagan: Yep. Your body changed. Your body made amazing changes and did amazing things. It is okay to give back to yourself and thank yourself. Thank your body for doing this amazing thing multiple times for a lot of people. It’s so important. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much for sharing these tips and a little bit about your story and choosing a birth location and all of the things. Abby: I didn’t really even get to my VBAC story but you can read it in the book. Just pick up a copy of the VBAC book. Meagan: A copy of Baby Got VBAC right here. You can find it in our show notes today. You can find it on our blog. You can find it on our Instagram highlights. You can Google it. We’ve got it right here. Baby Got VBAC. It’s an amazing one. So thank you so much and good luck for this next amazing journey, your third VBAC. And yes, thank you again. Abby: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I could talk about this all day long. Meagan: Right? We could talk for hours and hours about this. We’ll just have to have you on again after you have your VBAC and we’ll just share about each VBAC. Abby: Sure. Yeah, that would be great. That would be great. Meagan: Okay. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“Labor is an event of the mind, the body, and the soul. We have to make sure that we are preparing in each of those elements so that we can then know at the end of the day that we are true to ourselves.”Sarah, one of the founders of Birth Made Mindful, joins Meagan on the podcast today to talk about how to mindfully approach motherhood in the way that is best for you, your body, your baby, and your family. She also shares her Cesarean and two VBAC stories!Sarah and her sisters created the Made Mindful platform to help women find their own innate power from within. All VBAC Link listeners will receive 30% off any of their courses by using the code “vbaclink” at checkout on www.birthmademindful.com.Additional LinksBirth Made Mindful WebsiteSarah’s YouTubeSarah’s TikTokHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsReceive 20% off on Needed Products The VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hey mommas have you ever looked at the back of your prenatal vitamin and wondered if you are truly getting everything you need? I know I didn't when I was pregnant. Well today I wanted to share with you the #1 prenatal I suggest to all my doula clients, friends, family, and YOU women of strength. It's by a company called Needed. I honestly don't think I was the only one that didn't really understand just how important certain nutrients were for myself or or my growing baby. And that is why i love needed. They have gone above and beyond to create solid products not only that have the key nutrients but also have the optimal amount. Don't be overwhelmed picking a prenatal. Check out all Needes products, including their prenatals, pre/pro biotics, immune support and more at thisisneeded.com enjoy 20% off by using code VBAC20Meagan: Hello, hello Women of Strength. It is Wednesday and we have another great episode for you. Normally we have VBAC stories, but today we are going to be chatting about a lot of topics actually. We have our friend, Sarah. She is actually a VBAC mom and she has been on the podcast before so welcome, Sarah. Sarah: Thank you so much for having me today. Meagan: Thank you. Thank you. I’m so excited to have this discussion and this episode because it’s something that truly we need to remember. I love sharing all of the VBAC stories of course. That’s what this podcast is about, but it’s also really good to get education and empowerment through other episodes. Review of the WeekWe are going to get into this episode after I share the Review of the Week. I’m going to tell you a little bit more about our friend, Sarah. This review is by spicyhotcurrie. I love that name. That’s fun. It says, “The best education for all pregnant mamas.” I just love that so much because really, I mean, Sarah would you agree? At this podcast, we obviously talk about VBAC stories and how to empower people to make the best choices after Cesareans, but this really could be a podcast for all pregnant moms. Wouldn’t you agree?Sarah: Absolutely. Meagan: Yes. We share so many tips. It’s something that I wish I had when I was pregnant and preparing for my VBAC. Even if I didn’t know if I wanted a VBAC, this would be a great podcast to listen to and see what options were out there and then even what led to Cesareans so I could learn how to avoid them. I love that topic. She says, “After one unmedicated hospital birth and one medicated hospital birth, my third birth ended in a physically and emotionally traumatic emergency Cesarean. The VBAC Link Podcast started soon after. I listened to them for over a year before getting pregnant. This podcast has made me laugh and cry and given me so much knowledge I didn’t have even after three births and working in the postpartum unit at the hospital. This podcast has made me so excited for my VBAC in November. Thank you, Julie and Meagan.”This was back in 2020 so spicyhotcurrie, if you have your story to share, I would love to know. Contact us at [email protected]. If you haven’t left a review yet, we would love your review always anywhere you want to leave a review– Apple Podcasts, Google, or you can email us. Wherever it may be, we would love your review. Sarah From Made MindfulMeagan: Okay, Sarah. Welcome. Sarah: I’m just giddy to talk to you about birth today. Meagan: I am giddy to have you here to talk about birth. I don’t want to share your story. I want to let you share your story, but I do want to tell everybody who you are. You are an amazing person, an amazing individual, and you’re a mom of course. Of course, you’re a mama of three now. Sarah: Three boys. Meagan: Yes, a boy mama. You’re a birth coach, an educational coach, a doula as well which you guys, I’m just going to point out that Utah is amazing. I’m just saying that if you’re in Utah and you’re listening, you’re spoiled. We’ve got some good doulas here. Let’s see what else. You’re the founder of Made Mindful, right?Sarah: That’s right. Meagan: Made Mindful. Okay. Tell us more. Tell us more about that. Sarah: Made Mindful came out of all of our experiences, me and my two sisters, with the different births that we have experienced together. Meagan: It’s Carly–Sarah: Carly and Christina. Meagan: Christina, yes. Carly and Christina. Sarah: That’s right. Meagan: I love that you’re all sisters. That’s so cool.Sarah: We have our website, Birth Made Mindful. We want to encourage women and families to empower themselves with education, positivity, and most importantly, just believe that they have the strength within themselves to create the birth of their dreams. Meagan: Absolutely. I love that. It’s so hard sometimes because it’s so overwhelming. There’s so much going on and we’re getting so many opinions coming from all of the other places to know and you hear things like, “I wanted to do that but my body couldn’t and this but I couldn’t, and this but I couldn’t,” so then we start doubting ourselves like, “Can I? Can I do that? Is that possible?” Don’t you feel like that is happening all over the place? Sarah: It is. It’s just an overwhelming amount of information that we have to sort through. I think that also adds confusion. When we can look inside ourselves, we can find out really what matters most important to our families and to us as mothers and blossoming mothers if we are first-timers. Knowing what our options are, knowing some of the medical events that could take place with birth, and then being able to be in tune with ourselves and our bodies to know how to proceed. Meagan: Absolutely. You have experienced very different experiences. Do you want to share just a little bit more about your experiences and what truly led you here?Sarah: I would love to. My first son was five years ago, his birth. My water broke prematurely. I wasn’t in labor. After about 40 hours at the hospital, we had a Cesarean section. It wasn’t an emergency at that time, but he was sunny-side up so I just wasn’t having meaningful dilation. His Cesarean was necessary, but after that experience, I started looking back and just thinking, “I want to have a vaginal birth for my next birth.” I just didn’t want to be in pain and have the recovery and some of the problems that stem from abdominal surgery right after birth. So I prepared a lot. I listened to your podcast. I just researched as much as I could when I was pregnant with my second son. It was right around COVID. His due date was March 20th, 2020 so about three days before his due date, my obstetrician let me know that she could no longer support me in a vaginal delivery. Meagan: Did she tell you why?Sarah: I share that entire story in Episode 132 so if you haven’t had a chance to listen, it was just a remarkable story. I think it was mainly because of COVID. The hospital had updated their policies that all of the women in the queue for delivery that week and that month would either need to have an early induction or a repeat C-section and that they weren’t going to be able to support VBACs. But because I armed myself with knowledge, I had gotten myself a doula, I just felt like that wasn’t the route I wanted to go. I wanted to allow my body at least the chance for my first VBAC. I know that a lot of women even after having multiple Cesareans will attempt a VBAC but your chances of getting support in the medical system are a lot stronger the first time. So I knew that this was my window. I was actually able to find a midwife who took me on. This is just a couple of days before he is born. I ended up having a beautiful, redemptive VBAC at a birthing center. It wasn’t short labor. He was actually also in a sunny-side-up position so it was about 30 hours. My wonderful, supportive midwife confirmed, “If you would have been in a hospital, they would have done another C-section in the amount of time it took you to dilate again with being sunny-side up and all of those twists and turns of our labor.” But we did have a VBAC and it was amazing. The feelings, the emotions, all of the energy that I felt, I literally wasn’t tired for three days after his birth because all of those chemicals were appropriately working within my body. I was able to breastfeed and latch in a much easier way with that child so I knew that I wanted to start sharing my story and offer encouragement to other women. So in between his birth and then the birth of my next son which was about two years later is when my sisters and I put our knowledge together and created digital courses. We created affirmation cards and just decided that we were going to try to start sharing our message with all of our sisters and our community so that they could have great experiences in their birth. Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: For my third son, we actually delivered with that same midwife but I opted for a home birth. The reason why I wanted to have him at home was mainly because of tracking contractions. There’s always that question, “When do I go to the hospital? Am I too early? Am I too late?” If you show up and you’re only 3 or 4 centimeters dilated, are you then a burden on your medical staff? And they’re starting the clock if you’re in the hospital. So I thought, “I wonder if I was just at home if my body would relax enough that there wouldn’t be any halting from my body.” I just said, “It doesn’t matter how long it takes. I’m prepared to labor as long as this baby needs.” I also had made peace with the fact that if we needed to transfer to a hospital, I would not feel like a failure. I would approach that with the understanding that I was going to the hospital and utilizing the tools and the help that I might need if we did need a transfer because a lot of people are afraid of what a home birth means if there’s a transfer. Most of the time, it’s not an emergency if there’s a transfer that’s needed. Meagan: Yeah. Really, most of the time it’s due to a hangup and there are resources at a hospital that aren’t at home anymore. We’ve exhausted our resources. Maybe there is a little bit of Pitocin that is needed. I say needed, but it is something that could help and they’ve exhausted breast stimulation with the breast pump or maybe it’s been a really, really long labor and we’re just tired, and that epidural is something that really can help to actually have that final outcome that we were looking for. It’s just going to be in a different place. But it’s rarely an emergency and it’s okay. It is okay to transfer. It’s okay to make that choice. No failing or giving up. They don’t go together. There’s no failing. Sarah: Exactly. Meagan: Just because there’s a change of plans doesn’t mean there is failure involved. Sarah: Yeah. That terminology is so tricky when people consider a transfer from your home as a failure but most women just choose to transfer to the hospital before they plan to push their baby out. So his birth was remarkable. It was a few days after his due date again. I had started feeling a little bit anxious about when he would come. I decided that I needed to release all of that. I went swimming and I just told him, “I know that you’re safe, but I also want you to come as soon as you’re ready.” My labor started that night. I could sense that the contractions were ramping up, but I wanted to rest as much as possible. I didn’t want to have the mindset that I needed to walk around or be upright because with my prior births, it had taken me a full day and I didn’t want to feel exhausted myself. So at about 1:00 in the morning, I went into the guest room so I wasn’t waking up my husband and I just tried to sleep in between my contractions and it was successful. I was able to listen to some meditations and to find that quiet comfort within my bed. With sunrise, the contractions started ramping up and after about one hour of steady contractions, I thought, “It’s time to wake up my husband. It’s time to let him know that things might be started.” So after observing me for a few minutes, he decided that we should call the midwife right there. I definitely didn’t think that I was ready because I had really only been in what I would consider active labor for an hour, but when our midwife came to my home, I was 8 centimeters dilated and they were ready to fill up the birth pool and have me hope right in. It was just peaceful and quiet. My midwife and her team almost seemed like they were just working in synchrony in the background. There wasn’t any coaching. There wasn’t any interruption to what I was experiencing and having my husband and I there. We did send our toddlers off to Grandma’s house so that we could just have the house to ourselves. But it was amazing. I got in the birth tub and my water broke probably 20 minutes after that. And then after about 20 minutes of pushing, I was able to deliver him and just have that same concoction of hormones that just make you feel so elated, so happy, so grateful for your baby being born that immediately, any of those feelings of pain that come with pushing have gone and just being able to snuggle him there in my own home and be tucked in our own bed just minutes after. I felt like a home birth really was the birth of my dreams. I felt like a queen and it is what made me want to help encourage women to create the environment that they want so that they know that they are the leader of their birth. Yes. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it.Meagan: I want to take a quick moment to hear about our partner Needed. The leading women's health supplement brand recommend by nutritionally trained practitioners. Needed was founded by two incredible mommas who were navigating their fertility journey. They were shocked to realize that 97% of women take prenatal vitamins, yet 95% of us are nutrient deficient. Is that not eye opening or what? Getting the right prenatal vitamin is super important. So how do we know what one is best. While most perinatal supplements include the bare minimum of the nutrients women and babies need, Needed has all of your needs covered from your prenatal vitamin, to pregnancy specific pre/pro biotic, immune lactation and nausea support, as well as supplements that help us with our protein needs, balancing our blood sugar, and helps with postpartum healing. Needed's Complete Plan delivers unparallel nourishment for every phase. Weather you are thinking of conceiving, pregnant, postpartum, or deeper into your mommy years like me, these supplements are amazing. I take the prenatal collagen protein every single day, and absolutely love it. Learn more about Neededs complete line of perinatal and women's health suppliants at thisisneeded.com use code VBAC20 for 20% off that is V-B-A-C-20 at thisisneeded.comMeagan: I really do love it. I really, really do. It’s just so amazing. And it connects with me so well because of the same thing. After my second Cesarean, I learned more about doulas. The doula work just called to me. I was like, “This is what I want to do. I want to help people know that they can have different experiences.” One of the hardest things during our pregnancy journey is the preparation and knowing what preparation to do. There are so many things out there. You’ve prepared differently each time especially because you are preparing for different scenarios with different locations and stuff but are there any tips that you would have for birth prep in general and self-empowerment? How do you truly believe in your ability to do what you want to do and then create the environment to do that?Sarah: With my first son, I prepared with HypnoBirthing. I wanted to be able to find that meditative state so that I could move forward with an unmedicated birth but one of the disservices that the course instructor did for me was she said, “We’re not going to study Cesareans because you’re not going to have a C-section. We don’t need to start focusing on that because it won’t be an option.” So looking back, I would advise women to actually get as educated as they can with the medical system and know about inductions and know about options for inducing labor both natural and medical options regarding induction. But I also think one element that is most missing in the system is for our doctors or our providers to help us know that we have the power within us. We’re not taught about the physiological process of birth so we don’t understand that there are hormones within us and messages that our baby will signal to our body that it’s time to start the process. Right? Knowing that our bodies are made to go through this and that everything is intended to stretch, I think that we can eliminate a lot of the fear that we have if we only believe that we will be successful with an epidural or with vacuum assistance. Just knowing that our bodies are made to birth our babies whatever size they come, whatever date they choose to arrive, that our bodies have the answers within them. I also think it’s important to realize that the perception of pain is also internal. One thing that I have been learning a lot about is that our body only feels pain because of the messages that our brain then starts to comprehend. So if we begin to feel a contraction and our brain’s message is, “This is wrong. This is bad. This has to stop immediately,” all of a sudden, we create an environment of tension and stress within us. This is the opposite feeling that we need in order for our baby to continue to dilate and for the baby to be born. So what I try to instruct women and families to focus on is that the contraction is the method by which the baby is going to continue to descend and it’s the correct feeling that we should be having at the time. Now, I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s absolutely pain-free, but understanding that the waves are the only way for our uterus to contract and expel the baby then will give us power inside. We also have different pain-blocking receptors within our body. So as our contractions rise with each stage of labor as they start to get more intense through transition and then as we start to feel that natural urge to push, we have also been experiencing the counteracting force within ourselves of being able to block that pain. Then when our baby is born, having the skin-to-skin time completely erases all of those feelings that we had. So knowing that our bodies are perfectly designed to accommodate everything that we will experience gives us so much confidence that we can then proceed and we are able to labor as long as it takes. We are able to continue to breathe. One thing I like to think about as I’m experiencing a contraction, and one of the reasons I think that my labor was so much faster, was because every time I had a contraction, I would try to breathe as if I was allowing his head to push into my toes. I wasn’t pushing, right? You’re not supposed to push until you feel the urge to push, but I was allowing myself to think open thoughts so that my body could open and be in that state for cervical change but I was also trying to focus on the down and out of the baby being born.  When we have a contraction and we’re not grounded or we’re not prepared for those feelings or those really strong sensations, it’s a lot harder for our bodies to then continue to progress in a way that is unhindered and allows us to feel safe and secure and that everything is a correct sensation. In both of my vaginal deliveries, I actually did not feel like transition was a stage of torment or suffering for myself. I know a lot of women say that they can start to feel when they are in transition. For me, that always came in the pushing element. When I felt that pressure, that’s when I decided, “I really need to get grounded here because this is happening.” So for my third birth, I knew that the more that I can focus and feel what was happening inside of me and utilize those feelings to help push the baby, the sooner I can come through this situation. Right? Sometimes people talk about a hard scenario and they say, “The only way out is through.” That’s another thing for labor where you have to go through all of those feelings. Meagan: Yeah and those feelings can be really intimidating, right? Really intimidating so through our prep, prepare for those feelings. Prepare for the way to change up your breath because there are those moments sometimes where it’s like, “I don’t know if I can do this,” and our shoulders raise and our faces tense. If we can breathe through that, breath is so incredibly powerful. It’s so powerful. But if we can breathe through that, it can really, truly help. Just our breath alone and then like you were saying, how our mind relates to pain if we can change our mindset– this is totally not birth related but I am really big into cold water therapy like Wim Hof and all of the things. My husband and I converted our deep freezer into a cold plunge in our backyard and I will tell you, when I am in that, it’s freezing. At 40 degrees, it’s really cold, but when my mind connects to, “It is cold. It is cold. It is cold,” my whole body just trembles and I’m freezing. I’m telling myself, “It’s so freezing.” I’m trying to work through it, but I can’t. I’m just shaking. Then when I breathe and I’m like, “Okay. Calm down. You’re okay. You’re right here. You’re strong,” and I start coming out of that space of fear and exactly what’s happening if that makes sense– I’m telling myself that I am freezing. I am cold. I mean, I am cold but I’m also okay and I’m also going to get through this. It’s crazy. I just did it with some friends and they witnessed it. They were like, “Wow. That’s crazy.” I audibly have to say it out loud. I can’t even just do it internally. They are like, “Wow. That is really cool.” It’s the same with labor and with birth and all of these things. Sarah: Knowing that you are exactly where you need to be is what then will give your body confidence to do what it needs to do. I think that’s why birth affirmations can be so positive because as we speak out loud, our brain believes what we say. So if you are in labor and you are saying, “I can’t. I’m in pain. Make it stop,” all of a sudden your entire body starts to feel that tension and starts to feel that panic. But if we can use affirmations to say, “I am safe. I am secure. I am strong,” saying these things will then solidify to our bodies that that is how we feel. Meagan: Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to talk about changing plans and things like that. If we have a birth that is going another way which is maybe undesired, maybe a Cesarean or a repeat Cesarean. Maybe we’re at home and we are transferring to the hospital or you wanted to go unmedicated and you’re getting an epidural, I wanted to talk about the word failure and how impactful that word can be and how we have to offer ourselves grace. Do you have anything to say about that? Sarah: Absolutely. I think the first thing to do is to understand that when you share a birth story that didn’t have the outcome of your desire, a lot of people will say, “At least there’s a healthy baby. At least there’s a healthy mom.” While those things are most important and unfortunately, the opposite can happen at birth. It’s devastating. We also have to know that our mindset can control how we feel about an experience. So just as I shared that I had made peace knowing that a transfer to the hospital would not equal that I’m a failure, knowing that you have done everything that is within your power to achieve your main goal will help you then to feel like you’ve had the most beautiful birth. Sometimes I think that it’s more about just knowing that you’re respected and knowing that your wishes were granted during birth, that you had a birth partner or a support team that listened to you, and that made you feel like the goddess that you are in birth. Meagan: And heard. Sarah: And heard. Sometimes what we want is we want that epidural or we want that induction and we have reasons within ourselves knowing why we want the birth that we want. When we can create an environment within ourselves that then fosters that, that’s when our birth feels like it’s unstoppable. That’s when we know that we have achieved everything that we set out to do. I think one important way to prepare in that regard is to do what I call a fear release. When we’re thinking about all of the options that can go wrong, we tend to stop that thought immediately because we don’t want to think about a worst-case scenario. We don’t want to fill our minds or our bodies with that negativity but if we can approach it before it happens and we can actually say, “What is my plan? If my water breaks before my labor has started, what is my plan? If dilation isn’t happening at a good rate, what are my options? Can I get a Foley bulb? Is Cervadil an option while I am laboring?” we can actually walk down the path of each of our fears and we will start to see that we have the same amount of knowledge essentially that our providers have in what paths would be available. For me, I was writing everything down and every single thing that I would feel prior to birth. If I was feeling frustrated, if I was feeling scared, if I was feeling nervous about adding another child, “How am I going to take care of all of their needs?” all of those things are real and can feel overwhelming. If we don’t have the support externally, then we have to find where we stand within ourselves. Labor is an event of the mind, the body, and the soul. We have to make sure that we are preparing in each of those elements so that we can then know at the end of the day that we are true to ourselves and that we have listened to the promptings that come and that we follow what makes us feel like we are driving the car that will get us to the destination of our baby’s birth. Meagan: Yes. So in saying that, we have to act on the promptings that we feel and sometimes it may be something different than what’s being suggested. For a long time in birth, I didn’t realize that I could say no or could say, “I would like to do this,” or “Talk to me about this,” and have that discussion and that active conversation about what I was feeling. With my second C-section, I didn’t want to go down to the OR. I didn’t want to have a repeat Cesarean and I didn’t feel like I could say much more than, “Okay, let’s go.” So I want to talk about that. We have these feelings and then how do we act on them? Obviously finding that supportive provider and having that supportive team, but then how do we find the courage within ourselves to say, “Hold on. I hear you. I hear what you’re saying, but I would like to talk about this,” or “My heart is telling me this. Can we talk about that?”Sarah: I think the first step that we take is knowing our rights. Just like you said, if we have a provider that is suggesting an intervention. Maybe it’s a position that doesn’t feel comfortable to our bodies. We have to know that we are allowed to say no and that when informed consent is a part of our birth plan, we can always ask them what the options are. So if someone comes in and says, “Your labor hasn’t progressed for 4 hours. You don’t have anymore dilation. It’s time for Pitocin,” we can say, “What are my options? What might happen if I do not choose to have Pitocin at this time? Is it something that we can look into 2 hours from now?” Because I have had a hospital birth that ended in a C-section and then my other two births outside of a hospital, I recognize that it’s not always as easy as we might think if our providers are–Meagan: Pushing back. Sarah: If they’re pushing back and if they have a protocol that they have to follow based upon their hospital. Those are put in place to protect them as providers with liability and also to protect mothers and babies, right? No doctor would want to take a risk for a mother and a baby but when we feel like the request that we have should be honored and that we can ask those questions to then receive a response that we are able to then come together and work as a team. Knowing that everybody who is there really does want the best for you and your baby, knowing that you might offend someone by letting them know that, “Hey, I don’t want this to happen at this time,” but that you have the right to do that and that if needed, you can actually switch providers. For me, that was very scary. Meagan: A couple of days before. Sarah: It was a stressful event to have to be finding someone. I went to a few other obstetricians and they said, “You’re far too late. You’re too far along in this pregnancy to be coming to me.” That’s when I decided that even if having a VBAC outside of the hospital presented an added element of risk because I might have to transfer to a hospital if something went awry, I knew that was the route that I needed to take in order to achieve what I felt like was my right to attempt a VBAC. I love the work that you’re doing because so many women, as they are deciding if they should have a C-section or if they can try for a VBAC, find that there are roadblocks that are in our way. I don’t want to say all of the time, but a lot of the time, our providers want the very best for us, but some of their suggestions might not be what helps us achieve a VBAC. One example I can think of is an early induction. Right? We know that the highest chance for a VBAC is for spontaneous, vaginal delivery to occur and yet we are also under pressure for our babies to be delivered by 40 weeks. Meagan: Or 39 even sometimes. Sarah: Or 39. And just as a woman’s menstrual cycle is not always a 5-day event or our cycles aren’t always the same amount of days– Meagan: 14 days apart, yeah. Sarah: Exactly, that maybe you knew exactly the date you conceived or you had IVF so you knew exactly when your egg was implanted, it’s very hard to know if that 40-week date is accurate. Both of my VBAC babies were born at 40 weeks and 3 days. To me, that’s interesting because I think, “Maybe my body is regulated enough that that is just when my babies are developed.” You know? So knowing that if a provider is telling us, “You have to have your baby by 40 weeks,” we can say, “What are my options if I choose? Can I take a non-stress test after the 40-week mark to find out how my amniotic fluid is doing and to make sure my baby is healthy and strong?” Meagan: Yeah. Sarah: And if you do find that there are complications, then there is no regret when you have the induction at that time. Meagan: Right. Yep. Sarah: Or when you seek medical assistance or when you elect to have that repeat Cesarean because you knew that your wishes were honored and that you were able to be number one. Meagan: An active participant of your birth. Being an active participant in your birth is so important. Like she said, if you choose an elective Cesarean, that’s okay because you were a part of that decision making or if you choose to be induced or if you choose to keep going or whatever it may be, being an active participant in your birth can truly impact the way you reflect in your postpartum experience.Last but not least, I would love to talk about the postpartum too. I think we would both agree that a lot of the times– I don’t want to say this with everybody preparing to give birth, but I feel like it’s very much so in the VBAC world, we are so focused on how to get a VBAC, a vaginal birth after a Cesarean, and how to have this end result that we forget about what comes after the birth whether it’s a vaginal birth or Cesarean. We are so focused on how to get this birth and this outcome that we forget what happens in that last period. Sarah: Exactly because our bodies know how to birth a baby without the knowledge that we possess. Even after we gain all of this knowledge, it really is our body’s job and our baby’s job to be born. But the postpartum period then falls all the way back on the families. So if you’re not prepared, if you don’t understand what will be happening physically within your body and how long it takes to heal, you could find yourself underwater at that time. Your baby requires food every few hours so if you’re attempting breastfeeding and you’re having struggles with breastfeeding, all of a sudden it feels like the postpartum period is harder than the birth for a lot of women. We have a separate course for the postpartum period. We call it “The Fourth Trimester”. In it, we dive deep into sleep both for parents and for infants. We talk about breastfeeding or feeding your baby if you elect formula. We go into postpartum depression and anxiety and really just try to help women understand that the time to prepare for the postpartum period is during pregnancy. It’s not just the 38th week of pregnancy because your baby might come at that time. I remember with my first son, my hospital bag wasn’t even packed when my water broke because it was in that 38th week and I thought I still had a few more to go. Everybody said that first-time moms always go overdue. So even knowing that the La Leche League offers free consults over the phone at any time of the night or day, knowing that alone is just a resource that we can use. I have to tell you for my third birth, I thought, “Okay. We will just have this set. Everything is going to go swimmingly,” and my little baby boy just was not latching correctly which causes so much pain as you’re trying to nurse but it also caused one of my breasts to be engorged in a way that he wasn’t extracting the milk but I was still experiencing those letdowns. So after a few days of just struggling– and I had met with the hospital lactation consultant– and feeling like, “I don’t have the resources I need,” I met with women from the La Leche League multiple times and finally, one of the pieces of advice that she gave us was the turning for my son. She mentioned, “When you sit down to feed your baby, you’re not going to think of it as a feeding session. You are going to try latching.” She actually gave me a number. She said, “I want you to try 20 times to latch.” I thought, “That is way more than I have been trying.” I usually start to feel defeated after the 5th or 6th time of trying to get this all to work. Then she said, “Your baby might be angry. Your baby might be hungry, so feed them an ounce of milk from the bottle or spoon feed however you want to feed them, and then try again 20 times on the other side.” I cannot tell you what a difference this made knowing that I was going to sit down and try 40 times to latch my baby. After the 8th attempt, he latched and we never had problems again. All that it took was for me to change my mindset as far as what I expected. Right? So even though I was an experienced mom, I had breastfed before, my little baby is just learning this for the first time. He’s awfully small. He has the reflexes to suck, but he needs to be trained just as much as I do. We had to come together and work through that. I don’t think that I could have made it happen without the support of the La Leche League. A lot of the time I think, “There are always excuses,” when we’re in the postpartum period when we’re tired or we don’t have a store open when we need something and Walmart is closed at 11:00 and all of a sudden, you’re having a fight with your partner in the middle of the night because you’re not prepared so knowing just the amount of supplies that you’re going to need and how long you’re going to bleed after birth, all of these little details can be really overwhelming. Thank heavens that we have more people talking about it. We have companies that are responding to these needs. I think that we have more individuals offering support at this time where they say, “Oh, I”m just going to buy you that gift basket that has all of the support that you’ll need.” Having a friend that can bring over their old nursing bras that they’re not using anymore so that you’re just ready to go with the supplies that you need, can make your postpartum period feel like you are off to a great start. Meagan: Absolutely. There was something you had mentioned too, and this goes for birth, where you were like, “I never had problems before. I nursed my other babies just fine and this baby’s brand new and a new experience.” That goes with all things in life and with birth and postpartum. Just because we birthed this way or this is how our birth went or this is how or breastfeeding journey or this is how my postpartum went, doesn’t always mean that we shouldn’t prepare for the next baby and the next birth and the next postpartum. It doesn’t always go exactly the same. Then also, remember these babies. Yes. Is it instinctual? Yes. They know where to get milk but again, their mouths are different. Everything is different so it can change so having patience and getting to that spot where you get to your nursing station, you take a deep breath in, you are taking a deep breath out, and you try 40 times. You are trying and not letting number three get so infuriating because your baby is going to feel that too. Your baby is going to feel that stress. It’s the same thing in birth where if we have someone bring in some stressful feelings, we’re going to all react to that. Our bodies react so remember to find your breath, find what you need to do, and have the patience to walk through that.Sarah: The reason we named our company Birth Made Mindful was because the word mindful in and of itself just means that you are taking in everything around you and you are allowing yourself to feel without judgment what is happening. It’s the hardest thing whether you are in birth or whether you are having a challenging experience as a mother, just know that you have enough time to pause, you have enough time to think, and to really find out what answer feels right to you. What is your heart telling you? What is your mind telling you? Can those two things come together in a way that then you can make a decision that will empower you? I’ve been writing the book for our company, “Birth Made Mindful”, and it has just been an amazing process of going even a level deeper than just a digital course to explain to women that they have the strength within and that each of us is powerful. We are champions. I love the phrase “birth warrior” but I don’t want anybody to feel like they have to have their sword and their shield as they go into birth. We want it to be more of a collective feeling where all of us are working together so that we can have an experience that will then launch us into motherhood or maybe it’s our second child so launching us into having multiple children in a way that will really give us vibrancy. It gives us energy. It gives us meaning in motherhood and the support that we know that we can do it. It really does come from having an understanding of where we are at inside and allowing anything that doesn’t feel congruent, that we can work through those things and we can then find out where our true passions lie and make sure that we honor ourselves and honor our desires. Meagan: Our intuition. Oh, well tell everybody where they can find more about your courses and your blogs and hopefully soon, your book. Sarah: Yes! We are at birthmademindful.com and most of our social media handles are at Made Mindful. That way we can cover Motherhood Made Mindful as well as we continue to grow our course offerings and continue to try to help our community find joy in birth and motherhood. That is our mission to have every family feel like they are armed with knowledge and that they have all of the support that they need to take on the most important event of their lives. Meagan: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit more about your other birth story and sharing these tips with the listeners. It really is so important to prepare our mind, our body, and our soul for all of the experiences. Obviously, we know that things happen sometimes and there are going to be unexpected things that come but even through preparing and being in that space and taking that time to say, “Wait, what is happening?” just processing it in the moment and having the question be asked can help you as well for after. I love that you talked about doing the fear release. We talk about doing the fear release too. Sometimes we don’t realize that we have traumas because we don’t look at it as a super traumatic experience but then as we walk through our birth and things, we realize, “Oh, that might be a traumatic thing I need to process. That’s a fear,” or “Maybe it’s not traumatic but it’s a fear of mine. It’s enough to hang me up.” So it’s important to walk through these situations as well. I think it’s awesome that you offer the two courses. Postpartum. Obviously, I love VBAC and I love the prep but there’s so much to postpartum that is just forgotten about so I think it’s really important that we talk more about that so thank you so much. Sarah: Absolutely. We want your listeners to get a discount when they come and buy your courses. So they enter VBACLINK into any of our courses, then they’ll get 30% off of both of those courses if they want to come to check it out. Meagan: Wow. That is amazing. Sarah: We just hope to continue to provide education, knowledge, and support to families. Like I said, birth is a transformative event. It’s the day that your baby is born but it’s also the day that a mother is born. In this day and age, we need all of the help that we can get. Meagan: Absolutely. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. Sarah: Thank you so much for having me. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

A few months ago we posted a video clip from Kaitlyn’s birth taken by Danielle Wilstead at Wild Oak Birth Photography and it went viral! We have Kaitlyn and Danielle with us on the podcast today sharing the backstory behind her inspiring video. In the video, a nurse is asking questions incessantly and Kaitlyn is advocating for herself while literally pushing out her baby! Kaitlyn shares the power of trusting that your body will tell you what it needs and listening to it when it does so. Additional LinksKaitlyn’s Photography WebsiteDanielle’s Photography WebsiteEmma’s Birth StoryHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello everybody. Guys, this is Meagan with The VBAC Link and we have such a fun episode for you today. It’s actually not a VBAC mom. I’m just going to put that flag right out there right now. She is a mama. I’m sure you will recall if you are following us on social media that went viral after her birth photographer posted a very incredible little snippet of a story of her birth. We posted it back in February and we will probably post it today. If you have not seen it, definitely go today to go watch this video. Her birth photographer, Danielle at Wild Oak, posted this video and it immediately gave me chills. Immediately. I want to say that she is not a VBAC mom but the episode today is going to be sharing her story and then also sharing more about how to really truly advocate for yourself and even make decisions that might be hard or sound weird to someone else. This mama has a history where she actually birthed out of the hospital and then with this baby, she birthed in the hospital. A lot of people would be like, “What? Why would you go back?” so we are going to talk a little bit about that. I want to welcome Kaitlyn and Danielle to the episode today. Ladies, thank you. Danielle: Thank you for having us.Kaitlyn: Mhmm, thank you. Emma and I are here together. Hello. Review of the WeekMeagan: I love when babies are on the episode. I love it, love it, love it. Okay, so before we get into the story, I do want to turn the time over to Danielle because she is so gracious and going to read a Review of the Week. Danielle: Yes, okay. So this review came in from Apple Podcasts and this is from kim_md44 and they titled this, “When a Podcast Gives You a Transformative Experience.” The review says, “It’s hard for me to put into words how much this podcast has meant to me the last four months. I discovered this podcast during my second pregnancy when I was prepping for a TOLAC and wanted so desperately for a VBAC. Like many other listeners, my first birth was traumatic and ended in a C-section. One of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome was the mental gymnastics of getting over that trauma and truly believing my body was capable of birthing a baby vaginally. “This podcast did wonders in that journey. Hearing so many other women sharing experiences similar to mine not only helped me feel so validated, but it gave me so much hope for the future. This podcast gave me a community, my people. It gave me resources to help me advocate for myself and well, it paid off. I got my VBAC. On October 5, 2021, I had a beautiful, healing birth experience where I was able to birth my daughter vaginally. I did it.“So to the provider who told me that my pelvis was too small to birth my baby, who told me that this baby would have to be significantly smaller than my first to even think about attempting a VBAC, my second-born was a whopping pound heavier than my first and I pushed her out of my vagina. I did it.”So powerful. Meagan: That just gave me the chills. Danielle: Yes. All of the chills. All of the chills. Meagan: Yes. Such an empowering message and review. Thank you so much for that review. Just like she did, you can too. You can too. It’s hard to sometimes imagine it being possible, but it is possible. So thank you so much for that review. Kaitlyn’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, beautiful ladies. I have been looking forward to this. I texted Danielle. Obviously, it was going viral within seconds but I actually saw it from someone else’s page. Of course, I recognize Wild Oak Birth so I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is from Danielle,” so I went over to your page and watched it 50 other times. I was trying to reshare this because this is such an empowering video. This is so amazing and then I had to text you. I texted you and I was like, “Holy cow,” and then I was just thinking about it and I was like, “Hey, this is such a great message that we can share with our listeners,” because as TOLAC mamas, as VBAC mamas, it can be really hard to be in a situation where you have people constantly saying, “Well, you could do this but you don’t want to,” or “You don’t want to do this,” very similar to Kaitlyn’s, “Well, you don’t want to birth like this.” Well, why don’t I want to birth like this? We’re being told how and what to do. It’s very hard, very hard in the medical system to advocate for ourselves and say, “No, actually I don’t really want to do this.” Anyway, so I want to turn the time over to Kaitlyn and Danielle if you have anything to say. But really, if you want to share this story because I know that we’ve only seen this tiny bit of this story so can you tell us a little bit about your journey and how it came about? I know that Danielle posted that you did choose to birth in the hospital after out of the hospital so maybe talk about the decision to do that because decisions in this VBAC world and in birth in general can really be hard to make but they can truly impact the way our birth has the outcome. So I would love to turn the time over to you. Kaitlyn: Thank you. Yeah, it was wild seeing that little two-minute snippet of a very precipitous birth– I will not lie. That was precipitous. Danielle: Very fast. Kaitlyn: Very intense, but just that last little bit go everywhere around the world honestly. I’ve had a lot of beautiful, beautiful messages from people reaching out just sharing that they were terrified about birth and now they feel a little bit of hope and a little bit of peace. That’s, I think, I hope that your listeners will be able to get out of listening and hearing this story and my experiences and my feelings because it’s that hope that everybody needs. Yes. You can make good decisions. Yes, they are hard and yes, things can be beautiful regardless of what happens. So yeah. It was a very big experience. This is my third. Emma is our third and my first was a hospital induction. Like many, it was more on the traumatic side. I had an OB who was not super supportive. They were like, “Why would you not have an epidural? That’s dumb.” So not a good fit. With my second, I had a birth center down the street from us in Colorado. That was a water birth and so healing. The midwives gave me over and over and over again the opportunity to decide for myself like, “Okay, here’s this option. What do you want to do? Here’s what we understand. What do you want to do? Do you want to do your GBS swab?” “Yes, I do. Thank you.” They were providing that kind of care which I loved and as a birth worker myself, I love. Families deserve that kind of shared decision-making all over the board. We moved again and got pregnant. This was the one that we weren’t expecting. We have three December babies now, three December girls so March is very fertile apparently. That was exciting but I wasn’t ready to be pregnant yet. The only person I knew I wanted to be on my birth team was Danielle. I was like, “Danielle, I’m pregnant. I’m due a few days before Christmas. Please come.” She was like, “Okay, I’ll think about it.”Danielle: I remember it being so close to Christmas. It is a hard decision but I’m like, “This is Kaitlyn. It’s Kaitlyn. I have to be there. I’m going to make it work.” Kaitlyn: I was so grateful for that because honestly, I don’t know who else would have come flying. But then it was like, “Okay, great. I have Danielle. Who else?” So yeah. For me, again that shared decision-making is really important to me but I felt really torn between my second and my third. I think I just got a little bit clearer on, these are the exact risks in the hospital and out of the hospital. They are pretty matched. Like, oh okay. There’s no set risk like, “This midwife will have this much risk.” I attended some births where some midwives out of the hospital didn’t transfer fast enough. That was partly the family’s preference as well, but just like, “Oh, this is what I’m comfortable with and it’s not quite this.” I interviewed a bunch of midwives and actually switched care temporarily and it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t sit right to be out of the hospital. I was like, “Okay, we’re going to have a home birth.” My oldest was stoked. It was like, “Great. We’re going to have the birth tub and I’ll be there for you.” It was super sweet but it didn’t feel right. I remember working with my therapist and writing a pros and cons list for both in and out of the hospital then being like, “Okay, how do I feel about this? How do I feel about this?”I was able to think through and process, “Okay. This is my bucket of fears and the pros in a hospital birth with this midwife, and here’s my bucket of fears and my bucket of pros in this home birth midwife group,” that I was looking at. I just felt, “Okay. Nope. I’m going to pick the hospital bucket.” That felt a little wild to me. I definitely got in my head a lot about, “Okay. I’m a birth worker and who’s going to judge me for doing this? Will people think that I’m making the right decision?” Meagan: Which can I just add that it makes my heart hurt a little bit that anybody let alone a birth worker has to– not doesn’t have to but it happens because I did the same thing when I was preparing for my VBAC after two Cesarean birth. It was like, “Oh, who’s going to think this? What are people going to say about my decision to do this?” to the point where I didn’t even feel like I could share it. I didn’t feel like I could tell anybody. I had just a select few people who knew my plan but I was scared to share it. It’s hard because the biggest thing that matters is that it felt right for you. That’s what matters. Kaitlyn: Yeah. That was interesting and good for me. I have a fantastic therapist so we talked about this at length like, “Okay. Why do you feel that this is important?” You are right. And just trying to pull that back and pull back that power of decision-making and coming back to myself.Meagan: Yeah. Good for you. Good for you. Kaitlyn: That was big and lots of work and lots of talking with my husband as well like, “This is how I feel. This group of people says that this is the right decision and this group of people says that that’s dumb and stupid and you should go with this decision. I can’t please both groups so I feel so torn.” But yeah. I think that it felt good and I knew that my hospital midwife was going to support me. I had literally brought– so the next thing I did was that I went through and my therapist was like, “Okay, let’s acknowledge all of the trauma points from your first birth in the hospital and why this feels so scary because we can work on this. We can make this feel less scary.” That was really helpful because I literally made a list that I sent to Danielle. I was like, “These are points that are trauma points. This is how I can address those per se.” I brought that list to my midwife and was like, “Okay, let me tell you that these were the moments from my first in-hospital birth that was traumatic for me that I don’t want to happen again. These are the points that I would appreciate and why these points in my birth plan are meaningful to me.” That was an awesome realization. I felt so much better like, “Okay. I know my provider is on my side. I’m not hiding anything from her. She’s not hiding anything from me. I trust her and I trust her to take care of me if whatever happens.” That was the foundation that I needed. I needed it to be there. Meagan: I’m sure it solidified, “Okay. Yep. Definitely right. This is definitely right.” Kaitlyn: Yeah. Meagan: Which is such a great feeling to have. Kaitlyn: Mhmm, it is. I remember at my 40-week appointment, me getting all nervous over here because my last 40-week appointment with an in-hospital person was like, “All right. Let’s schedule your induction.” She was like, “No, we’re not going to talk about it. We’ll talk about it when we need to. Everything is going to be just fine, Kaitlyn. Trust.” She told me about a client of hers that had birthed beautifully next to the bed. She was like, “That was such a beautiful birth.” It restored my hope in birth. Meagan: It’s like she was projecting your fate. Kaitlyn: Yeah, that was kind of funny. Yeah. I walked out of that appointment being like, “Okay. I trust. I trust. I trust. This is going to be okay. I trust myself. This is the right decision. Let’s move.” So the day after my due date, we went in. I just wanted some data. I was like, “Okay. Let’s check. Let’s see where we are at.” I was 3 centimeters. I was like, “Okay, that’s good. Whatever.” Danielle and my team were like, “Woo! 3 centimeters!” I was like, “Sure, thanks.” But then I decided to do a stretch and sweep. You just have to be where it’s like, “Okay, that’s right. This is mindfulness. That’s how I’m paying attention to sensations. This is what pushing feels like. It’s pressure on the vaginal wall.” Yeah. The rest of the day, I got some cramps and bloody show out of that. It was midnight. I think I texted everybody. I was like, “All right. These are solid contractions. They’re punchy. I don’t feel like I need support yet, but FYI, things are starting to move.” My husband woke up. I made myself some eggs. Great. It’s my birth tradition that I have eggs in my early labor mostly because in my first birth, I was like, “I want eggs,” and they were like, “Sorry. You can’t have them.” Meagan: Hey, listen. Eggs are good protein and fat. That’s power food right there but I love it. Kaitlyn: That’s what I was craving. Meagan: It’s all in spite of you telling me that I cannot have these. I will eat these with every baby.Kaitlyn: I will eat my eggs and I will enjoy them. Yes, and I do. So yeah. I woke up and I made myself eggs. I walked around the house. My husband woke up and was like, “Oh, are we moving? Okay. Let’s do this.” Then we were like, “Okay, this is early birth where you pack yourselves and finish wrapping presents.” And then all my birth team was like, “Yeah, these were consistent minute long, 3-5 minutes together contractions. We’re coming.” I was like, “Okay, that sounds good but I don’t feel like I need support yet so no rush.” Then Danielle started driving and then I texted her and was like, “Nope, never mind. They stopped.” So Danielle turned around and they just stopped so I went to bed at about 3:00 AM and yeah. I’m not sure why it stopped but it did so I got more sleep. I woke up the next morning and there was nothing happening. I was like, “Oh, okay. I still don’t feel l like I’m going to be pregnant much longer so let’s move.” I scheduled an induction massage with one of our fantastic people up here. He is awesome. I sent my girlies off to play with grandma and got some alone time with my husband, some cervix ripening. So yeah. I remember getting to my prenatal massage at 12:30 PM. I got there, walked up the stairs, and felt, “Ooh. That is a solid contraction wave. Maybe we’re not going to make it to sushi,” because that was our plan. We were going to get a massage and go to sushi. We never made it to sushi. Danielle: Nope. Kaitlyn: I remember walking in and Eva asking, “Okay, are you having any contractions?” I was like, “I think a few, yeah.” By the end of that massage, 80-90 minutes later, I remember I was in full-blown active labor at that point. I remember thinking and realizing, “Oh.” Eva’s a birth doula as well so she was like, “Do you want some counterpressure?” I remember her counterpressure feeling fantastic and that’s when I knew, “Oh, this is active labor.” I finished my massage. It took me forever to get dressed again. I texted the birth team super trembling. That’s another cue for me like, “Oh, my body is changing things kind of fast.” I was like, “Okay, it’s time. Come. I want support now.” That was at 2:00 when we left the massage. I got home at about 2:30. I remember on the way home being like, “Okay. We are going to go home. I’m going to get some calories. My birth team is going to get there. We’re going to stay home for a few hours and I’m going to know when I need to go. I’m going to trust myself. My body will tell me when it’s time. I know where to go. It’s going to take a little bit. We’re going to get settled at the hospital and we’re going to have a baby in a few hours. It’s going to be fine.”That’s not quite what happened. We got home. I gobbled a little tiny bit of food because at that point I don’t feel like eating very much. Danielle got there first then my doula, Carly. I just remember everybody being there and realizing everyone was there and just being like, “Okay, whew. I’m all good.” It felt bigger than the last time. “This is already hard.” That’s what I remember telling Carly. I was like, “This is already hard.” She was like, “It’s supposed to be.” “Yes, you’re right but it’s hard.”Meagan: But it’s hard. Kaitlyn: Yeah. Then I remember my oldest came in. My middle child was taking a nap. She pretty much napped throughout my whole birth but my oldest got to come in and be with us while we were home. That was so sweet and filled that bucket for me of, “I’m not having a home birth. I don’t get to be with her throughout my whole labor,” but she got to be there for at least a little bit which was a little sweet. Meagan: Special, yeah. Kaitlyn: Yeah, sweet moment. She was super, super sweet. Danielle: She was. Kaitlyn: “Come in, Mom. Hold out your hand and sit here.” Then she started offering me books because that is her favorite thing. Then she told us, “Mom, that was too loud. Don’t wake up Sophie.” Meagan: That’s hilarious. Kaitlyn: That was so funny. Then I felt it. My body told me, “Shift. It’s time to go. I don’t want to be in the car for any more of this. Let’s move.” It took me 10 minutes to get out the door, but I’m pretty sure Danielle followed us on our tail the whole way to the hospital. Danielle: I sure did. Kaitlyn: I put my AirPods in with my mindfulness track and I fell asleep between contractions in the car on the way to the hospital. Danielle: Yeah. Kaitlyn: I remember sitting there and waking up, “Wait a second. How in the heck did I fall asleep?”Danielle: Yeah, well behind you driving, all I could see is her head tilting back like this and I’m panicking inside. You know, that backward arch is very common when baby is coming out. You are going back. Baby starts coming. Kaitlyn: Danielle was freaking out thinking I had a baby. Danielle: Is she having a baby in that car?! Pull over! Then she stood up again. I’m like, “Okay. What was that?” Kaitlyn: It was me falling asleep. Meagan: Were you in the back seat? Danielle: No, I was in my car behind her. Meagan: No, her. Was Kaitlyn in the back seat? Danielle: Oh no, she was in the front seat. Kaitlyn: I was in the front seat. Meagan: So you could see this. Danielle: Yes. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Kaitlyn: That was incredible. She was like, “That’s a sign that you were coping excellently.” I was like, “Oh, thank you. Thank you.” Which I never imagined because that car ride was the most dreaded part of my labor. I hated being in the car for that five minutes down the road to the birth center.” So I was like, “Okay.” I remember getting in the car being like, “Nope. I’m going to make this. It’s going to be totally fine. We’re going to be fine.” I remember my body slowing down a little bit. Contractions were not so close together in the car. There were probably four in that 20-minute car ride instead of six or seven which was really good. People will be like, “You almost had a car baby,” but I didn’t. My body knew where I was and I think that’s a pretty incredible part of births for me is that my body will slow down and pick up depending on what I need. Meagan: Obviously. Yeah. Kaitlyn: They will slow down. An hour and a half before Sophie was born, I slept for a half hour. Meagan: Oh my gosh. It was starting and then it was like your body needed a break and went to sleep for the night. Kaitlyn: Yep. Take a break. Kick back up. Meagan: We’ve got to trust our bodies. Kaitlyn: Yeah. That was really cool. I was mind-blown that it happened. But yeah. I got to the hospital, pulled in the parking lot, stepped out of the car, and things picked right back up. I was like, “Okay, we’re moving.” I booked it to the front door. Nobody was in the lobby. We sat there for a contraction and I was like, “Nope. Let’s go.” We went to the elevator and went upstairs to L&D. We didn’t see anybody until we busted into L&D. I let myself be loud. I was like, “All right. Things are intense. I’m going to be as loud as I want to because I do not want to go to triage right now. I want to go to a room and I want to be done.”Meagan: Yeah. I need a room!Kaitlyn: Yeah. I remember Danielle. I don’t think it was you. Maybe it was Carly. Maybe it was you. Danielle: Carly was behind me. Kaitlyn: We have a mom. Here. She’s in labor. They were like, “Oh yeah, come in.” I was like, “Thank you.” Danielle: Mhmm. Kaitlyn: Glide down the hallway. Glide down the hallway. They brought a wheelchair. I was like, “No. I’m not sitting down. That’s not happening.” Danielle: At this point, you were probably already 10 centimeters. Kaitlyn: Um, no. I was probably in transition. I was transitioning. Danielle: You think so?Kaitlyn: Mhmm, yeah because we got to our room and they were right on top of each other. That’s when I was like, “Okay. We’re at transition. Let’s get Heather here now, please,” but I couldn’t say that because I was answering all of the questions. I was amazed at how much mental capacity I felt like I had at that point. I’m not sure if that’s because things had just moved so fast or what, but I felt like I could answer all of their questions. “No, I don’t want a gown. Yes, I want this. No, I don’t want that. No, thank you. Yes, please.” I was like, “Nope, that’s going to be hard to get on the bed. Sorry.”Meagan: I remember you saying on the video, “Yeah, I know but it’s not going to happen.”Kaitlyn: Yes. I was on the other side of the bed first. I tossed off all of my clothes in those little tiny in-between moments between those on top of each other transition contractions. I tossed off my shoes. I tossed off my dress and then moved to the other side of the bed so that he could have a base reading of the heart rate. I remember my doula asking me– I remember seeing Danielle out of the corner of my eye setting up my tripod and being like, “Okay, Danielle’s good. I can have a baby now. I just need to document it.” Danielle: I’m good to go now. Kaitlyn: I remember hearing my doula start to fill up the tub because she knew that I liked water and water was helpful. I listened to that and was like, “Mmm, I don’t think I’m going to get there.” I remember her asking me, “Kaitlyn, do you feel pushy right now?” I was like, “No, not right now.” Then my water broke literally five seconds later all over my husband’s shoes. I was like, “Ha ha, now I feel pushy. Psyche!” Yeah. So then my nurse was like, “I really want to check you. I really want to check you.” I was like, “I’ll check myself.” Meagan: She was adamant. Kaitlyn: So I checked and I was like, “Yep. Her head is at a finger’s width from my perineum.” She looked at me and then moved to the other side, “What did you say?” I think she was just a little bit in disbelief of, “Wait, are you having a baby? Am I going to be okay?” I could feel her anxiety mount beside me but didn’t feel like there was any room for that. I was stoked. Meagan: I can’t imagine how you felt because I was feeling it watching it and I’m sure many other people were how she was like, “Well, I’d hate to have you just be 4 centimeters and have your midwife come.” She was feeling anxious. Kaitlyn: I clearly say, “That’s not happening too. No, I’m not 4 centimeters. That’s not happening.” I’m literally complete and going to push out a baby any minute here. Meagan: Yes. We could feel the angst and I’m sure you could feel it with her next to you, touching you, saying, “Get help in here!” Having those things being said, you were able to just really stay in this space even though all of these other things were happening. Kaitlyn: Mhmm, yeah. I think that was also interesting for me as a people pleaser. Meagan: Okay, so you’re a people pleaser person. How do you feel like you were able to disconnect that, “I normally would say to do whatever and follow your direction?” Kaitlyn: That’s an excellent question. Meagan: Yeah. I don’t want to make it sound like, “Go against your medical provider!”Kaitlyn: I mean, I didn’t anticipate that from myself. I did not expect myself to be able to hold boundaries for myself because that’s not something that I’m a super expert in.Meagan: Intuitively, it came out.Kaitlyn: It’s something I struggle with. My therapist was like, “Don’t expect too much of yourself in labor. You’re literally pushing out a baby. Rely on your team.” That’s why I had my team there was to back me up and talk for me when I didn’t feel like talking but somehow, there was just– I don’t know if it was because I had thought things through and knew, “I know where you’re coming from.” These nurses are there to manage risk and they are trained. Who knows how many things they hear all day long from an OB or some provider who ranted on a nurse for not checking their client before they got there? Meagan: Right, before they arrived so they’re feeling angst. Kaitlyn: How many stories have they heard? So I think I came in with that perspective. These nurses are trying to help. They’re trying to do their best. They have a very risk-averse perspective. That’s their job. It’s to manage all of that. Great. I don’t have to worry about it then. They’re going to be there doing whatever. So I could hear her fear and I feel like, I don’t know if it was my subconscious or what, but somehow it was like, “Okay, she’s scared. I’m not. I’m going to push out a baby. She’s coming. I’m stoked because I’m almost done and I know I can feel that she’s here. I’ve done this before.” It was really helpful because I had done that before. It felt really familiar. I was back in familiar territory. I had done work to know and trust myself a little better to say, “Okay. I know how to make good decisions. I can decide things and now understand what my body is saying about myself. I’m feeling scared. I’m feeling anxious,” and at that moment, it was, “I’m going to have a baby. She is coming and I am excited because she is almost here. It doesn’t matter what this person over here is feeling. That’s not my job to regulate her emotions. She can do that. She’s an adult. My job is to just be here and push out a baby.” That’s what I did. I had that pause, that conversation happened all in that pause between, “Okay, I’m complete and pushing,” which maybe happened for a minute. Danielle: Yeah. Kaitlyn: So yeah. It was like, “No, you’re not going to check me because I’m going to push out a baby right now. There’s no space.” My doula was like, “Okay, where do you want to push?” I was like, “I’m not moving. Right here apparently.” Yeah. It was big. That was the beautiful, beautiful part of this birth was feeling my instincts take over. It was like, “Hey, this is intense, but my body knows exactly what to do,” and feeling her head come down and push on my perineum, and my hands were right there. Then her head was out. I don’t even remember everybody being like, “Oh, there’s a head.” None of that had any space in my ears. And there were all the other sensations happening. I pushed her out. I remember looking down. I felt like I didn’t see anything until I looked down. I was like, “Oh, there’s a cord around her neck. I’m going to pull it around her neck and I’m going to pull her up.” I had walked through that step by step with my midwife more to get a feel of, “How are you going to support me because I want to catch my baby?” So my brain knew what was happening. And she was fine. All is well. We’re done. Then yeah. Then there was space for joy. I remember laughing. That was amazing. That joy and laughter and then the nurse was like, “Let’s sit you down.” I’m like, “Sure. We can sit down now. Now I can do this. I can’t move when I have a head at the top of my vaginal canal but I can move now.” We sat down and I just remember looking up at my team and we all just laughed at each other like, “What just happened?” I cried and I laughed and I cried and I laughed. That was amazing. Then I think as soon as all of the checks happened, I could feel my nurse beside me calm down. Her adrenaline spiked and made its course. I feel like she came back to herself and was like, “Well, that was crazy. Let me go get you checked in now.” It was so funny. So that was kind of cool too being like, “Okay, look. Everybody has big feels and if you’re not used to this then that’s fine.”Meagan: Yeah. You know, I love that you said that about your nurse. You could feel her anxiety. You could feel the tension but at the same time, you weren’t going to allow that tension to enter your space when it was so easily able to do. It’s so easy to let the tension that is happening in the room enter the body. We know how it can impact our birth and our modes of delivery. Kaitlyn: Absolutely. Meagan: I love that you said, “You’re the adult. I know you’re an adult. I know you’re here. I know your intentions. I know you’re here because you care and you want all things to be well, but I’m not letting you project that. I’m putting my wall here. You can be next to me but your space isn’t coming into my space. We can be in the same space with different emotions.”Kaitlyn: Your emotions are yours. Mine are mine. Meagan: That’s going to be a big takeaway, in my opinion, for this episode so listeners, it’s going to be hard. That’s a hard thing to do. It’s really hard. Kaitlyn: It doesn’t always happen and it’s okay if it comes in a little bit. Meagan: Exactly. Kaitlyn: That’s where your team comes in. That’s why I was depending on my doula or was going to depend on my doula but somehow didn’t need her to do that and build that wall for me but to be that reminder of, “Hey, where do you want to birth? Where do you feel like pushing? Are you pushing? Let’s stay present with yourself. What are you feeling right now?” and letting yourself feel those emotions because it doesn’t have to be joyful right away. That’s not a requirement for a good birth. That’s something that I also worked on. It was like, “Okay, what’s a beautiful birth? It does not have to be this painless, joyful thing,” even though Emma’s kind of was. It was intense but it was joyful. Meagan: It looked intense. Kaitlyn: And intense. It hurt and it was hard and felt manageable all at the same time. So yeah. Meagan: So incredible. Kaitlyn: That was amazing. And yeah. So happy. My midwife got there seven minutes after Emma was born to help with the placenta. The hospitalist walked in three minutes before that like, “Heather is right behind me on the road. I promise that she’s coming.” Meagan: You’re like, “It’s all right. I’m holding my baby. I’m good. I’m good.” Oh, man. Kaitlyn: She delivered the placenta and laughed with us. She was like, “Oh yep, she wasn’t waiting for anybody. That’s totally fine.” You didn’t miss out on me here. You did fine. I’m not worried. Yeah then everybody left us alone for the most part. That was amazing. Danielle: Yeah, I mean you did so many things postpartum that I don’t think many people ever do. You can share more about what you did but the staff really did give you so much space and that was really awesome on my end to see. It was almost like you were at home but at a hospital sort of just hanging out. Your girlies came in and even while your girlies were there, you and Carly were looking at the placenta. There was so much that I don’t typically see in a hospital setting and it was really, really cool to see. The energy was just so calm. Overall, so calm, just so happy. Everyone was elated like, “Wow.” Just kind of in complete shock but in the best way. Meagan: Yeah. I’m sure there was an overwhelming amount of joy and again, shock like, “What just happened? But whoa. Wasn’t that amazing?” I’m sure. One of the questions we get often actually was kind of what Danielle talked about. They say, “I want to have a VBAC and I really want the out-of-hospital experience, but I don’t feel like I can go out of the hospital. I don’t feel comfortable or my insurance, or whatnot. Do I really need to?”Kaitlyn: Generally for a VBAC, yeah. Meagan: Absolutely. So what tips would you give for that postpartum and how to create that good postpartum? You intuitively just were here. You were confident in your body’s ability which I think is one of the biggest things. You were confident. You’re a people pleaser you say, but because you were so confident, I think it made it easier. I don’t know you very well, but I think it could have made it easier to not please people because you knew. You knew things were going to be okay. You knew you were here. You were confident in your spot. Sometimes that’s hard and we don’t have confidence. That’s okay too and that’s again why we have our team. So we’ve got our team building confidence, education– these are my takeaways from this episode. Having those conversations with the providers before. You had some really good provider conversations that helped you know what to expect and know that she was truly on your team too. So yeah. Any other tips that you would suggest?Kaitlyn: Yeah. I mean, I went through all of those postpartum details with my midwife like, “Okay. I want to birth the placenta attached to my baby. I don’t want to cut the cord for a while. I want that to be calm and unrushed. I don’t want to worry about it right away. I’m in no rush for you cut that link quite yet.” Meagan: Which in the hospital doesn’t happen a ton. Usually, they cut the cord as soon as they deliver the baby. Kaitlyn: My provider had never done that before. My provider had never delivered the placenta attached to baby. Meagan: Oh, see? Yeah because that’s not very common. Kaitlyn: She was like, “I’ve never done that before. Can I clamp it first?” I was like, “No, let’s just let it be.” She was like, “Oh, okay. If that’s what you want then that’s fine.” She knew that was important to me and was one of the things on my backup plan if a Cesarean was ever going to be in the cards that if nothing is emergent, let’s keep the placenta attached. That would be really meaningful to me. She knew that and I knew that she would advocate for that for me. Meagan: And that is okay to not have it be attached.Kaitlyn: It ended up having the placenta attached for two hours. She left it in the bucket next to me. I was like, “Yeah, it can right here. It’s fine.”  Then they were like, “Okay, call the nurse when you’re ready to cut the cord and do the newborn exam.” I was like, “Great. We’ll let you know. Thanks.” So we called them about two hours later like, “Okay. I’m ready. I’m ready for my placenta prints.” I also do a print with paper and blood and do a tree of life. It’s kind of hard to describe in the audio but my doula and I nerded out over my placenta and did that while my husband was with my girly doing all of the newborn exam stuff. That was so fun. Meagan: Awesome. Kaitlyn: Yeah. I had my mom bring my older girlies in and they were so, so cute. “We are so excited to be here with you.” They wanted to hold her so we got that family time together too. I had to really convince them to leave before bedtime. That was hard. Meagan: I’m sure. Kaitlyn: And then yeah, I took a bath postpartum before we moved to the postpartum rooms and that was awesome. Danielle and my doula and I just sat there in the bathroom processing what had happened. Meagan: Yeah. Kaitlyn: Okay, what just happened? Did that happen? Did this happen? When did this happen? Did that really happen? And just being together. I loved how unrushed that felt and that nobody was in a hurry. Everybody was chill. They’d check on things and make sure all was well, but they filled that role and then I had my emotional support team to be with me. So sorry, I don’t know if that was too much but that was all amazing. Yeah. It was that kind of experience that I loved from my out-of-hospital birth was the team filled up the tub for me and asked if I wanted to take a bath. I was like, “Yes. That would feel glorious.” So I stuck that in my birth plan. I would love to take a bath postpartum.Meagan: I’ll never forget the first shower after I had my baby. It really was so wonderful. It just makes you feel fresh and clean and new. You know? Kaitlyn: Mhmm. Meagan: It’s a lot. Your body just went through something pretty intense so I’m sure that felt lovely and probably helped the cramps. Kaitlyn: Yes. Postpartum cramps are more annoying than the labor ones in my opinion especially because they get more intense after each child. That was also my birth plan. And then postpartum, give me IBUprofen as fast as possible because those stink and I want to enjoy myself. Then it took them an hour and a half to get me admitted so that didn’t happen but that’s okay. Meagan: Darnit. Kaitlyn: It’s fine. Meagan: Well, thank you so much. So much. There are so many nuggets within this episode and listeners, I know it’s not a VBAC story but wow. Wow. How amazing can it be? It can be so amazing. We know that it isn’t always like this. We know that this is not every birth story out there and it is a little bit more rare but it doesn’t have to be either. It doesn’t have to be. We can create those teams. We can talk with our providers and have a solid plan. We can trust our body, believe in our body, and believe in our ability. We can advocate for ourselves. We can block out the stresses of others and not let them into our space. There are so many things here that we can do. A big takeaway too is that even if it doesn’t end in the actual result that you’re wanting, maybe the VBAC isn’t the result. But even if that isn’t, if you are an active participant of your birth and you are truly going through this and it’s not just letting people make you get on the bed, make you get a cervical exam when your baby’s pretty much coming out and doing all of these things, you will feel more empowered about the decision and hopefully will be more included in the decision made in the end. Kaitlyn: Mhmm, yeah. And if that’s something you value, being in control and in charge of your body and decision-making in your birth process, then yeah. That’s possible however it goes.Meagan: It’s possible. Yes. Also just remember there’s no wrong way to birth, guys. You don’t have to show up last minute and have a baby. You don’t have to. You can go in and be induced and you can have an epidural and you can still have these beautiful experiences. Truly, you really can but yeah. I feel like there are some golden nuggets within this episode and I just want to thank you guys both again for being here, taking the time, and sharing this remarkable video. It really inspired the world obviously. Obviously, it’s inspired the world and we’re excited to share this episode with our followers. Kaitlyn: Thank you. Meagan: Thank you. Danielle: Yes, thank you so much for having us. This has been amazing. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today we are joined by a truly amazing woman of strength, Morgan. She recently retired after 25 years of active duty service in the Coast Guard and is a mama to two boys and one girl, each with their own very unique birth stories. Morgan’s first baby was born vaginally. Her second was a lifesaving crash Cesarean. Her third was a surprise HBAC born en caul! The high of this empowering birth carried her through a difficult postbirth hospital experience in which she almost lost her uterus. Meagan and Morgan share facts and insight regarding the amniotic fluid index. Morgan also gives tips on how to have necessary conversations with your provider to advocate for the birth experience you deserve.Additional LinksBridget’s Website (Morgan’s Doula)How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello. Happy Wednesday, women of strength. We are bringing another story to you. You are listening to The VBAC Link and we have our friend, Morgan, here today sharing her stories. I’m really excited because just before we started recording, we talked about how Morgan said that she is a numbers girl. She’s like, “I love numbers.” It’s something that I love too but never have ever retained as well as Julie did. I’d be like, “Okay, I’m trying to remember. Is it this or that?” and she’d be like, “It’s this.” I remember names and stuff like that and she remembers numbers. That has been something that I have really missed without Julie being here so I’m excited to talk about numbers with you today, Morgan. We’re going to talk specifically maybe about amniotic fluid and percentages and things like that. But yeah. I’m excited to get into some numbers. If you’re looking for some numbers on the chances of VBAC, we’re going to talk about amniotic fluid. What really is a scary number and when do we really need to induce a labor? Stay tuned. Review of the WeekOf course, we have a Review of the Week so before I turn the time over to Morgan, we will read Britjl14. That is their review today. The subject is “Tears of Joy.” It says, “I literally got teary-eyed when I saw that your podcast was coming back. You gave me the courage to have my VBAC after two Cesarean baby, 9 pounds, 15 ounces, in late August. Such an uplifting and informative podcast. I tell everyone who mentions wanting a VBAC to look this up. So excited for more to come.” I love that. You guys, when we decided to bring the podcast back, it was so exciting for us too. So, so exciting. It was so fun to get all of the emails and the messages on Instagram saying, “Ahh! We’ve been waiting!” because we took a 10-month break. A 10-month break. That’s what we needed to do for our personal lives but we are so happy. I am so happy to be back. I definitely miss Julie every time that I’m recording, but I’m really so happy to be back and so honored to be a part of all of these beautiful stories because really, I wish I had this when I was preparing for my VBAC. I really do. I go back. This probably sounds silly because I’m recording the stories and I’m hearing the stories but then every week, I go in and I listen to the stories because I am learning things after recording and hearing them the first time, a second time. I’m learning things about births and certain procedures so it’s always a learning experience even for me who “specializes in VBAC” so it’s really, really fun. So yeah. Thank you so much for your review. Remember, if you have not had a chance to leave us a review, we love them. We always, always read them and add them to our queue to read them on a podcast. Morgan’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Morgan. Hello. Morgan: Hi, hi. Thanks for having me. Meagan: Hi. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much for being here all the way from Alaska. Morgan: Yes, yes. Juneau. Meagan: Awesome. So awesome. Well, I’d love to turn the time over to you to share your story. I guess it was actually your second birth story technically?Morgan: My third. My third, yeah. My second was a C-section.Meagan: Yeah, sorry. That’s what I am talking about, your C-section. Your second birth story, I also want to talk about because it was a very valid Cesarean. Morgan: It was. Yeah. Meagan: I want to talk about that too because we can come across as so negative with Cesarean because it’s a VBAC podcast and we’re sharing a Cesarean story that led to a VBAC but a lot of the times, the Cesareans were negative or unneeded or undesired or unplanned, so sometimes it can come across that we are talking badly about Cesareans but I want to point out today with Morgan’s story especially that it was very, very needed. We are so grateful for Cesareans too. Even though we are a pro-VBAC podcast, we are not anti-doc and anti-Cesarean. That is for sure. I will let you share your story but I just want to talk about that because sometimes I think it can be like, “Wow. This podcast hates Cesareans,” and that’s not the case. That’s not the case at all. Morgan: Yeah, so I have three kids now and my first was a vaginal birth. It was mostly pretty well sought out and went through as expected. I was 41+5 and everything went pretty well. I did have some retained placenta at the end so I had to go back in for a D&C at six weeks postpartum because we hadn’t caught that before. My second pregnancy was a really good pregnancy. I was healthy. I was working. Everything was going as expected except my son, Cooper, was transverse. He would not budge. I tried so many things to have him budge. I was doing Spinning Babies. I went to the chiropractor. I could not find an acupuncturist where I was that I trusted and was ready to go to, but we tried so many things to get him to turn and it wouldn’t work. Toward the end, my doctor and I discussed doing a version. To me, we had discussed the risks of it were having a C-section at the end, but that’s what we were going in and trying to avoid anyways so the risks weren’t bothering me at that point so we did end up trying a version. It worked. It was very exciting, but then he turned back. I was like, “Oh no!” It was devastating. It was so devastating. Meagan: Oh, that would be hard. Morgan: That was one version and he turned back. So the doctor had said, “Man.” She was right with me on my birth plan too. She was there. She was ready to go. She said, “Well, let’s try another one.” I was like, “Okay. Let’s do it.” I went through it. I got through the first one. It was uncomfortable but we did it. So the second one, we tried another one, and sure enough, he turned. We were like, “Yes! We’ve just got to keep him there.” I was standing up all day. I wasn’t going to move. He was going to stay in. He turned back. I felt him turn back. I was like, “Ugh.” A second successful version that then turned back. After that, we were coming up on our due date and I was just so adamant about wanting a vaginal birth at that point that I said, “You know what? Why don’t we try a third version and we’ll just induce right after that? Maybe I won’t get my unmedicated birth but I’ll still have a vaginal delivery,” which for me was important because I wanted to be able to breastfeed without any concerns. So we tried. We tried a third version. It was on my due date. We were in the hospital. We were ready to induce afterward. My doula was on call. We were going to call her in after I started laboring. In the middle of the version, we lost his heartbeat. She had me connected with an ultrasound the whole time. She’s doing the version and there’s a nurse that’s doing the ultrasound and all of a sudden, we had no heartbeat. She said, “Maybe it’s just where we are. Let’s move a little bit and see.” I turned and I moved. We tried to find the heartbeat again and we couldn’t find it. She said, “Just give me a second.” She walked out of the room. I was all the way in the back of the labor and delivery unit at that point. She walked out of the room so calmly. She went into the hallway and yelled, “We need help in here!!!”Meagan: Whoa. Morgan: I was like, “Whoa.” I was not expecting that. What went from calm right in front of me went to a massive emergency in a hallway. All of the nurses descended and the bed got moving. We went into the operating room and it took 20 minutes because I didn’t have an IV or anything connected to me at the time. So 20 minutes later–Meagan: So you were under general anesthesia? They didn’t put you under general?Morgan: They did not. No, I saw it. I saw the whole thing. I mean, they had the cover up but there are so many reflective units and metal everywhere that I could actually see what was happening which was fine. I don’t mind that. But yeah. They pulled him out 20 minutes later. He was not breathing. No breathing, no heartbeat, or anything. They had to do CPR. Meagan: Scary. Morgan: They got him back. The nurses got him back which is just amazing. He was rushed to a NICU at another hospital, the highest level NICU. I think it’s a 4. Meagan: Yeah, mhmm. Morgan: Yeah, so he went to a children’s hospital where there was a massive NICU. He’s good. Friday is his birthday and he’ll be 8. He’s just an amazing little kid.Meagan: So amazing. Morgan: So I’m very, very grateful for that C-section. Meagan: How was that for you? How was recovery for you? Morgan: Recovery was fine. There were no unexpected occurrences. We knew it was going to take a little longer. I knew not to work. The thing that was hard was, well first, breastfeeding because I had so much IV fluid in me. Meagan: I was going to ask. Morgan: Yeah. I got really nervous because I was pumping. He was at a different hospital. After two or three days, I saw my levels go down drastically and I was like, “What is this?” What happened was that the IV fluids had left my system so it was just my natural breastfeeding amount. I was not expecting that drastic change. But once we figured out what that was, that was good. The second thing that was hard was his being in a NICU. Once I was discharged from the hospital, my husband was driving back and forth from the home to the hospital. Luckily we were close enough, but I could only sit. I couldn’t lay in that NICU. I couldn’t lie so there was a little bit of pain there. Once we were ready to get him breastfeeding, we didn’t have a room for us. He was still in the NICU so I was sleeping outside in the guest area, like the waiting room along with other families that were going through things like their kids in cancer and stuff and there was nowhere for the parents to stay so we were all making tents in the waiting room. So that was a little hard for that recovery. Meagan: That is hard. That is really hard. Morgan: Yeah. That part was stressful but once we were all home, it was good. It was good. Meagan: How long was he in the NICU?Morgan: He was there for 11 days. They were worried about brain damage so it was a hypothermic treatment that they put him on. Meagan: Did they put him in a cooler?Morgan: Yep, mhmm. Meagan: Yeah. Well, so grateful that all is well. There must have been something. It’s so hard because my baby kept going breech. My midwife would flip him and then boom, back breech. Flip him, and then boom. Back breech. It was the same thing. I’d feel him and I’m like, “What the heck?” She finally was like, “We have to trust him. There’s a reason. We don’t know why. We don’t understand it, but we have to trust him.” It’s so hard. It’s so hard. Morgan: Yep, yep. Meagan: Because I was like, “If I have to have a third Cesarean because he’s breech, I will be so mad.” But yeah. That’s so hard. Morgan: Right. That’s so true. I think Cooper was telling us, “I’m not supposed to be here if I go this way. Things are going to go bad,” and sure enough, they did. He tried twice but then yeah. Meagan: The third time was too stressful for him. Morgan: It was too stressful. I think possibly that maybe that umbilical cord got bent in a way that no airflow could go through or something. We don’t know. But yeah, thank goodness for that C-section because it brought him back to us. Meagan: Absolutely. Yeah. So then baby number three? Morgan: Yep, baby number three. That was five years later. We’ve had a lot of difficulties with some miscarriages. I didn’t mention before that I’m Active Duty Coast Guard. I also am on the ships all of the time so you have to plan pregnancies around shipboard life. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Morgan: Yeah. There are big time periods between my kids. But baby number three was five years later. I wanted a VBAC from the start. I wanted an unmedicated VBAC. I knew I could do it. After my first pregnancy where I was so close to being unmedicated and my second pregnancy being a C-section, I knew that VBACs were available. I knew that I could do it. I was so adamant about going down that route. With the Coast Guard, you don’t really get to choose. With any military, you don’t really get to choose your provider. Most of the time, we are in a military treatment facility. I was very, very grateful to not be there. I had some negative experiences in both the local MTFs. This was in Washington, D.C. so getting to be with a civilian provider was just amazing to me. I was very happy. We were with the INOVA hospital system at that time. The provider I went to for the first appointment was at 10 weeks. We had a great heartbeat. Everything was going well. I was like, “I’m going to have a VBAC with this child.” He said, “Okay. I am good to go on that.” It was exactly what we were expecting. I would never have expected him to say otherwise at that point. I’m like, “Vaginal birth is clearly the way to go without any sort of condition saying otherwise.”The pregnancy progressed. I guess I should mention that I was 40 at this time. With my second child, Cooper, I was 35 or 36 when I had him so I was in that high-risk stage just for age at that point. So of course, I’m there now at 40 and everything was fine. The pregnancy progressed. Everything was going well. At some point midway through, we were looking at what position the baby was in and she was breech. I was not happy about that and he was like, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Knowing what happened with Cooper, I was not so thrilled. Meagan: You’re like, “I have some trauma on that.” Morgan: I did, yes. At this point, I didn’t go for a chiropractor but I did learn that there was a wonderful acupuncturist in the area that had wonderful success with turning babies so I went to him. It was a 3-hour session and I actually felt her move in the session. It was just amazing. I couldn’t believe it. It was so cool. I’m like, “I feel her moving.” So she did. She turned a whole 180 at that point. He left us with homework. He called it, “Hot hot sticks” where you burn this incense over your pinky toe. Meagan: Bladder 6, yeah. Morgan: My husband would do it and the acupuncturist said, “You don’t take it away when she says, ‘Hot’, you take it away when she’s like, ‘Hot, hot, hot, hot!’” so that’s why she called it hot hot sticks. Meagan: Hey, I have actually seen that work though. The baby flips with those things. It’s called Bladder 6. It’s really cool. Morgan: We did that. He’s like, “You have to do this every day.” We continued to do it. It was great. I mean, I speak wonders about his service in the D.C. area. So that worked. We go back to the doctor and around 30 weeks, he started saying, “Okay, we need to schedule your C-section.” I was like, “Why? No. We don’t need to schedule a C-section.” He goes, “Well, you had one so we just need to schedule it.” I said, “I’m doing a VBAC. We talked about this.” Meagan: Yeah, remember at 10 weeks?Morgan: Right, right. He said, “Well, just in case.” I was like, “Why can’t we just induce? There are many steps between vaginal delivery and a C-section.” Meagan: Yes. Morgan: And scheduling a C-section I should say, right? So he taught me then, “We don’t induce with VBACs. There’s no Pitocin.” Later on in the story, I found out that that’s not exactly accurate. Some doctors will do it but he wouldn’t. That appointment was leading us down the road of research and starting for me to learn more about how to advocate and how ACOG and obstetricians and gynecologists work in their network and what their risk levels are and how important being able to talk to them in their language was. Meagan: Yeah.Morgan: He said, “We’re going to schedule a C-section for 37 weeks.” Meagan: Whoa. 37 weeks?Morgan: I was floored. Yes. I was like, “This isn’t even a full-term baby. No. No, no, no.” He goes, “Well, this is when they do it. It’s just easier. If you want a VBAC, as long as you go into labor before the C-section then we’re good.”Meagan: 37 weeks?! How rare is it that people go into labor? I mean, it happens. We know this but it’s not very common that the body just spontaneously goes into labor before 37 weeks and then we have a baby going into labor at 37 weeks and we’re concerned because before 37 weeks, we’re not full-term. Interesting.Morgan: Exactly. I was like, “No. No, no, no.” I was so upset after that appointment. I was like, “First off, my body would never go into labor before that.” I mean, sure. I’m speaking in exacts. Meagan: Didn’t you say that your first one was 41+5?Morgan: Right, 41+5 for my first. With my second, I had no contractions. I mean, he was transverse, but I had no contractions before 40 weeks so I was like, “There’s no way my kids are coming early. That’s just proven to be wrong for my body so far.”Meagan: Oh my gosh. Morgan: I left that appointment and I was really frustrated with it. I started doing work. I started doing research on where are the risks, what are the risks, and getting myself familiar with it. I started being in that defensive zone where I was having to prove myself. I found your website. I found your blog. I started listening to every single episode. I mean, it just gave me so much knowledge on where to look and what to look out for and the bait-and-switch that you were calling it. I was like, “This is me! This is what’s happening.” So I did. I researched and defenses were up at that point which is unfortunate because you don’t want to be in a defensive situation. Meagan: It is unfortunate, exactly. It’s so hard because again, we’ve talked about this on the podcast. We don’t want to have to walk in with our arms up and be ready to punch. It’s not what we should be doing. We just want it to be a nice, cohesive relationship where the provider is listening and we are listening to the provider because it’s also important for us to listen to the provider. They did go to medical school for a reason but at the same time, we also have to know that sometimes what those providers are saying is maybe skewed based on their own experience or maybe whatever. I don’t know. We’ve had providers tell people that they have a 30% chance of rupturing after one Cesarean. We have to still be aware that there is more information but we should never feel like we always have to have our wall up and our fists ready. It shouldn’t be like that and it’s unfortunate that sometimes it is. Morgan: Right, right. So after that appointment, I had already known I wanted a doula, but I was adamant about getting a doula with this one as well. I found one and she was amazing. She had been a doula for a VBAC before so she had also pointed me toward research and was ready to help me. She really was. She was awesome through this whole event and the whole birth. Time continued to progress. I remember going and taking my older kids to Chuck E. Cheese one day. They were off doing their thing with all of the arcade games and I’m on my phone. I’m listening to a podcast. I’m scrolling through ACOG research and I’m like, “I don’t want just the bulletin. I want the research behind it.” I’m doing all of this on my phone trying to find it all and I found it. I found what I was looking for. It was not just the risk of a VBAC and the risk of a second C-section. It was, “What happens when a person has already had a vaginal birth?” It’s a conditional probability, right? I’m a numbers person. I had already had a vaginal birth. Then it looks up, “What are those risks for a person to have a VBAC and a person to have a C-section?” When a person had already had a vaginal birth, the risks for a uterine rupture and the risk for mortality were actually so far below what the normal risk levels were. They were actually below your first birth. So if you’re a first-time mom and you’re having a first-time vaginal birth and you still have the mortality risk and you still have the uterine risk, my risk was lower than that because I already had a successful vaginal birth. Those were the risk levels he was working on. I was using his research and I was like, “No, no, no. You can’t tell me my risk levels are extraordinarily high when your own research that you are following tells me that I’m actually safer. I’m in a less risky stance now than when I had my first child.” I was even more adamant at that point to go towards a VBAC. I told him, “I will not have a C-section at 37 weeks.” I think it was your podcast that helped me advocate for myself in terms of standing up to a doctor. I have advocated in many other situations like law enforcement, school, or whatever but doctors were a whole new ballgame for me. To be able to say, “This is my right and this is my voice and I get to make this decision,” was a little intimidating before. Meagan: Oh absolutely. Morgan: I learned how to do it. So over the course of 3 or 4 weekly appointments at that point, I had rescheduled and rescheduled and rescheduled until finally, I got him to 41 weeks for a C-section. That was with the threat of going to another provider who I did go see on my own who was willing to induce with a mild amount of Pitocin, was willing to wait until 41+4 for a C-section, and was just on board with the concept. I had gone to see them and the unfortunate part was that they were not in the network so while I could pay a little bit of that bill, I couldn’t pay the what-if part of it. Like what if things go bad and I have to be in the hospital? All of that wouldn’t have been covered. Meagan: Which is so hard. Morgan: That would have been tens of thousands. Meagan: That’s so hard when we are restricted by insurance. Morgan: Yes and I was. Tricare is very restrictive. You don’t get to go choose another doctor just because you don’t like this one on Tricare Prime. You are stuck and I was. I went back to him and said, “I don’t want to be here right now but I can’t be anywhere else. I can walk into an emergency room and have a birth that way.” I was totally fine with doing that so I told him, “This is where I am. I am not happy with your care for me right now. I don’t think that you’re listening to me. I’ve seen another provider that tells me that this is possible and I also know that there is a wonderfully VBAC-friendly hospital in Washington D.C. I will easily drive past yours to go to that emergency room if I need to,” because that’s where I was bound within our insurance needs. He listened. He listened then and he said, “Okay.” So that’s where 41 weeks came. He did, though, say, “I’m not going to give you Pitocin.” I did learn that was his decision. He felt that–Meagan: You have to respect that is his opinion. Yeah. Morgan: Right. He gets to determine what is safe in his mind and he thought a C-section was safe. He did not think that Pitocin was safe. I was like, “Fine. That’s fine.” So we waited. We waited until 41 weeks for a C-section. Through that time period, I continued with the monitoring appointments that they want high-risk women to do. So two times weekly, I was going to the hospital. Not his appointment area, but the hospital where they had a clinic. Meagan: The non-stress tests and stuff?Morgan: Yes. All the non-stress tests. It was the non-stress tests where you have 20 minutes of checking the heartbeat and then always an ultrasound as well where they were checking the amniotic fluid levels. After all of these things got done, it took about an hour and I would meet with the doctor who would go over the information with me. That was one-on-one time. I think there were three or four doctors there doing all of the work. I ended up getting to see this one doctor pretty regularly. She was great at answering my questions so I asked her all of the time, “Where are your numbers for amniotic fluid? You are telling me I have an amniotic fluid level. In my world of work with the Coast Guard, then that means there is a risk level if it goes too high or too low so I want to know where your levels are. If you’re giving me a number on amniotic fluid, what’s the high level and what’s the low level?”They told me. They said that the low level was 5.5. I have no idea what the measures of unit are but I know 5.5. I kept going and kept going. Everything was always perfect. On Friday around 40 weeks, she was starting to get worried about a VBAC. This is again a different doctor. At that point, I had already gotten my membranes stripped once. I was dilated to 1 and I was still up a little higher. So there was no movement. There were no contractions, nothing but everything was still fine. All of the levels were still fine. On that Friday, my amniotic fluid was a 9 so it had dropped, I think, by 2. It was 11 that week and by Friday it was a 9. I had been busy but it was still above the 5.5. Everything was fine. She said, “We should admit you.” I said, “What are you going to do if you admit me?” They couldn’t answer me.Meagan: Because they’re not willing to give you Pitocin so they’re not willing to induce your labor. So what is admitting going to do I guess other than signing up for the Cesarean at that point?Morgan: Right, right. So I was like, “Are you just going to let me sit in a room for days on end until I go into labor naturally?” Meagan: Yeah. Morgan: Is there a time limit for that? She couldn’t answer those questions. So I said, “You know, I’m okay. I’m going to go home.” So we went. We agreed that I would come back on Monday. I would do a lot of drinking water and Gatorade and I would come back in on Monday and see if that changed my amniotic fluid level. So I did. I came back in first thing on Monday and again, everything was fine in terms of how they had prescribed the numbers to me ahead of time. So fetal kick counts, fine. Baby’s heartbeat, fine. The non-stress test and everything there was fine. The amniotic fluid level was at a 7. It had gone back down a little bit further but it was still above the 5.5. At this point, she called in the on-call doctor for my provider’s group which was another female and we said, “Let’s just do another check right here to see if I’m dilated any further.” I was okay with that. So she did. I hadn’t dilated any further but the baby had dropped some at that point. I was happy with that because the baby needs to drop first before you start dilating. That helps it. Meagan: Yep. Morgan: But they didn’t see that as anything. They were only looking at dilation. I said, “I’m good. I don’t feel like I need to be here. Everything is fine.” They said, “Well, you haven’t started dilating further.” I’m like, “Well, it’s not like you dilate 10 centimeters over the course of 10 weeks. That’s not how it works.”Meagan: Nope. Nope. Dilating needs some contractions a lot of the time too. Morgan: Right, right. We’re having this weird conversation where they’re telling me that I’m in trouble and I’m just not seeing it. There’s no urgency in their voice. There’s no actual concern in any of the testing that was happening and again, I’m asking again, “Well, what are you going to do if you admit me today?” They again can’t tell me an answer. So I said, “I’m going to go make a call.”I called my doula and we had a long conversation. At that point, we really thought, “If I had to go back again on Tuesday or Wednesday, it was just going to get worse with them urging me and urging me and how much stress did I want to add on for them to do that?” We were getting close to that 41-week C-section date at that point. So even doing all of the things, right? All of the induction things that you do. You’re pumping and you’re doing the red raspberry leaf tea–Meagan: Walking, yes. Morgan: All of the walking, everything. Nothing had changed, right? I went back to the doctor and I said, “I’m not going to be admitted today. I am going to go home.”We went home and we went to our last resort of induction which was taking the Cytotec, that weird horrible tasting stuff. Meagan: Castor oil?Morgan: Castor oil. Taking castor oil. Cytotec is that horrible drug that induces miscarriage. It was castor oil. So I did two tablespoons of castor oil in a milkshake. It was Ben and Jerry’s peanut butter. I wanted a really strong, intense taste to get rid of the castor oil taste. I told my doctor ahead of time that I was probably going to do that. I wasn’t trying to hide it. Meagan: Yeah, you weren’t sneaking around. Morgan: I did it. That was what I had for dinner that night at 6:30 and at 10:30, I had to go to the bathroom. At 11:30, contractions started. We were home and the kids– both boys were in bed at that point. We were just in labor. I went to the bathroom a few times. At some point, I said, “I really want to be in the bath,” so I went to the bath. I had a nice warm bath and I stayed in the bathtub probably for 45 minutes or so. Then I said, “I need to go to the bathroom again,” and that was when it probably felt like starting to push at that point but we weren’t sure if it was still the remnants of castor oil or if it was literally pushing. Our doula had said, “You’ll probably feel the castor oil effects for that first hour of labor.” We were still in that first hour so I was like, “Okay. Okay.” But Dave, bless him. He saw a change in me that I didn’t see. He saw me get into a more determined working mode in my face. He called my doula and he called my sister. He got everybody in motion. My sister was going to come to watch the boys so that we could get to the hospital when the contractions were around five minutes. My first vaginal birth was 14 hours so that’s what I was expecting. I thought it would be somewhere around 12 hours or so for this one. By the time my doula got there 30 minutes later, I was crawling on the floor. She said, “Let’s just see how you’re doing.” I must have looked like the devil because I said, “We’re going to the hospital,” while I’m crawling. Then I had a contraction while she was right there and she was like, “Whoa. You’re pushing, Morgan.”Meagan: Whoa.Morgan: “We need to go to the hospital. You’re right.” I was like, “Okay, okay. Let’s go.” That was one contraction. In between that next contraction, we got dressed. That contraction happened and then the next one. These are about two to three minutes apart at this point. Meagan: Really close, yeah. Morgan: I’m crawling to the end of my bedroom. I had another contraction at the top of the stairs. After that one was done, I walked down my flight of stairs and I got to the front door. I had another contraction and by then, my doula Bridget said, “You’re not going to make it to the hospital. We have to have this baby here.” “Okay.”Meagan: Oh my gosh. Morgan: Yeah. Dave calls 9-1-1. Fairfax County has an amazing fire system set up so we were expecting them within seconds. They did. They probably got there five minutes later from our call. Meagan: Wow. that’s fantastic. Morgan: They’re really fast but I had already had the baby by then. Meagan: Oh no way!Morgan: Yeah. He was out looking for them to show up and I had the baby one contraction later. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Morgan: Kori comes out. Meagan: So he missed the birth. Morgan: He did. He was outside getting the ambulance and firetruck to come. So Bridget was in there and she’s like, “Morgan, you’re baby’s coming. Catch your baby.” I was like, “Oh.” So I reached down and I was on my hands and knees. I reached down and caught her. She was still fully inside the amniotic sac. Meagan: She was born en caul?Morgan: Yeah.Meagan: Oh, so cool!Morgan: Yeah. There was no water rupturing or anything so she was fully inside her sac. Bridget had said, that’s the doula. She said, “She’s inside your amniotic sac. You need to open that up.” So I remember opening it up and having the water come out around her and fall to the floor. We had gotten some towels down. Then she screams and I just bring her up onto my chest and hold her. She’s bright and pink and everything is fine. I felt wonderful. Meagan: I bet. Morgan: It was such a great experience. There was no scariness to it. I wasn’t worried about being at home. I felt really in control of the entire process. I knew what was happening. I knew my body was working the way it was supposed to work so I wasn’t worried about the pain. There was a lot of pain but it wasn’t like pain. It wasn’t like someone was pinching me. It was intentional work. It really honed me in on what was happening and it was just amazing. I loved every minute of it. I’m holding her on my chest and two minutes later, nine big firemen come running over. I’m naked. I’m naked. I’m breastfeeding because I had taken off my bra at that point. I’m breastfeeding. I’m just sitting there against the coat closet. Meagan: And your husband was probably like, “Uhhh.” Morgan: Dave is right there. He’s right next to me at that point. It has to be nine or so. It was definitely a full firetruck and an ambulance and it was all men. They all walk in and I was mortified. I was like, “Oh my god.” Everything about my toned, intact, powerful, and in-control birth just went out the window. They got me a blanket so I covered up and they were ready to cut the cord. I said, “Let’s just hold. Let’s just hold off for a minute,” and they did. They let me hold off on cutting the cord. Meagan: Beautiful. Morgan: We let all of the blood drain out. I breastfed. I made sure we got that in and then eventually again, Bridget was so good because she kept a really good awareness of everything that was happening in the situation. She said, “You know, you haven’t delivered the placenta yet so we need to go to the hospital.” I was like, “Oh, right.” In the big transition, I had lost my big, powerful, intact mode of doing what I knew I needed to do and I switched to covering up my body and all of that. I wasn’t in the zone.Meagan: Yeah, which is kind of telling if you think about it. When you’re vulnerable like that, you’re like, “I forget that I have this other part of birth that I need to take care of,” because you’re just so protective of yourself. Morgan: Right. Right, yep. So we walked out to the ambulance and I did. I walked out to the ambulance holding her and we got there. We had a 20-minute ride. At some point in that ride, I thought I needed to get the placenta out but I couldn’t. I was by myself. I didn’t know these people. I felt too vulnerable to be able to do it there. Meagan: You didn’t feel safe, yeah. Morgan: We get to the hospital and the ER decides that they don’t need me. I’m not an emergency at this point so they take me up to labor and delivery. The doctor that I had seen earlier, the day before because it was a 24-hour shift, she’s the one that was still on call. She said, “Okay, well we have to get the placenta out.” She was doing this in a very rushed, not pleasant way. She was upset with me because I didn’t listen to her earlier and now I’m coming in on an ambulance. I could tell that she was mad. She said, “We can do this here or we can do it in surgery.” I said, “Well, let’s do it here. I don’t need to go into surgery if I don’t need to. You can give me an IV, put a little Pitocin in me and let’s go. I know that’s how you do that to get the placenta out.” At this point, there’s no issue with uterine rupture because the baby is already out so Pitocin should be fine. But that is not what happened. I said, “Yeah, we’ll do it here.” The next thing you know, she sticks her entire hand all the way into my uterus. I am in so much pain and she rips out the placenta and with it, she ripped open my uterus. Meagan: *Gasps*Morgan: I screamed. It hurt so much. I handed Kori, who is my little girl, over to Dave at that point. Bridget was just floored. She tells me this afterward because I passed out. Meagan: I’m sure you were in shock. Morgan: I must have been. She went over and went out of the room and yelled to get help even though the doctor was in there. There was another doctor that was nearby. It was the anesthesiologist who came in. She said, “No, no, no. We’re not doing this here. We’re going into surgery.” My doula took a picture of my blood pressure or my heart, whatever it is. The blood pressure monitor at the time. I was at 50/20. Meagan: I’m sure your heart rate was through the roof. Morgan: Yeah. It must have been. Meagan: You were in shock. Morgan: It was bad. They took me back to surgery and I did come back when I was in surgery. I remember feeling pain like they were moving my legs all around. I was telling them, “You’re hurting me. You’re hurting me. Get me under. You’re hurting me.” I had five D&Cs at this point in my life so I knew what they were supposed to feel like which is easy. They’re not supposed to hurt at all. I was supposed to be under and I wasn’t. I was telling them, “You’re hurting me.” I remember that it was either the anesthesiologist or the nurse. I couldn’t see who was next to me, but they were saying, “She’s not under. Stop. She’s not under.” So finally, I did get under and I had to have a big blood transfusion because of all of the blood loss that I had. Meagan: Blood loss because of your uterus, yeah. Morgan: They stitched me up–Meagan: Stitched your uterus?Morgan: Yep. Whatever they had to do. I don’t even know what they did but I still have my uterus. It’s still in there. Meagan: Which is great. Morgan: Yes. Yeah. They fixed whatever they needed to fix. That same doctor fixed whatever they needed to fix. I went to recovery. I woke up maybe four or five hours later and it was my doctor that was on call by then. He had said, “You’re lucky you still have your uterus.” I was like, “Well, I shouldn’t have been in that situation to begin with.” I definitely shouldn’t have had a hand go into me the way that it did. 18 hours later, I walked out of that hospital. I went home. I was discharged. I felt fine. The blood transfusion worked wonders. Meagan: Yeah. I’m sure it made you feel better. Morgan: Yeah, and now two years later, I’m allowed to donate blood too so I do regularly because of that. I did before but now I totally recognize that need and do it. But I look back at my birth story and I think about the home birth. I don’t really think about what happened at the hospital too much but I do think about how amazing that home birth was and how wonderful it was to have the people near me that were fully a team. Everyone that was there was there for me and it was an amazing team. It was just an amazing birth. I loved it. I knew I could do that. I knew I could do an unmedicated, vaginal birth and I did. Man, it was awesome. Meagan: An unmediated, vaginal birth en caul too!Morgan: Yeah, yeah. Meagan: Oh man. That is so amazing. What you said, you hold onto the home birth. You hold onto that experience. I think sometimes we have to hold onto those experiences. I had kind of a really wonky experience. I don’t know if I’ve talked much about it. I need to do an episode and talk about my postpartum but after I had my son, my VBAC, my body went into some weird shock too and I kept passing out actually. We don’t really know to this day. I didn’t bleed externally or internally. We don’t really know what happened and it’s been really frustrating to me to know that and it’s there. It’s in my mind just like this hospital experience. Obviously, this insane uterine/placenta issue that shouldn’t have happened like you said is in your mind but then you’re holding on to this over there and that’s what I do. I hold onto my VBAC because I do still wonder what happened or whatever. You’re like, “Yeah, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but I’m holding onto this HBAC technically.” It was an unplanned HBAC. That is sometimes where we have to go. We just have to hold onto the good. We have to hold onto the good because there is so much good that outweighs potentially the bad. Morgan: Right, right. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations. Congratulations. Morgan: Thank you. Meagan: I’m sorry that your husband missed it. Morgan: I know. He did. He walked in right afterward and then my sister came right after the firemen to watch the kids. I mean, it all worked out. It was great. Even the boys got to see her before we went to the hospital. My older son, Zach, was just wonderful. He came over and just connected with her right away. Cooper who was five at the time was like, “Oh, firetrucks!” Meagan: Firetrucks! That’s cool!Morgan: He’s like, “Awesome! Firetrucks. Can I go back to bed?” I was like, “Yep.” It was neat. It was perfect. It was the perfect home birth even as unexpected as it was. It was wonderful. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well congratulations. Congratulations. Morgan: Thank you. Meagan: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about AFI which is the amniotic fluid because you were getting into this space of, “Oh, they’re getting concerned. Oh, let’s admit you. You’re at a 9.” I think you were at a 7 maybe when they were like, “Oh, let’s admit you.” Morgan: They started at 9 on the first day. It was like, “You’re at 9. Let’s admit you.” Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, okay. Morgan: I said, “No.” Meagan: I’m glad my memory is not too far off. Morgan: You’ve got it. Meagan: But yes. Let’s talk about that because something that can happen and it doesn’t always happen but it can happen when we’re doing non-stress tests or things like this very commonly in the end is that they’re paying attention to this AFI. Sometimes that is one of the factors that pushes people to being induced. Not push reluctantly, but it’s the ticket for induction for a lot of providers so let’s talk about it. You love numbers and you talk about 5.5. A lot of providers will even say 5-25. 25 is high so after 25, we’re looking at high fluid which is also another concern for providers if we have too much fluid. But after 24 weeks of pregnancy, it’s most common for them to measure an AFI. They usually don’t pay attention to it before 24 weeks but they sometimes do after. It is normal for it to be anywhere from 5-25. The question is, okay. Say you’re at 6. Say you’re at 7. What do we do? Do we have to induce? No, we don’t. You are proof of that. We do not have to induce. What can we do to help with amniotic fluid? Are there other ways?You mentioned drinking Gatorade and water. Definitely increasing your fluid can make a huge difference. We’ve had a client go in and she was actually at 6, just above 5. She was like, “I just want to go home tonight. I’ll come back tomorrow. Obviously, I’ll come back in if baby’s not very active or anything like that.” She went home and she drank magnesium, like Mag-calm, and a lot of fluids. She went back in and it had gone up. It was just above 7 so not a ton, but it had gone up. They were like, “Oh, okay.” She was like, “I feel good about this.” She kept doing that. She kept going in for non-stress tests and fluid checks. Fortunately, it continued to stay just fine. Then sometimes it doesn’t and we don’t know exactly why, but hydration is super helpful for upping amniotic fluid levels. Salt can help us retain that a little bit. But yeah. And then getting actual IV fluids. Did they ever offer for you to get IV fluids or anything like that?Morgan: No. Wouldn’t that have been helpful? Huh. Yeah, they didn’t. I didn’t even think about it. You’re right. That would have been really helpful. Meagan: Yeah, so sometimes when we’re ingesting through our mouth, we don’t retain the fluid as much but sometimes via IV, we can and it can be really helpful if we’re dehydrated. I’ve been dehydrated before and I’m drinking, I’m drinking, and I’m drinking but it’s not seeming to help then I’ve gotten into Instacare and gotten an IV and it was boom. Night and day, it felt so much better. That can really improve by getting an IV fluid. So you can be like, “Hey, I want to get an IV fluid. I want to get some fluids.” Sometimes, low amniotic fluid can be caused by underlying conditions like high blood pressure or maybe if they’re a diabetic patient. I actually don’t know exactly if gestational diabetes can affect it but I would assume probably. Treating these and checking in with blood sugars and making sure our blood pressure is good can also help our fluid levels and our hydration just by checking in and making sure there aren’t any preexisting things. Then if we have moms that are dropping dramatically by 5 points or whatever, that could be something where we just do bed rest. We just chill. Just don’t do anything to exert our body. And then of course except for eating and going to the bathroom, showering, and taking care of ourselves, we aren’t out and about going to Chuck E. Cheese but that doesn’t mean going to Chuck E. Cheese lowers your amniotic fluid, I’m just saying we are literally doing nothing. That can sometimes help increase amniotic fluid as well and of course, stay hydrated. Then diet. Diet. Getting more lean protein and whole grains and really fresh fruits and vegetables can also– there’s not a ton of really heavy evidence within this but there is some evidence that shows it can impact your amniotic fluids which is kind of crazy. You’re like, “Oh, food.” But hydration and stuff come through food and it gives back to our body. So anyway, there are others out there and everything but those are some tips on how to raise amniotic fluid and help. Like you said, you felt very comfortable, very comfortable where you were at. Morgan: I did. Meagan: Yes. That’s still another leading factor. We always have to check in with our gut. Always, always, always. Morgan says, “Okay. I’m feeling good about this. I’ve done the research. I know the numbers. I’m a numbers gal. I feel good. I feel good about this.” Look what happens, right? But it is hard. I would love to know any opinion that you have or anything that you would like to share because it is really hard. You spoke about it earlier. Having that conversation and where your research started and learning how to advocate for yourself which you did very much so. I mean, it would have been very easy for you to schedule a Cesarean at 37 weeks or it would have been really easy for you to schedule a Cesarean at 39 or 40. But any tips that you have for our listeners to really, truly advocate for themselves? Again, we talked about how we don’t want to go in with our punching gloves. We don’t want to be punching and be combative back and forth but we want to have that really healthy relationship saying, “This is what your practice of obstetricians and gynecologists says. Let’s talk about this. Let’s have this conversation.”Morgan: Yeah. It was a hard conversation. I would say it was not one that ended in one appointment. That actually made it hard too because you’ve got a 30-minute appointment and you have to stop this conversation and start it a week or two weeks later. But every time, I really thought ahead of time. It was not a spur-of-the-moment discussion point for me. It was one that was planned. I wrote down exactly what I wanted to discuss beforehand so that we could really have that conversation and we could get through it in the amount of time that he had available. I do want to still be respectful and respect his schedule. I want to respect the other women that are there that need care as well. I also wanted to hear from him on why he wouldn’t do Pitocin, why he was worried about wanting to be so far in front of 40 weeks, or not wanting to go past 41 weeks. I got the answers to those things. Some of them I agreed with and some of them I didn’t, but really these decisions on pushing the C-section date back to 41 weeks, he ended up being okay with after all of the discussion and me saying, “Look, I don’t care about scheduling. I don’t care if it’s first thing in the morning. You’re assuming that I want to get in on the schedule at 8:00 AM but I don’t. I don’t care about that. If it has to be 3:00 in the afternoon, whatever. I want it to be at 41 weeks. That’s more important to me than an 8:00 AM scheduling of stuff.” I did go to the other doctor and get a second opinion but I had to pay that $300 for that appointment. Meagan: To do that, yeah. Morgan: Right, right. Meagan: I love that you mention how it’s so easy on both parties, on the birthing parents' side and the provider’s side to just assume, “You don’t want to fast all day because when you have a scheduled Cesarean, you have to fast so you want an 8:00 AM Cesarean, don’t you?” But it’s so important to say what you mean and where you’re at so there is no assuming. They know. They know where you’re at. Morgan: Right. Right. Meagan: I mean the same thing with providers. I encourage them to not just assume that the patient wants something but also talk about where they’re at. Like you said, you could have that conversation and be like, “I can see that. I can see that 100%. This is where I’m at,” and then you guys can have that meeting ground. It’s so important. It’s really hard, you guys. It’s really, really hard when you are in that space because we don’t want to go against a medical provider. We don’t want to fight. We don’t want to say, “You’re wrong.” That’s just not the position we ever want to be in but if there’s something that’s deeply in your gut and you’re like, “No. This is not what I’ve found out,” or “No. This is not what I’m okay with,” then have that conversation. I encourage you to have that conversation because that is going to better your relationship with your provider. Morgan: Yeah, absolutely. Meagan: Well, thank you so much. Morgan: Thank you. Meagan: Thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your beautiful story. I’m sorry that happened at the hospital but I’m so glad that you were able to leave pretty quickly and get back to your family at home. Morgan: Yeah, me too. I did not like that. But when I look at everything that happened, it was a wonderful story. I got my baby girl. Our family is complete and I’m just in awe of what a woman’s body can do. Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely. We are true women of strength. Morgan: Absolutely. Meagan: No matter how we birth, we are women of strength. I full-on believe that. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day. Morgan: Thank you. You too. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

When the empowering VBAC experience she envisioned took a hostile and combative turn, Carlise knew she needed to change birth locations immediately. Though signing an AMA was not something she thought she would ever have to do, Carlise found the strength to fight for the birth she deserved. Her thorough research and supportive husband and doula gave her the confidence to not tolerate a doctor’s inappropriate behavior.Meagan shares the pros and cons regarding AMA forms to help you feel educated if you find yourself in a situation similar to Carlise. While it was extremely difficult, leaving that first hospital during labor was ultimately what allowed Carlise to have her beautiful, unmedicated VBAC!Additional LinksCarlise’s InstagramAMA ArticleHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello. You are listening to The VBAC Link and we have another story for you today. We have our friend Carlise and she is from all over the place but she is in Texas currently. This is where you had your VBAC. In Texas?Carlise: Yeah, so both of my pregnancies have been here in El Paso, Texas. Meagan: Perfect. She had a VBAC in Texas and she had a wild journey kind of similar to a month or two ago, I want to say maybe it was Morgan where she had to sign an AMA and leave while in active labor. We are going to talk a little bit about AMAs today as well in addition to her VBAC because it’s something that we don’t talk about a ton. If you don’t know what AMA is, it’s against medical advice. That is a form that we would have to sign to pretty much say that we are leaving against medical advice but sometimes we are put in situations– and I’ll share a story that I’ve been to as a doula– where we feel that we have to sign these AMAs. Review of the WeekIn this situation, you signed the AMA and went on to another hospital and had a VBAC and a different experience. So we’ll talk a little bit about AMAs but first, we have a Review of the Week as always. Just a reminder, if you haven’t left a review, we would love your review. You can leave it on Apple Podcasts or on Google. You can just search for The VBAC Link on Google. You can email us at [email protected] or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We love your reviews. This is from runnervt. It says, “This podcast helped me get my VBAC.” It says, “I started listening to The VBAC Link to process my Cesarean due to breech presentation. It helped so much to hear women put into words all that I had thought and felt. Then I listened to it in preparation for my VBAC. Today, 8/7/22 and there were times I thought that my VBAC was slipping away but I was able to be prepared and get a little lucky and pushed out my 9-pound baby in 48 minutes with no tearing!” It says, “Thank you so much. Talk about the feeling of being superhuman. Thank you so much, Julie and Meagan.”I love that, superhuman. You are all superhumans. Birth is just so wild. Wouldn’t you agree, Carlise? It is such a crazy experience but it is so amazing. It is so beautiful. It is crazy to think about how different births can be. Carlise: 100%. It’s crazy. Meagan: Between one baby to another or say you have five babies and you’re like, “Yeah, this has been the same.” I have a friend who has had her 5th baby. She was like, “Okay. I have had easy peasy births” and all of these things, and her 5th baby was a Cesarean. She was like, “That came out of left field.” It was a whole crazy thing. She was really sick and baby was really tangled in her cord. But yeah. It’s wild. It’s wild to think just how the unexpected can happen so I think it’s so important to listen to stories just like the one that we are going to be sharing today and all of the stories on the podcast so you can get a better grasp and understanding of childbirth, how it looks, the interventions, and all of the things that can happen in childbirth. Sometimes it’s really hard to listen to those Cesarean stories for sure because you’re not wanting another Cesarean or if you’re a first-time mom listening to the podcast which we do have first-time parents listening to the podcast, it’s hard to want to listen to those because it’s not what you’re preparing for or it’s not what you think would ever happen but like 90% of us on this podcast, we didn’t think a Cesarean would happen either so it’s so, so, so important for us to learn all of the ways birth can come at us. We are going to get to your story but I would love to know if you have anything that you would like to add in the beginning of advice to the parents listening. Carlise: I think just doing as much research as you can possibly do and know that you may have some pushback in getting your VBAC or the birth that you want in general. But be confident in that research and also share that with your spouse or your support. Let them know, “Hey, this can happen or these are choices that we might have to make,” so that everybody’s educated and everybody goes in the room knowing what can happen because anything can prep for all of it but you’ve got it and it’ll be fine. Meagan: Yeah. Yep. I love it.Carlise’s StoriesMeagan: Okay. Well, we are going to get into this story but first, I just want to quickly introduce you a little bit more. We talked about how you are in Texas but you are from a small town in Missouri where you met your husband right after high school which is so awesome. You have been married for six years. You’ve lived in Alabama, Germany, and now Texas. You are a stay-at-home-mama providing stability for your girls. You have the two girls. What are their ages?Carlise: My oldest daughter is two and we just had Amelia last month so they are almost exactly two years apart. Meagan: Two years apart. That is so awesome. Your husband is an Active Duty Pilot?Carlise: Yes. He flies Apaches.Meagan: Yes. That’s so awesome. That’s really, really cool. I am so grateful to you for being with us today and I would love to turn the time over to you to share your VBAC story. Carlise: All right. My first pregnancy was super uncomplicated. There weren’t any issues throughout the entire time. We actually got pregnant in Germany and then when we were PCSing or moving back to the States, I was 17 weeks. We didn’t have any issues. Then we got to about 34 weeks and baby was breech. They were like, “No, no. It’s good. It’s good. Baby can flip, whatever.” I’m over here planning my vaginal birth, no problem. I have all this research done and then 35 weeks, still breech. 36 weeks, yep. Still breech. They gave me all of the things. ECV, moxibustion, Spinning Babies, and chiropractic care, but it was right in the middle of COVID so I couldn’t do chiropractic care. I couldn’t do acupuncture. I tried all of the things but she just wanted to be like a little taco. She was my little frank breech baby. We scheduled a C-section for 40 weeks. She wanted to come at 38+4 so we had gone in because I had a very, very slow leak. It was slow enough to where I was like, “Okay. Is this my water? Is it not my water?” Yeah. Sure enough. So when we got in, we had to wait a few hours because I had eaten that morning. We had a pretty uncomplicated C-section. The spinal took multiple different tries so that was horrible. The drain was at my collarbone so I didn’t get skin-to-skin after. All of the medication just made me super foggy and I straight up don’t remember the first two hours of my daughter’s life. I don’t remember latching her for the first time. It’s still really rough because that’s not the experience I wanted at all. Meagan: Right. Carlise: So when I got pregnant again 14 months later, honestly I walked into it a little naive because when I had done my research for my first pregnancy, I knew I wanted that vaginal birth. I had seen information on VBAC a lot actually when I was doing some of my research. I just kept seeing that it was a good thing. It was recommended by ACOG or whatever so I just thought that that was normal. Meagan: You didn’t even question it. You’re like, “Okay, great.”Carlise: I didn’t even think about it. When I was trying to make my appointment on post because we have Tricare Prime and you have to be seen on post. They were like, “Yeah, no. We can’t get you in until you’re 17 weeks pregnant.” I was like, “No. That’s not going to work.” They pushed me into the network off post and that’s actually kind of what I wanted but little did I know, the military hospital is the most VBAC friendly. I didn’t know that at the time. I had chosen an OB that everybody was like, “He’s great. He’s so good.” I was like, “Awesome.” At my first appointment with him, he sounded so supportive. He was like, “Yeah. You sound like a really good candidate.” He looked at my OP report. I was feeling really good about it. Then every consecutive appointment with him, I think I had three legit appointments, he just kept saying, “C-section this. C-section that. Whenever you want to schedule a C-section–” and I’m like, “Yeah. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to be a bait and switch here.” Meagan: Which is a terrible feeling. It’s not a fun feeling when you’re like, “Why is everything switching?” Carlise: Especially when he sounded so supportive, it was so disappointing, and then having to switch at 20 weeks, you’re like, “Okay, great.” Then, the anatomy scan that he did was literally less than five minutes. We both know that is not an anatomy scan. He pointed out major features. He didn’t look at the spine. He didn’t look at the heart. He didn’t look at any of these things. I was just feeling so uncomfortable with my care so I was like, “Yeah, no. I think I’m going to be done.” I was interviewing doulas and my doula had asked where this doctor delivered. I told her. The two hospitals that he delivers at have the highest rate of C-sections in the area as well as really, really bad reputations for episiotomies. Hearing her stories from being a doula at those hospitals was not great. I was like, “Okay, yeah. No, I’m going to switch now.” I talked to her about where she recommended and she’s like, “Honestly, on post. If you can get back on post, that’s going to be the most recommended but if you can’t,” which I wasn’t able to, the university hospital was going to be the second best place to get the VBAC. I switched my care. My pregnancy was super uncomplicated again. At the university, I never saw the same doctor which I really didn’t want but I was just like, “Whatever. I’m going to do this whether or not I have a supportive provider, so it’s good. You’re just here to give me prenatal care.” They were definitely more tolerant than fully supportive. They kept saying at every single appointment, “You’re going to get an epidural, right? You’re going to get an epidural.” I was like, “No.” They’re like, “Okay, well it’s just in case.” I hear that a lot.  But no, I’m planning on going unmedicated. They just kind of left it. Then we got to about 38 weeks and my doula had called me. She’s like, “Hey, I just had a horrible experience at UMC. The nurses were really pushing back at everything that this first-time mom had wanted.” They didn’t treat her well and it just sounded super, super iffy. She’s like, “We can obviously still go. I just want you to be prepared that it might be something that we could encounter.” The whole time, I was like, “I just want to go to the military hospital.” I had my daughter there. I was really comfortable with the staff. I really liked their care. So I was like, “You know what? We’re just going to go to the military hospital in labor.” She was like, “Okay, cool. Sounds good.” So that’s what we ended up trying. One day before 40 weeks, I went into labor super early in the morning. It was 1:30 in the morning. They were very odd contractions. It was like a rollercoaster for 24 hours. They started at ten minutes apart and then six but they would bounce around. They weren’t consistent at all. That just happened forever. I was just like, “I just want to be done.”Meagan: You’re like, “I’m tired.” Carlise: I was so tired. I was trying all of the things like the Miles circuit and curb walking, playing with my daughter, and trying to rest. Nothing was working. My doula was like, “Do you think it’s a mental block? Do you think there’s something?” I was like, “No, I feel good. The TENS unit is amazing.” I baked a cake while I was in labor. I was just like, “I don’t understand.” She’s like, “You’ve got this. It’s fine. It’s going to progress. Just try to rest as much as you can.” Then it was at 40 weeks at 1:30 in the morning that we started progressing a lot quicker. I was at 6 centimeters and I was like, “Yeah, I’m going to call the doula.” My husband ended up calling and while he was on the phone with her, they were just getting really, really intense. He was like, “Yeah. I think we’re ready for you to come.” She started making her way. It was about a 45-minute drive. At about halfway for her, she calls and she’s like, “You know, Carli sounded like she was ready to go. Is she progressing?” Doug was like, “Yeah. It’s getting serious.” She’s like, “Okay. Let’s just meet at the military hospital. Let’s meet there. I’ll meet you at the parking lot.” We go ahead and make our way over there. It’s about a 15-minute drive so it’s not too bad. She gets there at the exact same time that we do. The doula had also let the hospital know that we were on our way. They were already expecting us. When we got to the L&D, the nurses took me back. They did all of the normal blood pressure. They hooked me up to the monitors. They asked me why I had decided to go to the military hospital in labor. I gave them my whole explanation and they were like, “Yeah. Okay, sounds good.” They were super nice and very supportive. I had also taken all of my labs with me, the GBS strep results, and all of the things as well as printed out my post-OP report for them to have as quick and easy access. Meagan: Which as a side note is always good to have even if you’re not planning on going to another hospital because you never know if a precipitous labor happens or anything but it’s really nice and usually providers enjoy having that. It brings comfort. Carlise: Yes so that’s why we brought it. They also had seen that I had been in triage two weeks before because my daughter wasn’t moving as much. I decided to go there so that way they could check the baby and also have me in the system already. I had talked to a doctor as well about coming there in labor. They asked me all of the things like if I knew the risks and benefits of VBAC, just took some medical history, and were very supportive. They were like, “Yeah, absolutely. We don’t mind you coming here in labor at all.” I felt so confident. I felt so confident going in. The nurses had been like, “Okay, cool. Sounds good. Are you wanting an epidural? Are you wanting an IV?” I was like, “No. I don’t want an epidural. I just want a heplock. I’ve been able to keep down fluids and everything so I’m not having any issues with that. I just want a heplock.” They were like, “Cool.” So very supportive and nice nurses.They were like, “Okay. We’re going to get your support.” They went and got my doula and my husband and then they did a cervical check. At this point, my contractions were three minutes apart and very consistent. When they checked me, I was at 4 centimeters, 90% effaced, and -1 station. Baby was still up there a little bit. They also noticed some decels on the monitor. I was on my back and I was so incredibly uncomfortable. My daughter did not want me on my back. Every time I was on my back, it was awful. We had asked the nurses if that was a possibility and they were like, “Yes, but you bought your ticket for admission because of those decels.” We’re like, “Okay, no problem.” We were expecting to get admitted anyways. So then the nurses were like, “Okay, we’re going to get the doctor but I want you to know that he’s very military.” My husband, my doula, and I are looking at each other and we’re like, “Hmm. That’s a weird way to describe a doctor. Okay.”We were just expecting very blunt and very upfront. While we were waiting, I was just so uncomfortable so I got up beside the bed by the nurses’ station and was just rocking. I was having a really hard time with my contractions at this point. My doula came up behind me and gave me hip compressions. Then the doctor comes in. He doesn’t introduce himself. He’s not like, “Hi, how are you guys doing?” Literally nothing. He goes over to the doula and just goes, “And who are you?” The doula introduces herself and he’s just going on and on about how she’s in the way. He’s yelling at her like, “You’re in my way. You can’t be in my way. You can’t be in front of medical equipment.” She’s just helping me with a contraction so he’s not even recognizing or caring at all that I’m having contractions and that I’m in pain and she’s trying to help me. He’s just more concerned that she’s in the way. So then she moves beside the bed and he looks at her and goes, “After the exam, we’re going to have a chat.” We’re like, “What is with this dude? Why is he being so aggressive?” So then the first thing that he says to me again just in a very disrespectful tone is, “Why are you here?” I’m like, “What a weird question to ask someone in labor.” I was like, “I’m in labor.” He goes, “No. Why are you at this facility when none of your prenatal care has been here at all?” The nurse was trying to tell him because again, I’m having contractions pretty often but no. He wanted all of the answers from me. He was just being so aggressive and I told him the whole explanation that I had already told the nurses. I also mentioned, “You’re being really, really combative. You’re making me uncomfortable.” He’s like, “You know, I’m not trying to. That’s not my intention, but you need to understand the position that you’re putting me and this hospital in by changing your care at 40 weeks.” I was like, “Okay. I’m sorry, but I’m already here.” He just goes on for 30 minutes about how we’re putting him in a precarious position and we need to understand this. We need to understand that. We don’t have your records. I was like, “Dude, I brought you all of my labs. I brought you my post-op. What else do you want? What else do you need?” Again, he just keeps going on and on. Eventually, my husband was just like, “Okay, man. What do you need from us? Do I need to go to the other hospital and get your records? Can you request the records or can we just move on because we are getting nowhere?” The doctor was just like, “You need to understand.” I was just like, “Dude, we get it. We understand.” After that, he was like, “Okay, well I need to see if you are intact” which is a very weird way to say that he needs to check my waters. For some reason, I just had the fog. I knew that it was a swab. My doula was like, “It’s okay. It’s just a swab. They’re just going to swab you to see if your water broke. It’s not a big deal.” The nurses are like, “We’re pretty sure that her water hasn’t broken yet.” He’s like, “No. I need to check myself.” So they’re prepping the swab and then my doula hears him ask the nurse for lubricant. I could have sworn that he said something about a speculum but I’m not sure about that. My doula was like, “Hey, Carli. Do you consent to a cervical exam?” I was like, “Wait, no. No, no. I do not consent. I just had one not even ten minutes ago. So, no.” So then the doctor starts yelling at the doula again and saying, “Stop. You don’t give medical advice.” Then I’m having a contraction and he’s accusing her of making medical decisions, of moving me before the doctor came in the room, but he didn’t like that I was beside the bed standing up. He thought that she did that. So then after the contraction, I was like, “Dude, no. She’s only acting on my behalf when I have asked her to do something. You really need to back off. No. I do not consent to a cervical exam.” So then he explains why he wants to do a medical exam. Meagan: Again, you had just had one not long ago. Carlise: Right, exactly. Meagan: A little backstory, guys. I was reading this story on social media and I remember when I was reading this, I was like, “Why? Why? Why?” Every time, in my head, I’m like, “Why do we need to do this? Why do we need to do this? They just did this.” I was putting myself in your situation. Carlise: It was so aggravating. The fact that he was prepping the cervical check without talking to me first. The doula had to mention it. You’re like, “Okay, that’s a super big red flag. Thank you for letting me know,” because if she wasn’t there, my husband would have no idea. So he explains why he wants to do a cervical check again and I’m like, “No. I don’t want a cervical check.” So then he goes and sits down, stops prepping any exam at all, and he’s like, “I’m a really good doctor but I need to be able to do my job.” I’m like, “Dude. I already said that you could do the swab to check my water. I’m not refusing your care. I just don’t want a cervical exam.” He’s like, “No. You’re refusing my care. I have to do both in order to–”Meagan: Make an assessment. Carlise: Make a decision. I was like, “Okay. I’m really uncomfortable with your insistence here. I want a new doctor. You’re not listening to me. You don’t seem to care that I’m having contractions every three minutes. I want a new doctor.” He goes, “There isn’t one.” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah. I’m it.” So then the doula was like, “Okay. There has to be somebody on call. Can you go ahead and call them in?” So then he says, “Stop” again to her and says, “I do not engage with you.” I was like, “Okay. I’m going to repeat the question. Can you call the person who’s on call please?” He was like, “No, there isn’t anybody on call. It’s just me. The next provider doesn’t get in until 8:00 AM.” At this point, it’s around 4:00ish. I was like, “Okay. Can I just labor with the nurses? Because you’re not touching me.” Meagan: And the nurses were being so great. Carlise: They kept trying to interject and answer questions for me but he wanted the answers from me. At that point, I was like, “Okay, dude. Just get out. Everybody needs to leave. I need to talk to my doula and my husband.” They go ahead and leave. I’m like, “Okay. I don’t know what to do.” I’m freaking out. My doula was like, “It’s okay. You’re fine. We can stay here and deal with this dude. We can go ahead and just leave and go home. Your contractions are probably going to slow down since we’re dealing with this or we can go straight to the other hospital.” I was like, “Okay. Let’s definitely just leave. I’m done.” We told him that we were leaving and he just seemed shocked. Meagan: I’m sure. Carlise: Just completely shocked. I was just like, “No. We’re leaving.” So then they were like, “You have to sign out AMA then.” I was like, “Cool. I’ll go ahead and do that. You’re not touching me.” We went ahead and signed the paper. As we were walking out, I’m having to stop every minute. The doula is like, “Okay. Yeah. We’ve got to go straight to the hospital.” We ended up, and in mind fog, I was like, “I forgot my birth plan so we’re going to run home real fast. I’m going to get my birth plan.” That turned into an F-1 pitstop because I’m over here with really, really low sounding and having a rough time. Doug, my husband, is also freaking out. He’s like, “We’re going to have a car baby.” Meagan: Oh yeah, I’m sure. Carlise: He’s just panicking. So he’s speeding on the way to the other hospital. We get there and I had never gone through that entrance before. I had always gone in a different one on the back because my prenatal care was with Texas Tech and UMC, they’re right next to each other. So I always went into a different entrance. So the entrance that we went into, I had no idea where to go. I’m over here. I swear I’m about to push and we don’t know where to go. This super nice lady who was coming into work was like, “Do you guys need a wheelchair?” Doug was going to say no! I’m like, “Yes. Yes, I do.” So she gets a wheelchair. She brings us up to triage. As soon as we get up there and there was a trash can right next to the elevator. I’m just throwing up right next to the elevator. They’re trying to get Doug to fill out paperwork and have me sign things. I’m just kind of dying. Then I needed to go to the bathroom. I didn’t need to push. I just needed to go to the bathroom. I go in there and my water breaks. My plug comes out. So then I’m just gripping the walls. I’m just blinded here by my contractions. So they get me into a triage bed and they’re like, “Oh yeah. Yep. Mhmm. She is ready to go. She is fully dilated. Baby is definitely ready.” The doula is over here like, “Okay, yeah. We need to switch her bed too.” So they switched me into a labor and delivery room. She’s calling all of the shots here because the lights were so bright. I’m over here like, “Oh man.” So she’s like, “Okay, those lights need to be dimmed. We need to take this gown off of her.” She was taking off my TENS unit. They’re trying to put on monitors and I’m promptly trying to take them off so just being very unhelpful which I did not care about. So then they were trying to get the monitor on to check the baby. I was on my hands and knees which they did not want me on. I did not care. The doula is trying to help so she had reclined the bed so that I could lean over it so that way they could get the monitors on. That actually ended up working super, super well. Then I was feeling the need to push. Then I was just really self-conscious because I was feeling like I needed to poop. I was just like, “Oh no. This is horrible.” She’s like, “No, that’s normal. It’s fine.” I was like, “No, I actually think I need to go.” So she’s like, “It’s fine. They’re going to catch it. Don’t even worry about it. Just focus on the baby right now. You’re okay.” She snapped me out of it. I was like, “Okay, we’ve got this.”I was pushing and they were like, “No, no, no, no. The doctor’s not in. Don’t push. Don’t push yet.” I was like, “I’m not not pushing so y’all need to figure it out.” So then the doula’s over here like, “She’s crowning. Baby’s crowning right now.” Then they’re just rushing in and I could feel the ring of fire. I was like, “Okay. I need to pause for just a minute,” because I could feel if I kept going that I was going to tear up. I honestly loved that I could feel that versus having an epidural and not being able to feel that. Within another couple of pushes, baby was out and I didn’t have any tearing. I didn’t have any issues at all whatsoever. I did not get the Pitocin for the delivery of the placenta and I didn’t have the IV. I didn’t have anything, just honestly the most natural birth except for the hospital situation. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. But no interventions other than maybe a cervical exam here and there. Carlise: Exactly. It went super well honestly overall and I was so proud of myself because I was just like, “I did that and I was able to advocate for myself.” My doula was amazing. My husband was very supportive even though he was freaking out. Meagan: Oh I’m sure. Yeah. Carlise: He told his dad. He’s like, “It was super, super intense. The last couple of pushes, she sounded like a banshee and then baby was out.” I was like, “Wow, babe. Thank you. Thanks. That’s super sweet of you.” The nurses afterward kept coming in and they were like, “Okay, we need to drain your IV and we need to check your stitches.” I’m over here like, “No guys, I don’t have any of that.” They’re like, “Wow, okay. You’re the easy patient.” That birth, I was able to feel her before she came out. That was amazing. She got right on my chest. Delivering the placenta was super easy. I love that I can remember it and I’m proud of myself. The first thing that I said after birth was very colorful which definitely included, “F that doctor” which we then had to be like, “No, no. Not you, ma’am. Sorry.”Meagan: Yeah, yeah. I can relate to that one because that’s what I said. I said, “Screw you,” and then I named the doctor. Take that. Carlise: Mhmm. I was just amazed and then everybody that I tell when I’m like, “Yeah. I left the hospital at one-minute contractions,” and they’re like, “Oh, no.” I was like, “Yeah, no. I would rather have had a car baby legitimately–”Meagan: –than to go there. Carlise: Absolutely not. I was so disappointed and the fact is that’s what we encountered. We put in all of the complaints that we could possibly put in and I’m still waiting on the head of OB to contact me but the doula had a really, really good meeting actually with the head of OB, a lot of the staff, the provost marshall apparently was in there as well. Meagan: Wow. How did she connect? How did she go about doing that? Carlise: Apparently, with doulas, there is a different system for them. I’m not entirely sure but there are different routes that they can go because they are professional birth workers. She had contacted the head of OB and then the head of OB was like, “Okay, this is really serious.” So I think they just coordinated together. The end of that resulted in a giant meeting with all of the OBs to basically educate them on what to do when a doula comes in. Meagan: Oh wow!Carlise: And that doctor that we encountered has to go to those meetings. My doula’s teaching it. It’s a class. I was like, “Yeah man. You’re going to deal with that.” Meagan: That’s actually really cool to help that space be a little bit more collaborative because I feel like we are a little spoiled here in Utah. People are like, “How do the doctors treat you and handle things when you are in there?” Usually nine times out of ten, it’s very friendly and it’s not hostile like that but if it were, I think that we would probably want to be doing something like that as well and say, “Hey, we are all here for this patient. We are all one team here. We’re not here to be combative and create trauma emotionally.” That’s really cool. That’s really awesome. Good for your doula. Carlise: Yeah. I was so proud of her, especially being yelled at by a doctor. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Carlise: She’s trying to advocate for me as much as she can but she also doesn’t want security called on her so she was having to find a balance between that. Meagan: And she doesn’t want to make it any worse for you. Carlise: Exactly. That was super, super odd. The fact that I meant to mention it in my story, but he had been quizzing me over VBAC facts, then he was telling me that I was wrong. I was just like, “What?” and just freaking out. She just helped me so much. I’m a huge advocate for doulas and having one and I 100% recommend anybody to have one for sure. My husband would have had just no idea exactly how to advocate for me in the way that my doula had. It was great. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there are so many benefits of doulas but just like we were saying, she helped him too. She helped him through this process I’m sure to feel more comfortable and at ease with the things that were taking place. Even that alone whether you had a lot of help with counterpressure and stuff like that but being able to have a sounding board and someone there that you feel is on your team and it’s not you two against one person. I’m sure that brought so much comfort to him. Carlise: 100%. The fact that the doula had also done some childbirth education with him so that he knew how baby comes out and the different stages as well. Meagan: Yes and then when you have a provider questioning the facts around VBAC and you’re saying this and then they’re saying no or they’re shutting you down or they’re giving you false percentages which I know is a thing, that can be really, really scary if a partner is not educated or doesn’t know ahead of time. So that’s another really great pro of doulas is that they usually meet with you before, counsel, and go over all of those stats. I remember the feeling. I literally was on the treadmill walking, trying to pass the time because I hate the treadmill, reading your story and I’m like, “Oh my gosh. This is just so intense. It’s so intense.” Carlise: It was nuts. When I was trying to prep my husband for the VBAC, I’m pretty sure he just got really annoyed by me listening to this podcast all of the time. I’d be like, “Babe, you should have heard this from this mom.” He’s just like, “Ugh, I can’t wait until you’ve had the baby because I’m so done hearing about all of these VBACs all of the time and all of these stories.” But then honestly, it prepared him. I was like, “Babe, this can happen,” so when we were facing this doctor, he wasn’t second-guessing me at all. When I told the doctor the different things that I knew about VBAC because he wanted to make sure that I knew, Doug was like, “No. She definitely knows the stuff. She could spout this off normally.” He was confident. That made me more confident and with my doula being there, it helped a lot. Meagan: That makes me smile. I love it. Now you can be like, “Yeah, now I’m one of those people on the podcast.” Carlise: Mhmm, yeah. He was like, “I get to hear this story for the 35th time.” Meagan: I love it. Carlise: I was like, “Last time, babe. Last time.” Meagan: Last time. Maybe, maybe not. You’ll be sharing it for years. You’ll be sharing it for years. Carlise: Exactly. Meagan: Well I want to talk a little bit about the AMA, the Against Medical Advice form. It is one that like I said, maybe I’m crazy. It might have been a year ago actually that we talked about. It’s not one that happens often or that people maybe even know exists. I just want to give a little side note. It’s not something I suggest always doing like, “I’m just going to sign this AMA.” Against Medical Advice forms are taken pretty seriously but when you are in a combative, hostile environment, an AMA may be something that can get you out of that experience. I, as a doula, was at a birth where a mom chose to sign an AMA. From a doula’s standpoint, it was really interesting. I was like, “I would have totally done that too as a mom.” We were very much in labor. It was very clear that we were in labor but the toco, the monitor, wasn’t picking up the contractions. This doctor comes in very rudely and says, “You’re not even contracting. I don’t even understand why you’re here.” She looks at me and her husband. She’s like, “I’m contracting, right?” We’re like, “Yeah, you’re contracting. You’re doing really great.” They’re like, “We’re probably just going to send you home anyways so we can just sit here and wait,” and just was very rude, questioning her, and pretty much saying that she was not even in labor and that she was over the top. Carlise: Oh, lovely. Meagan: This one doctor that came in was like, “You are just highly sensitive and being overdramatic. Maybe you should learn how to cope better because you’re not even contracting yet,” and just talking down and being very rude. She’s vomiting. She’s shaking. She is clearly laboring. They leave and she turns to us and says, “What other hospital takes my insurance?” As a doula, I wasn’t expecting that but at the same time, I should have expected that because of how rude they were to her. I said, “Well, this hospital and this hospital.” She rips out her IV because they had given her an IV for fluids for vomiting. She ripped it off, was holding her arm, and was like, “Let’s go!”Carlise: That’s intense. Meagan: I was like, “What?!” She was literally holding her arm and she was like, “I am done.” Her husband was like, “Me too.” They were getting her dressed and as a doula, I’m like, “Okay. I go where you go.” Carlise: Man, all right. We’re doing this now. Okay. Meagan: She’s walking out and they’re like, “What are you doing? What are you doing?” They’re freaking out and she’s like, “I’m leaving. I am going somewhere else to have my baby. You said that you were going to send me home anyways so I am going home.” They were like, “We’ll have to have you sign an AMA.” She was like, “Where do I sign?” They were like, “Oh, but your insurance won’t cover this.” Carlise: Mhmm, yeah. Okay. Meagan: She was like, “I don’t care. I’m signing this AMA.” We went. We were 6.5-7 centimeters when we got to the hospital and had a baby a couple of hours later. Dad caught the baby. It was a beautiful, beautiful experience. So AMA, what does that mean? It’s really leaving the hospital without the physician’s advice before they decide to discharge you. It says right here in a NCBI which we will make sure that this is in the show notes today if you want to read a little bit more. But it says, “Leaving a hospital against a physician’s advice may expose the patient to risk of an inadequately treated medical problem and result in the need for readmission.” That is important to remember, that we as parents know that. We are signing this form and we are saying, “We assume the risk of us leaving because we are leaving against your advice,” but I also think it’s important for us to know and follow our mom's gut to be like, “I’m just going to have this baby and do this.”Carlise: 100%. Meagan: You have to think about it. If you are in an AMA situation, you want to really think about it. You want to weigh out the pros and cons and you want to be educated. If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re definitely starting your education because as you mentioned, you learn along all of these stories. But it’s a big thing. The article says, “The problem with AMA discharge is the prevalence of risk and costs. It can formulate recommendations of managing and preventing them on the basis of available evidence.” That’s so hard because they can say, “Well, this happened because you left,” or even the cost of insurance. They can say, “Oh, well we won’t do this because you left against our advice.” So it’s important to definitely learn more about an AMA and why you would sign an AMA but know that an AMA exists because if you are in a hostile environment, it’s probably not a healthy one. Carlise: Right and that was my thing too. I didn’t feel safe with this care provider and then being told, “No, there isn’t another provider,” I feel like there are going to be so many more interventions and so many things that are going to be done without my consenting because obviously, they already tried to do that once. I would rather sign an AMA and leave than to have you touch me and cause issues that shouldn’t have been caused at all. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think it’s important to know that it exists and then know the pros and cons. It’s just one of those other things. Know the pros and cons of signing an AMA or what that entails and then having that backup plan. But just know that it exists because for the client of mine, she was like, “I couldn’t have stayed there. I was feeling so anxious. I was feeling so triggered and traumatized by what they were doing and what they were saying to me.”She said, “The second I walked into this new hospital, I just truly felt 100% at ease. 100% at ease.” So yeah. It’s so important to feel that comfort, know your options, and look at you. You did! You went and you had an unmedicated, no-intervention VBAC. Carlise: Yeah. Honestly, it’s been amazing. The recovery has been fantastic and I am so proud of me and every mama who has had a VBAC and had to fight for it. That’s just awesome. Meagan: You should be so proud of yourself. Congratulations. Thank you for coming on and sharing this story. I also want to end with a preface by saying that sharing this story is not to bash an OB or anything like that. Carlise: 100%. Meagan: It’s not anything like that because OBs are great. I’m sure he was caught off guard. He had his stuff but at the same time very much acted in a very unprofessional way. Carlise: Absolutely. Meagan: It’s important to know all sides of things. Carlise: 100%. Absolutely. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Brittany’s first C-section came after a long and exhausting pushing phase with no progress. Her second C-section came after providers gave her a 50/50 chance of VBAC success due to the VBAC calculator. Brittany chose a repeat Cesarean for the comfort of a controlled environment following multiple traumatic pregnancy losses beforehand. She did not expect another horrible recovery with an elective Cesarean, but it was even worse than the first. Brittany immediately began devouring all information about VBAC after two Cesareans even before her third pregnancy. When she became pregnant, she found an extremely supportive provider 2.5 hours away which proved to be the best decision she could have made. Her VBA2C was everything she hoped it would be– raw, difficult, beautiful, redemptive, and empowering. Right after that birth, she wanted to do it all again! Additional LinksBrittany’s InstagramHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: You are listening to The VBAC Link Podcast and this is your host, Meagan. I am always honored to be on this podcast with you. I love the listeners. I love the storytellers. I love the reviewers. We just love everything about this community and I am excited to bring a VBA2C– I’m not even going to be bringing it actually. Our friend Brittany is going to be bringing it. We are having a VBAC after two Cesareans story. Our most requested podcast topic is VBAC after multiple Cesareans, specifically two. We know how hard it is to find providers to support a VBAC after multiple Cesareans even though ACOG themselves says that VBAC after two Cesareans is totally acceptable and reasonable to go for. It’s really hard and it’s frustrating. I know as a VBA2C mom myself that it’s so frustrating. It’s so frustrating, right Brittany, to feel total defeat over and over again, being told that you cannot, you should not, and being filled with horror stories. I mean, all of the things. It’s so frustrating and this is why we are here. We are sharing these stories. We are letting you know that you can. It is possible. It might not be easy along the way and you’re going to hear today in Brittany’s story that it’s not easy but it is possible. So we have our friend Brittany like I mentioned. She is from southern Minnesota. She has been through quite the journey which she is going to share with you. If you want to know what some takeaways will be from this episode, one thing is finding that supportive provider just like we were talking about. It’s so important. It’s so key but we know that it can be challenging being rejected multiple times and being told no, and then not finding a supportive provider until the very end of pregnancy. You guys, this is something that I want you to know. If you are not feeling like you are being supported, if you are feeling or seeing the red flags, if something in your gut does not feel right, you are not stuck. You do not have to stay with any provider because they saw you for 34 weeks, 28 weeks, 40 weeks, 41 weeks, or even 42 weeks. You are not stuck. You can change. It’s not always easy and we understand that, but you always have options to change. You can fire a provider at the very moment. We don’t necessarily encourage you to fire your providers. I don’t want to make it sound like, “Fire your provider!” but you can. If it’s not feeling right, if it’s not a good mix, you can say, “I would like to request a new provider at this time,” or you can start finding it through so many amazing resources like right here at The VBAC Link. Women of strength, if you are looking for a provider, write us. Go join our VBAC Link Community. We have a whole list of providers on there that have been known as supportive. I can’t tell you. I’m just here in Utah. I’ve not met all of these providers. I’ve not talked to them. I’ve not interviewed them. These are providers that are being suggested by our other women of strength who have truly gone through this experience and believe them to be VBAC supportive. Their names are being compiled on this list for you all over the world not just here in the U.S. as guidance for you to help you find a supportive provider. So go to The VBAC Link Community on Facebook, answer the questions, and go check it out. And if you are listening today to this episode, please PM us on Instagram, Facebook, or [email protected]. Tell us who your supportive providers are. If they are not on the list, we want to get them on. If you are a supportive provider listening, we want you on this list. It is so important and we as VBAC moms ourselves, and Brittany, I am sure you will attest to this. It is so important to have that provider on your side. It is so important. Review of the WeekOkay, I will jump off my soapbox and we will get to our Review of the Week so cute Brittany can share her stories. This is actually on our How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents. Parents, if you didn’t know, we actually have a VBAC prep course for you. It’s filled with information on the history of Cesarean, the history of VBAC, the pros and cons, how to VBAC, and how to find these supportive providers. We will provide you with a lot of printables and things to take along with you on your journey to make sure that you’ve got the perfect team and that you feel confident in the birthing choice that you are choosing. This says, “This course was so helpful, especially with helping to educate my husband on the safety of VBACs. As he had previously been nervous about my choice, we watched all of the videos already and will also be reviewing the workbook again before birth. Highly recommended.” Thank you, Heather, for sharing that review. Yes, just like she said, this course is amazing. We have reading material and then we have a workbook that you can follow along. You can either download it or purchase a workbook to go along with it. We encourage your birthing partners to take this course with you because it is important for them to know this information. So check it out at thevbaclink.com if you haven’t already and we will see you on the other side. Brittany’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Brittany. Brittany: Yes. Meagan: Thank you so much for taking the time today to share these stories. Like I said, we get emails and messages on Instagram and Facebook in our inbox saying, “Please share more VBAC after multiple Cesarean stories,” because there are times when we go in and we have an unplanned Cesarean and then sometimes we get coerced or we feel that it’s best to choose another one, but then we start learning more and we want a different experience. We know how hard that is. I welcome you and let’s turn the time over to you. Brittany: Absolutely. I am honored to be here. I am very excited to share my story. I know am a mama to three babies. I’m going to share a little bit about my C-sections before I move on to my vaginal birth. I found out I was pregnant with my first son in 2016. I’m sorry. I had him in 2016. I was actually newly sober. I’m a person in recovery so I was very new to a lot of things in life. I was going to be a single mom and I also was sober so a lot of big changes were going on at that time. I was very uneducated about birth, being a new mom, and everything at that time. I was going through so much at the time obviously and then I was nine days overdue which we know truly isn’t overdue but that’s what they say. At that point, I just wanted to have him. I was not educated about interventions or anything like that so I just went with the punches. Whatever the providers and team wanted, that’s what I did. I also knew as much as possible, I didn’t want as many pain meds as possible just because of my recovery from substances and I really liked narcotics so I knew that I didn’t want to go down that slippery slope. I allowed them to induce me with two doses of Cytotec. It started working but then they wanted to break my water and I allowed them because I truly didn’t know better or have any information on that. I got an epidural super early even though I think I panicked more than anything. I didn’t want to have pain so I just got it not knowing that I was going to have a long labor and being stuck in bed wasn’t going to do me any favors. After laying in bed basically for 24 hours, I pushed for two hours. He was not descending. At that point, I was truly done. I was exhausted. I had been up for two days being induced, so we decided on a C-section. He was sunny-side up so that’s what made it more difficult for him to come down which made sense. So he was here. Recovery was rough. I’ll talk about that a little bit more later. Fast forward to some time in 2017, I went into the ER. They couldn’t really figure out what was going on with me. I really wasn’t feeling well. Long story short, I actually had an ectopic pregnancy. I was on the IUD at the time so I had no idea that I was even pregnant. It was very traumatic. I went from not knowing I was pregnant then they had to take the baby out. I actually lost one of my tubes at the same time. I had to have lifesaving emergency surgery. I was in the hospital for five days and they couldn’t do it laparoscopically. They did have to cut me all the way open and take everything out. So that was very traumatic and a very big loss. Then I met the man that I eventually married in 2018. We experienced an early miscarriage in 2018 as well so another loss. In 2019, we found in late 2018 going into 2019 that we were pregnant with our rainbow baby. At that point, I was very unsure of what I wanted for my birth. I knew how terrible my C-section experience was but I was also terrified of laboring for that long and then ending up with another C-section again. I trusted my doctors. I was listening to them. Of course, they did the VBAC calculator and at that time, they told me I had a 50/50 chance. Being that he never descended, they said, “It’s up to you what you want to do” and I had lost two babies. I just wanted a baby here safe so I was like, “You know what? 50/50. Let’s just go with the C-section.” I was hoping that not having that long labor beforehand would really help with my recovery. I just wanted my baby here safely too. With it being my rainbow baby, I just wanted my baby here. Meagan: Absolutely. Brittany: Yeah. My C-section, the surgery itself went fine with my second son but it was an even worse recovery. I had a severe reaction from the adhesive tape that was on my belly. I broke out completely all over my whole body.  Meagan: Oh man. Brittany: I had shoulder pain and I have high blood pressure so it was very scary to have shoulder pain. It was very scary because I instantly thought of heart problems. It was just shoulder pain from the C-section.Meagan: It’s usually air actually crazy enough. Air gets trapped. I had that too. I was like, “What is happening? Is this my milk?” They were like, “No, it’s air.” Getting up and walking can really help but it can sometimes get trapped up in that shoulder or even the rib area. Brittany: Yeah, so strange. I was so sick and throwing up for 36 hours. Meagan: Oh, and with a new incision. Brittany: And then I was dehydrated and blacking out from that. It was just an absolute, awful mess. Basically immediately after he was born, I began researching vaginal birth after two C-sections because I knew I never wanted to do that again and I knew we were not done having babies. I binged every single episode that you guys have. I couldn’t listen to them fast enough because I knew I wanted all of the information before we had another baby. Even before we were trying, I was doing all of this. I read many books and watched YouTube videos. I was practicing meditation and mindfulness because the mindset is such a big part. I learned about HypnoBirthing and I was also so much healthier. I gained way less weight. I was eating healthier. I was being active and trying to be as mobile as possible to let the baby descend when that time came. Like I mentioned, I do have chronic hypertension so I really wanted to keep that in check because I knew that would be a big red flag for everyone. So then eventually, we did get pregnant with our third baby. I was still doing all of my research and things like that. At that time, I actually did hire a doula as well. I wanted to do everything I possibly could. She was very supportive of a VBAC after two C-sections. So then we started the hunt of trying to advocate for myself. I really worked on relaxing myself just to get in that positive mindset. Initially, where I gave birth to my birth son, they now do some VBACs but they will absolutely not look at people who have more than one C-section and then it’s case by case for just a single. They were like, “No, you either have to go to a C-section or go to the high-risk unit.” I said, “Okay, then send me to the high-risk unit. That’s what I want.”At 32 weeks, they saw me at the high-risk and complex unit. This was basically to see. They would assess me and see if they believed that I had a fighting chance. My blood pressure at the time was in a great range and I was actually off medication because I was so healthy doing what I needed to do. Meagan: That’s awesome. Brittany: Yeah, it was great. I advocated for myself with them saying, “I hired a doula. I have a supportive husband. I have done all of this research. I know what research truly says,” and of course, they pull out the calculator. Meagan: Oh boy. Brittany: It kind of depended. Sometimes it put me at 20%. Sometimes it put me at 40% depending on who did it because of the blood pressure and because of the two repeat C-sections with no vaginal birth before that. They said they would work with me. That was their wording yet they said that they wanted me to have a C-section no later than 38 weeks. Meagan: No later than 38 weeks? Brittany: Yep, yep. Knowing that my first son came at 38.5 weeks, I knew that was probably not likely. I was also in the mindset that if I went to 42 weeks, I was okay with it because I knew that as long as they continued to monitor things, then it was okay. I knew that if I didn’t go into spontaneous labor myself, so say that my blood pressure spiked or anything like that, they would not do anything to help induce me. No low Pitocin, nothing like that, no breaking of water, nothing. I would have to do it all on my own. I knew that was a huge barrier too. Meagan: Yeah. They’re putting restrictions on you already. Listeners, if you are getting, “Yeah, okay,” but then you are getting restriction, restriction, restriction, then it’s probably not the right space. Brittany: Yeah, exactly. Those were my first thoughts. If I’m already knowing that these restrictions are being put up, I’m going to hold in more tension even when I come here and just wait for some kind of failure in the process for them to say, “Okay, we need a C-section.” So I truly wasn’t even getting a chance to try. I literally left the office bawling with my husband. And of course, my husband is not as educated as I am because he’s not going to be giving birth. He’s very supportive and educated just not to our level but they fearmongered him. They made us, not me because I knew the statistic and things, but he was more worried like, “Are you sure this is safe?” and things like that. I was feeling so discouraged. I was 32 weeks pregnant and I was like, “What am I going to do because I know this isn’t going to work?”I actually have a very good friend who had her first baby by a C-section and then she had two VBACs after that. She was one of my biggest supporters. She rooted for me so hard. Meagan: She was your motivator and in your space. Brittany: She had to be induced at 37 weeks with her babies due to being high risk with medical complications and she still did it. She just really gave me hope. We began researching together. She literally lives in a different state and she was researching with me. Meagan: That’s amazing. Brittany: It is so amazing. That’s what’s great about this community. We found a provider that actually is 2.5 hours away from where I live. I knew it was crazy, but I was like, “You know what? What does it hurt for me to even go and see this guy once?”Meagan: Listen, it’s not crazy. It’s not. I know it sounds crazy and the world we live in makes it feel crazy to go so far. It’s not crazy. It’s not crazy. It’s just you advocating for yourself and finding what you need for yourself. Brittany: I came on Facebook groups with you guys and other VBAC groups specific to our area. I just read testimony after testimony about how amazing and old-school he is. I called and even at this point, I was okay if insurance didn’t cover things. I just wanted this. He’s a different breed. He’s a lone wolf, one of those very rare people that we find. I made an appointment. I believe it was for about 34 weeks so it was still a couple of weeks away. When the appointment came, I actually had influenza so I had to cancel it. I was like, “Oh my gosh. Everything that could work against me is working against me.” I said, “Nope. At his next appointment, I’ll go.” I went and he had my medical records but he barely looked at me and he was like, “Yep. We’re going to do this.” He was so positive. Meagan: Wow. Wow. Brittany: Not that we were going to try, but that we were going to do this. That was great. I continued to go to appointments weekly until post baby’s due date. But also he was not naive. He told me the risks of both very realistically but not in a scary way. Just like, “This is what it can look like.”Meagan: These are the facts, yeah. Brittany: The clinic has just a small-town, homey feel. It’s truly about the patient. It’s not like we are just another number. Truly at the end of the day, he gave me the empowerment that not only was I going to do this but he was going to allow me to try. That’s all I wanted was to be able to try this and to have hope in myself. At 38 weeks, we discovered that my blood pressure had skyrocketed. The next day, it continued to be so they monitored me for a little while. I’m also 2.5 hours away so they kept me for a little longer. The next day, it continued to be. Being that I was in a safe zone, the doctor said, “Would you be okay if we did a slow induction?” At that point, I trusted him even though I truly barely knew him. He gave such good vibes. My husband loved him. I said, “Absolutely.” I was completely closed so it did not seem like any baby was coming anytime soon from looking at it. At 7:00 PM that night, they inserted the Foley bulb to help me dilate. At 8:00 PM, my body actually took over and I had some major contractions. My job for the night was to rest, let the bulb do its work and just mentally get in the mindset that we were going to be in labor the next day. In the middle of the night, my COVID swab came back positive even though I had no symptoms. Meagan: Oh no and you had just gotten over influenza. Brittany: Yes. That was very interesting. My doula, this was the one weekend that she was unavailable of course, so she had her sub-doula available but she couldn’t come in because of COVID. She was only available by phone which was a bummer but we made it through. 12 hours in the next morning at 7:00 AM, the Foley bulb was removed and I was 4 centimeters. That was great because with my first son, I had already gotten the epidural and I was panicking at that time. I was already in a great mindset. I was managing the discomfort so great. He started the Pitocin super slow and low. That’s what he’s known for, starting it super low and slow at the smallest amount possible. The baby’s heart rate had some decels so they turned the PItocin off for a while, no panicking. They were just going to go with the flow. At 10:00 AM, they broke my water. We just hung out. I was feeling good. My contractions picked up on their own without that Pitocin ever being restarted. My body began doing it with that very little bit of intervention. At about 1:30, I began struggling pretty badly with pain and pressure. I stated, “I want an epidural.” Everyone knew that I didn’t want that so I said that I would wait another 15 minutes and give it a minute. I still wanted it 15 minutes later and I knew in my mind that I was holding so much tension in. I just couldn’t let it go so I was like, “You know what? At this point, let’s do the epidural.” We did it. As soon as the anesthesiologist came in, I knew that I made the right choice. I was already feeling that relief that I was going to feel from just letting my body relax. I knew how important the mindset was that I just needed to let my body do it. Baby’s heart again had a few decels but the team worked great to reposition me after the epidural was in. I could still feel the pressure of the contractions. I could tell we were progressing but at 2:45, I progressed far enough to be able to push. I progressed very quickly from being completely closed to being here very quickly within less than 24 hours. The team was so supportive. I could feel the baby moving down still, that pressure. I was ecstatic. Once we started the pushing phase, I was very nervous because that’s how far I got with Benny, my oldest. I had pushed with two hours with him and he had never moved down. I was very scared that that was going to happen. With the first push, I knew it was different. I could feel him moving. I could feel the baby moving down. We were gender-neutral beforehand and at 3:44, our sweet baby girl was delivered vaginally. Meagan: Aww. Brittany: Yes. It was quite amazing to feel baby on my chest. It’s still shocking now feeling the baby on my chest and having my husband look. He was crying and was like, “It’s a girl.” After having two boys, it was the icing on the cake. It was absolutely amazing. Meagan: Yeah, and a different postpartum experience?Brittany: Absolutely. My provider had known how traumatic my C-sections were and then of course with my ectopic, completely being cut open with that too, it was totally different. It was stunning. Even with the epidural, I barely had the epidural so it’s not like it was running for a long time. I was never able to eat right away after birth. I pretty much ate almost all labor until the epidural and then to be able to eat as soon as I wanted to right after without throwing up, that alone was huge. I could walk practically right after. No crazy abdominal pain because of the C-section. I could help the baby right away whereas I was stuck in bed for so long after the C-section. The doctor looked at me and he was like, “How is this?” I’m like, “Indescribable.” Meagan: Do you even need to ask? Brittany: It’s insane how different C-section versus pure vaginal delivery was. I was ready to do it again. My husband was like, “Okay, we’re done having babies because we got our girl.” I was like, “I’m ready to do it again.” Meagan: Yes. Oh, I was the same way. I was like, “No, I want to do this again. This was amazing. I got the birth that I wanted.” There is something special. I want to also point out that sometimes vaginal births can be traumatic too but there is something about that baby being placed on your chest after you’ve gone through some less ideal or traumatic experiences. Yeah. It’s hard because you compare it and you’re like, “This is a breeze.” It’s still hard. Recovery is still hard but it’s just magical. Oh, I love it. I love that you at the end of pregnancy were like, “No. We’re going to do something differently.” It ended up being an induction so it was like, “Hey, come. Drive and come and it’s planned.” But I would love to know or I’d love for you to share if you can any of your plans for listeners assuming that it was going spontaneously. I think a lot of people get nervous. It’s a daunting feeling. They get nervous about, “When do I go? What do I do? It’s a long drive.” Do you have any tips or suggestions of what your plan was to travel that distance assuming spontaneous labor went into play?Brittany: Absolutely. We talked about that. That was one of my husband’s biggest worries because obviously, he would be driving me. We knew first of all that obviously every labor can be different but that my son’s took forever. He was also induced. We were hoping for that but then also, we knew and had great backup for the other kids for daycare at a moment’s notice. We had great people to be able to drop them off at. We had talked to the provider too. Basically, if my labor got at all semi-regular if it had happened at home, if my water broke, I was going to head right in because we knew we would be having a baby. We also knew with having two C-sections that we wanted to be near medical attention just in case. We knew that even if my contractions started coming semi-regularly that we would likely head in. I was ready to labor hard in the car if that’s what it had to be. Also, say all of a sudden, I got pushy and that’s how fast it was progressing, we were okay going to our hospital closer just because then, I’m in the thick of it. We don’t want anything to happen to anybody but we knew that it could possibly be a barrier having to drive all the way 2.5 hours to this hospital. Meagan: Yeah. That is a really good point. Preparing to labor hard in the car is no joke for sure. Obviously, that’s not what happened but preparing yourself mentally is so beneficial because if that does happen, it can take out some trauma because it could be traumatic in the car if you’re not prepared for that and labor is progressing, and then of course, having that plan of, “Okay, if things shift and I’m pushing that baby out, we’ll go to this nearest hospital.” Also, I would suggest, you were saying, “Oh, if things were getting active then we would go,” but you could also, when you get there, you don’t have to go straight in but just be in the vicinity. Grab a hotel or go to a park and walk around. Just be close by. Preparing for that financially as well if you’re getting a hotel or something like that is something that’s important because you don’t want to have anything crazy happen but also educate yourself on the signs of something going wrong so if you know that it’s happening in the car and you still have 45 minutes, you can just go to the nearest hospital at the next exit or whatever. Brittany: Yeah, absolutely. Meagan: Great tips. I seriously love that. Prepare to labor hard in that car because it can happen. Congratulations to you and I am so proud of you on all of your journeys. It’s hard because we’ve had these Cesareans, undesired, sometimes traumatic, or desired with unidentified outcomes where you wouldn’t think that it would have been like that. These are the stories that make us who we are today. It’s these stories that are changing others’ lives and empowering them. Whatever your takeaway is from today, maybe it is recognizing a supportive versus non-supportive provider. Maybe it is figuring out what you need to do for yourself. Maybe it’s traveling or whatever it may be. Maybe it’s scheduling that repeat Cesarean. Whatever it may be, know that it is your birth. It’s your birth. This is your body. This is your baby. This is your future and whatever decision you make that is best for you, we here at The VBAC Link support but do have all of these resources for you to turn to and learn so you can know what your options really are. Brittany: Yes. Information is key. That’s one of the biggest things I took away. I am all for people making whatever decision they want in regard to anything including birth, but I just want people to have the information, the correct information, to be able to make those informed decisions. Meagan: Absolutely. Absolutely. One other quick thing I wanted to talk about is how you went in for a VBAC after two Cesareans with no progress. There wasn’t any progress being made meaning that your body was not showing signs at that moment of labor beginning or progressing. They started with a Foley bulb or a Cook catheter depending on where you are or what your hospital uses. That can be something that a lot of providers will refuse to use if you’re not dilated to a 1. Now, I want to preface. You’ll have to tell us actually. It can be very uncomfortable getting a Foley in with no dilation because they’re putting a tiny little tube in something that is closed. Brittany: Yes. Yes. Meagan: That is definitely a little bit of a disclaimer there. It can be very uncomfortable but just like Brittany and I want to say it was Shannon? I could be totally wrong. It was a VBAC after three Cesarean birth. She ended up doing a little bit of Pit to try and get her cervix to do something and then got a Foley in. It barely opened if I remember right. It just shows that it is possible. It is possible. They may say that it’s not possible. I will say that it’s not common for them to do it but it is possible. You can request it. Yes, prepare yourself mentally because I don’t know Brittany if you want to describe it at all but it’s possible. It’s possible to do that. So if you’re in a situation and they’re like, “You are in no state to be induced,” but you’re really not feeling like you want to do a scheduled C-section, try it. Brittany: Yes, totally. It was very uncomfortable. It was truly painful. I had been induced with my first son so I knew what labor was like, but I was like, “Oh, this is pretty rough.” But hands down, I would do it again. After that initial insertion which took a little bit because I was completely closed– Meagan: And probably posterior a little bit so they had to send the tube up and forward. Brittany: It was rough. I was worried that it wasn’t going very well, but it just takes time because I was fully closed. I had pretty good contractions just from that for an hour. My body totally took over which was good. I mean, but then it was such good progress. I slept all night. By morning, I was 4 centimeters. I mean, can you honestly ask for more than that? Meagan: That’s amazing. Brittany: That was the perfect start to an induction. Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That’s one of the things that the Foley can do is it can get your body to 4 centimeters, sometimes even to 5 centimeters. It’s also important to note that sometimes when it falls out, the cervix relaxes. Do you like my sound effects? It’s hard because we can see each other. She can get my emotion. It can relax and go backward. It doesn’t really go backward, it just relaxes. So sometimes keep in mind that if a Foley comes out at 4 centimeters, you might be closer to 3.5 or 3 but it stretches to a 4 because it just stretched to a 4. If you get checked again and they’re like, “Oh, you went backward. You’re a 3.” No. Don’t let that get in your head. And then they started low-dose Pit and things. That’s something I wanted to point out. It’s not something that is super common and oftentimes, providers say no but it is possible. Brittany: It was absolutely incredible. I mean, really the biggest thing is to educate yourself. I went to the chiropractor. I did all of the things. I was in so much pain at 37 weeks pregnant, 36 pregnant. I’m a firm advocate of the chiropractor anyway. I love it for everything. Helping my kids poop as weird as that is–Meagan: Oh no, I know. I’ve done that too and it’s amazing. It works. Brittany: Yes. So I had been going very regularly anyway because I knew how much that can help get baby in place and help with pain, help with hips. I was in so much pain and I’m like, “Oh no. This is not good. I can’t be in this much pain going into birth.” My chiropractor actually got COVID of course right around that time so I was like, “I can’t even see her. Who knows if I’ll get to see her again before I have his baby?” I was lucky enough to find a very nearby chiropractor the day before I went in to be induced. I swear that helped a lot too. Just incredible. It turned out beautifully. Meagan: Absolutely. Yeah and if sometimes you’re having prodromal labor or if labor it just carrying on, carrying on, and carrying on, going and getting an adjustment can be a game changer. Yes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today and sharing these beautiful stories. Brittany: Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Sydney joins Meagan on the podcast today to share her VBAC story and talk about her experiences going past 42 weeks for both of her pregnancies. Meagan shares a story about one of her doula clients who went past 43 weeks! Sydney and Meagan discuss how due dates are calculated and the flaws behind the method that is so widely used.Meagan shares evidence-based information about the risks involved with being pregnant longer than 42 weeks as well as risks surrounding the choice to induce earlier. Having multiple sources of information along with your personal experiences and feelings will help you feel more empowered to make the right decisions surrounding when to birth your baby!Additional LinksBirthful Podcast Episode on Due DatesEBB: Evidence on Due Dates BlogHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello! It is The VBAC Link. My name is Meagan and we have another VBAC story for you today. In addition to the VBAC story, we’re going to be talking about postdates. This is a really hot topic especially in the VBAC world because we have a lot of people, I don’t want to say forced necessarily, but pressed to induce their labor. I think after the ARRIVE trial came out, it’s become even more pressing to have a baby by 39 weeks. I feel like the way we view the new due dates is that 40 weeks is 41. 39 is 40. 38 is 39. I feel like in a lot of areas in the world, that is how our mental state has shifted and we don’t really hear 41 weeks or 42 weeks as much anymore. Today, we have Sydney, and guess what you guys? She had 42 weeks and 5 days, right? Is that right Sydney with your first? Sydney: Mhmm, that’s right. Yes. Meagan: And then 42 weeks and 3 days with the second. So you are one of those mamas that carry further along than a lot of people. We’re going to actually make sure to have it here in the show notes but the Birthful Podcast, I don’t know if you guys listen to Birthful Podcast but I love it. I’m not even expecting anymore. I’m done having kids but I still love listening to it because the guests that she has on there are just filled with information. I want to say the guest she had, her name was Gayle I want to say. Don’t quote me on that. But she has an episode all about due dates and talking about how the body carries. Review of the WeekWe are going to get some more into that at the end but of course, we have a review of the week and then we will have Sydney share her VBAC story with you. This review is by Rachelmademusic. It says, “Such a gem of a show. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Julie and Meagan, for creating this supportive and powerful space for mamas like me to learn and prepare for our VBACs. I’m currently 33 weeks pregnant and preparing for my own VBAC. I can’t begin to express just how thankful I am to have found this podcast. I am truly grateful for this resource and for all of the mamas who come onto this show and share their stories. There is such an incredible strength and collective wisdom to be found here and I highly recommend this podcast to anyone preparing for VBAC or not.”Oh, thank you so much Rachelmademusic. I would agree. This podcast is such a great platform for first, second-time, third-time moms, fourth-time moms, and not even just VBAC moms because there is so much information that is shared on this podcast that talks about how to avoid a Cesarean. When we have a Cesarean in the US, it’s almost 32%. That’s pretty stinking high especially when it used to be 5% way back in the day. Although our VBAC rates are also going up, Cesarean rates have just skyrocketed. So if we can learn how to avoid an unnecessary Cesarean or undesired which a lot of us have had undesired and unplanned or maybe unnecessary Cesareans, we can start lowering that. I think it could be super impactful to a lot of the world because as part of these stories, we hear these first-time Cesareans or second-time Cesareans and they don’t always resonate with positivity. That is hard because we want our birth experiences to be positive. So yeah. I think that it’s super important that anybody listens to all of these birth stories. Sydney’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, welcome to the show, Sydney. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be here with us and share these stories. Sydney: Thank you. Meagan: Are you in Virginia? Is that correct? Sydney: Yep, I’m in Virginia. Meagan: Awesome. We’re going to start trying to say where people are because a lot of the times, we’ll get messages that will say, “Oh my gosh, I’m in the same area. Is there any way I could get their providers?” So it’s fun to be like, “I’m in Virginia. I will listen to this too because I want a VBAC and I want to learn who is supportive or who is maybe not supportive.” Yes, okay. Well, I would love to just hear your story and share this with all of you women of strength listening. Sydney: Yeah, great. Okay, thanks. Yes, I’m Sydney. I’ll just jump into my first birth story. I was pregnant actually during the pandemic. My due date was August 8, 2020. Meagan: Okay, in the thick of it, really. Sydney: Yes, right in the midst of it. We were planning to birth with our birth center here locally. I actually was living in Tennessee when I got pregnant then moved about halfway through and started prenatal care with a birth center here so I was planning for a natural birth and just sort of assumed everything would be fine. Women had been giving birth forever. I come from a lot of strong women having a lot of babies so I just did not even think. I assumed it would be fine. Meagan: Yeah, you didn’t think anything of it. Yeah. Sydney: Yeah, this is just what people do. I’ll be fine. Everything was pretty normal with the pregnancy. I got to 40 weeks and had no signs of labor. I was not really worried about it at that point. Then I started getting to the end of 41 weeks and I was like, “Hmm. Huh. What do I do now?” The midwives were really helpful and gave me of course all of the things to try. I tried all of the things. I was going to the chiropractor multiple times. I tried acupuncture. I was drinking tea. I was pumping and doing all of the things that they told me I should do to try and get labor going. I just was not having much luck. So finally we decided, “Okay.” I was going to be 42 weeks on a Saturday so we thought, “I’ll try the big guns, castor oil, on Saturday.” Something happened with the midwife. She wasn’t ready for me to do it on Saturday so we had to wait until Monday which was 42+2. I took it first thing Monday morning at 6:00 or 7:00 AM. I could not keep it down. I threw it up so I had to do it again which was horrible. I hated it. I was like, “I’m never doing this again.”Meagan: Did you drink it straight? Did they have you mix it in a concoction? Sydney: They had me do a milkshake with vanilla ice cream, peanut butter, and castor oil. Meagan: Yeah, that’s actually similar to what I drank. Sydney: Really? Okay. Meagan: Yeah, with my second. It’s gross. Sydney: It was still so disgusting. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Sydney: I did it a second time. The castor oil did its job. It got some contractions going but I was walking a lot to just keep them doing anything. That sort of continued through Tuesday. I was having just mild contractions on and off. Then by Wednesday morning which was when I was 42+4, they were strong and consistent. The midwives were like, “Okay, we think you’re ready to come in. Let’s get things going.”I remember they had to meet us at the birth center. It was 7:30 in the morning. I got there and apparently, another mom had beat me there. She was also in labor. So as soon as I walked in, I’m a first-time pregnant mom, she is pushing her baby out and screaming. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever heard. Literally, I think my cervix just closed up and was like, “Nope. Not doing that.” I literally didn’t have contractions for a couple of hours after that. It all stopped. Meagan: Yeah. Sydney: That was unfortunate, Meagan: That can happen. That can really happen though. It doesn’t even matter. Maybe nothing significant like a woman screaming in labor, it doesn’t have to seem significant. It can be just shifting from the car to the hospital or your home to the car or downstairs to upstairs. Something off can calm things down. Sydney: It did, yeah. Meagan: Sometimes it’s just your body responding and needing a break. Sydney: Yeah, yeah and that’s really what happened. The midwives worked with me all day. We were doing Miles Circuit. I remember that it was August so it was scorching outside. They had me climbing hills and stairs and curb walking. They made my husband stay inside and take a nap because he was exhausted. I was doing all of the things, pumping every half an hour and they were giving me tinctures every 30 minutes. Still, by 5:00, I think I was maybe 3 centimeters but contractions were not picking up. They weren’t strong enough and we were both exhausted so the midwives were like, “All right. I think the best plan is for you to go home, drink a glass of wine and take some Tylenol PM. Let’s get these mild contractions to stop so you can relax and then you probably need to go be induced in the morning.” Because at this point, we were 42 and 4. I was starting to get uncomfortable. I was just exhausted. They were like, “It probably would be beneficial for you at this point to be induced and have an epidural so you can just rest and relax and let your body do what it needs to do.” That was our plan. We went home and did that. It worked for a couple of hours but the contractions actually really picked up overnight so by 4:30, I was like, “We need to go. I can’t do this anymore.” I think we did the wine and Tylenol PM again later in the night and it just was not working. So at this point, I was like, “Okay. We’re ready to go.” We ended up going to the hospital. By the time I got there, they were like, “You do not need to be induced. You’re already in active labor.” I was like, “Okay, great. Let’s do this.” We labored for a while and decided later that morning to try for an epidural so that I could just get some rest because we were so tired. As soon as I got into position for the epidural, the baby’s heart rate decelerated so there was panic. There were a ton of people in the room. They were doing oxygen. They wanted to check the baby’s position to see if the baby had maybe dropped or something but the baby stabilized almost immediately. They said I was at an 8. I was like, “Oh wow. Okay. Forget the epidural. Let’s just do it.” I continued to labor for a couple of hours and they checked me again. This was probably at 11:00 and they said I was at a 4. Meagan: What?!Sydney: I was like, “Huh? What?” I don’t know if the first person got it wrong. I have no idea what happened but I was in a different position when they checked me. It was a whole thing. Meagan: It’s happened. I’ve been to births where that’s happened where they were like, “Oh, you are 9 centimeters,” and getting the cart out, then getting the provider to come in then the provider comes in and is like, “She’s 5 centimeters,” then we’re like, “What?” The one provider explained to me and the team said that sometimes if we have a really, really stretchy, favorable cervix, especially during a contraction or certain positions, it can feel thinner than it is or feel like it is dilated more than it is and then they change that or a different person checks and they’re like, “Yeah, no.” But man, that’s a frustrating scenario. Sydney: I was devastated. So at that point, I was like, “All right, bring me the epidural.” I’m only at 4 centimeters.Meagan: Yeah. Change of plans, let’s do that again. Sydney: I cannot go much longer. So they were bringing the epidural. Meanwhile, they decided to break my water because she could feel the water and there was meconium in it so that gave them a red flag. When they went to bring the epidural and I got into position, the same thing happened. Baby’s heart rate went this time way, way down into the 20s. Meagan: Like something is being compressed. Sydney: Yeah, so at that point it wasn’t even a question. They rushed me out for a C-section immediately. By the time we got to the OR, baby had stabilized but they were like, “You’re both exhausted. We need to get this baby out. You’ve been doing this way too long,” and I was postdated and there was meconium so I think there was a lot of concern. Then they went to give me a spinal tap so I could be awake and it didn’t take. They did it twice and it didn’t take. Meagan: Did the baby’s heart rate react then?Sydney: Not that I know of. Meagan: It’s not working. It’s not working, yeah. Sydney: So they put me under and I birthed my baby asleep which was a whole thing but she was on my chest not too much after she was born and I was able to nurse immediately. They tried to be really accommodating to me and they were very mother/baby friendly. Meagan: Yeah. Did they bring you back pretty quickly? Sydney: Yeah. Meagan: Like you were awake right after? Sydney: Yes, pretty much. I think they were still working on me while I was awake. Meagan: Okay, yeah. Sydney: And then my husband was able to be there. He got to see her first while they were examining her. It all was fine. We were both healthy and we were okay but it was a little bit of a traumatic experience and not what we were planning for at all from a natural birth to a total C-section. Moving on to being pregnant again, I was like, “All right. What do I want to do now because it feels like the natural birth didn’t go well but this time around–” I don’t know. I felt like I was more prepared and knew a lot more. There were a lot of choices I made with the first birth that I knew I wouldn’t make with the second. I had said, “I’m not going past 42 weeks.” Obviously, I didn’t but that was my mindset. I was like, “I’m going to do what I can to have the baby ahead of time.” So anyways, my second baby was due July 10, 2022, so just under two years later. I did decide to go with the birth center again, the same birth center. We had a good prenatal experience there and I love the midwives there. And again, I felt like I was more knowledgeable this time around. I knew that I was getting a doula. I did not have that the first time. I knew that I wanted to set myself up for success as much as I could. So again, I was doing everything I knew to do to shorten the pregnancy. I went to the chiropractor early and I went consistently every week. I drank lots of the Nora tea. I started pumping at 36 weeks every day. I was taking Gentle Birth and walked consistently. Meagan: So great. Sydney: I was doing everything. The pregnancy was fairly normal. This baby was breech at 34 weeks and I was so discouraged because I was like, “I’m a VBAC. A lot of people aren’t going to want to do that.” Even my midwives were a little bit hesitant to do that because I had never had a vaginal birth. They usually are good with breech births, but with my situation, they were like, “We’re not sure we want to take that risk.” So I knew my chances of VBAC with a breech baby were very low. So I was doing inversions. I did acupuncture. I put frozen peas on my belly. I did everything that people told me to do. He did flip by 36 weeks which I was very thankful for. So anyways, I’m doing all of these things to make sure that this pregnancy is shorter. At 40 weeks, I upped the walking. I started swimming but no signs of labor at all. At 41 weeks, the same thing. Not dilated at all, getting discouraged. And of course, during this time, we’re doing a lot of non-stress tests and trying to make sure that baby is still doing well. Around 42 weeks again, I said, “I’m not going past 42 weeks,” but of course when it gets to that point, I’m like, “Just a couple of more days. I want to do everything I can to have the birth that I want.” So at 42 weeks, I was 1 centimeter and we were all so thankful. The midwife did a sweep and I did castor oil again. I tried to hit it with everything in one day. I think I ended up doing the castor oil three times because it wasn’t doing anything. Meagan: Oh my goodness. Sydney: So eventually, it worked and I got some contractions at midnight to 3:00 AM and then it just sort of fizzled out. I just kept having really mild contractions. At 42 weeks and 3 days, I decided that there was not much more I can do at this point. I need to go be induced because we really were trying everything. They were not getting strong enough or consistent enough to make any progress. Meagan: Again, post date. Sydney: Right, right. My body is going this long, so do I trust that? I know that the risk goes up significantly after 42 weeks from what I’ve heard and read so it’s weighing that balance of, “I know baby’s okay but how long am I willing to wait this out and take risks?” So I decided to go be induced. They put me in triage at 7:00 AM on a Saturday and of course, the nurse was basically like, “You’re this huge fish that doctors never see because you’re a transfer. You’re a VBAC. You’re post dates.” Just all of these different things that made me an interesting patient. Meagan: All of the checkmarks against you here. Sydney: Yes. They were able to get us into a room later that morning. It had a tub. The nurse we had was really sweet. She knew that we were from a birth center. She was like, “I have this room with a tub. Someone’s in it but if you can wait a couple of hours, you can get into that room.” So we got into the room with the tub. They started me with a Foley balloon and that did not take very long at all and then they started Pitocin at a very, very low level, like a 2 I think. Meagan: That’s a really great, nice way to induce. A Foley with a low dose of 2 or 4 milliliters of Pit for a little bit. Sydney: Yeah, yeah. I was able to be in the tub for a little while. I stayed in there for a couple of hours and then I think around some time that afternoon at 3:00 I did ask for an epidural because again, I had been up for days at this point and needed to just rest. Meagan: So tired, yeah. Sydney: The anesthesiologist was in surgery so it was a few hours. I think they didn’t come until 7:30 that evening. This time, everything went fine. I was able to get the epidural and get some rest. It was just like, “Wow. I did not anticipate feeling this good right now.” It was such a relief and I was able to get some rest. My doula came around then and was very helpful and sweet. Then around 11:30 that night, I started throwing up. They thought maybe it was the epidural. They said that can sometimes make people nauseous. They were checking all that and my doula was like, “She might be in transition. Why don’t we check?” And I was fully dilated which was so exciting. I was getting ready to push and I was happy to finally be doing something and feeling productive. I was pushing for a while. After about an hour or so, the doctor that was with me switched out with another doctor. I think she had another surgery to be in or something. The doctor that came in was the doctor that did my first C-section. He almost immediately– he hadn’t been in the room very long but he said that if I couldn’t push the baby out that they would have to use forceps or do a C-section. Meagan: Had he been pushing with you at all at this point or did he just bluntly say these things before even assessing? Sydney: Yeah. He had been in there maybe for five minutes. I was so discouraged and my doula just looked at me and winked like, “Don’t worry about that.” Meagan: Don’t worry. Yeah. Ignore what he just said. Sydney: Yeah. I think it took me– we started pushing around 12:30 and then he was born I think at 2:30 or so. So 2-2 ½ hours of pushing. Meagan: That’s not long at all. Sydney: It wasn’t too bad. That was really sweet. I finally got to have a vaginal birth. My husband was there. He got to announce the gender and cut the cord. I got him on my chest immediately and it was really sweet. I did have a 3A tear which was–Meagan: 3rd degree, yeah. Sydney: Yeah. It was a tough recovery with that but otherwise, it was a really, really good experience. Again, not in the birth center, not the natural birth that I had envisioned but it went so much better than I could have anticipated. Meagan: Good. Sydney: I’m really thankful for that. Meagan: I want to talk about that a little bit before we get into due dates. Like you said, it wasn’t the natural birth you anticipated, but in the end, you had an epidural that truly was such an amazing tool in your labor. At first, you couldn’t get it, but then you were able to rest, and like you said, “I didn’t anticipate feeling this good.” The world puts such shame on people for both sides actually of, “Hey, if you don’t go unmedicated then you’re crazy and you’re going to have a C-section,” or “Hey, if you go unmedicated, you’re crazy and then if you get an epidural then you’re crazy and you’re going to have a C-section.” It’s just not that way. We need to take out these absolute statements of, “If you do this, you won’t have this,” because it’s not true. I can’t tell you enough. We get so many emails of, “I really want to VBAC so badly but I just don’t feel I can go unmedicated. It’s not my personality. It’s not what I desire.” They’re like, “It just sucks that I can’t have a VBAC because I don’t want to go unmedicated.” I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait. If you want a VBAC, you don’t have to go unmedicated.” It’s the same thing with induction. Are there some things around induction that may increase some risks or some chances? Yes. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen though, right? This provider that started you out with this induction is a really great way to induce. Yeah. You had progressed a little bit before with your first so that’s also a really great factor, but yeah. You don’t have to go unmedicated to have a vaginal birth in general. I mean, look at all of the people that truly don’t go unmedicated. It doesn’t make you less of a person if you don’t have an epidural. Something I love about your stories, both of them, is that you had the discussion with the midwives but you had this thing of, “Okay. We’re going to go to the hospital now. I’m making this choice for me, for my baby, and this is what I feel good about.” I think that’s important to note too. Sometimes plans change and plans can change. Sydney: Yes, yes. I held it a lot more loosely the second time around than I did the first. Meagan: Yeah. Well, I think it’s just because in the world we get a lot of pressure and shame for decisions that we make. My kids are in a lot of sports and I get shamed for my kids being in sports and that has nothing to do with anybody else’s life. Yeah. Listeners, you guys birth the way you desire. If that’s a repeat Cesarean, that’s a repeat Cesarean. If that’s an induction, that’s an induction. If it’s unmedicated, medicated, or whatever it may be, birth the way you want. But on the way to birthing the way you want, make informed choices by getting the education and the knowledge behind every choice that you are making. Okay, so due dates. Here you have two babies that have gone over 42 weeks. Neither of them had many issues or anything. Maybe we had some mec which is common, especially in postdate babies. So I want to talk about what postdate means or what all of the terms mean. An early-term baby is between 37 and 38+6. That’s an early-term baby. A full-term baby is 39 to 40+6. A late-term baby is 41-41+6 and then a post-term baby is 42 weeks or later. Technically, you had two postdate babies. I had an early, a full, and a late baby. I had three different ones. One of the resources that we love so much is Rebecca Dekker at Evidence Based Birth. If you guys have not checked out that website, it’s so amazing. They turn studies into English for the people who can’t understand a lot of these studies because it’s really hard. They turn them into English. One of the things that she talks about on this specific blog which we’ll have in the show notes is titled “Evidence on Due Dates.” One of the things she talks about, and shame me if I’m pronouncing this wrong, but it’s called the Negel’s Rule. It’s something I had never really heard about until probably a year ago but back in the 40s, a professor in the Netherlands created this rule on how to calculate estimated due dates. She says, “Based on the records of 100 pregnant women, they have figured an estimated due date by adding 7 dates to their last period,” then that is 9 months. It’s crazy though because if you think about this world and our periods as women, we are not the same. Nobody. I can guarantee you that I am not the same as my neighbor or my friend or even my sister. We have different cycles and this was based on a 28-day cycle ovulating on the 14th day. That just doesn’t happen all of the time. I don’t love the method because it can be different. On the Birthful Podcast, we talk about how people sometimes carry longer. That doesn’t mean that they’re super, super, super overdue. It just means that they have carried longer. In her blog, she talks about a person that had a 44-day cycle so she may have been viewed as 42 weeks or 41 weeks + 2 days, but really, she was 40 weeks. So we were adding a week and two days onto this due date and we’re telling people that we’re got a higher chance of stillbirth and things like that but really because of her long cycle, she is 40 weeks. It’s just so hard. It’s so hard. I mean, there is research and this blog is amazing but even then, it’s hard. But we do want to talk about the risks of going past your due date. What risks, Sydney, did people tell you about going past your due dates? For you and baby, was there anything said that was very specific like, “If you go one more day, this is going to happen or more than likely to happen?” Sydney: The biggest thing that stands out in my mind is the meconium and the risk of baby aspirating and then also just the general risk of stillbirth going up after 42 weeks were the two obvious things that I remember. Meagan: Yeah. That is correct. The risk of moderate or thick meconium increases every week starting at 38 weeks. It’s interesting. We don’t know exactly why a baby has a bowel movement in utero all the time. Sometimes it’s due dates. Maybe sometimes it’s stress or a really fast transition or whatever. They just do. We don’t know exactly why all of the time, but it does seem to peak between that 38-42 weeks. It’s 3% at 37 weeks, 5% at 38 weeks, 8% at 39 weeks, 13% at 40, 17% at 41 and 18% at 42 weeks. An 18% chance that a baby may have a bowel movement within that 42 weeks. 18% might sound really, really high but to some people, they’re like, “Okay, well if it happens.” Then like you were saying, we worry about the risk of aspiration. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. If it does, sometimes we have other issues. Another risk for infants is the increased chances of NICU admission. They were the lowest at 39 weeks at 3.9% and rose up to 7.2% at 42 weeks. Again, some people may look at that and say, “That’s enough for me to have a baby at 39 weeks.” Some people might be like, “7.2%. I’ll take the chances.” It’s a totally personal preference. One of the other risks, and when I say risks, I’m really putting quotations around this because it’s one of those eye-rollers for me. It’s a big baby. A lot of providers will say, “Oh, your baby is going to get way big. You might not be able to have that vaginal birth.” Especially with VBACs, it’s like, “Last time, your baby was larger.” Let’s say last time your baby was 8 pounds, but this time it could be really big if you keep going. It shows that for greater than 9 pounds, 15 ounces rose during 38 weeks which is 0.5%, and then doubled at 42 weeks which is 6%. But I mean, we recorded a story last week with Morgan whose baby was 10 pounds, 12 ounces. Big babies still come out and they’re just fine. It’s hard to hear the risk of the big baby because why are we shaming these babies? It’s fine if they’re big. It’s fine if they’re chunky. We love when they’re chunky. And then some of the risks of having a lower APGAR score or stillbirth. The stillbirth I think is probably one of the most intense risks that we look at. It’s the scariest risk for obvious reasons. It says, “Absolute risk is an actual risk of something happening to you. For example, if the absolute risk of having a stillbirth at 41 risks was 1.7 out of 1000, then that means that 1.7 mothers of 1000 or 17 out of 10,000 will experience a stillbirth.” So you hear that and it’s very scary. Then it says, “Relative risk is the risk of something happening to you in comparison to somebody else. If someone said that the risk of a stillbirth at 42 weeks compared to 41 weeks was 94% higher, then that sounds like a lot but some people may consider that that actual or absolute risk is still quite low at 1.7 versus 3.2.” We’ve had a post like this. It actually stirred up a lot of angst because we talked about some absolute risk and some relative risk and actual risk, but really it can be very scary to hear a 94% higher chance than a 3.2% chance. Ultimately, yes. There are risks of stillbirth the longer we go. There are risks of placental issues or infections in moms because there is a whole other category of risks for moms that we a lot of the time don’t talk about too much. But yeah. It’s just a matter of what is best for you. At the beginning of the podcast, you said, “I haven’t met a lot of people who have carried as long as me.” I was telling you that in eight and a half years of being a doula, I have had one client specifically– I’ve had some 42-weekers at one or two days, but one client specifically who went 43 weeks and 1 day. It started at 40 weeks. Her provider was like, “You have to induce. You have to induce. You have to induce. She was like, “No, I don’t want to.” Then at 41 weeks, the same thing happened. “You have to induce.” At 42 weeks, she was like, “I’m over it. I don’t want to be here anymore.” She called me and she was like, “I’m changing providers. Does that change anything?” Her home was farther away from me than her hospital location so she was like, “I’m changing providers. Does that change anything to do with you supporting me? Because I need to know if I need to find a provider closer to you or if you’ll come to me.” I’m like, “Yeah. I’ll go wherever you go.” So she called I think it was the next day. At this point, she was 42 weeks + 1 day. She was like, “I found a provider. She’s out here by me. She’s going to support me.” I’m like, “Okay, great.” She goes to 42 weeks and the doctor is like, “We’re going to do two non-stress tests this week. We’re just going to check.” They did and they were like, “Everything’s great. No problem. Baby might be on the larger side, but other than that, everything’s looking great.” At the next one, she was like, “Yep. Everything’s looking good.” She’s now at 42 weeks and 5 days. I’m like, “Wow.” This is the first and this is in the very beginning of my doula career. I’m like, “Does this really happen? What is happening?” I was feeling nervous because I still didn’t know much then. Anyway, at 43 weeks or the day before 43 weeks, she went to her provider and they were like, “You’re really not showing a ton of progress. You’re barely effaced. You’re maybe a centimeter.” Sydney: Oh my gosh. So triggering for me. Meagan: Yes. Well and for her, she was like, “I’m never going to have a baby.” She said that. She was anxious. She was like, “I think I’m going to be pregnant forever.” I’m like, “No, you’re not going to be pregnant forever.” But you can understand where she’s coming from. Sydney: Yeah. I just don’t believe that people go into labor on their own. I just don’t get that concept. Meagan: Yeah because of your situation which I totally understand. Yeah. They were like, “How about you come in tomorrow? Let’s do this. Let’s induce this labor. Let’s have this baby.” So she called me and I was like, “Yeah, do it if you want to.” We went over everything so she was like, “Yeah, okay. I’m going to do it.” She actually started contracting through the night and we were like, “Oh, she’s going into labor.” I do think she was actually going into labor because we went in. She had only progressed another half a centimeter but she was contracting. I wouldn’t say that they were anything too crazy strong or anything but they were there. But then they did induce the labor with those contractions and at 43 weeks + 1 day, she had a really chunky little boy. Everything was really great. Nothing was wrong. He did have meconium. He pooped. They believe that he pooped on the way out so he wasn’t super gray or anything but yeah. It’s just very interesting. It’s very, very interesting. Due dates are interesting and it might be a hangup for you for a long time. Sydney: Mhmm. I always was so curious about this and they said, “We think you’re probably just one of those women that if we let you go, you would naturally go to 43 or 44 weeks. Some women just carry longer. Some women carry shorter. Everyone is different.” Meagan: Yep. Yep. I keep thinking Gayle. Gayle is what is coming to my mind for the podcast with Birthful. She talks about that. Some people just go to 43 and 44 weeks. It’s crazy but again, back to what was in that study on Rebecca Dekker’s blog is that it’s not that she was 42 or 43 weeks. That’s where the hangup in my mind comes from. This is where she is based on her last period based on this calculation that Google does or the little wheel. My doctor back in the day had a little wheel to tell me when I was due. That doesn’t mean that that’s when my baby is due and it doesn’t mean that I had that 28-day cycle and I ovulated at day 14. Really, that’s my hang-up in my head. What more can we do with these due dates? How can we calculate these due dates better because, in my opinion, induction is also really, really high? We’ve got a high Cesarean rate, a high induction rate, and a lot of people going in. Induction is just fine if that’s what you are wanting but a lot of people are getting that pressure to induce and they are getting these scary things being said. Let’s figure out what these due dates and these guesstimation dates really mean. Honestly, there is not enough evidence without induction and stuff like that, I don’t think, to really, really, really, really know what the average length of pregnancy is. Sydney: Yeah, that’s probably a good point because people just don’t go that long. They get induced. Meagan: Yeah, they just don’t. In your mind, you’re like, “I wholeheartedly do not believe that anyone can go into spontaneous labor. I don’t get it,” because you’ve had two experiences and it makes sense. You’re welcome to feel that way but at the same time, it’s like what is missing here? Like your midwife said, “You’re probably one of those that we would let you go and you would go.” But does that really mean you’re 44 weeks? Does that mean you’re 41 or are you actually 42 at that point?”Sydney: Yeah. We do plan to have more at some point, but I’m going to track my cycle consistently and track the actual conception date if I can and make sure I know exactly when and probably even do an early ultrasound which I haven’t done before just because it’s always the question people want to ask. “Well, are you sure about your due date? Are you sure about your cycle?” I can’t be 100% sure about my cycle but I can be 100% sure about when my last period was. I know what that is. Yeah. I field that question a lot. Meagan: You know, it’s an interesting thing that just popped into my head. Remember when I told you earlier that I’ve had an early term, a full term, and a late term? With my third baby, we were crazy. We were trying for a boy specifically and my friend was like, “Read this book.” I was like, “I’m going to follow this to a T.” We had two girls and my husband was like, “This is the last. You have one more try to get your VBAC.” He was really, really stern on this one more baby. I was like, “Okay, fine.” I was waiting for him. Before he was ready, I started temping. I mean, going more extreme. It consumed me a little bit but I really got familiar with my body because I really wanted to try for this boy. Anyway, so I had temped and done everything. We conceived. I knew almost the hour. It was ridiculous. It was absolutely ridiculous. I knew exactly when I got pregnant and I was 41 weeks, 5 days but with my first, they said that my due date originally was October 26th and then she was measuring small so then they bumped it up to November 6th, 10 days later. She ended up coming November 4th but then I wondered, “Was I early? Was I late? What was I?” because I wasn’t tracking. With my second, she came at 38 weeks, 5 days so it makes me wonder there too because I wasn’t really paying attention but I felt very pregnant. But then she was small so they were like, “No, it was totally fine.” I’m like, “She was measuring small from the very beginning.” It always makes me wonder. Maybe I was closer to the 40-week mark or maybe I was almost 41 weeks. I don’t know. It’s fascinating. Sydney: It is, yeah. Meagan: And it’s hard. It’s hard because we don’t know and we are only trying to do what’s best. We are only trying to do what we are given the information on. As always, we have to follow our gut and decide what’s best for us. We’ll make sure to include those studies. If you guys are listening and you find this interesting too, go down to the show notes. Find it. Read them. Listen to the podcast. It’s a really, really great episode. Anyway Sydney, thank you so much. Sydney: Thank you for having me on. Meagan: Thank you for bringing this conversation to the table because it’s not one that we talk a lot about. But I’m sure you’ve got some frustration. Like you said, “It’s kind of triggering to hear that.” Sydney: Yeah. It’s not fair that I have to do all of this work before I actually go into labor. We’ll see what I do for the next one. I’ve said, “I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to get induced at 42 weeks.” But I’m sure when the next one comes along, I’ll be like, “No, I really want to try and do it naturally.”Meagan: Let’s do the castor oil again. There are some ways to naturally induce like breast stimulation or sex and starting sex earlier on or evening primrose oil and things like that. Things that we can start doing at 38 weeks leading up. But even then, it’s not a guarantee and sometimes it can be frustrating when you’re like, “I’m doing all of the things. I’m taking castor oil and I’ve puked it back up three times and I’m still not having a baby.” Sydney: Yes. Well at this point, it will probably be a matter of, “I’m just going to trust my body. My body knows. My baby knows when they’re ready to come out.” I just need to follow my intuition and weigh that risk like you talked about. Meagan: Yeah. Sydney: Yeah, but we’ll see. I don’t have to worry about it yet. I’m not rushing it. Meagan: You don’t. You don’t. You don’t have to worry about it but keep grabbing the information so then you’ll be prepared. Sydney: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Meagan: Awesome. Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Morgan’s story is full of so much joy! You will be smiling ear to ear when you finish listening to Morgan tell her VBAC story alongside her VBAC Link Doula, Jennie. She is a beautiful example of why The VBAC Link Podcast exists. We want these stories to inspire you to heal from past birth experiences so that you can view your future births with all the light and love you deserve. Morgan worked so hard to heal from her first birth and prepared for her second in every way. She created a team where she could feel 100% safe in her vulnerability. She knew that she could fully trust them through any wild twists and turns of birth. And they definitely happened! But even with the extreme intensity, Morgan walked away from her VBAC with absolute gratitude and joy.Additional LinksMorgan’s WebsiteJennie’s WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, women of strength. We have an amazing episode for you today but first I want to talk to you just a little bit about postpartum depression. Studies show that 1 in 7 new mamas will develop postpartum depression. It’s scary and a topic that doesn’t really get discussed a lot. So before we jump into today’s episode, I wanted to share a little bit about our podcast sponsor and partner, Happiest Baby. As you guys know from listening to The VBAC Link, this podcast means so much to me. I love every single one of you. I know that’s hard to believe because I don’t personally know every single one of you, but it is true. I love this community so much and it means so much to me that Dr. Harvey Karp and his company Happiest Baby are such big supporters of VBAC and are supporting our mission. One of their biggest products that people may know or have heard of is called the Snoo. The Snoo is an amazing baby bed that can truly help many mams out there during their postpartum journey, especially if you were like me and have a husband or partner that has to go right back to work and is left with these amazing, cute, snuggly babies but also exhausted. Whether you had a C-section or a vaginal birth, for those few days and let’s be honest, probably months, you’re just exhausted. I was in pure survival mode. So many people refer to the Snoo as “the mama helper” who's there to help soothe your baby so you can just get a few more hours of sleep. They even have a rental program which I think is pretty awesome so you don’t actually have to buy the bassinet. As I started to learn more about Dr. Karp and his mission, I just loved learning that he is so passionate about reducing postpartum depression in parents. They even got FDA approval which I believe is the only bassinet or baby bed that has been FDA-approved. It’s also been known for reducing SIDS in babies as well. I asked our community for their reviews of Snoo and I was overwhelmed by the positive responses. I just wanted to say thank you to Dr. Karp for creating the Snoo and helping millions of mamas sleep for just a few more hours at night so we can continue bonding with our babies and having a better postpartum experience. Thank you, Happiest Baby. Hello, hello, and happy Wednesday. This is Meagan, your host, at The VBAC Link Podcast and we have a cohost today. We have Jennie so welcome, Jennie. Jennie: Thank you, hi. Meagan: Yes. She is one of our VBAC doulas and we actually have a fun episode that she is personally connected to because we have one of her doula clients which is always so fun. I think it’s really fun because when Julie and I would listen to stories, we didn’t have personal connections so we’re hearing it for the first time but it’s kind of fun to hear it from the storyteller as well as someone who experienced the birth. So again, thank you for being here with us today. Morgan from New York, so New Yorkers, listen up because this is a great VBAC story. She’s going to be here with us today. Review of the Week Meagan: But of course, we have a Review of the Week and our cute Jennie is going to read it for us. Jennie: Great. This is from laurateachesmusicstayathomemom and her subject is, “I did it.” She says, “I’ve been listening to you ladies for months and getting ready for my VBAC after two Cesareans. I had our baby yesterday with an unmedicated hospital birth. Still amazed and ecstatic. I said if this all works out, I’m going to share my VBAC story on the podcast. Hope to talk soon. Hearing the many stories assisted me in my positive outcome. Thank you for serving the world in this way.” Meagan: Oh, thank you so much and that was from Laura. That is such a great review. Thank you so much. I know that a lot of the listeners when we reach out on Instagram, we have a lot of people say, “I want more VBA2C, VBAC after two Cesarean, stories.” So Laura, if you are still listening, contact us. We would love to share your story because I know the world wants to hear it. Morgan’s Stories Meagan: Okay, cute Morgan. Welcome to the show. Morgan: Thank you so much. Meagan: Thank you so much for being here. I always love sharing these VBAC stories but I really do love it when the doula is with us. I’m going to turn the time over to you to share your VBAC story. Morgan: Awesome, thank you so much. Yeah. I’m really excited that Jennie will be with us as well. Of course, we have to start with the reason why I needed a VBAC. You can’t have a VBAC without the C.Meagan: How it all happened, right?Morgan: My daughter, Audrey, is four and she was an unplanned, unwanted, unneeded Cesarean after induction in 48 hours of labor, 3 hours of pushing, and she was just still floating. I didn’t know all of the things that I know now. I didn’t have a doula. I thought I couldn’t afford one. I didn’t do all of the things. That birth was very traumatic and postpartum was really hard. I swore I would never have another baby because I thought it would be the same thing again. About a year later, I also became a doula and saw other people having subsequent births that weren’t traumatic, especially after the first one that was. I was like, “Oh, okay. It doesn’t have to be the same.” So I got pregnant again and unfortunately miscarried but then three months later, we got pregnant with my son, Will, who is one now. He is about 14 months. Even before I got pregnant, I had known Jennie and we had met through the Cesarean group that she runs, the Cesarean/VBAC group that she runs locally and I knew that I needed her as my doula. I made sure that she was going to be free that month when I was planning on getting pregnant and planning on having a baby. I did all of the prep work– having Jennie, chiropractic, acupuncture, craniosacral, pelvic floor PT, Spinning Babies Daily Essentials, therapy for me, and switching to midwifery care. My midwife even said to me, “Do you think you’re doing too much?” I said, “No. I think for my type of personality I need to do it all because then I know if I need another Cesarean, it wasn’t because of me.” Meagan: It wasn’t anything you didn’t do. Yeah. It leaves out the what if. That’s totally my personality too. I’m like, “I know it might sound extreme that I’m doing all of these crazy things.” And when I say crazy, it’s air-quote crazy but to people, it sounds really excessive. I needed to know that if it ended in a Cesarean, there was nothing that I didn’t do. It would have helped me be more content with the outcome I think. I totally get it. Morgan: Jennie says all of the time, “As soon as you accept that a Cesarean may be the way that it happens the second time, especially after a primary Cesarean is when you can really heal and achieve that VBAC.” I had been having prodromal labor for probably two weeks and every night before bed, I texted Jennie, “Don’t go to bed. It’s going to be tonight.” In the morning, I’d text her, “Sorry.”Jennie: It was fine. It was fine. I wanted to touch on one thing about the prep work with you, Morgan, because you did so much work in the four years that you came to the group. Morgan, the first time that she came in was like, “I’m never having another baby. I’m never doing that again.” You did so much emotional work over the course of years to get yourself to a point where not only were you prepared physically, but you were really prepared emotionally and that was so awesome to see. Meagan: Oh, yeah. I bet. Morgan: Thank you. Yeah, it was a lot. So then comes December 8th and I woke up with a bloody nose which I never ever get bloody noses. I texted Jennie and I said, “I have a bloody nose and the last time and one of the only times in my life that I’ve had one is the day I went into labor with Audrey.” Meagan: Really? Morgan: Yeah. Could this be a sign of labor? We’re like, “Yeah, maybe. Whatever.”Jennie: I’m like, “Get off Google.” Meagan: Yeah, right?Morgan: I asked Jennie to Google everything for me because I didn’t want to go down the rabbit hole. Meagan: That’s actually really healthy. That’s really healthy. Jennie: Yeah. I’m always happy to do it. Morgan: Yes. She always sent me evidence-based things and peer-reviewed so I wasn’t like, “Oh, I got a bloody nose. Now I have cancer.” You know?Meagan: Uh-huh. Yeah. Morgan: So just tried to keep myself busy. I took my daughter to the store with me to pick up a prescription and then she asked if we could go to my parents for lunch. I remember standing at my parents’ house and my dad was like, “Sit down. Have a cup of coffee.” I said, “No. I feel like the baby’s in a really good position. I just want to stand and let gravity do its thing,” because I feel like the prodromal labor was because he was in a funky position. I finally sat down and had a cup of coffee. Maybe five minutes later, I felt a little pop and a little tear, and then a big movie theater, a movie scene gush of water. I just said, “My water just broke.” My mom, my dad, and my daughter were all sitting there. My dad hopped up and he was like, “I’ll get you a towel.” He came back with a washcloth. I said, “Dad, you have five children. Do you not remember that there might be a lot of water?”Meagan: This is birth, not a spilled glass of water. Morgan: Yeah. It was a lot. I was borderline poly so I had a lot of fluid. Polyhydramnios. So at first, my parents are like, “Well, you’ve got to go. You’ve got to go.” I’m like, “No, no, no. The next 24-48 hours. I need to just relax, go home, and take a nap.” So that’s what I did. My husband, Billy, met me at the door. We finished packing Audrey’s bag. My parents live five minutes away. He brought her bag. She was going to be staying there while we were at the hospital. I laid down to take a nap after texting Jennie saying, “My water broke. I”m going to try to nap,” but I was really anxious and really excited. Meagan: Super normal. Morgan: Yeah. But I remember with my daughter, this took a long time. Early labor was at least 12 hours and then I went straight to the hospital and had an induction. I was like, “I just want to be calm. I need to be in my bed. I need to just zen out,” and I couldn’t. I had been taking baths and doing some prep work in that way so I’m like, “I’m going to take a bath and do my thing and try to calm down.” Contractions did start in the bathtub, but they weren’t painful. But at the peak of them, I was having little mini panic attacks. I don’t know if it was because I was by myself at home or just excited or what, but I called my husband and said, “Make sure our daughter is good, but I need you to come back home.” I also texted Jennie because as soon as I got out of the bathtub, things got pretty intense. I just texted her, “Okay, come,” because I knew she lived 30 minutes door to door from me. I knew things were really happening and I really needed at least emotional support at that point. Jennie: Yeah. We’re in Rochester so it’s snowing of course. Morgan never texts one-word texts. That is not in her nature so when she was just like, “Okay, come,” I was like, “Oh, boy. Drop everything.”Meagan: Coming! Jennie: Yep, time to go. Morgan: And of course, snow makes it a little bit longer, and traffic and whatever, so by the time my husband got home about five minutes later, I was moaning through contractions on the toilet and needing to stand and hold onto his shoulders during the contractions and then just sit and release during the breaks. By the time Jennie arrived, I was getting new pants on to head to the hospital. I think the first thing I said was, “I need to push. I need to go and I need to push.” Meagan: Ah!Jennie: Yep. Morgan: But I said, “I need to go to the bathroom one more time. There’s just so much fluid and it’s so intense. The toilet’s so comfortable.” I could not get off that toilet. With every contraction, I was pushing and moaning. Every break, I was like, “Why is no one going? Why are you not making me go?” Jennie finally said, “It’s going to continue to be intense. If you want to deliver at the hospital, we need to go right now.” I was like, “Okay.” I got into gear. I walked to the car. I contracted twice on the way to the car and then got in and I was like, “Can I kneel? Can I kneel on the seat?” Again, I’m a rule follower. I don’t drive without my seatbelt on, but I could not sit because his head was right there. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Morgan: I give my husband so much credit. I feel like he’s been working his whole life to be the driver that he was that day. He was like someone on Mario Kart. Meagan: I love that. Mario Kart. Morgan: I never got, “Are we there yet? What are you doing?” or whatever. We were at home and then we were at the hospital. I think I had about six contractions on the way to the hospital. Jennie probably could tell better because you said you could see. Jennie: I was behind them and I kept seeing her head come up and then her head would go down. I’m timing her head coming up and going down thinking, “Okay. She’s either starting or stopping.” I’m on the phone with my husband like, “I’m going to deliver a baby on the side of the road I’m pretty sure.” Meagan: Oh my gosh!Morgan: Yeah. I said to my husband, “Just pull into the valet even though they aren’t running it because of COVID. Just pull in there. I know you can just park there and that’s going to be the easiest way that we get up there.” Of course, the security guard is like, “No, no, no. You can’t park here.” We’re all yelling at her, “I’m pushing!” “She’s in labor!” “Baby coming!” Finally, my husband just parked the car. I got out and she offered me a wheelchair. I said, “Can I kneel?” She was like, “Oh no, no honey. You can’t kneel.” So I just took it from her and started pushing it like a walker and walked myself up to L&D. Jennie: It was my favorite thing. Meagan: Then I will sort of kneel leaning onto this and walking. Jennie: Yeah. She literally in one motion spun it around, gave this lady a look like, “Please move” and then started going. Morgan: Meanwhile, it’s the middle of the day at a strong hospital on a Wednesday at lunchtime. There were so many people to try to navigate around. Here I am moaning and pushing and obviously pregnant, obviously in labor and these two beautiful nurses came out of nowhere. I don’t think they were L&D nurses. They took the wheelchair and told me to kneel. One of them ran up and pushed the elevator button so that we could get up to the third floor quickly. Thank God I was in that deep of labor because my husband was like, “She’s not going to take the elevator. She’s way too afraid of taking the elevator. She’s going to make us walk. She’s going to deliver in the stairwell.” And I did. I took the elevator because I could not walk up three flights of stairs at that point. Meagan: No. Not with a baby coming. Morgan: Right? I kept saying to him, my eyes were closed, and I’m like, “Billy, are you still here? Billy, are you still here?” He’s like, “Yes, yes.” I said, “Is Jennie here?” He said, “She’s parking and she’ll be right up.” We skipped triage completely and we went straight to a room. Someone came in and offered to check on me and I said, “Are you from my practice? I don’t know anyone with that name.” At the same time, Jennie walked in and continued to advocate for me to have my personal midwifery check me. My midwife came in and she checked me and said I was fully dilated and +2. That was the moment. The moment we all dream about, it was happening. She’s like, “Morgan, keep going. Do what you’re doing.” So I was kneeling on the bed on all fours and I pushed for a short time that way, then she said, “Are you willing to move into a different position because I think if you go on your side, your pelvis shape might just shift enough that he’ll come right out.” So I was like, “Yeah, absolutely. I will do whatever you think is best.” I wanted to move during the pushing stage and try different things. So I pushed on my side for a short time and I definitely started feeling the ring of fire. But then the mood in the room shifted and the midwife called out. She said, “Shoulder. Call OB.” Everything happened very quickly. She had flipped me onto my back. My feet were by my head. A nurse was on top pushing. The midwife was telling me to push and then I just felt him come out and go right in my hands and on my chest. That was the best moment of my life by far. They asked my husband to cut the cord quickly since they did need to break my son’s shoulder to safely deliver him so they needed to get him over to the warmer to assess him. He wasn’t breathing well because he came so fast that his lungs weren’t squeezed and all of those things. He got suctioned. He was only there for a couple of minutes with the NICU team and then he was back with me for skin-to-skin for a couple minutes. But then the midwife was saying that they were noticing that I was having a little bit more bleeding than they’d like to see. They tried some shots of Pitocin, rectal miso, and a few other things but she had said that removing the placenta is going to help start the stopping of bleeding. She asked for my consent to manually remove it. She said, “It’s going to be really uncomfortable,” and since I didn’t have an IV yet, they wouldn’t be able to give me any pain medication. They tried to get an IV in nine different times during labor but every time–Meagan: You were probably having a contraction. Jennie: Yeah. You were like, “I don’t like that. I don’t like that.” It was so polite but very firm. “I don’t like that.” They would stop. They listened. Morgan: Yeah, I would have my arm out. I would be so ready for them and then a contraction would come and I’d just ruin the whole thing. But wherever they cleaned off or had a vein ready so I said, “If this is going to be that uncomfortable, I need my husband to take the baby because I’m probably going to scream in his ears.” My husband took him and did skin-to-skin with him while they figured out what was happening to me. They were able to manually remove my placenta, but my uterus kind of came with it and inverted. So when they were doing the fundal massage and trying to find the borders of the uterus, they couldn’t find them. They asked if they could go back in manually and kind of push it back into place which again, those two were the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. By the way, I had just had a 10-pound, 12-ounce baby with no medication. The amount of pain was just really overwhelming. Meagan: That stuff is intense. Everything’s already tender and they’re going up and pushing things and scraping things. I mean, think about the fundal massage on the outside. It’s intense enough let alone it being on the inside. Morgan: Yeah, yeah. Jennie: I was impressed too with the provider because it was not the midwives at this point. It was the OB team and I don’t know if you remember this, Morgan, but you kept saying, “No OR. No OR,” because that was the big thing. We are not going to the OR for this birth even if it’s after the baby is out. That was a big sticking point. It was one of the residents, I believe, who was right by your head and she kept saying, “No OR. We’re not going to the OR. We’re going to do this here.” Morgan: Yeah. I really give credit to the URNC Midwifery group that I worked with because the midwife that was there that day delivered my son, I think she advocated a lot for that. Jennie: Yeah, for sure. Morgan: The OBs are comfortable in the OR, especially for a third-degree tear where they are stitching for 45 minutes and they’re afraid of blood loss and all of these things. They definitely probably would have been more comfortable in the OR but I didn’t want to be separated from my baby and I did not want to be in the OR. Anything that they could do safely in that room was fine with me. Finally, they were able to get an IV in and give me some pain meds. I also asked for some anxiety medication because I was very overwhelmed. Jennie: Understandably. Meagan: Yeah, a lot, and not even just those two things but a lot before. You just had a precipitous birth, a 10-pound baby, shoulder dystocia, all of these things. You’re hyper-stimulated at this point. Morgan: Yes, yes. I got Will back on skin-to-skin. They stitched for 45 minutes or so and it was just everything that I had hoped for. Jennie was right here. My husband was right here. My baby was right here. It was calm and I felt so positive about it. I was able to call my mom and I just said to her, “Well, he’s here.” She said, “What? You just left my house!” My water broke at 11:15 AM and he was born at 2:50 PM, so very, very, very fast. It was so positive. Looking back, I think that my Cesarean was very textbook, very typical, easy, whatever, but I had so much trauma associated with it and then if you look at my vaginal birth, it had a lot of complications but there’s no trauma associated with it because I felt so supported and so educated and informed. The midwifery group asked for my consent for everything even when it was an emergency. The birth and postpartum time was, I don’t even remember having the baby blues. I think I only cried because I was just so happy and so proud of myself and so grateful for the team that we had around us. It was incredible. Meagan: Oh my goodness. I love that you talked about the fact that you’re like, “I had this textbook C-section, but I associate it this way. Then I had this crazy thing with unknowns that you could definitely say were traumatic but you look at it differently.” It’s so interesting how we as individuals and human beings how in a position like that where you have an undesired, unplanned, unwanted as you described it, situation where you didn’t feel like you had a lot of real true say along the way, but then this one where you definitely had some things happen that were undesired and unplanned but you had a say along the way and it has impacted you so much in a positive way. It just goes to show how informed consent, education, and support around you make such a big impact, right? Morgan: Yeah, yeah. Meagan: I had some weird things with my VBAC and then I had textbook Cesareans that were not necessarily wanted, but I was alone with my first and had no one talking to me, and the same thing. I view that as not a pleasant experience and then even though I had some frustrations, I was still frustrated that things happened in certain ways with my VBAC, but I was still so happy and overall, I view it so differently. I would say if there are any providers out there or all of our doulas listening and Jennie, I’d love to know your two cents on this too, but I think it’s so important to remind your patients and to remind yourself that your patients are people. They are living this experience. They need that informed consent. They need that knowledge and that guidance. Even those moments of, “You’ve got this. We’re going to be okay,” or “Hey, I see this. Let’s try this.” Anything like that. Or, “I know this is going to be really intense but we’re going to be right here with you.” That can just make such a difference. I don’t know, Jennie, if you have anything that you would like to add. Jennie: At our support group, we say all the time that you can’t control your birth. We know this. You can do everything that you can to prepare, but one thing that Morgan has said often is that she totally trusted us. She picked us because she trusted us. She knew that whatever happened, we were going to have her back. I tell people all the time that a doula/client relationship, a provider/patient relationship is so intimate and vulnerable. There are so many of us out there that if I’m not the doula for you, if my provider isn’t the provider for you, that’s fine. Go find someone else who is. You need to be able to be completely trusting and vulnerable in the moment. Because Morgan did the work and found her team, she was able to take something that on paper might look traumatic and have it be so empowering and wonderful and the best day of her life. I’m so proud of you, Morgan, still even though it’s been a year. Morgan: Thank you. Jennie: The other really empowering thing that sticks out to me is that no one ever told you that they needed to take him away from you. He was on you during all of everything and the only time he was taken away from you aside from right at first to check everything was when you said, “Billy, can you please take him? I don’t feel comfortable.” I think for providers to hear how much that changed your experience knowing where he was, knowing he was on you or on his father, that was so important. As a doula and the photographer standing back and watching it happen and being a part of it, knowing that your baby was somewhere that you were comfortable with and where you could see him at all times was really, really cool. Meagan: Yeah. Morgan: Truly, truly the only reason that I felt comfortable and confident doing that was knowing that Jennie, you were right there by my side too because if Billy was over there with Will and I was by myself, I would have said, “Take him to the warmer or take him wherever. I’m not comfortable being in this emergency state with my support person not right by my side,” but because I had you and trusted you completely, I knew that I could have Billy go and take care of him and I would be okay. I’m so grateful because I definitely would like to be able to control my environment and with birth, you can’t control much. You try and you definitely have preferences advocated for, but being able to release that to the people that I trust the most in my life was really incredible. I’ve never felt so cared for and so confident about the care. Meagan: That is so beautiful. So beautiful. I’m so grateful for you sharing your story. Jennie, thank you so much for being here. We love when our VBAC doulas are on the podcast, especially with their clients. We really do because again, I know you guys maybe can’t see what I can see right now, but the joy on Jennie’s face as she’s listening to this, you can tell she is wholeheartedly proud and just so amazed by Morgan. She even said, “I’m still so proud of you even though it’s been a year.” You can really see it in her face. Morgan, you said that you are a doula now. You guys understand. As a doula, I’m just going to rave about doulas for a quick second. As a doula, it is an absolute honor to be invited into someone’s space. It’s a very intimate, beautiful space and to be invited into that space is absolutely an honor. And then to be able to witness this beautiful event, this beautiful birthday? It’s so incredible. So incredible. We hold on to them forever. I mean, I’ve been a doula for eight and a half years and I will never forget the first or the second of the third, right? It’s not that I remember every detail of every birth but there are things that stand out like grabbing a wheelchair and being like, “Yeah, move out of my way. I’m going upstairs,” or even just knowing that person so well as Jennie said. She has elaborate messages every time. She writes a lot so for her to say, “Yeah, come.” We get to know our clients so well and truly, I always tell people. You don’t have to be my best friend but I want you to know that I’m always going to be your friend and I’m always going to be there for you because really, it’s such an amazing experience to be with people and watch these incredible births just like yours, Morgan. Jennie: Absolutely. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Rachel is a pediatric dentist who owns her own practice in Pensacola, Florida. She fought for an empowering second birth experience even with an initial diagnosis of complete placenta previa. When her placenta thankfully moved, Rachel was cleared to go for her VBAC and she was all in!Rachel drove six hours to be able to birth with the provider she knew would best support her VBAC. With her doula and supportive family by her side, Rachel achieved the beautiful birth she envisioned. Additional LinksHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Women of strength, you are listening to The VBAC Link and I cannot wait for today’s story. Reading this story, there are so many twists. Not even twists I should say, but factors to this story. We have our friend Rachel telling it from Florida so welcome, Rachel. Rachel: Thank you so much. I’m so, so honored to be on this podcast. I can’t believe I’m actually getting to share this amazing journey with you guys so thank you for having me. Meagan: We are honored that you are here with us. Yeah. I feel like there are quite a few things within your story. Things like baby’s position, placenta previa which we are going to talk a lot about at the end, even dental stuff, close duration, so there are a lot of things where I feel like people can relate to this story. Review of the WeekI will read a review and then we will get right into your beautiful story. Today’s reviewer is haley222222. It says, “I can’t recommend enough. I found this podcast shortly after my C-section in 2019 with my first and it has helped me so much. My doctor had told me that I was only going to be able to have four children because I was going to have C-sections from here on out. This podcast opened my eyes to the possibilities I didn’t have a clue about and I had options.” Oh, I just scrolled, and okay. Here we go. It says, “I was able to find providers that I trusted and who actually believed in me. I prepared for my VBAC and unfortunately, my first VBAC was a stillborn at 26 weeks, second baby boy in October of 2022.” So sorry to hear that, Haley. It says, “Although it was heartbreaking, it was truly an amazing experience and I can’t wait to have another vaginal birth hopefully with a better outcome and a baby we can bring home. I am pregnant with my third now and I’m relistening to all of the episodes. I am so excited to do this. I am in the process of hiring a doula and we will be taking a birth course this time around. Thank you so much for creating this podcast and I’m so grateful for all that I have learned.” Well, Haley, thank you so much. Again, my condolences to you on your second and congrats on your third, and thank you so much for sharing your review. Rachel’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, we have our friend Rachel. Like I said earlier, she is from Florida. So you are a dentist and you have your own clinic, is this right?Rachel: Yes. I am a pediatric dentist. I only work on children. We have a private practice in Pensacola, Florida which is the panhandle of Florida. It’s lower Alabama, kind of LA but it’s on that end of the spectrum, not south Florida. Meagan: Awesome. That is so exciting. So, so exciting. Rachel: Thank you. Meagan: Well, thank you so much for being with us. I would love to turn the time over to you to share this story and then at the end, we’ll get into that placenta previa and some dental stuff. Rachel: I know, who would have thought that dentistry could be related to C-sections? Meagan: Who would have thought? Really, though. Rachel: I know. It’s all related. Meagan: We never talk about it so I’m excited too. Rachel: Well, I guess I’ll just get excited about my children journey. Again, I’m just so thankful that I get to talk on this podcast. I listen to you guys every single day when I was preparing for a VBAC and Meagan, what you’re doing is changing so many people’s lives. Like we talked about, I’m sure recording a podcast can get a little crazy like with any job that we do, but you really are making such a difference in so many people’s lives so I really thank you for that. Meagan: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Rachel: Yes. So okay, my children journey I guess what you could say started in Gainesville. My husband and I were living in Gainesville. He was finishing up an orthodontic residency at that time and I was working as a pediatric dentist. I had just finished residency and I was working at a private practice. We became pregnant with our first baby. They said I had a subchorionic hematoma around 7 weeks and said, “Don’t worry.” It’s a pretty common thing I think. Meagan: It is. Rachel: I came back for a follow-up ultrasound anyway around 10 weeks or so and no heartbeat. We had a miscarriage. They gave me two options, either the misoprostol pill to pass the baby or the D&C.Meagan: Cytotec. Rachel: Yeah, or the D&C. After talking to a lot of people, I just decided to have the D&C. It seemed less emotionally scarring. Anyway, so we did that. Right around that time, the day before surgery, the whole COVID thing in 2020 started and they said that for some reason, dentists were considered non-essential so everything was shut down for the whole month of April. Meagan: What?!Rachel: I had never not worked my whole life. This was the most time I had ever had off ever so it was crazy. I was not working. I had scheduled the D&C. That morning, I had a 99-degree fever or something. My OB in Gainesville was amazing. The whole hospital staff was like, “Oh my gosh. She might have COVID. We can’t do the surgery.” Yeah, so crazy. My OB had to vouch for me to say that I didn’t have COVID and that we could still do the D&C anyway. I’m pretty sure I was the last elective surgery to have done and then after the date, literally I think it was March 20th, and the day after, they stopped doing elective surgeries and stuff. I was super thankful for that. It’s Dr. Erin in Gainesville and she was just awesome. We had a miscarriage. It was a super tough time for me and my husband. I just remember praying and asking God to comfort us because we are Christians and I just really believe that God is close to the brokenhearted. The Bible says, “He’s near to the brokenhearted.” It’s still hard though because he’s not here to comfort you physically. I just remember I was praying and there was this dove that came to our house and lived in our backyard. It was so crazy. For several weeks, he just made a nest on the ground.Meagan: That just gave me the chills. Rachel: It is. I’m telling you, I prayed so hard. He can comfort you but he’s not going to give you a hug or something. I don’t know. Do you know what I mean? So literally this dove came and lived in our yard. That dove was there. I’m not even kidding you. The day that I found out I was pregnant, the dove just left. We were like, “Where did that dove go? He was living in our yard and now he’s not there.” That was the day I found out we were pregnant with our second baby, or our first baby. Meagan: Uh-uh. Wow. Rachel: It was so insane. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Rachel: Yes. That was the first crazy thing. I had wanted a puppy after the miscarriage and we had a really small courtyard so my husband was like, “Well, if we get a puppy, I’m getting a monkey.” I’m like, “No.” I was like, “Well if you really do want a monkey, I can look into finding us a monkey if you’ll let me have a puppy.” He’s like, “Okay, deal.” Well, he knows not to put anything past me after that because I found a monkey and we literally have a little squirrel monkey. His name is Rocko and we have a Maltipoo whose name is Remi. So the week after we got our monkey, that’s when we found out we were pregnant again. I was like, “Now we have a monkey and this puppy and now we’re going to have a baby.” That’s how life goes. If you know me, that’s just how my life goes. It’s just like, the more fun, the better. Anyway, so I was pregnant with the second one. I also had a subchorionic hematoma in the beginning and Dr. Erin was like, “Okay, I know I told you not to worry about it last time but seriously it’s usually not a big deal.” But you know, you’re still worried because you have the same thinking. Meagan: Yeah, trigger back a little bit. Rachel: Exactly. So I was just a little worried about that, but I kept pressing forward. So then fast forward later, everything is healthy. Six months into the pregnancy, I found out that we got a great opportunity to move back to Pensacola which is where I’m from. It’s about six hours away from Gainesville. It’s near my home town. My parents live here. A pediatric dentist, Dr. Stu Bonnin was selling his dental practice in Pensacola so we decided to merge together and transition. I went there. I was probably about seven months pregnant when we moved to Pensacola. I was starting up. I’m seven months pregnant. I’m starting brand new seeing all of these patients I’m just getting to know. My husband started an orthodontic practice next door which is a dream come true. We have always wanted to do this. The doors opened up to where it could happen. Timing sometimes seems crazy but it just happened that way. I mean, I remember we moved here on December 24, 2020, so Christmas Eve. U-hauls are a lot cheaper then by the way. Our family had COVID so we weren’t going to go see them anyway. I remember waking up on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day morning and I was sleeping on an air mattress. We had just bought our house and moved everything in. I’m like, “Wow. What a whirlwind. This is crazy.” So we moved halfway through. I’m a new business owner. So then I started seeing patients at about eight months pregnant. I’m trying to establish rapport with my new patients. I just decided it was in their best interest to work up until my due date. I worked up until my due date. At this point, I had no knowledge of birthing a baby at all which is my fault. I should have researched everything but there was just a lot going on. Meagan: Yeah. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself there. Rachel: Knowing what I know now–Meagan: You had a lot of juggling pieces. Rachel: I know. Plus I was like, “I don’t want to know how the baby gets here. I just want to know what to do after it gets here,” so I did a lot of Taking Cara Babies, reading how to get them to sleep through the night. I really wanted to breastfeed so I was focused on what to do when the baby gets here. Meagan: Which also is something that a lot of the time we forget to do. Rachel: I know. I know. It’s all hard. So I worked up until my due date. I was expecting to be two weeks late for some reason because I was two weeks late as a baby. My husband was two weeks late and we were both first babies. I’m like, “It’s going to be fine. I’ll probably just be a little late.” A week passed and I had found an OB here. They did the BPP thing, the biophysical profile. Everything had been healthy. Nothing was out of the ordinary. She started talking about inducing me because I had borderline low amniotic fluid. That’s the reason they gave me. So I guess amniotic fluid level from my understanding can be anywhere from 5 centimeters to 25 centimeters and mine was a 7. So she’s like, “It’s borderline low. The baby’s not in distress but the older your placenta gets, the more likely that you’ll have a stillbirth or you can have babies born with cerebral palsy and complications.”Meagan: Big words, very big words. Rachel: Yeah. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, well I don’t want that.” I trust the doctor. I’m a doctor. I feel like I look out for people’s best interests. I mean, I know I just deal with baby teeth but I truly want the best for my patients so I know she was probably recommending the same thing. All of that is not untrue, but anyways. Knowing what I know now, I’m just like, “What in the world?” She recommended that I be induced because of the borderline low amniotic fluid and that the longer time passes by, the increased chance of stillbirth. Because I had done zero birth education, I had nothing to really guide my decision-making process and my husband wasn’t there because it was all COVID stuff. He couldn’t come to any of the appointments so I was making these decisions on my own. I was just like, “Okay. We’ll get induced. That’s fine.” I only had a month off for maternity leave anyways, so I’m like, “Okay. It’ll probably work out that the baby’s born more on time.” Meagan: That you’ll have some time. Rachel: Yeah, exactly. The day before, I just had this really bad feeling. I called the doctor’s office and I was like, “Hey, is there any way we can postpone the induction?” I was really nervous. They were like, “No. This is the only time. We don’t recommend that. This is the best thing.” I’m like, “Okay.” I got to the hospital. I started on, is it Cervadil?Meagan: Yeah, Cervadil. Rachel: The insertion pill thing. Meagan: So the pill is Cytotec and then there’s the tampon-looking thing and that’s Cervadil. Rachel: Okay. I think that might have been what that was. So yeah. I did that. I got to 2 centimeters dilated and they started the Pitocin. So then after the Pitocin, it was a gentle induction. The doctor I went to I guess is known for gentle inductions so that was good. I got to 2 centimeters dilated. Our daughter’s name is Heidi. Her heart rate started dropping even this early on. I was only 2 centimeters dilated. Every time they turned the Pitocin up, it would drop. I was just like, “Just take me off of everything. Let’s just wait.” The OB came in and she’s like, “We’ve already had nonreassuring fetal heart rates.” I hope I’m using the correct words but I think that’s what it is. Meagan: Correct. Rachel: It’s just not looking good so we would recommend some kind of intervention at this point. I was like, “What about an epidural?” She was like, “Maybe you could use an epidural. It would help you relax and just speed things along.” So I got an epidural and then Heidi’s heart rate dropped again. This just kept happening and I will never forget. There was a younger nurse. The doctor wasn’t there. It was 2:00 AM and she came walking in the room. She said, “Hey, so the doctor just told us that we need to prep you for a C-section.” I’m just like, “What? A C-section? Excuse me? No one told me this was a possibility.” I had never even researched what that was. I never even knew that was a possibility. Meagan: A lot of us don’t. Rachel: I mean, I’m stupid for not realizing that is a possibility, but at the same time, you’re not planning on it. It’s just an unplanned surgery. Meagan: Yeah. We go in thinking we’re just going to have this baby which we do have a baby but we just don’t envision it that way. Rachel: I know. I just truly wanted what was best for my baby. Meagan: Absolutely. Rachel: If it meant a C-section to save her life, then obviously that’s what I would do but I was realizing this cascade of interventions was leading from one thing to another thing to another thing and I just was so upset. The OB got there and finally, my husband was like, “Whoa. Okay. What is going on here?” He talked to her and he was like, “Let’s just take her off of everything and see how her heart rate is.” We literally asked her. We were like, “Listen, if you think our baby is going to lose oxygen or something dangerous where it’s going to save her life to do a C-section, we will do a C-section, but if she is okay and we can work through–” the nurses were changing my position and the heart rate would get better. Sometimes I think the cord can just get compressed or things like that. She literally looked at us. I was really upset. I don’t even know what I said. I was just really upset. But she looked at us and she was like, “Okay, yeah. The heart rate looks great. You’re doing great. I’m okay with that. Let’s just give it a little bit longer.” It was probably another 12 hours that we had done that. Long story short, the same thing happened again and after she gave me time, and at that point, I think I had progressed to 6 centimeters. I was like, “Okay, we’re going to have this baby. This is looking good.” Even the nurse said that it was looking good. I think the final thing that happened is that I started running a fever and then when I ran a fever, the heart rate shot up and it was super high. Yeah, she was tachycardic. I’m like, “Yeah, she is not looking good.” At this point, it’s been 72 hours. I mean, I have so many fluids. I’ve been on an IV. So we were like, “Okay, we really need to do this.” I was kind of expecting it at that point even though I was super upset and super sad. I was just kind of waving my little white flag. We did what we could and they prepped me for a C-section. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced because everything went really well with the C-section. The OB was great with the C-section. All of the team was really fast. I kept saying, “I can still feel some pressure. Give me some more medicine. More, more, more.” I was so numb that my intercostal muscles were numb all the way up into my chest so it was kind of hard to breathe. I knew it was just because my muscles were numb so I was okay with it. It was so crazy because I was so happy. I heard my daughter cry so I knew she was healthy. I knew she was there. It was the best moment ever but at the same time, you’re sad. Everybody that has talked on this podcast, you know the feeling of where you’re so happy. Your baby is here. You’re healthy. There could be way worse other things, but at the same time, it’s just that this was not what I was expecting. It’s crazy. Anyway, she had to go to the NICU because there was fluid in her lungs so she had to have help with oxygen and then she had to get IV antibiotics because there was suspected chorioamnionitis. Meagan: Because of the fever? Rachel: Yeah, because of the fever. So it wasn’t proven, but they go ahead and put the baby on antibiotics before the results get back from pathology because it takes a while so they want to go ahead and get them on antibiotics just in case. It came back and it wasn’t chorio so she had unnecessary antibiotics. But I get it. You have to have certain protocols in place. So she had to have that. She was in the NICU for just a couple of days. It wasn’t bad. I was able to breastfeed. It was a struggle. You have to really make sure you’re on a strict schedule when your baby is in the NICU. You have to go feed them and pump especially when your milk is coming in. So that was hard but we were able to do the breastfeeding which is good. Oh, Heidi had a lot of donor milk in the NICU because it was good that they gave her donor milk. I always joke around. I’m like, “She’s going to have the best immune system because of all of the donor milk that she got.” Side note, whoever donates breastmilk, you guys are amazing. I just cannot believe that is a thing, so thank you to whoever donated breastmilk.Fast forward to the follow-up, everything is looking good after the C-section. Heidi is doing great. I’m so happy. I wanted to share this. I don’t know if a lot of people have ever experienced this but I talked to my provider. I mean, I really liked her other than she suggested the induction. I just really wasn’t that on board but she was like, “Yeah. In the future, you will definitely be a candidate for a VBAC.” But then I got this letter in the mail. I’m just going to read it. It says, “Dear Rachel, The patient/physician relationship is important in providing quality care. I feel your unacceptable behavior toward me and the hospital staff as well as your unwillingness to follow my recommendations for your safety and the safety of your baby has jeopardized our relationship. Therefore, this letter serves to notify you that I will not continue to be your provider.”Meagan: What?Rachel: I was so, so sad because I thought I followed her recommendation. She thinks I put my baby at jeopardy. If she thought my baby was at jeopardy, she should have told me that I should have had the C-section earlier. I just was so sad. I, as a physician, I’m not a physician but I’m a dentist and all of my patients, I try to give them both sides to everything. Not everybody is as informed as I am about teeth. Duh, we all don’t know. That’s why you go to a doctor for advice. Meagan: That’s why you go to a specialist. Rachel: I try to give everybody two sides. I try to inform them and then they make the decision. I don’t ever want to force someone into doing something that they don’t want to do but also if someone doesn’t take my recommendation, I’m not going to say, “Okay, you’re dismissed from my practice.” I get that some people just don’t feel comfortable treating certain people which is fine. I’m not bitter about that but I was super floored that she would dismiss me as a patient because I didn’t take her recommendation to get a C-section in the first place. Meagan: You did and then you had a conversation and she said, “Yeah, I’m totally fine with it. Let’s keep going.”Rachel: I had a doula with me, Ashley Andrews, she is amazing. She is my prayer warrior doula. She even said, “I don’t think you’re out of line, Rachel. I’m really confused.” Meagan: I’m sorry. Rachel: Anyways, not to harp on that but it was really sad. It was really for the best because I started looking at other providers anyway because I knew I wanted another baby. Okay, so here’s the good part of the story. Dun, dun, dun. Nine months later, we found out we were having another baby. This time, it was a boy so I found a different provider in Pensacola that was okay with VBAC. It’s really hard surprisingly to find someone that is super on board. It really is up to you to do the research and all of that. We have doctors. People think doctors are there to give you a magic pill and everything is solved. Doctors can’t do anything if you don’t make an effort on your end too. I feel like that’s why there is so much diabetes and all of these things because you have to do some kind of work on your end too to educate yourself and realize that you can’t just go to a doctor and expect them to fix all of your problems. I realized that and I’m like, “Okay, that’s in every situation. I have to become educated myself.” I found you guys. I listened to your VBAC podcast literally every single day at lunch and I would cry on my lunch break. I’m such a loser. Meagan: You are not. These stories are amazing. Rachel: I would listen to these stories and I would just cry. I’m like, “Wow. This is so awesome.” My husband, I love him. He’s so sweet. He’s like, “You guys should make a podcast for husbands on how to deal with their wives when they have decided that they are going to have a VBAC,” because he’s like, “All right, I’ve already accepted all of this stuff. It’s fine.” Anyways, at 20 weeks I was diagnosed with complete placenta previa, not just partial. The placenta is completely covering your cervix. My OB here in Pensacola, the new one, was like, “It’s highly unlikely that this is going to move. It’s complete. It’s very rare.” He started talking about placenta accreta and how sometimes it can even grow into the C-section scar and grow out into your bladder and stuff. I’m like, “Whoa.” I was so sad. I’m like, “Y’all, okay. I guess I’ll just have another C-section. This is fine.” But then I was like, “Okay. God, you said in the Bible.” Matthew 17:20 says, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible.” I’m like, “God if you can move mountains, I know that you can move this placenta. I know that nothing is impossible for you.” I just started praying. In the meantime, my sister who lives in Jacksonville had this great practice that helped her with her delivery. Full Circle Women’s Care, I highly recommend. I also talked to a friend, Saundra Fetner, who had a VBAC with them. I talked to her about it and she was like, “Yes. You need to go there.” I had a Zoom conference or a telemedicine conference with Dr. Adams. She is the owner there, the OB there. She was like, “Okay, yeah. We even have some missionaries that will be in Africa and then fly here and deliver their baby here and go back.” She was like, “If you want to deliver here, that would be fine with me. You just see your provider in Pensacola and then when it gets time, you just make arrangements to stay in Jacksonville until you have the baby.” Meagan: Dual care. Rachel: Yeah, exactly. I was like, “If something crazy happens in Pensacola, then I have the provider here.” I talked to my provider here and he was completely okay with it. He was like, “Well, with the placenta previa, you might want to try to rent a private jet so you can get there really quick.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s not going to happen but whatever.” He was okay with it. I didn’t care. Dr. Adams by the way, just has such passion for what she does. If you don’t have passion for what you do and you don’t enjoy it, why are you doing it? She actually had a C-section with her first baby and she’s an OB. So she’s like, “I understand how medicine is there if you need it, but sometimes you need to let your body do what it was created to do.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes girl. Preach, preach. I’m going to come see you. I don’t care that I have to drive six hours. I’m going to come here.” I scheduled a follow-up. Granted, it had only been two weeks since I had been diagnosed with placenta previa. Coming to the follow-up, I had another ultrasound and all of that at Full Circle Women’s Care. My first appointment, my sister went with me and we were like, “Let’s just not say anything. Let’s not say that I had placenta previa. Let’s just see what they say.” The ultrasound tech looked at everything and she was like, “Yeah, everything looks great. Your baby’s healthy. We just might need to get one more little position of the head when you come back.” I’m like, “What?” So then I’m like, “Okay, well you don’t see placenta previa or anything going on?” She’s like, “No. The placenta is way over here. This is the placenta here. This is your cervix here. There’s no placenta previa.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” My mom had been praying. My dad, my mother-in-law, Angie. I’m like, “Y’all, you will not guess what just happened.” I sound so crazy but I’m like, “God moved my placenta.” I even had Ashley, my doula, had her Sunday School group. She was like, “Girl, we’ve been praying for you.” I know that’s not the story with everybody, but it’s just so crazy. I really do believe that and I’m just so thankful. I had my appointment with Carol, one of the midwives and she’s like, “Yeah, everything looks great. You’re due around September. We’re going to do everything we can to help you have a successful VBAC.” I’m like, “Okay, Carol. You promise I don’t have placenta previa?” She’s like, “What are you talking about sweetie? Your placenta is far away from the cervix.” I couldn’t believe that it was the case. I had this regained energy and excitement. We were back on track. Let’s do it. Then a couple of weeks later, I met with Dr. Adams and it’s a group so you meet with different people because you don’t know who’s going to deliver you. Everyone I saw, I’m like, “If you deliver me, I don’t care. Everyone is great. Fantastic.” I met with Dr. Adams and she’s like, “You know, there’s this thing that you can read.” It is a recommendation for TOLAC or how to have a successful VBAC and how to ripen your cervix. She had all of the guidelines there. She was like, “Have you been following the guidelines? Have you been doing your daily squats to open up your pelvis and doing the specific Spinning Babies exercises to get the baby in the right position?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been doing my squats.” She’s like, “Let me see you do 20 squats right now.” This is at my OB appointment. I’m like, “Okay.” She’s holding my hands and doing squats with me at the appointment talking to me about what I need to do. Meagan: Oh my gosh, I love that. Rachel: I’m just like, “This is awesome.” Anyway, she really practices what she preaches. She’s like, “All right, then let me see you do some squats.” So I did that. Also, going back so for Valentine’s Day of last year, instead of giving me chocolates and stuff, my husband printed off the recommendations that they gave me. I’m like, “You don’t care about this as much as I do. I wish you could just know what I’m going through.” He’s like, “Okay, Rachel.” He printed off the guidelines of how to have a successful VBAC and he highlighted all of the things. This is on the OB’s website, How to Have Your Cervix Ripened Before Birth. These were the things you needed to do. At 20 weeks, drink red raspberry leaf tea. At 36 weeks, do acupressure, acupuncture, and chiropractic care. At 37 weeks, start taking evening primrose oil. At 38 weeks, start using clary sage oil and do birth stimulation, sex, and all of that stuff. At 39 weeks, you can do membrane stripping. He’s just so funny because he even bought all of these things. He’s like, “Are you drinking red raspberry leaf tea? Is it 36 weeks yet because that’s when you need to start going to a chiropractor.” That was awesome. I was just doing everything. I wasn’t perfect. I tried to eat healthier and all of that stuff. You do what you can but I work full time. At the end of the day, we’re not perfect but I tried to do all of those things. I did that. I found a doula in Jacksonville and she helped me through Hypnobabies. It is super interesting because your mind really can help you control pain. It’s so crazy. It really can. I even want to look into this for my patients. I think it would be so cool if you could learn to hypnotize. Dentistry is scary, especially for kids so I’m always looking for new things to try. Okay, so we go to Jacksonville. I was due September 29th. I took a week off early from work. We closed the dental clinic down. I had a dentist that’s working for me too, Dr. Bonnin and he’s awesome. Thank you for working for me on maternity leave. I closed for a week. We just went to Jacksonville. We had a little mini vacay. We took Heidi. I feel like it was so much just to spend time with me and Edwin with my daughter for a straight week in a really long time and focus just on our family. We have had a lot going on up until then so it was a nice little breather away. Meagan: That’s such a beautiful way to spend the end of pregnancy. Rachel: I know. Meagan: Sometimes in the end of pregnancy, we’re so stressed. We’re getting a lot of pressure from the outside world or from whoever. Why haven’t you had your baby yet or why haven’t you been induced? So it’s nice to just be with your family and create this space going into it. Rachel: Yeah, it really was. It was such a blessing that we were able to do that. I didn’t have to worry about, “Okay, let me do the last-minute touches on the nursery.” It was just relaxing. So I’m like, “Okay, for sure this baby is going to come soon.” I’m super relaxed. I saw a shooting star. I’m like, “All right. It’s going to happen.” It didn’t. A week passed so I’m already a week later and then I think I was 41 and a few days. I had the BPP again and they start doing the monitor thing. They just do the heart rate monitor. Meagan: Oh, a non-stress test? Rachel: A non-stress test just to make sure everything is good. They kept saying, “Everything is good but we are going to keep seeing you back.” They weren’t letting me go very long. Meagan: It’s very standard doing NSTs at 41 weeks, very standard. Rachel: Yeah, okay. They were just doing all of the things to make sure everything was good. But Dr. Adams was like, “I know you want to go into spontaneous labor on your own. If you’re not by 42 weeks,” and she was one to wait up until 42 weeks to do an induction. She’s like, “We’ll do a super gentle induction. We’ll start with breast stimulation. We won’t even go to Pitocin or anything.” I didn’t even want to hear the word induction so I’m like, “Okay.” But she was great because she allowed me all the way up until two weeks to schedule the induction whereas for some people, it just depends on the hospital scheduling and that’s where modern medicine is sad because you have to do the schedule and your body’s not on a schedule. Your due date is just a guess date. I mean, Jane, the doula in Jacksonville is like, “So what’s your guess date?” because it is. We try to do what we can but at the end of the day, sometimes you just have to let nature take its course. Anyway, so I talked to Dr. Adams and everything was good. I was trying to go into labor on my own. My best friend from dental school, Jackie, actually had premature contractions at 32 weeks so her doctor was telling her all of the things she needs to do to not go into labor and I was trying to do all of the things that they told her the opposite. I’m like, “Okay, what did your doctor say? Okay, I need to do that.” It just goes to show you that getting babies on this earth is just hard no matter what way you look at it but if you’re educated, it’s a lot easier. Hurricane Ian was brewing up and we had to move from our hotel because our hotel was on the beach and they were like, “We are going to have to evacuate the hotel because a hurricane is coming.” I’m like, “Oh, this baby is for sure coming. It’s a hurricane.” It didn’t. The hurricane came and went. I even drank midwives’ brew and all of that stuff. I was 41 and 5 days or something like that. Our daughter, Heidi, got really sick. She contracted something while we were there. She was throwing up. She couldn’t keep anything down. My husband was getting a little bit antsy. My husband was like, “I have a lot of stuff I need to work on at home. Why don’t you just stay here with your sister? I’ll take Heidi home and I’ll come back when you go into labor.” I was like, “Okay, sounds good.” He took Heidi home. She actually couldn’t keep anything down when he got home. Home was in Pensacola so it was six hours away from Jacksonville. He drove home and she actually had to be admitted to the ER because she had to get an IV and all of that stuff. I’m just like, “Oh my gosh. My daughter is in the hospital.” I feel guilty because I’ve been focusing on myself and making sure I don’t have a C-section meanwhile my daughter is at home in the ER. I was thinking about, “I’m just going to go home. I’ll just be induced again.” You just want what’s best for your babies. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we try to avoid C-sections when we can but have them when it’s going to save our babies’ lives. We just want what’s best for our babies so I just felt so guilty that I wasn’t there with her. But anyway, she was fine. I finally went to Dr. Adams again. It was the first time I had a check. She said, “Okay, you’re 2-3 centimeters dilated.” I’m like, “Why am I not in labor right now?” I was 2 centimeters dilated at the hospital a couple of hours in. So anyways, she’s like, “You are super favorable. You are 2 centimeters dilated. You’re at whatever plus station where your baby is really low.” She’s like, “I’m surprised you’re not in labor right now. All you’re waiting on is for this baby to say, ‘Okay, it’s time for me to come into the world.’” I mean, we just don’t know. That’s why medicine still has some mysteries to it. You just don’t know what puts someone into labor. Anyways, she did a membrane strip which was great. Membrane stripping, is that what it’s called? Membrane sweep. Meagan: Yeah, a stripping or a sweep. Rachel: She’s like, “Okay.” We had the induction scheduled for that Thursday and it was a Monday. She’s like, “Rachel, you’re going to have this baby. You’re not going to have to be induced. We have it scheduled just in case but you are going to go into labor on your own.” I’m like, “I really hope you’re right.” I went home. My sister and I went to a coffee shop and we just relaxed for a little bit and then we went home. We were going to see a movie. My brother lives in Jacksonville too. Me, my sister and my brother were going to see a movie together. He happened to be off work. It was crazy. We’re getting ready and then I start having some Braxton Hicks stuff but some contractions. Anyways, it really progressed and it started getting uncomfortable. I didn’t know. I thought, “Okay.” We contacted our doula. We met her at the hospital. She was like, “Do y’all really think y’all should go to the hospital?” I was having trouble breathing through everything. I was like, “I don’t know. It might just be Braxton Hicks.” We got to the hospital. I couldn’t breathe through it very well so then Jane, our doula, was like, “Okay. Let’s just go to the hospital and get checked.” I’m getting scared. “No, they’re going to trap me. They’re going to make me stay and I’m going to have to get a C-section again.” She’s like, “Rachel, no. That’s not true.” I’ve got my birth posse with me. We go in. They checked me and I was only at a 4. I’m like, “What the heck? I’m such a woosie. I’m only at a 4?” I’m like, “Let’s just go back home.” Carol was there, the midwife that I really had a good connection with and she’s like, “Rachel, I really don’t recommend you going home. I really think that things are progressing quickly. You should stay here and just relax.” Then I talked to my husband too. Meagan: Make your drive. Rachel: As soon as I got admitted to the hospital, Heidi actually got dismissed so he’s like, “We’ve got two babies heading out.” I’m like, “You’re such a nerd.” He’s like, “Rachel, stay at the hospital. You’re being crazy. Just relax. Do your Hypnobabies thing and I’ll be there.” I did that and it was crazy. As soon as I zoned everybody out and put my little headphones on– Meagan: And acclimated to the space.Rachel: Yeah, exactly. I had time to get acclimated. I was like, “Okay. This is going to be okay. This baby is coming.” I just relaxed and then things started getting a little cray cray during transition. Yeah. Now I know what people talk about with that. Also, I didn’t have an epidural because I’m like, “No. They slow things down. I do not want to get an epidural.” Yeah. So that was great and then the transition thing. Okay, things started getting really serious. My sister was there with me because my husband couldn’t be there. I had my sister and a doula. I was like, “Sarah, why did you talk me into this? This is so stupid. I can’t believe I’m doing this. This is the dumbest thing ever.” Then Jane was like, “Okay, I think she’s ready.” Meagan: Usually when there is intense talk and doubt kicks in, it’s like, “I think it’s happening right now.” Rachel: Exactly. So then Carol came in. She checked me. I was 9.5. I had a little cervical lip and I was like, “Oh my gosh. No. I cannot believe it.” I was just like, “How in the world?” Carol was like, “Okay, I think your husband is almost here so we can wait to pull the cervical lip out of the way.” I’m like, “No. We are not doing that!” I’m not waiting. He should have been here a little bit ago.Anyway, so we did that. I’m about to start pushing. My brother was there at the hospital. He met my husband out in the hospital parking lot and they were literally sprinting. They were like, “Okay, your baby is about to be born. Here you are.” Luke led him to the exact room. Edwin comes in. He has a backward baseball cap on. I’m like, “They’re going to think you’re a crazy person coming in here.” They’re like, “Is this the baby daddy? Okay, come in here.” I was pushing and I’m like, “Oh my gosh. The baby is going to get stuck,” because I’ve heard stories that the baby is going to get stuck at 10 centimeters. Carol was so amazing. By the way, she has a British accent. She’s from Africa and she’s the coolest person ever. She’s like, “Rachel, you are doing it. You’re about to have this baby.” I’m like, “No way. Are you serious?” At that moment, she’s like, “Rachel, you’re having this baby. This is happening. It’s too late to turn back. He’s not getting stuck.” I’m crying. I’m like, “This is the best feeling ever.” He was born. He’s healthy. He’s here. I’m healthy and this is how things are supposed to happen. It was the most amazing thing ever. You just can’t explain it. I’m just like, “Oh my gosh.” I just can’t believe that it actually happened and everything was great. The births were such polar opposites. No one's birth is less important than the other. I don’t ever want my daughter to think, “Oh my gosh. I was a failure birth, and then baby John–”. His name is John Edwin Richard the Third and then John was a regular birth. It’s not about that. It’s just how God can take our pain and our failures that we have and turn beauty from ashes. That is what happened. This is how it’s supposed to be. It was the best feeling in the whole world. I was just so thankful. I can’t believe my husband made it there. I didn’t think he was but he did. Meagan: So close. Rachel: Yeah. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I do want to say that I’m not trying to diss C-sections. You need it when you can but who you have as a provider is the most important thing. I trusted them and I knew that if she had recommended that I needed a C-section I was going to say, “Okay. I know that I’ve tried everything I can. I’m going to trust you guys.” She even said, “The position of the baby is the most important thing.” Baby has to be in the right position to do that. So anyway, it was just the most beautiful thing ever. I’m just so thankful for everything. Meagan: Oh my goodness. It’s such a beautiful story honestly from all of it, from the dove in the yard flying away to moving and driving six hours away. Those are hard decisions sometimes to make and sometimes dual care is really hard too because sometimes you will have providers disagreeing with the other provider so that’s really hard. But so beautiful. I could see the emotion and I could hear the emotion in your face. You’re so happy. It sounds just so beautiful. Rachel: I know. It’s amazing. It’s the best. Meagan: Well, thank you. I do want to talk about that placenta previa because it’s interesting to go from being diagnosed with complete previa to so far away. That’s a miracle. It’s so crazy but a lot of the time, we hear diagnoses of full placenta previa so I wanted to talk about what that is. You mentioned accreta too but previa is where it covers the cervix. To diagnose complete previa, it should be directly over the innermost side, so the OS. Directly over the canal of the uterus which is the cervix. So with pregnancies 16 weeks or more when this is happening, sometimes they’re diagnosed with a low-lying. Low lying is when it’s really, really close or the edge is less than 20 millimeters away from the OS, the cervix. 20 millimeters is 1 inch or 2 centimeters. Usually, most providers when it’s 20 or more are totally okay and comfortable with that. One of the interesting things, and I’m curious how you had yours, but a transvaginal ultrasound to diagnose the placenta previa has a way higher chance of it actually being accurate than an abdominal. Did you have an abdominal?Rachel: It was transvaginal, yes. Meagan: It was. Rachel: Yes. On both, yeah. Meagan: See? Look at that. That’s so amazing. If someone is diagnosing you with previa on the abdominal outside, you can also request a transvaginal because that can bring higher accuracy. If we get diagnosed and there are placenta issues within the pregnancy, then sometimes they will suggest a 34-36 week induction so that’s another thing and then if there aren’t any complications, sometimes it’s 36-37. So just for those who have been diagnosed. I also want to mention that a lot of the time when we have low lying or something like that, it does move throughout pregnancy. Rachel: Yeah, and usually it does take a lot longer than that. I did so much research too. So yeah, just like what you were saying, and if it does migrate upwards, it never will migrate back down because your uterus is growing up, not down. It all is about where the placenta attaches to the uterus. It’s this tissue and you can’t help it. It’s when the baby is conceived, that it attaches. I had a D&C and a C-section which can increase the risk of it. I had a friend that was diagnosed with it and she even had some bleeding. She almost had to have a C-section but it had migrated more than what did you say it was? Meagan: 20 millimeters, 1 inch, or 2 centimeters. Rachel: Yeah, she said it was 3 centimeters so her provider was letting her go. I’m not saying that everybody’s just miraculously moves all of the time but the chances are pretty good that it’s going to move. If your provider says that you need a C-section, just maybe give it some time. Everybody is different. Meagan: Yeah. Well, yeah. I think it’s just something that a lot of the time we don’t talk about, placenta previa. It can be really scary when you hear at 20 weeks, “Hey, you’ve got this possible placenta previa or low lying and you might have to have a C-section,” so at 20 weeks we’re hearing, “I might have to have a C-section,” and it immediately starts making our wheels turn. Rachel: It does. It’s crazy. Meagan: And then last of all, I really want to talk about teeth. Rachel: Yeah, teeth. Meagan: Our pearly whites. So obviously, you’re a pediatric dentist and one of the interesting things that you have found that we didn’t realize is that C-sections can affect enamel. Rachel: Yes, it can. If you think about it, at about six months in utero is when the baby teeth are starting to develop. Anything that happens, if the mom gets a fever or you don’t have the certain Vitamins A, C, D, or E which are really important for your teeth to mineralize and you don’t have the certain minerals, then your teeth can be a little bit weaker when you are born. All of these things in pregnancy affect the development of your teeth. Right at birth is when your adult molars, so you have four adult molars in the back and the front four on the top and the front four on the bottom. Right at birth is when those molars start to calcify. If you have, and I’m not saying that a C-section increases but it’s more of a correlation. It’s not a cause and effect. It’s a correlation. Meagan: It’s a correlation, yeah. Rachel: Yes. That’s observed if you have anything that happens right around the time of birth. With a C-section, sometimes the baby might be a little bit earlier. When you are born, you have things that happened at birth. The baby might be a little bit earlier. A C-section brings the baby earlier. Sometimes those things can affect the mineralization process of those six-year-old molars and the front four top teeth and the front four bottom teeth. It’s called molar incisor hypomineralization. If you have something like that, it’s just a really good idea to see a pediatric dentist. You can put sealants on it. Sealants can protect the adult molars from getting cavities and things like that to strengthen it. Also, being on antibiotics right at birth–Meagan: That’s just what I was going to ask. What about antibiotics?Rachel: Yeah. I’m not getting into the nitty-gritty of everything, but certain antibiotics are worse than others. Usually, the C-section has a higher chance of having to be in the NICU and taking antibiotics. That can affect the mineralization process of your molars. That in turn can cause them to be weaker which puts them at higher risk for cavities. It’s just so crazy that even a C-section can affect your teeth which is my small little bubble of medicine that I do. Even that can have a role. It’s not like if you have to have a C-section, you’re like, “Oh my gosh. My kid is going to have cavities forever.” It just puts you more at risk for that just like someone could be more at risk of being overweight but there are things that you can do through your diet and all of that to keep yourself healthy. It’s not an automatic thing. There are things you can do. Don’t drink juice and eat sugar. There are things you can do to keep cavities from forming. But yeah, at around that time is when everything is forming. It’s so crazy. Meagan: It’s just good to know.Rachel: It is. It is. Meagan: Even if you’ve had a vaginal birth with a lot of antibiotics from Group B Strep or something like that, it’s good to just be aware. Rachel: Yes. It’s not necessarily with a C-section, but with antibiotics and stuff. Meagan: Awesome. Rachel: Oh my gosh. Awesome. You guys are the best. I love you. Meagan: We love you back and we are so honored that you wanted to share your story and touch the world around you.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Blyss Young is a seasoned home birth midwife who has so much knowledge, experience, and a special heart for VBAC. Blyss hosts her own podcast, Birthing Instincts, alongside her cohost Dr. Stuart Fischbein where they normalize physiologic birth outside of the hospital.We asked our VBAC community what questions you have for a midwife who supports home births after Cesarean and Blyss has answers! You will leave feeling inspired, educated, supported, and loved for whatever your birthing choices may be after listening to this beautiful discussion. We absolutely adore Blyss and know you will too!Additional LinksBlyss’ WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello women of strength. It is Wednesday. Actually, it’s Monday the day of this episode and we are coming at you with another Cesarean Awareness Episode. I am so excited to be doing extra episodes this month. Today we have our friend Blyss Young. You guys, if you don’t follow her and her podcast with Dr. Stu, you need to do that right now. Push pause and go find them because they are amazing. They are a wealth of knowledge. They just make me smile. I feel like every time I’m done listening to an episode, my face hurts because I’ve just been smiling. Really, though. I remember I fell in love with Blyss and Stu years and years ago. We’ve been so fortunate to have them on the podcast before and Blyss agreed today to be on the podcast blessing you again with her wealth of knowledge and answering some of your questions. We put out in The VBAC Link Community, “What questions do you have for a midwife?” and we got quite a few surrounding home birth. I know this might sound like a really heavy month of talking about home birth because Julie and I got a little salt at the beginning of April talking about a home birth but it’s just such an important topic that a lot of people don’t know is an option. Review of the WeekSo we’re excited to dive into today’s episode with cute Blyss but of course, I have a review of the week that I would like to read. The title says, “Thank You” and it’s from cara05. It says, “I just wanted to drop a review and say thank you. Because of listening to some of your podcasts, I felt empowered to talk to my OBGYN about skipping the repeat Cesarean in the event that I go past my due date. This was something I had in my head that I really wanted. Opting for induction to still try for a VBAC was important. She was and just over all of this so supportive.” Sorry, that was a little weird for me to read.“She was so supportive of the idea and totally on board which helped me get more excited about championing–” Blyss, I can’t read this morning. Sorry, Cara. “--this VBAC so thank you.” Oh, man. This is where Julie always would come in handy. She would really read reviews really well. So going on and having her VBAC. Congrats, Cara, for feeling empowered and that you were able to talk to your OBGYN. This is something that is so important whether you are a VBAC mom or not. We want to have a good relationship with our provider and we want to make sure that we can have those tough conversations. When they may be suggesting induction or a repeat Cesarean for going past your due date, but if something in your heart is telling you no or you are seeing the evidence and you’re like, “That doesn’t feel right,” have those conversations. I encourage you to have those conversations with your providers. I mean, is there anything that you would say to that as well with being a provider in the world? I feel like as a provider in my head, I would want someone to tell me their thoughts and feelings. Blyss: My relationship with my clients is very intimate. Meagan: It is. Blyss: Yeah. One of my teachers, Elizabeth Davis, who wrote Heart and Hand is a longtime midwife and teacher. She talks about the more we do prenatally, the less we have to do in labor. So I feel like that relationship that we have and hearing the internal landscape of the client is so important because when we are in labor, our body responds. Our hormones respond to feeling safe and having trust and being able to really relax. That’s true for every one of my clients but especially with my VBAC clients because they have another level of trauma many times that they are having to go with. That could be their experience that happened in the hospital or maybe they were transported from a home birth and had a Cesarean. And then there’s that level of, “Does my body really work? Can I trust my instincts?” So the more that we can dialog about those things and start to really pull that apart and work with them prenatally, I feel like the better chances we have in having that successful experience. Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. I will never forget it. I transferred to my midwife at 24 weeks with my third, my son, my VBAC baby. I just remember looking forward to those days when I got to go see my midwife because I would be feeling angst and hearing all of the static in the world. I remember just walking and she would always greet me with a hug and say, “How are you doing today? What do we need to talk about?” We talked. We dissected those fears and really talked about the things that were going through my mind at that time. I remember always leaving, going with a weight on my shoulders and leaving just feeling refreshed and more connected to her. Blyss: Yeah. Meagan: I think it’s important. I know that it’s hard in the system because we have providers that are restricted on time. They have so many patients. They’ve got bogged schedules. They’re tired so it’s a little harder for them to be more intimate, but I still encourage our listeners to have those conversations, to let them know where you’re at so like you said, you can work through it prenatally so that during the birth, those things aren’t coming up. We talk about that in our course. VBAC can be different and need more time prenatally. So yeah. If we don’t do those things ahead of time, it can definitely impact us during labor. Blyss: Yeah. You know, expect that kind of care. You’re not getting that kind of care if you’re not feeling the way that you just described when you leave your provider’s office. Start to think about what it is that you really want. I know not everybody has the option to either financially or because of availability be able to work with a midwife necessarily, but plan to have somebody on your team that you do feel can support you that way whether it’s a doula or maybe doing some concurrent care with a midwife in your area where she can hold the space for you and give you those positive feelings that can help prepare you for your delivery.Meagan: Absolutely. Talking about that, I did dual care for just a little bit as I was debating a little bit and figuring out logistics. Just doing dual care made me feel so much better. I would go to one place and hear one thing and then go to the other and have to work through that. She did have the time and the resources to provide me with that comfort. I love it. Q&A with Blyss YoungMeagan: Okay, well like I said, we have some questions and I think they are really good questions from our listeners. We’ll just dive into those if you don’t mind and then feel free if we need to stagger away from them on any other topics or passions. This is one of the questions actually that was put in. We talked about this right before we jumped on. What is a CPM versus CNM or a licensed midwife? There are so many questions that people ask. There is a myth that CPMs are not qualified or able to handle VBAC and especially HBAC. I feel like this is the big myth. If you wouldn’t mind, could we debunk this a little bit? I don’t necessarily agree with that. Blyss: Yeah. I think it all comes down to what you feel aligns best with your values. Just so you understand a little bit about how we’re trained. Certified professional midwives, our licensing body is different across the United States. This is one of the problems with our systems whereas we look at other European countries where midwives are integrated into the medical system, we don’t really have it together in that way here in the States. The licensure is different from state to state depending on the local jurisdiction. CPMs’ certification is our national certification. I practice here in California so when I take my board exams, I’m licensed by the medical board. It’s the same licensing board that licenses OBs that gives me my exams. I take my exam and I take the CPM and the LM. That may not be the case across the country. We learn our bookwork and then we have an apprenticeship. We work side by side with midwives or doctors to learn our hands-on skills and then we take a board exam similar to many doctors and nurses and people like that who have this professional capacity. A CNM is a certified nurse midwife. They are licensed by the nursing board and they become nurses first and then have their specialty added to it of midwifery. As professional midwives, all we train for is out-of-hospital birth. That is our specialty. We specialize in low-risk, normal, healthy pregnant moms and their babies. A mom who has had previous Cesarean labor and delivers exactly the same as any other mom. They have an increased consideration because they have this scar so the integrity of risk has been affected but other than that, everything is exactly in terms of their pregnancy and their labor and delivery. We absolutely are champions for these moms being able to have and experience a vaginal delivery for the healing of all of that trauma that we talk about. And also because of your long-term health as a woman who is delivering maybe multiple babies in your lifetime, it’s actually much better for you to be able to have a vaginal delivery than to continue to go and have Cesareans. The benefits for the baby of being able to pass through the biome and have those mechanics that help empty their lungs as they are delivered and all of those things that the baby benefits from having physiologic birth. We are champions for that for these moms and for these families because we know. There are some things that we watch for in case there is a uterine rupture or dehiscence as we would say where the scar opens a little bit. There are things that will be a little bit different than a mom who has not had a previous surgery, but other than that, this mom is just a mom who is pregnant and wants to have her baby. So we’re absolutely skilled to be able to support that. If you look at the statistics of success because a mom who has had a previous Cesarean is a TOLAC. She is desiring to have a trial of labor after a Cesarean. I lost my train of thought. Meagan: You are just fine. You were just talking about uterine rupture. We have a small increased risk but we are just having a baby as well so at home we have to pay attention to uterine rupture and dehiscence and things like that. There are signs and then you were going to the statistics. Blyss: Yeah, there are signs that we are skilled to be able to look for. Meagan: Yeah. Statistically, uterine rupture happens at 0.4-1%. It’s pretty minimal but having someone who is trained in out-of-hospital birth is a little bit different but it doesn’t mean that anyone is less qualified to support someone giving birth after having a previous Cesarean or previous Cesarean. Blyss: Oh, yeah. So what I was going to say and where I lost my train of thought was the statistics in terms of success so actually having that vaginal delivery is much higher out of the hospital with a midwife than it is in the hospital. That is something to consider as well. If that’s your desire, you want to put yourself in a situation where you’re going to have the best possible support to be able to have the vaginal birth that you are desiring. Meagan: Absolutely. That’s what Julie and I spoke about at the beginning of April kicking this special episode series of home birth and the chances of success outside of the hospital. We talked about how I want to say it was 18% of people may transfer. Tell me if you know the stat. I think it was 18 or so percent. But within that 18% of transfers, it was usually exhaustion, needing an epidural, or maybe we’ve got some scar tissue or something that we can’t work through, it’s a failure to progress, and maybe we need something else if we can’t get a homeopathic way to work. I want to say that was what we found. Is that approximately what you would say?Blyss: That’s not my statistic. Meagan: Well, yeah. Your statistic is low.Blyss: I would say for a mom attempting to have a vaginal delivery after a Cesarean is the same statistic as a mom who is attempting a first-time delivery. We treat them in the same way in a lot of ways because they haven’t had that pushing phase. They haven’t pushed a baby out. Their labor depending on how far they dilated in their previous labors is going to give us some information as well. If a woman got all the way to 10 and was pushing her baby out and then they for whatever reason decided that a Cesarean was appropriate, her labor is going to be more like a multip, so someone who has labored except for that pushing phase. And someone who maybe didn’t ever get to have labor– you’re raising your hand. Meagan: Yep. Blyss: Or I think one of the questions that is coming up is that you only dilated to so far and you’re not sure if you’re going to be able to get past that point? Those moms are going to be treated more similarly to a mom who has never had labor before. We are going to support them in that way. You have to really, I think this is what we don’t understand. A lot of the studies and statistics that are done when you’re looking things up or hearing about things are from a medical perspective. They’re from medical perspectives. The way that they treat– and I was a doula for many years before I owned a center. I was a doula for many years before I started doing a private home birth practice. I know what it looks like in the hospital to support a VBAC. I’ve been there with them. Your provider and their faith in you and the way that you are treated by the nursing staff and all of that has a huge impact on your ability to be able to labor and progress normally. We are mammals so our bodies are going to respond the same way a cat or a dog or a cow who wants to go and be off by themselves and have privacy and not feel like they’re being watched. Your hormones respond to that. Labor moving straightforwardly in a normal way is affected by you feeling that way. That’s what I was saying when we were talking about the different licensure. It really depends on where you’re going to feel the most comfortable but you want to have a team that really believes in you and makes you feel, as we were talking about in the beginning, relaxed, comfortable, and empowered because those are the things that are going to affect your body progressing normally. Meagan: Absolutely. Absolutely. As a doula, I’ve supported VBAC clients both in and out of the hospital but there are times where there is a lot of pressure and angst that is created. That is not helping our labor. Julie and I mentioned it in our episode. We have to think about it like we wouldn’t give birth in the same place where we conceived. We don’t conceive in front of a whole bunch of people with bright lights on a bed with things strapped to our bodies, right? Blyss: Right. Meagan: But then we do give birth this way. It’s just something to be mindful of for sure. Blyss: I didn’t get a chance to say that my statistics for first-time moms are a little bit higher than for moms who have already had a vaginal delivery. That statistic is about 10%. As you pointed out, the majority of those are not emergent transports. Those are transports where we are ready for something a little bit different. Again, this is when even midwives have a different level of comfort in terms of how they care for you. I don’t transfer someone to the hospital because I’m ready for them to go. I transfer people to the hospital unless there is a medical indication. If there’s a medical indication then obviously, I’m like, “Okay, we need to go,” but in terms of this exhaustion and wanting something different and maybe wanting to rest and get an epidural or get access to Pitocin to augment the labor, those kinds of things, for me, if everything is looking great medically, then this is the mom’s choice. This is not something that I’m going to make that decision for her. I had a mom the other day. This didn’t happen to be a VBAC mom, but just in a normal labor. She had the pushing instinct. It went away. We labored with her for another nine hours because she had a lip and then she pushed her baby out. All of the doulas who were with us were talking about how if that happened in the hospital, that mom probably would have definitely been augmented, definitely not left alone, given a lot of pressure, a lot of vaginal exams, and then probably would have ended up having a Cesarean or a “failure to progress.” But what that mom needed was rest. She needed to eat. She needed to feel like she was ready for the next level of her labor. It was a very mental thing for her we believe. That’s not something that is always given either at home or in the hospital. Sometimes, especially, I was just talking to a VBAC mom right before we got on the phone because she went in to see if she could get a consult with a backup doctor in her local area. I sent her to the most common doctors that are supportive of transport. This doctor said, “No doctor in their right mind would back up a mom attempting to have a vaginal delivery at home.” And this is the best we’ve got. We got on the phone and we were talking about her feelings about all of that because she would really love to know if she’s going to have a repeat Cesarean, she would really like to know the person with who she’s having a Cesarean. Meagan: Totally. That’s one of the reasons why I did it. Blyss: Yeah. That’s a reasonable thing to desire but what she’s finding out is that she might not have that option and just being in that doctor’s office, she said that the nurse came in and said, “Can you take off your pants so we can do a pap smear?” She said, “I’m not coming in for a pap smear.” Just that was a perfect example of being treated like every other person and not being individualized. This woman was coming in for a consult. But it solidified her desire, “This is why I’m not going into the hospital again. If I need it, then it’s a good option but it’s not something that I’m feeling like I want to choose.” It’s just solidifying her desire to have this out-of-hospital experience. Meagan: Absolutely. I think for those who are doing dual care, it’s important to still learn the stats and the facts because they can sometimes inflate these numbers and these statistics then you are left thinking, “Wait, am I making the right choice?” My provider told me, “Good luck, no one is going to want you out there.” It was a little different than what she was told but very similar. No one was going to want me out there. It made me question, “Why? Am I that scary of a patient?” That’s just not a good feeling and it’s not how you should be feeling during pregnancy and especially not during birth. I’m going to lead into one of the first questions that were actually written. Why is there so much backlash around HBAC? When we were talking about backlash, I think it really just means so much hate and distrust about HBAC. I mean, do you find that a lot of people are coming to you saying, “Everyone’s telling me not to do this,” or maybe they’re even scared? I feel like maybe by the time they come to you, they are confident in their decision, but do you ever have any clients come to you who are still unsure?Blyss: I think that people can be in care and still feel a little unsure. There is part of the process of just unraveling the experience that you had last time and being with somebody who consistently says, “Everything looks good. You’re doing great,” and just normalizing the experience of having a joyful pregnancy. The mom that I just talked to, she’s like, “There are risks in everything.” I think that’s true too. You can look at a statistic that says, “You have a 1% chance of having this happen,” and you can try and say, “I want to try and take that risk down to zero.” Obviously, there is risk in everything. You can’t have no risk, but there are people who look at it and go, “I have a 99% chance of having success.” Meagan: That’s what we say. Flip it and be like, “I have a 90.9 or 99% chance of full success.” It’s like, “Well, dang. That means I’m pretty high up there.” Blyss: Yeah. That’s probably how you look at life in general. So if you’re wanting to flip the script for yourself not just about this particular instance but about how you look at life in general because you talk about how the birth of your child is just one day. You’re actually going to be raising this baby and they’re going to have all kinds of risks. Do you want to spend the rest of that time with this child being worried all of the time about what possibly could happen or do you want to enjoy what life has in store for you? That’s a lifestyle thing, but you can have a transformative experience and you have this thing in your life that people are looking at. They are projecting onto you their own fear. You have the ability to ground yourself in your own belief about how you are wanting to take control of not just this delivery but your life in general. I think it can help you move into feeling more confident about your choices in general. Meagan: Absolutely. I think you just nailed it right there. A lot of the time, the people that are feeding the backlash are people that have experienced an unfortunate circumstance or have experienced something personal. They are feeding it out there to the world because that’s where they’re at. Blyss: Yeah, or not. Or they haven’t had any. Meagan: Or they haven’t. Exactly, yeah. Blyss: You know, I had a mom one time in my care who was attempting to have an HBAC. Her previous doctor was sending me the records. She was transferring out of care. She was like, “This is so dangerous. How are you going to know how the baby is doing? How are you going to know the signs?” She didn’t even know what we do at a home birth. She didn’t know that we monitor the baby, that we have all kinds of medications, and the ability to be able to manage things at home. I think a lot of times, there is just ignorance too. There is just not an understanding of the role that midwives play. We’re not doing a seance with our incense and our Birkenstocks and just hoping for the best. We actually have been trained to know what to look for. Because we do normal all day every day, that’s our specialty. When something is not normal, it stands out. It’s like a bad nook. You’re like, “Huh. This is not normal.” If there’s something going on with the mom’s uterus during labor and delivery, there are going to be signs. There’s going to be pain in between the contractions near the site that’s unusual. There might be bleeding that’s unusual. The baby’s heart tone might be unusual. The patterns of her labor might be a little bit funky. There are a lot of things that will stand out to us as “This is not normal labor progressing. Something is going on.” If you’re being conservative and it’s a question mark, “Huh. Does this mean that something is happening with the scar?” then you can conservatively transport to the hospital and be monitored continuously because we use intermittent monitoring. Maybe nothing. Maybe you’ll have a vaginal delivery at the hospital, but you have the ability to do that and not wait for something catastrophic to happen. You have plenty of time to get there and do the more conservative management of this labor just in case. Meagan: Right. One of the questions was, what are the stats of transfer for an emergency? Again, everyone’s stats might be a little bit different, but what she is saying is that there are signs that indicate a change of plan before there is a crazy emergency.Blyss: Right. Meagan: I do think that what you are saying is that she didn’t know what the care was. It circles back to the backlash. I think that a lot of people don’t.My mom said some really crazy things. Years later, it wasn’t until I really understood the mental process of my mom and everything. She was saying those things out of fear, the unknown, and uncertainty. She didn’t know what out-of-hospital birth looked like because she only knew what Cesarean birth looked like. It’s so important to learn those things and learn those signs but know like Blyss said, that it’s not usually even just one. Blyss, you would know way more than I do. But from my experience, there are usually a couple of symptoms. It’s not usually one. It’s like, “Okay, we’ve got this, this, and this” or “We’ve got this happening. Let’s transfer. Let’s take a plan of action.”Blyss: Yeah. You were talking about my cohost, Dr. Stuart Fischbein, and one of the things he says– he was a doctor in the hospital for many, many, many years and has now been providing out-of-the-hospital support for families for 12 years now. He has the benefit of both worlds. He talks about when we say that a uterus has a rupture, we imagine a tire bursting on the freeway where it’s all of a sudden a pop. But usually what it is, is what we call dehiscence. There’s a little opening in the uterus. Oftentimes, that can go without having any real incidence and the only way they would know that happened is if they went in and did another surgery. So a lot of times those things will heal on their own. I think you were saying there’s a 6.2% out of the people that do have a dehiscence or a rupture that have something really catastrophic that can happen. The statistics are really on your side but you have to be the one who makes that decision to say, “I would really just rather have another Cesarean,” or “I really want to try,” because there is such a high statistic of having success.One of the things that I was saying to this mom earlier is what I notice and I would consider myself a specialist in VBAC. I really love caring for these women. One is because I feel like their options are limited especially in the area that I am in. There is actually a ban on VBACs in the local hospital where they would deny these women pain relief if they came in to try and have a vaginal delivery. The women in my area are driving 40 minutes to go to a hospital in another town to be able to have this support. I feel really honored to provide this option for people who desire that. It’s really important to me. And, I was transported in my first delivery and had a forceps, an instrument delivery. I didn’t end up having a C-section. But when I had my vaginal delivery on my own at home after that, the triumph of reclaiming my body and knowing that my body wasn’t broken and that it was just a mismanagement of my labor that led to that. I know what it’s like for these women to be able to have that redemptive birth after the surgery. What I notice with VBACs is that they’re totally straightforward and normal just like another mom giving birth which I talked about earlier or they come really fast. It’s like the uterus knows, “I can’t do this for very long. I need to be super effective.” I actually just had a woman who had a VBAC after two Cesareans with me and it was so fast that I didn’t make it. That’s how fast it was. I was so happy for her and her husband because he’s a paramedic and he caught the baby and it was absolutely amazing. I was on the phone and on my way there. All the work that we did to prepare her for this and she just popped that baby out like she had done it her whole life. Or we might have a labor that meanders. The uterus is wise in that way too. It’s like, “I need to be really conservative with my energy.” So you might have these contractions that are really far apart. Just like I did in that birth when I was telling you that we gave her nine hours to try to have that lip back, nothing was wrong. We weren’t getting any signs that anything was wrong. If you’re a mom attempting to have a vaginal birth after a Cesarean and you have labor like that, you want somebody with you who is going to honor and respect that your body is progressing, it’s just going to take a little bit longer because the integrity of that scar, the uterus knows, “I just need to be smart about this.” If you augment that labor or push that body past what it’s saying it can do, that’s when you can have a problem. Meagan: Yeah. I love that you said that because I was one of those where my uterus tinkered around for a little bit. I had a 42-hour-long labor. I was like, “This is never going to happen,” but it did and I’m so grateful for that. I think that’s just what my uterus needed. It needed to take its time and then it was 6-10 hours to get baby out really quickly. It just took a long time to get there. Blyss: You said you hadn’t had labor before, right? Meagan: I labored like a first-time mama. I only went to a 3. My water broke before contractions really started so it had to kick in. There was a lot. Blyss: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes first-time laborers can be that way. I tell my families to be prepared for three days. That’s normal. That’s normal labor for a first-time dilation and delivery. I don’t think that’s what you’re going to hear from a medical provider because they don’t know normal. They only know what they decide as being normal so most of those labors get augmented in some way. Either they’re induced or they give them Pitocin at some point or they just call it and say, “Your body’s not doing this so we’re just going to give you a Cesarean.” Meagan: Yeah. That’s what happened with my second. They were like, “Oh, it’s just not going to happen.” It hadn’t been very long. So it does happen. Another question was going into failure to progress. If we didn’t want to transfer and if there was no need to transfer but maybe we’re getting tired and we’re trying to progress at home, obviously we know time is our best friend. Time, trust, and faith in our body, and sometimes it is going to sleep, getting some food, and maybe doing a fear clearing. I truly believe, I’ve seen it so much through my own doula work and my own personal self and through the podcast and everything, that clearing your mental fears during labor can change our pattern just like that. It’s crazy. But for home birth midwives, are there things that they can do to help things progress? In the hospital, we talked about how you are more likely to be augmented with Pitocin or something like that. Maybe they’d break your water. But are there things that you can do out-of-hospital to avoid a transfer because it’s not really necessary at that point but to help progression if we’re starting to get tired and things like that?Blyss: Well, I think that when you do have that scar, you want to be mindful of pushing the body like I said. I’m not against augmenting a VBAC but it’s something to really give really good informed consent and talk through. I would probably lean more toward, “Let’s sleep. Let’s take the pressure off. Let’s figure it out.” If you’re in early labor, sometimes you can take a Benadryl and maybe even have half a glass of wine. Sometimes that can help you sleep. If you’re in full-blown labor, it’s a little bit harder to do. But like you said, maybe having a conversation about, “Is there something that you’re afraid of? Are there people at birth that are nervous and that’s affecting you?” Sometimes you have too many people there too early. Your mind can be wanting to take care of those people like, “Gosh, this is taking forever. I feel bad that my midwife is here and that my mom is here.” Send people home. Keep one person there just in case, but clear it out. You can refresh the space. If you’ve been in labor at home for a long time, sometimes you just change the smells. Clean up a little bit. Meagan: Go outside. Blyss: Go outside. We send our mama outside barefoot in the grass in her backyard. Those things can be really healing. I send people on walks all of the time. I know it’s really hard. You don’t want to get your clothes on and go outside but this is going to be really good because it takes your mind off of it. Also, going back to that hormone flow, you want to increase oxytocin so do things that can do that. Maybe put on a funny movie and get distracted that way. Maybe you and your husband can go and get in the shower together. You can have a little bit of making out and a little bit of nipple stimulation. If your bag is intact, I know this sounds totally crazy, but I’ve had people actually have sex and it’s very effective. Or if you have a toy or something. I just saw a post the other day talking about how masturbating during labor can bring on the sensation of being able to relax a little bit more. Meagan: I’ve had a client do that. Blyss: Yeah, totally. Meagan: It totally worked. He did it for her but it totally worked. I was like, “I don’t know what you just did and I don’t need to know the details.” I was like, “Why don’t we all leave? Why don’t we grab some lunch? You guys do your thing.” We came back and it was business. Baby was coming. I mean, seriously, baby came three hours later. It can work, yeah. Blyss: Totally, 100%. One of the other things you can do is have a dance party. Change up the music. You don’t need the spa music and Hypnobirthing or something the whole time. Put on some fun music and laugh. Shake your booty a little bit. All of these things can be really helpful. Doesn’t that sound much better than laying in a hospital bed being monitored and strapped? Meagan: Or hooking up to a pump?Blyss: Yeah. So facilitating oxytocin is another one that can be really, really helpful. But you know, midwives have homeopathy. We have herbs. Our big gun is castor oil. Those things can be utilized. I think it’s just a matter of really talking it through. The first thing I would always recommend is respecting the body and respecting that there’s a reason why it’s having a challenge. If labor really can’t get going and you’re really tired, then the hospital might be the appropriate place because that again might be your body telling you, “This may not feel the right way for my uterus. There might be something else going on that the uterus is protecting itself from working too hard and causing that scar to maybe not keep its integrity.” Meagan: Yeah. That’s a really good point. I want to talk about how you did transfer. You weren’t a VBAC. You have transferred. I want our listeners to know that if a transfer takes place, that’s okay. That is okay. You’re not failing because you left and changed your plan. There is no giving up because you decided that you wanted an epidural. There’s no failing in that. It doesn’t need to be negative is what I’m trying to say. A lot of the time, people writing in are a home birth turned Cesarean and feel totally deflated like they failed. That’s just not how it is. It’s not how it is. You are doing an amazing thing. You are birthing a baby. You are birthing a child out of your body. You are giving birth and you are becoming a mother to a human being. It doesn’t really matter how you do it or if the plan has to change but like Blyss said, sometimes we need to tune in and say, “What is our body saying right now?” Is our body saying that we need to do nothing? Is our body saying that we need to do something? I think that is one thing that we need to remember. I think sometimes too that people think, “Oh, home birth midwives will do everything they can to avoid a transfer.” I really disagree with that. Yes, they are going to help you get the birth that you want. They are going to do everything they can and they are passionate, but I’m telling you right now listeners, or an OB that helps at home too. We know that those exist with Stu and I think there are some others. They’re not going to just do something for themselves. They’re not just going to keep you. “You can’t leave. Nope. You can’t leave because you’re going to change my statistic.” It’s just not going to be. It’s important for you to remember that you are going to be safe. They are going to have these discussions with you and it’s okay for you to have those discussions if you’re feeling like you need to transfer. If your intuition is saying, “Something is not feeling right,” and not feeling like you are giving up, failing, or disappointing anybody because you’re not. You’re doing what’s best for you. Blyss: Yeah. Again, going back to the work that you do prenatally is going to really help you in labor. The more that you can tune into your own body and know what’s important to you and what you need as a sovereign person, the more you’re going to be able to tune into that in labor. You don’t want to be handing over your power to a provider. You want to be the one who is in charge of what’s happening to yourself. They may give you information and consult with you about how things are going from their expertise, but ultimately, it’s about you being the one who’s saying, “This is really what I want and this is what my body is telling me.” You don’t want to just wait until you get into labor to do that. You want to practice that throughout your whole pregnancy. I think that is a really important piece. And yep. Thank God we have medical advances. What I find with my clients is if we end up transferring, we’ve done all of these things. They’ve had great prenatal care. They’ve been able to talk and process all of these things. If they’re going to have a repeat Cesarean, what they would like to do differently this time that they learned from their last experience? So if they get to that point, they know that they did everything that they could to give themselves the best chances and they feel empowered throughout the process. I think that the most important thing is that you feel like you weren’t bullied or made to do something and that each step of the way, you are making a choice that feels right for you and your family. As human beings, we deserve that for everything. We deserve to be able to make these choices for ourselves. Meagan: Yeah, and I think with being able to make those choices and to feel that empowerment to be able to do that, even if the outcome isn’t what we planned on, we’re going to have an overall better view from that experience because we aren’t going to feel like birth happened to us. We’re more likely to feel like we were the active participant in our journey and the leader or the driver in the seat and have a better postpartum experience.Blyss: Yeah. And welcome to life, right? Meagan: Yeah. Blyss: Our lives don’t turn out exactly the way that we planned. We ultimately have to meet life on life’s terms and know that we are not in control of every single thing that happens. It’s how you respond and how you move forward through a challenge that really makes you who you are and gives you the life experience that you want to have because labor and birth and being a mom is the greatest lesson in not being in control of things. It’s an important one. It’s a really important one. The only thing that you can really have control over is going in and deciding, “I’m going to deliver on this day and have a repeat Cesarean.” That is within your control. But if you are really wanting to trust your body and to have a physiologic birth experience, you have to be willing to let go of that control and ride the waves and see where it takes you and meet each moment with the best that you’ve got at that time. Meagan: Yes. Oh, I love that. I love that. Ride the waves. That is the perfect ending. I have one more question but I want to just end on that. Ride the waves. Ride the waves. Trust your body. So if I’m having an out-of-hospital birth, what should I be asking? Are there specific questions I should ask my midwife? Do I have qualifications? Are there certain things where you would say, “You’re probably not a good candidate for a VBAC at home?” Are there any final tips that you would give as people are researching this option and talking to people?Blyss: Yeah, I think it goes back to what we were saying in the beginning. How do you feel when you are in this person’s presence? That’s a big one. Telling your story to them, telling them how you feel and what you are desiring this time and then just really feeling into do you feel that this is somebody that you want to have by your side? Ask them about their experience with VBACs. Ask them what would be the situation in which they would require a transport or that they would want to transport? See if that aligns with how you are feeling about this decision and what you would want from a provider. Maybe ask their statistics how many VBACs they have done. What is their transfer rate? When did they transfer with those people? I think that’s all really important and how comfortable are they? Are you a mom who has had multiple Cesareans? How comfortable are they with those risks and do you feel aligned with what it is that they are sharing with you about their philosophies? I think that is a big part. Again, your provider and how they feel and how they approach things whether it’s in the hospital with an OB or a certified nurse midwife or at home with a CPM, their feelings about it and their trust in this process is going to have a huge impact on your experience because they are going to bring those fears or concerns into the birth room or into your pregnancy and you don’t need that. You need someone who believes in you 100% and when you’re with them, you feel better than when you got there. That’s what you’re looking for. If you don’t have those options available in your area, find somebody who can provide that for you virtually or find a doula who can be there with you as a continuity of care that you do have that connection and trust and faith with. I feel like that is probably the most important part of the process. Meagan: Absolutely. That’s what I was looking for. I had a lot of questions at my visits but ultimately, one of the biggest things I was looking for was how I felt in their presence, their confidence in me, my confidence in them, and yeah. I mean, I liked to know what would happen if I needed to transfer or what would they be looking at to make me transfer so I would know, “Okay, this is happening. She talked about transfer,” but overall, I needed to know that that person was in my corner because I had never been in anybody else’s corner if that makes sense. I was in my own corner with my first two babies and I didn’t want to feel that way again because it’s a very lonely corner. Blyss: Yeah, yeah. The only contraindication would be a classical incision. Other than that, I think that it’s just about exploring what the risks are. Let’s say it’s a short interval or something like that. I think giving true informed consent to that family and making sure they understand the increased potential risk, if this is an option that they want, I would rather be able to support them in this option than send them to the hospital if that’s not necessary or having those people maybe do an unassisted birth because no one’s willing to support them. That’s me. Not all providers feel that way but I believe if this is something that you’ve researched, you understand the risks, and this is what you’re desiring, you deserve to have somebody there by your side. That’s what we’re there for. Birth is meant to happen with nobody around just like a mammal. We’re designed to survive. Our babies are designed to survive. You don’t actually need anybody with you, but when you hire somebody to be there by your side, we are there to be able to help you decide when it is time to get support or be able to step in and offer that medical support if needed. So if someone never wants to deal with any kind of complication that may potentially arise in childbirth, you probably shouldn’t be a provider because that’s our job. We’re the ones who are supposed to step in calmly and help you make a decision that’s going to keep you and your baby healthy. Like you were saying earlier, us keeping you home when you don’t want to stay home, none of us want to have a bad outcome. We don’t go to work thinking that we want to force somebody to stay home and have a bad outcome. We all want the same thing, a healthy mom and a healthy baby. For us, there’s that additional layer of transformation, elation, joy, rights of passage, and having the family have an experience of understanding that this is how we were meant to deliver our babies. Meagan: I have feelings about the healthy mom, healthy baby. Just like you were saying, I add to it. Healthy mom, healthy baby, and a good experience. That’s going to look different for everyone. I hope that as you are listening to this episode, you know you have options. You have options. I know sometimes Blyss talked about financially or maybe even location-wise, you are feeling that those options are stripped or you are feeling restricted. I understand that and I know it sucks. But don’t ever hesitate to explore your options or maybe look for those virtual support meetings and things like that. Or maybe drive 40 minutes because deciding what is best for you is most important. Here at The VBAC Link and Blyss, I’m going to speak for you, there’s no judgment in the way you birth. There’s no judgment. We just want you to have a good experience and know your options. Blyss: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. I love you and as I said, I love supporting families in general but I have a special place in my heart for VBAC moms and for the work that you are doing so thank you so much for inviting me to have this conversation. I am available for people to come out to Santa Barbara if they feel like they don’t have options which I know is not for everybody. I’m also happy to do consults with people over the phone if they just need somebody who can tell them that they can do this. Meagan: Yes, I know it sounds crazy that I’m going to go to another state and have a baby, but you guys, people do it. Before COVID, I had a Russian clientele. People from Russia would come to the states here to Utah. Think about how far that is. It’s not super crazy. A lot of the time, people are like, “It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of effort. It’s a lot of this.” You guys, this is one day in your life that will impact you forever. It really will. I will never forget my births. Money will come and go but your experience will stick with you. Blyss: Forever. Meagan: So if you can make it work, if you have a VBAC ban, or you are restricted or something like that, check out Blyss. Check out midwives in the next state over. Look at these options. Expand your ideas. Expand your ideas and know that you have options. Blyss: Yeah. Take back your power. Meagan: Take back your power. Take back your power and know that it’s okay. It’s okay to do something that seems weird. People are going to be like, “What are you doing?” but it’s okay to do that. Blyss: And that’s how change happens. If we all do the same thing, no one is ever able to see that this is possible. You deserve that. You deserve to listen to your own heart and your own instincts and what your soul is telling you is right for you. That’s okay if it’s not right for everybody. Meagan: Yes. Absolutely. Just like we were talking about earlier, there are going to be different outcomes and that’s okay if that wasn’t your outcome or if that wasn’t your choice. We have people who after learning about VBAC and the statistics, the risk is too much for them and that is okay. That’s okay. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Janelle is such an inspiration. You can feel her beautiful spirit as she shares her birth stories with us today. She talks about how it’s okay if your life circumstances don’t allow for the perfect birth setup. Janelle was able to adapt and make peace with where she needed to let go. She was able to achieve the unmedicated VBAC she desired in a hospital setting. She found ways to strongly advocate for herself which also worked with her kind personality.Janelle has such a heart for women as she shares relatable advice about how to create a special experience throughout all of the unknowns of pregnancy and birth. Additional LinksHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, women of strength. We have an amazing episode for you today but first I want to talk to you just a little bit about postpartum depression. Studies show that 1 in 7 new mamas will develop postpartum depression. It’s scary and a topic that doesn’t really get discussed about a lot. So before we jump into today’s episode, I wanted to share a little bit about our podcast sponsor and partner, Happiest Baby. As you guys know from listening to The VBAC Link, this podcast means so much to me. I love every single one of you. I know that’s hard to believe because I don’t personally know every single one of you, but it is true. I love this community so much and it means so much to me that Dr. Harvey Karp and his company Happiest Baby are such big supporters of VBAC and are supporting our mission. One of their biggest products that people may know or have heard of is called the Snoo. The Snoo is an amazing baby bed that can truly help many mams out there during their postpartum journey, especially if you were like me and have a husband or partner that has to go right back to work and is left with these amazing, cute, snuggly babies but also exhausted. Whether you had a C-section or a vaginal birth, for those few days and let’s be honest, probably months, you’re just exhausted. I was in pure survival mode. So many people refer to the Snoo as “the mama helper” whose there to help soothe your baby so you can just get a few more hours of sleep. They even have a rental program which I think is pretty awesome so you don’t actually have to buy the bassinet. As I started to learn more about Dr. Karp and his mission, I just loved learning that he is so passionate about reducing postpartum depression in parents. They even got FDA approval which I believe is the only bassinet or baby bed that has been FDA-approved. It’s also been known for reducing SIDS in babies as well. I asked our community for their reviews of Snoo and I was overwhelmed by the positive responses. I just wanted to say thank you to Dr. Karp for creating the Snoo and helping millions of mamas sleep for just a few more hours at night so we can continue bonding with our babies and having a better postpartum experience. Thank you, Happiest Baby. Welcome to The VBAC Link, everybody. This is your host, Meagan, and we have our friend Janelle with us today. She is going to be sharing with you her VBAC story. She is from Minnesota and has so many amazing tips. Some of the highlights of her birth stories are post-dates. This is one that we talk about all of the time on the podcast, but baby being born after or by a certain day so 41 weeks, is that right, Janelle? Janelle: Yep.Meagan: Someone told you that you had to have an induction and then you declined and then your baby came spontaneously within that time. So really, really cool stuff and then planning for an unmedicated hospital birth with little to no interventions– that’s also something that is very possible so if you are looking at how to do that, this is definitely a story you’re going to want to listen to. And then financially or physically or even relationship-wise, you don’t have to have the ideal birth to have a great birth. So I’m really excited to hear Janelle’s story about all of these little details. Review of the WeekI’m going to jump into a Review of the Week and tell you a little bit more about Janelle and then we will get into her story. Today’s reviewer is Bethany Sagaert. I am hoping I didn’t just butcher your last name, Bethany. I’m so sorry if I did. This was back in 2020 so just a couple of years ago. The subject is “Podcast Was Part of My VBA2C Journey.” It says, “I’m so thankful for this podcast. I listened to so many episodes in preparation for my VBA2C. Listening to other women share their stories gave me the courage to keep working and fighting for my upcoming birth. I just gave birth to my third boy and the birth was everything I could have asked for. I am so thankful for this podcast and blog and refer every expecting mom I know to it in hopes that it gives them the courage and confidence it gave me to give birth the way they want and deserve.”Thank you so much, Bethany for this wonderful review. Just a reminder for all of you listeners, we do have a blog. We have a wonderful website where you can go. You can find a whole bunch of stuff on our blog. We have our resource page. We have doulas if you are looking for a VBAC doula. We have a list of VBAC doulas all over the world. We also have a VBAC course. We now have a mini-course which is really exciting. So if you are wanting to keep upping your game and fill yourself with education, hop over to thevbaclink.com and find all that we have to offer.Janelle’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Ms. Janelle, thank you so much for being here. Janelle is a full-time stay-at-home mama of two girls and after an unexpected Cesarean in 2020, Janelle began the process of planning and preparing for her VBAC. She and her husband enjoy getting outside with their girls, cooking up good food, and playing board games together after all the kids are in bed. Janelle, welcome. Welcome to The VBAC Link and thank you again for being here. Janelle: Yeah, I’m so glad to be sharing my story. Meagan: Absolutely. We know it’s going to inspire just like all of the stories on here, so we’d love to turn the time over to you. Janelle: Okay. Well, I’m Janelle. When I was planning for my VBAC, I would always be doing the dishes at night listening to The VBAC Link. It was always my goal to have the VBAC but then the second goal was to be able to share the story. So I’m really glad to be sharing. Meagan: And here you are. So awesome. Janelle: Yeah. Well, I’ve heard a lot of other moms say every VBAC starts with a Cesarean so I’ll start there. Meagan: Exactly where it starts. You can’t have a VBAC without a Cesarean, right? Janelle: Right. So with my first daughter’s birth, my water broke and I was really wanting an unmedicated, natural, vaginal delivery. The water broke and I got so excited. I thought, “It’s going to happen. Things are going.” This was a few days before 40 weeks so I thought I was going to have my first baby right on time. It was going to happen perfectly how I wanted. But then after the water broke, no contractions started. I hadn’t really educated myself and really prepared for the labor very well so I didn’t know to maybe stay at home for a little bit to try and get things going. I ended up going to the hospital which led to many interventions. I got induced and nothing was really happening. I was dilating a little bit but it wasn’t “fast enough” and there was meconium present. There were a few things that I felt were stacked against me and in the end, we decided that it would be safest for me and the baby to get the C-section. If I could go back, I would do a lot of things differently, but that’s just how it was. Meagan: Yeah, and it’s what you knew at the time. Janelle: Exactly. Meagan: It’s what you knew then. That’s one of the things about birth is that we grow. We grow as we learn. Sometimes we have to learn “the hard way” in order to make changes for the future.Janelle: Right. I see a blessing in it really that I was able to go through the C-section and then have learned so much in the process of preparing for a VBAC. I never thought I’d say that, that I’m thankful for how the story was but now I am. So anyways, I had the C-section and right away, I was pretty sad about it. I was bummed and I knew I wanted another baby. I was hoping to have another baby. I really wanted a VBAC. From the second I left the hospital. I thought, “The next time I come here, I’m not having another C-section.” I put my mind to it and about a year and a half later I think it would have been– our girls are about two years apart– we got pregnant with our newest baby. I started all of the research. The educational research, the physical research. I tried to prepare emotionally and spiritually. I was just trying to do what I could to prepare. Leading up to it, I had always heard, “You need a supportive provider. You need a supportive provider.” That’s the number one thing. But because of some family circumstances, we had some interesting financial goals. Our deductible had already been met because of some surgeries that happened that year, so it really was the best decision for me to be at the hospital. I know some people say, “It’ll only be $5000 (only $5000) to get a midwife at home,” but that was a lot to us. Meagan: Yeah. Janelle: That is not pocket change. Meagan: We talk about how in the end, two, three, four, five years down the road are you going to be like, “Okay, that $5000? It probably was worth it.” But at the same time, you have to take into consideration where you are at that time. If it is going to cause stress and angst and hardship, it’s probably not worth it. Right? You have other alternatives. You can still make a great birth. Janelle: Right. I was thinking, “This is the main recommendation that everyone has to have a good provider.” I thought, “I don’t really have that opportunity.” But I did have the opportunity to have a doula. I said, “This is my situation. I’m getting a doula that I like but I will be at the hospital.” I said, “I’m going to learn what I need to learn for my situation. I’m going to stop complaining about not being able to do it just how I want.” That’s when I started the education of how to do this at the hospital because that’s where I was going to be. I had some pressures during the pregnancy to have different interventions that I wasn’t interested in. One of them, the one I should highlight, is the pressure to be induced at 40 weeks. My baby was measuring a little bit on the bigger side. She came out at a little over 9 pounds so that was the reason that they were interested in inducing. Also because of the previous of Cesarean, they were telling me it was a better chance of things going well for us if I was closer to 40 weeks. But because of my views and what I had educated myself on and what I believed, I did not want to accept that intervention. I told them I wanted to wait. 40 weeks came and went. I was really surprised that it came and went because I was trying to do all of the things but you know what they say. You cannot force the baby to come before they’re ready. We were walking. We were hiking every day. I felt the baby. There was so much pressure but nothing was happening. I would wake up every morning and think, “I’m going to end up with another C-section. The baby’s not coming. I’m not going to go spontaneously,” but I had some really good support around me. My husband knew how much the VBAC meant to me. Our doula, her name is Kayla. Shoutout to Kayla, I know she’ll listen. She was so supportive and she just told me, “Hang in there. Take it day by day. You can always make a decision the next day or the day of.” What are they going to say if I come in and ask to be induced? They probably are going to be happy to have me. So I just kept waiting and then 41 weeks came. I was getting Braxton Hicks for the whole pregnancy but so many. By this point, having feelings down there wasn’t really anything new. Meagan: Yeah, not foreign. Janelle: Right. I was just like, “Oh, they’re probably Braxton Hicks again.” I was playing that game where I wanted to be in joyful denial because I wanted to progress naturally. I was in this mindset of, “If anything is happening, I don’t want to think about it anyway.” We got up and we made breakfast. I was getting contractions at this point but I had never had natural contractions. I had only had contractions that were induced so I didn’t really know what was going on. I made the breakfast then I had this urge to clean the front closet which should have been the sign.Meagan: That can definitely be a sign, a surge of energy. Janelle: Yeah, so the front closet was cleaned. We listed a lot of stuff on the marketplace. Things were sold. After we put my toddler down for a nap, I had a chance to think about what was going on. I thought, “These are still going.” I hadn’t really paid attention to it. I heard this trick of if you get in the shower and they continue and get stronger, then it’s probably labor. But if they go away, then it’s probably not. I had done this before. I had gotten in the shower and then I’d get out and they were gone. So I just thought, “I guess I’ll do the test again.” So I get into the shower and I feel one. I thought, “Ooh. That was interesting.” Then I get out and they would continue. I thought, “Maybe this is something,” but I wasn’t fully convinced. I got to my room and I downloaded the first contraction timer app that I could find. I timed a few. I thought, “Well that’s weird, two minutes apart. This can’t be it. They say that they’re supposed to be five minutes apart at first. What’s going on? They’re probably two-minute-apart Braxton Hicks contractions of course.”So I screenshotted it and I sent it to my doula. I asked her, “What do we think is going on?” She played it cool and said, “Are you having any other symptoms?” I said, “I just feel like I have to poop but nothing more than that.” She said, “Okay. I’m going to come over to your house.” The plan was to labor at home for as long as possible and then head over to the hospital very late in the game. I asked my husband to bring our toddler to a friend’s house because I was starting to have to breathe through some things. I was in that mindset of where I wanted to focus. I was like, “She’s got to leave. I have to focus.” Our doula got there. My husband got back from dropping our toddler off. I just wanted to be in our bedroom away from everyone. I was laboring standing up. I was using that breathing technique of four seconds in, six seconds out. And okay. I had just researched and researched VBAC that I had forgotten– I researched positions and how to deal with medical staff but I had forgotten that I should have some breathing techniques. So oddly enough, a few days before labor started, I was watching this YouTube vlog of someone in labor. That is what her technique was and thankfully it stuck with me and worked for me because it was all I had. That is just what I did. I guess it calmed me down and it worked. Meagan: Mhmm, it’s really powerful. Our breath is so powerful. Janelle: Yes. So four seconds in, six seconds out. That’s what I did the whole time. My doula said that anytime I was ready we could probably go to the hospital because she was watching. She knew that I was progressing and that it was getting close to active labor. That’s what it’s called, right? Active labor is when it picks up?Meagan: Active phase of labor, yep. Janelle: Oh, transition is what I was meaning. She knew that I was getting close to transition. Meagan: Oh, yep when you’re entering into transition, which is in the active phase of labor. Janelle: I was getting shaky and ready but I said, “No, no. We don’t want to head in before it’s time. I want to have this VBAC.” So she pulled my husband aside. I heard that she told him, “If we don’t plan on having the baby at home, we’d better head in. We’ve got to get her in the car.” They told me, “No, we think it’s a good time.” I trusted them but was still a little in denial. Is this it? Should we go in? We drove to the hospital. It wasn’t that bad. We live pretty close. Thankfully, my wonderful doula and wonderful husband got us to skip triage which is something we had talked about before. It was a goal that we wanted to be able to skip past triage. It was a little bit rocky because I don’t think the hospital staff fully wanted that to happen but my doula pressed. She was like, “Her contractions are two minutes apart. Please just let us go. She wants to have a natural labor. She’s in labor, I promise.” So we got back to the room and that was such a blessing to go right back to the room because I think it kept me calmer. Once we got there, I started having more shakes and adrenaline. I started feeling scared. I realized that I was the only one that was going to do this and I realized, “Okay, this is the real deal.” I finally realized, “This is happening today and this baby comes out of me. No one else is able to really help me here.” That was a little bit scary. So during this time, it was pushed on us to get a check in order to Meagan: A cervical exam?Janelle: Yep, in order to get admitted to the hospital. I pushed against that. I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t interested. But then I got to the point where I thought, “If I got a check, I think that might be something that is encouraging to me if I get that.” I told them that I was okay with it and I was a 9.5. I was like, “I really think it’s happening!” I was so thankful that things were progressing. Meagan: That’s funny that you were contracting to the point where your cervix is at 9.5 but they’re questioning admitting you.Janelle: No, that’s what we were telling them. “No, this is real.” Meagan: “This is it. I’m going to have a baby.”Janelle: Right. But I’m glad that I didn’t do the check too soon. We were there for a little bit before I said that that was okay. I think that kept me in that labor land. I turned inward and was focusing. Something that I used getting to the hospital was that I kept going with the breathing. I let my husband and doula really do all of the talking and I just shut my eyes. If people asked me questions, I was feeling really free to put my hand up and just continue what I was doing. My doula told me, “You’re a very sweet person but it’s not the time that you have to be super polite. You don’t want to be rude. But this is the time. You are the woman in labor. It’s okay if you tell them, ‘One second please’ or just put your hand up because you’re busy. You’re doing something right now.” So I practiced that and being okay with making people wait which was odd for me. I’m not used to being that way. But just to realize that today is my day. Today it’s about me and that’s okay.Meagan: Exactly. I feel like so many of us moms especially in labor are so like, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” We don’t want to put anyone out but really, it’s okay. They can wait. They don’t have to have anything right then. Janelle: Here’s a funny part. I guess some people came in while I was nearing pushing. I was feeling pressure and saying, “I think I need to push.” People are coming in and introducing themselves. My doula says that I told them, “It’s very nice to meet you all but not right now,” while I was doing the thing. I thought that was kind of funny that those manners came out during such a time. Meagan: Yep. Janelle: But anyways, so 9.5 centimeters. I was super excited. My water broke soon after that. I was confirmed complete about 40 minutes after my water broke. About 20 minutes after starting to push, our baby was born. Meagan: 20 minutes?!Janelle: Yeah, loudly crying. She was a little over 9 pounds and I was just so stunned that it had happened. I was so glad that it had happened. Meagan: Yes! Oh my gosh. That’s fast pushing. Janelle: It was. I was up in the position where you lean the bed up and you lean over the back so maybe a modified all-fours type thing. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it. Janelle: Yeah, me too. Meagan: That is awesome and you did. You labored as long as you could there at home and then you got there. It’s just so awesome to hear the difference where it’s like, “Yeah, I don’t want that. I don’t want that. Okay. Now, I’m okay with that.” That’s something I’d like to make note of for the listeners is that it’s okay to not want something and say no, and then it’s okay to change your mind if that’s what you want. Right? Same thing with epidurals and getting an epidural. You can change your mind in labor. It’s okay. You’re totally warranted in doing that and it can help you when you are the one making the decision. Like you were saying, “I was really glad I didn’t check before then because I was in this great labor space and then I was ready and that was okay with me.” Janelle: Exactly. It really, really pushed me along to know that I was 9.5. I think it gave me a boost to say, “Okay, this is happening.” It gave me some confidence. Meagan: Yes, absolutely. You know, every time we have a storyteller, we have them fill out a sheet and the question is what is a secret lesson or something no one really talks about that you wish you would have known ahead of time when preparing for birth? Do you want me to read this or would you like to tell everybody?Janelle: I’ll tell everyone. Meagan: Okay, yeah. Janelle: So like I said, when I was preparing for my VBAC, I think I forgot to prepare for some obvious things because I was so focused on VBAC-specific things. So I forgot that music can be really motivating and special during transition. I think if I could go back, I would have thought of certain songs to request during that time. My doula was really kind and she had some songs in mind that she put on for me and they ended up being perfect. They are super special to me now but I think something to remember to plan, just picking a few songs that will motivate you or be special to you during that time because I remember it so clearly, those moments right before meeting your baby. Meagan: Yes. It’s something that can help you stay in that space because sometimes transition can be scary or intense. It’s always different for everyone but if you have those familiar things, you’re doing something and you’re doing work but in a familiar space. I personally connect to music so much. I have my whole life. I used to be a dancer. Music connects to me and the same thing for me during birth and even preparing for birth. I would listen to those songs especially when I would struggle. If there was anything scary that had come into my mind or someone had said anything, I would go on and listen to those songs. To have that during that transition period would be so awesome. Like you said, there’s probably a lot about your labor that you remember vividly and there are some things you don’t remember as vividly but to have those songs and you remember them. You probably remember what you were doing during that time. It’s just so powerful. Janelle: Yeah. Meagan: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your tips. Janelle: You’re welcome. Meagan: Are there any other tips that you would like to give our listeners before we go?Janelle: I think the last thing that I would say is I shared about how the situation that my family was in maybe wasn’t ideal but some things are just out of your control as far as where you will be laboring. I think I would just remember to focus on the things that I can control. On those days when you feel like you’re going crazy anticipating and preparing for your VBAC, I know I felt like I just want to know. I want to know if I’m going to have a VBAC. I want the day to come and I want to know, is it going to be a Cesarean or is it going to be a VBAC? On those days where it just seems like you’re kind of, maybe the word is obsessing over it, I was there. I would just take a day off from thinking about it and when it came down to it, I was really able to relax when I realized it was not fully in my control. I can control some things and I’m going to do the best that I can. I really got to the point where I thought, “Even if I have another Cesarean, I’ve done all of this research and preparation that I feel like I would be able to choose that in a lot of ways and be confident that it happened.” In my first experience, that’s what really bothered me. I didn’t feel like I got to choose it. I wish I would have done things differently but I didn’t have all of that information. Yeah, some things are just out of your control. Meagan: So powerful. Like you said, we can only control what we can control. Sometimes it’s hard to not be able to control some things but if we can do our best to stay in there, educate ourselves, and be in that space like you said, even if it ultimately does go to a repeat Cesarean, we’re probably going to be looking at that very differently in the end. Janelle: Exactly. Meagan: I know for sure, I didn’t even have all of the stuff I wish I had with my second that ended in a repeat Cesarean. It wasn’t the birth I wanted, but I was a participant in at least making the final say and that stood out to me. I think that helped my recovery and it was healing for me to do that. And then on top of that, I had things. I wanted to watch my Cesarean in particular. I wanted to feel more like a part of my Cesarean and that was huge. I was able to say those things. “I desire this.” It wasn’t within my control and I didn’t want that Cesarean. I definitely still felt pressure to have it, but at the same time, once I made the choice, I still was able to try and control some of the things that had happened. It really did. It reflects very differently to me today than I think it would have if I didn’t so I love that message. Thank you. Janelle: You’re welcome. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Riley shares valuable lessons learned as a first-time mama not knowing what to advocate for or how to advocate for herself during labor. Something as small as bringing your own gown to the hospital can make all the difference in finding your power. Riley mentions some of the shocking things her first provider did which drove her to immediately switch as soon as she became pregnant again. Meagan and Riley discuss how key a VBAC-supportive provider is especially during short birthing intervals. Opinions on the ideal length between pregnancies vary dramatically among providers!Additional LinksThe VBAC Link Blog: Length Between PregnanciesHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello. It is Wednesday and we have another VBAC story for you today. Our VBAC storyteller is Riley so welcome, Riley, to the show. Riley: Thank you. Meagan: Yes. She is from Alabama so if there are any Alabama listeners out there, listen up because she definitely has a great story. I feel like there is something special about her, or I should say unique, about her story and that is the time between birth and pregnancy. That is something that’s really big in the VBAC world. We get a lot of questions about it. Unfortunately, we have a lot of providers naysaying VBAC when there is a close duration. I’m sure, Riley, you are going to tell us all about what types of stuff people said to you. We are going to talk about that at the end as well because we do have a lot of people who have a close duration between birth and pregnancy. Yeah, so we are going to be talking about that. Review of the WeekMeagan: But of course, we have a Review of the Week so I want to make sure to read that review. This review is on Apple Podcasts and it’s from RokFray. It says, “Getting VBAC Ready. This podcast has been inspiring and motivational to me as I prepare for a VBAC with my fourth baby.” Oh, that’s awesome. “Listening to each of these stories and realizing that through listening, I am learning how to advocate for myself and my family. It’s been a true blessing. Thank you.”Well thank you, RokFray, and I am with you. I feel like one of the best things about this podcast is truly learning how to advocate for yourself. That comes with getting educated. We have to educate ourselves in order to advocate for ourselves because if we don’t know what we’re advocating for and we don’t know the stats, facts, risks, and all of that stuff, it’s hard to advocate. You’re like, “I don’t know any better. I don’t know any better.” So if you guys are also wanting to learn more about VBAC and all of the stats and facts, we also have a VBAC course. If you guys didn’t know, we have a parent and a birth worker course. You can find them at thevbaclink.com/courses. Riley’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Riley. Thank you so much for being here. Riley: Yes, I’m so excited. Meagan: I’m excited too. I would love to turn the time over to you. I know both of your stories are vastly different. Everybody’s stories are usually different but I would love to know and have you share your stories. Riley: So my name is Riley. Like you said, I do live in Alabama. My husband and I will have been married for three years this coming May. We are practicing Catholics and fully open to life hence, the two kids are close together. Meagan: I love it. Riley: We have been blessed with two kids these past two years of marriage. So one kid one year and another kid the next. I am a stay-at-home mom. My son is 18 months old and my daughter is 4 months old right now. It’s a very busy time of my life. Meagan: Very busy, yes. Riley: 5 months after we were married, I found out I was pregnant. I was finishing up college and hadn’t quite graduated yet. I had no knowledge of pregnancy, birth, or hospital interventions. That wasn’t a term in my vocabulary at all. I just didn’t really know much about it. I was very thankful to have a sweet cousin during my first pregnancy who basically walked me through it. She helped me know kind of what to expect but I still didn’t know how much of an advocate I was going to have to be for myself. I learned so much going through that first pregnancy. Some knowledge I gained through that experience and then some knowledge was just research topics that would pop up and I would look at.The main thing that I learned from my first pregnancy was that I was just way too compliant. For example, I learned that you can say no to cervical checks. That was a very small thing it seems like to some people, but that is something that some first-time mamas just really don’t know anything about. I’ve learned that, and that you can choose whether or not you get all of the recommended vaccines during pregnancy. You can also choose small things like whether or not you want to labor in the hospital gown or if you want to wear your own clothes. You can say that you’re going to move during labor instead of laying in bed the entire time which happened to me. We’ll get to it. All of this might sound like common knowledge but it isn’t for everyone, especially for those first-time mamas like I said who don’t have a lot of outside resources other than the hospital staff which is not always the best resource. Meagan: I agree. That is something that I would love to carry on a comment from that. This podcast is very VBAC-specific. People are wanting to have a vaginal birth after a Cesarean and are learning the good things, but I feel like this podcast really would benefit everybody, especially first-time moms learning about, like you said, interventions. That wasn’t even in your vocabulary. You were like, “What?” Riley: Yeah.Meagan: So walking through this podcast and learning what interventions can maybe lead to a Cesarean or how certain situations could lead to a Cesarean or what you can and can’t do. Like you said, you are your own advocate and you can say no to anything. Riley, you’re not the only one that was very go-with-the-flow. Guess what? I was too. So many of these listeners were very compliant. “You say that. You know better than I do. You went to medical school and midwifery school.” Again like you said, it’s not always the best resource to have just that information. There might be a lot of information outside of exactly what they’re giving you. So I love that you said that. Riley: Yes. My friends who are first-time mamas, I’m just trying to fill them with all of the knowledge because it’s almost like with your first birth, you want to prevent that Cesarean. That’s almost how the interventions have become and how bad it’s gotten. I’m just always in my mind, “Please let me help you be able to have your first baby vaginally and not have a Cesarean.” Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Let’s get these rates down and it starts with not having a Cesarean the first time assuming you don’t want one. We know some people do and they have reasons why and that’s totally fine. But yeah, getting this rate down would be great. Riley: So to continue, my first pregnancy was very normal, no complications. My son’s due date was estimated for the end of June which is another big thing that doctors put. They put a lot of pressure on that due date. So when you’re that first-time mama, you’re waiting for that day. When that day comes, you feel like something’s wrong. It’s a lot of pressure. My husband and I had in our minds that baby boy would be in our arms mid to late June. It was a lot of pressure on that due date. My mom had me on my due date so these people I was surrounded with, it was like, “Okay, we’re waiting on the due date.” Meagan: Yes. We have a VBAC Link Podcast follower that said, “As much as I was okay with going over my due date, it was the daily pressure that got to me.” Having that pressure at the end of your pregnancy doesn’t help us go into labor.Riley: Yes. So much pressure. No, it doesn’t. So when the due date came and nothing happened, we were a bit surprised because most providers like I said, put lots of pressure on having the babies on that date or very, very close to that date. Once the due date had passed, I began to get slight pressure for an induction, no reason other than I had passed my due date. We knew we wanted to wait for my body to go into labor naturally if possible. That was our goal. So at 41 weeks, my water broke. I was having no contractions. My water broke, no pain or anything with that. Regretfully, my husband and I packed it up and headed to the hospital. That was just our gut feeling. We called the nurses and they told us to head there. If I were to do it again, that pregnancy and that time frame, I would definitely wait at home longer and just labor at home and wait on those contractions to come and not go. Even if your water breaks, you’re going to be fine. Meagan: You’re going to be fine. And if your water breaks, take a quick note. Let’s run through it. “How am I feeling? Do I feel like I have a fever? Do I feel like something is wrong? Is there a lot of meconium on the ground?” You can run through this checklist and say, “Okay. Everything’s okay. I feel great. Baby is moving. Everything is great.” Do a mental checklist. Riley: Yeah, so we packed it up and headed to the hospital. We only had a 20-minute drive so we got there pretty quickly. Once we entered, it was just a cascade of interventions. As soon as I walked in, my mindset was going to be, “Active during labor. Walk around the hospital room and be able to get into positions that I want.” As soon as I walked in the door, they asked me to take my clothes off, get into a hospital gown, and get into the hospital bed. I asked if I could– because this might be TMI but I had put a diaper on because it was most comfortable for me because my water had broke and after your water breaks if you don’t know, you need a little something down there to walk around. Meagan: You just keep leaking. Yes, you do. Riley: That was my plan. So they wanted me to strip down and just get in bed. I asked if I could do what I wanted and they basically gave me a stern no because of the infection. Meagan: Let’s just stop right there. How does infection come into removing your clothes or not removing your clothes or having a diaper or not?Riley: Or get an infection walking around.Meagan: I’m sorry, but vaginas are not vacuums. They don’t just suck up infections. Things have to be inserted into them. Riley: Yes, yes.Meagan: So you wearing a diaper or a pad is not– yeah. Riley: Not very much logic when into that. Meagan: I digress. Riley: That was our first, I would call it, intervention. It’s very small, putting a hospital gown on, but it was the first one of many. Meagan: But for you, it was an intervention in the way of where you were like, “Wait, that’s not what I want to do,” and then you didn’t feel at the time because we didn’t know. You weren’t given an option. It’s just like, no. Riley: That’s the number one thing that starts making my comfort level go down. Meagan: Yeah, exactly. Riley: In labor, you need to be as comfortable as possible. Meagan: You’re becoming very vulnerable at that moment. Riley: I later realized that the risk of infection, like we said, is very low, and after your water breaks, walking around is not going to cause an infection. It was a very slippery slope after that. I was put on a time clock due to my water breaking, so the doctor wanted the baby out in 24 hours. I really had no knowledge about that. I was just like, “Okay,” staring at this clock on the wall. Man, these 24 hours happen fast. Meagan: It really does. Riley: The hours go by and it’s not happening like the doctor wants it to. I’m getting nervous. I didn’t really want to use Pitocin, but that was something that he wanted to do so we compromised. I was like, “As long as you do it at a very, very, very low dose and do it very slowly.” So he started the PItocin. At this point, I’m still bedridden. They would not even let me get up to go to the bathroom. They gave me a bedpan. Meagan: So crazy. Riley: The bathroom was literally right there. I asked them if I could go to the bathroom and they were like, “Oh no. We’ll bring you a bedpan.” I’m like, “That’s not what I want.” Meagan: I want to get up and move. Riley: So the contractions were not fun stuck in the bed on Pitocin. Pitocin contractions are not fun period, but if you get to walk around with them, I feel like you can cope with them. But being stuck on your back in the bed, you can’t really cope anyway in that position. So then I ended up asking for an epidural because I was not coping well in bed with those Pitocin contractions. Meagan: You’re stuck in one spot. Riley: Mhmm. Fast forward to time to push and the doctor told the nurses to pull the epidural. No questions asked. It was almost like I wasn’t in the room and he was just talking and giving the nurses orders.Meagan: Wow. Riley: He came in a few times and asked if I was feeling pressure. I always told him, “No, not really. No.” I knew when my contractions were coming, but no. I’m not feeling any pressure. He didn’t like that answer and he told the nurses to pull the epidural. It was a weird feeling in the room. He walked out and the nurses turned the epidural monitor around. They told me, “We’ll leave it in as long as we can.” They were against the doctor. They said, “We’re just going to watch for him down the hallway and when he comes back, we’ll pull it. We’ll let you have it for as long as possible.” They said, “He does this to everybody.” Meagan: What?!Riley: I was like, “Okay, thank you.” Anyway, by the time he got back, they pulled it without my consent. I was supposed to last for a couple of hours. It probably lasted 30 minutes and I could feel everything. That’s a huge change going from that medication to nothing. Meagan: Yes, yes. Riley: I pushed for over an hour until I heard the words no mother wants to hear and that was, “Stop pushing.” He was staring at the monitor. It felt like an eternity but he eventually told me what was going on. He said that the baby’s heart rate was spiking every time I would push so even though my body was wanting to push, he was telling me, “No, no. Don’t push.” He eventually announced that we were going to do an emergency Cesarean. My mom and husband were there. My husband started suiting up to go to the OR for the Cesarean. The anesthesiologist had to come back to push the epidural back because I didn’t have it anymore so she was trying to do that and she got tears in her eyes. She was like, “I don’t think it’s working.” I was like, “Yeah, I can feel the washcloths and everything you’re putting on my legs. I can feel everything.” She was like, “You’re going to have to be intubated. Your husband or mom, nobody can go back there with you. You have to go back there by yourself.” I was like, “Okay. Let’s just get this show on the road if this is what we’re doing. I’m in so much pain. I’m tired of talking about it.” They rolled me back there by myself. I waited for a minute and then they put me under. I basically woke up in a closet-like room without baby, without my husband, and just by myself. I was crying and I was like, “Where’s my baby?” The doctor was standing over me and he tells me how big my baby is or something. I had a decently big baby, like 9, 12. It was just very traumatic, all of the interventions, waking up without my baby, and having this emergency surgery, not getting to be awake when my baby was born, missing all of the first times. They went ahead and did all of the stuff without me. I didn’t meet him until he was already two hours old because that was how long it took me to wake up and everything. My husband was there with the baby. Meagan: Can I ask how long from the time when he was like, “Your baby’s heart rate is dropping, we’re going to have to do a Cesarean,” to you going and having a Cesarean?Riley: Like how long from when he announced I was having it?Meagan: You mentioned it was an emergency but I was just curious because it seemed like a lot of stuff had happened leading up. Riley: Yeah, it was pretty quick. It wasn’t like everybody was rushing around and getting me back really fast. But it was like, “Okay, emergency Cesarean,” then they tried the epidural. That’s what took a little bit of time and then maybe I would say maybe an hour. Maybe I’m wrong. Meagan: Yeah, no. I’m always so curious when providers say “an emergency Cesarean” and then this emergency takes so much time. An emergency is quick. You’re saying all of these things and I’m like, “Oh.” Riley: I guess if it really would have been an emergency, they wouldn’t have tried the epidural since I didn’t have it. Meagan: No, yeah. Riley: They would have just taken me straight back there and put me under. Meagan: But we hear emergency in our reports and they’re telling us it’s an emergency and we get scared. “Emergency” is a very big word. I’m sorry, keep going. I’m loving this. Riley: That is basically the end of my first story. So that was just very traumatic, but then we were still open to life so we were not going to close that off. I was also kicked out of my six-week postpartum appointment. I never really got to that postpartum when they even say, “Wait a certain amount of time,” so I never encountered that because it was just an odd situation. I just didn’t go to it so we just did our thing. We had our baby and then we were just like, “We’re just going to go with it and see what happens.” We actually got pregnant five months after having my son. Something about the five-month timeframe for us, but I knew initially that I wanted to have a vaginal birth. I had so many things running through my head when I was staring at that pregnancy test. The first thing I knew that I wanted to do was to change providers. I knew that if I was going to plan for a VBAC, then I needed not just someone who was tolerant but someone who was going to be completely on board with my VBAC. I didn’t want any rolling eyes. I wanted to be on the same page. I asked friends and family and finally found one. The instant we met, I knew that she was a perfect fit for us. I had a pretty normal pregnancy once again except for some tachycardia that lingered and would not go away. In addition to changing providers, I also knew that I wanted to write a very detailed birth plan which I did not do with my first pregnancy of all of my wishes and everything that I wanted. I talked with my provider at the end of my pregnancy and she had no reservations about anything. At around 30-ish weeks, she mentioned me getting a doula. I didn’t really know everything a doula entailed, so I did some research and talked it over with my husband. At 37 weeks, we decided to hire a doula. Meagan: I love it. I love it. It’s never too late until the baby is born to hire a birth doula. It’s never too late until you’ve had a baby. Riley: It was definitely towards the end but we got her in. We were eagerly awaiting those contractions. I had never felt that slow progression of early labor because, with my first like I said, just my water broke with no contractions. Finally, at 40+3– she came a little bit earlier– I had the smallest contractions at 4:00 AM. They kept coming at random times. The new provider we chose is a much longer drive. She is about 45 minutes away. We did keep that in mind. Around lunch, the contractions were a little stronger and much more regular. After nine hours of laboring at home, we headed to the hospital. I had very regular contractions on the 45-minute drive there. We arrived and finally got admitted to a room after going through triage. I was dilated to about a 5 and I was at -1 station, 90% effaced. Meagan: Great, yeah. Really great progress. Riley: I labored in all of the positions that felt most comfortable to me, never being forced to be in the bed. I was even able to get in the shower at one point. After 15 hours of laboring including that early stage at home, I was just exhausted and began to have back labor. I was just contemplating an epidural because I was so tired of laboring. After getting the epidural, I was able to rest a bit until it was time to push. I do think the epidural probably prolonged my labor a bit. I’m just going to throw that out there. It’s kind of a win-lose situation. You get some rest and feel a little bit better come time for pushing, but then you look back on it and think, “Did the epidural really prolong this an extra 2-3 hours?” I was given a light epidural which was such a blessing. If you don’t know what that is, you can ask for a light epidural and I would suggest that to anybody wanting to get one because it gives you the ability to feel all of the contractions and to feel the pressure as well. That is such a big deal. I was actually able, with my epidural, to get in different positions for the baby and to also push on my own and not have to be coached with the countdown and all of that. I was able to just feel my body and know what was happening. My provider and doula teamed together and gave me all sorts of positions to try and help labor the baby down. Three hours of pushing and a busted blood vessel in my eye later, the baby was finally born. She was healthy and I had no complications afterward. I was like, “It actually happened. I did it.” Meagan: You did. Riley: I did. I achieved the VBAC that I desired for these whole nine months. This story wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention all of the rosaries and prayers said in preparation for this birth. We knew our baby’s name pretty early on. We chose to name her after two saints– Saint Sylvia and Saint Anne. Both of these saints really helped us through the entire pregnancy. The Blessed Virgin Mary and God especially were there every step of the way hearing all of our prayers and knowing that they would be answered in God’s own time. Even when I was getting anxious around the estimated due date, He knew that three days later, I would have my successful, redemptive, holy VBAC. Thanks be to God. Meagan: Oh my gosh. I love it. I love it. You talked about blood vessels bursting in your eye. Sometimes that happens. Riley: It does happen. Meagan: It does happen. We try to avoid it but sometimes it happens. Riley: Yes. Meagan: Oh, well congratulations. Riley: Thank you. Meagan: I love it. I would love to talk about the 5-month mark and everything. You got pregnant kind of soon. What would people say to you? What would providers say to you about really more in-depth of what they would say to you about this? Did they place doubt? Did they encourage? It seems like overall, they were pretty dang supportive. Riley: Yeah, so we changed providers so the only provider I encountered was our new provider with the spacing. The people we encountered, there was a lot of negativity. Family members and people were very nervous about something happening and me not thinking about my body and taking care of myself. Things like that. Our provider was totally on board. Meagan: Okay. That’s awesome. Riley: I was very nervous. That first appointment, I really was planning on going in and her making the decision and her saying, “You’re either going to have to have a Cesarean or you can try for a VBAC.” I figured she would tell me one or the other. I walked in and she totally just puts the ball in your court. She says, “It’s up to you. I’m going to give you the stats. I’m going to give you both sides.” It’s just literal stats. It’s something you can look up online. She was super supportive. I was nervous to say, “My son was born last July. I just had a baby.” But she was like, “That’s not a big deal.” She said, “The time difference in your babies is not the issue.” She said, “It’s if you have complications in this pregnancy that might pose an issue to have a VBAC.” She was like, “The time difference, yeah maybe waiting a little bit longer could help you,” but she said, “14 months is not a huge deal at all.” Whereas if I would have gone to another provider, I don’t think that would have been what I would have heard. Meagan: Yes. That is what we are finding. I always ask people what their providers say just because it’s so different and it’s dramatically different. Riley: Yes. Meagan: That’s what’s kind of interesting to me about everything. There are studies. There’s research and all of these things, but some providers will say, “Oh, you can’t get pregnant whenever. It needs to be a 24-month gap.” For some, it’s 18 months. For some, it’s 12 months. For some, it’s 15 months. It varies so, so dramatically. There are studies that show that really, really close intervals like 6 months or something increases the chances of uterine rupture because we don’t have a Cesarean scar that is completely healed. It takes your body time to heal, but some tips to give to you right after pregnancy is eating well with high protein and really good nutrients. Feed your body all that it needs so it can do its job and recover quicker. But it’s just so interesting to always hear. We have a mom that reached out probably a couple of weeks ago and she said, “I’m 20 months out and my provider said no.” They pretty much told her, “No, you’re going to have a uterine rupture.” She’s like, “Is this true?” It’s like, “No, it’s not.” We have a blog about getting pregnant after a Cesarean and how long should you wait? So be sure to check that out. It’ll be in today’s show notes or just at thevbaclink.com/blog but it isn’t a guarantee. It isn’t something. Here your provider was not really worried about it. Do you feel comfortable sharing with the audience your provider’s name? Riley: Sure. She is actually not an OB. Meagan: Is she family? Riley: She’s family, yeah. She delivers babies all of the time. She actually has lots of experience with VBAC mamas so a lot of people go to her. Marcia Daniel at UAB in Huntsville. Meagan: Awesome, awesome. So again, if you are listening now and you want to explore your options, there’s someone to check out. We always love suggesting providers. We have a list in our private VBAC Link Community on Facebook. We have a list under the Files section of providers all over the world of what people have said. We will make sure to get her added to that list. If you’re listening and you’re looking for a supportive provider that maybe is more accepting of birth and you want to check her out, check her out. Okay, well thank you so much. Riley: Yeah, you’re welcome. Thank you for having me on. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We are so excited to have Kaitlin McGreyes from Be Her Village here with us today! Kaitlin began Be Her Village as an avenue for women to register for birth services instead of typical baby shower gifts to help support their transition to motherhood. Kaitlin shares how through her Cesarean and VBAC stories, she learned how to become an empowered and active participant during birth. Kaitlin and Meagan also answer a burning question. What is the real formula for how to have a successful birth outcome? Research, research, research, then trust yourself to make choices that are best for YOU!Additional LinksKaitlin’s WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, hello you guys. It is Wednesday or maybe Friday or Thursday or Tuesday, whatever day it is that you are listening, today is Wednesday when we are recording The VBAC Link Podcast. I’ve been a little giddy for this episode because we have our friend Kaitlin. She and I connected. She is with Be Her Village and we actually connected two weeks ago. Maybe a week ago, a little bit ago. We got off the phone and we both felt the same feeling, this energy. Can we just be best friends? That’s what you were saying. We’re best friends. It’s just so fun. We definitely have very similar passions and drives for the birth community and VBAC and all the things. She has a story of her own today that truly led her to where she is right now which I think is one of the biggest things that relates the two of us because my journeys led me to where I am right now at my desk recording this podcast and serving this VBAC community. So I’m going to introduce her a little bit more in just a moment, but we do have a Review of the Week. Review of the WeekThis was actually sent via email as well. We got two emails back to back about reviews. Just a reminder, if you have not had a moment to leave a review, please do so. We love them. They mean the world. Our team loves reading them. You can leave them on podcast apps like Apple or Google. You can send us a social media message on Facebook or Instagram or you can be like Daria did and she sent it to us via email. That is so wonderful as well. She says, “I just wanted to leave a review of my favorite podcast. It’s almost an obsession at this point. I had a C-section with my twins almost two years ago and am currently pregnant with baby number three. I’m writing in March as I listen to your podcast on my walks and get ready for VBAC as much as I possibly can. I can’t describe how much valuable information and most importantly inspiration it gives me. Maybe it’s just pregnancy hormones but I swear I cry every time I listen to moms describing the emotional moments of their birth stories. Nothing feels more precious to me at that moment. I am dead set on having a VBAC in August and all of the episodes of the podcast give me extra encouragement and strength to advocate for myself. I religiously listen to every new episode and maybe I’ll get to hear this review soon.”Yes, you will. It is coming up soon, just before your VBAC actually, Daria. It says, “Look out for my next email in August with hopefully a successful VBAC story. Thank you so much again for everything you do for women all over the world.” Oh my gosh. Then she says, “P.S. English is not my first language. I’m from Ukraine but I hope my English is fluent enough to reflect my feelings.” Oh my gosh. Kaitlin, is that not just an amazing review?Kaitlin: I really just feel it. I’m sitting here getting ready to tell my story and I’m getting teared up about the fact that the people listening are in my position right before I had my VBAC. It’s such a place of unknown. It’s such a place where you need support. It’s such a place where there are so many forces working against us unfortunately and the fact that this podcast and my story might help someone in their preparation. It might impact them. It might be what they need to hear to stay and get furiously determined. Oh my god. I love it. I want to give her a hug.” Meagan: I know, right? I just want to squeeze her and say, “I love you. I love you. Yes, you can. Yes, you can advocate for yourself. Yes, you can do the things that so many people in this world believe are unachievable.” It makes my heart so sad to know that there are so many people out there that want a different experience and are told they can’t or are told it’s not possible. Yeah. I love that you’re here. I love that you’re in this space. I cannot wait for your email in August myself. Kaitlin’s StoriesKaitlin: Oh my goodness. I am so excited. Let’s get her her VBAC. Meagan: Yes! Let’s do this. Yes. You get so invested Kaitlin. It’s so amazing. You get so invested in this community. These people are writing and are like, “Hey, I have a question.” By the way, if you didn’t know, you can always email us at [email protected] and write us your questions. We love speaking with you. We love doing consults. We love doing all of these amazing things to connect with you and to build you up whether that be through a consult or the blog or just an email or this podcast or our VBAC course. Whatever it may be, we want to help you through your journey.Kaitlin: It’s amazing. What you guys are doing, I’m so excited to even be here. This is the work. I’ve been a doula. I’ve helped so many people achieve their VBACs and witness them. I’ve literally been in the room with them, but this platform and everything you’ve created with it is helping so many people. It’s so powerful to have this narrative change. It’s so powerful for us to tell our stories and counter what the doctors are telling us, counter what maybe other people in our families are telling us. This fear and this risk and this, “How could you be so irresponsible to think about a vaginal birth? How selfish?”I don’t know if we’re allowed to curse here, but that is what drives me and that is so powerful to be like, “Nope. I did it. I trusted myself. I trusted my body. My body is not broken. I can do this with the right support, the right advocacy, and a little bit of luck.” Not going to lie, there is a little bit of luck in there. We can do this. That’s such an incredible message that we need to keep spreading again and again and again. How awesome is this? Meagan: Oh my gosh. I couldn’t agree more. Okay, you guys. We have Kaitlin and if you can’t already tell, we just are so passionate about birth and options and birth workers and all of the things. I’m so excited and honored to have you, Kaitlin, on this podcast. You guys, she is the founder of Be Her Village. Be Her Village. Definitely go check it out. She started doula work in 2014 which, you guys guess what? So did I. I didn’t know that until actually just barely. We started around the same time. She is so passionate about creating access to maternal care for all. She has a gift registry on this Be Her Village. You guys, it’s a platform. It is literally– actually, I’m going to let you talk about it because it is literally amazing and genius. Genius. Kaitlin: Thank you. Meagan: It is such a great tool for people because I’m sorry. I love all baby clothes. I love my baby clothes so much. Kaitlin: I love baby clothes too. I don’t tell anybody that, but I also love baby clothes. Meagan: I do, but after my two Cesareans specifically, actually even after my VBAC, luckily my husband was in a situation where he could be with me. He was home all of the time so we had the support but he could have even used some support. I loved all of those cute little baby gifts, but to have some resources or to have that doula that I wanted to hire with my second but my husband was like, “We can’t afford it. I don’t like the idea.” Right? Tell us about what you are doing with Be Her Village. Kaitlin: Awesome. Absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me. Meagan, I just love you. I love what you are doing. Everyone who is listening, thank you for this space to tell my story. Be Her Village is just my answer to having a baby and having this perfect nursery surrounded by all of the gifts, all of the wonderful, generous things that my friends and family showered me with, and actually having nothing I needed. Just feeling completely alone, being post-C-section because I didn’t have a doula. I couldn’t afford a doula. I didn’t know that I needed a doula. That wasn’t the norm. I was just surrounded by all of these gifts and had none of the support. Breastfeeding was hard. The C-section recovery was hard. Life with a newborn was hard. It’s just difficult. What I’ve realized is that our community has so much love to give. They’ve sort of been tricked into this idea that all I need is stuff. We need stuff.Meagan: Wipe warmers. Kaitlin: Yeah, wipe warmers and seventeen different bouncers.Meagan: You don’t really wipe warmers. Yeah. Kaitlin: It’s a little extra. I feel like we can get all of the stuff in the baby nursery. You can get a whole baby’s store worth of stuff and you’re still going to need some support for yourself as a mother. So I thought of Be Her Village. I was like, “Why don’t we connect parents with doulas and why don’t we give doulas, lactation care, postpartum care, and pelvic floor visits as baby shower gifts?” What an incredible gift to be like, “I’m going to help you get your VBAC. Here’s a doula to help you advocate for yourself. Here’s a pelvic floor provider so you can get back to running, Cross Fit, or exercise,” which for many of us is a mental health tool. What about impactful gifts that actually care for the mother so she can take care of herself and her baby?Meagan: Yes. Yes. This is something Julie and I did when we were together hundreds of episodes ago saying that you can afford a doula because we are huge advocates here for our doulas. Clearly, we’ve seen the impact and we just know this impact, but we talk about asking for money towards something else. You don’t have to. But this is an actual tool and resource where it is easy to do that. It is easy to do. It is easy to register for that. It’s incredible. I’m obsessed with it.Kaitlin: Thank you. Meagan: I’m obsessed with you and I just can’t wait to one day actually finally meet you in person. Kaitlin: Oh for sure. Meagan: Yes. Just yeah and just to see you grow because this is so amazing. Women of strength, we understand. We understand that finances are not always in a place to have a birth doula, a photographer, a lactation consultant, a postpartum doula, and a PT pelvic floor or to give birth out of a hospital and all of these things. We know that these things cost. We know that they do but I’m telling you right now there is serious value in this and it is honestly so amazing to have a doula or support versus a baby wipe warmer or one extra pair of newborn onesies. Kaitlin: Yeah. I want to provide insight into that. It’s not just that it feels good to moms because that’s something that we’re not always comfortable with. “I’d rather get something for my baby. I don’t need to feel good. I can do hard things.” And we can. We can do more than we know. But using a doula reduces your chance of a C-section. Using a doula reduces your chances of an episiotomy which is where they cut your perineum. It reduces the chance of forceps use or vacuum use. It reduces–Meagan: Time in labor. Kaitlin: Time in labor which I’m like, “Just sign me up right there. Are you kidding? Forget about it.” Meagan: Labor can be shortened by at least 41 minutes. Kaitlin: And you know what? It’s more than just the shortness of the labor, it shortens pushing time and it increases the APGAR score of the baby which is literally the baby’s health upon being born. There are just so many things that a doula does. It’s not a promise that one doula will do that for you but collectively when people line up doula support, their outcomes, and their baby's outcomes are better. If you’re thinking about a VBAC which I’m guessing you are if you’re listening to this, you need to get a doula. You need to think about a doula. It has always been this thing that I personally even as a doula felt uncomfortable saying and recommending because how can you say, “Hey, doulas are vital. Sorry, you don’t have $1000.” Meagan: Or more. Kaitlin: Or way more. It’s such an uncomfortable conversation. That’s why I created Be Her Village because 12 billion dollars are spent on baby gifts every year for baby showers. It’s like, “Well maybe the generosity exists. Maybe the love exists and maybe the money exists. We just need to create a platform where people can line up their doulas and ask for them for their baby shower gifts.” That’s exactly what we did and we’ve had over $135,000 gifted on Be Her Village directly to parents. They’re getting the gifts. They’re getting the support and it’s literally the coolest thing in the world. Meagan: It’s so amazing. Kaitlin: It’s just so cool to see it come to life and to have people find out about it, then literally get better gifts that are taking care of them and improving their entire experience. Unfortunately, it’s because I needed it. I wish I could go back in time and do it again which is something we really often hear is, “Oh my god. Where was this when I was having my baby?” Meagan: Right? That’s why I’m here right now. I needed more. I felt alone in so many ways preparing for my VBAC. Everyone looked at me and was like, “What? You’re doing what?” I’m like, “Yeah. I want to push a baby out of my vagina. Why does that seem so weird?” Because I had that Cesarean, everyone was like, “No, you can’t do that.” I’ll tell you what, when I came around to that second C-section and was wanting to have a vaginal birth, it was even more mindblowing to people. It felt very lonely and cold. I was like, “No. No.” There wasn’t a lot of inspiration. Facebook was going on and there were stories being shared but there wasn’t inspiration like what we have today. There wasn’t a lot of knowledge in one spot so that’s why we’re here today. Kaitlin: I have to say that one of the things too, and there is so much to talk about, but this is actually part of my birth story too so it’s such an interesting place to begin. I think people legitimately think that vaginal birth and Cesarean birth are equally risky or quite honestly even the opposite. They think that vaginal birth is more dangerous than Cesarean. It’s like, of course. If that’s the underlying held belief, the subconscious belief is that vaginal birth is risk and Cesarean is not, then of course, Meagan, why would you do that? Why would you risk your life and your baby’s life just to have a vaginal birth? You don’t get an award for that. I’m just imagining what these people are thinking. Meagan: They would say that. Kaitlin: You don’t get an award and it’s like, “Well, hold on a second. What if we actually find out where the risk lies?” That was something. I was not set on a VBAC. Not at all. I was totally disappointed. I was probably the least impactful word I could use but there was just a defeated feeling about my C-section. I just felt like, “Oh, that wasn’t really what I wanted.” I also went into my VBAC birth, my second pregnancy sort of like, “I’m not going to take unnecessary risks for my baby or for myself just to get the VBAC badge or the vaginal birth experience.” You have to balance your desires with what’s risky and what’s safe. So I didn’t research. I remember one of the things that stood out for me was that I had this vision of– and I’m sorry. Get your earmuffs ready. This might trigger somebody. But I had this vision of vaginal birth ending in hemorrhage and being very, very, very scary and very dangerous. I don’t know. This is what you see in the movies. So I didn’t research this. I don’t know if you know this Meagan. I’m so excited if I can share this with you for the first time but vaginal birth hemorrhage is 500 ccs of blood loss. Cesarean normal blood loss in a totally run-of-the-mill, we-did-a-great-job, there-was no-extra-bleeding Cesarean, is 1000 ccs. It’s double. Meagan: Yes. Kaitlin: As soon as I realized that, I was like, “Oh. We’re not talking about the same thing. Everyone talks about vaginal birth and C-section on this leveled playing field and we are not in the same ballpark.” That is incredibly risky when it goes normally. It is twice as risky as when a vaginal birth goes horribly wrong. To me, it’s like, “Oh, we’re not even in the same stratosphere.” It’s a completely different thing. I think once we start talking in facts and figures and we start really sharing that, it takes so much of the fear away. The fear can be such a big monster to deal with when we’re talking about VBAC because it’s scary. There are unknowns. Every pregnancy is a little scary because fear is what drives us but if you walk away with one fact from this podcast, just know that it is not the same thing. It’s not even close to the same thing. Meagan: It’s not. It is not. It isn’t. Even with vaginal birth after a Cesarean, yes. There are risks to having a vaginal birth after a Cesarean, but it’s also not the same thing. There are also risks for a second Cesarean, a third Cesarean, and a fourth Cesarean, and the risks are pretty substantial. It’s important and I encourage you if you are preparing to actually look at the pros and cons of both sides. I also want to point out that sometimes the cons of a vaginal birth might make you be like, “Yeah, I don’t want to do that. That’s actually not what I feel comfortable with. That’s not what my heart says.” And that is okay. Also, know the risks and the cons of the other side. So know the pros and the cons of both vaginal birth, vaginal birth after Cesarean, and vaginal birth after multiple Cesareans. Know those risks. Dial in and decide what risk is applicable, safe enough, and comfortable enough for you. My risk, I live a little bit more on the edge. I have jumped out of a plane multiple times and I have a friend who thinks that is the scariest thing and she won’t do it because she has children. She fears the risk of dying. I totally understand. Kaitlin: I’m like, “I would VBAC every day of my life and I will never jump out of a plane. They are not the same risks.”Meagan: Right? So not the same risks to you and to me. So I’m like, “Yeah, my risk is nothing. It’s not enough for me to not jump out,” and you’re like, “Yeah, no. I’m not doing that.” So it depends. There are benefits and risks to both sides. You have to decide what is best for you. What risk is impactful enough for you to make that decision? Know that it’s okay if you are not making the decision that Sally is making. It’s okay. It doesn’t make you any less of a woman of strength. It doesn’t make you any less of a mother. Nothing. You’re not failing your body. You’re not failing your baby if you make one choice or another. Kaitlin: Absolutely. The big thing is that you have to get that information so that you know the right information so that when you have to go talk to a doctor and they write you off and say, “Nope. We do repeat C-sections because it’s risky,” that you actually know what they’re talking about and you actually know whether you are at risk or not because there is a much bigger picture than what you might get at a standard OB’s office. Meagan: Yes. Absolutely, so this information is so important. Cesarean Awareness Month is April and one of the biggest things that a lot of say are, “So are we promoting Cesareans?” It’s not that we are promoting Cesareans, it’s that we are promoting information about Cesareans, VBAC, and your options. Even though Cesarean Awareness Month is in April, every month is Cesarean Awareness Month in my mind. Every single month and every single day is information that we need to be sharing, that we need to be getting out there because women of strength, you need to know these stats and these facts so that you can make the choice that is best for you. Kaitlin: Yes. Oh, I love that. Meagan: I don’t know exactly all of the choices and the things that led up to your Cesarean but for me, I didn’t know. I walked in. I was uneducated, you guys. I was young. I was 22. I just knew I was going to have a baby. I went to the same doc that my mom did who delivered me via Cesarean coincidentally and all of these things. I just didn’t know. It takes knowledge. It takes time. It takes time. If you are willing to put in that time, you will likely, even if it ends in a Cesarean, feel better about your outcome and carry on with your life. Kaitlin: Yeah, and that VBAC prep, I don’t think anyone here is anti-Cesarean. It’s such an interesting thing to point out because there’s nobody out there that is saying– April is not an anti-Cesarean month. Meagan: No. It’s awareness. Kaitlin: It’s awareness so that you can go in with intention, with a conscious choice, and with the information you need. You know what? I went through a whole research phase. I was not sure that VBAC was for me. I wasn’t because I wasn’t sold one way or the other, but the ability to have a choice is everything. That is where your power comes from. It’s not from being the loudest, the strongest, the fastest, or even having a VBAC. It’s about getting there on your terms. I know people who have had surprise VBACs believe it or not. I should send her to you. A surprise VBAC was not planned and she was kind of traumatized by it because she was planning a repeat C-section. She didn’t go through that prenatal that a lot of people listening are going through of, “Okay, so what are my options and how do I step into my path here?” Whatever that path might be, there’s a lot of power and a lot of healing in whatever birth you have, but unless you do that work of identifying your choices and not just your risk assessment but also your practitioners and lining yourself up with support, then you’re going to be sort of that passive participant. I think, not all of us, some of our C-sections come after being active, but with a lot of us, myself included, there was this passivity where as soon as I hit the hospital, I was stripped of my power, stripped of my clothes, stripped of my humanness, and told to lay back flat. Keep the baby on the monitor. Here’s your medication and boom. That’s a C-section. It all happened to me and I wasn’t actively there. That was a big part of what changed for me. I felt like I benefited from my VBAC whether I had a C-section or vaginal birth. For the record, I absolutely asked for a C-section as soon as I hit transition. I said to my doula, “Okay. I’m done. I’m done with this. Can we just get a C-section?” I’m really glad I asked my doula and not my OB. Meagan: Right? Right? Your doula and your team were probably like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let’s give her ten minutes.” That is a very normal thing too to say. We need to hear your stories. Let’s hear them. We could chat forever. But let’s hear these.Kaitlin: Oh cool, okay. I know. We’re already halfway through. I can give you a quick synopsis of the C-section because I feel like it’s always relevant when we’re talking about VBAC. My C-section was a 41-week induction, the oldest story in the book. Mine was a little bit interesting because I actually planned an out-of-hospital birth and I planned a midwife-supportive birth. I got a little bit of the bait-and-switch. It’s a little spicy because in New York where I was giving birth at the time, midwives could not own a birth center. Now they can, there has been a huge push in legislation on that but at the time, I was told that midwives were in charge of my care and they were not. They were on the phone with an invisible OB I had never met. I did not know he was calling all of the shots. I always start off by saying that I planned an out-of-hospital birth with midwives. I thought I was doing all of the right things. That is part of what makes me feel a little extra angry about my treatment because I thought I was doing the right thing and I wasn’t. Meagan: They never told you that you were actually under an OB umbrella?Kaitlin: Nope. Everything was midwife-facing. It was really disingenuous the way that they did that and then basically at the 41-week appointment, literally, an OB was on the phone with them in their ear telling them it was time to induce and I was sent to the hospital for an induction. I didn’t know that was the bad part. It’s only sort of upon reflecting and becoming a doula and realizing that, “Wait. They were never really in charge.” Meagan: You never actually had the midwife you thought you had. Kaitlin: No. I was not in midwifery care. I had a midwife mouthpiece for an OB. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Kaitlin: That wasn’t great. It’s also awful because that’s the only birth center in New York. New York state is so far behind the rest of the country in a lot of ways and birth centers are definitely one of them. I want as a doula, in my heart of hearts, I want to recommend birth centers but I can’t recommend that one because of the way that they behaved and their ownership. So I went to the hospital and it was alarming to me how fast the power was stripped away. My voice– my midwife dumped me there and left me there. This is crazy to say because I’m such an advocate and I’ve doula’d people through so many things that to say I allowed this for myself is kind of amazing. I was given Cytotec, a double dose of Cytotec in the C-section recovery room. That’s where they sent me because I was in this busy Brooklyn hospital and I was set up with Wendy, the nurse, who I hate. I still remember Wendy. These people become bigger characters in your story. Meagan: They do. Kaitlin: Because they stay with you. But anyway, long story short, I went from nothing eating a sandwich with my family to absolutely full-blown, every three-minute transition level contractions. I couldn’t move. She wouldn’t let me move off of my back. I felt like a trapped animal. I ended up getting the epidural because my whole birth plan was out the window. Meagan: Oh, I’m sure. Kaitlin: I was like, “Why am I torturing myself?” and the baby didn’t respond well to the epidural. His heart rate went down and I just looked at my team. They all looked very nervous and I said, “What are we doing here?” She said, “The OB is going to come to talk to you in about 45 minutes.” I’m like, “This baby is actively in distress.”Meagan: But your baby is not doing well.Kaitlin: Actively in distress. The OB was going to come in 45 minutes. I looked at her and I say this, the only reason this is okay is because I said it. I would never say this to another person but I looked at her and I said, “I want a healthy baby. I want a healthy baby at the end of this.” I say that because it’s really toxic to be like, “At least you had a healthy baby.” It’s like, “Okay. I get to say.” What I was trying to say to her in the fog of the labor was, “After all of this misery and all of this horrible treatment, at the very least I would like a baby that’s alive and handed to me.”So I did. I got a C-section. It was scary. It was cold literally and otherwise. It was not what I wanted. It was not the ending that I wanted. I ended up in my house. My husband was back at work. He didn’t have literally any time off and he was back at work the day that I was released from the hospital two days later. It was just underwhelming. It was not how I wanted to enter motherhood. Meagan: No. Kaitlin: In the least. I felt like besides the physical– the physical recovery was horrible and I recovered really well but it was just so intense. It’s major surgery. I also just felt disempowered. I felt highly anxious. I didn’t realize it until later that it was postpartum anxiety but I was just so set off-kilter by the whole experience. It just took my power and my voice and my strength away from me and then handed me a baby and a C-section scar. I was like, “Oh. That’s not how I thought motherhood was going to go.” Meagan: Oh my gosh, yeah. That’s hard and being alone. Oh, man. Kaitlin: Yeah, being alone. Meagan: It started your journey off really intensely. Kaitlin: It was really hard. Then when I had my second, I just knew it needed to be different. I knew I needed to do more research. I actually, this is funny. I did everything the opposite. I planned hospital birth. I planned an OB birth. I hired a doula. Everything I didn’t do, I did the opposite. But the thing I did along the way was that I was really intentional about all of my choices. I found the doctor that does VBACs where I live. There’s a handful of them and I found Jessica Jacob at North Shore. She does a lot of Orthodox Jewish women who see her. That’s her practice. A lot of those women have 6, 7, 8, and 9 babies so when they have a C-section if the thing is “once a C-section, always a C-section,” that can result as we talked about earlier, that can result in really dangerous situations. So she specializes in VBAC, vaginal births, and preventing those primary C-sections.So I went to her. I had done my own research and then I went to her and said, “Knowing my story and looking at my chart, am I a candidate?” She said, “Absolutely.” I was like, “Okay, sold. I’m in.” Meagan: That’s awesome. Kaitlin: Yeah, it was really good. This one was so much less traumatic and not even less traumatic. I had a full-blown spiritual experience with my VBAC. It was completely on my own terms. It was private. The day that I went into labor was my due date believe it or not. What a magical little baby. Awesome and obedient and wonderful. Now he’s not. He’s not obedient at all. He’s 8 now. He’s not obedient. But it was actually Father’s Day in 2014. That was my due date. I woke up with these little Braxton Hicks turned into these contractions that would– you know the Braxton Hicks where they just tighten and release and you have them forever? It was like that except at the very height of it, it was this little squeeze that just took my attention. I was like, “Oh, what? What is this?”Meagan: You’re like, “Oh, something’s happening.” Kaitlin: Because I had never been in my own labor. This is part of it. I had never been. I had this suspicion, you know that intuition, I just knew that if I could get into labor, I could do this. I went to an acupuncturist, one that my doula recommended. They put these beads on my ears. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this Meagan.Meagan: No. Kaitlin: Okay, so they put beads on my ears in these pressure points and they taped them. Then he told me as much as I could, and I am touching on the actual points because that’s where they were. I’ll never forget where they were. And to just pinch them and just keep doing that as much as you can to activate. Meagan: Really?Kaitlin: I did it. That was Friday. Friday night was when I went. I pinched and squeezed those until Saturday. I literally ripped the tape and the beads off. I was totally overstimulated and couldn’t touch them anymore but I did as much as I could. I remember knowing that I had an instinct that I was going to go into labor because I could not stop eating the day before. It’s so interesting how our bodies know. Meagan: It’s fueling. They’re fueling. Our bodies fuel. I did the same thing with my VBAC. It was so weird. I had all of this energy and was eating all of the stuff. Kaitlin: Everything. Meagan: Everyone was like, “How are you eating that much? You’re 9 months pregnant.” I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m so hungry.” Kaitlin: My husband, we went out for lunch and he got food for me, him, and my two-year-old at the time. I remember looking at him and I was like, “What are you guys going to eat?” I was insatiable which had been different from any other day. So anyways, I wake up on Father’s Day, the day of my birth and it was this incredible, gentle, slow labor which was such a wonderful way to learn how to work with my body. The whole morning was this questioning time of, “Am I in labor?” In between, I was literally like this talking in between. I would convince myself, “No, not in labor.” There was this whole discussion of, “Should we go to Father’s Day brunch?” Then I would have a wave come and I was like, “No, no, no. We’re not going to sit at a restaurant right now.” Meagan: Yeah, no. Kaitlin: So I labored like that all day with just me and my husband. We watched World Cup soccer. We got lunch. We were eating. I was learning how to move. I was learning how to breathe. Every single contraction was just this opportunity to figure out how to work with my body. Then the nighttime came. It’s what you learn in your childbirth classes. At night, the night falls and it signals this privacy and safety. Again, it was still just me and my husband. Things just picked up. Oh my goodness. I remember my doula called me. I had been texting her all day. I didn’t want anyone to come. It was so private. She called me and we spoke. I just gave her an update then we hung up the phone and it’s amazing the switch. Everything about labor is so mental and emotional. I just kicked into high gear. The waves that I was able to get on top of earlier, it was taking the full essence of my being to work through these contractions. It was so incredibly wild how fast that happened. We labored at home until maybe midnight. Yeah, about midnight. We called our doula. We had called the doctor and said, “Hey, I think we’re going to come in.” The doctor said, “Well, she might get turned away. She’s not ready.” Because this is what VBAC-supportive looks like. It looks like saying, “You might not be allowed to be here because that’s how I keep you safe in this hospital.” I remember that really stood out to me. It was like, “Oh, this is interesting what she is saying. Maybe I shouldn’t come.” So we waited as long as we possibly could. We called the doula around midnight. The doula came here to my house. I was on my knees next to my bed. I could not be in my bed for hours and hours. I looked at her as soon as she got there and I said, “Let’s go. It’s time to go.” She was like, “Oh, okay. I just got here.” Between my bedroom and my car, I had probably five contractions. It was just one after the other after the other. At this point, I’m thinking that I’m going to go to the hospital and spend the day there. My mom will come for the birth. I’m not really getting–Meagan: Where you’re at. Kaitlin: Where I am in labor because it’s part of labor. You just kind of can’t tell. Meagan: It’s true. There’s no sense of time. There’s no sense of understanding sometimes. You’re like, “I know I’m feeling this, but it’s probably going to be a while.” Kaitlin: Yeah, that’s actually literally a part of it. You’re not supposed to know. Your brain shuts down. The prefrontal cortex of language analysis shuts down and you’re living in this beautiful other existence where you’re in a wave. You’re out of a wave. You’re in a wave. You’re out of a wave. So we went to the hospital. I walked all the way up. They offered me a wheelchair and I was like, “I literally cannot sit down. There’s not a chance of that.” So I waddled my way and had contractions every few minutes. When I got to the floor, they were like, “Okay, just skip triage. Go right to the room.” They took one look at me. I think they obviously knew that I was much closer than I knew. I went to go pee in the bathroom in the room right before I went to go lay in the bed and get checked or whatever. When I sat on the toilet, I had a contraction and I now know it was spontaneous pushing. But I had this contraction where it was like, “Oooohh.” Meagan: Yeah. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Kaitlin: At the top, the peak, when you’re moaning, it just caught. It was like, “Oh my god. I think I’m pushing.” It was this weird thing. It was weird because I hadn’t experienced it before. So I got in bed and everything was really a blur because the doctor came. She checked me and she said I was 6 centimeters and +2 station, -2 station. I wasn’t ready. When I was pushing and I was working, the best thing she did was she just said, “Okay. Just do your thing. I’m going to be right outside.” The nurses were skirting around asking me so many questions and I just ignored all of them. Where I was, was in the stars. I was just so far away from the hospital room. It doesn’t make sense but I just imagined this tunnel from the top of my head to the outer regions of the universe. That’s where I went. I went to this place that was just completely apart from the realities and the things that the nurses were worried about. I just could not care less. I was so deeply in tune with what I was feeling and where I was going in my brain and my body. I remember feeling so primal in a good way. The first time, I felt like a trapped animal and this time, I felt like this primal goddess being just feeling deeply connected to every sense of myself and every sense of my body. It was just wild. It’s hard to put into words but it was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had laboring my baby down and pushing him out. There was no other anything at that moment. It was just me, my body, and this baby. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done. There were funny moments in it too. This is the reality side of it. At one point, I was curled up on my side against the side of the hospital bed. In the middle of a contraction, the bed starts going up and down, up and down. Meagan: Was your head pushing it?Kaitlin: I snapped at my husband, “Why are you moving the bed?” He was like, “It’s you.” Meagan: It’s you! Kaitlin: So it was quite the sight. But yeah, and he just flew out. My body just apparently, so I didn’t realize this until a lot longer later, but I experienced fetal ejection reflex with my next baby who was a home birth, but I experienced it with him too. He went from inside of me to in the doctor’s hands in one big push. It was just wild. It was really wild and it was really, really the coolest thing ever. It’s hard to explain how intense the moment is and how good it feels to have that relief.Then the oxytocin was just pulsing. Everything is good. I remember he was put on my chest and he was so alert. He was so awake. He was not drugged. I was not drugged which was not necessarily part of the plan. I just want to throw that out there. I was wanting to go without an epidural but it wasn’t–Meagan: Set in stone. Kaitlin: I wasn’t deadset on it, yeah. I was open to whatever happened. Meagan: Which is healthy. That’s a healthy way. Kaitlin: Because who knows? But it was so cool to have him go through those initial stages and be aware of his surroundings. I remember feeling even in that moment of joy, I remember feeling a little bit like I was experiencing what was stolen from me the first time around. It felt like a little bit of grief associated with that. I’m getting a little teary-eyed thinking about it right now. I honestly think it’s why I had a third baby. I should have had this. I should have had this the first time. He looked just like his big brother. It was just this feeling of, “I was really robbed.” I knew I was robbed the first time but I didn’t know what necessarily. Meagan: Right, because you hadn’t been there yet.Kaitlin: I just knew there was something I was missing. There was this incredible feeling of triumph. That was absolutely the overwhelming feeling but there was this little linger of grief too, of just, “Oof. Now I know what I missed out on.” It was beautiful. I screamed from the top of my lungs, “I just had a baby out of my vagina!” Literally, the entire floor of the hospital could hear. My doula sent me a video of that later on. Meagan: Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that you have that. Kaitlin: Yeah, I’d have to find it but it was just this pure, pure triumph. I was forever changed by that. I was forever changed by the whole experience and that vaginal birth was the culmination of all of the work I put in. It was the culmination of doing the research, lining up my support team, and doing this work to be an active participant in my care. It was the best thing in the whole world and I am forever changed by that moment. Meagan: Yeah. I love that you said being an active participant in your care. It’s so important, listeners, for you to be that person in your birth and not have birth happen to you. We know it happens. We know. It happens way too often. I hope in time that we stop seeing it happen so often and it’s more of a rarity but right now, a lot of the time– I don’t want to make it sound like we are painting a bad picture on providers or the system or anything like that. I mean, look. You were going out of the hospital–Kaitlin: And I still got burned.  Meagan: It depends, right? But it’s so important and it all stems back to what we were talking about in the beginning is having the education, having the support, and being prepared to be that active participant and to be that person and finding those supportive providers that will say, “Hey, why don’t you stay? You’re probably going to get sent home for a little longer.” It’s just so important and it can be vital to the outcome of our birth. Kaitlin: Yes. That’s such an important thing, Meagan, if people are listening and trying to take things away. I think something that we can do often is, “I’m going to listen to this. I’m going to listen to as many birth stories as I can so I can learn exactly the formula. What did she do? What did she do? What is the thing that I have to do?” The thing you have to do is get the information and then trust your gut. Part of being an active participant is research, research, research, then trust your gut. That’s what I always tell people. Do all of that research, but at the end of the day, you’re the only person that can make each of these hundreds and thousands of tiny decisions for yourself. That’s the real formula. Meagan: Yes. Kaitlin: Trusting our instincts, trusting ourselves, trusting our own wisdom in these moments to steer us and guide us forward. Meagan: Yeah and just like each of our bodies is made out of different things and chromosomes and hormones and all of the things, we are made to be the person we are, we have to trust all of those things. Like she said, and create our own formula because her formula is going to be different than mine. She’s not jumping out of a plane. I jumped out of a plane twice because I loved it so much. I had to do it again. Kaitlin: I’m definitely not jumping out of a plane. Meagan: Right, I’m just saying that the formula is going to be different. You have to tune into your own formula and it does start with that intuition, education, and gathering support. Kaitlin: Meagan, you said it earlier too. I know we’re running out of time. Meagan: No, you’re fine. Kaitlin: You can see all of those stats and also do the opposite. You can see that it’s safer to have a C-section and choose a vaginal birth. You can see that vaginal birth is riskier for you and choose that anyway. The evidence is there. The “evidence” is there as part of the decision making but you get to do what feels right for you and your family and your baby and your body and your birth. That is the thing. Evidence is not everything. It’s one of the tools that we have. Meagan: Yes. Mic drop right there. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for being with us today. I mean, I know that we could talk for hours and hours and hours about all of the things. We probably need to do this again because of that. Kaitlin: I would love that. I love you and everything you’re doing here. Thank you so much for having me. Meagan: Thank you. Can you tell everybody where they can find Be Her Village?Kaitlin: Absolutely. Behervillage.com is a great place to start. You can just hit the “Get Started” button. You can create a registry or if you’re a birth worker and you want to get involved with what we’re doing, you can add your services. We have training courses. We have so many great things. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook. Both are @behervillage. I’m in the stories. I’m answering the messages on Instagram so if you want to be in touch, that’s the best way. Meagan: Absolutely. We’ll make sure to drop all of those links in the show notes. So while you’re leaving a review, also go check all of these amazing links out because Be Her Village is incredible, doing amazing things, and is seriously so important. So, so important. Thank you again so much. Kaitlin: Thank you so much, Meagan. Bye, everybody!ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Nicole joins us today from Canada. She has had an induced Cesarean birth, an induced VBAC, and is now pregnant with her third baby! Nicole shares her journey with IVF before pregnancy as well as what it’s like to have a subglottic stenosis during pregnancy. Meagan gives tips about the best types of induction for VBAC. You can be induced and still confidently achieve your VBAC!Additional LinksHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello and welcome to The VBAC Link. This is Meagan and we have our friend Nicole with you today. She is from Canada and she has a VBAC story which is awesome. One of the things I wanted to talk about today within her VBAC story and her Cesarean story is induction. Induction is a hot topic, especially in the VBAC world. A lot of providers out there will not induce or they’ll tell people they can’t have a VBAC because of an induction needing to take place or people are scared of induction. I find that a lot of our followers are scared of induction. So at the end, I want to talk a little bit more about induction. Review of the WeekMeagan: We are going to get into our review so cute Nicole can share her stories. Today’s review is, let’s see if I can get this to pull up. My computer’s slow here. It’s by Rucca the Silly Frenchie. I love that name. Lucathesillyfrenchie. The title is, “An essential resource if you are VBAC hopeful.” It says, “Writing this review from Columbus, Ohio. I’m a VBAC hopeful with my second daughter due on September 4, 2021.” So Rucca the Silly Frenchie if you are still listening, let us know how things went. It says, “After my first daughter was born via Cesarean due to a footling breech position, I knew TOLAC was in my future. This podcast has been beyond educational and inspiring. Be prepared to be addicted to listening to all of the powerful and unique birth stories from strong women around the country. Regardless of what happens with my upcoming labor, I feel empowered knowing I took a more empowered and educated approach with this pregnancy. Thank you, Julie and Meagan.”Thank you, Rucca the Silly Frenchie for your review. I would love to know how everything went. If you guys have not had a chance to leave us a review, please drop us one. We love them and we love reading them on this podcast. You can leave them wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hi birth workers, this one’s for you. In an ideal world, VBAC parents would be treated just like other birthing parents. In today’s world, most medical providers sadly don’t fully support VBAC parents. However, 90% of parents with a prior Cesarean are good candidates to attempt a VBAC. This is why we have created the advanced VBAC doula certification program. In this doula course, we share evidence-based data for you to educate your clients, teach you the tools on helping them how to process past fears and trauma or help them decide if VBAC is even right for them. You will feel better prepared to support them during this beautiful experience. All VBAC-certified doulas are listed on our website so parents know who you are. To learn more, go to thevbaclink.com.Nicole’s StoriesMeagan: Okay. Nicole, I am so excited. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day. I know that all of you guys here who have recorded your stories are sacrificing time out of your day to be here to share this amazing content for all of these wonderful, hopeful listeners. Nicole: Thank you for having me. I’ll jump back to before my Cesarean, but this podcast was such a resource for me in planning for my VBAC so I’m happy to be a part of it in a different way. So thanks for having me.Meagan: Yes, thank you. Nicole: I’ll start from the very beginning. My husband and I were high school sweethearts. We got married in 2015 so about a year after we got married we decided, “Okay. We’re ready to start trying to have a family.” I stopped taking my birth control pill and literally nothing happened. I wasn’t having any cycles or anything like that. So I went to my family doctor. We started inducing cycles and then going from there just on our own. It turns out that notwithstanding the fact that we were inducing a bleed, I wasn’t actually ovulating at all. So that’s fine. So then we started doing a couple of rounds of letrozole with her just with timed intercourse. We did five rounds of letrosole with that timing with her and then with no luck or success at that point, she referred us out to a fertility clinic where I was diagnosed with classic PCOS and ovulatory PCOS because I don’t ovulate on my own. So we did the first IUI with them. Again, no success with letrozole so that’s fine. We had another one scheduled. After doing all of that, I had stopped responding to the letrozole at the highest dose so then our only option was either superovulation or IVF and it just worked out timing-wise to do IVF and it made more sense to do that. We ended up going through IVF and because I had PCOS, the numbers that we got in terms of eggs were really, really good. We got 41 eggs which is insane. Meagan: Wow, yeah. Nicole: When it was all said and done, we ended up with 10-day five embryos which was really promising so that was good. We had our first transfer, a frozen transfer, in August 2018. It was successful so we were super excited. I had a really good pregnancy. I never felt sick. Aside from the first-trimester fatigue and exhaustion, I felt really, really good. I loved being pregnant. I was one of those annoying people. I never complained about being pregnant. I felt super good. Even at 41 weeks, I wasn’t like, “Oh, get this baby out.” I loved it. It was great. Of course, we did all of the things that you’re supposed to do like taking birth classes and all of those other things. I never had a birth plan per se. The birth plan and goal were just a healthy baby and a healthy mom whatever that looks like. Maybe in hindsight, we should have had something more concrete but I’m not sure it would have changed anything. Fast forward, I was 40 weeks plus 10 days, so 41 and a half weeks, maybe a centimeter dilated. Baby was just holding up shop. Meagan: Very comfortable. Nicole: Yeah, too comfortable, arguably. They decided to induce me and I was totally fine with that. They induced me with Cervadil. It was fine. They put in the Cervadil We stayed there at the hospital for about an hour or so. Everything on the monitors looked fine so this one woman said, “Come back when you have contractions for at least an hour lasting a minute,” or whatever the 4-1-1 is.  Meagan: Yeah. Four minutes apart, one minute long, for at least an hour. I want to add in strength because sometimes it can be 4-1-1 and it’s not really strong so we go in a little bit early because we are seeing 4-1-1. Add strength in there if you are taking notes for when to go. Add strength. Nicole: Yeah, so when we left the hospital, it was fine. We went out for lunch and just hung around at home. Other things they told us before we left the hospital was if it feels like baby is not moving, if your mother’s intuition kicks in, to come back and they’ll make sure everything was fine and they’d go from there. It was around suppertime and I started to feel like, “Okay. Maybe baby’s not moving as much as she usually does or maybe I’m just being paranoid.” I said, “Let’s just go in. Let’s double-check just to be safe. I’m not going to get any sleep if I’m worried about her not moving so I’d rather just go in and get it checked.” We went in to get checked a little after supper so in the early evening. That was fine. They hooked us up to the monitors and everything looked okay. I could feel the contractions but I wasn’t really in any pain. I wouldn’t describe it as being painful yet. Baby looked really good and everything so they said, “Okay. You can go home” because I was still, I think, only a centimeter or maybe 2 being generous. They said, “Yeah, go home,” on the same kind of instructions so that’s fine. We went home. A few hours went by at home and now the contractions were quite a bit stronger and quite painful actually. I didn’t want to rush off to the hospital again because we had only just been there two or three hours before that but the contractions were very painful and very long. So I had one of those little contraction counters or whatever on your phone and I wasn’t sure if I was recording them correctly. I was logging them at two minutes but I was like, “That doesn’t sound right. That seems long.” I was like, “I can’t imagine spending the night at home with these feelings like this. I need something for my pain.”I actually had my husband call the hospital and say, “Okay. This is what’s going on. If we come in, are we able to give her some pain meds and send her back home?” or send me back home if I’m not dilated enough yet to warrant admitting us. They said, “Well, maybe but you were already here for lack of fetal movement so there would be some hesitation about giving you something for it like morphine for example because then you are really probably not going to be feeling the baby. But come in. We will take a look at you and then go from there.” So okay, that’s fine. We ended up going back to the hospital maybe around midnight or shortly before then. It was quite late. I could barely walk through these contractions. They were so painful. In the back of my mind, I couldn’t imagine it getting any worse but I’d never done this before. Maybe my tolerance for pain isn’t as high as I thought it was or would like to think it is so that’s fine. We got back to labor and delivery. Right from the moment they hooked me back up onto the monitors in the triage room, you could just tell the vibe and the mood were completely different as soon as they looked at the strip. My contractions were lasting anywhere from 2-3 minutes. More than not as I was having 3, 4, 5 of them in a row without any break in between which was then really hard on baby because there was just no amount of time for baby to recover. So before one contraction would basically fully come down, another one would start. Meagan: Wow. Nicole: They were worried that the Cervadil has essentially hyper-stimulated my uterus. Meagan: Yes, that’s what I was going to say. It can do that. Cytotec and Cervadil can hyperstimulate. Nicole: Yep. So the first thing they did was take the Cervadil out. They said, “Okay. We’re just going to give you a little bit and see if things go down.” They didn’t. Meagan: Yes. But even Cervadil is less likely to stay in your body as long because it is removed so that’s a nice thing about Cervadil. Nicole: Yeah. They took it out and it didn’t change anything so then they gave me a dose of, I think it’s called nitroglycerin. It’s a spray. I don’t know if it comes in different forms but essentially it was described as what they can use in an attempt to relax the uterus and stop it from contracting. Meagan: They sprayed in your vagina? Nicole: In my mouth. Meagan: I was like, wow. Okay, in your mouth. Okay. Nicole: I think it’s also used for cardiac patients because it has the same effect on the heart if someone’s heart is having a heart attack or something. Meagan: If it’s too high or something. Nicole: Yeah, don’t quote me on that. I’m certainly not a medical professional but that was my understanding on that. Anyway, so they gave me something like five doses of that. Again, this is at this point a train that had left the station and nothing was working. Throughout this process, they were having me change positions so I’m being asked to go on my side and my hands and knees. I remember at one point, there was so much commotion and moving parts. I’m still having these super intense and painful contractions that they had asked me to move in some way and I said, “Okay, I just need a minute. I just need to catch my breath. I just need a minute.” The nurse very sternly but kindly looked at me and said, “We don’t have a minute. When we ask you to do something, you have to do it. We ask because baby is not doing well.” That’s kind of when despite all of the craziness, I clued in. I was like, “Okay. This is obviously maybe more urgent than I appreciate in the circumstance. So it was intense and scary. They decided that even though I was only 2 centimeters just to admit me because what are they going to do, send me home? They put me in a labor room because, until this point, we had just been in a triage room. Things kept going from bad to worse. At some point, it was decided that they would break my waters so that they could put in the little internal monitor to baby’s head. They did that. I had a few more doses of nitro. Throughout this whole process, I made it very clear, “I am pro-epidural. As soon as you can give me one, I want one. Give me one right now.”They said, “Okay, we hear you but technically you aren’t even 3 centimeters dilated yet so you’re not even considered to be in active labor so we can’t give you an epidural yet.” I said, “Okay. Just so you know, I want one as soon as you are willing to give it to me.” I’m not sure how much time actually passed after. They broke my water and looked at the monitor until the call was made, “Okay. It’s time to get baby out.” But I kind of just remember the OB who was on call coming up to me. He was this big, intimidating man. He had such a gentle and soft voice. He said, “Look. Baby is not doing very well. I think we need to go in and get her. She’s not tolerating labor and it’s really important that we get her out as soon as we can.” He’s like, “Unfortunately, that means we are going to put you to sleep.” I was like, “Okay, that’s fine.” As soon as the words left my mouth, it was like, whoosh. A team of people rushed in. Somebody was in my face with a waiver that they were asking me to sign which in the moment, I get. But I was just like, “This is ridiculous.” Someone else was taking off all of my jewelry. My husband was being ushered out of the room. It was madness. We are running down the hall to the operating room which is, in our hospital, literally down the hall. So I’m on the table. They’re doing all of their counts or whatever they do. I’m basically awake and the anesthetist is sitting right by my head. He was complaining about how long everything is taking and how I should already be asleep and how we need to get the baby out which was terrifying. I remember he kept saying to me, “Just close your eyes. Just close your eyes.” I had never had surgery before so laying in this chaotic mess with someone telling me to close my eyes was so unsettling. I just remember being so scared to close my eyes because my husband wasn’t in the room with me.Meagan: And they never let him in, right?Nicole: They let him in after our daughter was born. Meagan: Being separated, how did that make you feel and being put to sleep?Nicole: It was scary. I obviously wasn’t worried about my husband. I didn’t think at the moment about how he must have felt. I’m sure it was scary for him too. It just all happened so fast. There was hardly any time to feel anything other than fear because you almost didn’t have enough time to process any other emotion. But I just remember laying there. You’re strapped to the table naked, having these 10-minute-long contractions. I was almost begging them at this point to put me out because it was so awful. My husband wasn’t there so I was so thankful that there was this one nurse. I just remember hearing her voice come from somewhere behind me. I must have had this terrified look on my face because I had this anesthesiologist saying, “Close your eyes. Close your eyes.” She said, “It’s okay. You can keep them open. Everything’s fine.” It was the only moment of relief or calm that I felt in that entire OR. Everyone was doing their counts. Somebody must have asked where the sponge is for an antiseptic or whatever they use on your belly. The response from across the room was, “Nope. We’re just going to dump and cut.” I was like, “Oh.” All of a sudden, you feel this cold splash come across your midsection. Thankfully, they put me out shortly after that so I could stop listening to these conversations that were happening around me. But it was very scary. It turns out that baby was born a couple of minutes later. When it was all said and done, from the time the call was made that they needed to do the section to when she was born was less than 10 minutes. In my mind, it felt like this eternity but it wasn’t. It was quite quick. They brought my husband into the OR just as they were walking my daughter over to the warmer. He got to see her right away. She was totally fine. Everything was fine with her which was nice. They heated her. She went up to the nursery while they finished the section and were stitching me back up. I woke up a few hours later and they brought my daughter and my husband over to the recovery to see me after. I had a really good recovery in terms of C-sections. Meagan: That’s great. Nicole: Yeah, it was really nice. I don’t actually remember being in any pain after the fact either in the hospital or at home but I did struggle in the weeks that followed bonding with the baby which really took me for a loop. We had spent so much time and emotional energy and money trying to have our family and trying to have a baby. Then here’s this baby in front of me and it sounds awful to say now to feel almost nothing, to feel indifferent. I didn’t have this overwhelming sense of loving joy. I certainly didn’t want any harm or anything or have thoughts of harm that way, but the easiest way for me to describe it is that I felt indifferent. It didn’t really matter if she was crying to me. I didn’t really care if she was there or if I got to hold her or if someone else held her all day. I was indifferent. Meagan: Yeah. I call that a disconnect. You’re just not fully connected. It’s not that you're not recognizing that she’s there or anything, you’re just not feeling that full connection that we hear about. Nicole: Yeah. Meagan: But that’s also really common when you’ve had the type of Cesarean that you had or just Cesarean in general too. It happens in vaginal birth too. Nicole: I thought that was the case at the moment. I did think it was because I really didn’t have a birthing experience. At one moment, I was pregnant. The next moment as far as I was concerned, I woke up and I’m not without anything really connecting the two. That was kind of the struggle emotionally for those first couple of weeks. It kind of resolved itself around 7 or 8 weeks. It’s never been an issue and I’m obviously obsessed with my daughter and I love her. Thinking back on those memories and feelings is hard. Once we got through it, it was good. So that was the birth of our daughter. Shortly after she turned one, we started talking about having another child. We always knew that we wanted more than one. I come from a family of three and my husband comes from a family of four. We always thought that in an ideal world, more than one would be great. We did another frozen transfer in August 2020 which was successful so that was really exciting again. Similar to my previous pregnancy again, I felt really good. I was never sick. I loved being pregnant. Then I found this podcast and I listened to it religiously. I knew that I didn’t want to have an elective section. I really wanted a VBAC. That was the goal in terms of if I didn’t have a birth plan the first time, the birth plan the second time around was a VBAC. I found a doctor who said that she would deliver our baby. She wasn’t delivering babies with our first but she was back delivering them. She said that even if she wasn’t on call that day that she would come just for us to do ours which was really nice. She was super supportive and very much like, “If you need to be induced, we can talk about that.” She wasn’t insistent that I go into labor on my own or by a certain date or whatever the case was. I felt very much in good hands with her. Meagan: Yeah in not putting those restrictions on ever from the get-go. Nicole: Yes. That was really nice. It was such a weight off of my shoulders from the beginning. But it was the fall of 2020 I guess it was that both personally and many people around me noticed that my breathing was really poor. Part of me just chalked it up to being extremely out of shape. I was a new mom. I wasn’t doing as much as I had. But it really hit me when I started noticing that when I would read my daughter her books at her bedtime. You know toddler books. There are five words on every page, but I would have to stop between each page to catch my breath just sitting at rest. Meagan: That’s concerning. Nicole: Yeah. So I thought that maybe there was more to this. We went. Through a series of referrals, we ended up at ENT. He said, “This looks like something but I’m not one that can fix it for you,” so he referred us to a further specialist just in the next practice over. I was diagnosed with what’s called subglottic stenosis. Meagan: I’ve never heard of that. Nicole: In the simplest form, it’s a narrowing of your airway. It’s not scar tissue from my understanding but just normal tissue kind of like an overgrowth of normal tissue that causes this narrowing. It was likely caused by my intubation during my Cesarean. Meagan: During your Cesarean. Nicole: Yep. There was just something about my airway that didn’t like being touched and this was the result. The specialist informed me that it was about a third of the size that it should be and that it would be dangerous to attempt to labor without having a surgery to open it back up. Meagan: Wow. Nicole: That was another hard decision but we decided to go ahead and get that surgery while I was pregnant. I got that surgery. It’s called a dilation where they open it up with a laser and a balloon and all of this stuff. I had that surgery at 24 weeks and it was amazing how much better I could breathe. I didn’t appreciate how bad my breathing was until they fixed it. You don’t realize how much of my day and my time I spent just thinking about breathing so that was really nice. Then we were given the green light to TOLAC and try for a VBAC. The rest of the pregnancy was uneventful. I ended up going overdue again. I was 40 weeks and 7 days, I guess 41 weeks. It was decided that at that point, I would be induced because I was only a centimeter dilated. There were no signs of labor. So, fine. This time obviously though, they said, “Under no circumstances can we use Cervadil,” so we decided that I would be induced with a Foley bulb. We went to the hospital. They put in the Foley bulb that morning. They said, “Okay. Come back when it falls out.” It fell out a couple of hours later that afternoon. We went back to the hospital. I should add that during my pregnancy after my dilation surgery, we had an anesthesia consult to make sure, “Okay, what can we do to avoid another intubation?” It was decided, “When you come into the hospital, we’ll give you an epidural probably earlier than would usually be offered just in an abundance of caution to try to do everything we can to avoid intubating you.” So that was fine. We got to the hospital. They started me on a low dose of Pitocin. Contractions started to look like they were getting longer again and not really following that nice pattern that they like to see. Our nurse started getting a little nervous and concerned and suggested that we call anesthesia to do the epidural which sure. I’m totally on board with. I was proepidural from the very beginning with the both of them. From my perspective, I didn’t need to make my life or job harder than it already was. Anesthesia came in and gave me the epidural. It was great. I felt nothing. Then the contractions actually fell into a really nice pattern after so no one was worried. We hung out for two or three hours at the hospital again contracting. I had no idea. I never felt anything. At one point, I said to my husband, “It feels like I peed a little bit.” He was like, “You have a catheter in.” I was like, “Yeah, but I feel wet.” It turns out that my water broke on its own which was nice but I didn’t have any urge to push or anything like that. They said, “We’ll let you just hang out for a couple of ours. Just let us know if you feel that urge.” That urge never came so they said, “Let’s start pushing anyways because it’s been a little bit since your water broke.” I said, “Okay.” We pushed for about an hour and a half and then at that point again, baby started having some decels and it looked like baby was starting to not tolerate labor that well. Slowly, the vibe became a little more tense. The message started to be, “Okay. It’s time to get this baby out. We have to push this baby out sooner than later.” At some point, the call was made to use the vacuum to help that happen sooner. That was all explained to us and we said, “Okay, sure.” The vacuum was used and then the baby came out two pushes later. When my son was born, I didn’t get to hold him right away. He wasn’t crying. They took him over to the warmer right away. He had no tone. His body was completely limp. He wasn’t crying. He was breathing, but only barely and had the flared nostrils and all of those telltale signs that he was working really, really hard. Meagan: The traction and all of that. Nicole: Yeah, so they had him on the bag and worked on him for about 15 minutes. In that time, he never cried. He never perked up so it was decided that he needed to go off to the NICU to get some extra attention there. My husband went with him to the NICU. I stayed behind. I ended up having a third-degree tear that required some attention. They took me up to the NICU once I was all ready to go a couple of hours later. It turns out that he had a severe meconium aspiration so he actually ended up spending four days on a ventilator and was in the NICU for nine days. Meagan: Was there any sign of meconium when your water broke?Nicole: Not when my water broke. Before, I think right before the call was made to use the vacuum, I do remember our doctor saying, “It looks like there is a lot of mec in there,” but there was no mention of it when my water broke. Meagan: So maybe during labor. Nicole: So I’m assuming it was sometime after that but during the labor that it happened. That was a scary experience, but he’s totally fine now. He’s a happy, strong, healthy boy. We just call him as being built to last because nothing phases him. But my VBAC wasn’t necessarily what I had envisioned but ultimately it was really successful and a better emotional experience which is weird to describe because there are a lot of emotions around having a child in the NICU. I didn’t have any issues bonding with him. I felt that connection to care for him right away. If anything, if nothing else, I’m hoping that having that VBAC, it will help what will hopefully be my next VBAC better. I’m actually currently expecting. Meagan: Awesome! Congratulations!Nicole: Yep, so we’re hoping that the third time is the charm. Yes, so I’m just shy of 31 weeks. We are due April 1st. Meagan: Really soon! Actually, right when this episode airs you will have a baby. Nicole: This kid is probably going to be late too. Meagan: You’ll either have a baby or just about having a baby. Oh, so fun. Nicole: Or will be preparing for one. My husband and I always joke that getting the babies in and getting them out usually takes quite a bit of work, but baking them is where I thrive. Meagan: Yeah. Nicole: The plan again, even with everything that happened with my son, the recovery was quite difficult with a third-degree tear, but we’re going for another VBAC. We’re hoping like I said, if anything, my son will help pave the way for hopefully a smoother, less eventful experience. Meagan: Absolutely. Your chances are higher of that. Sometimes that first vaginal birth, even if there is no previous Cesarean, can be a little longer or have things like forceps and vacuum and things like that. It can happen. So hopefully like you said, it will pave the way and be a beautiful redemption. They all have been great but a redemption birth of the two with less drama maybe. Nicole: Less drama. Less excitement. I just want a nice, run-of-the-mill birth. But yes so it will be good. I’m glad that I experienced it. I wouldn’t change it. Meagan: Yeah. You are still happy with the outcomes. Nicole: Yeah. I’m still happy we had the VBAC. Everyone is happy and ultimately, that has always been our thing. Healthy baby, healthy mom. Whatever that looks like, we can deal with but hopefully it looks like a VBAC. Meagan: You’ll have to let us know. Definitely let us know. Nicole: Yeah, I will for sure. Meagan: That’s awesome. I want to talk a little bit about induction. I’ve been taking notes along the way just about things that you’ve said. Right before I get into induction, something that you had said during your first, something that they said to you is that they were just going to dump and cut. You heard that and then you were gone. Those longlasting words, I think it is so important to note to everybody listening especially if you are a provider, that words matter. Words matter. Even though you may not be thinking that something that you say that your patient is going to hold onto, it’s possible that they will. I don’t think that you held onto dump and cut, but I heard that and that is a very scary thing. “We’re just going to dump and cut.” I just want to remind everybody to please be mindful of your words when you are with someone especially in a vulnerable state. But induction. I want to talk about induction. I just want to talk about what ACOG says and going over 40 weeks and stuff like that. Because Nicole is proof that induction can happen and VBAC can happen. An induction can happen and a VBAC can happen with no complications. Sometimes it can’t and we don’t know why. We can’t always blame induction at all, but I don’t want you to be scared of induction. I don’t want you to be so terrified of induction that it consumes you because I know that some of our listeners are in that space especially because they had an induction that spiraled down and went Cesarean. I want to talk about how ACOG concludes that, “Induction of labor between 41 and 7 and 42 and 7 can be considered. 42 weeks to 42 weeks and 7 days is recommended given evidence of increased morbidity and mortality.” Something has changed over time and that is the ARRIVE trial. We have a blog about the ARRIVE trial and we have a blog about induction. We have a blog about going over 40 weeks. Since this has happened, we see a lot more people at 40 weeks and if they haven’t had a baby yet, providers are rushing to get babies out. I just want to let you know that doesn’t have to happen, but if you choose to induce, that’s okay too. Just like Nicole said in the beginning of her induction story, no she didn’t qualify for Cytotec or Cervadil because she is a TOLAC, but she had a great induction with a Foley catheter or a Cook catheter. Depending on where you are at, everyone calls it something different. Those are really great alternatives. You do have to be dilated a little. Sometimes they can give Pitocin a little bit and then give a Foley. But talk with your providers. I encourage you to talk with your providers. I feel like her provider really said, “Okay. Here’s what we should do and this is why.” It worked out in Nicole’s benefit. I want everyone to know that induction doesn’t have to be scary. Right, Nicole?Nicole: I don’t think the spiraling with our son had anything to do with the induction. Meagan: It just happened. Sometimes we have babies that have a fast transition or during pushing and meconium is really common too. So yeah. I know people who go into spontaneous labor and have meconium and I know people with meconium aspiration with induction. It just happens. I felt like there are lots of people on here who are living proof that induction is possible but Nicole just said it right here. She’s been induced and she had two very different circumstances with induction. Take it slow. Speak with your providers. Go over all of your options and remember that words matter.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We are bringing you extra episodes all month long in honor of Cesarean Awareness Month! Meagan and Julie kick off the conversation with a passionate discussion about the realities of birthing in a hospital setting. Doulas are birth workers who uniquely experience births in all settings. Meagan and Julie share what they have seen and how it has formed the strong opinions they have now. Additional LinksJulie’s WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsJulie: Welcome, welcome. You are listening to The VBAC Link podcast. This is your cohost for the day, Julie Francom. I’ve missed you guys so much. It’s so fun to be back here but I am also here with Meagan Heaton, the cofounder with me of The VBAC Link. We are so excited to be on a really special episode with you today. We were actually having lunch together the other day and talking about life, birth, and everything. We just decided that it would be better if we recorded the conversation so that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to record our conversations about birth, VBAC, and everything in between. Review of the WeekBefore we get into it though, Meagan has a review for us. Meagan: Yay, yes I do. It’s always so fun to have you on Julie. I am excited to have our conversation that we were having the other day only recording it because it is definitely a great conversation to be had and to be heard. If you guys didn’t know, April is Cesarean Awareness Month. This month, we’re going to be kicking off with some extra episodes in addition to our stories. Here is number one for you. As Julie said, I do have a review of the week. This is from mathletic and it says, “Empowering and Addicting.” It says, “This may be my second time leaving a review, but it is because I am preparing for my second VBAC and felt that it was necessary. I first found this podcast as I prepped for my VBAC in 2019. I religiously listened to a new episode on the way to and from work daily and am always excited for Wednesday morning’s new episode.” Julie, that is crazy to me that people have been listening since 2019. Julie: Forever. Meagan: It is 2023. It says, “This podcast has given me so much education and strength that I took going into my TOLAC and achieving my successful VBAC in May 2019. I am now preparing for my VBAC as I am 36 weeks pregnant and due in early June.” This was in 2022 by the way so last year.“Although I have now had a VBAC, I knew starting my mornings off with this podcast again with this pregnancy would be something that would help me get into the right headspace. I sometimes feel like Meagan and Julie are now my new friends.”We are. We are friends with all of you. Julie: We are your friends. Meagan: Yes. “As we commute to work together–” We’ve been commuting to work with her, Julie. Julie: Yeah. Meagan: “I am very bummed to learn that there was a break, but I am so pumped when I found out that they were returning this May.” So yeah, seriously, this was a long time ago, you guys. We returned in 2022. “Thank you for all that you are doing in helping us mamas feel educated and strong as we go into our next births. I recommend this podcast to all my friends even the first-time mom friends as it’s been such a great wealth of knowledge going into any birth.” I could not agree more. This podcast is going to teach you so much and not only how to have a VBAC but how to avoid a Cesarean in the first place. As we know, Julie and I were talking about this, Cesareans are through the roof. It is above 32% here in 2023. It is sad. It’s scary and it’s concerning. It is concerning. Why are we having so many Cesareans? We are going to take one moment and then we are going to get going into this wonderful new episode. Cesarean Awareness MonthMeagan: Okay, Julie. Hi. I miss you. I love you. I just saw you last week. Julie: It was so great to have lunch with you and just jibber-jabbering away about life, the birth work, getting old, and my salty attitude about birth. We’re going to talk about it.Meagan: Your salty attitude. You guys, she has become a little salty and sassy. Julie: I am. I’ve always been that way, but I feel like I was pretty good at toning it down and being diplomatic, especially doing The VBAC Link and things like that. I definitely have opinions as we all do. I was just making sure that we were including everybody and that everybody has a safe space here. We certainly want to do that on this episode as well, but I will hit 100 births this year. Meagan, you are probably at 600. Meagan: No. Julie: But either as a doula or a birth photographer and you know what? One thing that I wish people could understand a little bit more or take more seriously is that doulas and birth photographers probably have the most unique perspective on childbirth because we see births in the hospital, out of the hospital, at birth centers, with hospital OB/GYNS, hospital midwives, out of hospital midwives, and unassisted births. We have seen a few of those. We have such a unique perspective and we see how things unfold in each environment with each intervention and with each provider. I wish that somebody would hone into that and try and work to collect those experiences and perspectives because if you ever want to hear about the state of childbirth in the United States and probably even in the world because a lot of countries are not too different from ours, talk to a freaking birth worker that does hospital and home births because that is where you’re going to find these priceless gems and perspectives that you’re really going to learn from. Yeah. I just wish that people could see that. Meagan: It’s hard because we have clients hire us as their doula or their birth photographer and we talked about this at lunch the other day how we come in and one of the mean things as a birth worker that we are going to do is talk about what birthing experience that person wants. It is important to us as birth workers and as your friends to help you get the best experience that you can get and help you get a lot of those things that you desire. Am I wrong there? That is one of the biggest things. Julie: No, I think that’s right. Meagan: That’s one of the biggest things of what being a doula is. It’s one of the most important things is helping these clients and helping our parents get these births that they want. We come in and we ask things like, “What would you like for your birth? How do you envision your birth? What kind of things do you desire to happen or not happen in your birth?” It’s more often than not a very similar answer. It’s usually things like, “I would like to labor at home as long as possible. I would like to go unmedicated. If not, as long as possible before getting an epidural. I would like to have a vaginal birth and avoid unnecessary interventions.” Julie: Don’t want to be induced. Meagan: “Don’t want to be induced. I want to go into spontaneous labor,” is just what I was going to say so they don’t want to be induced. “I want to avoid a Cesarean.”Julie: “I want my water to break on its own.” Meagan: Yep. “I want to avoid a Cesarean. I want to push as my body and myself direct.” Julie: “I don’t want to push on my back.” Meagan; “I don’t want to push on my back.” Things like this. If you’re listening to this episode, I’m assuming you’re shaking your head, “Yep. That’s what I want too. That’s what I want too.” It’s not a bad thing that we want these things. It’s not a bad thing. Julie: It’s a good thing. It’s natural. It’s instinctual. It’s primal. Meagan: Yes. These things are things that we want for a reason. What I hear when I hear these things is, “I want to birth the way my body is going to birth and was made to birth.” Right? Julie: Yep. Meagan: But as birth workers as Julie was talking about, we have this interesting perspective because we’ve seen things. I’m not going to sit and say that I’ve seen all of the scenarios and all the things in birth. I’m not. Again, no I have not been to 600 births but I have been to a lot. I’m still learning as I go but there are so many situations where I can see things unfolding. So we have this client and these people that are wanting this type of birth and then what Julie? 37, 38, 39 weeks. Julie: “Oh, we’d better do an ultrasound to see if your baby’s measuring big or check your fluids My gosh, I hear you complaining so much about being pregnant. Let’s just induce at 39 weeks. You can pick your baby’s birthday. You can do this.” Or all of a sudden, maybe your blood pressure is maybe a little bit high so maybe you have preeclampsia so you have to test that. What does that do? It stresses you out so it makes your blood pressure high even more. Everyone starts to get a little anxious because the due date is approaching. Mom, dad, and parents are getting anxious. Providers are like, “Okay, well we don’t want you to go past this date” Especially with VBAC. Oh my gosh, it’s not safe to go after 40 weeks because that increases your chance of uterine rupture. Not true, by the way. Meagan: Or we’ve got a big baby. Julie: “Or we’ve got a big baby and your last baby was 8.5 pounds so we want to make sure.” All of these are non-evidence-based reasons because people treat 40 weeks like an expiration date rather than an average. That’s when, in a hospital system, things start to happen that decrease your chances of all of those beautiful, perfect, wonderful things that you want in your birth. Meagan: Yes. Julie: Sorry, go ahead. Meagan: No, you’re fine. You’re fine. I was just going to say that this is what we see happen so often. We meet with our clients at 24-34 weeks pregnant and these are their desires. This is what their hearts and their souls are saying. Based on a lot of the time, what they have learned too. They know the evidence-based information so they are like, “Based on that, I don’t want to do these things.” But then 37, 38, 39, 40 weeks come and we have these new introductions and new seeds being planted.For some reason, those things leave. They leave our minds. Julie: Well, you’re tired. You’re very pregnant. You’re easily influenced and yes you want to be done. Yes, it sounds nice to be done sooner. Oh no, you don’t want to have a complication or preeclampsia, or a big baby. That sounds scary. Shoulder dystocia sounds really complicated. In some instances, it is for sure, but when you start planting those little seeds, then they grow into self-doubt. It’s easy to confuse our worries and our fears with intuition. Meagan: They’re lost. Yes. Yes. That is the hardest part. We are getting these seeds planted and then they’re being watered. The seeds are growing and the roots are pushing out what our intuition was saying from the beginning. Then we make choices and decisions. We are human beings that have the opportunity to make these choices and decisions, but sometimes we are backed into these corners because our seeds are being poured on. We are being flooded with overwhelming, scary feelings. As a birth worker, it can be frustrating. I’m going to be super honest. Julie must be spitting the salt at me. I don’t know what she’s doing here. It’s so infuriating to see and heartbreaking to see someone we know and loves go into this space that we know is not where they wanted to go and then see the cascade happen when it didn’t need to. The other day, everyone at Zupas was probably like, “Whoa. These two broads are crazy.” We are very animated. Julie: We weren’t very quiet. Meagan: We’re not quiet people first of all and we are animated. I feel like in the past, Julie has been a little bit toned down with her bluntness. She’ll be blunt but I’m over the top and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, Meagan stop.”Julie: Now I’m just like, “Heck yeah, girl.” Meagan: So us together, we’re at Zupas saying these things. One of my questions is, and I wish I had the power, knowledge, and time to produce this huge study because I really want to know what happens if we do nothing. What happens? What happens? Julie started adding to that. Do you want to talk about what you added to that?Julie: Yeah. Meagan: Do you remember? Julie: Yes. Okay, sorry. My mind is going on 17 different paths right now like it usually does. I think if you really, really, really want to get a good perspective about birth, really sit down and talk to a doula. One that you haven’t hired because I know when my clients hire me, they hire me for my knowledge and my experiences and to support them. I’m not going to say my full, unbiased opinion to a client because I don’t want them to feel like I’m not supportive of them. I am supportive of them. Meagan: Or jading them. We don’t want to jade. Julie: I don’t want them to get doubts about their birth plan going into it because everybody else is planting doubts so I don’t want doubts to come from the doula. But really, sit down and talk to a birth worker because I’ll tell you what. I see way smoother births at home. I see way less need for induction at home. I see more love and support in the birth space at home or a birth center. I see more mother-led pushing, way more mother-led pushing at home. I never ever see anyone birth on their back at home ever. I see more partner involvement. I see kids involved. I see whoever you want at your birth involvement. I see mothers who are satisfied with their birth experiences at home. I see babies healthier and more skin-to-skin time and happier families and happier outcomes at home hands down. Yes. Are there a few here and there where it is hard and they need more help or there is a hospital transfer every now and then? Sure, but I guarantee that you are more likely to have problems and your baby is more likely to have problems in a hospital because it is set up to control things and it’s not set up to trust the mother-baby unit, to trust the parent-baby unit, the birthing person, whatever pronouns you choose to use, insert them here. It’s not set up like that. It’s not your provider’s fault. It’s not your nurse’s fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s the system and the way that it’s integrated and taught to these health providers that birth has to look xyz and has to be done by xyz. The baby should be this size. The mother’s xyz has to look like this. It is all set up to facilitate a system that does not trust the parent-baby unit. It does not trust it. At home, it is very well-trusted. It just is. It just is. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. This is maybe where my saltiness comes in but you are way more likely to have that birth experience at home. Yes, it can be done safely. Yes, there are still providers at home that will keep an eye on you and transfer you as soon as you might need any medical assistance because it does save lives. It has. We’ve seen it. We know it, but most of the time, you are— yeah. I’m just going to pause that here for a second and go into where you were trying to lead me here, Meagan. Meagan: You’re just fine. Julie: Sorry. I just have so many opinions clearly. Meagan: It’s passion, Julie. It’s passion. You are passionate because you are seeing things. I am too. I’m seeing things that are unnecessary. They are unnecessary. We will circle back to where I was going, but we will start where you were at. There are so many unnecessary things that are happening in the system that is so frustrating as a birth worker to see because we also have seen the other side. We have seen. Yes, Julie and I personally have experienced the other side. She was at home. I was at a birth center. We have seen it and experience it. The passion that is coming to you through this episode is because we believe. We know as we’ve experienced it ourselves as people who have given birth in a system that is “off” the straight and narrow path as a lot of people will say. When people were hearing that I was going to VBAC after two Cesareans out of the hospital because I kept it quiet from most people. But you know what happened when it happened online. People were attacking me, “How dare you?”Julie: People are going to throw salt at us now for this episode. Message me on Instagram @juliefrancombirth. I will engage with you. Meagan: But no. This is passion coming from you. This is your passion in saying, “I have seen other things. I’ve seen other opportunities.” Julie: I’ve seen the other side. Meagan: We know. We know, women of strength. We know that it is not always suitable, comfortable, or appropriate for you to birth outside of the hospital. We know that. We do. We definitely just have seen things outside of the hospital that are incredible. Julie: Way better. They’re way better. They are. Hold on. Let me interject here for just a second. People might say, “Oh, well you’ve only been to a hundred births. Providers do a hundred births a week in a hospital.” Not a hundred births a week. That would be a lot. But significantly more. I am not going to argue that at all. I’ve only been a doula for 8 years, 100 births. That’s 10-12 a year besides having babies in between then as well. Last year, I did almost 30 which was super great. But here’s the thing. When you’re in a hospital, you’re only seeing hospital births. You are only seeing hospital births. You are only seeing, I don’t even know statistics for this, maybe 90-95% of people have an epidural in a hospital? I don’t know. Maybe 70%? I don’t know. I should probably rescind that number. But a lot. And if you don’t have an epidural, guess what you have? You’re hooked up to an IV. You have continuous fetal monitoring. You are in the very system that we’re trying to break away from right now. That is what you see. You don’t see hands-off birth. You don’t see the normal, physiological process that happens when you do nothing. Yes, at home you have intermittent monitoring every 30 minutes. You do the lab work and stuff like that. The routine tests and everything like that is done at home prenatally and during the birth, but what happens? You don’t get to witness that if you work in a hospital in the labor and delivery unit. You don’t get to see that. Meagan: Just a quick search by the way, it’s 65-80% of people receive epidurals and stuff. Julie: Huh, there you go. Meagan: But yeah. They don’t. Their opinions is tainted a little bit. This is why I kind of wish that I had the power to do this study. If there is one and you are listening and you are aware of this study, please let us know. But the study of what happens if we do nothing? We know the ARRIVE trial. We know that if we induce people at 39 weeks, we sort of know what happens. Julie; Do we induce them at 39 or do we induce them at 40 and 5? Meagan: This is the thing. Really, this hasn’t really been done for a long time. We know that ACOG says 42 weeks is the cutoff. We’ve got an increased risk of things like stillbirth and things like that. But okay, so at 42 weeks, we assess. But what happens if, at 38, 39, 40, and 41, we do nothing? What happens if we don’t strip our membranes? What happens if we don’t even perform a cervical exam until 42 weeks? Julie: What happens if we don’t talk about induction? We don’t even talk about it. Meagan: Yes. Don’t talk about induction. So what happens if we do nothing? What does our Cesarean rate do then? I’m really curious. Do we go down? Do we go up? Do we start having more issues? I don’t know. Julie: What does maternal and fetal mortality look like? Because right now, it is a disaster. Meagan: Yes. It just makes me wonder. Cesarean Awareness Month is something that is near and dear to our hearts. We want to bring awareness to it. Cesarean is 32.1% right now. Julie: Yeah. It went up. 2020 and 2021 preliminary data, the Cesarean rates went up. Surprise, because of COVID. Meagan: As a birth worker, what do we know that happened during that time? What did we see? I’ll tell you what I saw. Induction, induction, induction. Julie: People’s support system’s being taken away. They wouldn’t even allow partners there. Guess what else happened? Everybody put masks on. Who feels secure? Some people had to push their baby out wearing a mask. Birth, being a very instinctual and intuitive process, anything that creates that feeling of unsafety or difference or fear will interrupt that process. It will make it less efficient. So when you were taking away people’s partners from the birth room, when you’re making everyone wear a mask in the birth space, when you had a positive COVID test, or if you did not want to do a COVID test, people would come in wearing hazmat suits. Meagan: Even the fear of testing positive and then the threat of everybody being taken away including the baby. Julie: Yeah. All of these things interrupt that process and then yes, people with COVID. I can’t even imagine what it was like in the healthcare system. I cannot even imagine what it was like to be a healthcare worker during COVID and having to deal with all of that also. But then needing to also predict and schedule births to control the number of patients coming in and out of a hospital created this “need” for induction and for causing things to be a little more predictable for everybody. I can understand that to a degree but also, but it introduces the need for other interventions to get the baby here including a Cesarean. Meagan: Right. We’re seeing this stuff happen and it is just so hard because if you’ve been with us for a really long time, you know. You know what we’re for. We’re here to educate on birth after Cesarean. We’re here to educate you on your options for birth. That doesn’t mean you have to have a VBAC either. Right before this call, Julie and I had another call. We were talking about not necessarily advocating for a Cesarean, but we’re also not saying you’re bad for having a Cesarean, right? We’re not pro-Cesarean people. We’re not advocating for unnecessary Cesareans, but at the same time, we’re not shaming anyone or wanting to make you feel bad for choosing that route.Julie: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s important to say that. Our intention is not to shame anybody but also there’s a certain point where you’ve got to stop sugarcoating everything. I tell this to my clients too. I’m not going to bounce around the issues with you. I’m going to tell you things. I’m never going to lie to you. I’m never going to say xyz. I’m not going to tell you, “You’re wrong for choosing this,” or whatever because I don’t think anyone is wrong for choosing this but I feel like it’s so easy to get coerced into doing something we normally wouldn’t have done. I feel like it’s so easy to feel safer in a hospital because that’s how we were raised. I feel like some of these things are ingrained so deeply in us that it’s hard to break away from them, but I also am not going to pretend that people’s choices are conducive to their birth preferences. There are just some things that don’t go together. Natural birth in a hospital does not go together very well. It just doesn’t. Not natural, but unmedicated, hands-off birth does not happen well in a hospital. It’s a lot harder and it’s much more of a fight to get that in a hospital versus out of a hospital. Meagan: Yeah. Well and I think too it’s important to talk about creating that space and that environment. If it’s in the hospital, okay. But let’s talk about how to set that up, how to set that space up. We just recently posted about creating a more homey, comfortable environment. We’ll make sure to drop all of it if you guys are interested in checking out these awesome things like getting into your own birthing gown. Going to a hospital, taking off your clothing, and Julie you just talked about this and in a second I want you to bring up what you were talking about with me, but naturally, showing up to a new location with new, strange faces. It’s maybe a little cold. It’s maybe a little foreign. It’s maybe a little staged-looking. Everything is folded up on the bed. Then take off your clothing. What does that do to our body and to our mind? It puts us in an uncomfortable feeling.Julie: A little bit of a fight or flight mode. Meagan: We talked about putting on this thing that is open in the back so our butts are showing. So getting into your own gown, into your own soft, cozy, comfortable gown can bring you some comfort even though you are still changing once you’re getting there or maybe you go there in that. Maybe you prepare and you get in that before and you go. Or maybe you don’t like IVs and the bottom of an IV looks yucky. There are IV covers to take it away and make it feel less hospitalized because you are in a hospital. But Julie, talk about what you were saying earlier. I was like, “Huh. I’ve actually never thought of that.”Julie: I saw this on Instagram a few days ago. I’d seen it circulating around before. I wish I knew what account it was so I could tell you to go look at it, but I don’t remember. Maybe I saved it. I’ll have to look it up while I’m talking. But it basically said, “What would happen if we conceived babies in the same manner that we deliver them?” In order to get pregnant, okay. We need to preface this with sometimes how people need interventions to get pregnant and sometimes you have to have IVF or other things in order to have a baby. But for most people, what if in order to conceive a baby, instead of being in the comfort of your own home with your partner, or I guess wherever you decide to conceive in a car or a forest or wherever, a movie theater. Anyways, whatever your choice, not my business. What if instead of that, you first went to a hospital, changed into their gown, got your blood pressure taken, got hooked up to an IV just in case you need to have some kind of medication–Meagan: Have monitors placed on your belly. Julie: Have monitors placed on your belly, have nurses come in and out and tell you that you can’t get started until the doctor comes in– Meagan: Asking you lots of questions. Julie: Asking you about your insurance, your cycle, when your last period was, and all of these things. I don’t think you’re going to make a baby in that situation. You bring your partner and be like, “Okay, partner. Go get changed now.” Your partner gets changed and everybody’s watching you. Everybody’s watching you. Meagan: You’re on the monitor outside. Julie: I mean, when babies are born, everyone’s watching. Freaking hands are in the vagina and freaking everything. What happens if we conceived babies that way? How would that work? How would that work? Let’s flip this around. Let’s flip this around. What happens if we birth our babies in the same manner that we conceived them?We get in our house, movie theater, car, forest, whatever. We go into our home. We turn the lights down. We run a hot bath. We snuggle with our partners. You probably don’t want to have your kids or mother-in-law in your space, but what happens if we created that same environment to increase the flow of our natural hormones, to safeguard and protect that process and make it as intimate as it was when we conceived our babies? Meagan: Yeah. It’s a big question. Julie: It’s way better and I can say that it’s way better because I’ve had my own, but also, I’ve seen over a hundred almost births and I see the contrast. I see the contrast and it’s a beautiful situation when it’s allowed to unfold naturally. Every once in a while, I’ll get a nice unicorn birth that has a nice, unmedicated, parent-led birth in a hospital but it’s very rare. Meagan: I want to talk about that because, with Cesarean Awareness Month, that’s what we do during Cesarean Awareness Month. We talk about things. We do see preventable Cesareans and preventable interventions. Talking about advocating for birth after Cesrean and advocating for yourself, here we are. We go into this space, into the hospital, and we are vulnerable. What do we do? We feel vulnerable because I didn’t go to school for 4+ years. I didn’t study this. I went to the forest and conceived a baby. Julie: Or a movie theater. Meagan: I went in. I have this. I’ve learned. I’ve learned, but now I’m in this space and I’m vulnerable. It’s bright. Like Julie said, it’s this less-ideal space to give birth. We would never conceive there, so why would we give birth there? But if you’re in this space, what do you do? What can you do to create a better space? A better environment? We just had a mama. She wasn’t a VBAC but her video went viral. Julie: Katelyn!Meagan: Yep, Katelyn. Maybe actually she might not have been– actually, her episode hasn’t even aired yet but you guys definitely need to check out the video on our social media because it is so incredible. Chills all the way from head to toe. It went viral because she advocated for herself. She had nurses. Bless their heart, we love nurses. By the way, if you’re a nurse, we love nurses. I don’t want to say we hate nurses. But she had nurses following their protocol–Julie: Trying to get her on the bed. Getting baby’s blood pressure. Meagan: Trying to get blood pressure. Trying to monitor baby. They tried to get her on the bed and tried to give her a cervical exam, because how would it be if she was 4 centimeters and her midwife was called to come? These things are being told to her. She is pushing out a baby as she’s being questioned for all of this stuff. She’s literally pushing a baby out of her vagina and standing up in this hospital room. That scenario and that story is few and far between because it is hard. It is so hard. You guys, I was a mom in a birthing room the other day at the veterinarian. I had my puppy. We’re sitting there and this doctor is like, “We have to do this. We have to do this. We have to do this.” You guys, I’m a doula. I know how to advocate. Do you want to know what happened? This is a real thing. This really happened. Julie: You have a puppy?Meagan: He’s like a puppy. He’s five but he’s like a puppy. My pup. So we’re there and he’s telling me all of these things we have to do. Not only is he telling me what we are having to do, but he’s also doing things to my dog in front of me, then telling the nurse what he’s doing and charging me for these things that I did not ask for. I did not consent to them. I left and I literally paused and thought, “Holy blippity bleep, blah blah blah, bleep.” That is what happens in the birth room way too often. Julie: Yep. Meagan: Women of strength, we do not want this to happen to you. Julie has spit her salt all over and it’s all over me too. We’re feeling it. Julie: Oh, I’m not done. Meagan: We’re feeling it. We’re feeling it. Don’t let these things happen to you. It’s okay to stand up for yourself. It is okay to say, “No, thank you.” It is okay to say, “I hear you. I respect you. I feel differently. I don’t want to do that.” Or maybe at a later date. Or maybe at a later time. Julie: Or just cancel your prenatal appointments. I’m not advocating for that, but I’ve had clients be like, “You know what? I know when I go for my 37-week visit that they’re going to push for this and this so I canceled. I’m not concerned. Everything’s healthy.” Meagan: Yeah, you just don’t have to do anything. I think one of the biggest things and one of the biggest places we can start at avoiding these unnecessary Cesareans– Julie: Is by staying home!Meagan: It’s by staying home and advocating. You guys, y’all can tell where Julie is. She’s feeling it here at home birth. Julie: I just see it. Go ahead. You go then I’ll go. Meagan: I’m just saying that it’s okay to stay strong. It’s okay to stand strong and try your hardest not to let your vulnerability because it’s there. You’re so vulnerable in the end. You’re tired. You’re miserable. You’re vulnerable. We just want this baby in our arms. We just want this VBAC more than anything. Don’t let people break your vulnerability, sneak in there, and take advantage of you because there is no need. Obviously, if there is a medical, true medical reason, we understand that. Right? They happen. Like Julie said earlier, we’re grateful. We’re grateful.Julie: There’s no shame in that. You should have mercy on yourself if you got railroaded either by the system or by an unexpected emergency. Have mercy on yourself. Give yourself grace because it happens. It’s not okay that it happens if the system is the cause of that, but it doesn’t make you a bad mom. It doesn’t make you a bad human. It doesn’t make you a bad anything. It’s just what happens sometimes. Meagan: Most Cesareans are unplanned because we had no idea what was happening, but a lot of the time these Cesareans are happening because they are sneaking in, these little sneakers. I don’t even know what. I was going to call them weasels. They are weaseling their way in and tapping into our vulnerabilities. I was not the vulnerable one with my second C-section. My husband was and my provider saw it. He snatched it and turned him against me. What did I do? I walked down for a second, unnecessary Cesarean. We don’t want these things to happen to you. We want to bring awareness and maybe you’re like, “Wow. These chicks are coming in strong.” But you guys, we are passionate. We love you. Julie: We want you to have the birth you want. That’s why. Nothing hurts me more than loving someone, knowing what they want, and seeing them get railroaded in a hospital setting. We see it a lot. Meagan: That’s what we see most of these times. Julie: A lot. Especially more as a birth photographer. As a doula, I was more involved in the prenatal prep. Sometimes I show up to births as a birth photographer and I’ve never met the people. They fill out my questionnaire. They hired me. I come in and I’m like, “Hey, I’m Julie. You’re in labor. It’s nice to meet you.” Those are the hardest ones. I’m never going to watch someone suffer. If you’re suffering, I’m going to put my camera down and I’m going to help you. But for first-time parents that didn’t feel the need to do any type of childbirth education or learn anything about the process, you just sit there and watch them get railroaded by the hospital setting. You’re watching trauma unfold and you’re just like, “How is this happening?” But you know how it’s happening because you’ve been watching it for years. I’m talking about myself in the third person or second, or whatever person. But here’s the thing. It breaks our hearts. We see it all the time. We see it in The VBAC Link Community all of the time. So many times, people are like, “My water broke so I went into the hospital. I’m only 0 centimeters dilated. They started Pitocin. It’s at a 10 and I don’t know what to do. I’m not dilating and contractions aren’t coming. Help me.” This could have been stopped if you knew that it’s okay for your water to break without labor starting and to wait at home for 12-24 hours for labor to start on its own and rest, hydrate, and watch for fever or chills or anything like that then go to the hospital. It’s a simple thing to learn but people don’t think that because they trust their system. They’re going to the hospital and getting railroaded. So many times we see that. All of a sudden, you’re water has been broken for however many arbitrary hours your hospital decides is important, and then you get a C-section because all of these things happened. If you would have just known that it’s okay to stay home, and there is evidence of staying home. We’re not just making this up. There is evidence to support this and just takes a little bit of time to learn. But anyways, that’s why I’m sounding really salty today is because I see people get railroaded by the system all of the time. All of the time and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. I can leave birth and not be super affected by it anymore usually, but these birth experiences are yours. They’re going to affect you for the rest of your life. We don’t only know that. We don’t want you to be railroaded by the system. We want you to know and follow your heart and follow your intuition. If your intuition is telling you, “Unmedicated birth, not pushing on your back, not getting induced, not wanting cervical checks,” then you probably want to birth at home because as soon as you walk out of the door when you are in labor to go to the hospital, your chances of having that birth go down a lot.Meagan: Yeah. I mean, studies show that people are much more likely to have interventions in labor and birth as soon as they are admitted in labor, especially in early labor. If we rush to the hospital, but in your mind, you’re like, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be induced. I don’t want interventions,” but the second we start contractions, if we run and go in, our chances of interventions are sky high and the chances of Cesarean are high because we’re pushing these things that are leading to Cesareans. Don’t shame yourself and offer yourself grace if you’ve experienced an unexpected, undesired Cesarean. You are not alone. You are not alone. But know that you have options. Sometimes I want to say to open your mind a little bit. Whether you come back to that openness or not, you come back to that original idea or birthing location, open your mind a little bit and learn the stats. See the stats. Hear the stories. Hear what it can be like.I don’t want to take away from anyone who has birthed in the hospital and had a beautiful experience because they can happen and they do happen. They do. But yes. There are a lot of other things that can happen in the home or outside of the hospital that may not lead to interventions and things like that because we’re at home and we’re doing those things. We’re doing more of nothing. We’re not doing a lot of anything. We’re doing nothing. We’re watching. We’re trusting. We’re having faith. It’s so important to understand that your body is capable of doing this. I’ve had some consults lately that broke my heart because people have literally told them they can’t. They won’t. They shouldn’t. Those three words. They can’t have a vaginal birth. They will never have a vaginal birth. I was told that. Right here, I was told that I would not get a baby out of my pelvis. Hello, okay. They shouldn’t and they can’t. Don’t believe that. If you are listening to this podcast, whether you be a first-time mom, a second-time mom, a VBAC, a CBAC, a HBAC, breech. Julie: A breech BAC. Meagan: Whatever your history is, whatever you’re coming from, know that you are capable. You are capable of making these choices. You are capable of doing this. It is totally possible. Totally possible. Yes, we might sound salty today. We might sound aggressive. Julie: We’re passionate. We’re seeing women get hurt by the system. Meagan: It’s really hard, but sometimes, we have to have these hard, raw conversations. Julie: Direct. Meagan: Direct conversations to say, don’t let the system get you. Don’t let it get you. Don’t let it bite you in the butt. It doesn’t have to be like that. It doesn’t have to be like that. I hate that it even has a label as “the system”. You guys, this is a system. It’s unfortunate that it has come to this. It is unfortunate. I wish that we could all just go back to the farm. Let’s have the farm everywhere. Ina May’s farm. Let’s bring back the farm and just give birth like that. Don’t you think, Julie? Wouldn’t that be lovely?Julie: That would be beautiful. I think it’s a double-edged sword because up until the 1940s, 1950s, maybe a little bit earlier than that, probably the 1920s or 30s, most people gave birth at home. You only went to the hospital if there was an emergency or if you were at higher risk. Meagan: And there were some downfalls about birthing back then too. Julie: Right. That’s what I’m getting at because there’s a reason why people transfer to the hospital. In the advent of the 50s, 60s, and the 70s, mostly the 70s, all of these new technological advancements and things like that provided ways that we could save lives that otherwise would have been lost. For that, we are incredibly grateful. We are so grateful. Like we talked about a little bit earlier in the hospital, with that, it has evolved into a system that tries to control the birth process so it’s a trade-off. I feel like an ideal situation would be where everybody births without intervention unless there are true emergencies. We’re not talking about emergencies like, “Oh, I was induced at 39 weeks and my body wasn’t progressing past a 4 and it’s been 48 hours. My baby’s heart rate is starting to go down so now I have to have a Cesarean.” That is a hospital-created, emergent Cesarean. That is a system-created circumstance where a Cesarean became necessary. That happens so much. It happens so much. We have been raised to go to the hospital and have babies. We get induced. My mother-in-law was induced on her due date every single time. She had her babies every time on her due date. She had five kids. Everything went perfectly well. She has no trauma. Who really knows? It’s been a while since those things but she speaks very fondly of her births and that’s okay. That’s good. But now, we are a generation of traumatized women from our birth experiences. You go into a room with four people that have had babies, I guarantee that two of them had a really rough experience. That’s another number I’m just making up. You’re not going to be able to find any resources for this. Meagan: What do they say? Two out of five people have unexpected Cesareans or something like that. Say at a restaurant and have everybody raise their hand that had a Cesarean. That’s the question. Have you ever had a Cesarean? A lot of arms are going to go up. How many of those Cesareans were planned? There are going to be some. Julie: Less than half I would say. Meagan: There are going to be some that stay up, but most of them were unplanned. Julie: I have a cousin that had four Cesareans. The first one was unplanned, the three other ones were scheduled. She says, “It’s the best way to have a baby. You go to the hospital, go to sleep” because she would go under general “then you wake up and have a baby.” She loves it. She speaks very fondly of it. That’s the way that she likes to birth and that’s okay. I don’t want to come off as romanticizing home birth because birthing at home is hard. Sometimes your baby is in a wonky position or sometimes your body might be not quite ready. It’s going to be a longer and harder process. Sometimes emergencies happen and you have to transfer to the hospital. Things like that happen. I don’t want to make it sound like that never happens because it does. I think there are three major home birth studies now that show it’s just the mortality rates for mothers and babies are similar in the hospital and at home, so there is not enough difference to say that one is better than the other, but also, at home, guess what is less? Less postpartum hemorrhage. Less chance of the baby needing resuscitation. Less chances of severe tearing. Less chance that baby is going to the NICU at home. It’s worth considering. It’s worth exploring and my gosh, if you are a 100% hospital birther, I think Meagan touched on this a little bit earlier, we encourage you to check out home birth resources in your area. Just check them out. Just go and talk to a home birth midwife. Ask her what she does in the case of an emergency, what would risk you out of birthing at home, and just talk to them. You don’t have to hire them, but talk to them and see what else is available. See if your intuition jives with that. If your partner is on board with a home birth because it’s going to freak them out, and you feel like it’s something that you want to explore more, it’s time to sit down and have a serious talk with that partner. Do not let your partner or your provider take away the chance of having the birth that you want because they feel uncomfortable about it. Meagan: Yeah, that’s a hard one. That’s a whole other–Julie: I know it is because it’s important. You should respect each other’s opinions. You should. You should respect each other’s opinions. You should respect your partner. You should understand where your partner is coming from. You should take their point of view into consideration. You should be able to come to a compromise, but if your partner is not willing to do that for you, then that’s a problem. Meagan: I want to just quickly before we end, plug in some numbers. Look, you guys. Are you so proud of me? Julie, you should be proud of me for talking about numbers. Julie: I am proud of you. Meagan: This is what you usually do. Julie: Before we get into that, I want to say one more thing. I understand that some of the things that we’ve said are probably going to be pretty emotional for some people. Maybe some people have gotten triggered. Maybe some people just hate us now and they’ve already unfollowed us on Instagram, who knows? I say us but probably me too. Probably a lot of VBAC Link people follow me on Instagram as well. Let me try and figure out how I’m going to circle back around and say this. If you have been triggered by this episode, I really, really encourage you to lean into that trigger. Don’t run away from it. Don’t slash The VBAC Link. Don’t unfollow us. Don’t unsubscribe. Don’t trash talk to your midwife buddy about us. I guess you can do all of those things. It’s really your choice. But I encourage you to really lean into that trigger because I wish that we were a society of owning our triggers instead of blaming other people for our triggers. Triggers are our own emotional responses caused by some sort of unresolved trauma or issue in our life. If you lean into that trigger and explore it and figure out why it’s happening and where it’s coming from, you’re going to be able to heal emotionally and become a better human. It’s going to affect your future pregnancies, your future births, and your future interactions with other people. How would it be to not ever feel triggered like that? It would be really cool. I wish that I was never triggered but I also know that when I get triggered, instead of running away from it, I have learned to really lean into it, explore it, figure it out, and resolve that. I encourage you that if something we said has triggered you, then lean into it. Maybe leaning into it is unfollowing The VBAC Link. Who really knows? But I bet you that there is a deeper issue there. I wish or I hope that you would take some of the things that we have said here and consider them. Maybe lean into that too and explore a little bit more some of the things that we are talking about and why we are feeling this way. I also encourage you to talk to a local doula or a birth photographer and ask about their experiences observing home birth and hospital birth. That’s my little parting piece. Meagan: Great, you’re right. A quick plug-in before we talk about these numbers, if you are not aware, The VBAC Link has VBAC-certified doulas all over the world. I’m serious, all over the world. So if you are looking for a VBAC Link doula or if you are looking for someone that’s really educated and knows their stuff about VBAC, knows how to support you, and also to help find a really solid provider and location and help you determine where is best for you, check out our directory at thevbaclink.com/findadoula. Search your area because seriously, these doulas are incredible. Julie and I a long time ago, back in 2018, started–Julie: 2018, 5 years coming up. Oh my gosh, in a couple of more months. Meagan: Yeah, back when we got together and started this company, our goal was to help change the VBAC world. We cannot do this alone as individuals, so we have all of these incredible doulas helping us out there. So if you are looking for a VBAC doula, I have to gloat about them because they are amazing. Julie: Really amazing. Meagan: But let’s talk really quickly before you go about success rates. There’s a study that has been done. It was published in 2015 but I believe that it was from 2004-2009 which makes me even wonder now after COVID what it would be because home birth and HBAC have skyrocketed since COVID because a lot of people were, just like we were talking about in the beginning, having their people stripped from them, having to wear a mask, having to deal with the fear of losing their baby if they tested positive and all of these things. But this was a while ago. The success rate was examined. It’s a lower number like 1050 or something like that but the rate of successful HBACs was 87%. Julie: That is pretty amazing. Do you know what I love? That’s higher than APA because APA says that 60-80% of people who attempt a VBAC will be successful. Meagan: Just in general, a VBAC, yes. Julie: That’s general. Hospital, home birth, movie theater birth, whatever. 60-80%. But this at home, did you hear that? 87%. Meagan: At home, 87%. Now, I want to talk about transfer rates. They had an average of 18% transfer rate. Julie: That’s kind of high. Meagan: It is kind of high but I want to talk about that because a lot of people might think of an 18% transfer rate and they automatically go to Joe Rogan’s page and hear, “Oh, what they are saying is so true. All of these terrible things are happening.” You guys, no. Yeah. Did you see it? Julie: No, send me a link.Meagan: There’s a video. You’ll have to check it out with Joe Rogan and this lady. I don’t even want to get into it. It was so annoying. I just rolled my eyes the whole time. Anyway, the majority of these people that were transferred, I want to preface. It was not because there was a crazy emergency. It was most common for failure to progress. Failure to progress we know has a lot of things. We know that sometimes failure to progress can be due to cervical scarring or maybe we’ve had really long prodromal labor and things like that. There are a whole bunch of different reasons why but failure to progress and they needed to go to the hospital to then benefit from some of the things that the hospital offers like Pitocin or something like that? But still, only 18% which I know sounds high but still, 87% had a successful VBAC at home, so an HBAC. Julie: Okay, so I also want to say two things. First of all, the study might have had certain protocols to follow for a transfer. That might have caused the transfer before it was necessary. I don’t know. I haven’t seen this study. But also, the second thing is that I heard somewhere, and it might be different with study protocols, but I heard somewhere and I feel like my circumstances support that most hospital transfers are due to maternal exhaustion. They are so tired. They have labored for so long but I don’t have a number to back that up. But that’s interesting that that study shows that. That’s really cool. Meagan: Yeah. There are things. We know that women at home can sometimes lack resources, but you can also talk to your provider if you’re birthing at home and talk about, “Hey if I’m not progressing, what kind of things can we do to help progress?” Sometimes that’s processing and sometimes that’s nipple stimulation. Sometimes that’s getting everyone out of a room, turning off the lights, and taking a nap. There are so many things that go into it but it’s a pretty small study relatively. But still, wow. It does represent something. It represents something and we can’t ignore it. But anyway, we are pro-choice. We are pro everybody making the best choice for them but we do. Julie: We’re also pro-not watching the system railroad people. Meagan: I was going to say that we do see so many things that are so avoidable. I’ve had clients in the past years. One client probably two years ago, she was 38 and 5 I want to say. I’d have to go back and look at my notes and the provider was like, “I don’t know. You look big. It looks like this baby is measuring big. It could be anywhere from 8-10 pounds. We should probably induce. I will totally support this VBAC but let’s induce.” The cervix wasn’t doing much. It just wasn’t an ideal spot to be walking in for an induction and they required breaking water. They wouldn’t put Pitocin in. When the water was broken, they needed Pitocin after that which is interesting. She got up to a 1 and started Pitocin, had an IUPC placed, an FSC placed, and all of these things. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and it was just so hard because you guys, I adore this person. I adore this person but it was so hard to see these things and see the path that it was going down knowing that the end result was likely coming to a repeat Cesarean when that’s not what she was wanting. It was so hard texting my doula community, my resource group that we all have as birth workers saying, “You guys, pray. Pray. Pray that this is just one of those miracles because it’s one of those situations that we see too often.” It did. It ended in a repeat Cesarean. It was healing. It wasn’t an emergency. She did heal from it, but it didn’t need to happen. I can’t say that for a guarantee. I can’t say something wasn’t going to happen, but it didn’t need to happen that way. So women of strength, here we are. We love you. We know that you are in a hard situation. We’ve been there. We’ve been there. Julie’s been told by providers in the hospital that she would rupture. I was told that I would rupture. No. You were told that your baby would die. Julie: Me and my baby would die. Meagan: Yes. We were told these really scary things. Do we hate the hospital? No. Do we hate it? No. Do we hate what we see in it? Yes. Julie: Yeah, a lot of time. Meagan: We hate it. We hate what we see. I mean, not always. I can’t say that we always hate what we say but so many times we hate seeing things that are just avoidable. So here we are. Know that we’re here. We’ve got our course. We’ve got the blog. We’ve got this podcast. We’ve got our private Facebook community. We have Instagram. We have so many resources filled with evidence-based information. If you are wanting to up your VBAC game and learn the history of VBAC, learn about Cesarean, the history of Cesarean, learn about VBAC, learn how to find the right provider, learn how to tap into where you want to birth, and really tune into that, this course is going to help you walk through that path. Whether or not you choose a Cesarean, you choose a VBAC, you choose an induction, you choose home birth, hospital birth, midwife, OB, unmedicated, medicated, whatever it may be, we are here to support you but it is so important to us that you find that information that you are filled with the evidence-based information ready to take on the birth and have the birth experience. So if you want to learn more about all of these resources, check the show notes. They are all going to be listed. Go to thevbaclink.com and click around you guys. You’re going to get lost in there because there is a lot. There is a lot of incredible information. But yeah. Julie, anything you want to add before we let the listeners go? Julie: I do. I do have something we want to add. Listen. Me and Meagan want to do a birth together, a VBAC. Maybe at home, maybe at a hospital but if you are in Utah, Salt Lake or Utah County, Weber, Davis, Tooele, Park City, and any of those areas, reach out because we have a special bundle discount that we will give to you if you hire Meagan as your doula and me as your birth photographer. Meagan: Yes. We’ve done a birth together as doulas switching up. We’ve never done a birth as a birth photographer and a doula. Julie really wants us to work together. Julie: I do. We will be a package deal. We will take some money off of our services for you so that we can have that experience and then you get both of us at your birth which is a total win. Meagan: That would be really fun. It would be really, really fun. Okay, listeners, we love you. We love you so much. Happy Cesarean Awareness Month. It’s April. We’re going to be posting those stats and all of the things this month so stay tuned. If you have not followed us on Instagram or Facebook, check us out at @thevbaclink. You can find us anywhere and we are so grateful that you are here. Hopefully, after today’s episode, you’re not unfollowing us on all of this. We love you. We just have to say that. Julie: And you can follow me @juliefrancombirth.Meagan: Yes. You can follow Julie at @juliefrancombirth.Julie: Bye! ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“It’s a dream. I am so thankful and just hope I can return the favor to the community because you all have been such a gift in my life. If I can give anything back, I hope that my story helps people.”Lindsey’s episode has SO much to offer! From listening to over 200 VBAC Link birth stories and extensive evidence-based research, and now fresh off of her own HBAC, Lindsey shares her list of helpful VBAC tips. As an active duty Air Force servicemember, Lindsey also shares tips on finding birth support during a military PCS as well as getting a referral to birth outside of the hospital under military insurance. Finally, Lindsey shares her husband’s journey with paternal postpartum anxiety and an update on how his anxiety levels are now– three months after her HBAC.Lindsey’s stories are just as impressive as she is and we are so honored to have her on the podcast today! Additional LinksHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, you guys. Welcome to The VBAC Link Podcast. We have a story coming to you today from Maryland. We have a mama. Her name is Lindsey and she married her high school sweetheart which I think is so fun. So fun. They have two boys, right?Lindsey: Yes. Meagan: Pretty fresh postpartum. Three months out. Lindsey: Pretty fresh. Meagan: Pretty cool. Your husband is a stay-at-home dad and you are on active duty Air Force and work as a dentist. How? You are a powerhouse. That is awesome. Lindsey: Thank you. Meagan: You are doing a residency and you have lived all over the country and seen so many things and you’ve had a VBAC. Lindsey: I can’t wait to share. Meagan: Yes, I can’t wait to get into this story. You guys, one of the things we are also going to be talking about today is something that I actually don’t know if we’ve ever talked about on the podcast but it is something that I feel like I saw in my husband when I was going to VBAC for the first time with my second birth. I saw what happened and he shut out, so we want to talk about paternal postpartum anxiety a little bit today because it’s something that we don’t focus on highly. We are focused on the mom giving birth and the experience that they have had, but it’s so important not to forget about our significant others or our birth partners, or anybody there that was in the space and witnessed birth. I’m excited to be talking in just a minute with Lindsey about paternal postpartum. So if you have a significant other that may have had a traumatic experience, definitely listen up. It’s going to be great and then also sometimes, I think just hearing these stories and hearing maybe some of the characteristics and things that are happening, it might help you know. I didn’t know until he had said things when I was preparing for my vaginal birth after two Cesareans, he was saying things and I was like, “Okay. You are not okay completely. That triggered you and let’s talk about it.” So I’m really, really excited. Review of the WeekOf course, though, we have a review of the week and this is a long one. I would always make Julie read the long reviews because I swear I can’t read and hear myself at the same time. I just get mixed up so we’ll see how this goes.Lindsey: You’ve got this. Meagan: This is from likap8 so thank you. It says, “I did it. I have my VBAC.” It says, “Hello, ladies. I was waiting to write this review since I was pregnant and tell you thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I knew I was going to achieve a VBAC thanks to the knowledge you provide. When I was 12 weeks pregnant, my doula team recommended it to me and I immediately felt really empowered by listening to every single story. I finally had something real from real women telling me that VBACs are possible, that I just needed to educate myself and do everything in my hands to make it happen, and that’s what I did.”“I hired a doula team. I went to the chiropractor. I did Spinning Babies. I followed doulas on Instagram that tell you what exercise you must do to prepare for labor. I did Hypnobirthing. I submerged myself in everything about natural birth and I trained my body and my mind for this big day. I had my VBAC on March 15, 2022” which is almost a year ago. Actually when this comes out, it will be over a year ago. It says, “and it was the most healing experience. I did it thanks to you all and people like you to help women like me have our dream birth.”Wow. That was incredible. Such an amazing review. Thank you so much. We are always smiling when we see these reviews come in on Apple Podcasts or Google. Sometimes like I’ve said in the past, we’ll just get an email that says, “Hey, I just want to quickly write a review.” So if you have a review for us, please shoot it over. We would love to read it on the next podcast. Lindsey’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Lindsey. Are you ready? Lindsey: I’m ready. I’m excited. Meagan: I’m so ready. Thank you so much. I’d absolutely love to turn the time over to you and share all your wealth of knowledge and your experience that these listeners are definitely going to benefit from.Lindsey: Thank you so much for having me. This is a moment that I daydreamed so many times when I was walking with my son, well, when I was pregnant with him and when I drove. At one point, I was driving to a provider in Virginia and I would listen to it on the drive. I was like, “Maybe one day I can be on the show.” Meagan: And here you are. Three months postpartum. Lindsey: Oh my gosh. It’s a dream. I am so thankful and just hope I can return the favor to the community because like your review said, you all have been such a gift in my life. So if I can give anything back, I hope that my story helps people. Meagan: Awesome. Lindsey: Yeah. So I first learned about The VBAC Link actually right after I had my Cesarean. It was a week after my Cesarean. I searched #vbac on Instagram and you guys popped up. I started following it and tucked it in the back of my mind because I had heard about a VBAC and I knew that I wanted to try for that. I didn’t start listening to the podcasts until I was 24 weeks pregnant. My family and I had just done another military move. We moved from Kansas to Maryland and I was pretty overwhelmed by starting over again. The moves have been pretty good, but when you start adding kids to the mix, it makes it a little harder. I felt like I didn’t have a community and I was starting this intense training program and feeling kind of lonely. I felt like I didn’t have the time or mental capacity to learn everything I should learn to have a good VBAC, so the podcast was such a gift because it packaged it into a reasonable amount of time that I could do when I was multitasking and then provide evidence-based information and hear a powerful story. It was just everything that I needed, so I learned so much from you all. I’m so thankful. My Cesarean story, to start out, I wanted an unmedicated birth with my first son. We hired a doula. We found the only midwife in the town where we were living in Kansas who covered our military insurance. The base I was at didn’t have OB care so we got an automatic referral. I kept a really active pregnancy. I even did cardio kickboxing up until the day before my water broke. Meagan: Cool. That’s awesome. Lindsey: I was like, “Yeah, I’ve got this.” But a couple of things looking back on my pregnancy, I did have a brand new midwife. She said I would probably be the first birth that she attended which is fine. Meagan: Yeah, you’ve got to start somewhere. You’ve got to start somewhere. Lindsey: Yeah, but the way that it worked in the city where I was living in Kansas, she was not on her own. She was actually part of an OB practice. She couldn’t be on her own so that practice, I found out later, had the highest Cesarean rate in town. I didn’t know that at the time. She also gave me the recommendation to start using primrose oil vaginally at 38 weeks and I didn’t know that that was an induction method. I found that out on your podcast. She said that it would prevent tearing so I was like, “Oh.” I found out things later. Things I didn’t ask about. I didn’t know to ask about them. My water started leaking at 40 weeks and 1 day. I woke up at 3:00 AM. It was just a trickle and mild contractions. I went back to bed and called the midwife on call at 6:00 AM. She was like, “Well, you have an appointment today at 8:00 so you can wait for that.” At 8:00, she checked and my waters had ruptured. She left the room to talk to the OB and then when she came back, she was like, “You know, let’s have you eat some breakfast and then have you come start Pitocin.” The hospital had a birthing center across the street from the hospital so you weren’t actually at the hospital but they were prepared if something went south. You could have a Cesarean there too, but not really meant for it. So then I arrived to the birthing center, or a birthing suite, and they didn’t have a cordless monitor so they put me on a monitor that had the cord. I remember being really disappointed because I was like, “I want to walk around,” but it was really limited with that. They started Pitocin and really an hour later, I was having a hard time handling them. The contractions were really hard and really fast. We called my doula and she came. I remember my midwife saying, “Don’t scream.” I said, “Okay, well I don’t know what to do. I’m trying not to scream.” I labored with Pitocin for seven hours and got to 6. My midwife then had me stop Pitocin and labor on my own for three hours. I remember sitting in the bath and not wanting to get out. I was like, “I don’t want to get out of this bath.” I wasn’t really feeling any contractions at this time. I did have the labor shakes and I remember asking why. No one really answered me why I was having the shakes. I found out on your show later, one episode, and I was like, “Oh, that’s normal. I didn’t know that it was normal.” Meagan: So was the water helping you contraction-wise? You weren’t really feeling them or did it just stop?Lindsey: Unfortunately, she checked me and I was still at a 6 three hours later. Meagan: So when they turned Pitocin off, your body wasn’t quite in that active phase on its own. Lindsey: Okay. Meagan: Okay. That’s when I was like, “Hmm.”Lindsey: I know. She put me back on Pitocin and I said, “If you’re going to do that, you’re going to have to give me an epidural,” because my body had just calmed down from not having it for three hours. The epidural worked so well. I was numb all the way up my chest. Meagan: Oh wow. Lindsey: I know. I remember asking, “Can we turn this down?” They never turned it down because it never felt less than that. Then seven or eight hours later was when I made it to a 10 and I had got some rest. They said, “Okay, time to push.” Again, I couldn’t feel anything. They showed me how to do it. They said, “You’re doing it.” After two hours of pushing, my midwife went in and manually tried to turn my son because she said that he was in a weird position. When she did, his heart rate deceled. She told my husband, “Go pull the cord.” He pulled the cord. Eight people flooded in the room and then I heard, “Turn her on my side,” then I was like, “Oh.” So I turned myself on my side and my midwife apologized actually to me afterward. She was like, “I didn’t mean for you to turn you on your side,” but I was just like, I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the military and I heard something so I was like, “I’ve got to do it.” But we laughed about it. It was something to laugh about. After another hour of pushing, so three hours total, she asked the hospitalist who was working to come in and the hospitalist did a pelvic evaluation. She determined she couldn’t get forceps around my son. He was asynclitic and at that point, she said that she recommended a Cesarean. I learned that it’s an unplanned Cesarean, not an emergency Cesarean, but still, it felt emergent and it felt unplanned. It felt very unplanned. Meagan: Yeah. That’s one of the hardest things for me as a doula, as a mom who has had them, to decipher what is emergent because they treat it as it is an emergency and we are feeling that feeling so we think that we had these emergent situations. Lindsey: Yes. You definitely feel it. Meagan: I’m not saying there aren’t. There are definite emergent situations, but sometimes, we label them as emergencies and they’re not but the way that everybody is making it seem feels that way. Lindsey: Yes, and the tension was definitely in the room. I mean, even when I was in labor and pushing. Meagan: Was he doing okay? I know he had the decels a little bit, but was he doing okay now? Lindsey: Yeah. Oh yeah. He was stable at that point when they brought me back which was good. So he had had the decels. Then I consented and thirty minutes later, they pulled my son out. He was crying and I cried and felt that instant love that you feel for your baby like you’d do anything for them and it was very special, but I definitely felt really excited and then also really robbed of the birth that I wanted at the same time so it was kind of weird to feel both things at once. Meagan: But that’s okay. That’s okay. Lindsey: It is okay. What was encouraging though was like, “Man, I labored for nothing.” 20-something hours of labor, but all of those hormones, the midwife did say, “You know all of the hormones you had released are really good for the baby too,” so I was like, “Okay if it worked for something.” So then about 4-5 hours after my son was born, they left us alone for a little bit. They still came and checked on us. I woke up and my husband was pacing the room. I asked him, “What’s going on?” He said that he was shaking. I could see that he was shaking and his heart rate was racing. He was really emotional. I told him, “I think you’re having a panic attack.” We were married for almost ten years before we had kids, then we were together for five years before that so we’d been together for a long time and I’d never seen him go through anything like that before. I was like, “Oh my gosh, just come,” and I had him lay in the hospital bed with me until he stopped shaking. Yeah, so that was our experience at the hospital, and then we got home and I remember we ordered pizza and he couldn’t eat it at home after the hospital. He couldn’t eat anything for a few days after we were home. He barely was eating anything. He couldn’t be in the same room with our son when he was crying. He felt like another panic attack would come on, then couldn’t be in the room when we were sleeping at night. I remember feeling so concerned that he would never be the same again. We would never want any more children. He is my best friend, so it was like, “Oh my gosh. Who do I talk to about this? What do we do?” We actually ended up, he talked to one of the pastors at our church and worked through that. We were like, “Okay. This is a hard moment. We’re working through it.” Evenings were the worst at the time. When the sun started to go down, that’s when we would try to connect together and talk about what he was feeling and going through. We would pray and we would watch Gilmore Girls which is our favorite show. It seemed like things were slowly getting better, but then five months later, my husband was watching our son and I had already gone back to work after 12 weeks and then he was also watching our friend’s baby who is a little bit younger than our son and the baby started crying and he had a panic attack. He called me and I was working across the street. Our base was across the street from where our friends lived. Thankfully that day, a skunk had gotten into the ventilation system at work. Meagan: Oh gross. Lindsey: We were all being evacuated at that moment. They called it a natural disaster. Meagan: Oh my gosh, that’s a natural disaster. That is. Lindsey: It was $80,000 worth of work to fix it in the end. It was nuts. I was literally leaving my desk at that moment to go home. I said, “I’ll be right there.” So I was there and had him go walk it off. I had heard of a therapy group in town from a friend and got the information. He started therapy pretty soon after. I think it was in that week. He ended up going for the rest of the time we were in Kansas which was I guess a year and a half that he went. It made a huge difference, a huge huge difference. I am really thankful for that. Meagan: Did he feel that the birth itself was what brought everything on? Was that a trigger?Lindsey: Great question. That’s what we’re thinking is that it was all of the heightened emotions from me being in labor and that not going well, then all of a sudden we were in a Cesarean. The pulling of the cord was something that really stood out in his mind, like, “Oh my gosh. This is a serious thing.” Just that fight or flight reflex was on for that whole time. Meagan: He was the one that pulled the cord, right? He was the one that was told to go pull the cord. Lindsey: He was the one that pulled the cord, exactly. Meagan: Which if you think about it, when someone tells you to go pull the cord when you know that’s an emergent, really scary, someone-could-be-dying cord, you can imagine where his mind went. Lindsey: Exactly, exactly. He brings up this story when they brought me in for the Cesarean, they had me on the– I don’t really remember because they had given me medicine at that point, but he said that I was on a table naked. No curtains were up. They were rubbing iodine on me or something and he was like, “Oh my gosh. Are they not going to put a curtain up? I’m just going to see my wife being sliced open?” They had my arms tied down. Meagan: Scary. Lindsey: Scary, yeah. He’s not a medical person at all. I’m a dentist and he doesn’t do the blood thing. He said, “No, that’s not for me.” I’m going to bounce back and forth between what he went through and then jump back into the story too. I had a lot of questions about my Cesarean mainly about how did I go from wanting an unmedicated birth to having a Cesarean? I remember asking my midwife at my six-week postpartum because I had done some reading on Evidence Based Birth, the website of how you can wait after PROM so many hours before you start Pitocin. I asked her, “Why did we start so quickly?” It was six hours after I had PROM that we started Pitocin. She said in a hushed voice– no one was in the room with us, but she kept her voice really low. She said, “Oh, it was the OBs that I’m working under.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” I don’t know. I was disappointed that I had a Cesarean, but in the state of weakness, it really taught me to rely on faith and it also set me on a path to really deep-dive into the world of birth education. I’m no expert by any means, but I learned so much compared to where I was at the first time. Flashing forward to January 2022, we were celebrating my son’s first birthday and I found out I was pregnant. I was nervous and excited. We were going to be getting orders from Kansas to Maryland, so we will flash forward to Maryland. We moved when I was 24 weeks pregnant. My doula, Lauren, came as a recommendation from a friend in the area who lives in Virginia. Lauren, the doula, suggested a practice that was VBAC-friendly. At this point, I am working at a military installation, so they expected me to give birth there, but long story short, I was able to get a referral, so if anyone is on active duty listening to this, hang in there. It’s hard. Sometimes you can’t get a referral. But I was able to get one thankfully and the practice in Virginia was an hour away so I would drive to the appointments. They were nice, but I didn’t see anyone consistently. I did move later on in my pregnancy, so it was hard to see every person because there were so many people that worked there. I did have one experience before I decided to ultimately change to home birth. When I was 30 weeks pregnant, I was feeling menstrual-like cramps and it really concerned me because I know that could be a sign of labor contractions. They didn’t go away, so I called. It was a Saturday. I called the OB on call and she said, “Well, why don’t you ahead and come to the hospital? I’m working here. We’ll put you on some monitors and check.” So I drove and I remember driving by myself and again, feeling really lonely because I was there by myself. My husband was with our son. It was late in the evening. His bedtime would have been soon. I called my doula and she offered to come with me because she’s awesome, but I was like, “No, it’s okay. I’ll just call and check up.” When I got to the hospital, I got checked in. I was crying and the nurse was like, “Oh my gosh, what’s going on?” She was really sweet. But the OB popped her head in, looked, and she said something quickly, and walked away. Then I never saw her again. She had the midwife come in and talk to me. The midwife said, “Everything looks good. No contractions. You’re probably dehydrated. Let’s get you some fluids.” She asked to do a cervical check. We did a cervical check. I was at a 1, but she said that most women who have either given vaginal birth or have dilated to a 10 walk around at a 1 at any time. I was like, “Okay.”Meagan: Or more. 1 or more. Lindsey: I’m sure. I’m sure. She walked away and went to talk to the OB. She came back and said, “Okay, so OB would like you to start some steroids for the baby in case you go into labor.” I was like, “Wait, you just said that I’m fine.” Meagan: I’m not in labor, yeah. Lindsey: Right. I felt really conflicted. I wanted the best for my child. I was confused because I didn’t have any other signs of being in labor. There was a woman who was– it was the triage room so it’s just curtains. I heard a woman who was the same gestational age as me and she was at a 5 and in labor, so they were like, “Okay, we’re going to do this intervention and this intervention.” I thought in my mind, “That makes sense. This woman is in labor. I am not.” I felt really disappointed that the OB didn’t come and look me in the eye or talk to me, put her hand on my shoulder, find out that, “Hey, you just moved to a new area. You’re stressed out. Stress could make this happen,” which I found out later. So I ultimately ended up declining and had a very healthy pregnancy. It was just that one time that I had that happen for about a week and everything was okay. He actually came a week past my due date, or eight days past my due date so no worries about being early. That’s something and I’ll touch on this later too, as a provider, it’s so important to connect with your patient and in my specialty that I’m getting into, we talk about, “Listen to your patients. They’ll tell you what’s going on.” It’s not that we have to stand over them and make a clinical decision, it’s like, “Look at them. Hear what they have to say. They will tell you what the problem is even if they don’t know what it is. Their story will tell you.” So it’s so important that they do that. Find a provider that’s willing to listen. So then at 35 weeks, I was actually listening to an episode of The VBAC Link on my lunch break and I texted my doula. I said, “You know, if I have a third child while we’re living here, I really think I’ll do a home birth.” She said to me, “It’s never too late” –I wrote it down– “to follow your gut and find the perfect birth team. I was like, “That’s nice to say that but that is way too stressful to try to figure out a home birth at 35 weeks pregnant, get a new referral from the military,” and I said, “I’ll look into it,” but it seemed really overwhelming. She was really encouraging. Meagan: Very daunting. Lindsey: Very daunting. She said that she would support me either way, but she did send me the names of a few midwives in the area. I ended up calling three and one had openings around my due date. I felt really connected to her right away. She put my mind at ease and she had worked with a lot of military families so she knew about my insurance. She actually has delivered over 2000 babies at this point, so tons of experience which was really nice to have.Meagan: Kind of the opposite end of things. Lindsey: The opposite end of things, yeah. We told her we would get back to her. I went home and presented it to Zach because I did all of this in one day. I just ended up having an extended lunch break and called then went back to my residency, then called more. I told my husband about it and he was like, “What?” At that time, we were doing a birth education class with our doula, so we were watching some of the videos that she sent us then we watched a video of the hospital room. He couldn’t finish the video of the hospital room. I was like, “Babe if you can’t finish the video of the hospital room, how do you think it’s going to go if we get in there?” So we thought about it that day and prayed about it, then the next morning, he was like, “Yeah. Let’s do it.” I was like, “Okay. Now I need to think a little bit more,” so I took the rest of the week to think about it. We ultimately decided to do it. I remember my first prenatal appointment with her was a few days after that and she spent over an hour with me. I kept looking at the time and I was like, “She’s got to go. She’s got other patients and I feel guilty.” It was weird. I felt this guilt of, “I’m taking up too much time from her.Then I could tell by her demeanor though, she was in no rush to leave at all. Even when she walked out the door, she was just like, “Okay, yeah.”So with that being said, her appointments were kind of a time range like, “I’ll be there around 2:00.” Sometimes it was later. Sometimes it was a little bit earlier so we had flexibility with our prenatal appointments. They were all at our home. Meagan: Which is awesome. Lindsey: Yeah, it was so nice. My HBAC story, at 8:00 PM, I had a few painful contractions the night before my son was born. I texted my doula and she recommended doing the Miles Circuit. Then I texted my midwife and she recommended I have a glass of wine or some Benadryl and go to sleep. I didn’t because, at the time, I was like, “Alcohol interrupts your sleep cycle. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t.” But I probably should have done some Benadryl or something because after I gave birth, I was talking to her about it and she said, because I had these irregular– maybe someone will connect with this– but I had these irregular contractions all night and I was so tired. She said, “Having some Benadryl probably would have helped you sleep and stopped the irregular contractions. I’m like, “Okay. The next time that happens, I will take Benadryl.” But I go into the shower an hour later and that really helped to labor in the shower, just the hot water hitting my back. I was on my hands and knees and I really wanted to let my husband sleep because, in the back of my mind, I was thinking of what happened our first time. I just didn’t want that to happen again to him and to us. But I didn’t feel like, “Oh, I just have to do this because I have to be strong for the two of us.” It felt like, “Okay, we’re a team. I’m able to do it myself right now and then at some point, I’ll need him to tap in, but I can do it now.” As much as you enjoy labor, I was like, “Okay, I can do this on my own,” so it was kind of a good time to just be with myself and my baby and think about what was ahead. Zach did bring me a birth ball around 10:00 PM and I used that. At 11:00 PM, I tried to get some sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable. I took a nap in between contractions, but they kept waking me up. Then until basically 4:00 AM, they were 5-20 minutes apart so I would try to sleep on the floor but every time a contraction hit, I had to move and get up on my hands and knees. I felt like I just couldn’t stay still during the contraction. At 4:00 AM, I was like, “Okay, I need Zach. I need some help.” He worked with me from 4:00-5:00 and did hip squeezes. He was super sweet and encouraging. Then we called my doula at 5:00 and she arrived around 5:30. She was like, “Okay, where are you feeling it?” I was pointing to my back and she said, “Let’s get this baby off of your back.” We did some Spinning Babies and this really helped the back labor. I mean, it was still labor, but it was all in the front at that point which was really helpful. The contractions were more regular, still pretty far apart like 10 minutes apart. She said, “All right, you’re at a good place.” This was a little before 8:00. She said, “I’m actually feeling really sick by the way.” I was like, “Oh.” She said, ”I called my backup doula just in case, but I just want you to know where I’m at.” I was like, “Oh no, Lauren.” She’s like, “Nope, not about me. Don’t worry about me.” I was like, “Okay.” But at 8:00 AM, she left, and then within half an hour, it was all in my back and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I wanted to call her back right away but I also knew, “She is sick. I don’t know.” We waited a couple of hours and it actually ended up being a really sweet time for my husband and me because we talked and we prayed and we cried. We just talked about how different our life would be. I mean, we had done that too before our second son was born, but it felt like that was such a special time to talk it out. I’m thankful for that. 10:30, I did call my doula back and she said was going to tough it out and come over, then the backup doula would be coming, but then she called me right back and said, “Lindsey, I have a fever. I’m so sorry.” I was like, “Oh no.” I didn’t want to expose myself to a fever and the baby, so she took care of all of that. The backup doula was going to be coming at 12:30 but I was like, “Oh gosh. I have to make it until 12:30.”I found out two weeks before I was giving birth that my pastor’s wife is training to be a doula so I invited her to come. I don’t know her very well and I especially didn’t know her very well at the time, but I told her, “We’re going to know each other very well after this.” So we called her to come and it was nice because she is not a birth worker, but it was really beautiful to have her there and she was helping my husband at a few different points. Just watching her cry when the baby was born and I actually heard– jumping ahead here– but I actually heard my midwife telling her, “Okay, this,” and giving her tips. Meagan: Tips and stuff? Lindsey: Tips and stuff, yeah. That might bother some people, but maybe because I’ve been in school for so long myself, but I liked hearing it too so it ended up being a really beautiful thing. She was praying for us while everything was going on. The whole house was so peaceful. The backup doula ended up coming at 11:30. She came a little bit earlier at 11:30, then I had the pastor’s wife, and then when my midwife came, I felt so surrounded by loving, confident women and felt very safe. That’s something that I really wanted to feel was just like I knew everyone there. I felt really safe. That’s what I felt. At this point, I was back in the shower when the doula arrived. Ashley is her name and I had never met her before. I turned off the shower and I was like, “Thank you for being here,” naked and sobbing. I hugged her. She said, “Okay, let’s do some Spinning Babies.” We did a few things and then at 12, it wasn’t even that long later, I was like, “I’ve got to go back to the shower.” So I was back to the shower and things continued to build up.I get out. They called the midwife and Ashley had thought of a few things we could do with Spinning Babies. She and the midwife were immediately on the same page. The midwife was on her way. They were like, “Let’s have Lindsey do the side-lying release,” and I was like, “Nothing in me wants to get on the side of the bed.” I looked at her and I said, “I’m done. I’ve got to go to the hospital. I need meds. I tried. I can’t do it.” She was very, very kind and acknowledged what I had to say and said, “Let’s just try this.”Meagan: Yeah. It’s such a hard thing as a doula because you’re like, “I know you want this and you’re saying this. I don’t want to ignore you and not take you seriously, to then later have you not feel heard or respected…”Lindsey: I can only imagine. Meagan: But you can see a different space than they can see. Yeah. It’s a hard space to be in. Lindsey: Right, especially when you met them an hour ago. Meagan: Yes. Oh, I can’t even imagine, yeah. Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. I appreciated that she was validating me, but I was like, “No. I’ve got to go.” But then I was pacing the house in my diaper naked and Zach said I was walking around like a zombie. The little amount in me that could think reasonably was like, “Okay, if I have to go to the hospital then I have to get checked in, and then if I get checked in, then I have to wait for an epidural from the anesthesiologist, then I have to be in the car to get to the hospital. That’s going to take so long. Okay. Let’s just try it.” So I tried it through three contractions, then she had me flip over to the other side. As soon as I flipped over to the other side, my water exploded. I was wearing those diapers and it felt like the water filled up like a water balloon in my diaper and then burst to the floor. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I looked down at the water and it was green. I stood up and I was like, “Ashley!” I was hysterical. I was like, “It’s not clear. It’s not clear.” She was like, “I’ve been to a lot of births. It’s something that happens. We’ll talk to your midwife and see what she has to say.” It really ramped up. I went back to the shower. I remember I ran to the shower and turned it on. When I got in, it was cold, but the water warmed up. Meagan: Yeah, but shocking. Lindsey: Shocking, a cold shower, yeah. I was gasping. Then the water warmed up and I started screaming. She really was helping me through the contractions and was like, “Keep it low,” and so sweet in how she did it. I was just following her voice. So really, my husband at this point, when the doula was there, he was like, “I’m going to let her help my wife.” I didn’t feel like, “Where is my husband?” I felt like, “Okay, this is good. I’m glad that Ashley is helping me.” Actually, I found out later that he went and cleaned up my water. He was like, “I have something to do,” and he cleaned it up. She reminded me, I failed to mention that when I did want to go the hospital, she reminded me, “When you get to this point, I know you’ve listened to a lot of birth education and listened to a lot of podcasts,” you know that this means that you are really close. It just didn’t feel real. I was like, “Yeah, but they were close. I don’t think that I’m close.”Meagan: It’s not possible that I’m the same. Lindsey: I just felt like it was not possible, no. I did find this out later too because Jennifer, my midwife, wasn’t worried about the water. She said, “The color of the water, when it’s bright green, usually means that a baby is in distress, but when it’s brown and murky, it just means that the baby is old and has been in there for a while.” Again, he was eight days past his due date because I asked her later, “Why weren’t you concerned about it?” So she said that it was fine. That was good to know. Meagan: Yeah, very good to know. Lindsey: Yeah, so then I get in the shower. I had the mucus plug come out, the bloody show, and then things were ramping up. The midwife gets here and they want me to get out. I started to make a grunting noise. I was like, “Oh my gosh. Did I actually just do that?” Ashley said, “Are you feeling pushy?” I said, “I don’t know. I think so, maybe.” Then the midwife arrived and she was checking the water. She said, “The water is not warm enough,” because I had used all of the hot water. They were filling up the tub and the water was gone, so my husband was boiling water in the kitchen because there’s a certain threshold for the temperature that it has to be. I still didn’t believe even though I was making grunting noises that I was going to give birth. I still thought, “I’m going to have to go to the hospital.” They tried to get me to sit on the toilet, and I can’t. I was like, “No.” I go to sit down and then I would get back up. I know the toilet is a dilation station and I was like, “Oh, I just can’t do it.” When she arrived, my midwife put her hand on my lower back. She never did a cervical check. She put her hand on my lower back. She said to my husband, I found out later, that I was probably a 7 or 8 when she got there. I asked her how she knew that and she said she would feel the tailbone push out and then the back of my buttcrack is a darker color. I was like, “Oh, interesting.” I’m in the tub and they are adding hot water. I am pushing and they don’t have to coach me. I’m doing it. They’re encouraging m– my doula and my midwife– but my body just knew how to do it which was so cool. I did start to feel the ring of fire which actually to me didn’t feel that bad because the whole labor felt really bad. Meagan: It didn’t to me either. It just felt like I had a whole ton of pressure. I just remember pressure. I don’t remember the full, full ring of fire. Lindsey: No. Oh wait, I did forget one thing. I didn’t want to forget this. I didn’t think I could do it when I started to get to almost pushing. I think I must have said something. I should ask my husband. I must have said something because my midwife gave me a pep talk and she said, “Okay. Would it help you if you felt your baby’s head, like a little bit of biofeedback?” As a dentist, we talk to patients about different things like biofeedback so I was like, “Yeah, that connects with me.” I was like, “I don’t know how to do it.” She said, “Reach down, feel, and then you’ll feel something firm and squishy. It won’t feel like you.” I was like, “Okay.” Then I did. I was like, “Oh my gosh. He’s there.” That was definitely a big motivator for me. I didn’t do that with my first son. They had offered and I was like, “Oh gosh, no. I don’t want to,” but I think that it was very helpful. There is a mental hurdle to giving birth. I think VBAC moms, I don’t want to say more of a hurdle, but I think we do. Meagan: Sometimes we have extra stuff. We just do. We just do. Lindsey: Yeah, so setting yourself up for success if it is touching your baby’s head. That was my point when I had to have the Cesarean was when I was pushing, so that pushed me through the threshold. It was mental at that point. The baby was coming. I just had to work with my body to do it. My husband has a funny memory of me when I was in the birth pool. I was holding both sides because there were the sides of the tub. I literally am roaring and I felt like I was roaring. I was like, “Come on.” My son’s name is Finn. I was like, “Come on, Finn. Let’s get this over with,” and just roaring him out. My doula was standing in front of me. He was like, “You were just yelling in her face.” It took me an hour to push which sounds like a long time but didn’t feel like a long time at all. I held him and I cried. Zach was crying. The picture that I sent is really cool because you can see my husband tearing up in it. The pastor’s wife cried. Ashley was crying. Except for our midwife, she was cracking jokes the whole time not in a disrespectful way, but she kept the mood really light. I didn’t notice because I was in labor land, but my husband said that it was really nice. It kept him calm because she was so chill.She said to me later actually when I got in bed that my son didn’t cry right away but she checked. Actually, my doula recorded it so I could hear her. She checked the pulse and the cord. She wasn’t concerned that the baby didn’t cry right away because she felt that the pulse was really good. In the video, she was like, “He’s just getting ready to take his first breath,” really calm. She said to me later that she did do a little bit of suctioning which I was like, “No, that’s fine. I didn’t have a problem with that.” I say that because everything was so considerate. For all of the questions that were asked or what she did, she wanted to let me know. I could have never known that she did suctioning ever but she wanted me to know. I just thought that was really cool.She has me quickly get out of bed. I didn’t think it was quick, but we talked in our debrief later that it was quick because she saw that I was bleeding but no placenta came out, so she wanted to figure out where it was coming from. She had a really cool way of testing or trying to triage me without me knowing. At one point, I did pick up on it because she asked, “Are you feeling any pain in your arm?” Then I was like, “Oh, she’s checking my heart. I know that from being a dentist?” She would just ask low-key questions but was trying to make sure everything was all right. Meagan: Without making you feel like it. Lindsey: Panic. She was like, “Okay, we’re going to check your blood pressure.” Blood pressure was 100/40 so she said, “All right, Lindsey, let’s start you with some IVs,” I was like, “I don’t care. Do anything. I have my baby on my chest. Do whatever you want.” She said, “You have some bleeding. We’re going to try to see where it’s coming from and get the placenta out.” She had me try to push and I was like, “I feel like I can’t. I have no urge to push.” She said, “All right. I can try,” so she tried to pull it but then the cord was feeling like it was going to separate so she said, “Okay, I’m not going to do that.” Sorry, when they started the IV, she was like, “I would like to give you a shot of PItocin.” I was like, “Okay, yeah. Go for it.” So she gave me a shot of Pitocin in my leg. It turns out that she was concerned about the bleeding. She was like, “I’ve got to figure out where this is coming from.” At that point, she had tried to pull it out. She wasn’t able to so she said, “Okay, Lindsey. I need you to push the placenta out.” I was like, “Okay.” So I pushed it out and she said, “I’m sorry. I have to be really mean and press on your abdomen,” so she really got on there to make sure that I wasn’t hemorrhaging or anything. The birth assistant was stuck in traffic so she had just arrived at that point. She had her check too and she did find a small tear, a first-degree tear. Oh, sorry. I wasn’t going to do this but I’m going to do this one time. When I did feel that ring of fire, she said at that point, “Okay. Put your hand down there and where you are feeling burning, move the tissue out of the way,” so I think that helped. She told me in a prenatal visit that she has women do that because she can try to feel or try to guess where they might tear, but when moms do it, it usually is really successful because they can feel it. I thought that would be really interesting. I did have that first-degree tear, but she said, “You probably don’t need a stitch, but I’d like to go ahead and do it because you have blood.” I said, “Yeah, fine.” So we did it. It was a venous tear so that’s why it ended up bleeding more. The bleeding stopped. We weighed the baby and they did the tuck-in service. My in-laws were in town. They actually are the best and they were supposed to fly back to California that day because they came two weeks early. They came a week before my due date and stayed a week past because we thought the baby would be born then but he wasn’t. They were flying out that day but they canceled their flight and stayed because I had gone into labor the night before they left so they were with our one-and-a-half-year-old. They ended up saying, “We’re just going to get a hotel room and you guys hang out,” which was nice to have that time with just Zach and I and our new little baby boy. After my HBAC, we were sitting on the bed with our second son and just so thankful. I asked my husband how he was feeling because I was curious about this experience. Would it be different than the hospital? He said that he was feeling great. He felt like in the hospital, he couldn’t really do much. The doula didn’t take over but he would try to support me in labor, but then he was like, “Well, what else do I do?” He felt like being at home, he put water in the tub. He cleaned up my water. At one point, he even said, “I put the dishes away.” That night in bed, he did have a little bit of shaking, but I think his sympathetic nervous system was so ramped up. That happens. The specialty I’m getting into is pain– head and neck pain. Oral-facial pain is what it’s called. We have patients with chronic pain, people who have undergone post-traumatic stress and TBI, or I should say have post-traumatic stress disorder or TBI and their sympathetic nervous system is ramped up. It’s designed like a zebra outrunning a lion. You’ll see a zebra shake after it’s done and shake it all out. But a zebra doesn’t keep thinking, “What if that lion would have caught me? What if I would have lost the let?” Zebras just move on. But we as people are the ones that think about, “What if?” So that’s what causes that sympathetic nervous system to keep staying on. Anyway, so he had a little bit of the shakes. I was thinking through that and one of the things that we have patients do for chronic pain patients, it can also help with anxiety, and it can also help lower your blood pressure. Feel free to link this and look into it because there is a lot of evidence-based research on it. I’m saying that to all of the listeners too. It’s called diaphragmatic breathing. I highly recommend it just in general for any type of chronic pain. It’s really helpful but there have been studies of people lowering their blood pressure. I was like, “All right, honey.” We were in bed. I was like, “We’re going to do some diaphragmatic breathing.” We did some diaphragmatic breathing and it really helped him calm down. What it does is it activates your vagus nerve which is that fight or flight reflex responsible, that nerve that innervates and starts up the fight or flight. It helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system to calm your body down. So that’s what I did and it was awesome. Meagan: I love that. Lindsey: Yeah. One more thing to go over after this, but to show where we are now, I did go back to work and this is my second week back, so very timely. My husband did a full week by himself with the kids and there was lots of crying because my baby doesn’t take a bottle during the day which is another story and also stressful. We’re working on it. The baby’s been crying a lot and is hungry. I asked him last night, “Okay, I’m on the podcast tomorrow. Let’s give a full update.” He said, “I have not felt any anxiety at all.” I was like, “That is so awesome.”Meagan: Oh awesome. Lindsey: Right after the birth we talked about it, I was like, “Do you feel like you would have had this in the hospital?” He was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I would have because I would have had the same smells, same sights.” He and I both feel like the total change of environment was what was best for our family and really helped my success in my HBAC and for him too. I really do think that I would have gotten an epidural 100% if I was in the hospital. I was so close so I just wonder, “Would that have hindered me?” Who knows? You can’t play those games. You never know. Meagan: It’s hard to know. It’s hard to know. I believe that if I were in a hospital for the second, and this is not to say anything bad about a hospital birth–Lindsey: No, no definitely not. Meagan: I probably would have had an epidural too and I do believe that I probably would have had a third Cesarean but it’s so hard to know. I’m curious, maybe not. I have no idea. Lindsey: Right, yeah. Absolutely. Meagan: Oh man. Lindsey: I have one last little thing I want to go over. Thank you. So one of the key components I think that was missing from my first birth was education. At almost every prenatal appointment, my midwife would say, “Any questions?” Almost every single time, I didn’t. I guess I trusted her and not that you shouldn’t trust your providers but I didn’t even know what to ask so that’s why I recommend your podcast to first-time moms too because then you know what to ask. I did some reading. I definitely did some reading and I did the hospital birth class. I did a class with our doula too, a birth class with our first doula, but I did so much more the second time around. My point is that definitely finding a provider you can trust and you can feel like you can ask those questions or who would maybe even prompt you with what questions to ask is so helpful because being informed as a patient– I strive to build that rapport and trust with my patients every time. I tell them this, “We’re working together as a team and I want you to do your own research and I want to work with you to determine the best plan for you,” because when you feel empowered and informed, you have better outcomes. I really felt like birth happened to me the first time around and then the second time, I was actively a part of my birth which was really a powerful thing. Meagan: Very, very, very powerful. That’s something I was going to say. Even if it doesn’t go the way you want, you can still be the driver in the driver’s seat. We know that with babies and birth, things go certain ways and everything but you can still be empowered. Lindsey: Thank you for saying that. I actually had that thought to say to share that too. Birth is crazy and you never know how it’s going to go or what’s going to happen but you would know, “Okay. I did all of the research beforehand and I can rest in the fact that it’s okay. We made the best decision at the time given the information that we had.” Meagan: Absolutely. Lindsey: I’m just going to read if it’s okay, a quick list because I am a list person and I listened to all of your VBAC Links. I gathered my own list. Everyone’s list of how to have a VBAC might look different but this is my list. Meagan: Yay, I love it. Lindsey: I’m a list person for all of you guys out there. I did listen to as many birth stories as possible. If I would have started sooner, I would have listened more, but my number one on Spotify in 2022 was The VBAC Link. I had listened to 206 episodes. I know there were almost all of the 206 episodes at the time. Almost all of them, not quite. I did learn things like the risks and benefits of Pitocin, what the labor shakes were, how having a tight pelvic floor can prevent baby from descending, how important movement is in labor, and coached pushing versus self-directed pushing. I learned a lot about breathwork. There’s a really good YouTube video by Bridget Teyler that my doula told me about. Meagan: Bridget’s awesome. Lindsey: And then your podcast too talked about breathing. The low tones are so important. I didn’t know that the first time around. I did see a chiropractor once a week for the majority of my pregnancy starting really in the second trimester. When we moved here, I couldn’t find a Webster-based chiropractor in my area but I saw a corporate practice called The Joint. The woman there was trained in Webster. She just wasn’t certified because she doesn’t pay an annual fee to get the certification. Something to think about there. I did drink the tea, the red raspberry leaf tea, and ate the Medjool dates at 37 weeks. Spinning Babies, I started that three to five days a week. I didn’t do as many intense workouts as I did with my first son. I really did a lot of walking partially because I had so many Braxton Hicks and partially because of hearing that having a tight pelvic floor can prevent the baby from descending.Hydrotherapy– I did so much of that during labor. I squeezed a comb through every single contraction. The comb was the comb that we brought home from my first birth that they give you at the hospital so it was kind of poetic. By the end, the comb was very destroyed from all of my squeezing. I did write down my fears and emotions with the birth. I did boil it down to three that I was feeling. I told my doula and my midwife about them. I was like, “In case I stall in labor, I just want you to know.” I tried to really turn the fear/tension/pain cycle to not give in to the fear through every contraction. I’d turn that into prayer. Every contraction is helping my body to move down my baby and to work with that. I remember, and I would say that Pitocin contractions were worse than actual contractions, but I do remember that I was bracing every one like, “Oh no. Another one is coming.” I’d fight every contraction. It was still hard, but I tried to work with my body instead of pushing them away, then moving every 15 minutes to a new position in labor. Meagan: Such a powerful list right there. Lindsey: Oh, thank you. Hopefully, if someone is like, “Oh, my VBAC might be tomorrow, maybe they can listen to this episode and get some tips at the end there in the final hour.” Meagan: Yes, the final hour. The final countdown. I love it. Thank you so much and huge congrats. Lindsey: Thank you. Thank you.Meagan: Congrats. What a crazy journey to go from moving and finding providers, then changing and even changing doulas in the very end. You had change up until the very end. Lindsey: The very end. I didn’t even think about that. That’s true. Meagan: Yeah, you really did. Awesome. I’m so happy to hear that everything is going well right now and your husband is going better. That’s really awesome. Lindsey: Thank you. It’s really good, really, really good. Thank you so much. I’m just so honored to be here and to see you face to face and just thank you for all that you do. Meagan: Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Due to a velamentous cord insertion and breech presentation, Brenda decided to schedule a Cesarean for her first birth. It was a peaceful, calm, and beautiful experience. When she became pregnant with her second baby soon after the first, Brenda knew she would be okay with another Cesarean if necessary, but also intuitively felt that this birth experience would be very different. Though she didn’t know exactly what to expect from labor, her body took over and knew exactly what to do…even in the car!Additional LinksBrenda’s WebsiteBrenda’s InstagramBrenda’s FacebookHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsThe VBAC Link Facebook CommunityFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Happy Wednesday, everybody. You’re listening to The VBAC Link. This is your host, Meagan, and you guys, we have a great story for you. A really, really great, exciting story. One of those stories that you see go viral. Brenda, you might have gone viral. They go viral, a lot of these stories, and they’re really fun to listen to. I always remember imagining and being like, “That would be cool if that happened to me,” then I’d be like, “What would I do?” I don’t know what I would do. Our friend, Brenda, is here to share her story with you. You guys, trust me. It’s going to be an amazing one. I’m going to read a review and then we are going to jump right into it. Review of the WeekToday’s review is by jess63636 and it says, “Fantastic resource for mamas looking to VBAC.” It says, “I listened to the VBAC podcast in the days leading up to my delivery. I wish I had discovered it sooner. The VBAC Link resource helped me through a successful VBAC induction.” Love it, congratulations. “It was an empowering experience facilitated by the support of The VBAC Link.” Oh, that makes me so happy. It makes me so happy. We have a lot of people that will find us toward the end and they’re like, “Oh, we wish that we knew about you.” I’m like, “I love that you love the podcast in the time that you did have us.” Don’t stop listening because guess what? All of these stories are going to continue and they’re all amazing and have their own special twists. So if you would also like to leave a review if you feel like jess63636 and would like to leave us a review, we would love it. So check it out. You can go on Google or on Apple Podcasts. You can shoot us a message at The VBAC Link on Instagram, Facebook, or wherever and you might be the next review read on the podcast. Brenda’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Brenda. I’m excited to hear it. I was reading it, but I’m excited to hear from your words. I just think it’s great. We kind of talked about this right before we started recording, but I want to also tell listeners that you have something that a lot of our followers will write in and say, “My provider is telling me that I can’t have a vaginal birth because…” What do you have?  Brenda: A partial bicornuate uterus. Meagan: Yes. Brenda: Also known as the heart. Meagan: Heart-shaped, exactly. So a heart-shaped uterus. Is it different? Yes. But you are living proof, right? You are living proof that it can be done. So yeah, if you have a heart-shaped uterus then listen up. This is quite the story. Brenda: All right. I’m just going to start with my daughter’s quick story/birth and everything and also just mention her C-section. There was nothing traumatic about it for me. Everything went really smoothly and it was a really good C-section. I almost fell asleep during it was how calm and peaceful it was. Meagan: That’s so beautiful though. That’s so beautiful. Brenda: Yeah, it really was. I love listening to redemption stories, but personally, it wasn’t a redemption for me. It was just another experience that I wanted to experience. Meagan: Which I think is important to note by the way. Just saying that right there because we do hear a lot of hype, and mine was hyped I believe, and a traumatic experience. I don’t mean hyped like we are hyping it up. It’s a very intense lead-up and sometimes you can look back and are really struggling. It doesn’t always have to be that way and it isn’t always that way so we also need to be mindful of our listeners that didn’t have a traumatic Cesarean because sometimes we carry our feelings outwardly so it’s okay that someone had a beautiful experience. Brenda: Yes. Yes. It was really beautiful and leading up to it when I found out I was going to need the C-section with her, I was really disappointed. Ultimately, I wanted to have an unmedicated, vaginal birth with her and then we ran into, they weren’t really complications, but we didn’t know about my uterus. I had a very healthy pregnancy. She never moved much. She was breech pretty much the entire time. From my 20-week scan on, she never moved or flipped or anything but she was fine. A bunch of sono techs kept asking me, “Do you know what the shape of your uterus is?” By the time they had started asking me, my uterus was too expanded from being pregnant. I never had a reason to go find out what shape my uterus was. We had switched our OBs multiple times throughout my first pregnancy. We went from a friend’s OB, who had two Cesareans with him which were great. He was a great doctor. I just didn’t want to be in the hospital really, so we switched to a birthing center and then we were kicked out of the birthing center because she was breech and I also had a velamentous cord with her. Meagan: Which I feel like is also more common than we know. Brenda: Yeah. Yes, it definitely is. But I know too, our OB from my second pregnancy said that he usually doesn’t find out until birth about it, but with my first pregnancy, everyone was scaring me about it because it can be scary. Meagan: Yeah. It can result in IUGR and complications during birth. Brenda: Yes, but I just feel like they really hyped it up for me like, “You need to get a C-section.” I did feel like I needed to because she was breech on top of the cord insertion. So we ended up switching to a midwife after we got turned down. It was a midwife that one of our friends who was also pregnant was using and I was just like, “You know what? Let’s just do it. I don’t really want to be with an OB. It’s a pretty good hospital here,” so we switched and she basically explained the velamentous cord because I feel like it was really hard to find information on it when you Google it. There’s no clear information on it. She had drawn out a picture for us to understand it and then she explained, “And the baby’s breech and we don’t know what—” They thought that my uterus was a notch. I don’t know if I’m staying that right, but they thought that there was something stopping her from moving and then it ended up being that my uterus wasn’t what they expected it to be. So then once she drew the picture, it was just clear and I felt like, “Okay. This just needs to happen. I can’t even attempt it.” I even went through trying to find doctors who would deliver breech babies and there were not really many around here. Meagan: There’s not really many around anywhere. Brenda: Yes. So I did go down that route for a little bit and then I was just like, “Okay. I think I can’t do this. I’m stressing myself out too much and I don’t want the baby to be stressed,” so we had scheduled a C-section for May 17, 2021, and no. She was due on the 17th. The section was scheduled for the 13th and then my water ended up breaking at midnight on the 8th, the day before Mother’s Day. But I did also do all of the squats and I tried to induce labor because just personally, I wanted her to pick her own birthdate. I’m one of the oddballs when it comes to C-sections. I don’t like to plan the date. I would prefer to go into labor and let the baby choose so I was so excited when my water broke in my sleep. My husband was freaking out because he was like, “Oh good. We have the C-section date,” not freaking out, but he was at ease. Meagan: He was planning that day, yeah. Brenda: Yeah, and then the next day was Mother’s Day. We got to the hospital. We had a doula and she ended up meeting us at the hospital. Because of COVID and everything, she wasn’t allowed to come into—I think in the OR they’re usually not allowed to come in at this hospital, but she couldn’t even come in after to see us, but she was with us before. It was nice because even though I was excited, both of us were really nervous. Meagan: Yes. Well, talking about that. We get a lot of emails about, “What if it goes to a Cesarean, or what if I need a Cesarean? Is a doula worth it? Would you say yes?” Brenda: 1000% yes. Yeah, I would say because we had hired her before I needed a Cesarean and then that happened. She was with us after and just comforting me. I really, really wanted to do an unmedicated birth. It was definitely worth it because she also came over to the house after. We didn’t know what we were doing. We were first-time parents also and then I’m recovering from a major surgery. It’s not just a birth. It’s a surgery too and I had never had any surgeries in my lifetime, so that was the first one. But yeah, it’s definitely worth it if you can afford it or if you find somebody. I know around here, they have a lot of communities where they have affordable doulas which are really nice. Yeah, it was worth it and she was there, thankfully. My husband and I were both freaking out inside of our heads at the same time. I don’t think we both realized it and when we talked about it after, we had to wait for five hours for my C-section in the hospital. Meagan: Wow. Brenda: Yeah, because I had to get the COVID test and then I wasn’t really progressing or anything. Meagan: Oh, wow. I was going to say that normally with that type of situation, they would get you right in so that’s interesting. Brenda: Yeah, they were very busy that night. Meagan: They’re like, “You’re okay. You’re not having a baby right now.” Gotcha. Brenda: Yeah. Right before I went in, I started to get some mild contractions, but I didn’t know what contractions were until the second pregnancy. It was like, “Oh, I think I was getting a contraction. I don’t know.” But she kept us calm waiting to go in because five hours was a long time to wait. Meagan: That’s a long time to wait. Brenda: Yeah, so that was good and like I said, I almost fell asleep on the table and my husband was rubbing my head. He doesn’t do good with blood and stuff so he was trying to keep his eyes on me and rubbing my head to focus on something and not knowing it was really keeping me calm. But yeah, then she was born and it was Mother’s Day the next day. It was one of the hospital’s busiest weekends in years they said. Meagan: Wow. Brenda: Yeah, so that’s why we had to wait five hours. Meagan: Makes sense, makes sense. Brenda: Yeah, and then the next day, the OB—he was an on-call OB. I actually don’t even remember his name but I really, really liked him just because when he came in to check on us the next day, he had drawn out my uterus. He said, “So we have figured out your uterus. It is the partial bicornuate heart-shaped uterus” and explained, “This is where your daughter was in the womb,” and all of that. I don’t remember if I asked him but he basically just said to me, “You can totally have a vaginal birth going forward now that we know,” because this is the part I forgot. They didn’t want to manually flip her because they were sure and then with the cord insertion and everything, it was too much. It could have been a big storm. Meagan: Yeah, totally. That’s cool that he came and spent that time and was like, “This is where we’re going,” and that he even did say, “You can have a vaginal birth in the future, assuming we’ve got all of these other things.” But that’s really cool that he took that time, especially during one of the busiest weekends of the year. Brenda: Yeah, yeah. Actually, thinking back now after my second pregnancy, the midwife, I wouldn’t go back to her even though she was great for that, but thinking back, I’m like, “She didn’t check on us.” There are a lot of things now looking back I’m like— Meagan: Yes, and all of those things matter. They matter. They really do. Brenda: Yeah, but then that was my daughter, Harper. I’ll just go right into Hudson. Meagan: All right. Brenda: So Hudson is five months today by the way. I was very excited to record this for his five-month birthday. My husband and I had my daughter. We decided that we wanted to have another child and we just tried and two months later I became pregnant with him. I had reached out to the doula that we worked with for the first pregnancy. So I’m in Queens but I’m in the furthest part of Queens-- not the furthest part. I’m by the beach in Queens and she’s in Brooklyn and just where we are, it’s long to get to places in Brooklyn or in Manhattan and stuff. We’re just really far and it’s a long commute everywhere. So she had recommended this other doula who was closer to us from her doula community and we ended up clicking really well. I know when I first met her— Meagan: That’s awesome. Brenda: Yeah, it was nice. When I first met her on the Zoom call, she had just said—I just assumed I was going to need a scheduled Cesarean for the second time because this is now, they’re 15 months apart. It’s pretty close. Meagan: It’s close, yeah. Yeah. Brenda: Yeah, but she had said, “No, if you want a vaginal birth, you should totally do your research,” and she recommended The VBAC Link. So then we ended up looking into it and my husband was freaking out a little bit because he also just had in his head, “Oh, two years. Two years.” That’s what everybody is told. So once she recommended that I started listening to you guys and the more stories I heard, I was like, “Whoa. Okay.” I started researching, “How about babies who are born 15 months apart?” Just the shorter age gaps and stuff and I just kept hearing more and more and more, so then I decided, “All right. We’re going to try for a VBAC.” We ended up calling the midwife back again— Meagan: The out-of-hospital midwife? Brenda: Yes. She was in the hospital with us. She was with me through the C-section. Meagan: Okay, so not the birth center one. Brenda: No, so the birth center wouldn’t allow me back in either because of the Cesarean. Even if it was five years later, they wouldn’t take me on. Meagan: It was the fact that you were a previous Cesarean. Brenda: Yeah. We did meet with her the first two appointments and I did find out from a Long Island VBAC Facebook group because the hospital that we went to was in Long Island and I had seen a post that our midwife, someone else who was seeing our midwife, wasn’t delivering anymore. My husband is a New York City firefighter and another couple in his firehouse was going to the same midwife. They were also pregnant and didn’t know either, so I guess she didn’t tell anybody. It was really odd. Meagan: You were planning on giving birth with her. Brenda: Yeah and she did say too at our first appointment, “Yeah, if you go into labor by 39 weeks, you can totally try for a VBAC. If you don’t we have to schedule you by 39.” It was that same thing and then I found out she wasn’t delivering, and then I went to hop around to the other OBs in the office just to see if I clicked with anybody and every appointment for me just felt like another doctor’s appointment. They all said the same thing. In the VBAC group, somebody had mentioned a doctor from the practice and she had to fight with him to let her go to 41 weeks. I’m not a confrontational person. Meagan: Well and it’s hard because you’re already so vulnerable to have to walk in with your boxing gloves up, it’s not a great start. It’s not a great start. Brenda: Yeah, so I was just like, “I’m not fighting to want to go to 41 or 42 weeks. If I need to, the baby wants to.” So our doula and her doula community recommended the OB that we had switched to. My in-laws live next door and when I was talking to my mother-in-law, she was like, “Oh. That’s the practice that I went to when Sean was born,” but it was a different doctor. He had passed away and it was just a different doctor at the same practice. I was like, “Wow.” I felt like it was kind of meant to be.” While I was on the way to, I think I had already been switched to him, an old friend had randomly reached out to me. I hadn’t talked to her since before COVID. We were talking on the phone. I’m driving to the OB and she’s like, “How are you?” She wanted to ask me something and I was just telling her, “I’m pregnant again and I had to switch OBs because I want a VBAC.” She had her VBAC with the same doctor. Meagan: That’s awesome. Brenda: Yeah, and she’s a little bit older than me. Her kids are my age. I’m 31. Her kids are my age. I was like, “Oh wow, so you had a VBAC with them?” Yeah, so it was just another sign like, “All right. This is meant to be. This is who we’re going to go see for this pregnancy.” When we met him, he said to me, “I don’t see why you can’t go to 41 weeks and then once you get to 41 weeks, we discuss other options or routes like induction or whatnot.” That just made me feel really good the way he said that. He said, “You can totally. You had a healthy pregnancy. This pregnancy is healthy.” So we ended up switching to him and that was the second half of my pregnancy. Actually, I think I switched to him closer to the third trimester again. So then fast forward to 39 weeks. I went for my 39-week checkup and everything was good. I think I was 2 centimeters dilated. I ended up getting my cervix checked and everything which was fine. I was asked if I wanted to just see where I was because, with Harper, my water broke at 38.5 so now I’m past the date that she was. I think I was 39+2 for my checkup or 39 and one day and everything looked good. No real signs of labor. I go about my day and I was eating carbs all day. There was nothing around. I was too tired to do anything and then after my appointment, I went to a bagel store. It was in a very big Jewish community and they didn’t have meat or pork or anything so I had to get a grilled cheese but on a bagel, because they didn’t have regular bread either. It was a really thick sandwich but I was so hungry so I was like, “Whatever. I’m just going to eat this.” Meagan: I bet it tasted really good. Brenda: Yeah. I also had cookies. It was just all carbs all day. I remember thinking, “Man. I just need to eat protein tomorrow. This is too much. I feel carb overloaded.” Meagan: Yeah, and then sometimes you just crash. Brenda: Yeah, and that night we went out for a walk with my husband, my daughter, and my mother-in-law. We took my daughter to a playground and there was a little food truck by us. We got burgers after and I was just like, “More bread, but can I just have the patty?” but it was a little food truck, so I ate it. We came home. I put my daughter down. I went to the bathroom and I lost my mucus plug. I had read about mucus plugs, but if it never happened, then I never knew. It didn’t happen with my daughter. I had no idea and then I was like, “Oh. This is the mucus plug that I’ve read about and that people talk about all the time.” It was a lot and it just didn’t stop coming out, so I just texted our doula. Also this week, the doula that we hired was on vacation which we knew going into the pregnancy and I met the backup doula. In my head, I also knew. I’m like, “This is what’s going to happen. He’s just going to come the week that she’s on vacation,” kind of thing. I just had a gut feeling the whole pregnancy. I called our backup doula, Makee, just to let her know. I was like, “Hey, I lost my mucus plug. I know it doesn’t mean anything or it could mean something. Just to let you know.” I was a little crampy but not enough to be like, “I’m in labor.” I went down to my husband and I just said to him, “We need to go to bed tonight. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I might go into labor tonight. We should just get sleep while we can.” Meagan: Prepare. Way to prepare. Brenda: Yes. So we got ready to go to bed and I went to go take a bath really quickly because I had really bad restless leg syndrome. They were really bad in both pregnancies for me so I would take a bath before bed and it helped a lot. So I took a bath. I went to bed or tried to go to bed. My husband passed out with no problem. He’s like, “Okay, let’s go to sleep.” I tried to go to bed but Hudson was moving all around. He moved a lot but I was not used to the movement because Harper didn’t move at all that whole pregnancy and then this pregnancy, he was moving a lot but then that night was a lot more than ever. He was full-on partying in there. Finally, when I was able to fall asleep, it had to be five or ten minutes before my water broke. My husband and I, because he knew I was trying for a VBAC, and our OB, Dr. Bachman, said to me when I met him that in order for a successful unmedicated VBAC, he told me to labor at home as long as possible. Meagan: Yeah, wow. Brenda: Which was the plan, yeah. That was one of the first things that he said to me. My husband would agree to a home birth if we lived in an area that had a better hospital nearby. The closest hospital is just not somewhere you want to be for emergency labor or whatever. So yeah. Our doctor had said to labor at home as long as possible, so my husband and I agreed that if my water breaks again, I’m going to let him sleep until I feel it necessary to wake him up because I wanted him to get sleep. Meagan: Yeah. He needs to rest too. Brenda: Yes. So he agreed and I went downstairs. I was like, “All right. Let me call our doula just to let her know that my water broke and things are moving along.” She had asked me, “All right, when you want me to come over, let me know.” I had to think about it because I don’t know how far along I am and I didn’t really go through full labor or even half of labor. So I was just like, “All right.” One of my friends was up. This was 1:00 AM and she was up so I was like, “Okay. I’m going to call her.” So I called her and I was on the phone with her for almost two hours just to keep calm because I was getting contractions, but they were 6-7 minutes apart. I don’t know if that’s too close to being calm, but I felt fine and I was able to talk and stuff. I just couldn’t relax and go to sleep. But Malky, our doula, also was telling me to eat whatever. I was trying to eat, but I ate so many carbs that day that it actually was great for me going into labor. Meagan: You carb-loaded literally. Brenda: So I was on the phone with my friend for two hours. I threw up in the middle of our conversation which I didn’t know was a thing while you are in labor, but it was just a one-and-done, so it was good. Then I was like, “All right. Let me just go wake Sean up because we have to get the car seat in the car still.” I don’t plan ahead. I had everything out for my hospital bag and I knew where I put everything, so I was like, “All right. When I go into labor, I’ll just pack it. I’ll have time,” which I did pack it, but we needed the car seat still in the car and stuff so I was like, “All right. Let me just go wake him up and just let him know.” I called our doula. I was like, “You can come over now.” She was getting over something. She had been sick, so there was another backup doula for her, but she was over the hump. She had let me know on the phone. She was like, “Do you want me to connect you because she knows that you are in labor too?” I just said to her, “Nope. I need you here. I met you.” I’m sure the other doula was also great. I trust who they work with, but I just needed somebody that I had known and met already in person here. I was like, “I don’t care. Just come over. You won’t touch the baby and if I need you to hold the baby, you’ll just have a mask on,” kind of thing. I said, “Otherwise, you said that you’re over the hump. I trust you. Come over please.” She came over and I took another bath while I was in labor. My husband lit some sage in a candle for me and made my bath water. He was just getting everything together. We have two dogs. Our daughter was sleeping throughout this whole time. She sleeps 12, 13, and 14 hours so she was out cold. I kept saying, “Oh, I can’t wait until she wakes up. She can hang out with us for a little bit.” I was still moving and talking and whatnot. I was able to fall asleep in the bath for five or ten minutes and then my contractions were still five minutes apart. Our doula had explained, “Once your contractions start increasing to one minute long, a minute and a half long, we’ll start to decide if you are ready to go to the hospital or whatnot.” The entire time, they were 30-45 seconds. They never reached a minute. My daughter woke up probably at 8:00 in the morning, a little after 8:00 and my husband went to go get her dressed and brought her into our bedroom. I had gone through the biggest transition during labor. It was just immediately like, “Okay. I feel like I have to poop. I know I have heard this in stories.” I looked at my doula and I was like, “Malky, we have to go to the hospital.” My husband was still with our daughter. She was just like, “Are you sure?” because she was timing the contractions for us and making sure we have time to get there. She was just like, “Are you sure?” and then I had to think about it and I know in my head too, I couldn’t picture having the baby in the hospital. I’m very intuitive and it was just one of those things where in my head, I was like, “I don’t think we’re going to make it, but we can’t do this here because Sean is going to freak out.” When she said that, I was like, “Yeah. We do have to go. I can’t have the baby here because this is what we had agreed on.” I was just like, “I didn’t plan to have the baby at home kind of thing,” so I was just like, “Yeah. We have to go.” Sean brought Harper into our room and the plan was for her to hang out with us in bed and have her morning milk with us. Meagan: But it was past that at that point. Brenda: I looked at him and I was like, “You need to bring her next door to your parents. We have to go now.” He had told his parents that I was in labor, so they knew, “All right. We’re going to be taking Harper soon,” so he brought her to his mom’s and then we were trying to go downstairs. At one point, I did have to poop so then Makee was like, “Can you feel for a head or something?” Sean was right outside our bedroom so I was like, “Oh no. He heard that. I hope he doesn’t freak out.” But he was really good. He was really calm hearing all of that. So then I tried to feel, but I was too afraid to know if there was a head there kind of thing. My dream birth was if the baby was coming, just come out. I don’t want to have to push. So I just didn’t want to know. I just wanted the baby to come out if he was coming. I was like, “I don’t know. We have to go to the hospital.” I was too afraid to know. Meagan: Yeah. You’re like, “Let’s just go.” Brenda: We make our way down to the car. That was like I said, a little after 8:00, so finally, we’re all in the car at 8:45. I also looked at Malky and I was like, “You’re coming in the car with us, right?” She’s like, “No, that was the plan. That was the plan.” I was like, “Okay good because Sean is driving. I need you in the back with me. I can’t do these contractions by myself.” She was with me the whole time at the house and I couldn’t imagine doing them by myself in the car while Sean was driving. So we all got in the car and we were driving. The tension in my body went away completely. I was still contracting but it wasn’t as bad as that last transition. I just felt a little more at ease and my contractions were still there, maybe four minutes apart, but less than a minute long. I’m talking to my husband and Malky in the car breathing. I was fine. The hospital was 28 minutes on the GPS to get there. It was morning traffic, but it wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t terrible. It was actually a good time when we left, but my husband didn’t think we were as far as I felt at first before leaving the house. Then I did start to feel a little pressure moving downward and Malky was like, “Can you feel for the head?” I was too afraid to know still in the car. I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” I don’t know what happened that made her ask me. She asked me. She was like, “Pull your pants down!” We were a couple of blocks away from the hospital. Meagan: She wanted to look for the head. Brenda: I was like, “You just need to look. I can’t do this.” I forget what exactly happened at that moment when she told me to pull my pants down to check. She was like, “I see a head.” Meagan: Out or she’s seeing crowning?Brenda: I think she’s seeing crowning. On top of this throughout my entire labor, I had asked her, “Take all of the pictures and videos you can.” So on top of doing all of that and calling the doctor in the car to update them, she’s recording everything for me. Meagan: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Brenda: Yeah. So she said, “I see a head,” and I think she meant that the baby was crowning. He ended up flying out a few seconds later in the car and we were a block away from the hospital. Meagan: I can’t. What did Sean do? Brenda: He kept driving. He had to run a couple of red lights. Yeah, because he was taking his time at first and then once she said she saw the head, he had to skip through some red lights and go around because we were so close. He just went right to the front of the hospital. Malky kept calling the hospital and was just saying, “Okay, we’re coming. She’s literally about to have the baby.” I don’t remember if she called when the baby was there, but when we got there, the nurses were waiting for us in the lobby. Sean parked right in front of the entrance and ran in. They were like, “Oh, where’s your wife?” She was like, “She’s in the car with the baby.” They all came running out of the hospital. They all came running out of the hospital and then the nurses came in to check on us. While we were driving that last block, I was trying to get Hudson skin-to-skin because I had a t-shirt on. I’m like, “Wait, how do I rip this off? I can’t.” At the same time, I’m like, “Is Sean okay? Is he going to pass out?” because he gets really woozy. And then I was like, “Wait, but I also just had a VBAC.” I was so excited. Meagan: All of these things are going through your mind. Brenda: Yeah, yeah. I didn’t know what to do at first. I’m trying to get him on my skin, but it was really cool. They came out and they let me cut the cord in my car. Meagan: That is awesome. Brenda: Yeah, that was one of the things I really wanted to do was cut the cord myself. Sean wasn’t able to cut Harper’s cord because like I said, he gets woozy but after that car ride, he was able to cut the rest of the cord for Hudson in the hospital which I was shocked that he was just like, “Yeah. I’ll do it.” Meagan: He was probably in the fight or flight like, “Sure, yeah,” not able to really think about what he was doing. Brenda: Yes. Yeah. So he was able to do that and he made it without passing out. One of the first things when we parked and as soon as he got out of the car, I was like, “Is he okay? Is he going to pass out?” Meagan: Yeah. I love that you just had this baby in the back of a car and you’re so worried about someone else’s feelings. I love it. Brenda: I just wanted everybody to be happy and safe. I didn’t want my husband to pass out and he didn’t, thankfully. But he was in for it. Meagan: I love it. Brenda: And then the placenta was delivered in the hospital. They had given me a little Pitocin to get it out. Our OB was in the middle of another labor when we got there and then actually, I think he just got out when they got me in the bed to get into the hospital and the first thing he said was, “Well, you didn’t need me for your VBAC.” Meagan: He’s like, “You did that on your own.” You did that all on your own. That’s crazy to think about. Brenda: Yeah, it really is. I didn’t push. I felt the pressure, but I didn’t know what I was doing. Even after all of the stories that I’ve listened to, I was just like, “I think the baby’s coming but I don’t know,” and I think that maybe part of me was trying to hold it in until we got to the hospital so my husband wouldn’t pass out. But Hudson was just like, “Nope. I’m coming right now.” Meagan: I’m coming. And there he was in the back of the truck. Brenda: Yes. Yes. Meagan: That’s amazing. Huge congrats. I’ve always wondered what it would be like. You see those videos and the videos go crazy because I remember I was like, “This is amazing!” But really if you think about your story as one of those that everybody thinks about or that they are like, “I don’t want to do this,” but then it sometimes happens. Brenda: Yep, yep. Yeah. It was quite the experience. I know I’ve heard even on your podcast stores, there are people who are like, “I almost had the baby in the car,” and that wasn’t really my intention, but it happened. Whenever I heard them in stories and stuff, I was like, “Wow. Could that be me? No. I might just be a C-section mom for the rest.” That was just in my head, but yeah. Like I said before we left, when I said to Malky when she asked me if I’d be more comfortable, no. I wouldn’t be more comfortable in the hospital, but in my head, I couldn’t picture having a baby in the hospital which was crazy. It was like I kind of knew we weren’t going to make it but I wasn’t trying to not make it. Meagan: Yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah. That intuition was speaking to you. Brenda: Yeah. I was like, “Oh man. We might have stayed home a little bit too long.” Meagan: I love it so much. It’s so awesome. It’s so, so awesome. You’ve had this journey of finding providers, a little bit closer timeline of pregnancy and birth, and a heart-shaped uterus. You’ve got all of these things and then you just had this beautiful accidental car birth, but a beautiful VBAC. I’m so happy for you and huge congrats. Brenda: Thank you. There was just one more thing I wanted to mention. When we did switch to our OB, they are a very old-school practice so they don’t do the measurements. They don’t measure anything but he had sent me to their high-risk tech just to check everything out toward the end. I only had one appointment with them and I remember being in there. After the tech measured everything and everything looked good, the doctor came in to talk to us and she made me feel like I was crazy for wanting a VBAC so close. I know towards the end of the appointment, she was like, “Do you want to know your success percentage?” Meagan: The VBAC calculator? Brenda: Yes, which I didn’t even know was a thing until she asked me. Meagan: Totally a thing. Brenda; I don’t really get intimidated. I’m just the type of person that I need to know every little thing that could go wrong and it doesn’t stress me out, but I have friends who it does stress out and family who stresses out over that stuff and they would rather not know which I respect. I’m just the opposite of that. So I was like, “Yeah. Go ahead. Do it. I’m curious.” I think I was something like 75% or something. It was in the seventies and I’m like, “Oh, great. That’s a good number.” I think she was trying to scare me. It was really weird and uncomfortable. They had mentioned too that I had a velamentous cord insertion the second pregnancy too and I said, “No, I don’t think so. It’s been pretty strong from the beginning.” When we were still at the other office, I know it can change, but nobody ever said anything. They had told our OB this time that “Oh, she has a velamentous cord insertion,” kind of thing. I know she didn’t make a big deal of it but I just knew it wasn’t a velamentous cord insertion. At the hospital, when the placenta was delivered, our OB was like, “Nope. You were right.” They were reading the paperwork from my first pregnancy. I kept saying that to her. I was like, “Are you sure you’re reading the right notes? Everything you’re saying is from Harper’s pregnancy, not this pregnancy.” She was just like, “No, no, no. I’m right and you’re wrong.” I was like, “Okay, whatever you say. I know what I’m feeling.” Meagan: You’re like, “But okay.” Brenda: Yeah. Yeah. Meagan: Yeah. It sounds like you’re really intuitive. Brenda: Yes. I was just happy to be right after the VBAC and then when the doctor told me because I was just like, “Can you just make sure? I’m curious. I know the placenta is here. Everything went well. I just needed to know. Did they really mess up?” Meagan: Yeah. Interesting. Brenda: But yeah. That was Hudson’s story and I can’t believe that he entered the world like that. Meagan: Me neither but it’s amazing. Such a fun story to share forever. He’ll be like, “Yeah. I was born in a car.” That is so awesome. Well, thank you so much, so so much for being here with us today and sharing your story. Really quickly before we go, I feel like you’re an entrepreneur and I just wanted to share your stuff. We’ll make sure to tag all of your stuff on Instagram today and have it in the show notes but do you want to tell everybody? To me, it looks like custom designs and t-shirts and hoodies and hats and beanies and all of these things, and then are you a yoga instructor? Brenda: Yes. Meagan: Okay, that’s what I thought. Brenda: Yes. Yes, so I teach yoga. I actually recently went back to a spa where I was teaching at. I guess I’ve been there for over a month now. I’ve been back for over a month because COVID happened then I was pregnant for two years and then recently, I was like, “Okay. I need to go back and teach.” I don’t want to work full-time. I love being home with the kids so yoga is nice because it’s just one hour out here and there. Like I said, we live next door to my in-laws who are amazing help and I’m able to go teach because of them. If we didn’t have the help, my husband works too and his schedule is all over the place, so we have that. Meagan: Where can people find you? Brenda: My Instagram is @YogiBrendaLee and then I also make t-shirts and sweatshirts and stuff at home. We do local designs and are starting to branch out to do not some local designs so that people elsewhere can find them. My husband’s been helping me with our website and that’s called Channel Creations. I think the website is channelcreationsbc.com. Meagan: Yep. That’s what I have. Brenda: Okay, yes. I had to go double-check. Meagan: Super cute stuff. I should have you do a custom VBAC sweatshirt. Brenda: Oh, yeah definitely. Meagan: I’ll have to write you. That would be awesome. Brenda: We’re here. We make stuff for some local companies here and a bunch of our friends usually hook us up with people that they know for their businesses. But yeah, so that’s that. Yeah, we have—I’ll show you, but it’s this mama shirt that we just recently came up with and it has the hearts with everybody’s name on it. Meagan: So cute. Brenda: The dogs’ names are on here too. Meagan: I love that. So cute. So cute. Brenda: Thank you, yeah.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Achieving your VBAC is an accomplishment worth celebrating, but it's also important to hold space for processing the difficult moments.Pat joins us today to share how she birthed both of her babies over the age of 40 as well as how she found a supportive team to go for her VBAC.She shares the importance of paying attention to your feelings when choosing a provider even if everyone around you feels differently. Pat experienced some traumatic events during her VBAC which left her feeling grateful for the outcome desired but unexpectedly having to grieve the loss of what she thought would be a dreamy and empowering experience.Additional LinksPat’s WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hey guys, this is Meagan. I’m so excited for another amazing story. We are actually going to be talking about something that I don’t feel like we talk about a ton and it’s going to be pregnancy after 40. Even really 36, right? I feel like in the medical world, 36 is old. I’m doing air quotes because it’s such an annoying thing to be but we are going to talk about that. Pregnancy after 40 and what that looks like and how that may feel for someone. We have our friend, Pat, today from L.A. She’s going to be sharing her stories. She did have a VBAC and we talk about this often on social media and things like that where people may have a vaginal birth after a Cesarean and it’s the most healing, amazing, beautiful experience and then sometimes it’s not. So I’m excited to hear from Pat today and hear more about her experience. Review of the WeekBut of course, we have a Review of the Week so I’m going to make sure to get into that before Pat starts sharing her story. Just a fair reminder, if you guys have a chance, if you would please leave us a review, we love your reviews as you know. We talk about it all the time but really, they make us smile so much and we love reading them on the podcast. So push pause and go leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. This specific review is from Sarah. She doesn’t have a subject on it but she says, “I am a birth and postpartum doula who is always on the search for a birthy podcast to listen to in my car. I was so excited when I found The VBAC Link so I could listen to these amazing stories from women all around the world who reached their goals through becoming educated thanks to Meagan and Julie. I recently certified with The VBAC Link as well and I’m impressed by the thorough delivery with which their knowledge was shared in the training. I’m super excited to move into the next chapter of my career and I’m so thrilled to do so with an amazing community and support.” Sarah, I love it. Thank you so much. It is so awesome to have you as one of our VBAC doulas. Birth workers, if you didn’t know out there, we actually have a birth worker course on how to support your VBAC clients because again, we talk about it. It shouldn’t be anything more than just someone going in to have a baby, but with vaginal birth after Cesarean or a Cesarean I should say, and wanting to go for vaginal birth after Cesarean, there are hurdles that a lot of clients have to jump through. It’s so nice to learn how to support them so we have a certification course and we add you to our doula list and share you with the world. So parents, if you are looking for a VBAC doula, go to thevbaclink.com/findadoula and see if there’s a doula near you. Pat’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Pat. I can’t wait. Thank you so much for taking the time today to be with us. Pat: No, thank you for inviting me. I’m so excited. This podcast has been such a big and helpful thing to prepare for my VBAC so thank you for that.Meagan: Absolutely, well I’d love to turn the time over to you. Pat: Yeah, I am Spanish so that’s why I have a weird accent but I’ve been living in L.A. for the last ten years with my husband. I have two kids now. One is two and a half and the other one is going to turn ten months in just a little bit. My journey started really late or later than other people here in the states. I always knew I wanted to be a mother but then I saw my friends having kids and saw what that really means to your life, so for a little bit, I was trying to decide whether I could really take on motherhood or not. I knew that if I were to be a mother, it would be in my late thirties. I really wanted to push it which makes sense now because if I hadn’t done that then, I would have different kids. I really believe in destiny and these kids were meant to be for me. So I think I’m happy with that. With that also came a lot of stress from the doctors. All this talk about the extra risks and how difficult or impossible it was going to be to get pregnant at 39. My journey, thank God, wasn’t that hard. I had an IUD, a copper IUD, and I took it out in January 2019. For the first three months, I didn’t get pregnant, but I also had weird pain and my period was really strange. I had an ultrasound and they saw that actually, I had an IUD inside of me even though they took it out. Meagan: What?!Pat: Yeah. It was so bizarre. I don’t want to get into details because it will take us the whole hour, but what happened was that someone along the way, and I had an IUD since I was 20 because I had DBT and I couldn’t take hormones so that was the way I chose to go. In those years, someone forgot to take out the old IUD and just pushed a new IUD inside of me. Meagan: Oh my land. Pat: It was crazy to discover that. So anyway, they took it out and three months after that, I was pregnant. That was October-November I think of 2019. So it was fairly quick for my age and everything. I was thrilled. My pregnancy also was super healthy. I did have certain things here and there but nothing that a younger person wouldn’t have. I barely had any morning sickness or anything. I did have a couple of weird symptoms. One of them was palpitations. I didn’t know that I had them and then towards the middle of my pregnancy, I started having not fainting, but lightheaded episodes where I really had to lay down in the street when I was walking my dog around several times We discovered that it was something regarding my breakfast really, so I had a thing for toast with peanut butter in the morning and I guess the way my blood sugar was doing something weird and I was really almost fainting in the street. Once a doctor told me to actually change that for protein and to have protein first in the morning. Immediately, that disappeared. Other than that, everything was great. I was feeling super beautiful with my pregnant belly and I was going for an unmedicated birth. I was really preparing mentally and physically for it. I did Hypnobabies. I was really in my head. I was obsessed with it as a friend of mine recommended me to be if I wanted to achieve it. I was doing all of the work. Everything was going great. Of course, we get into 2020. COVID comes in. My husband was able to still come into the 20-week ultrasound which was awesome, but after that I was alone and there was a lot of stress added to the pregnancy. I feel like it was toward the end of my third trimester that I don’t know why, but my mind started to lose its balance. All of the fear about motherhood came crashing down and the last few weeks, they were full of excitement but also fear. Everybody was like, “Are you so excited?” I was like, “Yeah, but I’m also so scared.” I felt guilty. I couldn’t talk to anyone about that. Because I was scared, people would think I am a bad mother or I’m going to be a bad mother. Anyways, we didn’t hire a doula which is important in this birth story because of COVID but I guess I didn’t know that I was going to need her so much. The doctor told me towards the end of the pregnancy that he was OP but that he could still move. I would feel the baby. He didn’t have space. I could feel that my belly was so tight. I didn’t think that he was going to move. I didn’t know anything about helping him position more than a couple of exercises I saw on Spinning Babies. When the birth started, it was after my 40-week appointment. I wasn’t very dilated. My doctor checked me and I was 1 centimeter and then she said that I wouldn’t probably go into labor for a few days. But then the next day, I woke up with contractions. They were light and just like period cramps every ten minutes. So I was excited but I also was in denial. “This cannot be. I’m only 1 centimeter,” which didn’t matter at all. I’ve learned that now. During the whole day, they went like that. They progressed a little bit in how painful they were, but they were ten minutes apart. Nothing was really happening so I just kept going. I had heard of prodromal labor, so I thought that maybe this was not it. By the time I went to bed, they were 7-10 minutes apart, but they were not super painful but painful enough that I couldn’t sleep during the whole night. Meagan: So tired, I’m sure. Pat: So tired. This was a Friday. So Saturday, it just kept going the same. Actually, the contractions got a little bit weirder. Instead of coming down and getting a pardon, they were all over like seven minutes to ten, five, and they were getting more and more intense as I would go but still, nothing was happening. Basically that night, I tried everything because I called my doctor and she confirmed that it could be prodromal labor. I had the feeling that it wasn’t, that it was labor that was not progressing because nothing would stop it, not any bath, nothing. So that night, I took some Benadryl and could sleep between contractions, but it was a few minutes here and there. But the next day, it was Sunday. I was so tired and then up to this point, I had been trying to move forward with this pregnancy and this birth. I would do exercises but at this point, I was scared because I thought, “I am going to get caught up in this level of pain for two more weeks and I just don’t think I can take it.” I tried to slow it down. I wanted to wait basically. I was also losing my mind a little bit. It was my third day with very little sleep. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know how to cope with contractions, or how to breathe properly. This is where a doula, I think, would have made a difference. Obviously, my baby was not coming down, and just having someone with me that would have helped me position the baby better, I think, would have made a difference but it was what it was at this point. So another night without sleeping and we are on Monday now. The doctor tried to convince me to go in for a membrane sweep, but I really couldn’t get out of the house, so again, I lived in the bath. I was in the bath, in the bath, in the bath. Finally, my water broke a little bit. There was a gush of water but it was yellow. That’s how I could see it. I didn’t know what that meant, but obviously, it meant that there was some meconium. So my doctor told me that since my water broke, she felt comfortable waiting until the next day, but I had to be in the hospital at 7:00 AM on Tuesday. By that night, I think it was 1:00 in the morning when the pain was so bad and my mind was so out of it. I was even regretting being pregnant at this point. Just get me out of here. So basically, I told my husband, “Let’s just go because I don’t know what this is. I want an unmedicated birth but if this is nothing then I really need help because I just cannot go on like this anymore.” So we got there. The triage was horrible. It was hours until I was checked in. Discovering that I was only 3 centimeters was crushing, to say the least. Once I was there, I knew that an epidural would help me sleep and that’s what I needed. So by that time, they still did walking epidurals which I don’t know why they call it that because they don’t let you walk anyways. Meagan: It’s just a lighter epidural essentially. Pat: I know, but they should change the name. Definitely. So that really helped me. I slept for an hour and when my doctor came and checked me in the morning, I was 5 centimeters. I was at 0 station. Basically, the doctor said because of the circumstances, she thought that I had to be around a 6 by the time she came back later on. I thought it was achievable. I had a whole morning. By that time also, I had developed a lot of pain in my left side and in my right side. The right was a sciatica type of pain and the left was just my lower back. It was hurting a lot like my kidney type of thing. I was drinking water and drinking water and I just couldn’t get satiated. I kept laboring in bed. They didn’t mention the OP baby. They didn’t offer a peanut ball. Nothing, so I was there just surviving in bed. They wouldn’t let me get up, so I would sneak in between visits from the nurse and get up with my husband a little bit because I would feel my legs and everything. I needed to get up because it was so excruciating, the pain in my back when I was laying down. The doctor came at 3:00 PM and I was again 5 centimeters. Her fear of infection was clearly high. She was scared for me even if nothing really was happening. At that point, my water really, really, really broke and there was this green, thick layer. It was full of meconium coming out of me which I knew was only a matter of watching it. It didn’t mean that I could not have a vaginal birth, but it was a little concerning. The doctor convinced me to take Pitocin at that point. I started that at 3:30 and the pain in my sides increased. It was more and more difficult to try to stay in bed. A few hours later, I think it was around 9:00 PM, I had blood pressure issues. Everything was starting to pile up. There was a little bit of protein in my urine, but I had been given so many different infusions of liquids that my doctor chose to change one first before giving me my other medicine to see if that worked. That worked, but by that time, for someone who didn’t want any interventions, I was full of tubes everywhere to my uterus with a catheter, it was just really bizarre. During that time, I also had a resident come in. She was the chief of residents and she was one of the sources of my trauma really in the hospital because she was really disrespectful to me not only in her comments. When she saw me in pain, she said, “Oh, you wanted a natural birth so I don’t know what you expected,” and things like that. Also, she came and checked me and she really hurt me. I asked her to stop and instead of stopping, she pushed harder inside of me. Meagan: Oh!Pat: I didn’t even know how to react to that because she ignored me and she kept doing it even harder. I felt so violated by that and that just stayed with me. Meagan: I’m so sorry. Pat: Yeah, it was crazy. I continued laboring and the blood pressure resolved. The kidney was failing. They said it was damaged. That was why the protein was coming out on the tests. But with that change of liquids that they gave me, apparently, it just made it better. The pain was still there, but the protein disappeared. My blood pressure came down and that was really it. Around 10:30, following my notes, apparently, the baby’s heart dropped. It lasted more than eight minutes, but it wasn’t a big drop. That was also my first experience with everyone coming into the room screaming. This is another thing. I saw this chief resident talking to my husband about what was happening to me but no one was talking to me. They were yelling at me, “On all fours!”That was after I got up and they saw me up, so they were also yelling at me, “What did you do? This is all you. Go back to bed.” I was so scared. Yeah, but nobody was explaining to me what was happening. Luckily, they got that under control and then they explained to me what had happened. They told me to lay on my side really, really still. On that side, it really, really hurt almost like torture. A really well-designed torture. They had stopped Pitocin and they restarted it an hour later. Everything was going well, but again, after a couple of hours, there was another deceleration. We are now at 4:00 AM so it is 24 hours after I had gotten to the hospital. This one was shorter, but it was deeper. I was only 6 centimeters when I had it. I couldn’t even picture myself having a baby frozen in this position. “You cannot do this. You cannot do that.” How am I going to birth a baby then? I was really sad, but I didn’t see any other way out. I had my cry with my husband and then we just went to the OR. It wasn’t an emergency, so we had a minute to process. It was something that needed to be done. My doctor was great at talking to me. This was the first time that she actually came to the hospital after 24 hours, so once she was there, I didn’t have to deal with the chief resident. She is always really respectful and she always talks to me about everything before making a decision so that was great and helped me calm. The surgery went great, but I was so out of it. For example, when they were going to pull out the baby, they lowered the curtain but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t even say it. I didn’t see it. I couldn’t see and I said, “Okay,” then I turned and looked at my husband and at his face. He was looking at our baby being born which also was beautiful, but I was really, really out of it. I think it took them 15 minutes or so to bring the baby. They also raised him, but I only saw the legs. I remember him crying and just realizing that I actually had a baby. It’s a real baby and not a fish that was inside of my belly. It was pretty great. Then they wheeled me into recovery and I was in a lot of pain, but my husband recalls actually that when they brought the baby, he actually said, “I thought you were dying but then they brought the baby and put him on your chest and you were fine.” I didn’t remember that but I keep that as a memory because I thought that was one of the most beautiful things that happened. He also crawled to my breast which was really great. Meagan: Yay. That’s really cool because a lot of times with Cesareans, they don’t allow that to happen so that’s really cool. Pat: Right. No, they were really good at giving me the baby as soon as they could. I also held him in the OR but I wasn’t feeling great and then they took him back. But then this nurse came and without saying anything. I’m in this beautiful moment. The baby latches. I’m just enjoying it and this woman starts punching me in the uterus basically. That’s how it felt. Massaging me and I screamed like I’ve never screamed in my life. It hurt so much. I asked her. Again, she didn’t say anything. I asked her, “What are you doing?” She said, “I have to do this because it’s either this or you’re going to bleed to death.” I said, “But I’m not hemorrhaging or anything. That was just another thing that really impacted me. Meagan: That sticks in your mind, yeah. Pat: Exactly. The flashbacks come afterward. It might not sound like a big deal, but it is a big deal. It’s a really big deal. We went to the room and after that, everything was beautiful getting to know our baby and naming him because we knew that he was a boy but we had different names. He was great. He was drinking. He was wetting the diaper but then because of all of the liquids that I got, first of all, he was 8 pounds, 12 ounces when he was born but almost a pound of that or half a pound of that was liquid. He was so swollen. Meagan: Yes. I want to talk about that because a lot of people don’t realize that’s a thing. We have long labors and we receive a lot of fluid or we receive a lot of antibiotics and all of these fluids, it can actually make our baby bigger than they actually are. So yeah. It’s crazy. You have to have an 8-pound baby come out, but then they’re 7 pounds. It’s scary because it looks like they’ve dropped so much weight and then you’re not thinking that you are feeding your baby right and they’re not getting enough milk when actually, they’re getting rid of that excess fluid. Pat: That was part of the problem. It’s crazy that they don’t know it. Meagan: They don’t talk about that. Pat: The problem was that he was losing so much weight because he was getting out of the liquids but in the process because apparently, all of the liquids threw his pH off so he was dehydrated. He was eating normally but he was dehydrated. After another day, his diaper was dry. I told the nurse, “I don’t think this is normal.” She was like, “No, no. This is normal. Don’t worry.” I was like, “Okay. I guess maybe babies are like that.” But then we had a great lactation consultant and she noticed that he was breathing really fast. They had to take him to the NICU just because of dehydration. It was another setback on the happy ending type of thing. But luckily, he only spent the night and a morning there and he was okay. We took him home. This was already day number four in the hospital. From then on, he thrived. We had to do for a little bit, I think it’s called a [inaudible] feeding thing just to make sure he was gaining weight but it was really obvious from the get-go that my milk was enough for him and he was good with it so after a week, we weaned him out of the bottle and he was only breastfeeding, gaining weight, and everything was great. Yeah, I had a lot of emotions but my postpartum was really good. I think that has a lot to do with my placenta encapsulation but I will never know I guess. Meagan: I know. I love placenta encapsulation myself. So yeah. Pat: So yeah, second baby. I remember a nurse in my room. I was actually getting wheeled to the OR and I had a nurse talking to me, “Don’t worry, honey. You can have a VBAC.” I was like, “I don’t know about this VBAC, but I’m telling you that I’m not having more kids.” So that VBAC thing stuck with me. I started having baby fever really early on like six months postpartum. I thought my baby was so cute, I thought, “I want another baby.” My husband was a little resistant but I knew that I was going to convince him so in the meantime, I started listening to The VBAC Link Podcast. It was a great source of learning. I’ve always loved birth stories, but this was really specific. Listening to so many Cesarean stories, I could also understand better what happened to me and maybe make a plan for why I didn’t want it to repeat again in the future. When I got pregnant, I got pregnant on the first try. I just want to say it again because I was 42 at the time. I was 41.5. I turned 42 when I was pregnant. Age doesn’t have to be an impediment to having kids. Every person is a person. Statistics don’t represent you. I want people to have hope for that. This pregnancy went also really well. The symptoms were a little bit worse. I didn’t have extreme nausea or anything, but it was a little bit worse. Not too bad, but a little bit worse. I hear that happens with second babies and third. At this moment, what I was more focused on was my VBAC. Of course, I wanted to go unmedicated too, but I really wanted to do everything possible to have a vaginal birth. I hired this doula. I live in L.A. and there is this famous doctor who everyone goes to. I thought, “I love my doctor, but she already was talking about how she follows a certain procedure at the hospital.” At 39 weeks, she recommended being induced and all of that stuff. I just thought, “She’s great, but I really want to have the best chance. If they call this guy the king of VBACs, shouldn’t I go with him?” I went with him and he was really hopeful about my VBAC. He has a weird personality. He’s really nice but at the same time, he is just not everyone’s cup of tea and not my cup of tea in a lot of different things. I had a little bit of a red flag for certain things that he was trying to force on me. When I would tell him, “I don’t want this or I don’t want that,” he would just get mad basically and try to push it. I was going away from having to convince my doctors of what I wanted for my birth so I landed on a guy who was supposed to be– it felt to me at the time– the only way of having a VBAC and having to have the same fights with him, it felt really confusing. I think it’s really important to know that because a provider might be VBAC-supportive, it doesn’t mean that they are not also intervention-supportive which is what happened with this guy basically. I continued with him because I was really scared to not have my VBAC unless I was with him. Meagan: Right, because everybody around is like, “Go here.” Pat: Yeah, and here’s another thing. I could find maybe one or two medium reviews, but all of the reviews about him in all of the VBAC groups were like, “No, this is a great guy.” Meagan: This is the person, yeah. Pat: People don’t want to tell bad stories. They don’t want to talk badly about the doctor then what are you doing then? You are just protecting this doctor. You are not protecting women or people that are birthing. Meagan: Well, and what’s hard too is even though one provider may be very VBAC-supportive and be very cohesive with that patient, it doesn’t mean that he or she is going to be an amazing VBAC-supportive doctor, but may not still fit the same desires. They can be VBAC-supportive but they might not be the right provider for everybody else. Pat: Yes, yes. I wish I could have read a little bit more about him because then just talking to other women in the group privately, they would say, “Yeah,” and most of the people had a good experience with him, but I wish I would have been able to read or find these reviews because that maybe would have made a difference in trying to find another VBAC-supportive provider. But I stuck with him. Everything went well. I had no problems that could have been related to age or problems at all. It was a normal, healthy pregnancy. I had been really careful of my positioning during the pregnancy so baby wouldn’t be OP but he was OP too. By that time, we didn’t know he was a he. I knew that it doesn’t matter he’s OP. It’s another baby. It’s another birth. I have a doula now. If I get stuck in another 4-day or 5-day birth, this person is going to help me get through it. I believe I can do it. I just need help. That’s it. Meagan: Well, and it would probably shorten it because they would probably know and have some tools that would hopefully help. Pat: Which she did because my story, with this second baby went really similarly. I actually was 39 weeks pregnant this time. I don’t know if it was all of the cleaning I did or my two-year-old, my one-year-old then had this huge tantrum, one that he never had. He cried in my arms for two hours and I felt my first contraction when I was with him. From there, it started the same way. Really low-key, a cramping feeling that went a little bit up during the day but nothing was happening either. But then at night, I tried to sleep and I was in so much pain. I was having really huge contractions. We are still cosleeping basically. My toddler was there. My husband was there and my body didn’t feel free enough to move things forward. My husband had me labor during the night, but in the morning, it went down. The contractions, I didn’t even time but in the morning they were back to 7-10 minutes and less painful but still really intense. I remember I kept cleaning. I did a set of exercises to get things going from Spinning Babies. Meagan: Three Sisters? Pat: The [inaudible] one. Meagan: Oh, yes. I know what you’re talking about. Pat: There were a bunch of exercises you could do so I did all of them. Here’s another thing that I recommend to people who have had trauma in their first births. I thought, “I’ve got it.” I thought, “I have processed this. I am okay.” I even wrote a script about witches. It’s named The Resident. I thought I had processed it but I didn’t so when things were really starting to get similar to my first birth, my mind got out of whack. I lost it and I remember crying to my sister-in-law, “This is the same as with Liam. It’s going to be five days. I’m going to end with a Cesarean.” Totally negativity that I didn’t need at that moment. Meagan: You spiraled. Yeah. I did that too. Pat: I spiraled, yeah. So you really need to process your first birth before going into a VBAC. But I could feel that things were different. I felt the body recharge that I never had. I could feel my hips hurting a lot which meant something was happening down there so that kept me hopeful. My husband told me, “Listen. I saw you with our first. This is different. You are so much more advanced right now. You never got to this point.” Meagan: But in your mind, you’re relating to what you know. Pat: I know and also your mind is not a rational mind in that moment. It is full of fear and you’ve been told that you cannot do this, so why would you think you can do it? That’s where your mind goes in that moment. My doula came finally that afternoon and she had me breathe through the contractions which I think was key because from there on, I could relax with them and I got in the bath and everything felt more controlled. One of the things that she actually had me do for the last couple of months before the birth was sleeping with two or three pillows in between my legs as if it was a peanut ball or a peanut ball. I had a bunch of pillows. I feel like that was key too because my hips are not too wide for how tall I am. I feel that keeping my hips open really helped this time. That night, the second night, I went to bed with a Benadryl again and I woke up at 1:00 or so. I was in a lot of pain. Really big contractions that you couldn’t sleep through. Again, I went to the bath and the counterpressure really helped. It really, really helped. It was one of the things that helped me the most. I had the HypnoBabies in my first pregnancy, but it never got to really help me at all. It’s really funny just singing a song in my mind. It was Yellow by Coldplay. Not even loud in my mind. Every contraction and that was it. I could go through them. It was just crazy. Meagan: I did the same thing with Believe by Whitney Houston. Pat: It was a random song also. Meagan: “If you believe,” and singing it in my head, and then I ended up making a slideshow video with that song. It just connected to me. Pat: That’s so cute. Yeah. It was magic. I think it was 3:00 or 4:00 AM in the morning. It was intense enough that I thought, “If I keep going then I might have him in the car.” I would feel different things in my hips. I could feel a little bit of the movement going down. It was like, “No, no. This is different.” I’m now going to get there and I’m going to be just 3 centimeters. If not, I don’t understand birth at all. So we went to the hospital. It was 40 minutes away, 30 with traffic. It was bad but not horrible because of Coldplay. When I got there, it was amazing because I had a really strong contraction and the nurses just put me in a room. Meagan: You didn’t have to be in triage for 3 hours. Pat: If you go to the hospital, just have a really, really, really big contraction so you don’t have to wait there for 3 hours. So yeah, I got checked. I of course didn’t want a resident around me so I had a midwife team. The midwife checked me and I was 10 centimeters she said but I had a bulging bag so I was 8 centimeters. Meagan: Yeah. Sometimes a bag can overstretch the cervix and then the bag breaks and the cervix relaxes. It seems like they check and they’re like, “We don’t feel any cervix,” but then the bag goes away and they’re like, “Oh. There’s some cervix left.” So that’s probably what happened. Pat: I was not even defeated because I thought, “I am still 8 centimeters. I never made it through 6.” Meagan: Huge. Huge. Yeah. Pat: I was so proud of myself, but I must say that when I got there, I was walking into the room and my doctor came in. He looked so tired. He had two births before me. What he said was, “Don’t tell me you are in labor.” I’m like, “I am in labor.” You could tell he was not there. He was tired which I understand, but I still feel like you have to be professional. You cannot tell that to a birthing woman. That’s where the problems with him started. It didn’t feel good but I forgot about it. I had my midwife and I was mostly laboring with her. He would just come in and out. I thought I was doing it. I didn’t want an epidural. I was laboring in the room. I was really tired, but the baby also was really high like -3. He was not down but it didn’t worry me too much. I kept going. I kept going for two or three hours. In between, my doctor came and checked me but there was no progress. At some point, I guess I wasn’t coping as well. I think I was just getting into transition because in between contractions, I was like, “Ohh,” like kind of fainting. I felt like my body needed rest. Two days laboring with this kid felt much more than five days laboring with my other kid, so I don’t know. My doula suddenly said, “You know, I know you want an unmedicated birth, but I just don’t think you are going to progress if you don’t take the epidural.” I understand she said that because she was scared for me not to have my VBAC but also, I feel like it was early in the game. Why don’t we try other things before that? But it was true because basically what I thought– my husband though was my huge supporter. He was like, “No, no, no. You’re doing great. You can do this. You can do this.” He still tells me nowadays, “If you could have heard me and not the doula–”. I was like, “Supposedly, doulas have so much experience–”. Meagan: Sometimes, an epidural is a great tool. There’s this spot where we get in labor where we’re tense and we’re not really letting our body go, so an epidural can come into great play and allow us to finish out that cervix and that dilation and that process, but yeah. If you didn’t want one then there are other things you could do. Different positioning and coping and breathing and water. Pat: I think that’s what she saw. She saw that I was too tense and that was not going to go anywhere. So I said, “Okay. I’m going to wait half an hour and if I did not progress, then I will consider it. It would be the right thing. It makes sense.” This was almost four hours from the moment we got there. When we got checked, I hadn’t progressed and I accepted the epidural. Meagan: Did your water break? Was it bulging and then they broke it or was it still bulging? Pat: The doctor broke it a little bit but just enough so that it would just come out a little bit and come down, but he didn’t break my waters completely. They actually broke when I was laboring in the room. It was really funny because it was gallons of clear water which was a different experience. It was like, “This is so clear. This is so clear.” But it was gallons and gallons of water coming out of my body. It was crazy. But yeah. After the epidural, I rested. At that point, they didn’t have the option of the walking epidural anymore so it was a normal epidural but I could still feel my legs and a little bit of pressure. It was good but I could rest. I couldn’t sleep but I could rest. Two or three hours after that, I was already at a 9.5 and I had a cervical lip. Oh, in between that also– this is an important piece of information. These are things I want to forget so I forget to tell them. The doctor came in. He was coming in and out. This was probably at 12:30 or 1:00. He said, “Well, I have a dinner at 5:30 so we need to start pushing at 2:00.” I’m like, “Okay.” And he left. I didn’t know if it was a joke or if it was true but it turns out that he really had a family dinner at 5:30. It turns out that also I was ready and I was almost ready to push, but I was fully dilated by 1:30. That lip really went away. The midwife put me on my side and it was great. She was amazing. I wish everything would have happened just with her. I started pushing. The pushing phase was really weird to me because I was expecting it to feel good and they were like, “Okay, you’re ready to push. Do you want to push?” I was like, “I guess.” Meagan: Disconnected. Pat: Disconnected. Totally disconnected like, “What am I doing here? I don’t understand what’s happening.” I pushed for an hour or so. I asked for the mirror to see what was happening. That was cool but also got me a little bit discouraged because I could see the little advancement with the push. When I was more advanced or ready, they called the doctor. The baby was doing fine. He had a couple of moments where his heartbeat was taking a little longer to come back, so I could see my midwife calling the doctor, but he wasn’t concerned so we kept going. I think it was one hour into pushing that he came and turned on the lights, propped me up, changed the way I was pushing, and just sat in front of me with a boring face and said, “Okay, let’s see.” It was just not the kind of person you wanted there. Meagan: Impersonal, yeah. Pat: Yeah, really impersonal. He was also yelling at people like the nurses. He was in a really bad mood. Yeah. Everything was getting weird. I already had this weird feeling of, “What is happening?” I don’t know. I cannot really describe that but it was this fight or flight mode that you get when you’re birthing that makes your baby come. That’s what started happening to me. The thing is that I kept pushing and pushing and pushing and little by little, there was some progress. At some point though, he started to mention how he wanted me to get a little bit more of the epidural, but I talked to my doula and to my husband. I really wanted to feel what was happening, but then he kept going on about how if I had the epidural it was going to be better because he was going to have to stitch me and then, “Oh, that hurts a lot,” and then this and this and this. He kept going into my head. I really regret this, but I let him convince me and I got a little bit more of the epidural. At that point, all of the pressure disappeared. I could feel but yet I couldn’t feel as much. After that, when the epidural was already in, he said, “You know what? The head of the baby is coming in and out, in and out, in and out. What if I take a vacuum and I use in only just to hold the head of the baby in the same space in between contractions?” I had heard this on a birth story. It worked for the mother. This was two and a half hours into pushing so I said, “Yes, yes. Let’s do it,” because I could see in the mirror that that was true and that was happening. He put the vacuum on and they closed– I don’t know. I closed my eyes and when I opened them because everyone was telling me, “Open them. Open your eyes. The baby is coming.” He’s basically yanking the baby out of me. This is all how I felt that it happened. I’m sure the other side is different. This is where my problem comes with this VBAC and it’s just that I felt I was tricked into using an intervention that I didn’t want. The baby was born at 4:45 basically. Meagan: Right before dinner. Pat: The other thing is that he had the baby. The baby was crying. It was a boy which was super exciting to discover. He was pink and one of the other things I had told him was that I wanted that baby on my stomach. One of the things I missed in my other birth was the feeling of this high when they put the baby on your chest and he knew. I had told him so many times. He had the baby and he kept cleaning him up, cleaning him up, cleaning him up. I have a file of pictures where I’m holding out my hands to grab him and I retract them until I just snatched the baby out of him basically. Meagan: Give me my baby. Give me my baby. Pat: Give me my baby. Give me my baby. I breathed out this moment of rage and I could be present with my baby. I welcomed him and everything was great. From that moment on, nobody took him away from me. I held him and he felt so familiar. I felt like our family was complete. At least that feeling wasn’t taken away from me, just the joy of welcoming my baby. Everything in the postpartum was great, but I really struggled. I struggled a little bit. I don’t think it was depression but the baby blues were really hard on me for 2-3 weeks. I couldn’t stop crying all the time. I would remember my VBAC and I felt really guilty. I even remember the midwife, “You got your VBAC. You got your VBAC.” It was like, “Yeah, I got my VBAC.” I’m glad. I didn’t want a C-section, but this is not what I wanted. I feel so robbed. I feel robbed and it’s so bad of a feeling to have. Meagan: Yeah. You did. You got your VBAC. Everybody on the outside is like, “Yay. This is what you wanted,” but it was very traumatic getting there. It was really positive and then it took a spin and things happened to you that reflected not as positively. We’ve talked about this back when Julie and I were together too. You can be grateful for your vaginal birth after a Cesarean. You can be grateful for your CBAC, your Cesarean birth after Cesarean. You can be grateful for your birth, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grieve another experience or be upset. You don’t have to have one without the other. They can go together. Unfortunately, you have this space now where you’re like, “Yeah, I did, but I reflect differently than everyone might think.”Pat: Yeah. I feel like all the work that I did, he just took it away from me because he was in a rush and it wasn’t necessary. Meagan: Yeah, I’m so sorry. Pat: I’m processing it. You can focus on the positive things, but it’s not great. Meagan: Well, congratulations on your baby boy. Pat: Thank you. Meagan: But yeah, I think that’s something to note and it’s so hard. We as doulas here had a client who said the same thing, “I knew I didn’t want this. We went over this with you. We all went over it, but for some reason, I just went with what the doctor said.” It’s so hard not to. We are in this very vulnerable space and they have this way sometimes– I’m not going to say all the time– but projecting this, “You have to make decisions right now” or “You have to do this or this scary thing will happen.” I don’t think that they really realize how their speaking to us impacts us as birthing women, but it does. It does. The things they say and even like you said, he sat down and gave you a blank stare. “All right, let’s see what we can do here.” Just that right there takes away from someone’s space. Providers, doulas, if you are listening, anybody who is entering a birth space, please make sure that whatever is going on in your personal life, whatever is taking over at that moment, leave it at the door. I know it’s hard. I know it’s hard. As a doula, if there’s ever a situation where I have that, I might need to call my partner because if I can’t shut that off and join this beautiful space and hold space for my clients, then maybe I shouldn’t be there. It’s hard because these providers are just going to be there but we have to be mindful. We have to be more mindful of how we present ourselves, what comes out of our mouths, and again, the actions that are done to us because they impact us so much. So I’m sorry that that did happen and I’m sorry that along the way, you had to go back and forth in everything. I am happy for you but at the same time, I grieve with you. I feel you.I am so sorry. So sorry, but congratulations at the same time. Pat: Thank you so much. I feel like you really understand. When I’m telling this story, not everybody understands why it hurt me so much. I feel that you and your community probably will understand. Meagan: Absolutely. We understand. We hear you. We feel you. We’ve been there. I really appreciate you and I know you are 10 months postpartum, but we’re still here. We’re still here to help you heal through this journey. Pat: Thank you so much.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“I knew I was having a daughter this time. I was like, ‘I’m going to approach this as the model that I want her to have. I want her to know that she is empowered to make whatever choices she needs to in life and I need to practice that now.’”Though Heather’s two birth outcomes were very different, the most inspiring part is what Heather fought for within herself. Heather went from knowing she had a voice and being afraid to use it to knowing her voice and making sure it was heard. In the depths of depression and anxiety, Heather continued to be proactive and choose healing. Through vulnerability, therapy, patient advocacy, medication, and staying attentive to her needs, Heather’s second postpartum experience was drastically better than the first. Additional LinksHeather's WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Welcome to The VBAC Link, guys. This is Meagan, your host, and today we have our friend Heather. She is from Kentucky and she is sharing her amazing story. One of the highlights of her story that we’re going to be talking about is postpartum depression which is something I’m really excited to talk more about because postpartum in general and Heather, maybe you would agree, I feel like it’s even more sometimes in preparing for a VBAC because we’re so hyper-focused on the birth and having this vaginal birth and avoiding a Cesarean and all of the interventions. I mean, really. We’re just so hyper-focused that we forget what comes after. Not just recovery after, but mentally and physically. All of the things, and so I’m really excited that you are going to touch on this today and I already want to thank you for your knowledge because I’m excited to hear what you have to say. Review of the WeekOkay, I have a review of the week and then we’re going to go into it. Does that sound good? Heather: Great. Meagan: This is actually a review of The VBAC Link course. This is from Ashley and she says, “TOLAC/VBACs should be treated just like any other birthing person but there is a certain preparation and information that needs to be offered to them and this course covered that. The value is held in your careful recognition of how to best support our clients who are doing a TOLAC.” I’m assuming Ashley is reviewing the doula course in this one. She says, “I cannot praise you two enough for the fear release activity. Honestly, it is something I can apply to even myself before and after birth and even in life in general. Thank you for that. It has already helped three of my VBAC clients.” Even starting right there talking about processing and fear release before going into birth can ultimately help us in our postpartum stages. Heather: Absolutely, yeah. That’s a big part of, I think, what I was working through in my second pregnancy. Heather’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, well then let’s turn the time over to you. Heather: Well thank you so much. I’m really humbled to be here today. I’ve heard so many amazing stories and I wasn’t sure that mine was really amazing enough, but I really just feel so strongly that talking about postpartum depression is important even now, even five years out of recovering still that I just really want to be there to help others who need that light. Meagan: Absolutely. Heather: All right, so I got pregnant with Theo in 2017. We made the decision in March and literally the weekend I had my birth control out, we looked at each other, and bam. We were pregnant. Meagan: Oh no way. Heather: So I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is amazing. Oh my gosh. I’m terrified.” I had no chance to really start processing this. I was still weaning down from my depression medication. I had been in treatment for depression a few years prior. I had been out of it but still on medication. I was feeling good. I was feel pretty stable. I thought going off of my medication was going to be great. So we find ourselves pregnant and oh man, that pregnancy was hard. I was sick. I was exhausted. I’m a performing musician and teacher of music, so I was getting through my days with little kids and getting to gigs and driving and throwing up in the car on the highway. Meagan: Oh, bless your heart. Heather: I’m still processing this whole, “Wow. Our lives are going to change.” I was really excited too, obviously. I was really happy to be starting this but we were really apprehensive heading into that. I was due Christmas Day that year, so starting in November, we started getting serious about birth prep. We did a very comprehensive birth course. I was seeing midwives for my care during that pregnancy and I thought they were just really great. They had the same view I did. I was really happy with the care I was receiving. It was very encouraging and just like, “Whatever it is that you want, we will get this for you.” The hospital I was going to deliver in had nitrous. It had one room with a tub. It had showers in every room. It had obviously the epidural and the IV meds. I felt good about the options, although something inside of me really wanted a more natural kind of experience. I think looking back, I really did want a home birth, but I was scared and it’s expensive, so this is the direction that we went in. Our birth prep, like I said, was very comprehensive and on top of that, I was reading books. I was making sure that I was informed in case of a Cesarean. I knew about the cascade of interventions and coping with contractions and stuff. We got to the end of that video class and oh my gosh. So they do this, “Congratulations. You’re going to have a baby.” I was just like, “Oh my god.” I was terrified. To be perfectly honest, my husband wasn’t much better. It was about another four weeks before I actually went into labor since that moment and it was an exciting time. I got through 39 weeks at work and then I stepped back because as an organist, I wasn’t going to be playing the day before my due date. My due date came and went and he didn’t come. I was very thankful for that because as an organist, I did not want to have a baby on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day would have been preferable frankly. Meagan: I was going say, did you guys have performances at all? So you took a step back but did you have Christmas stuff at all? Heather: I had backed off by the week before Christmas. Meagan: Oh that’s so nice. So you completely stopped. Heather: Yes. So 39 weeks on, I was on maternity leave. I had some Braxton Hicks, nothing really, not moving too much. I got to 40 weeks. My mom came. 40+1, we go for a walk. 40+2 I think is when I had my next appointment with my midwife who was one of the two midwives I had seen in the office and she was the one who actually was still doing hospital deliveries so we were like, “Okay, let’s get in to see her a few more times in case I possibly see her,” which I did. We decided to do a stretch and sweep. It kind of went. It was possible. I was pretty high and closed and stuff, but I think the sweep worked. I didn’t really experience much from that. My mom was like, “Well, I’m going to go see my sister in the other state,” so we had some space again which was really nice to have. Thursday that week, I go to my massage guys who are also acupuncturists and I was like, “Get this baby out of me.” They were wonderful people. They are not prenatal or anything. One of them is from India and he was like, “So your baby is a little bit over here and is not pushing on your cervix.” He just lightly touched my belly and it was so gentle. Then I had some acupuncture and they left me to chill. Then Friday comes the next day and that evening, I just had a sense. I was like, “Hmm.” I don’t know. I was just feeling this. So that night, I went to bed on the couch downstairs. My husband was upstairs. I woke up around 3:00 or 4:00 AM and I’m like, “Yeah. I’m having contractions.” I was like, “Okay, early labor. I’ve got to rest.” So I went and crawled into bed with my husband and that was just a no-go. It was too painful. I pretty quickly got out of there. Mostly, I would labor bending over, leaning over something. We did lots of different places. I was at home for a good 7-8 hours probably. I was feeling pretty good in early labor there. I just had some food, keeping it light. My husband was packing his bag because of course, he hadn’t packed ahead of time. I guess contractions probably started around 4ish. I took a bath. I know you’re not supposed to slow them down, but I was like, “I need to rest.” Meagan: This is the thing with taking a bath. I don’t want to say full-blown labor like you’re not in labor at all, but if it’s going to progress, it’s going to progress and water’s not going to stop it. If your body responds by slowing down and taking a break, that’s probably what it needed. Heather: Yeah. It still continued. He would put Netlifx shows on for me. He’d put stuff on for me. I’d be breathing through the contractions. After the bath, I guess shower, then bath. I don’t really know. I started having to moan through contractions and they started, “Okay. I’m doing my low breathing. I’m feeling good.” I was feeling like, “Okay. I’ve been prepared so far.”Around 11:30-noonish, things started changing and I started getting antsy and anxious. Contractions started coming much closer together. It was probably about three minutes apart. They’d been a minute long for hours at that point, so we knew that we were really in labor. I was definitely starting to get that worry, that anxiety going then. It was like, “We’re not at the hospital.” We weren’t far from the hospital, but I was like, “We need to get there.” I remember I was using the bathroom and laying down was a no-go. The toilet was absolutely excruciating. It was really intense when I hit a contraction. My dear, sweet husband comes and jokingly brings me something to put on that was lacey underwear or something like that. I was like, “You just do this. We need to go.” I was not having any of it at that point.So it was like, “Okay. We’re definitely ready to go.” We got in the car probably at about 12:30 and we head to the hospital. Man, the car ride contractions were not fun. I’m going, “Ohhh.” I start going, “We’re going to have a baby.” Meagan: All the emotions. Heather: All the emotions. I mean, it was funny but it was also like, I was starting to become a little unhinged there. I had gotten out of my safe, comfortable, “I’m in a space. I’m in a zone.” Looking back on it, I realize now that I was starting to experience back labor. That was still a whole extra level of, “Oh my god. I’m not prepared. This is really intense.”We got there. I insisted on walking the whole way. Meagan: Probably good for you though. Heather: That’s what I was thinking. I was like, “I don’t want to have interventions. I want to get there as late as possible so I’m going to walk.” Every 30 feet, we were stopping to moan through things. We go to where we think triage check-in is and it’s moved because they were doing work. So we were standing there and my husband’s calling the midwives to come from across the hall. It was ridiculous, but the midwife was like, “Let’s get you a chair.” I didn’t really want it, but they could tell that I was in labor. I get to triage and they check me and I was 5 centimeters. I was so excited. I was a first-time mom. I’m halfway there. This is awesome. I’m freaking out though. So I’m freaking out and I’m there and okay. It’s time to admit me. I knew my preferences. I knew in my heart what I wanted and I didn’t ask for that. Meagan: You can’t say it probably right? Heather: Yeah. I thought, “I want a water birth. I want to ask for the tub room, but what if I don’t end up doing a water birth and I’m occupying it and I’m taking it from somebody else?” All these I would say people pleaser things came in. I was like, “You know, I want to get in the shower. I want to labor back in the shower,” but I was starting to shake. I was getting scared. I was getting more and more scared and just feeling out of control. So I was just like, “I’m progressed enough. I want an epidural,” even though I knew I didn’t really want an epidural. I was having this back labor. I had been laboring for a long time. I was 40+5 and I was tired. You’re not sleeping well by that point. The midwife was great. She was supporting me. She was applying back pressure and a lot of tailbone pressure, especially with the back labor and it was really helpful, but I eventually got the epidural. The first one didn’t take. They did another one immediately and that one only half worked. They put me on my left side because I could feel my contractions all the way down my left thigh. It was really, really intense. The medicine worked that way. I guess we got some sleep. A few hours later, they come to move me to my right side. A few hours later, they move me so I’m sitting with my legs and knees out. That was all they moved me. I couldn’t really move. Over the course of having to move, the epidural definitely started wearing off on my left side again. Then shift change happens around 8:00 PM and the midwife that I had been seeing comes on. I was so happy. I was so happy to have her because she was wonderful. She comes in and the room is dark. She checks me and I’m complete. Well, I’m almost complete. She’s like, “there’s a bulging bag of water. We could break them and start pushing or hold off on pushing. What do you want to do?” That voice inside again says, “I want to labor down. I want to have some time to really feel the urge to push,” but baby was having some heart irregularities, so I was like, “Well, then let’s go ahead and break my waters. We’ll start pushing.” Even though in my mind, that really wasn’t what I wanted. Meagan: Your intuition it seemed like so far has been saying one thing, but then your voice said something else. Your mind talks you into something else. Heather: Absolutely. I think that’s really the motif throughout that whole labor. My intuition was in one way and what I was agreeing to and saying I was okay with was another. My midwife was very great. She wasn’t pushy, but having a baby who has nonreassuring heart tones, not dangerous yet was like, “Okay. I’ve got to consider this as well.” So on one hand, I wasn’t thrilled to be accepting breaking my waters, but I wanted to know that he was in a good position. I didn’t know it was a he, but I wanted to know that baby was in a good position, but the labor nurses were like, “Oh yeah. Baby’s ready. Baby’s ready.” Meagan: And you don’t really know about back pain at this point. You kind of maybe do because it’s half working, but you’re not feeling it the way you were feeling it so you couldn’t even really identify where he was at. Heather: Yeah, exactly. I’m a first-time mom. Meagan: You don’t know what you don’t know. Heather: No, you don’t. We start pushing and they were pretty good about letting me push on my sides and on my back. They would turn me to my left side and I would push. They would turn me to my right side. I would push. I did a lot of pushing on my back which was probably where the more effective pushing was happening. At this point, my temperature has been climbing so that was one of the reasons why my midwife wanted to break my waters was because my temperature had climbed a bit. She said, “Sometimes with an epidural, that can happen but if it keeps going and it becomes a fever then we know that it’s not the epidural and it’s an infection.” I’m thinking, “Okay, then we’ve got to get this baby out.” I’m pushing and an hour goes by. My husband is watching me get sicker and sicker. My temperature finally breaks into a fever around 9:30-9:45 PM. By this point, I definitely have a fever. Baby’s heart is not tolerating it well and I’ve not made much progress in pushing. So my midwife starts consulting with the obstetrician who is overseeing her who comes in and she says, “We need to get this baby out. Our options are C-section and vacuum.” I’m like, “Well, I definitely don’t want a C-section.” So she goes off to get ready for the vacuum. Now, she doesn’t feel that she can do the vacuum because I guess she had an injury or something so she goes and gets the other obstetrician that night to go and do the vacuum. So they’re back ten minutes later. I’m still pushing. I’m still feeling it. My epidural has worn off even more by this point so I’m really feeling the contractions and feeling them build. I’m working with them. I’m feeling like that was a good experience. I appreciated having that knowledge especially when into my second birth. I didn’t really know much about a vacuum. I figured, “Oh, it might be assisting in pushing. I’d push a bit.” They’d assist the baby out over a period of time is what I was expecting. After a couple of pushes with the vacuum, the obstetrician who had come on, not the one who was doing the vacuum but the other one, says, “I’d like to do an episiotomy. Is that okay?” I said, “No. I do not want an episiotomy.” We push again. The next contraction after that, she’s like, “Okay. I need to do an episiotomy. You’re going to tear anyway.” I talked to my husband and I was like, “Okay, fine.” Meagan: Oh, love. I love you and you’re not alone where you’re like, “Fine. I just want this baby out.” Heather: Yeah. I didn’t really understand that that was coercion at the time. Meagan: Yeah, because you are vulnerable. Heather: So vulnerable. I was sick. I had a fever. Meagan: I was going to say that you didn’t feel well probably. Heather: No, my husband was seeing me get sicker and sicker like I said. By this point, it’s probably about 10:00 PM. I’ve been pushing for over two hours. I have a fever. I just consented to something that I really didn’t want going into it. The next contraction comes and I’m feeling all of this movement down there. I’m thinking, “Oh my god. He’s out.” They’re like, “Vacuum just popped off for the third time and we can’t do it anymore.” I’m like, “What?!”Meagan: At this point, they had done the episiotomy. Heather: Yeah. They hadn’t told me that it had popped off at all. I didn’t know where we were in that process. Meagan: There was no communication. Heather: There was not that communication. It was just, “You’re going to tear anyway.” A certainty. “You’re going to have this baby vaginally and you’re going to tear so you need an episiotomy.”Meagan: So you made the decision with the understanding that this baby was then going to come. Heather: By that point, we really had no choices. I was pretty sick. I could feel the contractions. I wanted baby out. Meagan: Yeah. You just want it to be over. Heather: My midwife was there the whole time. She helped coordinate getting my husband to the OR. They turned up my medicine. They wheeled me down. She brings him in after they’ve determined that I’m numb enough which I almost wasn’t. This is the OB who cut me and that’s who she is. When I talk in conversation about my birth, that’s where my mind goes and that’s really what was like, “Wow. That was obstetric violence. She cut me.” I just can’t process it any other way. She almost put me under because they had to numb me and she thought it was an emergency. In my mind, I’m hearing her say to the anesthesiologist, “If the next time, she’s not numbed, we’re going to have to put her under.” My mind is going, “No. Don’t let me. Tell them no. Tell them you do not consent to go under.” Fortunately, they didn’t put me under, but the medicine was high. My husband was there next to me and my midwife was there as a support person. They performed the C-section and my midwife was like, “Do you hear that baby crying? That’s your baby.” That was beautiful. It really was. We didn’t know the sex, so she brought my husband over to the warmer where he was and he came back. He whispered in my ears, “You have a son,” which was a really beautiful moment too. They bring Theo over and I get to kiss him a little bit. I can’t really hold him. I want to ask if I can hold him, but I don’t. But I also just needed to sleep at that point. He was born at 10:38 PM and I had been going since 4:00 AM so I was exhausted. They take him away. Apparently, he was having some breathing issues so I sent my husband with him. They went to the nursery together. I want to back up and say though that while we were having this C-section discussion, the one thing I asked for was delayed cord clamping. That was the one thing and the OB said no. In my mind, I’m thinking, “Can I ask for a clear drape? You want a clear drape. Ask for this.” I knew the things that I could ask for. I didn’t though. I had already just said no to an episiotomy. I just had one anyway. I had just been told no to delayed cord clamping. I think I was just almost out of fight. Meagan: Well, yeah. Like I was saying earlier, it’s to the point where sometimes in labor, we want to use our voice but we can’t. We’re using it in our heads, but we can’t get it out. It’s just this weird thing. I could probably see you too just being like, “I give up. Everything I did want, I’m being told no, or the opposite has happened to me.” Heather: Yeah. That was something I really had to process through. Where was that voice? Where was I? Where were we working together and where were we not working together my voice and me? But he goes to the nursery and because I had developed an infection, they wanted to get him an IV and antibiotics as well. He was there for a long time. I was alone in recovery. At that point, I was like, “I just want to sleep.” At one point, my midwife and the obstetrician came in to have a talk afterward. What I remember from that talk was basically like, “You have a small pelvis. You have an incision where you could have a VBAC, but I think your pelvis is too small.” I was just like, “That sounds ridiculous.”Meagan: Yeah. You’re like, “I know better. I know better.”Heather: I knew better. I knew better. I knew that was ridiculous. Even in recovery, I felt like I timed out because of the fever more than anything and I timed out also because I didn’t have a lot of movement going on. There was no continual positioning during labor. I had been born via C-section. I was OP. That had been in the back of my mind in preparation. I was like, “I’m going to help this baby get into good positions.” I knew the positions to help me. I knew these things and I still ended up with a C-section. The hospital stay, unfortunately, was not better. I finally met him and got to hold him at about 3:00 or 5:00 AM. I’m not sure. It was a really long separation and that was a really hard separation to come to terms with. When he finally came into the room with my husband, we tried breastfeeding and it didn’t really work. He didn’t latch and then we just went to sleep. The lactation consultants came around the next morning. They were fantastic. We started getting a latch. We diagnosed him with tongue and lip ties. We got those revised and then breastfeeding was off to a much better continuation. The next day, so I went into labor and had him on a Saturday. Sunday was New Year’s Eve so we got to look out over the city and see the fireworks. Monday, I had this rash all over my body. We were like, “What is this?” It was particularly around my incision and my belly, but it seemed to be everywhere. We were like, “What is this?” It didn’t seem like PUPPPS. It wasn’t just in stretch marks. It was like, “Maybe it’s the antibiotics.” Meagan: The sutures?Heather: “Maybe it’s something you’re wearing. Maybe it’s the sutures. We don’t know.” I had part of my thyroid removed a year prior and I actually had an allergic reaction to the surgical prep. I was like, “Maybe it was the surgical prep.” It wasn’t. We don’t know what it was but they gave me Benadryl. I was like, “Great.” It made me tired. My baby was constantly trying to breastfeed. I was also on medicine for the infection and pain which was just horrendous. That pain was worse than back labor for me. That was almost the most traumatic was trying to walk the day after. It got better quickly for me. I was very fortunate, but it was really scary getting out of bed the first few times. Like really scary, I was in so much pain. So yeah. The Benadryl didn’t really help. The next day, I asked for more because I was still itching and the nurse was like, “It can make your milk dry up.” I was like, “What? I’m not doing that.” We got home eventually and it was just really hard. He very much wanted to be held all of the time. We weren’t sleeping. I felt like breastfeeding wasn’t going super well. We got to my two-week appointment and I saw my midwife who had been there in the birth and I mean, she was wonderfully empathetic. She was just like, “How are you?” I was like, “I am not well. This is not going well. This has been really hard. He’s not gained weight.” She asked me what did we want to do about it? I was really lucky in that the practice and the hospital in general had a licensed clinical social worker attached to it, so I could go to the same place and see this therapist. She was a specialist in postpartum and prenatal counseling and just maternal and child psychology. At two weeks, I was like, “Okay. I want to talk to her.” I went to that probably a week later and I just cried for an hour. I just cried. I talked about the C-section and the episiotomy and about how I was pumping at that point but he wasn’t gaining weight and how this was hard. She just listened the whole time. I was like, “Wow. I just cried for an hour.” She was like, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I was like, “I think it is a good thing. I needed this.” Meagan: Sometimes you need those releases. Heather: Yeah, the release was really important. I was seeing a lactation consultant. I was triple feeding so I was feeding, pumping, and supplementing. We get to, I guess, his one-month appointment and he’s passed birth weight. He’s doing well. I went back to the lactation consultant who was like, “Keep triple feeding.” I was like, “I can’t do this,” so I just started to listen to my intuition on that. By that point, yeah. He was gaining weight well. A few weeks later, I go for my six-week appointment and I still was not myself. At that point, I decided to go back on medication. We found something that was breastfeeding-compatible and I felt comfortable doing that. I knew that I needed to take care of myself and that antidepressants were definitely going to be the next step. I would say after I got on antidepressants, I stabilized for a while. There were a good few months there where I was continuing with therapy. We were dealing with a lot of, “Okay. I still have a newborn. I’m still exhausted. I’m adjusting to motherhood,” but just other things in life were coming up. Like I said, I felt like my mood was pretty stable. At about six months postpartum, somebody in my close circle had a pretty decent vaginal birth and I was really happy for her, but oh my gosh. I just fell apart. I dove right back down into depression. I showed up at therapy the next week and I was just like, “I’m so happy for her,” and was just crying. Again, I don’t know where this is coming from. That’s when we started the next step in processing the trauma. Since my therapist was attached to the hospital system, and since she had the specializations that she did, we were able to go through all of my labor notes. For those appointments, I asked my husband to be there for me as well, so we went together. We went through those over the course of a few sessions. We really dug into some of that. I remember going through the notes around the fever and pushing and I was like, “Yeah. I really did need that C-section.” That definitely helped me take another step forward, but at that time also, my therapist was like, “Just so you know, there are other avenues for discussing this.” That’s when she told me about the patient advocate at the hospital. I didn’t know about patient advocates, but my therapist was like, “She’s really great. She’s not just there to prevent lawsuits or malpractice suits. She will be there. She’ll be emotionally there for you. You call her and she’ll set up a meeting with the doctors and head of obstetrics and neonatology if you want.” So that was something that I decided that I wanted to do. It took me a few weeks definitely because it’s still something very close to my heart. It was still very hard. It was just hard to make the call. I think just making space for ourselves when we find ourselves in a place where there’s another step forward, but it’s still hard. It’s just so important. Meagan: It’s hard to make those steps. Heather: It is. You can feel like you know it’s what you want to do and you can still give yourself the time until it’s really right. But I made the call and in September we had the meeting. It turns out that the doctor who had cut me was no longer at the hospital. Meagan: Oh uh-uh. Heather: It may have been because of her attitude. I can neither confirm nor deny, but I did meet with the head of obstetrics who was actually performing the vacuum and assisting in the C-section. That meeting, I went into it and I wanted to ask about the fever. I wanted to ask about the infection like, “How does this happen? Did I do anything? Should I not have taken a bath that morning?” The doctor was like, “These things happen and you can’t control them and all we can do is make the best choices that we can make.” And then I brought up with her the episiotomy and I said, “That was not okay. I should not have been pressured into that. This hospital needs to know and the doctors need to know that all around, this was not okay and this should not have happened.”She said that they have trainings and there’s one coming up and that she was going to use this scenario in the trainings. That was really powerful for me to hear that they were going to talk about it in whatever way they did. It was really important for me to speak out and say, “This was not okay. This happened. It should not have happened that way,” but then also to have the doctor hear me and agree with me really did help. The meeting was also interesting. She said, “We would be happy to do pre-pregnancy counseling. We could do a VBAC calculator.” I didn’t know about that and was like, “Okay.” I also said, “I think this hospital should have more access to clear drapes, and women in my position should be offered these things, not just expected after all of what we’ve been through to ask for these things. This seems like a basic thing that we can do to be more mother-baby centric.”Meagan: It’s minuscule to make such a big impact. It’s a minuscule thing that changes someone’s experience so much and I love that you brought that up. I love that. Heather: Yeah, so this was back in 2018. I brought that up. I was like, “This could have been and I think this would have helped.” Neonatology was not at that meeting. They were unable to be there, but the head of neonatology did give me a call a few weeks later and she was lovely to talk to. She said, “I was reviewing your notes.” The obstetrician in the patient advocate meeting had not reviewed my notes. I had really hoped that she would have. But neonatology and I went over the notes for Theo and it turns out that he was in more distress than I had believed at birth. I also think that I just was like, “My baby is going to be fine.” Babies have trouble breathing sometimes. That’s why we have an umbilical cord. That’s why I wanted delayed cord clamping for a little bit of a buffer. But the care that he received was important. She just reaffirmed that getting the mom and baby together is really important from the get-go for us. We do value that and you are right to bring that to our attention, but we will continue this value. I got a lot of closure from all of those meetings. I definitely understood all of the medical things that had gone on better. It didn’t solve my depression. I’m still in therapy to this day, but it really helped turn the page. Meagan: Yeah. Heather: So fast forward to about a year ago, December 2021. I had even written that in my notes. I can’t do the math. Meagan: The years are blowing by so fast. Heather: It’s going by so fast and my daughter is in a sleep regression. It’s just great. We were starting to finally feel like we had our feet underneath us. We moved states. We got settled in another place near my parents which has been great and we were like, “Okay. We want to grow our family.” So that December, we decided to start trying, and two weeks later–Meagan: Did you look at each other? Yep.Heather: Yeah. Yeah. Two weeks later. From my last menstrual period, I was three weeks pregnant and I was like, “How am I getting a pregnancy test positive already?” I was terrified. I was like, “What is up with us? We are never taking risks. This is just too freaky.” Yeah. We got pregnant right away. So right away, I’m like, “Oh. But I have all of this trauma that is resurfacing.” My son was born at the end of December which means that the really hard postpartum was right during my first trimester which was hard again. I was very sick. I was resting a lot but it was also a different feel because we were so much better as a team this time. We were so much more open about how we were feeling. We were more excited. We knew that we knew more this time. But it was still an adjustment getting used to being pregnant again. I definitely had some anxiety and I don’t usually have much anxiety. Going into my first provider appointment, I was so scared. I really was not looking forward to being in prenatal care again because of my experiences before. So because we got pregnant so fast, I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to go, but I knew I wanted midwives again because I just did not feel safe with obstetricians. I went with what ended up being a community clinic for anybody. Anybody can go and it’s price-capped, etc. It’s a rotating group of people who provide the care. It just so happened that the first time I went there, I met with one of the midwives so I thought, “Okay. I’ll be seeing midwives.” I didn’t really know how they assigned people. The midwives were good. From the first appointment, she asked me what I wanted to do for birth and I said that I wanted a VBAC. My second appointment a month later, I was like, “But I have really bad tailbone pain, so maybe I do want a repeat Cesarean.” A few months later, I was like, “Nope. I definitely want a VBAC.”I started preparing for it. I did some more courses online learning more about VBAC. That’s when I got introduced to the Facebook community, The VBAC Link Facebook Community which was really great. I started really digging into that towards the end of my second trimester. I will say, unlike my first pregnancy, my second trimester was lovely. I really had a good time. I was taking medication for nausea which never went away again, but because I had it managed, I was able to enjoy and move a lot more this time. I did a lot of pregnancy yoga and pilates. That was really lovely. It really helped me feel more in charge and in control of that aspect at least. Towards the end of my second trimester, I was like, “Jake, I really don’t want an epidural. I really think that is the whole reason why I had the fever in the first place. What I’m learning now is that epidurals can cause fevers.” What everybody told me back in 2017 was that no, no, no, no. Epidurals don’t cause fevers. They might elevate your temperature, but I really don’t believe that at this point. I really think it was because of the fever. I knew that my epidural had not been great. I didn’t want it. I had back labor. I was like, “We need more support.” We got a doula and she was amazing. I had her by the end of my second trimester going into my third trimester. At the beginning of my third trimester, I went to a prenatal appointment on the regular day that I had been going and this new provider walked in. She said, “So you’re going to have a repeat C-section?” I’m like, “No.” She’s like, “Okay, well I mean, I have one priority, really two priorities and that’s a healthy baby and healthy mom.” I’m like, “Okay, but I signed the trial of labor consent last time.” She’s like, “Okay, well as long as you signed it.” It was a horrible discussion. I kept trying to be like, “No. I don’t want to talk about that. I’ve done my research. I’m good.” Meagan: Well and just what she had said there was pretty much saying, “Well, this is my priority and that’s the way to get it.” It was that. Heather: It was horrible. She didn’t go over my charts. She didn’t go over my gestational diabetes screening which I didn’t have, fortunately. She didn’t go over my TSH levels. She didn’t go over anything. She had a hard time finding the baby’s heartbeat. I was just like, “Man. Who is this person?” So I went home totally shook. I was not okay. This is not a good provider. I am being bait-and-switched. I called every office in town. I called every office two hours away. Nobody could take me by that point. I was bawling and I was just talking to my doula and I was just like, “I feel like I should drive two hours and show up in labor.” We examined all of the options. Because I hadn’t found anybody by the time of my next appointment, I went to my next appointment and my blood pressure was through the roof. It was 150/90 something and I was always fine. This midwife comes in and she’s like, “I was looking at your notes. That other provider does not do births. She can’t see. She is not indicative of this practice, Heather.” Right off the bat, this midwife was like, “I can see from your blood pressure readings and from what happened last time that this was not okay.”I think I just started crying. I brought my husband that time because I was like, “I’m not going in alone.” So we went. We had a 45-minute to hour-long meeting with her. She was just amazing. She really got me back on track. She was like, “Okay. So here’s what we’re going to do. At 36 weeks, you’re going to start the evening primrose oil. You’re going to start doing this. You’re going to stretch that. We’re going to do stretch and sweeps if you want. If you don’t want them, that’s okay. If we have to induce, this is what I envision.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh. They’ll even induce.” You don’t know all of these things and her overall approach was like, “Okay. I’m feeling so much better about this.” So for the remainder of my pregnancy, I pretty much only went in on days when I knew that the other provider would not be there. I started seeing these other two midwives mostly whereas I had seen a third midwife on Wednesdays so I knew a few of the providers. I was like, “Okay.” As we were getting closer and closer, I’m checking back in with my doula and I’m like, “This hospital doesn’t have the things that I want. There are only two shower rooms. There are no tubs. There is no nitrous. It’s just two medication options, but I don’t feel like I can drive. I don’t want to be laboring in the car. I want to stay home as long as possible.” But I definitely was starting to feel more comfortable with that decision. Knowing that my husband and I had done the self-work since our first birth, knowing that we had all of this time to really talk through things, knowing that we had a doula, we just felt so much better prepared to advocate and face this. This time around, I did a hospital birth course which included a tour of labor and delivery. I was not prepared for how anxious I got in the labor room. I really was back in that place. Meagan: Triggered, yeah. It triggered you. Heather: I’m heading to the hospital. I’m having a baby. There are going to be interventions. It’s not what I want. But we got through it and I just had to take it by faith that I was going to be okay and I was going to be able to stand up for myself. Fast forwarding a little bit, we get to 34, 35, and 36 weeks and I’m just having tons of Braxton Hicks contractions. My job is keeping me on my feet a fair bit teaching little kids music, so I’m wiggling around and every time I’m moving, I’m feeling tightening. I’m like, “Wow. I’m getting ready. This is so amazing.” I was feeling very positive about that. By 35-36 weeks, every night from 10:00 PM on, it was like baby dance and squish hour. So I’m having those tightening Braxton Hicks. Sometimes they were timeable. They were pretty regular. They were not stopping, but I wouldn’t call them painful. I was on the link, “What is this? Okay. It’s probably prodromal labor.” So I was having that quite a bit. I started at 36 weeks. I started, “Okay. I’m going to do the evening primrose oil,” and boy did that make my uterus angry every time I would do it. I’m like, “I don’t know if the midwife really intended this. Maybe I shouldn’t do it.” I go to my 36-week appointment. I go to my 37-week appointment and I’m like, “Yeah. This is crazy.” I didn’t have any checks by that point. I did have a check, I guess, at 35 weeks when we did the GBS positive swab and I did come back positive. I was so upset. I was like, “Man, I really should have just declined that,” because I wasn’t going to change what I was going to do for labor anyway. I had one of the nice midwives check me at that point. She said, “You’re soft but you’re still pretty high and baby is right there. She moved when I poked her.” I thought that was pretty funny. I’m not sure if my son had ever gotten down that low, honestly. At 38 weeks, we go for a walk. I stopped working. I just had so many contractions. I had been bringing my husband to work with me because I work an hour away. I was like, “I’m not going to drive if I’m contracting. It could literally be any time.” But we had the appointment and the midwife was like, “So Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are the midwives that are really on board with your birth plan. They’re the ones that you really want to see.” I was like, “Awesome.” So Monday night, I’m 38+3 and I do my prenatal yoga, pilates, and birth ball bouncing. It’s probably 10ish, 10:00 PM. My husband is like, “Let’s get this baby out of you.” He’s bouncing me on the ball. We’re just being lighthearted and silly and just like, “Okay, whatever.” But that night, I woke up at 3:00 AM which was not unusual having contractions which were not unusual. I get up to pee which is very usual as we all know. At that point in pregnancy, I just could not sleep and my water broke. I went to the bathroom and then I’m still leaking and it was dark. I’m like, “What’s going on?” I sit back down on the toilet. I get some light and I’m like, “Oh my gosh. There’s vernix in it. This is really my water.” I was so excited. I wasn’t really feeling any contractions and I was like, “Of course,” because I’m GBS positive, my water breaks prematurely. Meagan: Your water breaks first. Heather: I was so mad but I was like, “I’m not going yet. This could still be a day or more,” but I started calling my doula and let my husband sleep a little bit longer. I go into the room finally probably at almost 4:00 and I’m like, “My water broke.” He was dead asleep but his face lit up and he was so excited. That’s one of those really sweet memories from labor for me was just seeing his face get so excited like, “We’re having a baby! We’re having a baby!”Another hour and a half goes by. I canceled all of the things that I had to do that day. My parents come to get my son and I had a very tearful goodbye because by this point, I was definitely in labor and I was emotional. I was like, “My baby.” So my parents show up for my son and I’m in the shower. I’m groaning, moaning through things and I’m definitely having back labor. My doula isn’t there yet, but we still have a lot of time. Contractions were fairly close by that point, probably 3-4 minutes apart for a solid minute, really, really strong ones. Meagan: Which is common with back labor and posterior babies where it’s really, really close. That’s really common. Heather: Yeah, I was like, “The shower is great, but you know what would be even better? A bath.” So I drew a bath and I’m emotional. My son is gone and I’m crying to my husband. He’s like, “You’re going to see him again.” But I’m like, “But he’s not going to be my only baby.” The doula shows up and she’s like, “Now, is your bath too warm?” I glared at her. I was like, “No. I was a good girl. I didn’t make it too warm.” All I wanted was to be in the sauna. But I get out. I was like, “Okay. It is time to go to the hospital. I’m facing that reality. I’m going to have to go to the hospital now.” So I used the bathroom and I’m on the toilet. Oh man, once again it was just so painful being on the toilet. I start feeling my body push. I’m like, “Okay. We need to go.” So we were packed up. I put on a robe and underwear and nothing else. Meagan: That’s great. Heather: We show up in August to the hospital in the south and I’m in my not regular robe, like a fuzzy robe. Meagan: Like fuzzy warm? Heather: Yeah, yeah. That’s what I wanted. I was beyond rational thought at that point. My husband parks right in front of the doors. It’s totally fine. We’re in a small enough town. It’s great. He gets the wheelchair and wheels me up. People are clearing the elevator for me and I’m like, “Uhhhhhhh.” We only had a ten-minute ride to the hospital, but I had at least five contractions so I was in full-blown transition at that point. I’m horse-lipping it. I’m doing whatever I can to not push. We get up to the room. We skip triage. We go right into the room and they’re pretty calm. My birth plan never made it over there, so they don’t know who I am really. I’m like, “That’s great. I’m happy with that because I’m a VBAC person and I don’t want the monitoring. I don’t want to be in your constrictions, rules, whatever.” It took them a long time actually to figure out I was a VBAC person. They’re kind of intermittently monitoring me but I’m moving around. I’m fully naked at this point. I had no modesty. I did not care. Oh, I had a TENS unit and I had a comb. Meagan: Combs are amazing. Heather: They really are. I’m leaning against the back of the hospital bed and I’m screaming through them. I got checked and I was like, “Can I have medicine?” They were like, “Uh, it’s too late for that. You’re at a 9.” I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I started labor maybe around 3:30 or so and I’m at the hospital by 8:30. Meagan: Wow. Heather: So I’m at a 9. I had my TENS unit turned way up. I’m screaming for things. As my husband, I want to say this. As my husband was wheeling me into the room, I was like, “I’m going to ask for an epidural. I want the epidural.” He was like, “No, you don’t. No, you don’t.” That moment was so important because at that exact moment, I forgave myself for that first epidural. I don’t think I could have in any other situation. I really was like, “No. I did what I had to that first birth. I understand again why I did it. This is no joke.” Just that thankfulness and that gratitude for that started. One of the nice midwives was on call so she comes in and she checks me. Even though I’m a 9, my cervix is moving out of the way, so she was like, “You have the green light to push.” So I’m pushing and I probably got ten minutes into pushing and I was like, “This isn’t working. I want a C-section. I want to be awake for my baby’s birth. I don’t want her to get stuck.” The midwife was like, “This was your choice. We have not been doing this for long enough. Okay. We are not there yet.” Everybody like my doula is in the back saying, “No, Heather. You’re doing great. You’re fine.” My husband is like, “No. We’re not doing that.” I was like, “Okay. Okay, no. I know how to push. I remember this. I can do this.” So I was pushing. I started off pushing holding the back of the hospital bed. I pushed on my hands and knees. I wasn’t feeling like it was super effective at that point. I really wanted to try the squat bar. They didn’t really know where it was. They had to figure out where it was. I guess they don’t use it a lot, but I was like, “No. We’re doing this.” I pushed squatting for a while. That was pretty good, but we were like, “Okay. Let’s find a position where I can rest in between contractions too.” I tried on my left side for a while and then I turned to my right side for a while. One of the pushes on my right side, I felt a shift and I was like, “Oh. Now we’re in business.” I could tell. She had moved farther along. I actually ended up pushing on my back for a little while. That felt good too. It felt really effective. While I was on my back, I asked for a mirror which was something in my first birth, my voice had said, “Yeah. Go for the mirror,” but my fear had gone, “I don’t want to see. I don’t want to see that.” But this time, they didn’t have a mirror so my husband whips out his cell phone and I was like, “Don’t you dare.” He’s like, “No, no. It’s just so you can see. I wouldn’t do that Heather.” I was like, “Okay.” Meagan: That’s actually a really great idea. Heather: Yeah, honestly. I got to see that. I got to really be so much more present. By the time I was pushing, yes contractions were really intense, but I was so thankful to just be able to do something about them. I had experienced this in the first labor too. With the epidural wearing off, pushing felt good. Ring of fire did not. I could feel that. That was super intense, but I had really gotten back into the zone at this point.I guess I had tested out my provider and she was like, “No. You’re doing it. You’re doing great.” They really could never get the monitors to continuously monitor me. They tried one of the wireless ones and baby girl and I were just moving too much. I was thinking, “That’s fine. We’re moving. That’s what we need to do.” So I would push and then the labor nurse who apparently was a little snarky about me not being on continuous monitoring would slide the monitor down and at one point, the midwife was like, “That’s your baby’s heartbeat. Your baby’s doing good.” A few times, they reminded me to take really slow breaths in between so we kept that oxygen going. After a while, probably about 45 minutes or maybe longer of pushing, I got back up on the squat bar and it really got serious by this point. I remember the midwife was like, “Okay. There is about this much, about two inches between you and the bed, so once this head is delivered, we’re going to carefully roll you to your back and then we’ll deliver the rest of the baby.” I was like, “Oh my gosh. I’m having this birth.” So the next contraction comes and it builds. I push and I feel her just slip out entirely. Meagan: Whoa. Heather: She fell out of me at that point. In one motion, I had my eyes closed and I had been on the bar. She’s out of me and I roll back onto the back of the bed. All of a sudden, I have this very slimy, meconium-covered baby on my chest. She wasn’t covered, but she had all of this fluid come out.Meagan: Warm and sticky.Heather: Yes, very sticky. I was just like, “Oh my god. I did it.” It was an amazing feeling. I didn’t have this huge rush of love. It was a little bit like when I had held my son for the first time like, “Oh my gosh. There is this beautiful stranger in my arms,” but that was kind of nice. I was like, “Okay. I’m used to that. That doesn’t mean anything. I did it.” They did all of the APGAR scores and everything watching her on my chest. The nursery nurse was like, “If you see her starting to peck around, you can nurse her.” We had a successful first latch. My doula was taking pictures so we have some beautiful pictures of my husband and me just looking at this baby and looking at each other and grinning. I mean, I would say the biggest feeling I had after Juniper’s birth was just gratitude. I really felt so cared for in the hospital this time. I knew the midwife and she was really, really supportive. Having my doula and my husband there was great. My husband was a rockstar this time. I would say we were both kind of deer in headlights the first birth. This time, he was giving me sips of water. He was encouraging me to put on chapstick. He was holding my hand. He was just an amazing partner through this and I mean, I know my doula did a lot but I feel like she was also just kind of there. I know at one point when they were like, “There’s no birth plan. What does she want?” my doula was on it because at that point, all I would have been able to say it, “I want the things,” which would have been, “I want skin-to-skin. I want delayed cord clamping.” My husband cut the umbilical cord while she was on my chest. We got to see the placenta. We got alone time just to have that golden hour. I was very sore but it was nothing compared to the back labor. I just felt really like, “Okay. I can handle this recovery this time.” Important to note, I did have a mental health plan in place for postpartum. I still saw my providers two weeks later and it was the really warm and fuzzy midwife. She was like, “How are you feeling?” I was like, “Honestly, I’m great.” I had a little bit of baby blues a few days after where I was comically crying because my babies were growing up when one is four days old, but it was honestly a night and day difference between the baby blues and postpartum depression. Baby blues, I felt great most of the time. I had this abiding sense of gratitude and love for my husband, for my kids, thankfulness and so appreciative of the staff. My midwife had actually told the labor nurse to back off because she was freaking out that I wasn’t being monitored as a VBAC person but my midwife had said going into it, “I think number one, we’re going to get you a better birth this time and I think that’s going to help your mental health but number two, we’re here. We can up your dose.” I had therapy appointments already scheduled. My therapist was like, “If you need to see me twice a week, that’s fine. We’ll make this work.” Ultimately, I went into it having done a lot of preparation for postpartum and knowing that I had been through the fire the first time and I could do it if need be. Actually, it was a lot easier than I had expected. I think the other reason why this postpartum reason was easier was because I did do so much intensive work since my first child’s birth. I really dug into the trauma. It took a long time. There’s no timeline where you have to have it all figured out by and even during pregnancy, I was still figuring out bits and pieces of it and piecing it together and facing difficulties, but I had just told myself going into that birth, “I’m going to l listen to myself. I’m going to listen to that voice and if baby needs to be born via C-section, it’s going to be okay because I will have listened to myself this time.” That’s going to be the big difference. So I really tried to manage my expectations but also just to hold onto what I knew I could control and what I knew I could do. Meagan: I love that you say that. Hold onto what I could control. Hold onto what you can control We know in birth and in life, in everything in life, there are so many things that are truly out of our control, but for this birth, you held onto what you could control and then you were open-minded for the things that you couldn’t control. It didn’t go another route which is awesome, but if it did, you were much better prepared this time. Through this birth, I feel like we saw such a shift in you, Heather. We saw such a big shift in, “I’ve got this voice. I don’t feel I can use it. I’ve got this voice. I’m going to use it and I’m going to get my team. They’re going to know what my voice is before I get there even so if I don’t ever feel like I can use it because I’m in a space where I’m vulnerable, my team knows and they’re advocating for me.” Heather: Yeah. That was such an important part for me. I knew I was having a daughter this time. I was like, “I’m going to approach this as the model that I want her to have. I want her to know that she is empowered to make whatever choices she needs to in life and I need to practice that now.” I also want my kids to know sometimes life is uncontrollable and that we can trust things but we can also just accept that some things are going to be hard. We don’t know what the outcome is going to be. I really had this saying in the back of my head, “Don’t push the river. The river of labor is going to come. It’s going to take me where it takes me.” From the water breaking to her being out, it was maybe 7 hours. She was born at 9:58 AM so an hour and a half after I got to the hospital. So much did go how I wanted. So much was a lot harder than I expected, but I had prepared myself in so many ways. I knew I was strong. I knew I had been preparing my body, my mind, and my emotions. I really had just been so vulnerable with my husband and myself. I knew I could tap into that vulnerability as strength which is honestly one reason why I am here today is that I really hope that we can all find that. It’s hard. Meagan: It is hard. It’s really hard. We’ve talked about this in other episodes. It’s hard to even recognize or accept that you need to do that. It’s hard to even get to that point. There are so many times when we just brush it away so I love it. I love that you go through all of that work for for yourself. Look at what that did. Look at the impact. Like you said, it’s okay. You’re still going through things. You’re still working through things and you are probably going to for a while and that is okay, but you’re helping you and you’re taking charge for you.Heather: Mhmm, yep. I feel so good about the example that’s for my kids. Meagan: Exactly. Exactly, yes. Thank you so much for coming into this space and being so vulnerable and sharing these beautiful stories. I know as a mom myself going through two undesired Cesareans and both in different ways, I understand that space of wanting to be that strength but not feeling like you can and then through work and processing and education, being able to be there and say, “Okay. I’ve got this for myself. I’ve got this for myself.”Listeners, you can do that too. If you are like Heather and I and have been in a moment, and it doesn’t even just apply in birth, it may apply in all things in life where we feel vulnerable and we feel stuck, you can do it. You can trudge through the mud. Sometimes it’s really feeling like you’re trudging with ankle weights on. It’s thick and it’s heavy, but you can do it. You are strong. Something I also wanted to mention is patient advocacy. I don’t know if that’s ever been spoken about on the podcast. I don’t know if many people even know it exists. I believe from my knowledge that it exists in every hospital because there unfortunately are things that happen in hospitals where patients need to go in. But if you are like Heather and you’ve had this experience, don’t shy away. Heather, do you have any tips on how to maybe approach a provider in that way of, “Hey, I’ve got this going on.” How could someone start that conversation or who in the hospital can they contact to find the patient advocacy program?Heather: Yeah, so I knew about it because my social worker was also a therapist. I would say that finding social workers is going to be the first step because they are the ones trained to know the systems. I know that there are always going to be some kind of social worker attached to the hospital system. When I had that awful doctor appointment with that obstetrician, I actually did approach the social worker. She’s not a therapist but she was like, “Here’s the name of the person who you should talk to.” I actually have that card but I haven’t contacted them yet because I’m giving myself space and grace but I will. I will at some point and say, “This happened and it was not okay.” I would say if you are afraid to talk to your provider about it, just ask your provider who the social worker is and how to get in contact with them. I don’t think hospitals usually advertise that super well at all. Meagan: They don’t. Heather: But telling your provider if your provider is the one that you are reporting, telling them that you want to talk to the social worker is a neutral way to go about it. If you’re like me and had a wonderful midwife but had an issue with another person, you could probably talk directly to your provider about like, “I need to talk to a patient advocate. What happened was not okay and I want somebody to listen to me.” Meagan: Yeah. This is the thing. I think you touched on it earlier. It’s not always to just be like, “I want to sue this person.” It’s not about that, but I will tell you right now, it’s going to make change. It’s going to make change. You are advocating for another birthing person who is walking in and maybe is in a vulnerable space and doesn’t feel that they can speak for themselves or maybe after some more education from a provider’s standpoint or a nurse’s standpoint, they can step back and be like, “Okay. I’ve learned about this and I’m not going to take this approach because it’s affected someone else.” It’s okay. It’s okay to do that. You really are. You’re advocating for the future people.Heather. Yep. It really can help you heal too. Meagan: Absolutely. That’s one of the biggest takeaways from personally doing that. Like you said, it didn’t help everything. It didn’t cure all of your feelings, but it gave you some validation. It gives you power in your healing. So I love that you spoke about that and all about the postpartum. I’m so glad you had a much better and healing and beautiful experience the second time around. Heather: Yes, me too. I really felt so much better cared for this time. Meagan: Good. Good. Well, congratulations again. Heather: Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Abby has always had a heart for birth. She became doula-certified long before becoming a mother and even introduced her husband to The Business of Being Born on their second date! She knew that undisturbed, physiological birth was the way she wanted to go.But Abby’s birth experiences were filled with wild twists and turns including chorioamnionitis, posterior and breech positioning, pulmonary embolisms, hemorrhaging, multiple miscarriages, an ICU stay, and many blood transfusions. With the odds stacked against her, Abby did not give up the fight. She knew deep in her soul that a VBA2C was something she could do.AND SHE DID!Fresh off of her VBA2C, Abby shares every intense, tender, and raw moment of her journey. We know you’ll love Abby just as much as we do.Additional LinksAbby’s WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Hello, this is Meagan with The VBAC Link and today we have another beautiful story for you. We are so excited to share all of these stories in this beautiful 2023. It’s going to be a great year. That is what I keep saying. It’s going to be a great year. No more weird viruses and all of the things. It’s just going to be a good, positive year and we are starting this week out with a positive VBAC story. We have Abby with us today and she is from North Carolina. Is that correct? Abby: Yes, Charlotte, North Carolina. Meagan: Yes, I love it. We have quite a few doulas in North Carolina as well. Maybe you guys could all connect. She is actually a doula as well. She is not practicing right now because she has a whole bunch of little bodies around, but this birth has totally motivated and boosted her spirits into the day that she does get back into doula work. So Abby, welcome. Review of the WeekMeagan: I am going to share a quick review and then we will jump right into your beautiful story. Abby: I can’t wait. Meagan: Me neither. I really can’t wait for your story. This is PaigeBroadway. She shared her review and it was on Apple Podcasts. It says, “Allowing me to believe in myself.” Just that subject right there makes me so happy because that is exactly why The VBAC Link exists is allowing you to believe in yourself. We talk about this all of the time. It’s to believe in yourself to make the decision that is best for you. We don’t always have to have a VBAC. We don’t always have to have a repeat Cesarean. Or maybe a VBAC is chosen to a repeat Cesarean or a scheduled one. It doesn’t matter the way we birth, but as long as we believe in ourselves and we believe in our ability to make the right choice for us, that is exactly what this podcast is for. Her review says, “My husband and I are currently trying to conceive. I knew immediately after my C-section that I never wanted to have an experience like that again. This podcast has already given me the strength to switch providers and the knowledge to prepare for a VBAC. I can do this.” Paige, you absolutely can do this. Just like all of the others here, right? Right, Abby? Do you feel like that? Abby: Oh my gosh. That is just the most encouraging thing and that’s how I felt about The VBAC Link for five years and now I’m here telling my story. So yes, Paige. You can do it. You really can. Meagan: Yes. You really, really can. We always accept more reviews. You can drop us an email at [email protected] or Apple Podcasts or Google Play. You can send us a message on Instagram. Wherever it may be, we love to read your reviews. We love to receive your reviews. So definitely if you wouldn’t mind, push pause and drop us a review. Abby’s StoriesMeagan: Hello, women of strength. This is Meagan. I am so happy that you are listening to the podcast. When I was preparing for my vaginal birth after two Cesareans, it was hard to find the evidence-based information in one spot. It could lead me to feel lonely or even confused. This is why Julie and I created The VBAC Link Podcast. Did you know that we also send out emails with helpful tips and advice on how to achieve your VBAC all easily digestible in one email form? Just head over to thevbaclink.com. Okay, Abby. We have so many stories on this podcast and I know that like you said, here you’ve been for five years and now you are here sharing your story. You are just fresh. You are fresh out of it, right? 2 weeks? Abby: Very fresh. I just stopped wearing Depends the other day. Meagan: Oh my gosh. I love it. That is fresh. That is fresh out of it. Abby: Very fresh. Meagan: Fresh out of birth. Sometimes I feel like right out of birth is so fun because again, it’s so fresh and it’s in the forefront of your mind so you have all of the detailed things to share. I am so, so, so excited for you to share your story. So go ahead. Abby: Oh my goodness. Well, I should start at the beginning about five years ago. My daughter is turning five on January 31st, so it’s been almost exactly five years since she was born. I went to a doula training when I was 20-22ish years old way before my husband and I met. On our first date, he told me that he didn’t want to be in the room when the baby was born. I literally told him that he should go on a date with someone else because it was so important. I was like, “This isn’t going to work out.” I showed him The Business of Being Born on our second date and he has changed dramatically since then. Meagan: Oh my gosh. I’m dying. Abby: But I feel like that just gives a little bit of a background of who I am as a human being. Meagan: And your passion. Abby: I feel very strongly about it. Yes, yeah. I was really quite young. Honestly, I have to give a shoutout to a friend of mine who is now a midwife but was a doula at the time. We went on a mission trip to Africa. We were sitting on a bed in Uganda and she was talking about how beautiful birth was. I was a teenager. I think I was soon to turn 21. It was like, “Why would you not get an epidural?” I was very far away from childbearing years at the time. I just didn’t understand. She just sat patiently with me and explained in such a beautiful way how beautiful birth is and that it can create a mother and that it’s worth it to go through what you go through and come out on the other side of it. It was just such a meaningful conversation for me. It really shifted my whole worldview and made me who I am today.  It’s interesting thinking back on that girl who would have said, “Why would you not get an epidural? Why would you want to have a natural childbirth?” to the way that my stories ended up which is just bananas. Needless to say, I was very crunchy and felt like, “Okay. I’d love to have a home birth.” It was my first baby, so my husband was like, “Maybe we should do a birth center.” At the time, there was a birth center in Charlotte, so that’s the direction that we went. I was just picturing the twinkle lights and a tub and all of the things that you see on Instagram for birth. That was the mental picture that existed in my brain. At that time, I was listening to another birth podcast and I specifically remember skipping over C-section stories. I was just not interested in them. I didn’t even think it applied. It wasn’t intentional. It was, “Oh, well I don’t need to listen to those because I’m not going to have a C-section.”Meagan: That’s not what I’m doing. Exactly.Abby: Yeah, that’s not what I’m doing, so why would I need to listen to that? In retrospect, that really messed me up and I love that y’all’s podcast mentions that this is a podcast for all moms. This does not need to just be people who have had C-sections. I think listening to The VBAC Link can help you prepare to a) not have a C-section, but also prepare for a C-section if that’s what has to happen for you. It was just a really difficult transition for me from the twinkle light picture to ending up with a C-section. But my pregnancy with Hadley was fine. It’s funny because I’m older now and I’m like, “Oh, that pregnancy was great.” I was in great shape and I was much younger. Everything was fine and easier. I did have a rib pop out of place. I know now that she was sunny-side up for almost the entire pregnancy, so my whole third trimester was excruciatingly painful. I had never seen a chiropractor before that, so I went to a chiropractor eventually but it was really just like bandaids. It wasn’t really helping because my body was not in the right condition beforehand. I’m a really big proponent of bodywork. That will come back in the rest of my story. But at the time, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was in a lot of pain toward the end, but other than that, everything was fine. I went overdue which I expected. I was excited when I made it to 37 because I was still allowed to be at the birth center. I think I was probably pretty ready. I tried to do some induction acupuncture, and I’m not sure if it actually did anything but a couple of days later, I started having what I felt like were contractions. I had never been in labor before, so they were two minutes apart but really, really short and not getting any longer. I was just confused.My doula-gut was like, “This feels off, but also I’m dying.” I don’t know what to do about this. So we called my doula over and went to the birth center after almost 48 hours of having those contractions at home. Again, if I knew then what I know now, I would have taken a bath and had some Epsom salts. It was probably prodromal labor. We went to the birth center and I can’t not tell this part of the story. I told the midwife, “If you tell me that I’m 1 centimeter, I’m going to kick you in the face.” She backed up because I was only 1 centimeter. Oh, I was like, “No, don’t back up. Come in my face and tell me I’m a 4 or something.” I just knew at that point that it was over because I was like, “I’m so tired. This is the point when I’m asking for an epidural and I’m 1 centimeter.” How could I possibly get through this?The worst news was yet to come. She said, “You have to transfer to the hospital. You have a fever of 100.2.” She thought that I had chorio. I think, I don’t know how to say the actual word. It’s chorioamnionitis. Meagan: Yeah. That’s why they call it chorio. Abby: Exactly. Meagan: Infection. It’s an infection. Abby: Right. It’s a uterine infection. She said, “I’m sorry. I’m diagnosing you with a uterine infection. You have to go to the hospital.” I was just devastated. Honestly, that was the point of my birth where I feel like I really lost all of my power as a person and a mother. The rest of the birth felt like it just happened to me. I was not an active participant. I went to the hospital and they said, “You actually don’t have a fever,” because the hospital system’s standard of fever is over 100, and at the hospital, I was 99.7 or something. So they said, “You don’t have a fever. We’re going to let you labor.”Meagan: So it went down?Abby: I don’t know if it went down or if it was just a different thermometer and they were like, “According to us, you don’t have a fever so we’ll let you labor.” In retrospect, it was good news because if they had just sliced me open the second I got there, I probably would have never set foot in a hospital again and that would have been very bad news for my second birth. So I think that would have really turned me off of the medical system altogether and doctors. I just would have gone real red pill in the other direction. So they let me labor, but I ended up with an epidural at 1 centimeter. I tried to get in the little dinky shower at the hospital and it was cold half water. I was like, “This is doing nothing.” I wanted to be in the tub at the birth center. I ended up with an epidural flat on my back and at that point, you’re like, “Well, who cares? If I’m already here, why not do Pitocin? Why not break my water?” So thus began the cascade of interventions ironically that started with an epidural. I feel like that’s not always the case, but that was very much the cascade of interventions for me. I did not want them to break my water, but eventually, they did. I was there for three days and they really let me go for a really long time. Meagan: That’s actually really impressive for a hospital.Abby: I was so pleased with the care that I received. Both of the OBs that were flipping on and off of call were very patient with me. I think they kind of knew, “Oh, this is one of those birth center moms. We might as well just let her try.” Meagan: Let her do it. Abby: That was kind of a vibe that I got, but it was genuine. They really were like, “Yeah. You can totally do this.” But really, it was an unnecessary induction because I was 1 centimeter and I wasn’t really in labor. I wasn’t having true labor contractions. I wish that I had just gone home and gone to sleep, but we wouldn’t be here having this conversation if that happened. I got to 10 eventually and I made it to pushing eventually. The epidural that I had was so strong that I could not feel from my shoulders all the way down. I was numb. I’ve never been so numb in my life, but again, I didn’t know that’s not what an epidural was supposed to feel like. They were telling me to push and I was just like, “What do you mean?” They told me to lift my legs up and I was like, “I can’t hold my legs. They weigh 4000 pounds. What are you talking about?” The nurses were not as kind as the OBs and I could tell that they were not approving of my pushing and that it wasn’t doing what it was supposed to be doing. But the benefit of Hadley’s birth, she asked that I say her name on the podcast, so the benefit of Hadley’s birth was that by the time I made it to 10 and pushing, they tried to use the vacuum seven times. They tried all of the things. They really, really let me go. So by the time they said it was time for a C-section, I really trusted them. I didn’t feel like it was a snap judgment. I felt like, “You know what? Okay. I agree. If this isn’t working, it’s not working. There’s nothing else we can do.” So come to find out, she was sunny-side up. Meagan: I was going to say, was she sunny-side up still?Abby: She was. She was. So when they had broken my water, she basically got stuck up in that broken rib cage and never made it around my pubic bone. I also did have chorio we found out after. Meagan: Oh no way. Abby: It was just the wildest. We joke that it was a Murphy’s Law birth and that every random thing could have possibly happened, but everyone was fine. I was fine. Hadley was fine, but it was deeply traumatic for me. I really did not feel like I was present for it at all. It was really difficult to feel like I wanted to have this empowering, personal experience and it was so impersonal and medicalized. I was separated from Hadley for the first few hours of her life and they took me into, I don’t even know what it’s called, but it was a terrible experience. My husband was super traumatized because it wasn’t what he thought was happening either and it was really, really difficult for us. That is really when I started listening to The VBAC Link right away. I was like, “Done. I’m having a VBAC. That was terrible. I’m not doing that again.” I felt pretty strongly about that. Unfortunately, it took us two and a half years to get pregnant with our second. We had three miscarriages along the way, so a lot of our story has been “not right nows” and “maybe laters”. We are really thankful for the children that we have which is wild how they all got here at the correct time. We were filling out adoption paperwork in January 2021 after so long of trying and found out on February 1st the day after my 5-year-old’s third birthday that we were pregnant. It was the darkest line I’ve seen since I was pregnant with Hadley. It was like, “This is the baby. This is the one. She’s going to stick around.” I felt like this was my VBAC. I don’t know if that was just my personality and my, “Oh, this is going to happen. I’m going to manhandle this into being the case,” but I very much wanted it to be my VBAC. That pregnancy went kind of similarly with rib pain. I started chiropractic earlier this time, but still really struggled with the rib. Her name is Ginnie. Ginnie was sunny-side up the whole time, so that was against me from the beginning that she was sunny-side up, but again, I don’t know how I didn’t spend more time thinking about it or trying to get her into a better position, but I just didn’t. It was honestly the height of COVID and I had a toddler. Life was just still happening, so I went into labor I thought. I was 39 weeks exactly and my water broke at home. I was elated because, with Hadley, my water didn’t break on its own so I felt like, “Oh my gosh. Labor is starting. I’m going into labor naturally. This is exactly what I wanted.”I stood up and it was a gush. It was very much my water. It was no mistaking, “Okay, that’s not pee. Definitely, my water has broken.” I was so excited and then nothing happened at all. Meagan: I can totally relate to that. Abby: Yes. I’ve listened to your birth stories. It was a Sunday so a friend came to pick up our toddler and we were all excited. We were going to have a baby. Nothing. Meagan: Nothing. Abby: Crickets. Not even a single cramp. I walked four miles that day. We did all of the things and it just was like no. We went to sleep that night and I was like, “I’m not going to the hospital until 24 hours and then I’m not even going to tell the hospital that it’s been that long,” which is sort of what happened. We went in about 24 hours later and I still had not had a single contraction. Absolutely nothing happened. Meagan: Were you still leaking?Abby: Yes. Yeah. Meagan: Still coming. Abby: Again with the diapers, I need to buy stock in Depends at this point. But yes it was definitely my water and it was definitely not doing anything. I went to the hospital. Triage takes a million hours when you’re not in active labor, so we were in triage forever and they wanted to get me hooked up to continuous fetal monitoring. I said, “Oh, okay. So I’ll have the wireless one.” They were like, “Oh, it doesn’t work.” I was like, “That’s not what I signed up for.” My practice was very like, “Yes, you can have a VBAC.” Actually, my midwife was very, “You can have a VBAC,” but she was part of a practice that had OBs and you sort of don’t know who you’re going to get until the day of. I felt very supported throughout my whole pregnancy. Everyone thought I was going to have a VBAC. I had plenty of those conversations with OBs that they’re like, “Okay, so just so you know, here are the risks.” I’m like, “Yeah, yeah. I know all of the risks. I’ve done the research. Thank you very much for informing me. Have a nice day.” When I think back, I think there were probably some red flags that it was friendly but not supportive.Meagan: Tolerant. Abby: Yes, a tolerant but not supportive practice. But again, I didn’t know that until I knew that. I started an induction. My contractions started getting regular. It worked. I was dilating and I made it to about 6 centimeters. I don’t think I mentioned this before but my husband had childhood cancer, so he has pretty severe medical trauma and hospitals are particularly triggering for him. Other people being in pain is also triggering for him. Meagan: I’m sure, yeah. Abby: Around 6 centimeters, I was starting to need a little bit more support. My doula, because inductions take forever, was like, “I’m just going to go home and spend the day at home. I’ll come back at night when you really need it.” I was chilling. I was just watching Friends and hanging out until I wasn’t. It started to pick up really quickly. What made me start to need more support was that they turned off the Pitocin when I had to go to the bathroom and then they turned it back on and didn’t change the number. I think it was at a 9, but something about turning it off and turning it back on made my body go, “Whoa. That was really intense.” All of a sudden it felt like insane Pit contractions. My husband started to have a really hard time supporting me through it and my doula was stuck in line at Chick-fil-A. You know, once you’re in the line, you can’t get out of the drive-thru. Meagan: Of all the places too, darn it. Abby: We wanted it. I was like, “Bring me food. I want to eat something. I’m going to break all of these rules.” Meagan: She’s getting everyone food and stuck. Abby: Yes, she’s totally stuck. My husband needed to eat dinner. It had been a long day already, so she was stuck. I was like, “You know what? I have peace about this. I’m going to get an epidural. I’m going to ask for an epidural.” I really was pretty okay. I was not dying mentally at this point, but I felt like my husband needed a little break from me not being okay and I felt like, “I’m at a 6. I got an epidural at 1 centimeter last time so all right. We’re doing it. This is happening. Things are progressing. Let’s do it.” Naturally, my doula got back right before they were placing the epidural. She was like, “What are you doing? We’re not doing an epidural. Let me do some hip compressions. What are you talking about?” She’s very, “Come on. Let’s do this.” That’s why I hired her because I needed that, but I had made up my mind mentally. Meagan: Yeah, which is okay.Abby: Yes. Very much so. I think it is honestly what needed to happen for a litany of reasons. But once my doula got back, she noticed that my heart rate kept beeping on the monitor and when you’re in hospitals, you hear beeping all of the time so we weren’t paying attention to what the beeping was. It wasn’t the baby’s, so no one was really all that concerned, but my heart rate was insanely high. So much so that my doula was checking my Apple Watch for my history of what my normal heart rate was. She was like, “Give me your Apple Watch and let me look at what this normally is,” but I had only gotten my Apple Watch while I was pregnant, so I didn’t have a baseline, “This is my normal heart rate.” Basically, the nurses just turned down the volume on my heart rate monitor that was saying, “Alert, alert! Something is wrong with this woman.” Meagan: That could be a sign of infection. Abby: It could be a sign of a lot of things. Meagan: A whole bunch of other things, yes. Abby: It seemed like my doula was the only one who was concerned about that. I was concerned only about having a VBAC so I was like, “Whatever. I don’t want any hindrances to the VBAC. Don’t panic about me because I’m good. Baby is good. I’m good. I’m fine.” Again, I made it to 10 and pushing. My heart rate was through the roof and I guess I need to rewind a little bit, sorry. I had a cough for the last four weeks of my pregnancy, maybe more like six. It was a dry cough and it was a the height of COVID, so I had 75 COVID tests because they said that I had COVID.” Meagan: Because you had a cough. Abby: Yes, exactly. They said that if I had COVID, my doula couldn’t come into the birth with me. With my husband’s history, I was like, “No, no. I have to have my doula. That’s not an option.” I took 1000 COVID tests, but it was never COVID. It was never positive. I just had this dry cough that would not go away. The cough combined with the heart rate was really freaking my doula out even when I had an epidural. I took a little nap. I made it to 10 and pushing. When I was pushing, my cough really started to ramp up. I was coughing incessantly. I remember the midwives joking, “We’re all going to have COVID at the end of this birth. Obviously, this lady has COVID because she is coughing up a storm.” We were talking about how one of the midwives had just gotten her taste or her smell back or something after having it. She was like, “Oh my gosh. I’m going to get it again.” It was all of this sort of lighthearted conversation, very, “Yeah, haha. We’re all going to get COVID I guess.” Yes, except for my doula. She was like, “This is odd.” But she said, “You know, maybe you’ll cough your baby out. Maybe it will help you. Maybe those pushes will help you get the baby out.” She was trying to be encouraging. I don’t even remember. I should probably look at my notes on how long I pushed. I think it was a couple of hours and again, I had a sunny-side-up baby with my water broken. She was just lodged and would not come down. Meagan: Were they able to try and rotate at all or was she not low enough? Abby: Neither of the girls ever descended. I don’t remember what station they were at, but it was high. I looked at a picture of my third baby at 37 weeks and my belly was so much lower at 37 weeks than either of the girls on the day I went into labor. They just never dropped. They were not ready really. So when they said that it was time, an OB came in who I had never met before and was not the kindest about the way that she shared that information with me. For me, I felt like, “Who’s going to let me try for a VBAC after two? This is my opportunity to have a vaginal birth and if this is it, this is it. I can’t.” But it felt like at that moment, everyone in the room just sort of fell to what she said. I didn’t have a choice. Even my doula who I adore was like, “I think it is time.” So when your doula and your husband and your midwives all say, “I think it’s time,” then what choice do you really have? Meagan: Well, you trust these people.Abby: Right, right. You also don’t want to be the person who, this sounds horrible, but something happened to my baby because I was so hell-bent on having a vaginal birth. At that point, that’s how the conversation felt. Her heart rate was dropping and it wasn’t coming back up in between contractions. They were like, “Okay. I think it’s time.” I reluctantly consented, but really, really struggled. I sobbed through the C-section and threw up through the C-section. I hate having my arms out like Jesus on the cross. It’s just the worst thing in the world. It’s just terrible. It’s not for everyone. I feel like it’s important for me to say that that was my experience. I have a friend who just had a C-section and she was like, “I thought that it was really cool to know that they were down there doing all of that stuff.” She had a great experience and I think that’s amazing. I’m so glad she did, but for me, it was just so different than what I expected that it was deeply traumatizing for me, especially for the second time. But the baby came out and she was fine. I think it took her a couple of seconds to start breathing. I think she had some meconium or something, but they handed her to my husband. She was all cute and then they brought her over to me. She licked my cheek. I do remember having a very different reaction to meeting her than meeting my first daughter. With my first, I had never had a baby before and so I felt like the first thing I thought was, “I didn’t think that’s what she would look like.” I didn’t feel like, “Oh my gosh, I made this human and I love it so much.” That was just not my experience. But with the second one, I had a three-year-old at the time and was like, “You’re going to turn into the coolest little person,” and I knew how to love a child then so it felt much better and different which actually made the next part a lot harder. I still had my cough. It did not go away and after they had sewn me up on the table, every doctor had left the room and it was just the surgical techs and the people that are basically cleaning up the floor. I had to cough and my arms were still out. I was flat on my back and you know when you have a cough, you want to turn to the side or sit up and I couldn’t do either of those things. My lips turned blue and they called a code. I was breathing so I don’t know what the codes are. They pressed a big alarm and people came running. Brian, my husband, was holding the baby and they took her out of his arms and basically pushed him into the hallway so that he wouldn’t see me die, I suppose was the thought, or drop the baby or who knows. I just wanted to turn over and I was trying to explain to these nurses while having a coughing fit, “Can you just let me roll over?” They were trying to put oxygen on my face. I was like, “That’s not going to help this tickle in my throat. I don’t want you to put oxygen on my face.” I was fighting them off. Meagan: I need to get up. Abby: Yeah, exactly. I was just like, “Why can’t you understand me?” But I wasn’t speaking words, so that’s why. The first person who ran back into the room was my anesthesiologist and she apparently was a cardiac-specific anesthesiologist which I didn’t even know was a thing. She took one look at me after I had settled down and said, “I believe that you just had a pulmonary embolism and you need to go to get a CT scan.” At that point, I didn’t know what a pulmonary embolism was so I was not all that concerned about it. I was like, “You’re silly. I just have a cough. I’ve had a cough for four weeks. What are you talking about?” I knew that my husband was going to be really upset obviously, but he wasn’t going to be allowed to come with me to get a CT scan. I was like, “You have to let me go talk to my husband. I have to go tell him that I’m okay.” It’s not funny, but it’s now just sort of a dark humor inside joke that when I went to go talk to him, I was like, “Babe don’t worry. It’s just a pulmonary embolism.” He was like, “Abby, those kill people. That’s not a just kind of thing.” They found several bilateral pulmonary embolisms in my lungs. One of my lungs was 98% occluded, so 2% away from not being able to make it. I spent the first two days of her life in the ICU. Again, it was COVID so I wasn’t able to see her because everyone in the ICU was there for COVID. They were like, “We don’t want your newborn to get sick,” and they were on different floors so they brought her to me one time and then I pumped milk for her that nurses took back and forth but it was really insane. Meagan: Wow. Abby: They gave me blood transfusions and immediately put me on heparin and a drip to start clearing up the blood clots and get them thinned out. When I got finally sent home from the hospital, I had to start blood thinner injections and do those for the next six weeks which unfortunately led to a postpartum hemorrhage. Meagan: Oh my land. Abby: It’s a wild ride. This wasn’t even that long ago. It was October 2021. I basically didn’t have any postpartum bleeding for the first week. I was like, “Man, maybe the C-section is just the way to do it. Maybe this is making the bleeding a lot easier,” but what they think happened is that I had some major swelling and it was basically holding all of the blood in my uterus and by the time it opened up, it was like floodgates. I won’t be too graphic, but when they tell you to call the doctor is when I called the doctor. I had a couple of other scary experiences at home. I passed some clots and they had given me some Cytotec which is supposed to squeeze the uterus. Meagan: Clamp the uterus down, yep. Abby: It clamped too much blood out and I lost too much blood in one hour basically. I passed out on the floor and I was on blood thinners so my mom caught my head because you can get a brain bleed if something happens while you are on blood thinners. I had to get a blood transfusion the next day. My postpartum experience was recovering from a C-section, recovering from the ICU, and then postpartum hemorrhages and I think I had three blood transfusions after being outside of the hospital. Meagan: Holy cow. Abby: I don’t even know how to end that story and shift to the next one because it really was not that long ago. That daughter is now 15 months old. Like I said, it took us a long time to get pregnant with her so I suppose you could say that we were not all that cautious after she was born. Six months later, we found out that we were pregnant. Well, we didn’t know at the time that it was a boy, but we found out that we were pregnant. I had already been asking the hematologist and the pulmonologist, literally everyone. I was like, “So what happens when I get pregnant? Do I need to be on the blood thinner injections on day one? How does this work? What am I going to do?” They all thought I was crazy because they were like, “This chick almost just died. Why is she thinking about getting pregnant?” I was like, “Is this ruling me out of a VBAC?” I had all of the questions. I’m glad in retrospect that I asked them early. I was like, “It could be two years from now, but I want to know what I’m supposed to do on day one. I’m not going to be seeing a pulmonologist on a regular basis when my baby is two, so I might as well just ask now.” I had all of the information that I needed which was wonderful, but I struggled really hard with nursing her. All of my kids had tongue ties and it’s just been a difficult journey breastfeeding. Ginnie, the middle one, had colic and food allergies. I was down to seven foods that I could eat.Meagan: That’s the worst. Abby: It was terrible. I was off eggs, soy, dairy, gluten, caffeine, tomatoes, and corn. Meagan: You weren’t really eating anything. Abby: I really wasn’t eating anything. I was losing my mind. I was pumping around the clock to try and get my supply back up. She was still not gaining weight and we just were like, “If this was working, I could maybe keep doing it,” but it wasn’t working and she wasn’t gaining weight, so I switched her to formula. Once I weaned, we pretty much immediately got pregnant. Very much a surprise but I feel like I need to share the beginning of this story because this is really the start of my VBAC story and I’m really going to try not to cry. I had a postpartum nurse when I was postpartum with Ginnie whom we had never met before, but she just adopted our family. She brought me Uncrustables in the postpartum room and those are the best. She was like, “Here’s candy from the nurses’ station.” I think you get a little extra attention when you’re a pulmonary embolism mom in the ICU, so she just adopted us and became a friend to our family after the baby was born. She called me a week before Mother’s Day and said, “Abby.” She was bawling. She told me that she hasn’t cried in three years but this was the first time she cried. She was bawling her eyes out and said, “Abby, I just had a dream about you. I have to tell you the dream.” As a nurse, she has seen, in her time, one stillbirth and it really deeply affected her obviously. She had a dream that she went to heaven and saw her stillborn baby girl as a teenager. She was holding three of my children. Carly did not know that I had three losses because she met me after Ginnie was born. She just knew I was a miscarriage mom and in her dream, the reason she was sobbing was because she thought that meant I was going to experience more loss. She was devastated. She was like, “Oh my gosh. She’s already been through so much. She just had a pulmonary embolism five months ago,” so this stillborn baby girl who was a teenager in the dream calmed her nerves and said, “No, no. These are supposed to be here but this little boy is coming down soon.”Meagan: I’ve got the chills. Abby: This is a true story. It’s the craziest thing in the world. It’s just wild to me that this is part of my story but it is. She said that he looked just like Hadley, my five-year-old, and that his name was John which is our boy name and my dad’s name and my grandfather’s name. That was always going to be the name. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Abby: We were like, “Okay. That’s really weird.” You think that’s weird. I think that’s weird. It is the reason that I took a pregnancy test. We weren’t trying so I wouldn’t have taken one. It was the faintest little line. Truly, so, so faint but because I knew that I needed to be on Lovenox day one and because I knew from my miscarriage history, I needed to be on progesterone day one, it was a Friday so I texted my midwife and I said, “I need HCG labs and I need you to call me in progesterone and Lovenox.” My HCG that day was very, very low. I think it was a 5 and the lowest considered viable pregnancy is a 7. They want it to double or triple by 48 hours from now. I went back on Monday. I started my progesterone and Lovenox on that Friday with a very faint test and a very low HCG and it was up to 77 on Monday. It was doubling or tripling in the appropriate amount of time. I kept going back and it kept going. He is sleeping in the other room right now, so he clearly stuck. I really contribute his life honestly to Carly’s dream and the fact that I never would have taken a pregnancy test. It was a Friday. I was able to be so proactive about the medicine and care that I needed. I knew when she told me the dream, I said, “I’m pregnant. This is going to be my VBAC.” I just knew it in my bones so intimately. I really don’t know how to explain it. It was just a soul-knowing. I just knew. She was like, “The dream wasn’t literal, Abby. I’m not saying you’re pregnant right now.” I was like, “Nope. I know.” I just knew. I just knew. People always say things like that, but that had never been my experience, especially trying to conceive. You’re always like, “Oh, I stubbed my toe. Is that a sign of pregnancy?” You’re looking for every little thing and this time it was like, “No. I’m pregnant.” We’ve wanted a boy the whole time and I was like, “This is going to be my boy and this is going to be my VBAC.” I just knew. So really, on day one I started fighting like hell for my VBAC because it was after two and I knew that I was going to need to basically be a psycho about it. I think that’s my biggest VBAC advice for people is that if you really want a VBAC, you have to kind of have to be a psycho about it because no one wants you to have a VBAC more than you want to have a VBAC. You need to advocate for yourself. I think a lot of people can take a sort of, “If it happens, it happens” attitude and that is fine if that is how you truly feel about it. If it happens, it happens but if you really, really, really want a VBAC, you have to really, really, really fight for your VBAC no matter how supportive your providers are, no matter how wonderful your doula is, it’s only you who is going to get you that birth. You’re the one who has to push the baby out. You’re the one who has to do all of the work even if there are people helping you. And I did day one. We would like a large family, so our position from the beginning of the pregnancy was, “Well, if this baby is a C-section, then are probably done.” I really don’t want to put myself through more than three C-sections. The other two were so deeply traumatic for everyone in our family. I can’t imagine recovering from a C-section with three or four children. We are going to be done. So that really lit a fire under me to fight for it even more. Even if we do decide now to be done, I didn’t want surgery to be what decided the size of my family. That was something I felt really strongly about. I started chiropractic on day one. I started doing all of the things. I took obviously all of my medicines and I just took really good care of myself and my body. I think bodywork played a huge part in my pregnancy this time around. We found out at 20 weeks at my anatomy scan that the baby was breech. I’d never had a breech baby. All of my babies were OP before, so I was like, “Okay. Surely this is 20 weeks. He’s obviously going to flip at some point.” He really didn’t. He was breech until 35, so I went to a Webster chiro twice a week. I did moxibustion. I did all of the Spinning Babies. I hung upside down off my couch 700 times a minute and did everything you could possibly do, handstands in the pool to flip a breech baby. Really, nothing was working. I went to a bodyworker who was like, I don’t really even know how to explain what he does, it’s something between chiropractic and massage therapy, but he tried to manually move the baby for me. It never worked. Nothing happened. They told me I couldn’t have an ECV because I was a VBAC after two and my last birth was so recent and I had an anterior placenta. Meagan: All of the cards were stacked against you. Abby: So many cards. I basically was like, “I have this deadline. If I made it to 39, they’re going to schedule me if he doesn’t flip by then.” It was really dark honestly because I had that deep knowledge the whole time that this was going to be my VBAC. I really started to doubt that and say, “I’ve had such shit luck before now.” Sorry if I’m not allowed to cuss on the podcast. Meagan: You’re just fine. Abby: Maybe my terrible luck is going to continue and it wasn’t a true feeling, it was just a desire. He finally flipped after a lot of tears and a lot of, “I think I’m going to have to have a C-section.” I went to birth trauma therapy for the whole time. We talked a lot about, “Okay, well what happens if you do have to have a C-section? How are you going to be okay with it if that is the outcome?” He eventually flipped which, praise God, was amazing but the minute he flipped, he was LOA. I have never had a baby in a proper birth position. That is intense, girlfriend. He was down low doing what he was supposed to be doing and I was like, “Ow. This is a lot of pressure all of the time.” It was just constant pressure. It felt like a lot of contractions. They were obviously prodromal, but with my experience with Hadley, I just ignored them the whole time. I was like, “La, la, la, la, la. Nothing is happening.” He flipped at 35.5, maybe 36. The contractions really picked up right away. I never had a cervical check, so I don’t know this but I have a feeling that I was walking around at a 3 or a 4 for a while. I was having very regular contractions, not necessarily timeable, but they were real for sure and doing something for sure. His position was doing something also. He was putting pressure down low and dilating me in my opinion. At about, I guess it was 38, everyone kept saying, my doula kept saying, “I think you’re going to go early. I really think you’re not going to make it.” I was like, “I’m going to go 42. Nobody is going to stop me. I will do whatever I need to do.” Meagan: Mentally prepared. Abby: I will have a 42-hour labor, okay? I will have a 42-hour labor if I need to have a 42-hour labor. I will do all of the things. They were all like, “No. You’re not going to make it.” But then, when you keep not having the baby, you’re like, “This is making me crazy.” Prodromal labor is insane. It’s such a mental game. It’s just like, “Is this it? Is this it? Is this it?” especially because I’d never gone into labor naturally before. But when it was it, I knew. There’s really no denying it. I went to the chiropractor in the afternoon. I’m so excited. I’m about to start telling my VBAC story. Sorry I’m long-winded, but this right here is truly what I’ve been dreaming of for a really long time, so thank you for giving me this space to share my story. Meagan: Yes. I love it.Abby: I went to the chiropractor on a Monday at 4:00 and I said, “I think I’m going to go early. I’ve been having all of these contractions.” I had one while I was standing there talking to her. She actually encouraged me to get a membrane sweep. I denied them the whole time with all of my midwives. I was just like, “No, no, no. I’m not doing that.” She was like, “Hey, I went to 42 and I wish I had started the process a little earlier.” It made me doubt all of the prodromal labor I had been having because I was like, “Why do you think I need a membrane sweep? I’m obviously having a baby in the next five days.”Meagan: Yeah. You’re like, “My body’s working.” Abby: Exactly. That’s what I thought. I was like, “I don’t know about that.” But I had a contraction while I was standing there talking to her, checking out, and paying. She said, “Are you having a contraction right now?” I was like, “Yeah. This is just what it’s been like lately.” I went home and was annoyed by the contractions. I drank a Body Armour with some electrolytes and took a bath because that usually slows the prodromal down. I had five contractions in the bath. I was like, “Hmm.” So I texted my doula and was like, “Usually when I take a bath, it stops the contractions. Surely this means that something is happening.”I didn’t mention that for the last two weeks once he flipped his head down, I started bleeding pretty regularly. I’m on blood thinners, so I could get a papercut and it would be like the red sea, so it was not all that concerning. My doctors were like, “Well, it’s not your uterus. The baby is okay. You would be in pain if you had a rupture. Everything seems okay.” Meagan: Yeah. Abby: My poor doula, I texted her a lot of pictures being like, “Is this bloody show? Is this bloody show? Do you think that this is bloody show?” But finally, on the night that I took a bath and had contractions in the bath, she said, “That looks like blood show.” I was like, “All right. Okay. Now we’re cooking with gas. Something is happening.” I got out of the bath and was very annoyed. We had a long day. We have two other kids and my husband and I were both just so tired and wanted to go to bed. He said, “Can I make you some dinner?” I don’t think I had eaten anything. He said, “I have a couple of steaks. Can I make you some steaks?” I was like, “That sounds awesome.” I was like, “I’m just going to sit in bed. I’m going to watch New Girl and ignore these contractions and eat some steak.” I attempted to do that, but the contractions were starting to pick up and I couldn’t eat. I had to eat in between contractions and chew and swallow. I was not enjoying the steak at all. I lay down and I felt a pop. I had experienced my water breaking with Ginnie and I was like, “That was my water.” I texted my doula and said, “I think my water just broke.” She had been fielding all of these texts from me for the last two weeks about the blood and contractions and blah, blah, blah so it’s not that she didn’t believe me, but she was just like, “Okay, so tell me what makes you think that your water just broke.” I said, “Well, I didn’t pee.” She was like, “Okay.” I got up out of bed. My husband had just put down a piddle pad underneath the sheets because he was like, “You know, just in case. You’re having all of these contractions.” I didn’t want to totally ruin the mattress, so I hopped up out of bed really quickly because I wanted to go back to sleep after my water had broken. I was like, “Even if there’s a piddle pad, I don’t want the sheets to be wet because I want to sleep in them.” It was a flood. It was very much my water. I was like, “Okay. Nope. That’s okay. Things are happening.” And things really did start to happen so, so quickly. You know, as a doula, you have all of these numbers in your head of, “Okay, so there’s 5-1-1 and you call the doula when it’s 5-1-1 and then you go to the hospital when it’s 4-1-1 and your contractions are a minute long and not slowing down in intensity.” That was very much not my experience. It was 0 to 60. I think the prodromal that I had been having just ramped my body right up and so there was no real labor. Meagan: That’s the thing. Prodromal labor can do that because your body has been working. We call it prodromal labor but it’s not like your body wasn’t just doing anything. Abby: It did. It felt like it was doing nothing but it clearly was doing work. Meagan: It was. Yes. So listeners, if you have prodromal labor, seriously, just be on the lookout. Sometimes when labor does start and you’ve had a history of prodromal labor, it can start right out of the gate. Abby: It was aggressive. Meagan: Yes. Abby: So basically, immediately my contractions were two minutes apart and at first, they were 40 seconds. My doula was like, “You know, they can start out intense and maybe taper off a little bit.” That is not the direction that it went. They started ramping up in intensity. I watched about four minutes of New Girl and was like, “That’s it.” And we were so tired. I just kept saying, “I want to do this tomorrow. I really just want it to wait.” With my middle child, I had been able to go to sleep after my water broke. I slept all night in my own bed and it just ramped up intensely so quickly. I hadn’t washed my hair when I took a bath. It was just a soaky kind of bath, so I was like, “I’m going to go take a shower.” I wanted to wash my hair in the shower. I felt like then my doula could braid it and it would look cute in the morning and I’ll just have clean hair. If I ended up with a C-section, I wouldn’t be able to wash my hair for five days, so I might as well just do it now. My contractions picked up in the shower and I remember getting back onto my bed and being like, “I don’t know how I’m going to get dressed.” Meagan: So intense. Abby: So intense. I just was expecting, even with the second birth, the contractions with the Pit were scheduled essentially. They were intense, but they were scheduled, so you get a break in between them. You get to, “Okay. Let me take a deep breath. Let me reassess.” There was no time for reassessing. Honestly, it was really scary. I have to be honest and say that I’ve had a lot of people say, “I’m so glad you got your dream VBAC.” I was like, “I don’t think I would use those words.” I got a VBAC and I’m so glad that I did, but it was really, really scary because it was just so intense so quickly. Part of the birth plan was to stay at home for as long as possible. You don’t want to go too soon and have them tell you that you’re 2 centimeters and all of a sudden, you’re stuck at a hospital, especially with your water broken. I just remember struggling to get dressed and telling my husband, “I think we need to go to the hospital.” He was like, “It’s literally my job to tell her not to go to the hospital. I have one job and it’s to not let her go there.” Meagan: It’s to say no. Abby: I’m not supposed to do that. These are very specific instructions. So he called my doula and was like, “She’s begging for you. She’s really starting to moan through them and not be able to get sentences out.” She said, “Let me listen to her.” He put me on speaker and she said, “I’m going to meet you at the hospital. I think it’s time to go.” I was like, “Thank God someone is letting me go to the hospital so I could get an epidural.” I was ready for this show to be over. I was like, “If I get an epidural, they’ll let me take a nap.” All I wanted was to go back to sleep. I just wanted to go back to sleep. We got in the car. My friend was coming to keep our children and just sleep on our couch while we were going to the hospital and we were about to leave before she even got here. They were well asleep. It was 10:00 at night, but we were like, “We have to just leave the front door open for you.” She ended up making it. She saw me in the front yard and she was like, “Brian, do you think she’s in transition right now?” He was like, “I don’t know but this is really intense.” The car ride was horrible. We only live 9 minutes from the hospital, but it was just so intense, and just no breaks. It was scary and so painful. I follow pain-free birth on Instagram and they are liars. It is not pain-free. I just don’t want anyone to listen to this podcast and be like, “Pain-free is what I experienced” because it is not. It is excruciating. You always think you are a badass until you’re not. I was like, “No. Get me an epidural right now. I am dying. I will do anything. Just send me the anesthesiologist right now.” So by the time we made it to the hospital 9 minutes later, I was screaming. Screaming like in the movies and we always joke as my husband and I are now birthy people, I’ve transformed him to the dark side. Meagan: I love it so much. It all started with the Business of Being Born. Abby: Exactly. Meagan: Second date. Abby: Oh, literally. We always make fun of Hollywood movies where this woman’s water breaks and she is screaming in the hospital 20 minutes later and that is exactly what happened to me. It was so instant. My water broke at 8:30. We called my doula at 9:30 and she said, “Holy crap. Go to the hospital.” We got to the hospital. Oh, I wish I had the exact timeline. I might have to look. We got to the hospital and I was screaming bloody murder getting out of the car. I don’t even know how I walked out of the car to get to where I needed to be. The woman at the front desk heard me screaming and ran to get a wheelchair for me and run me up to the OB floor because this poor woman was like, “We are not having a baby in the lobby today.” Meagan: Yeah. I’m sure. Abby: She truly was like, “Go. This is my job. I’m going.” She ran me up to the OB floor and my doula apparently pulled in right behind us. She was on the floor but heard me screaming through the elevator from the 8th floor. I was screaming Meagan. It was a lot. I feel like I owe a lot of people some cookies at the hospital. My midwife said that I came in hot. Meagan: You came in hot. Abby: I really did. They were running me down the hall and this poor, I will never forget, this poor girl at the triage desk was very obviously new and she asked me if I could fill out paperwork. I was like, “Do I look like I could fill out paperwork right now?” I was sideways in the wheelchair with my leg up yelling at everyone. I just was like, “No. I will not be filling out paperwork right now.” They took me to triage which honestly was BS. I was like, “I’m obviously having a baby. Why do I need to go to triage?” But they saw me right away which was very helpful. I saw a midwife I had never met before which made me nervous because as a VBAC mom, you’re like, “I want to know that it’s the right people.” Meagan: Right. Abby: But around the corner comes– they tried to get an IV in my arm. I was flailing. There was just no way that that was going to happen which was awesome. I didn’t want an IV anyway. But around the corner comes a student midwife who has been with me through my whole pregnancy. She shadowed a bunch of different midwives and I saw her several times. We actually had a really wonderful conversation. I guess one of the times the baby was breech at the doctor and I told her about my birth trauma and how difficult it was for me and all of the reasons we didn’t want another C-section and she just gave me the most trauma-informed care. She just sat and listened to me well beyond the time of the appointment. She made friends with my five-year-old during the appointments. She was just such a light.The midwife came in and she said, “Hi, I’m Barb and I have a student with me today.” I had literally just been screaming at everyone in the room and I said, “Is it Cara?” and it was her. I gave her a big hug. She was like, “It’s me!” and it was the most joyful moment of a really, really intense birth. It was 3 and a half hours from start to finish. It was so, so fast. It was a very intense, honestly scary time but seeing Cara was just like, “Okay. You are a safe person for me right now.” It felt like, “I know that you know how badly I want this and I know that you are going to do everything in your power to help me get it and why this is important to our family.” It was just like, “Okay.”But I still didn’t calm down. I was not calm. None of it was a calm experience at all. There was just no time to emotionally switch from sitting in my bed watching New Girl to I’m at a hospital having a baby. It was just so quick that I couldn’t wrap my head around the change in my life situation. They checked me and it was Cara who checked me, the student midwife. She said, “Well, you’re an 8.5.” I was like, “Okay.” My husband was like, “What? I was not supposed to come to the hospital,” and then he was like, “Oh my gosh. Thank God I came to the hospital. I’m so glad I’m not delivering a baby on our toilet right now.” That was not what he wanted at all. She said, “You can start pushing though.” No one ever told me that I was 10 which I thought was interesting. She basically said, “If you’re feeling pushy, you can push.” I was like, “I just want this baby out of me because I want this to be over. I’m very much done with this process.” So they took me to an L&D room and tried to switch me from a triage bed to the regular bed and I truly was in so much pain with no breaks in the contractions that I was like, “No. I can’t even get on the bed.” They were like, “Trust me. You don’t want to be on the triage bed to deliver a baby. Try to get over there.” Every movement that I made felt so challenging and so painful. They asked if I wanted to– I went on my hands and knees and they were like, “Is that comfortable?” I was like, “Do I look comfortable?” It was just the most erroneous question. I was like, “What part of me screaming makes you think that anything about this is comfortable right now?” Of course, it was too late to get an epidural, so when they tell me that it was basically time to push, I was like, “I don’t want that. I just want to take a nap. I just want an epidural.” When she said 8, I was like, “Oh no. I have to do this. I have to be here and I have to do this.” Obviously, in retrospect, I’m very glad that it was too late and that I did it, but it was truly just so, so intense. Again, just how quickly it happened just did not allow time for me to even understand what was happening. But I started pushing when we got in L&D and the midwife who was very old school, I’m not going to guess her age but she’s older, got in my face. I’m an Alabama football fan, so I kept saying that I needed someone to Nick Saban me in labor. I needed, “All right, Abby. Here’s the deal. See you at the finish line.” I had never met her before. She totally got in my face and Nick Saban’d me. She said, “Abby.” I said, “I just want the baby out. I just want this to be over. I just want to get the baby out.” She was like, “We can get the baby out. You can get the baby out, but you have to stop screaming. You’re letting all of your power out of the top of your body by screaming. You have to channel that. Take a deep breath and push down.” I just felt totally incapable of that, but I was again, so over it that I just was like, “Okay. I guess I’m just going to do whatever this random lady says.” I started pushing and less than 30 minutes later, my son was born. I was at the hospital for 48 minutes before he was born. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Abby: Truly like a movie. It was just the fastest thing I’ve ever experienced. It was really scary and apparently, it was also really scary for him because he came out not breathing. Meagan: Fast transition. Abby: Yes. It was so fast. Everything was so fast. It’s officially precipitous labor, the timeframe that I experienced. He was just totally unresponsive. My doula said that she saw his chest rising and falling when they took him away, but you want the pull the baby up on your chest experience. I was so shocked when I pushed him out. Pushing was so hard. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and they told me that I could see his head. I touched his head and I was like, “Oh my gosh, there is a baby coming out of my vagina. I can’t believe that this is happening.” But the endorphins that you sort of expect to follow didn’t really happen because we were panicking. My husband and I were like, bawling and praying out loud and just were so nervous that the baby was not going to be okay. My doula said that it was less than three minutes, but of course, it felt like an eternity. It was terrible. There were eight people around him on the table and oxygen. It was just a very medical experience. Again, I’ve had a lot of weird birth things and when I first envisioned being a mom, I envisioned a home birth really. All of my births have had reasons that they needed to be at a hospital. With Ginnie, praise the Lord that I was on an operating table when I threw a pulmonary embolism and that there was a cardiac anesthesiologist that knew. Honestly, had I had a vaginal birth with Ginnie, that pulmonary embolism would have flowed up into my lungs walking around my culdesac on a Tuesday and I wouldn’t be here. That’s just not the kind of thing that you can come back from. They are literally called the silent killer for that reason. It’s hard to admit that the way that I wanted things to happen was not the way that they happened, but I am so thankful for all of the medical people and all of the things that happened the way they happened because my children are safe and I’m safe. That doesn’t make things any less traumatizing if you’ve experienced trauma, but it’s just really overwhelming to think about how things could have happened had I been more stubborn or insistent on a home birth this time or whatever. So I think my biggest shift obviously once the baby was okay and everything, I had a second-degree tear which was no big deal. She stitched me up. That took forever. I was kind of over it by that point. By the time she was done and they had handed him to me and everything was fine, people had cleared out of the room, I had to go to the bathroom. I had so much water during labor. I have a big Stanley cup and I just kept asking my husband to give me water in between every single contraction. I was like, “Water, water, water.” It was the only thing I said for an hour. I was like, “I really have to go to the bathroom” and the nurse just looked at me and was like, “Okay. It’s over there.” I was like, “I can go to the bathroom? I can just stand up and go to the bathroom?” And I did. She was like, “I can help you.” She wasn’t trying to be rude or anything. She was like, “Okay, yeah. We can totally go.” I was like, “No, I think I can go to the bathroom.” Totally unmedicated. I had no IVs. The continuous fetal monitoring did happen, but it was someone just holding. They didn’t even have time to put anything on me. They just held it down at the bottom of my belly. I was pretty unencumbered and by the time I was done, I could just get up and go to the bathroom. I took a shower in the postpartum room the next day and everything was just like night and day. I have already taken walks with my family. I took the baby out of the house yesterday by myself. I carried his car seat by myself. The recovery is, my birth was not a dream birth. It was terrifying and I’m glad it’s over. I’m glad I did it. It’s amazing and empowering, so don’t hear me saying that it wasn’t amazing, but the postpartum experience is what has solidified for me that it was worth every second because for three and a half intense hours, I don’t have to have four-plus really terrible weeks trying to recover from a major abdominal surgery, so it was worth every very, very intense second. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Abby: I know, I’m sorry. Meagan: Well congratulations. Abby: Thank you. It’s a very long story. Meagan: Congratulations. It’s okay. I love it. I love it so much. I appreciate your sharing. I could just feel the intensity. Abby: Oh, it was intense. Meagan: I’m sure for everybody it was just like, “Ahh!” So much was happening and those precipitous births, just recently recording, I think it was last week’s episode was accidentally at home. Sometimes there are these babies that just come and they are ready to go. I really appreciate you sharing your story. Abby: I’m so glad. I’m so glad. It was really such a joy and overwhelming to be here. Honestly, thank you. I feel like what you do is just such a service to women. When you have a C-section, you might think that your body is incapable or not able to do what you thought it might be able to do and it’s really disempowering to feel that way. So to hear these stories is such a gift. I just ate them up like candy. I listened to The VBAC Link on the day that I went into labor and I was going on a walk before I went to the chiropractor. It just gave me the power to say, “I think I really can do this.” And I did. So thank you for what you do. Meagan: And now, you’re one of those stories. Abby: I’m one of those stories.Meagan: Before we go, I just wanted to share with everybody if you guys want to go find Abby on social media, again, she’s not actively doula-ing right now, but I can see it in the future. Abby: Definitely. Meagan: She’s at @AbbyKraftMac which I absolutely love.Abby: Yes. Kraft with a K. Meagan: Yep. Kraft with a K or abbykraftmac.com. We’ll make sure to be tagging you today on Instagram and all of the things. So thank you again so much for being here. Abby: Thank you, friend. I’m so thankful. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We are so excited to be joined by Mikaella as our guest and our dear Julie as a cohost today! Mikaella’s VBAC story is one of redemption, healing, and embracing the unexpected. By allowing herself to recognize that her Cesarean birth was traumatic, Mikaella was able to begin her healing journey and prepare for her VBAC. As her birth progressed, plans changed from a faraway hospital to her local hospital to a fast and furious birth at home! Julie, Mikaella, and Meagan share thoughts on the importance of acknowledging our traumas and how to avoid comparing them to others. Additional LinksMikaella’s InstagramClark Film and PhotoHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsMeagan: Good morning and welcome to The VBAC Link or maybe it’s the afternoon or evening or I don’t even know. Whenever it is that you are listening, welcome to The VBAC Link. This is Meagan, your host, and guess what, you guys? We have Julie today as a cohost!Julie: Yay! Hi. Meagan: It’s always so fun to have Julie on and today is actually one of her own clients which is super fun. I love when we have a doula client on the podcast because you can just connect with the story and people are bouncing back and forth, so it is so fun. She is here from Utah, so we are all Utahns today here on the podcast. Review of the WeekWe’re going to jump into a review, and then I’m going to tell you more about our guest Mikaella. Julie: Yeah, I’m so excited to be here. I was a little nervous this morning. I’m not going to lie. It’s so strange being on here as a guest instead of a regular host. I don’t know. It’s just this weird little thing, but also I wanted to clarify that Mikaella is actually a birth photography and video client of mine. She had a separate doula, Jenessa who is incredible. But she’s going to go into that more in her story, I’m sure about it. I do have a review and I love this review. It’s incredible. It was by springr and the title of the review is, “Wow, Just Wow.” I love that. She says, “I’m what I like to consider a still pretty new mama, but I’m also a C-section mom. For a while, I really thought that’s what I would always be. I hit some pretty dark places, but this podcast has given me light. I listen to multiple episodes a day and have a long stream of notes on my phone.” Let me add, I’m not pregnant again, but that’s how prepared I want to be when we do get there for our next baby. This podcast has given me my first tool to get there. Recently, as quarantine life has become the new normal, I’ve almost always got an episode buzzing in my ear. My husband says I’ve got a bit of an addiction. I snapped back really quick and said, ‘I’ve got hope. It helps me believe in myself.’ He quickly got quiet.” Meagan: Oh my gosh, I love that. Julie: Yeah. “These ladies answer personal messages asking for help. I just can’t say enough good things. They are that good. This podcast is just that good. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” This sounds familiar actually, this review. It might be somebody that has contacted me and wants to hire me as a doula when she gets pregnant. Now I’m just thinking because that review did sound a little bit familiar. Anyways, we’ve been talking for a bit of a year now and she’s not even pregnant. Anyways, it might be. Who knows, it might be completely random and somebody else but when she said personal messages, I was like, “Oh, maybe.” Thank you so much to whoever left it. Meagan: Maybe. Well, I love that review. And you know what? That’s okay if you are addicted to a podcast. I have podcasts that I’m addicted to and I always have an AirPod that I actually have lost now. There is one missing because apparently, I can’t put it right back in the case. I just sit there and I listen to my podcast in one ear and then do life in the other while I’m doing things and that’s okay. I love it though. I love that this podcast gives you hope. That is exactly why this podcast is the podcast. That is exactly why it is here. It’s to give people hope, inspiration, and motivation, and to empower you to make choices that are best for you for your birthing day. So thank you so much for that review. Mikaella’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Mikaella. We are so excited to have Mikaella on. Mikaella: Hi. Meagan: Hi, yes. Thank you so much for taking the time today. You have a lot of things. You’re a photographer, right as well? Mikaella: Yes, yep. Meagan: Okay, and then you have three kiddos and you have been a 911 dispatcher for five years. Love that. That’s really cool. I love that you say trash reality TV is your guilty pleasure. That is so funny. I love that you also love Taco Bell because I have this weakness for Taco Bell too. In fact, we just went on a weekend trip for my daughter’s gymnastics meet in St. George, Utah and we got a taco from St. George. You guys, it’s the best Taco Bell taco I’ve ever had. Like seriously, St. George does it right. So when you are in St. George next time, you should go to Taco Bell. Julie: Meagan and Mikaella, you guys. I’m sorry but Taco Bell is not very good. Meagan: Do you know what? It depends on the Taco Bell because the Taco Bell by my house sucks. But St. George, holy cow. Even my husband was like, “That was the best Taco Bell ever.” I was like, “Right?” So I love that. I love that so much and I’m so excited to dive into this story because I love hearing the big baby stories. It sounds like you heard, “Big baby, big baby, big baby” for so long and so many people telling you that you’re not a good candidate for VBAC, and then boom. Julie: Boom. Mikaella: Basically, that’s the best way to put it. Meagan: So let’s turn the time over to you to share your stories and how this big baby and a non-VBAC candidate mom rocked her VBAC. Mikaella: So I have three kids. I have a five-year-old Claire, a three-year-old Boston, and then Charlie is my VBAC baby. I feel like Charlie’s VBAC story really starts with 21-year-old first-time mom Mikaella who knew nothing. I was along for the ride. I had no interest in pursuing any sort of birth education or anything like that especially with my mom’s own traumatic birth history so I was like, “Whatever happens happens. It’s fine.” For my first birth, that was okay. It wasn’t that big of a deal. I do wish I had been equipped with more knowledge, but it was smooth sailing for the most part. She came on her own the morning of my scheduled induction so I was already in labor when I got there anyway. My body was doing what it was supposed to do. She ended up being vacuum assisted because she was posterior and then it ended up being a trend with all of my babies with them being posterior so that was a really big worry I had with Charlie. It just felt like a normal birth experience. And then Boston because Claire’s was so normal, I went in feeling like, “Oh, nope. I’ve got it, no problem.” Then I was talked into an induction because I was along for the ride. I didn’t know the ins and outs and the cascade of interventions and things like that. I was induced about a week early with him. Both he and Claire, my labors were about 12 hours long with lots and lots and lots of pushing. But with him, I felt completely out of control from being induced and having my dura nicked with the epidural. Then I had some major blood loss that was still unexplained there in the middle which was pretty traumatic. With him, I pushed for hours as well and he was just not coming out. He was so stuck. My provider was not pushy at all actually. He was very, “Here are your options. You can keep pushing. We can try a vacuum with him too, but if he gets stuck, it’s going to be more complicated with him being farther down the birth canal.” So we opted for a C-section with him. I don’t know. I think I reacted really strongly to the extra medication because I was numb from the chin down. It was a very unpleasant experience which just added the whole out-of-control feeling. I went in there and as I’m feeling them tugging, I didn’t feel any pain which was great. I was feeling the tugging and then everybody starts laughing. I was like, “This is not the time to be laughing. What is going on?” They pulled him out and were like, “He’s huge.” He was. He was a 12-pound baby. There was probably no way I was actually going to get him out on my own, but ever since having him, everyone was like, “Oh you just make big babies,” because my first baby was 8 pounds, 9 ounces. He was 12 pounds. Julie: And he’s still such a big kid. Mikaella: He is a really big kid. Julie: He is so cute. Mikaella: He’s bigger than all of the other kids in my preschooler’s class and he’s only three. He’s just big like my whole mom’s side of the family. So after his birth, it took a long time to be able to talk about it out loud. I posted a really watered-down and foggy version on Facebook as a birth announcement post, but I don’t even remember writing half of it. I just remember feeling traumatized but not that the trauma was valid because I knew people with worse stories and that was something that I had to come to grips with. My trauma was still valid despite it not being maybe as bad as somebody else’s. Meagan: Totally, yeah. Mikaella: I knew we wanted more kids, but there was so much anxiety surrounding the decision of when to have more kids so there was a little bit more of a gap between Boston and Charlie. I was still pretty afraid of birth until I had a life-changing experience attending a birth as a photographer. It was actually for Jenessa who ended up being my doula later down the road but it was this beautiful, intimate home birth. I found it so healing. She was singing through her contractions and the atmosphere was just so sweet and loving. She was definitely in charge and she knew what she wanted. She was a practical stranger at that point, but it was still such a positive experience to watch her have such a positive birth experience. It was life-changing. So then when I got pregnant again, I knew I did not want a C-section just based on how the last one had felt. I didn’t even want an epidural based on the spinal headache I had gotten with my dura being nicked. I felt like having the epidural and not being able to move around during labor contributed a lot to both of my babies getting stuck, so I felt like being able to move in labor was going to be really important to me. My OB who delivered Boston was actually super supportive but I wasn’t allowed to VBAC at the hospital. Where I live is a really rural area. He said he would send me north whenever I went into labor, but I really wanted to know my birth team. With that it option, it was just, “You get who you get and hopefully they’re supportive of a VBAC too,” which I think we’ve all come to realize is hard to find VBAC-supportive providers. Meagan: Very, very, yeah.Mikaella: So when I was looking for a provider, I went through so many, but I began my research. I met with multiple providers and I just kept hearing, “You make big babies. You make big babies,” because Claire was 8 pounds, 9 ounces, and Boston was 12 pounds. “You just make big babies and it would just be easier for you to have a C-section. Here are all of the risks and complications of a VBAC,” but no one wants to talk about the complications of a repeat C-section, right? This one particular OB, I don’t know if I can shout him out because he might be really upset. I want to make sure that no one else looking for a VBAC goes to him. He didn’t even give me the decency of a conversation before completely shutting me down. I had gone in. I spoke with the nurse. She was like, “Whatever you want, you get. You are the birthing mom.” I was feeling on cloud 9. I was even texting my husband, “This is going so well,” as she was checking me in. I guess the casual conversation that I was having with her about my birth history, she relayed to him in the five-minute span before he came into the room and that was all it took for him to decide that I was not a good candidate for a VBAC at all. He didn’t want to talk about the preparations I had made, that I had a doula, that I didn’t feel as big as I was with Boston. None of that even mattered. Meagan: He just put a label on you and was done.Mikaella: Immediately. Immediately. There was no conversation about any of it. Not about my birth history. Even my original OB who delivered my last baby was like, “No, you can do that. That’s fine,” but it just said that it made him and his staff uncomfortable. I ended up at Valley Women’s Health, the Orem Midwives’ Group at 35 weeks pregnant and I just stuck with them because they were the first ones to not tell me no right away. There were still some things that I was hesitant about. There was a lot of, “You’ll have to do this and this and this. These are the requirements, but sure. We’ll try,” kind of thing. I did, however, have to go through a VBAC consultation at Utah Valley where they all discuss the risks of a VBAC. Nothing about the risks of a repeat C-section of course. They had me sign all of those forms and then had me do a growth scan which showed Charlie being about three weeks ahead. She was going to be absolutely massive according to them. I did not feel big at all at least compared to my last two. I was more active in this labor. I was eating healthily. I was doing all of the stretches and sitting in the right positions to make sure that she wasn’t posterior too. I just felt like I could do it. It really helped to feel like I was going to be in charge of this birth. My doula was very, very supportive all the way through. She was just like, “No. You’ve got this. You can do this. I know you and I know your willpower,” so she was a huge support that way and as well as my husband. He’s never not backed me on anything. He’s great. I should also add that the hospital where I was going to deliver is about an hour and a half away from me. Only like what, five minutes away from you, Julie? Julie: Yeah, it’s about 20 minutes from me, but super far from you. Mikaella: Okay, you’re a little bit further. I was thinking it was only about five minutes away. I was preparing to labor in the car. They had been like, “Are you sure you don’t want to be induced?” I was like, “Nope. I don’t want to intervene with this at all. My body is going to do its own process.” I was mentally preparing myself to labor for an hour and a half in our van. I had my husband get the puppy pads ready and line the bottom of the van with the puppy pads. I woke up to my strongest contraction at about 4:00 AM and that’s when I began timing them. I got in the shower to see if they would get closer together and then they started getting closer together really fast. The timeline is kind of foggy, but the contractions were so strong. I texted my doula at 5:30 letting her know that my contractions were about 5-7 minutes apart and that I was going to try and leave soon. She was going to have plenty of time because she was right next to the hospital, but in reality, I had only maybe two more contractions that far apart. It was just happening and happening really fast. I called my mom. She was getting ready to come over and I woke up Preston and had him load up the car while I was getting dressed. I do actually wish I had had him with me during those moments, but at that point, I thought we were still going to make the hour-and-a-half drive to the hospital, so I was like, “No. Get this. Get my bag. Get my charger. Throw all of the things in there,” the last minute things and grab whatever. Just throw it in the van.So he was running around like crazy trying to make sure he’s got everything. I couldn’t even get my pants on in between the contractions. I was sitting in the same spot just powering through these contractions. I remember thinking, “There’s no way that I can do this unmedicated. I’m going to get that epidural as soon as I get to the hospital,” because all that I’ve heard in all of my research is that when you think you can’t do it anymore, that’s when you’re at the end. I was like, “Well, I just barely started. How am I supposed to make it any farther than this?” and not realizing that I was actually right there at the end with how quick it was all going. Meagan: Oh my goodness. Mikaella: Yeah. It was about 30 minutes later that I knew we were not going to make it up to Provo. I called my doula and I think that was all I said. “I think we’re not going to make it to the hospital.” She’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, get to Sanpete Valley,” the one that’s only 20 minutes away. “They can’t force you to do anything,” because that was my biggest worry. I was like, “I don’t want them to just throw me on a table as soon as I get there.” That contraction that I had on the phone with her was actually the only one that I was able to have my husband doing counterpressure for. I was just bracing myself against the tub. He’s doing his best because we really thought that I was going to have a doula there. She would be able to walk him through things. I wasn’t the most prepared. I’m not going to lie as far as the actual coping mechanisms, I think, that I was going to use. I had a metal comb that is used for dog grooming that I was clutching in my hand as tight as possible. Meagan: Powerful. Mikaella: Yep. I loved having that thing. That was a godsend honestly.  My mom arrived at about 6:15 and I was just holding onto her. It’s funny because the two births I attended were so peaceful and one like I said, Jenessa was singing through her contractions. It was a beautiful environment and then another friend of mine was low moaning. It was a quiet atmosphere still and I am just screaming. You could even hear it in the background of the 911 call that my husband had to make. I’m just losing it in the background. I’m like, “This is not the calm, cool atmosphere that I was expecting.”But my mom got there. I had a super strong contraction and I was just feeling the irresistible urge to push. When I sat back up after that contraction, I felt my water which was bulging and that’s when I had to tell my husband to call 911. He was like, “Oh, okay. This is happening right now and right here. We are not making it to the hospital.” Because I am a 911 dispatcher, the operator that he called is my coworker, so I knew the instructions she was going to give me. I was not about to lay on my back even though she was about to tell me to. He kept telling me, “She says that you’ve got to get on my back.” “I am not getting on my back. That is not what I want to do right now. Just tell her to get the ambulance here. We’ll make it work.”At that moment, I made it from my bedroom floor back to my bathroom which is the tiniest room in my house. I don’t know why I felt like I needed to be in there. But the EMT that lives around the corner arrived as I was crowning. I’m holding onto my mom. I did finally end up laying down, but she arrived as I’m crowning. With one push, Charlie’s head comes out and my EMT unwraps the cord that was wrapped around her neck. It was wrapped around twice so she was super nervous– the EMT was. Another push and she was out. She was super pink. She was a really healthy color. What was really cool was that this whole time, despite it not being my plan at all, there was no fear. There was never a sense of, “This is going wrong.” There was a little bit of panic and there were a lot of self-doubts there in that first hour, but there was no fear. I just was able to trust my body and know what I was doing despite none of it going to plan whatsoever which was a really cool experience. Then they load me up into the ambulance. They took me to the hospital which was where I delivered my placenta. We actually were only there for six hours because, for some reason when you don’t deliver at the hospital, they’re like, “Oh, you can actually go home,” which seemed backward to me but I wasn’t about to fight it. Jenessa and Julie arrived around the same time. I didn’t even call Julie myself. I just told Jenessa, I was like, “Please call Julie and let her know what’s going on.” The rest is history. It was just the most amazing redemptive birth. I got basically everything I wanted. I had written out a list of birth goals that I had wanted and on that list was intermittent monitoring which, I didn’t end up having any monitoring. Getting my VBAC was super important which I got. I didn’t have to have an epidural. I didn’t even have to get an IV. It was just completely and 100% me and that felt incredibly powerful. It’s been a really, really cool story to share especially to other moms who are looking to do VBACs and stuff like that, especially after I was told, “You make big babies. You make big babies.” This was another big baby. She was a 9.5-pound baby who came out on my bathroom floor with no tearing whatsoever. I did that.  Meagan: And you did it. You did it very quickly. Very, very quickly. Mikaella: Very, very quickly. From the first contraction that woke me up to her being born was about 2.5 hours total compared to the 12 hours each for my first two kids. Meagan: Oh my gosh. That is amazing. That is so amazing. I’m sure on Julie’s end, she was like, “Oh my gosh. I’ve got to make it. I’ve got to get there.” Julie: Well, let me tell you. Can I tell you my version really fast?Mikaella: Yes. Julie: So I met Mikaella. Oh, I don’t even remember. It was a month or something like that before you had your baby or something like that? I was excited because I’ve had clients in the past drive up from 2.5 hours away up here to have their VBACs, so I love those stories. I love people that really want to fight for it. We connected and I got pulled onto the team. I was excited to do a birth with Jenessa as well. But that morning, I got a phone call from Jenessa. I want to say it was around 6:00 or 6:30, somewhere around there. It might be a little earlier. She told me that you were in labor, that you had to change plans and go to the local hospital instead, and that you were just going to wing it, push for your VBAC, and fight if you needed to. You were prepared to do that, but things were moving quickly and you weren’t going to make it up to Orem. I was groggy and half awake. I’m like, “So does she still want me to come?”I think I asked that or whatever because you know when you’re half awake, I’m like, “I have no idea what to say.” She said, “Yeah. Get dressed and start heading down.” She said she was on her way, so I got dressed and I grabbed my cameras and gear, and headed out. It was about an hour and twenty-minute drive for me or maybe just an hour. I’m not quite sure exactly. So I started heading down and then I was just like, “Please don’t let me miss this birth. Please don’t let me miss this birth.” I was so frustrated because I had missed two other births already this summer because of people having fast babies. I had one VBAC client that went from 3 centimeters to baby in an hour and they didn’t call me in until she was pushing. I was like, “Why, why, why?” and then the other client that I missed had only a 41-minute labor and it was a 46-minute drive for me. I was on my way and I was like, “Please don’t let me miss this birth. Please not another one. Please not another one.” But I was excited to be going and supporting Mikaella. As soon as I was getting ready to go through the canyon in Spanish Fork which is about halfway there, I got another call from Jenessa and she said, “She just delivered her baby on the bathroom floor.” I was like, “What?! She didn’t even make it to the hospital?” I was so surprised. And yes, I was absolutely super sad to miss it, but I’m also super happy that Mikaella got everything she wanted. It’s funny because we have pictures and video clips of you reading off your list of everything that you wanted and stuff. That was super fun to go. I still kept heading down and we did a nice golden hour session. I was there for a few hours with them and the kids came in to meet baby and everything. But it was wild. This summer was wild. There were so many crazy things happening with births and babies. I just actually had a 9.5-pound baby born about a week ago even, a 9-pound, 7-ounce birth center birth. I just love seeing these big babies come flying out into the world just as fierce as they want to be. I love it. I love your story. It’s so wild. I’m excited that you get to tell it today. Mikaella: It’s so fun. I love being able to tell it. I think it’s really cool that Charlie’s got that story that she can tell now too. Now even, she’s got news articles that she can look back on. Meagan: Yes, I was going to say that you said earlier that the news had contacted you and you were on the news. How did that story get out? Were they just like, “Oh my gosh, this accidental home birth.” Did they talk about VBAC in there too? Mikaella: It was very interesting to see how they took my story and spun it. I won’t say it wasn’t factual, but they definitely put a certain light on it I guess you could say. Our local ambulance, two or three more of my coworkers work in the ambulance too so I’m really close with a lot of them. Meagan: I would really like to see this article. Julie: I’ll send it to you or she can send it to you. One of us. Mikaella: I think that there’s a video as well as an actual written one. So basically, our local hospital does an EMS highlight at the end of the year and they decided that they were going to highlight Ephraim's ambulance this year which is where I’m from and the story that they were going to highlight was Charlie’s story. A big emphasis was put on the EMT which I totally appreciate her. I love her. She was a godsend in that moment that she was there and she knew what to do especially with the cord wrapped around Charlie’s neck. There was not a lot about me in the article which I find interesting. It’s not as much about the birthing mother despite it being a birth story. So when the interviewers actually came over to my house, we were just having a casual chitchat before the actual filming and the interview began. They were saying, “The hospital was worried that this was going to make people want to have a home birth. They were worried that we were advocating for a home birth.” She’s like, “You weren’t planning on having a home birth, right?” Julie: What? Mikaella: Yeah. I was like, “Not that there’s anything wrong with having a home birth, but no. That wasn’t the plan.” I was like, “It is now if I have another one. I’m probably just going to have it at home.” I found it interesting that the hospital was like, “Oh, we don’t want to promote home birth because that’s risky,” or whatever. Then in the article, it was very much about EMS which is fine because it was their highlight, but they kept saying, “The baby that came early, the baby that came early.” I was like, “She didn’t come early.” She came maybe two days early before her due date, but she just came fast. Julie: Oh my gosh. What got me was like, “The cord was around her neck and it was so emergent.” They went and talked about how the cord wrapped around her neck was that they saved your baby’s life. That’s what people say. That’s what people think, but we all know that the cord around the neck, 99% of the time is not a problem. Mikaella: Exactly. The EMT that delivered her is wonderful. I have fostered a relationship now with her after the fact and I know a lot of people that work on the crew, so I didn’t mind them getting a little highlight, but it was very interesting to see how they spun it there at the end and how they spliced it together. I know they were trying to work with what they had because I was so nervous about sharing my story that I was kind of all over the place. Preston had to keep anchoring me and be like, “Don’t forget about this part of the story. Don’t forget about this part of the story.” I’m like, “Oh right. I know.” Meagan: Yeah. Mikaella: It’s interesting, yeah. Meagan: It just goes to show just in general with news how things can be spun and taken a little bit more out of context to make it sound different or more desirable in one factor or another. When you have a perfectly safe, beautiful, vaginal birth after Cesarean with a larger-sized baby that was a fast, precipitous labor and then this amazing EMT comes in and they just help. How awesome it was that they were there. There was this nuchal cord and how nervewracking it was for them, but they knew what to do. They were trained and they helped. Instead of just talking like that, it’s a little different so it’s kind of funny to think about that but still so cool that Charlie can go back and see and be like, “Look. I even made it into the news because I came so fast.”Mikaella: Exactly, exactly. Yep. Not a lot of big things happen in our tiny town. Meagan: Yeah, yes. So oh my gosh, well thank you so much both Mikaella and Julie for being with us today. Julie: Yeah. Meagan: One of the things I just want to talk about really, really fast is something that you were talking about from your second birth. You say that you had trauma but you know other people have more intense trauma or whatever. Mikaella: Right. Meagan: I don’t want you to discredit the trauma that you did have because, for you as an individual, the trauma that exists exists. It’s okay and sometimes I feel like it’s just natural for us to be like, “Well, I know I didn’t have to have this, this, this, or this happens like that person which is more traumatic.” It seems more traumatic to the listening ear, but at the same time, you personally went through this traumatic situation. It’s okay. You can own that and be like, “This was very traumatic for me and it sucked. I had to work through this.” I want everyone out there to know that it’s okay. It’s okay to accept your trauma and recognize that it is trauma because that’s one of the hardest parts is recognizing that it’s traumatic. I’m proud of you for recognizing that, “Yes. This is traumatic for me.” Even Julie I’m sure would have situations with her own births or her clients’ births where sometimes we walk away as doulas and we’re like, “It doesn’t seem very traumatic to them,” but it was really traumatic for me and I wasn’t even the one going through it. I was an observer and went through it that way, but it wasn’t happening to me. Trauma just exists so differently for everyone. So for everyone listening out there, one recognizing your trauma like Mikaella did is so important. I know for me, I think I told the story of how I was in the driveway stomping around processing trauma that I didn’t even realize that I still had. Trauma is one of the best things that you can do, so I want to just really quickly talk about Julie because Julie is on the podcast today too. She actually did a really cool YouTube video on our YouTube at The VBAC Link and it’s a smokeless– Julie: Smokeless unless you have lots of people doing it. Meagan: Yes, we did it one time with a lot of people and we definitely had smoke. Julie: We set off the fire alarm. That was awesome. Meagan: Yes we did. But yeah, check it out because even the smallest traumas may resonate largely inside and impact the result. So definitely check that out on YouTube at The VBAC Link. It’s smokeless fear release. Julie: Smokeless fire fear release. Can I add something really fast about trauma because you know how I am with trauma? Meagan: Yeah, you’ve learned a lot about trauma. Julie: I went through a big, massive trauma-processing PTSD thing in 2021 and it was super intense. It was a lot of therapy and a lot of sessions. There were group sessions and everything like that. One thing that is so interesting is how everybody perceives their trauma differently. I feel like everybody feels like, “Oh, my trauma is not as bad” or “This person’s trauma is way worse.” Meagan: We compare. We compare. Julie: Yeah, we do. There are people that are like, “I never would have survived the things that you went through in your childhood,” and I was like, “Dude. Are you kidding me? You saw this and this and that and I can’t even imagine going through that.” It’s really interesting because we do. We tend to compare, but one thing that I’ve learned through that process and one thing that I tell people, one thing that I want people to remember and know and one thing that I want to remember myself whenever I am feeling like maybe my stuff is not as bad as somebody else’s is that trauma is trauma. There’s no capital trauma or small trauma. It’s trauma. The thing about trauma is our bodies and minds respond the same no matter what that trauma is. There are physical and emotional symptoms that come when trauma happens and those symptoms are the same no matter if you feel like your trauma is more or less than another person’s. All of the symptoms are the same. We all go through those same things. Our bodies feel it the same. It may manifest differently and things like that, but trauma responses are trauma responses. And processing through them, it doesn’t matter what caused the trauma.The trauma is there and it lives there. That is something that we all have the same. You know what I mean? No matter what the trauma was. I think that I see it so much Mikaella. When you said that, I was like, “I want to talk about this.” But yeah. Don’t discount it because it lives inside of you the same as everybody else’s does no matter what the circumstances were. Mikaella: Definitely.Meagan: Yes. I love that. I love that and it is pretty crazy to think about all of the women that have experienced birth trauma. I mean, it’s upward towards 1 in 9 of people who are actually diagnosed, and then think about all of the people that don’t seek help. We’ve got a lot of trauma out there. It makes me sad that it happens, but I love that you said that. I love that so much. So thank you. Julie: Yeah. Mikaella: Something I’ve noticed too on the trauma side is that so many women don’t recognize it as trauma because they have been conditioned to think that birth is just a big, scary, traumatic thing that happens. When you have that trauma, that’s just what comes along with birth, but hey, at least you’re still here. My mom has her own traumatic birth history and she would not say it’s not traumatic. She would definitely be the first to tell you, “No. That was trauma.” But my mother-in-law and I have sisters-in-law and they have all had one thing or another, but it’s like, “Well, but my baby and me are here so it’s fine.” Meagan: Exactly. Mikaella: The trauma is still so valid and it took me a long time to realize that and push against what has been perceived as normal for so long to recognize that no, it was traumatic for me. Just because it wasn’t as bad as somebody else’s or just because the baby and I are here and healthy, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t traumatic. Due to that trauma, it took me a long time to even see a doctor when I found out that I was pregnant because I was like, “Nope because that makes it real. That makes this pregnancy real.” So even after having some healing experiences, it was still like my body was postponing calling the doctor and making an appointment. My body was postponing and putting off all of the things that I needed to do to prepare. It had its own kind of trauma response. Meagan: Exactly. That’s one of the reasons why I congratulate you for recognizing that because so often, I didn’t even recognize it until I was in labor and I was like, “Oh my gosh. I have all of these trauma factors that I’m now letting out in labor.” It’s so hard. It’s natural, I feel like, for our minds to downplay it and be like, “Well, but I got this so I shouldn’t be traumatized or I shouldn’t have fear or I shouldn’t have sadness because I do have my baby and I’m okay overall,” but that doesn’t mean we have to write it off. We don’t have to write it off. We don’t have to push it down the tunnel and just forget it ever happened because we have a healthy mom and a healthy baby. There was one birth that I was at here in Murray and the mom ended up having a Cesarean. It was a, I would say, pushed Cesarean more than a needed Cesarean. She didn’t want it and she was crying. Lots of things were happening and I ended up going into the OR on this. It was a traumatic Cesarean. It really was. And then after, the doctor said to me, he pulled me aside and he goes, “Well, isn’t she just happy now that she has her baby? Can’t she just let all of that stuff go?” Because I stepped out to give them a moment because they were really upset. I just wanted to let them be together. It was clear to me that they just wanted a moment just the two of them and their baby. I said, “I don’t think it works that way.” He goes, “Well, that’s how it should work.” Julie: Wow. Meagan: I will never, ever forget that. It was like, “You totally just pushed her trauma aside. You did your job. You got the baby here, but now what happened leading up to that, what happened during it, and what’s happening after shouldn’t matter because she has her baby here.”Julie: Well, that’s totally gaslighting. I mean, come on. Meagan: It was bad. He didn’t say that to her. I hope that he never did, not that I know of it, but he said that to me. I was like, “You totally just discredited everything that she just experienced.” I was very frustrated. Julie: I hate the system. Meagan: You know, it’s hard.Julie: I really do. Meagan: It’s hard because I’m sure overall in his head, he just doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand. He didn’t experience that. Julie: Yep. Meagan: But that doesn’t mean she should just be okay. So if you’re one of those moms, and I’m going to tell you that there are lots of us out there that are like, “Okay, well it’s okay because it’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll heal. My baby’s here fine and safe.” We all should be glad and happy about that, but it’s okay to accept that. It’s okay to say, “You know, that was really hard. I didn’t like that” or “That was triggering for me.” Like Julie said, the mind and the body and everything, we’ve got to work through it and we’ve got to accept it and it’s really hard too. Mikaella: I want to add even if it’s not necessarily traumatic, you’re also still allowed to mourn a birth experience that you didn’t get to have. Even if there was zero trauma involved, if you had something in your mind that you were working towards and didn’t get it, that’s still so valid. I know with Boston, my C-section, at the end I feel like it was necessary. I didn’t feel pushed toward it or anything. I don’t know that it would have been necessary had I gone without all of the interventions leading up to the C-section. At that point, the C-section was necessary but I definitely mourned the experience of not having a second vaginal birth. I feel like a lot of women feel that way because it’s like, “Well, your baby is here and you’re fine. Your birth wasn’t even traumatic, so what’s the matter?” But you’re more than allowed to mourn a birth experience that you didn’t get to have. Meagan: Right. Julie and I have talked about that all of these years on the podcast. It’s okay to be happy for your baby and everything but also mourn. You don’t have to only be happy or only be mourning or grieving the experience. They can go together. You can grieve the experience that you didn’t receive while also being happy for your newborn baby. Mikaella: Exactly. Julie: Yep. It’s complicated. It feels complicated, but it’s not morally right or morally wrong to mourn the loss of a birth experience you wanted while being incredibly excited about your new baby. It’s not. It’s not morally right or morally wrong. It just is. It’s okay to feel these things. It’s okay to sit with them and it’s okay for it to feel complicated. Meagan: Absolutely. Okay, ladies well thank you so much again for being here with us today. I do. I love your story. Honestly, I long for that birth. We’re done having kids. We definitely are not having anymore, but I kind of long for it. Those fast, precipitous births can be really, really crazy and very intense because your body is doing a lot but it kind of sounds really fun too. Mikaella: I honestly enjoyed it. Out of all three, that was my most enjoyable birth and the easiest recovery afterward. I got to experience spontaneous pushing or the pushing reflex. The ejection reflex was so incredible because, with my other two, I pushed for hours and hours. It started as, “Let’s do practice pushing,” and then it was just pushing and pushing. It was exhausting. So getting to feel the ejection reflex was honestly awesome. Painful, but it was awesome. Getting to just check all of those things off of my list and knowing that I can do it and taking charge of my own birth there at the end was really incredible. Meagan: I love it. Well, thank you. On that note, we will just leave on the positive. It was incredible, that positive note. Thank you again, both of you. Mikaella: Thank you. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Our friend Necey joins us with her inspiring five birth stories today! Necey had a scheduled Cesarean for her first birth, a redemptive VBAC for her third, two scheduled C-sections after that, and a VBAC after three Cesareans for her fifth baby. She shares how her VBA3C was a spiritual journey that gave her the strength to advocate among skeptics and have faith in herself to follow the path she knew she needed to take. We are so in awe of Necey’s powerful stories!Additional LinksNecey's Family YouTube ChannelHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Hello, you guys. It’s February and we have more beautiful stories coming your way. Today we have our friend Necey. Her name is Donice but she goes by Necey. She has a whole bunch of stories. She is unique because she is a VBAC and then a VBAC after two Cesareans. She has five cute kiddos and she had an unexpected Cesarean like a lot of us do, then a VBAC, and then two Cesareans, and then a VBAC. I think it’s cool that you have a VBAC after multiple Cesareans and then you have a VBAC. I’m so excited for her to share her stories today, all five of them. So amazing. Review of the WeekBut of course, we have a review of the week. I’m going to share it from koggli. Sorry, I always butcher the names. The subject is “The Reason I Got My VBAC.” It says, “I cannot thank these ladies enough for the impact they had on me and my second birth. My first was a 24-hour labor with an emergency C-section. After delivering my precious son, I was sure I never wanted to go through a C-section again. Through their knowledge and resources, I was able to feel much more prepared for my second birth. Because of these ladies and all of the ones who have also shared all of their testimonies, I had a successful VBAC in October 2020 with a little girl.” She had a little boy and then she had a little girl. “Now I am preparing for my second VBAC with another little girl due October 2022” which means at this time of recording, she just had her baby a couple of months ago. So koggli, if you are listening, please write us. Let us know how it went. It says, “Because of them, I became so passionate for VBACs and the beautiful redemption they can bring. Thank you, ladies.” Well, thank you koggli. So excited for you. Congrats on your VBAC. I can’t wait, I hope, to hear about your second VBAC. So as usual, we love reviews from you guys. They are so amazing. They warm my heart. You can leave them in all sorts of different ways. You can do it on Apple Podcasts, Google, Instagram, and Facebook or just email us at [email protected]. Whatever it may be, we would love to know what you think about the podcast. Necey’s Stories Meagan: Okay. I can’t wait. Let’s dive into your stories. Five stories. Obviously, everyone starts with a C-section, so let’s dive into that. Necey: Okay. First, I want to say thank you for allowing me to be able to come on your podcast and share my story with you and your listeners. Okay, so first we’re going to talk about Joshua. He’s my firstborn. When I got pregnant with him, it was my first one. I didn’t know anything about anything. Meagan: Right? You just don’t know what you don’t know. You know you’re going to have a baby. That’s what that pregnancy test confirms, right?Necey: Yes, yes. I just didn’t take good care of myself. I was eating. I was just happy to be pregnant so I took it as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted. I gained a lot of weight rapidly. Around 7 months, I ended up getting diagnosed with gestational diabetes. That made me have to go to the doctor more often, sometimes twice a week, and get a lot of non-stress tests. I didn’t know what I was doing or what the tests were for. So then at around 37 weeks, I went in and got a non-stress test done. I didn’t pass it. They said that he wasn’t moving the way they wanted him to move and therefore, they took me to get an ultrasound to make sure that he was still doing okay. The measured fluid and everything. The nurse ended up calling the doctor. The doctor said to have me go home and have me come back in the morning, and if it’s the same then we’ll go from there. So fast forward, my husband and I come back the next day. Nothing changed, so they said that they were going to have to keep me at the hospital I was at because it wasn’t the original one I was supposed to be at. They said it was because it had a children’s hospital inside. Meagan: A NICU, uh-huh. Necey: Yes. They wanted to make sure that if there were any complications with him that we would have the option. They ended up taking me up to labor and delivery. I thought I was going to get induced, but once I got up there, and when the doctor came, my family was there and she just was like, “We’re going to do a C-section.” I was like, “Okay.” Meagan: Oh!Necey: Yeah. I was just like, “Okay.” We didn’t know. Meagan: Right. Necey: I heard the nurse ask her, “You’re not going to induce her? You’re just going to give her a C-section?” The doctor was like, “Yeah. Just going to give her a C-section.” I didn’t know. I was just like, “Okay.” So I did the C-section and everything went good, no complications. As she was pulling him out, she said, “Oh, that’s what happened. The cord was wrapped tightly around his neck.” I now know that just because the cord is wrapped around the neck doesn’t mean that you cannot deliver your baby vaginally. Meagan: Correct, yeah. It actually happens all of the time. Babies come out with nuchal cords all of the time. Necey: Yeah. So you know, I was just like, “Okay.” I was just happy that my baby was born. He was born 6 pounds, 11 ounces I believe via C-section. Everything went good. I was just happy to be a first-time mom. So for my second pregnancy/baby, I had another son, Reggie the Third. He was actually a successful VBAC. The pregnancy was fine. No complications and no gestational diabetes which I was happy about that. Everything was fine. I actually went into early labor with him on Thanksgiving Day.Meagan: Oh, a turkey baby. Necey: Yes. I guess it was all of the food. And then so I actually was going some Black Friday shopping because I never had labor before. My husband and I were at the store and I kept going back and forth to the bathroom. I was just telling him, “I don’t know. It keeps feeling like I have to go to the bathroom but nothing is happening. It’s kind of weird.” He was just like, “Okay.” So one time when I was going back to him, I ended up having a contraction that stopped me in my tracks. I was like, “Wait a minute. Is this possible? Oh, a contraction.” So I was like, “Okay. Oh, Lord. Just let me make it through this so I can get back to him because I don’t know what’s going on.” I made it back to him and I was like, “I think we need to go home because I feel like I may be having contractions.” He was just like, “Okay.” So I got home, called the exchange line, and told them what was going on. They wanted me to go on and get checked out. I did and I went about midnight. They let me go at about 8:00 in the morning and said I was contracting. I just didn’t have any change. I went home and relaxed. At around 6:00, so that was Thursday, then Friday around 6:00, I started to have contractions. I was like, “Wait a minute. It’s time now.” So I had my sister and my sister-in-law, so family over. I ended up on all fours making this moaning sound. My sister is on the phone calling my doctor. My sister-in-law is massaging my back and she was like, “I’m almost sure you’re in labor.” So they said to go back and I went back. They checked me and I was about 4-5 centimeters dilated. So they said, “Yeah, you’re in labor.” Active labor is what they called it. I immediately asked for an epidural. I didn’t even try to labor. I was like, “Give it to me. I want it now.” Meagan: Yeah, that’s okay. Necey: Although I had the epidural, for some reason, I still felt my son. He felt like he was coming out of me. Some hours had passed, maybe about 8 or 9 hours or so, but before that, the nurse ended up checking me and she was like, “You’re complete. I just have to wait until the doctor comes.” She called the doctor and I was like, “I think I feel him.” She was like, “Oh, I just checked you. You’re good. You’re complete. You’ve got time,” is what she said. She had me do some practice pushes and as they had my legs open, my mom and my mother-in-law were like, “Oh, I think you need to close your legs.” Meagan: I thought I had time.Necey: Right? I was like, “Okay, why? He’s right there, isn’t he?” She was like, “Yeah.” So then the doctor ended up coming. Actually, I had a resident. He ended up coming in and the doctor soon followed. I didn’t even get to push. I pushed a time and a half. I didn’t even get to push hard or anything. He just came right out. I think my body had already done it for me, just unaware that that’s what it was doing. He was born 6 pounds, 14 ounces. Meagan: Okay. Necey: Yes, so I’m in the 6-pound range. So yeah. Then for my third baby, Miss Addison, my first baby girl, the same thing. No gestational diabetes. The pregnancy was actually good. We were on track for another VBAC, but around 40 weeks, I went in for my check-up and the doctor was just like, “I wonder why you haven’t gone into labor.” I was actually thinking the same thing. So she said to follow her to the ultrasound room. I did and she did a quick check to examine and she was like, “Oh, that’s what’s going on. She’s transverse inside of you.”Meagan: Sideways. Necey: Yeah. I had no clue what that meant. I was just like, “Okay, transverse.” I’ve heard of breech or head-down. She told me to come back the next day and do an EVC.Meagan: ECV. Necey: ECV, I’m sorry. Meagan: It’s a version where they are trying to manually, from the outside, rotate the baby. Necey: Yes. She said if that was successful, then good. If not, we would have to do another C-section. So of course, it wasn’t successful and I didn’t know anything about Spinning Babies or anything like that because I probably would have tried some of those things, but yes. We ended up going for a C-section, got prepped, and for some reason, when they got me to the operating room, I became very panicked. I started shouting and asking them to get me up. I didn’t want to do it. The whole team lifted me up and the doctor talked to me. She calmed me down. We went on with the C-section. Everything went good. She was actually 8 pounds even. Meagan: A big jump, about a pound heavier than your other babies. Necey: Yes, so I don’t know how or why, but that’s what it was. So for my next pregnancy/birth, it was my daughter Madeline. Her pregnancy was good too with no complications and no gestational diabetes again. However, I was still with the same provider, so since I had two Cesareans, she said she wasn’t comfortable with doing a vaginal because I actually unknowingly started to advocate for myself with her. I just asked. I asked and asked. She always told me no, so I was just like, “Okay.” I didn’t think I had another choice, but I did try to compromise with her. I was like, “If I go into labor before the scheduled date, can I just have her vaginally or try it out?” She was like, “I guess. I really don’t want to do it, but maybe so.” I didn’t go into labor though. So I went to the scheduled Cesarean and I think for my last birth, I had trauma so I was just scared. I started to panic again. This time, it was before we got into the operating room. It was right after they gave me the spinal tap. It was so bad. It was really bad. I was a little embarrassed, but they ended up saying that they had to give me some medicine. They ended up giving me Xanax. I was scared because they said it was not good for the baby. It messes with the baby’s heart. They were like, “We really don’t have another option because we really need you calm.” So I just agreed. But after I got that, I didn’t even know what it was, but I was really relaxed. I didn’t have a care in the world. We did the C-section and Madeline was born. She was 6 pounds, 12 ounces. Meagan: Okay. Necey: I know. So I don’t know. But yeah. It was good and no complications, just the panic attack. Oh, and you know what? Yes. My husband did say that she didn’t respond. I didn’t know because I was out of it. And so he said that he got scared because she didn’t respond for a while. I’m just assuming it was because of the medicine, but she was fine. I just thank God that she was okay. I was very depressed after that. I think it was a trauma for me, so I didn’t want to have any more babies. I didn’t want to go through the delivery process or any of that. I ended up getting pregnant again. Meagan: Oops, someone else had a plan for you. Necey: Yep. So with this pregnancy and birth, I knew deep inside that I didn’t want to do it, but I was okay with having another C-section. I wasn’t looking to be pregnant. It was actually at the end of the COVID lockdown, so I have all of these friends and I see people having these babies and I tell my husband, “We missed the wave. We did good.” And then nope, we got caught right up in the wave. So yeah. Her story is a journey for me. I didn’t realize I had trauma with the rest of the other two births before her. One day while I was minding my business and having some alone time, I heard the Holy Spirit tell me that I was pregnant, that I was going to have my baby vaginally, that I needed to call my sister to have her bring me some pregnancy tests, and that this is going to be a faith entrenched journey between me and God. Meagan: That just gave me the chills. Necey: I’m telling you, I was scared. I thought I was tripping. I said, “No, I am not,” but I decided to be obedient, so I called my sister. She came over with three pregnancy tests and sure enough, every single one of them was positive. Meagan: Pregnant!Necey: My husband and I were like, “How did this happen?” We thought we were doing good, but when God has other plans for us, His plan always trumps what we want to do. I remember my friend telling me that she ended up not going to doctors anymore. She ended up doing midwives. She told me that they had done research that the midwives are saying that there is more research out saying that it’s possible for people to have vaginal births after multiple Cesareans. Meagan: At this point, you’ve had three technically, right? You’ve had a vaginal birth in between, but you’ve had three. Necey: Yes. I had three. I called the midwifery info she gave to me. They said no. They said maybe if it would have been one that they would be able to do it, but they gave me the information for somebody else. I called them. They said no. After that, it was just a rabbit hole with a lot of no’s, so I decided to call my previous doctor although I had that trauma. I just didn’t really feel as comfortable as I did once with her. It was just familiar to me. Meagan: Some comfort there and familiarity.Necey: Yes. I ended up calling her and went to my appointment, but that was the last appointment I went to her because she did a couple of things that I feel like as a provider, you just shouldn’t do even as a person. It’s like she was passively trying to get me to get a tubal done. Meagan: Oh. Necey: Yes. She was like, “I need to know if you want to get a tubal or not because I need to schedule your C-section at a different hospital so we can do it all at the same time.” I was like, “Okay.” I didn’t say anything to her. I didn’t plan on getting one, but even if I did or didn’t, I didn’t say anything. I actually wanted to talk to her about having my baby vaginally. Meagan: Right, yeah. Necey: That was a red flag and I just said, “Okay.” Then the second thing was that she asked me about the routine testing that most doctors do which is fine. I didn’t have a problem with it. It’s just that she started to say because I told her that I didn’t know. I would tell her at the next visit. She was just like, “Well, the sooner the better in case your baby has any disabilities and you want to terminate your pregnancy.”Meagan: Oh, whoa. Necey: Yes. I was shocked because I couldn’t believe she had said that to me. But for me, if that’s what God wanted to bless me with a baby with disabilities, I’m okay with that because I’m going to do what I need to do. I just thought that was kind of out of line that she would do that. It hurt my feelings a little bit, but I was like, “Okay. This is the only choice I have.” The third thing was after we were wrapping up and she was leaving out, she said in a low tone but I could hear her clearly, she was like, “Well, thanks for keeping us in business.” I was like, “Okay. Have a good day.” Meagan: Maybe a little unprofessional. Necey: Yeah. But I had been with her since my second birth and my second pregnancy, so that was just new for me. I decided I wasn’t going to go back to her. That was in January. I found out I was pregnant in November, so from the beginning of January to the end of February, I didn’t have a doctor. I’m calling. I actually wrote a letter to one of the head obstetricians in my area of a big institution where I’m from. She actually called me back. That phone call had me in tears because he basically was laughing at me literally and telling me that it is a joke. No institution here would ever–Meagan: He went out of his way to call you back to tell you that you are a joke. Necey: Yes, that, “No institution in our area or anywhere is going to allow TOLAC after three Cesareans.” I was just like, “Okay, God. Why would you tell me this? Why would you have me go down this road if it’s not true? This is impossible. Nobody is going to let me do this.” After I went on my rant, I was just like, “Whatever.” I just kept going. I kept on and ended up finding a doctor who ended up giving me a referral to a high-risk clinic here. But in between that time, I ended up hiring a doula. I suggest anybody that’s pregnant, get a doula if you can. I ended up joining some Facebook groups and following people on Instagram. It’s where I found you guys, The VBAC Link Community and it was so encouraging for me just to know that I wasn’t alone. There are people out there who are going through the same things. I ended up going to the high-risk clinic and they told me that they were going to accept me as a patient. Of course, they told me all of the cons of TOLACing after three Cesareans. They said that they suggested that I get a repeat C-section. I told them that I didn’t want to do it, but this was the first time that I understood that even if I didn’t want to do it and someone forced me to it, they said that it was assault. I said, “Is it?” They were like, “Yeah. If you don’t consent to it, we can’t do that.” I was like, “Oh. Okay.”But yeah, so to her birth. My water ended up breaking. I did want to say that they told me they would absolutely not induce me. No Pitocin. I had done a little research, so I knew that. They said that Pitocin can increase uterine rupture rates or the percentage of it, so I wanted to stay away from it. They had told me that. That Wednesday, fast forward to my labor and birth with her, my water broke at 1:00 AM on Wednesday. I never had experienced that before, so I’m like, “I think that’s what it is,” because it kept coming out in gushes. I had a doctor’s appointment Thursday morning, so I tried to do some walking to try to get things moving because I wasn’t contracting. I didn’t feel anything. I went to the doctor Thursday morning and told them what had happened. Of course, they wanted me to go to triage and get checked out to get the test done to make sure that it was actually my water. We went home. We didn’t go back right away. We waited a long time. We went back at 11:00 at night, got the test done, and it was my water. I had to be admitted and I was scared, but I knew the word that I had so I held on to it. We got upstairs and the first resident that came in was really forceful and was like, “You have to sign this paper saying that you are declining the C-section.” We were like, “Okay. Can you give us a second?” The nurse that we had was really, really good, the first nurse. Both nurses. She talked to me. She consoled me. She explained things further than what the resident was saying. My husband and I ended up signing the paper, but I still had no change. My water was ruptured. Meagan: Were you contracting? Okay, yeah. Just ruptured, but nothing happening yet. Necey: Yes ma’am. They ended up telling me that I had to get induced. Meagan: You’re like, “But they said they wouldn’t.” Necey: Yes. So my husband and I were scared. I was like, “I don’t know about that. I thought you guys said I wasn’t going to be able to do that.” They were like, “Basically, your options are to get Pitocin or have a repeat C-section.” The nurse was really nice. We asked her if we could take a second to just pray and talk among ourselves. She was like, “Okay,” but she stayed there. She didn’t leave. Meagan: Amongst ourselves like him and I and a doula. Necey: Yes. Yes. So we looked at each other and that’s what we kind of said. She was like, “Oh, well I wanted to pray with you guys.” Yeah. It was so shocking. I wasn’t expecting it. We said, “Okay.” After she prayed, the atmosphere just changed. I was like, “You know what?” I’m taking this hospital gown off. I brought my own gown. I’m putting that on. I had the affirmation vision board that I had made. I pulled that out. I turned off the lights. We brought LED light candles and lit the room up and put on our worship music and just went in. I’m like, “You did something there,” talking to the nurse. They started me on Pitocin. I told them I wanted to start at 0.5. They said they don’t usually do that. They usually start around 2. I told them I was scared and that I would rather start off low and work my way up. They ended up saying, “Okay.”Meagan: Good for you. Necey: So then the doula ended up getting there. This was around 3:00 PM. She was there and I started contracting. They put in an internal fetal monitor, I think is what it’s called. Meagan: An FSC or an IUPC. A lot of times with VBAC or TOLAC, they put this IUPC monitor in to tell them exactly the strength of the contractions so they can manipulate the Pitocin. The FSC is the little probe monitor that goes on the baby’s head to tell them exactly what the heart rate is. Necey: Yeah, they put the one– Meagan: IUPC, intrauterine pressure catheter is what it’s called. Necey: Okay, you got it. But yeah, so they did that. Between 3:00 and I would say around 10:00ish, I was still just at a 3. The contractions were getting stronger and they didn’t want to check me often because my waters were broken. They didn’t want to introduce infection. I was, is it B strep positive? Meagan: Group B strep, GBS? Necey: Yes, yes. I was positive for that. Meagan: So they probably wanted to do antibiotics. Necey: Yes, so all of that is going on and then the shift changed and the other nurse came in. She was just like, “Okay. I just took these classes. I want to put you in all of these positions.” She and my doula had me, I don’t know what the position was but they had me laying on the bed and I had to arch my back and they had the birthing ball in between my legs. Meagan: That’s Walcher’s. Oh, arch your back laying on your side?Necey: Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Meagan: Oh, okay okay. Like a Sims position, like a side-lying position? Necey: I was calling it swimming. Meagan: Sims, yeah. Exaggerated probably. Or there’s the flying cowgirl where you are really, really arched. Necey: I think I may have done that one too. They were on it. I had no clue. I was just doing what they told me to do. All I knew was that I was feeling contractions. I started going back and forth to the bathroom. I ended up throwing up. It was unmedicated for me too. We didn’t find out the gender. It was a surprise for us. We thought that the journey was more important than that at that point. At about 10:45ish, the nurse and my doula were like, “I really believe that you are in transition,” because I was making these weird noises. Meagan: Isn’t it funny how our body just intuitively makes weird noises but at the same time, we’re like, “Oh wait. That’s a good noise.” Necey: My doula said, after it was over, she looked at me and she was like, “I have never in my life heard anything like that.” We all laughed about it at that point, but yeah. For some reason, the resident doctor that was there would not let the nurse check me. I don’t know why, but the nurse kept asking and was like, “I really just think she’s ready.” I don’t know. It was just taking the doctor a really long time, but she finally got there. She comes and she was ready to check me. I was like, “Wait. You have to wait. Here comes a contraction.” The contraction comes and I’m like, “Okay. It’s over. Check me now. Let’s move fast.” She did. I was complete. They were like, “Okay. Get ready. We’re going to do a couple of practice pushes and get things going.” They were like, “Whatever position you want.” I ended up on the bed in the weirdest sideways– it was just really weird. They were like, “Okay, if that’s what you want to do.” I’m like, “Okay, I guess.” Meagan: That’s what my body is doing, yeah. Necey: The room quickly filled up with people. I pushed two times and I ended up yelling out, “It burns,” because it burned. Meagan: Uh-huh, the ring of fire. Necey: Yes, that’s what they said. They chuckled and they were like, “Yeah, that’s the ring of fire. That’s supposed to happen.” My husband was all, “I see the head.” I’m like, “Oh, it’s happening!” Then I pushed again and I mean, she popped out. We didn’t get it on camera. We videoed the whole thing, but my husband, I guess, got so excited. He snatched the camera from the doula and accidentally cut it off, so we missed her actually coming out. Meagan: Darn it!Necey: I know. I couldn’t be mad though. He was excited. She was born. Hannah Faith, 6 pounds, 5 ounces. She came out. He was screaming, “You did it. God did it, honey.” I’m like, “Yeah, God did it.” Everybody in there was in awe. The doctor– I even asked. I said, “Has anybody in here ever witnessed a vaginal birth after three Cesareans?” and everybody said no. This was amazing. And so she was born. I’m happy she was born. I didn’t realize just how much I needed to have a healing birth, this faith journey with God and me, and just the information I learned about giving birth. It only took five, but–Meagan: But hey, you learned and grew with each one. Necey: Yes ma’am. Yeah. So that’s it. My babies. But that’s why her name is Hannah Faith. Meagan: That’s so beautiful. Necey: Thank you. It was our journey. We didn’t even have a name picked out either. Meagan: It just came. Everything fit just perfectly. Necey: Yes. Meagan: Yes. And do you know what? Something that you did for all of those providers that were there, is you proved to them, and not that you were there to prove anything, but you proved to them and showed them that it’s possible because I guarantee before that, they were probably all a little doubtful and a little skeptical, right? But there it goes. It happens. The hardest thing with VBAC after– so from VBAC after two Cesareans, ACOG is like, “Okay. Vaginal birth after two Cesareans is reasonable. We feel like it’s okay. We know that the rupture rate is anywhere between .2-1.5% depending on the study.” But then VBAC after three Cesareans, there’s not a lot out there and it’s because we’re not doing them and providers are cutting people off saying, “Nope. You had those two. You’re done.” But then we’ve had story after story after story of VBAC after three Cesareans where they’re beautiful and they pan out. Look, you had Pitocin. Do you know what your Pitocin got to?Necey: 5. Meagan: A 5. See? You had Pitocin and you had an IUPC. I want to talk a little bit about that because sometimes, it’s a less-ideal thing because it’s an intervention, right? But sometimes, a provider may agree to allow a VBAC after multiple Cesareans. If you’re feeling stuck and there’s no one in your area and it’s a rule, you could talk to them and say, “Let’s have this. Let’s watch what my contractions are doing. I’m willing to have this intervention for this birth. I never want to say to give in to anything, but it’s just an option because it sometimes brings comfort to those providers and I guarantee that that’s what it did. In the beginning, they were like, “No, you can’t have Pit,” and then it was like they totally forgot that they said that. So they were saying one thing and doing another. That happens a lot of the time, so you are just living proof, right? VBAC after three Cesareans with an induction. I mean, yes you went into spontaneous labor. Your membranes ruptured spontaneously, but then labor didn’t start. It probably would have in time, but they jump-started it. They jump-started it with Pit, so it’s possible. It is possible. There are not enough studies out there because it’s not happening. Necey: It’s not. That’s actually a goal of mine to just advocate and give a voice to the problem. Maybe the issue is the fact that we are being denied and the proper research isn’t given because during my research, YouTube, The VBAC Link Community, and others, I saw multiple women having vaginal births after two, three, and I even saw four. If we could get across the board and get a good average and a good study was done, then maybe we can move forward. Meagan: Right, it’s just getting the person and getting the connections to start back. It’s going to start with people just like us, just regular old humans. It’s going to start with us facilitating this. We have our Dr. Natalie Elphinstone, I think is how she says it, she is doing maternal assisted Cesareans which is something also very foreign and not heard of. Everyone is like, “No, that’s not possible,” and here it is and it’s happening. As each of us starts implementing things, maybe it takes writing these providers like you did. It is unfortunate that they called just to laugh at you and say, “Yeah, right.” Maybe write back and say, “I just wanted to let you know that this happened.” Necey: That’s what my doula said to do. I haven’t done it yet. I actually had forgotten and I think I should too. Meagan: Yes. It’s just that every little thing. I wanted to write a note to my doctor too because he was like, “Good luck. No one’s going to want you out there.” I remember yelling. I’m holding my baby and should be not thinking about my doctor, but that’s exactly where my mind went. I was like, “Screw you. Look at what I just did. This happened. You told me this wouldn’t happen. You told me I would never get a baby out of my pelvis because it was so small.” Yeah. It just goes to show that one, we are capable of amazing things. Our bodies are incredible. God is good and it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s not like you’re shoving his face in it and saying, “Oh, look at this,” but it’s like, “Hey. I want you to know that this happened. I even had Pitocin.” And then he might look at it and scoff and say, “Whatever,” or he might be like, “Hmm. All right. Maybe I shouldn’t doubt.”Necey: That’s the biggest thing. It is possible. It just goes to show that we are all human, even doctors. It’s not to discredit them at all, but nobody knows everything and we should work together as a birthing team and not as an enforcer and just the patient. This should be a collective thing. I think a lot more can get done if it goes that route. Having a doula is very important during pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum. My doula came a week later to do the postpartum visit and she asked me how I was feeling. I was fine and she was just like, “Well, how are your feet?” I was like, “Well, they seem like they are a little bit swollen.” She was like, “I think you should check your blood pressure because there is such a thing as postpartum hypertension.” I said, “Okay.” I checked it and my blood pressure was really, really high, almost stroke level high. She said, “You need to go to the emergency room now.” I’m just thankful that we had the doula because I probably would have just gone on. I was feeling fine. I ended up going. I had to stay. They had to put me on magnesium and some other things for a couple of days. They sent me home with some medicine, but everything ended up fine after that, but I just want people to be aware that postpartum is care too and there are those signs. Meagan: Yes. So often, postpartum is just forgotten about. It’s hard because we are so focused on birth and pregnancy and all of these things, but then we forget about postpartum. If something is not seeming totally right, and it’s normal to have– especially if you’ve had a lot of fluids or medicines or anything like that, it’s normal to be swollen, but if you’re getting more swollen or you weren’t swollen and now all of a sudden you’re swollen, that’s definitely a sign of postpartum hypertension. It’s definitely something to call and discuss. It never hurts to just call. Even if it’s nothing, it never hurts to call and just check out. Necey: Yes, yes. Meagan: Thank you so much for sharing all of your stories and spending time with us. Necey: No problem. Thank you again for having me. Meagan: Absolutely. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“If you want to have a VBAC, trying is so empowering. If it’s on your heart, you have to go for it because it’s possible.”We have had her on the pod as a fabulous cohost a few times, but now we get to hear Sarah’s own VBAC story today! After a PROM and stalled long labor, Sarah was told her pelvis was too small. She was labeled as a “failure to progress” and “once a Cesarean, always a Cesarean”.  Sarah put in the work to change the way she let outside opinions influence her choices. She didn’t let self-doubt control her thoughts and surrounded herself with positivity. Sarah went all in for her VBAC and everything worked out beautifully!Additional LinksEntering Motherhood PodcastSarah’s InstagramHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Hello, this is Meagan with The VBAC Link and we have another VBAC story coming for you. Today is actually kind of a fun episode because we have one of our own VBAC doulas. She’s actually been a cohost on a couple of episodes, so this is really fun to have her be on the other side of things instead of being a cohost, now sharing her story. I am so excited, Sarah, for you to be with us today. She is a mom of two, a wife, and a mechanical engineer. Since entering into motherhood herself, she has become certified in postpartum nutrition and is a birth and postpartum doula which I think is amazing. Postpartum nutrition is such a big factor. We are going to hopefully have a special guest on here sometime maybe in the spring and she’s going to talk about that and how nutrition can play a huge factor in our recovery and how our incisions, like our C-section scars, heal and how it can impact VBAC. It’s amazing, so I love that you are certified in postpartum nutrition. If you have anything that you would like to share at the end of this, please be my guest and definitely share anything. I am so excited for you to be here today. Review of the WeekMeagan: I’m going to read a review and then we are going to jump into your amazing story. Sarah: Sounds good. Meagan: Perfect. This is a more recent, August 2022 and it’s from Connor Alyse Hoelle. Sorry, I’m really bad at names obviously. I’m probably butchering it. But the review says, “I was planning on waiting until I give birth to leave a review, but I love this podcast so much. I have to do it now. Julie and Meagan have created such a fantastic and empowering resource in The VBAC Link podcast. When I first got pregnant, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue a VBAC and had a lot of self-doubts. Now, I’m just a few weeks from my due date” so I bet she’s had her baby because right now it’s the end of 2022 “ and thanks to this podcast, I’m genuinely so excited to go into labor. I’m been binging every episode and can’t believe how much it has changed my perspective and increased my confidence in my body and my baby. I promise you’ll be hearing an update from me afterward.”So Alyse, we would love to hear the update and see how things went and see how you’re feeling about your birth. I love that she has been with us and binging. It warms my heart so much. So if you also have a review, please never hesitate to drop us one. You can leave it on Apple Podcasts. I think Google Play maybe, actually, I don’t have Google Play so don’t quote me on that but if you can’t do it on Google Play, you can to go Google. Just search “The VBAC Link” and leave a review there or you can send us a message on Instagram. You know all of the things. I say it every time, but we love your reviews, so please if you wouldn’t mind, leave us one. Sarah’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Sarah. Are you excited? I’m excited. Sarah: I am, yeah. I am just super thankful to be here. Like you said, I was able to be a cohost on some other episodes but to be able to share my story is just something that’s near and dear to my heart. I love sharing it, so I’m happy to be here. Meagan: Well, thank you. Share away. Anything that you would like listeners to hear. Sarah: Well obviously, every VBAC story begins with a Cesarean. Like many other episodes, I am just going to briefly go over what went on with my Cesarean. With my first, she was born in August of 2019 and it was an unplanned Cesarean. I was a first-time mom doing all of the things, quote-on-quote, all of the things I felt like I was supposed to do. I was reading books and talking to other moms. I took a birth course. I had a baby shower. I was looking at all of the cute baby things. I went to all of my prenatal appointments and was checking all of the boxes. I was even seeing a chiropractor. I had a doula. I was just doing all of the things that I felt I needed to do to prepare. I was convinced that I was going to have a completely normal, unmedicated birth. I was just going to walk into the hospital, pop out my baby, and just start this new life of a family of three and being a mom. Everything was just going to work out. Obviously, I’m here because that did not go according to plan like most of our Cesarean experiences. Actually, very similar to your story, my water broke first. Meagan: Mmm, yeah. Sarah: I was just shy of 39 weeks and I got up to pee and sure enough, there was a little bit of a pop and trickle down my leg. I was like, “Man, I peed myself.” I was fully convinced that this was just pee and I was super embarrassed. I went to the bathroom and just continued on. Sure enough, every time I went to stand up, I just kept on peeing a little. Meagan: Like how much pee do I have?Sarah: I was like, “This is weird.” I’ve never been pregnant before. I’m so far along, maybe this is normal. There I am. Of course, we all have our phones when we’re on the toilet. I’m sitting there Googling, “What happens when your water breaks?” or “What is it like when your water breaks?” All of these scenarios are running through my head because everything leading up to that point was basically, “Oh, your water’s never going to break. It’s not going to be until later on in your labor.” Everything like that, and sure enough, soon after, I believe it was my mucus plug that came out. It’s honestly so hard to try and look back on the experience knowing what I know now and say, “What actually happened?” There’s no way of being able to go back and actually relive it through the lens that you have now, so it’s really crazy to go back and everything, but we were there in the moment and just convinced, “Okay. Water broke. What do we do?” Sure enough, it was just like, “Well, I guess we go to the hospital.” Meagan: That’s what I was told. It was like, “If your water breaks, you come straight in.” So I was like, “Okay, cool.” So my water broke and what did I do? We got ready and we went in. Sarah: Yeah. So here I am. I remember my husband took a picture of me standing outside of the hospital. I was happy like, “Okay, we’re going to go have the baby now. The water broke. This is great.” I was just convinced that this was all cool. Like, “All right. Baby’s coming. My water broke. I must be doing something right.”I got there. They checked me. I wasn’t even a centimeter dilated. They were just like, “Okay. We’ll see what happens, but you’re staying here.” That, I think, really threw me in for a loop. I figured that I was going to be staying there, but I did not think I wasn’t even a centimeter dilated. I did not. Meagan: Right, because you think, “Water breaks, I’m in labor.” Sarah: Mhmm. It’s go-time. Meagan: We associate water breaking with the movies where it’s like, “Hurry! Get to the hospital! We’re going to have a baby.” But in hindsight, we weren’t really contracting or anything like that. Sarah: Not much was going on. Knowing what I know now, sure. I should have stayed home and all of these things, but again, in the moment and in that situation, it’s like, “Okay. Go to the hospital. Show up.” So now, here I am at the hospital and contractions did pick up. They put the monitors on me and set me all up. It was just kind of like shock. I was like, “This is happening. I’m having a baby. What’s going on?” So almost through every single contraction, I was shaking and then I was throwing up. From my birth class, it was like, “Oh, if you’re shaking and throwing up, you might be going through transition.”So again, I’m like, “Oh yay. My body is doing what it’s supposed to. I’m so far along. Let’s do this.” And sure enough, I was only at a 2. They were doing all of the cervical checks. I remember specifically this one nurse said to me– so I was only at 2 centimeters at the time and she was like, “Oh honey if this is how you are at a 2, you’re never going to make it to a 10. You should just get the epidural now.” Meagan: Awesome. Thank you so much for the encouragement. Sarah: I was just defeated. Over and over in my head, I’m like, “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t what is supposed to happen. What’s going on?” And of course, you can’t stop birth. It’s coming. It’s going. Things are moving and all I wanted to do was just take a moment and pause and stop. My body didn’t want to. It was just all happening. Naturally, I was just so defeated. I had only made it to 4 centimeters a few hours later after she had said this and I was still trying to motivate myself. I had my doula there. She was like, “You can do this. You’re okay.” I was shaking and feeling so scared and just not able to calm down. I think I took what the nurse had said and also just how I was feeling and was like, “I’m never going to be able to relax. I’m never going to be able to do what my body needs to do to get this baby out.” I was like, “Let’s do the epidural. Let’s just see where this goes.” It let me relax, but ultimately what I was feeling was just all of the pressure. She was posterior and it was just a lot of pressure and everything going on. I think maybe if we did some repositioning, that could have helped, but you never know what’s really going on. With the epidural, I was able to relax and calm down. I wasn’t shaking anymore. Meagan: Yeah, which makes it more pleasant. Sarah: Right, yeah. I was like, “Okay. I can get through this. This is fine.” I had gotten to 7 centimeters. Now, they were amping up the checks because I had the epidural, so why not?Meagan: You can’t feel it, so why not? Sarah: Right, and then I was approaching that 24-hour mark since my water had broken. I did get to 9 centimeters, but they were just saying, “This is taking too long. You should have progressed further at this point. We should really start to consider Cesarean so that we don’t fall into any emergency situations.”Meagan: Did they offer any intervention to help you get over that little hump? Was there any talk there like, “Hey, let’s give you 2mL of Pit. Let’s do something.”Sarah: Yeah, really nothing was discussed in that sense, but I found out afterward when I was pregnant with my second that I did have Pitocin. I was hooked up to antibiotics because I was GBS positive and then after the epidural, I believe they just added on the Pitocin. Meagan: But didn’t really talk to you about it. Sarah: No because my provider with my second was like, “Oh, so you had PItocin and everything.” I was like, “I did? No.” They were like, “Well, that’s what it says here in your report. I had no idea that they were even administering Pitocin. Maybe that’s what helped me progress further, but ultimately, it was just not moving as fast as they would like. Meagan: Yeah. Ultimately, it was that lovely failure to wait. Especially because your body went into spontaneous labor, rupture of membranes spontaneously and then it needed its time. There were some interventions which sometimes, not always, but sometimes can slow the body down because the body is like, “Whoa, hold on,” and then it catches back up, but maybe it sounds like they didn’t give you that time to catch it back up. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. It was just one thing after another. After the word “Cesarean” was thrown into the picture, I was just like, ”Oh my goodness. It hasn’t even been 24 hours and I have gone from wanting a completely unmedicated birth to now thinking a Cesarean is in the picture.” I just sat. I laid there in the bed just honestly praying and hoping and saying, “Whatever my body needs to do to get this baby out, allow it to happen.” They came back in and checked me. I still wasn’t dilated, so they just prepped the OR and I ended up with a Cesarean for my first birth. It was just like we said, I was classified as a “failure to progress”. They were convinced that maybe the baby was too large. My pelvis was too small. All of these things were being documented in my report. “This woman had this happen.”In their mind, they were thinking, “She’s never going to have a vaginal birth.” This is just a classic, “Oh, she’s going to always have Cesareans if she wants any more kids.” I think that was the picture that they drew up in my file and what was laid out for me with that provider. So going into my 6-week postpartum appointment, I was already like, “Okay. I have to have a vaginal birth. I want more kids. What does this mean?” They basically said, “Oh, well because of your situation, you could try again, but it’s probably going to result in the same situation.” They were already telling me that I should just go for a repeat Cesarean if I were to ever have kids again. Obviously, that did not happen, but I had to really put in a lot of work for myself and my education. I found this podcast. I started my own. It was just all of this rush of, “I need to figure out how I can get this to happen because I’m not getting that support from my provider of believing that I can do this. I know it’s not the story of “once a Cesarean, always a Cesarean” anymore. People are doing this. People are having very successful VBACs. It’s one of those things where if you choose to have a repeat Cesarean, that’s your thing, but if you want to have a VBAC, I feel like trying is something that is so empowering. If it’s on your heart, you have to go for it because it’s possible. Meagan: It is possible and what’s so hard for me to hear is what you just said. Before even getting pregnant or before even getting there, we have these providers placing doubt and fear in our minds. When I say doubt, it’s doubting our body can do it, but also, they pretty much say, “Well, sure. You can try but it’s going to end up the same way, so why waste your time? Just go in and have a baby.” So we’re being placed with all of these seeds. They’re being placed before we even fall pregnant again, so then we are doubting ourselves. I’m just going to say it how it is. It bugs the living crap out of me. It bugs me so much that we have people placing doubt in our ability to have a baby when they don’t know. Sarah: Right. I could have easily been like, “Oh okay. From now on, I’m going to always have Cesareans.” I could have gotten pregnant with my second and scheduled a full-on Cesarean and that would be the path that it went, but I had that successful VBAC. I had a baby come out of my vagina. It was possible. It’s just crazy that I think we need to share these stories. We need to show that it’s possible to send some shock to the providers and make them see, “Okay. We can rethink this situation.” It is something that’s going on. Obviously, women are doing this.  It’s really crazy. That provider too was like, “Oh, I just delivered a baby from a mom that had her 10th Cesarean. You can have as many as you’d like.” Meagan: Kind of funny, coincidentally I should say that you said that. We just had someone commenting. I did a reel on breech and she said that she had 10 Cesareans. 10. That is a lot of Cesareans. It is. She just said, “I wish I knew what I know now.” The same thing. That’s the hardest part. We can’t shame ourselves for not knowing then what we know now because that is how this works. We grow. We learn. We experience things and that is what morphs us into the passionate people or passionate person that wants to have a VBAC, right? And again, it’s no shame to those that don’t want to. That’s okay too. It’s just a matter of knowing, “Hey guys, really though. It’s really possible. It really is, and don’t doubt your body for a minute,” because I know people out there do, but you don’t need to. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. It’s so much easier said than done. It’s like, “Okay. Don’t doubt my body.” That’s what I mean. I think for some of us, it is easy to not doubt ourselves. It’s easy to have that confidence. I really needed to work on my confidence. I really needed to work on trusting myself. Meagan: Yes. Sarah: It’s just those quote-on-quote “simple things” that for some of us really take time and a lot of rethinking what we have known about ourselves. Meagan: Mental capacity for sure. Sarah: Yeah, and also, the language that we’re using and the way that we speak to ourselves and then also the way that people are speaking to us like that nurse that was commenting on me only being 2 centimeters and my provider saying, “You should just go ahead.” I had to learn how to take that information and refilter it to just be like, “Oh. That’s their opinion. That’s not truth.” Meagan: Love it. Sarah: That was so much of my VBAC journey and really preparing for stuff. I also was not only like, “How can I have a baby?” because that was the message that I was aiming for from my first, it was, “How can I have a vaginal delivery? How can I have this VBAC?” I took a HypnoBirthing class which covered all of those techniques. It was pregnancy and birth. I even used it in postpartum and was constantly reiterating these tracks that they had of, “You’re doing great. It’s perfect. Believe in your body. Trust in your body.” I needed to put myself into that hypnotic state in order to reframe my mindset to be able to successfully have this. I was just fully embodying everything in that sense. They also say that the color orange is also a really great color for having more activity and oxygen to the brain and really being more clear. I believe it also enhances confidence and happiness, all of those things that you need when you are birthing your baby.Meagan: Very positive. Sarah: Yeah, so I bought this big, fuzzy blanket that was bright orange. I had an orange water bottle and I had all of these little battery-operated tea light candles that were orange. I was like, “I am just covering myself in orange.” I am just all positive thoughts because I needed to have that because I knew, “Okay, if I come across a nurse again and if I come across friends or family–”. People were like, “Oh, what? You’re going to be in the hospital though right?” It was like all of their fears were—Meagan: Projecting? Sarah: Right. Also, after my Cesarean, it was so much like, “Oh, I’m so sorry that that happened to you.” All of these other people’s perspectives bombarded me with second-guessing my decisions and wondering what I just went through. I was having so much doubt because I was not confident in any of my decisions anymore. I was like, “What am I doing?” Now, I feel like I’ve gotten to a point of that true confidence. Obviously, there’s always going to be something else that comes up. Now, I’m dealing with a toddler and a baby and all of these new things, but being able to throw yourself in that position knowing that there are going to be things that come up that are unpredictable and you’re just going to have to renavigate through that. Having the experience of knowing, “I can rethink this situation. I can put myself in something that I’ve never been exposed to before and make it out.” That’s why I took The VBAC Link doula certification. I was already doing some doula work and things like that. I was like, “You know what? I really feel like I need to educate myself as much as I can and become certified that is specifically in something that’s going to prepare me not only for my birth but also to be able to help other people that are going through these same scenarios.”Meagan: Right. That’s why I became a doula. Sarah: Right. Meagan: I was so inspired. I’m like, “No, I don’t want anyone to feel the way I felt.” I can’t take that completely away. I can’t take someone’s feelings away, but I want them to hopefully feel supported, educated, backed, and overall just loved because I lacked that. I lacked that with my second. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s just dropping into different communities and finding podcasts like this that are going to be able to be amazing resources to give you that, “Oh, hey. Somebody’s doing what I want to do” or “Somebody’s already accomplished something that I see as a potential for me.” I think that we need to see those examples. We need to have these stories be told because it really helps us see that it’s possible. Sometimes, that’s literally all you need when you’re going through this journey. I felt like I was doing all of the things now again with a different perspective and not only preparing physically but mentally because I knew that was just as powerful and as important as all of those external, surface-level things that you are shown when you’re just preparing for birth in general. Even just staying hydrated and I got certified in postpartum nutrition because I was like, “Something is going on here. There is some sort of disconnect. My body is different. My body has changed.” What I believed about nutrition before is not the same as how I’m experiencing the postpartum period. Honestly, just all of that coming together has been super helpful, so I’m excited to listen to that episode that you’re going to have. Meagan: Yes, me too. Sarah: Yeah, yeah because it’s so much information there that is really being uncovered. It’s a lot of new research. Women’s health in general, I think, is being real.y pushed and needed. That also, I feel like, just helped me. Watching what I was consuming and what I was putting in my body. Maybe it’s old wives’ tales but the dates and the red raspberry leaf tea. I was all about it. Even just different smells and the environment that you’re in played such a part in creating that good, calming atmosphere and just reiterated my confidence and held me centered in my birth. I originally when back to the same provider that was telling me, “Oh, go ahead. Have so many Cesareans.” My kids were about two and a half years apart. I went in. “Hey, I’m pregnant again. I’m ready for this VBAC. Let’s go.” They just kept on saying, “Okay, We’ll see how it goes.” My billing came and basically, the bill was for a Cesarean. I was like, “I don’t understand. I’m going to have a vaginal birth. Why are we billing me for a Cesarean?” They were like, “Oh well, you know, just in case.” I was like, “Just in case I have a vaginal birth. Why is that not a route that we’re leaning toward?” It was right after my anatomy scan at 20 weeks. I switched over to midwives that are in the area and they have, I think, an overall 80% success rate here in Greenville, South Carolina. I believe that if you’re going for a VBAC, they are one of the better providers in the area. They definitely want vaginal births. They want that to be the outcome. Once I switched to them, it was not even a thing. They were just, “Oh yeah. VBAC. VBAC.”Meagan: Let’s do it. Sarah: Yeah, like, “Okay.”Meagan: We’re just going to have a baby.Sarah: Right. I felt so much better. It wasn’t until the very end that I was listed as that, “Oh, too big of a baby,” and things like that, they did suggest doing the scan to see the size. I denied it. I said, “No, thank you.” Meagan: How big was your baby?Sarah: My first was 7 lbs, 14 ounces. Meagan: What?! That is not a big baby. Sarah: No. Mind you, I’m only 5’0”. Meagan: But still. I’ve seen a 5’2” give birth to an 11-pound baby. Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. By no means were my babies big. My second was actually 8 lbs, 4 ounces so he was bigger than my first and he was my VBAC. It’s really just crazy. That’s one thing as a doula, it’s hard for me to hear people be like, “Oh, well my provider thinks that my baby is going to be big.” I’m like, “Okay, but maybe no?”Meagan: Right? Exactly. Like, “Okay, but we could look at it this way too.” I had an interview with someone the other day and she was like, “Well, how do I tell if my pelvis is going to be adequate?” I was like, “Your pelvis is perfect.” She was like, “What?” I was like, “No, really though. Really.” I started talking to her about it and she was like, “Oh.” It’s hard. So you got the diagnosis of “big baby, small pelvis,” but then you look at the baby and you’re like, “But the baby wasn’t big.” So they did the scan…Sarah: I did not do the scan. Meagan: Oh, you didn’t do the scan. That’s right. You declined it. You declined it. Sarah: I declined it because I said, “Well, what is that going to tell me?” If they said, “Big baby,” then I was going to have that in my head. I was like, “Do I need to get it?” And that’s what I really enjoyed about them because they were like, “No. It’s up to you. You can make that decision.” I was like, “Okay. I don’t want it.” Also, the same with the checks toward the end. I was like, “Nope. I don’t want any cervical checks. I’ll just wait until baby comes and we’ll see if I want checks then.” But they were super considerate of all of those things and never made anything along those lines a requirement. If they would have said, “Oh no, we need to have a scan,” that could have turned into some other things. It went, I feel like, as well as it could have. By the time this comes out, he will be over a year old, but right now, he is almost a year old and I am still just absolutely amazed at myself and what was able to happen. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. Sarah: The birth itself was crazy. I started to have pressure waves, contractions, whichever you want to call them, really early in the morning, and then probably for about an hour, I just let it play out. I didn’t wake up my husband. It was maybe only 3:30-4:00 in the morning so he was still sleeping. We were still hanging out and then it just continued though. I was like, “This is pretty intense already.” I was like, “I think maybe baby is coming. Let’s see what’s going on.”I had a doula again the second time. We were messaging her and she was like, “Okay, yeah. Perfectly normal. They’re probably just going to teeter out and span out. We’ll see where you are in a couple of hours or so.” I mean, they did not slow down. They were super consistent and kept on coming. I’m like, “All right. Maybe if I get in the shower, I’ll be able to relax a little bit. I’ll be able to get through these.” I feel like the shower was one of the worst ideas because I couldn’t even dry my hair off afterward. I was just like, “Just get clothes on me.” I did not want to do anything after getting in the shower. I was constantly using counterpressure which I feel is the best thing for me and I definitely recommend at least trying it. We did all of the hip squeezes. Every time I started to feel the need for one, I would just yell, “Squeeze!” My husband would run over and squeeze my hips. Again, it was just ramping up and getting super intense. I had piles of pillows in my bedroom and wrapping around them. I was on the edge of our little ottoman in our bedroom and then went to the bathroom and just was moving around as much as I could on all fours, side-lying, and things like that. At some point, I was laying on my side, then my water had broken well into it all. I was just like, “Oh my goodness. We need to get to the hospital now. Once that happened, I felt him drop. I was panicking because I mean, I specifically wanted to have a hospital birth because I just felt like that’s where I needed to be to feel at my comfort level, so once that happened and I felt him, I was like, “We need to get to the hospital! I am not having this baby here.” My friend that was watching our oldest had not gotten there yet and our doula was still like– I think my husband was like, “Oh, we don’t want to get to the hospital too early.” He was downplaying everything because of the previous scenario. Now I say, “New baby, new birth.” This is different. We can’t take what has happened from our past births into this new one because it’s going to be a whole different situation. Meagan: Totally, yep. Sarah: Finally, my friend came over and she was watching my daughter and was like, “Okay, yeah. I’ve got her. I’m covered. We’ll take her to our house,” and things like that. We got in the car and I just remember grabbing and holding on to the holy cow bar and having a foot up on the side and just gripping everything around me going through all of the motions. My eyes were closed and I was just like, “Let’s just get to the hospital.” Somehow, we just kept on gaining more time. I think my husband made a wrong turn and I was like, “Just get me there. Get me there.” I think he was panicking. I’m not sure what happened. We finally got there and my doula was standing right at the door of the hospital. There was actually a wheelchair right out there that I thought she had gotten for me. I just jumped right into the wheelchair and she was like, “Oh, okay.” “Wheel me up. We’re having this baby.” I was so ready to go. I was so amped up and so pumped. I later found out that the wheelchair had literally just been left there by somebody that had gotten picked up minutes before, but she was like, “Okay. We’re going in.” I’m gripping my belly, breathing, and everything. I just remember the person at the front that was checking everybody in was like, “Oh no. We don’t do that here. Go straight up.” Sure enough, we got in and I was already at 8-9 centimeters. They were like, “Okay. You’re having a baby. Let’s get you in there.” I really wanted a water birth or at least to be able to be in the tub, so they started to fill up the water when I was in there, but then after they hooked up the monitors and everything, they said, “We don’t really like what’s going on with his heart rate and we’re just going to keep you out.” I was honestly just like, “Okay. It’s not the plan, but let’s just get the baby out.” They checked me again and they were like, “You’re ready to go. You’re ready to push.” The only thing I had to do was get hooked up to antibiotics because I was GBS positive again which was something that I definitely tried to prevent, but I think that’s just one thing with my body. I am just forever GBS-positive. Meagan: Sometimes it happens and we don’t know why. You might be surprised if you have another baby. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. Sarah: Yeah, yeah. They did ask me as I was getting wheeled over to the delivery room, “Do you want the epidural?” I was like, “Heck no. I made it this far.” Meagan: You’re like, “No. I just want to have a baby now.”Sarah: Yeah. It was probably a little over an hour from when I got wheeled in until when he came out. I pushed for maybe about 20 minutes and just that feeling of him on my chest. It’s literally goosebumps. I felt so proud of myself and accomplished and empowered. I was like, “Oh my goodness,” because I didn’t get my daughter to be on my chest with my Cesarean. They had said that that could have been an option and it was not. It was not something that I got to do, so just literally, I didn’t care what he was covered in. I didn’t care what I was covered in. I was like, “Give me the baby.” I mean, honestly, it was such a cool feeling to have that. Meagan: Absolutely. It’s euphoric. You’re in a whole other world. It’s the weirdest thing because you’re there and everyone’s there around you, but you’re in a completely different space. Yeah. It’s a really cool feeling. Sarah: It is. And like I said, he was bigger than my first and when they weighed him and everything, I was like, “See? I can have bigger babies. I can do it.” Meagan: You pushed for 20 minutes. I was like, you pushed 20 minutes with your small pelvis and big baby. Sarah: Yep, yep. I felt on top of the world. I was like, “I can deliver a baby vaginally. I did it.” I took the iconic hand-up-in-the-air photo and was just there snuggling him so much, but yeah. That’s my birth story.  Meagan: Oh my gosh. So amazing, so amazing. I’m so happy for you. I’m so happy that all of the doubt that was placed in the first birth was able to just be washed away at the end where it’s like, “Whoa. Yes. I can do this. I did do this. This is amazing. My body is amazing. My baby is amazing.” Hearing your first story, it sounds to me like– I mean, I wasn’t there. I haven’t seen your OP reports. I don’t know. I didn’t see the tracings, but it sounds like still positional probably, or something like that, so yeah. I’m so happy for you. Sarah: Thanks. Meagan: I’m so happy for you. Sarah: Like I said, it’s been almost a year later and I still get so giddy about it. I think it really allowed me to really– I am appreciative of my Cesarean because I feel like if it wasn’t for that, I would not be so called to do this work and such an advocate for it and so wanting to be a part of the birth community as hard as I am. I think we have to take those experiences for what they are and like we were saying earlier, learn from them and really grow with them and be thankful for it and just heal from it and see where you’re still hung up and what needs to be processed. But go into another birth with a completely different perspective and mindset and just what it is. Finding a provider and finding a location where you feel safe, finding a support person, a doula, and things like that, connecting with the community, and really having that comfort is great, but I do feel like we are our one and only true advocates. Meagan: Absolutely. Sarah: We have to take that action. We have to follow through with what we’re learning and like I said, listening to this and being a part of online communities, in-person communities, and things like that is great, but if you’re not implementing what you’re learning and you’re actually taking those actions, it has to click. It has to be like, you do your homework, you study for the exam, and you pass. It’s just like one of those things where I feel like you have to really embody it and when I hear people say, “Oh, it’s so easy.” I’m like, “It was not.” In the end, overall, it’s like when you’re running a race. You have to train for it. You have to be a runner in order to complete it without stopping or feeling exhausted. It’s a lot and I think that’s one thing that is sometimes overlooked. With my first, “I’m just going to walk into the hospital. I’m just going to have this baby.” What needs to be done? I think it’s just those kinds of things. You really have to ask yourself, “Am I honestly doing the things that I need to do? Am I implementing them into my life? Am I drinking my water? Am I clearing my fears? Am I healing from my first birth? Am I asking my provider all of the questions that I have? Am I not embarrassed to find the resources that I need? Am I clearing out all of that negative feedback from other people? Am I doing those things and am I dropping into communities that are supporting me and cheering for me?” I think that’s where the magic is. That’s when it clicks in and that’s when you really get to feel confident and empowered and happy with your decisions moving forward. That bleeds into motherhood. I think that bleeds into the whole postpartum period and really just continuing to build that confidence in yourself is my favorite thing that I learned in motherhood. Meagan: I couldn’t have said it better. I mean, really. You just nailed it. All of those things are so important. In the end, we have the support. We have the processing. We have all of those things, but in the end, we still have to tune into ourselves and you have to believe in yourself. You have to have that. You can have a huge team of believers and cheerleaders, but you also have to cheer for yourself. I love it. Thank you so much, so so much for all of the information. Sarah: Yeah, this has been so much fun. Honestly, thank you so much. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

“Let’s make every birth the best possible version of that birth that it can be.”Dr. Natalie Elphinstone is a true trailblazer! When one of her patients asked about the possibility of a maternal-assisted Cesarean, she listened intently, took the idea to heart, and advocated for change by creating a new hospital policy to allow this beautiful procedure. Dr. Elphinstone is creating a whole new experience for Cesarean moms as they get to deliver their babies, hold them first, have uninterrupted skin-to-skin time, and feel like birthing women instead of patients on an operating table. Dr. Elphinstone shares how she was able to make this change, how we can implement this procedure in our areas, and even offers some VBAC tips as she is a big VBAC advocate as well! We are SO honored to have her with us today.Additional LinksDr. Elphinstone’s InstagramDr. Elphinstone’s Introduction PostHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Welcome to The VBAC Link, you guys. This is Meagan, your host, and I am so excited to be here with you today. Today’s guest is an amazing OBGYN in Australia. She has caught over 1500 babies and believes in supporting women and families to make individual choices that feel right for them. You guys, she is making such a big impact in Australia and I am just so excited to pick her brain and hear more of her journey about how she has been changing the norm in Australia. Review of the Week We have a Review of the Week so of course, I’m going to jump into that before we start with Dr. Natalie. Okay, so today’s review is actually pretty short. It’s from Dr. Steven Roushar who is amazing. We actually have him on a podcast probably back in the early one-hundreds. He is a chiropractor and his wife has also had a VBAC. He said, “The VBAC Link is phenomenal. Great podcast content and training for birth workers.” Thank you, Dr. Roushar. We are so happy that you love The VBAC Link. We love you and believe in chiropractic care so much. As usual, if you have not had an opportunity to leave The VBAC Link a review, we would love that. I love getting these reviews. It makes me smile and we love reading them on the podcast. So push pause right now, and head over to Apple on iTunes. You can leave us a review. A 5-star review would be awesome along with a written review. You can do it on Google. You can do it on Facebook or you can email us. Wherever it may be, we would love your reviews. Dr. Natalie ElphinstoneMeagan: Okay, Dr. Elphinstone, we are so excited to have you. We are so grateful for you. I know your time is precious in OB-land. You are obviously seeing a ton of births. So grateful to have you. Again, thank you so much for being here. In the birth world, we get these comments sometimes, “You’re The VBAC Link, I have a girl crush on you.” I am girl-crushing on Dr. Natalie Elphinstone. She is the freaking coolest. You are so cool. I am so honored to have you on the show today and I’m so honored for her to share with you her knowledge because you guys, you are going to fall in love with her too. If you don’t follow her Instagram, right now, press pause and go check her Instagram. Do you have a Facebook too? I think we just follow you on Instagram. Dr. Natalie: Yeah, sadly I just do the Instagram thing. Meagan: That is okay. You are @drnatalieelphinstone, right? Dr. Natalie: Yep, all one word. One really long word. Meagan: One really long word, but you guys, it’s amazing. I want to do a little bit of a background. This is how I found her. I actually found her off a video. You may have seen these going around of a maternal-assisted Cesarean delivery. It brought me chills. It made me cry. I was just like, “Oh my gosh. I want to do this. I want to have this option here in the U.S.” She is in Australia too, so not here in the U.S. I don’t even know. Your page just started blowing up and this video started going viral. I shared it and I think I wrote you. I think I just wrote you and was like, “Wow, this is amazing,” or something. Crazy enough, we had some crazy emails coming through like, “That’s fake. That’s not real. It’s a simulation.” I was like, “What? No.” Anyway, so I wrote Dr. Elphinstone and I just said, “Hey, I would love to have you on the podcast.” She is so gracious and said yes, so we are going to dive right in. I always say “dive right in” but we are diving right in to learn more about what she does and how she is truly changing the birth world in Australia. Okay. Dr. Natalie: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for even thinking of having me come and talk on a podcast that of course, tends to be concentrating on VBACs, yet yes. I am getting known for this maternal or parent-assisted Cesarean. And so to be honest, it took me a little bit by surprise that you thought maybe I would be somebody to talk to. I mean, the whole thing took me by surprise. When I started off just sharing some of the videos of my maternal-assisted Cesareans, it was not with any kind of intention of trying to be this game changer. I actually just wanted to show something that we did that was really, really awesome and maybe with it, that idea of, “Well, if we can do it here, then maybe it can inspire other people to open up their mind to this possibility as well.” And then, it kind of just blew up as you said. It started getting reshared. I started getting contacted by people all around the world asking for my help and my advice on how they could possibly do it in their country. I’m super, super honored to be able to share my journey and my knowledge. To date now, I can say that– I was just contacted today by another country over the weekend who contacted me to say, “Thank you very much for the information that you shared. It was able to allow me this opportunity to do a maternal-assisted Cesarean for possibly the first time in my country.”  This was Ireland, so I’m pleased to say that Ireland is the sixth country that I’m aware of that I’ve been able to help impact at least one individual person. This is just mind-blowing to me and I feel so privileged to be able to not do anything special. I don’t think I’m doing anything special. I’m just open to changing my practice and then sharing it so that it is seen that it is something that is possible. When you then get people that say, “That’s fake,” I mean, oh. That actually just makes me really sad. It makes me really sad that this idea of what I’m showing, a maternal-assisted Cesarean, is so far removed from what they believe to be reality and what they know in their world that they think it must be fake. That’s actually sad to me. Meagan: I’m with you. Me too. It does. It breaks my heart that this world has come to the point where we are so blinded, we are so closed-minded, and just looking down this tunnel that we can’t see the possibilities outside of the norm. Dr. Natalie: Yeah, yeah. That’s what it is for me. This is just me thinking with an open mind, “Can we do something different?” If the answer is yes, then why don’t we? Why can’t we and how do we make that happen? So that’s how I started. Meagan: Right, I know. That’s what I love. It’s going to take someone to get it started for it to happen. Here you are. You’re doing it. You are doing it and you are changing it. It’s hopefully just going to trickle on down and spread throughout the world to see that Cesarean birth can be different. It can be different. Each video, they are all different. Sometimes, I have seen that you’ve got videographers or someone in the OR even on the other side. You’ve got two different views of baby coming out. You have mom reaching down and pulling baby out, and then we have the other side where the amniotic fluid is pouring out. It’s just so dang cool. It’s so dang cool. I love it. For my second Cesarean, I watched it in a mirror. I wasn’t able to be a part of my birth in the way that you are creating people to be a part of their birth, but I saw it in the mirror and it was really cool and really special. That right there, that and the skin-to-skin that I was able to get made the difference and created the healing for an undesired Cesarean birth that I had. It truly created that healing aspect. I’m just going to shoot it out there. How? You’re seeing it in your head and you’re like, “We’re going to do this.” What kind of flack or backlash did you get or pushback did you get in your space there in Australia? What did you get there and how did you personally push back? Dr. Natalie: Yeah. It’s a really good question because I think everybody who has wanted to pursue this journey comes back and says, “But I’m getting met with these challenges and I’m getting met with these accusations. I’m just getting shut down.” I think that probably everybody will meet some of those challenges. And yes, I’ve met those challenges too. My journey of how this happened to me, and I always tell this story because I think it’s a really important part of this story. This wasn’t on my radar. To be honest, I didn’t think of it myself. I had a single patient come to me who I was looking after for her antenatal course. It was her first baby. She had decided for various reasons that a Cesarean birth was the way that she was going to go. She came to me and said, “I’ve seen on somebody else’s social media this idea of a dad-assisted Cesarean, a partner-assisted Cesarean.” She said, “Can we do that?” I said, “Well, I’ve never seen that happen before in real life. It’s definitely never been done at this hospital. I don’t know that it’s ever been done anywhere in my area before,” and so one easy spot to stop there would be for me to say, “So no, we can’t do that,” and that would have been a really easy answer. But instead, I went, “Well, maybe. Why not? Why can’t we do that? That does seem pretty cool. That does seem like it might be a really valuable thing if that’s something that you want to do. So how do we make that happen?” So my point is, number one, this whole thing started with one person, one patient herself coming to me saying, “Can we do this?” It can start really, really small. I was in a privileged position where I had the opportunity to go basically straight to the top of the hospital. So I’m talking about working in a private hospital in Australia for this scenario, so I literally just went to the CEO of the hospital. I asked her, I said, “I don’t know how to make a new procedure happen. Tell me what I need to do to be able to make this happen.” I mean, number one I asked her, “Are you on board? Can I make this happen?”To be fair, I was expecting to be shut down at that point, but my gosh, she said yes. She said, “That sounds like, yeah. Why not?” A very quick answer would be that when it always comes down to new procedures, is there a value in it? Is there an importance? Does it achieve something so to speak? And then the second thing, is it dangerous or are there risks or are there concerns about that? If you can tick off those two boxes, then yeah. We can do a new procedure. But there are some hoops to jump through. She told me what those hoops to jump through were. I had to write a policy. Hospitals always want to know this very streamlined checklist of how you do this new procedure. And then I had to get that policy approved by the various levels of boards if you like at the hospital, so I had to present this to a couple of different meetings. That’s where things got really interesting. I can write a policy. I can write a protocol. That’s just me sitting at the desk and talking stuff out, but then presenting this idea to boards of people to get a general consensus that this seems like a good thing to do, I guess I was really naive going into that. I guess I believed that this was a really important thing to do, so I probably expected that everybody else would as well, but clearly not. That was definitely my naivety at play there. I then got met with challenges from the people hearing it. Everything they just laughed off like, “That sounds like the most ridiculous thing in the world.” I guess when you are talking to surgeons for example, surgeons, yes. We operate. People are asleep and we cut them open and we do a procedure. There are a lot of these rules around that to keep it sterile and to keep it clean and to keep it safe. To be fair, here I am suggesting that this woman who is awake and having her operation is going to literally reach down into her own open wound and pull out her baby. So yeah, okay. I get why it might sound ridiculous if you don’t have the understanding of the fact that this is birth rather than it being an operation. I think that’s a really important part to remember. I hope that none of us ever forget when we are doing any kind of Cesarean or any kind of instrumental birth or whatever that this is not just a procedure that we are performing on somebody. This is their birth. This is the thing that they are going to remember forever. So even if this is the 5th Cesearean I’ve done this morning and I’m getting a bit hungry or I’m a bit bored or whatever, oh my gosh. That’s not the point. The point is to remember that this is the most astounding thing that has ever happened in this woman’s life and in this family’s life so let’s make it really, really special. Anyway, I digress. I digress. Meagan: Absolutely. You digress in a good direction though because it’s so true. I’m sure. I’m not a provider. I don’t know. I’m sure it just gets repetitive, right? Dr. Natalie: Yeah, it can. Meagan: Walk in. Catch a baby. Walk in. Have a Cesarean. But if you can, if you can walk in. If you are a birth worker and you are listening, and that goes for all birth workers, walk in and truly hold space for that person and be there for that person because it is something that they are going to remember forever. You probably aren’t going to remember two months down the road, but they will. Dr. Natalie: I think that’s something that hopefully every provider continues to keep in the forefront of their mind. I think I’ve certainly had the times where let’s be honest, sometimes I haven’t honored the birth experience, or perhaps it’s a Cesarean and often we then think that the woman’s really distracted now. The baby’s out. She’s focusing on the baby and we’re just getting on with the rest of the operation and closing her up, and often, let’s be fair, I am just having a conversation with my colleagues around me. I’ve had that not come back to bite me because I don’t think I’ve ever said anything inappropriate in that situation, but the women and the partners have come back and said, “Oh yeah. We heard you chatting about other things.” Actually, a lot of the time when they are telling me that, they are telling me that they were kind of reassured by that because they knew that if I was just perhaps having this general chitchat then clearly I wasn’t worried about anything in their operation. Meagan: Yeah, I can see that. It is interesting though because, with my first baby, that’s what I remember. I don’t remember my baby’s cry. I don’t remember seeing my baby. I remember the doctor and the assistant on the other side of the curtain talking about how terrible the storm was outside and how one just got back from Hawaii and was so depressed. That’s what I remember about my birth. Dr. Natalie: Yeah, yeah. I don’t quite know what the answer to that is because it is going to be this balance between definitely wanting to honor that birth space, but yes at the same time, we are humans too and it is our job. We love our job, but sometimes yes. Part of that job is bonding with our colleagues as well. Meagan: Talking on the job. Yeah, talking on the job. That’s what you do. Dr. Natalie: That’s always a wake-up call for us to always be really mindful of even just what that general chitchat might be that, okay yeah. Let’s talk about our holidays. That’s a good memory, but maybe let’s not complain about something else like another colleague down the road. Let’s keep that somewhere else. Meagan: Yes. Dr. Natalie: Oh gosh. So yeah, I did definitely meet with some criticisms as I said. Just that general not understanding of the importance of birth and this incredulity of the ridiculousness of the things that I was asking for. And then there was the stuff you would expect like the actual medical concerns that the other people might have like, is this a danger to the woman? Does it increase her infection rate? Is it a danger to the baby? The baby might get too cold and the pediatricians can’t get access to the baby quickly. There were those sorts of concerns actually coming from a genuine place of still wanting to do the absolute very best for our families but of course, there is an answer to all of those questions. And then there were the people who I’m not sure what their motivation is. Maybe it was a threat to them. Perhaps other providers have always done things a certain way, so anytime you’re wanting to change a procedure, number one you’ve got to realize why it’s important to change the procedure. So with a Cesarean for example, we’ve been doing a fairly stock-standard way of doing this Cesarean for who knows how long. Certainly, for as long as I’ve been training, it’s always been done a certain way and possibly I imagine, it’s been done pretty much in the same way for many decades, so why would I change something that I can’t see a problem with? In most providers’ eyes, there’s no problem with this. There’s no danger in this. There’s nothing going wrong apart from all of the things we know certainly can be a danger and can go wrong, but we accept those risks. But why would I change and certainly why would I change into a direction that might become more complicated, especially more complicated for me as the provider having to change the whole way I do things? Because let’s be honest, we’re people. We might not really like change especially if we’ve been doing something the same way for a really long period of time. So I definitely also got this pushback from maybe the people who felt challenged by that and who came back to me with even some threats. I don’t even know. It was sort of ridiculous and if you weren’t in a really serious board meeting, I would have laughed at these people who were coming to me claiming wildly with no evidence behind it things like, “You’re going to kill women doing this.” What? What? Where is that coming from? And then the other really one that did actually make me laugh out loud, I certainly got one threat if you like or they thought it was a threat. They said, “But once you do it once, that woman is going to tell her friends and she’s going to put it on her Facebook and you’re going to get other people asking for this.” I went, “But that’s the point.” That is why I want to do it. Meagan: You want to make this change. That is what we are doing. Dr. Natalie: So yeah, I thought that was funny, but that’s definitely not where they were coming from with that. Anyway, that is what happened so they were right. Meagan: They were totally right. Here we are. All of us are totally in here loving it and wanting to talk to you about it because you are willing to. Like we were saying earlier, it’s sad to know that so many people are so closed-minded. “Oh, well if you do this, then it’s going to get it.” It’s like, well yeah. We’re not doing this as a secret. I’m not going through all of this to keep it a secret. We want to make this change. We want to make Cesarean birth better. My slogan is “Make Birth After Cesarean Better”, but to be really honest, sometimes our VBACs don’t end up going exactly as planned, or maybe we decide in the end that we want a scheduled Cesarean, so let’s have a healing experience, a beautiful experience and let’s incorporate these moms as you are doing because it’s truly going to make a difference. I don’t know how many of these you have done, but I would be so curious to start learning what it does for the postpartum period, where it’s taking us in postpartum, and how we are viewing these births. So many of these people that I talk to, and you can only imagine, have had very traumatic Cesareans, very terrible experiences, ones that they truly have to process and work through before they can even fall pregnant again. It makes me wonder with this even if it is a Cesarean and even if it wasn’t desired, in what ways would it change our view? Have you had a lot of people talking about their experience of how they are viewing this? What are your patients saying?Dr. Natalie: I would really love to be able to do, if I had time in the world, to do an in-depth study basically of what the feedback was from all of the families that so far have had this procedure, this maternal or paternal or whatever you want to call it assisted Cesarean. Certainly, one thing I know for a fact is that I definitely have never had anybody come back to me after they have done this and complained or actually had any concerns. I have not had anybody ever come back saying, “Oh, yeah. Well, maybe next time I won’t do that” or “I wish I hadn’t done that.” Nobody has ever said that. It has definitely always been a really positive experience for them. Some families and mothers are only having their first baby and doing it this way, so perhaps they don’t have anything to compare it to but that doesn’t matter. What they know from this experience has been that it was really empowering for them and that it achieved a lot of the things that they would be imagining from a vaginal birth anyway. And then I’ve had all the way up to somebody having her fifth Cesarean and her four previous Cesareans had been with other providers and had not been any kind of maternal-assisted Cesarean. In particular, her fourth Cesarean before she came to me was a really difficult, traumatic experience for her because of things that happened at that time. This was an unplanned pregnancy, so this wasn’t meant to happen in the first place, but happy about it and accepting it for sure. She was acknowledging that certainly she was going to have a fifth Cesarean. So she came to me and we performed this maternal-assisted Cesarean. We had spent an extensive period of time talking about what all of the very specific things that had been difficult for her in her previous Cesareans and how we could overcome that and what we could do differently this time around. She has this fifth Cesarean which she then says is so dramatically different from all of the other experiences that she had and so healing for her that she could now say in retrospect she hadn’t even processed perhaps how difficult the other Cesareans had been until she had this experience where she could now see the difference. She’s like, “Now, I can actually rest happy that this was my final baby now. The fifth one, we’re done. We’re taking permanent measures.” But this then was so healing for her that she can rest on the knowledge that this is her lasting impression of what birth is now, that it was this rather than the previous one in particular that had actually been really, really difficult. She had the insight to say that even the postpartum bonding period with her baby was so impacted by the difference in her Cesarean experiences that yes, she knew this baby from the very beginning. She got to be the first person to put hands on her baby. She got to have that immediate skin-to-skin with her baby and that uninterrupted bonding time. It often takes the women by surprise, perhaps they haven’t thought about these details but they often will say things like, “Whoa. This baby’s warm and slippery and wet.” I’m like, “Yes, of course, it is warm and slippery and wet. I don’t know what you were imagining otherwise.” But that hadn’t been their experience before because previously, the first way that they had experienced their baby was only after the providers had dried off the baby and wrapped it up in a blanket and maybe now given it to them, so they’ve only got the view of this little face and all they’ve gotten is “I can touch your cheek” kind of deal. So yeah, it has taken them by surprise that it turns out when you first lay hands on your baby, it’s warm and wet and slippery. Meagan: It’s kind of crazy though. I had the same thought. With my VBAC, I pulled him up from my vagina and pulled him onto my chest and he was. I was like, “Am I going to drop him because he’s so slippery?” Before, I was strapped to the table and didn’t really get that. So it is. It’s such a different feeling and you wouldn’t think about those little details being dramatic, but they are going to leave an impression. So how can we as listeners and people who are going for a VBAC, or maybe just a scheduled Cesarean, maybe going for a VBAC which ends in Cesarean, are there any tips you can give, or is there anything that we can start doing, especially if the hospital is not doing what yours is doing, to try and get this going like your patient did? If any providers are out there listening, do you have any tips for anybody?Dr. Natalie: I think it definitely can be achievable to make a change in the space of your own pregnancy, but perhaps start that early. So perhaps if you knew that a Cesarean was the way that you were going to go, start that conversation early with your care provider to say, “Okay, well if it’s a Cesarean, can we make it look like this?” Perhaps it’s not necessarily going to be to that extent of the maternal-assisted Cesarean because that does take all sorts of hoops to jump through and it will take time. I was incredibly– I don’t know if luck is the right word, but in a privileged position to make those changes in the space of only a few months in my hospital to introduce this new policy and to be able to achieve it for that one woman who had asked for it. But I know that for a lot of hospital workers trying to change policy usually takes much, much, much longer than that. But it’s got to start somewhere. So if you as a mother are wanting to make that change, it is possible, but if it’s not going to work in your pregnancy journey, you could still be a voice for future mothers if you start the process at some point. It’s got to start somewhere. The really easy first start is to start talking to your care provider. Just say, “This is what I want it to look like in whichever way it may be a maternal-assisted Cesarean, or let’s lower the curtain down so I can see the baby emerging from my uterus.” Perhaps because I think a lot of care providers are going to take the easy way out and say, “No, you can’t do that because we don’t do that here.”The next step in that conversation to ask gently is, “Why can’t we do that?” I say gently and I don’t mean that you should be pleading or begging, but confrontation often doesn’t achieve what you want it to achieve, so just have an actual, sensible conversation with your care provider. So if they come back and they say, “No, you can’t do that,” then perhaps you can say, “Why can’t we do that?” to actually find out what the legitimate reasons are if there is a legitimate reason because if the answer is, “Well, we don’t have a policy for that,” then you can ask the next one.Meagan: How do we create one?Dr. Natalie: Exactly. How do we go about creating a policy? If the answer is something like, “My belief is that it’s going to increase maternal infection,” then you can come back and say, “Is there evidence for that? Can you show me the evidence for that?” because I actually don’t believe that there is any evidence for that. Whatsoever the answer might be, just keep the conversation rolling so that hopefully at some point, there might be this little click in the care provider’s mind that says, “Oh, well maybe you’re right. Maybe this is a legitimate question to ask and possibly I could maybe even be that change in this woman’s life.” Maybe again, perhaps not. Maybe that care provider is still just not going to be open to change and not willing to make that personal effort that it takes, so if you’re in the position of having different care providers or you have the ability to request a different care provider, then go to the next person and ask the same question. Maybe again, this is not perhaps going to achieve it in your pregnancy journey so to speak, but if then I as a care provider have multiple people coming to ask me the same thing, I would think that at some point, there’s going to be a realization where I say, “Huh.”Meagan: This is desired. This is desired.Dr. Natalie: Exactly. Because if there is that desire, then maybe it is worthwhile actually making that effort to make a change. If I also believe this because I think it does take this understanding on the care provider’s behalf to have that insight to say, “Actually, this is an important thing to do for our women and their families.” It takes an open mind for that, so maybe you’re not going to get that with the first care provider, but ask for another one and just keep going. Meagan: And just keep going. Yeah, because the more that it is asked like you said, the more it’s going to be in our heads as a provider and then maybe a provider one day is going to say, “Okay. Let’s look into this.” Dr. Natalie: Yeah. You can always ask to go up that chain of command so to speak as well. If the obstetricians themselves are perhaps not able to change, then you can ask that question of, “Can I get the contact details of who the clinical director would be?” or perhaps what the titles are of the people in the hospital who are in charge of making that change. So just go up the pipeline. You can do that as a consumer. You can directly approach the director or in my case at the private hospital, the CEO. Just write them an email. Don’t knock on their door, but gently ask in an email, “Perhaps is this something that we can work on?” And it is happening. All of those countries that I’ve said have come back to me and said, “We were able to achieve this for the first time in our country,” a lot of the time, that started with the patient herself asking her care provider and then hopefully meeting a care provider who is amendable to that challenge and who will take up with that in themselves. They’re going to be more powerful going up that pipeline to make change happen. It’s possible. It is possible. It is happening. Meagan: It is. It is happening. Your page has all of the proof. Dr. Natalie: Yeah. They’re not fake videos. I don’t have time for that. Meagan: Fake videos, I know. Like I said, it just makes me sad that people would even question that they are fake. Okay, we’ve talked about your journey of how this happened and now this is how we as consumers– I love how you said that we are consumers. We are really in a place where we can implement this. We can get things going and that’s simply just by putting the idea in a provider’s mind. I love that so much. You recently posted an introduction of yourself and something that stood out to me is in your post, you talked about, “What if we do nothing? What if we change the care and stop intervening and do nothing?” Then you prefaced it with, “I don’t mean literally doing nothing, but I’m meaning continuously supporting, loving, educating, and empowering.” It really resonates with me. I love that so much. I love your words in that post. In fact, we will link it in the show notes so everyone can find it really easily. It’s just beautiful and I love what you’re doing. I really love it so much. I can’t even tell you how grateful I am. Like you said, we are a VBAC podcast. I am doing these Cesarean episodes. Yes. I would like to see the Cesarean rates go down substantially. That is a huge goal of mine in my personal life. I would love to see Cesarean birth percentages going down, but at the same time, I do understand that they are needed. They are desired and there is that to be said. One of the questions I was going to ask you before I let you go is a lot of these videos look very calm and very planned. Sometimes Cesareans aren’t calm or planned. Are there restrictions there, pre-restrictions that have to come into play before a maternal-assisted Cesarean delivery could happen? Dr. Natalie: Yeah. One thing I always definitely want to say because I’ve had this crisis myself as well going, “Am I getting known as a Cesarean doctor?” I don’t want to. Meagan: I can see that. Dr. Natalie: I don’t want to be that. I certainly don’t want to become that person who then only does Cesareans and maternal-assisted Cesareans, but if a Cesarean is the right choice for the woman in her situation, then yes. Let’s make it the best possible version of a Cesarean that it can be. That’s the internal catchphrase that I say. Let’s make every birth the best possible version of that birth that it can be. Whether or not that’s a vaginal birth or whether or not that’s a Cesarean or whether or not that’s anything, a forceps, let’s make it the best possible forceps that it can be. Okay, that’s not on the top of the list of whatever you want to plan for, but if it’s going to be that, then let’s make it the best possible version of that that we can be. So yes. In a Cesarean situation, how can we make that calm– I mean not even calm, right? It’s about that connection. It’s about the instant connection of the mother and her baby, so how can we try to achieve that where she can be this integral part of her own birth rather than it being that she is a patient having an operation? It’s about changing that viewpoint. I think that there are then so many little elements of that that we can achieve that even if it’s not necessarily straight up to the maternal-assisted part, that there are so many other steps that can be important that we can do without necessarily having her scrubbed and putting gloves on and putting her hands in her belly. Let’s lower the curtain. Let’s do direct skin-to-skin. Let’s do delayed cord clamping. Let’s not take the baby away from the mother. All of those things can still be achieved as well perhaps even and mostly still very achievable in an emergency Cesarean situation. We use the word emergency Cesarean a little bit willy-nilly because it’s not often an actual emergency. Meagan: Yes. I love that you pointed that out. But sometimes when we use that emergency word, it triggers people and they think that it was a life-saving thing, so I love that you said that. We have a lot of people say, “Oh, we had an emergency C-section.” I’m like, “Oh, what was the reason for your C-section?” “I didn’t dilate past a 3 for a few hours, so we walked down to the OR.” That wasn’t an emergency C-section. Dr. Natalie: I think in our hospital, and I know most other hospitals in Australia have a very similar classification system, but we either call it an elective Cesarean meaning that it’s planned and booked well in advance, or if it’s an unplanned Cesarean, it gets called an emergency Cesarean. But we have then six different categories of how we classify how urgent that emergency Cesarean is, but they all then come under the banner of an emergency Cesarean. A category 5 is that it just needs to be done within the next 24 hours. It’s still called an emergency Cesarean, but clearly, if we’re happy to wait 23 and a half hours, it’s clearly not that urgent. But it still gets called an emergency C-section. Yeah. There’s a very wide degree of how urgent an emergency Cesarean might be. So yes. At my hospital where I am able to do maternal-assisted Cesareans because I’m not at all of the hospitals that I work at, but at the one where I am able to do it at, at the moment, our policy is written in such a way that it is only for these planned, elective Cesareans. That’s got to do with a whole range of factors. It’s got to do with me being able to prepare the woman and her family ahead of time to know what this is going to look like. We go through all of those nuances of how she is, for example, going to become sterile because it is still an operation, so we do need to actually play by those rules to make sure that it is safe. I often get questions or comments on my maternal-assisted Cesarean videos saying, “Oh, isn’t it a shame that she’s got gloves on? If it was truly a bonding experience, she would touch her baby without gloves.” I go, “Yes, absolutely. That would be really, really nice.” Of course, it would be preferable to be able to grab her baby with her bare hands, but we have to keep in mind that this is still actually an operation, so from that perspective of we need to keep it safe for her, yes. She needs to have gloves on. I can’t see a way around that at this point in time. Once the baby is out of her, once the baby is on her chest, once the baby is not in that sterile field so to speak, then of course, take the gloves off. She can touch her baby straightaway. That’s what you’ll see in those videos is that I often then lower her gown down so that she can put her baby directly onto her skin, onto her chest and then I’d be very happy for her to take her gloves off. They often just don’t in that instant because they are holding their baby and they don’t want to move from that moment. Part of the reason why it’s currently only getting performed in an elective Cesarean situation is that pre-preparation where I’ve told her all of these rules of maintaining sterility so that she doesn’t inadvertently break any of those rules. She has to follow the same rules that I as the operating surgeon have to. We go through the same handwashing process. There is a little technique to putting on the gowns and the gloves and whatnot. Meagan: Yep. I’ve seen it. Dr. Natalie: Yeah, you’ll see it. Hands up in the air. Meagan: They get their hands up in the air and everything goes on. The gloves go on. Yeah. Dr. Natalie: Exactly. She can’t then touch anything after that point that’s not sterile. It’s all of that pre-preparation and it’s the pre-preparation of what it is going to look like and what it’s going to feel like for her to put her hands on that wet, warm, slippery baby and to be able to lift it out of her. I get that if she starts to lift and she’s like, “I can’t do it. It’s stuck.” You have to be reasonably firm because I try to make hopefully only a small enough hole that you can get the baby out, but it’s not hip to hip so it’s a little bit of a squeeze. But yep, pop it out. Meagan: That was a question I wanted to ask you. Since you’ve been doing this, have you seen any special scar situations with a mother assisting meaning any extensions, J’s, or anything like that?Dr. Natalie: No, I haven’t. I really haven’t. Again, that’s a question that we get. I get the question from people. I think this comes from their previous expectations of what they’re being told perhaps in previous Cesareans that isn’t it going to damage her abdominal muscles if she sits up like that? If she’s reaching and grabbing? She’s lifting her head up. People have told me before that in their previous Cesareans, they’ve been very much guided to not lift their heads up. In fact, I’ve had people tell me from other countries in particular that not only were their arms strapped down to the table but their head was strapped to the table as well. Meagan: I’ve heard that as well. Dr. Natalie: So they can’t move their head and they have a system where they have to lie down flat for six hours after a Cesarean so that they still can’t lift their head up or sit up for hours after the Cesarean because of this idea of things like a spinal puncture headache. I don’t even know what those rules are because they don’t make any sense to me. But if that’s what people’s experiences have been, then, of course, that’s why they are questioning the validity or the safety when they see then what I’m doing that they themselves might think that this is dangerous. But no, there’s no abdominal muscle trauma in excess of what a Cesarean does anyway. No, there’s no risk to women of lifting their heads up off of the table. There’s no risk to women of bending so to speak and lifting their baby up at the same time as a Cesarean. Yes, it can be a little bit more difficult because of course, they are anesthetized, but we are there still. She is not going to drop this baby. I’m still very much within catching range, supporting range and you might see on some of these that yes, I do still give her that helping hand to pop its bottom out, but once she’s got that baby, you can just then watch their faces. You watch those videos and sometimes blur out the rest of the stuff that’s going on, and just watch her face. It’s really powerful to watch her have this, first of all, maybe this anxiety that’s building. That would be an obvious response. Here she is lying down for this operation and then we lower those curtains and there’s this wonderment of what this is going to be and then she touches her baby, and then she lifts it up. There’s that moment of pure joy on her face every single time. Often, you’ll see the tears that come with that too. It’s just powerful. That’s what birth should be like every single time. Just because it’s now in an operating theater, that doesn’t mean that we can’t achieve all of those same things. Meagan: Right, yeah. Dr. Natalie: We might as well stop after that, right? Meagan: I love that. I love that. One day, I’m thinking, okay. I totally get that. You have to pre-prep and talk about this in a planned situation. I hope that maybe one day the conversation can be had in prenatal appointments where it’s like, “Hey if you don’t have a vaginal birth or if you don’t have a VBAC or are a first-time mom, there are these options. Here, sign this form if you would like to be educated on this, and let’s educate. Assuming it’s all calm and it’s not a true emergent baby out in seconds, but a very calm decision where everyone is making their way to the OR, maybe we can start implementing it there too because I do know for sure it would be so healing in so many ways for all of these moms that maybe wanted a VBAC and didn’t have their VBAC.”Dr. Natalie: For sure. I think that’s so true. I am definitely like that where I’m constantly pushing the boundaries at my hospital. That’s where I next want to take it because as I said in my policy, it’s written that this can only be performed on elective C-sections and I wrote that policy. That’s a shame. If I could go back, I would take that out. I mean, it’s got to be that way to start off with because we did want to do this in a really controlled way because we were introducing a new technique, but now that we’ve seen it and all of the reasons that we believed we would need all of this extra time to be able to plan for this, now that we’ve done enough of them that we’re all practiced and experienced at them, it literally maybe takes an extra five minutes to the time of the operation just to get it ready.So there’s no particular reason that I can see that we then couldn’t achieve that same sort of thing for the vast majority of unplanned Cesareans as well. That would be a game changer because obviously, the unplanned Cesarean is in particular where the woman might come out traumatized at the other end if she’s not getting what she was aiming for. Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. Dr. Natalie: Wouldn’t that be powerful if we could still make it then the best possible version of the emergency Cesarean that we could do?Meagan: Absolutely. Well, I want to be conscious of your time. I know that you’ve been up all night for multiple nights on call doing the amazing things you do. I would love to leave with– since it is a VBAC podcast, is there anything that you would like to share about VBAC or anything cool that you’ve seen or anything that you’ve been implementing with VBAC or any tips or anything as a provider who is making a change in birth in general? I do want to focus on that. I don’t personally see you as the Cesarean birth provider. Dr. Natalie: Great. Meagan: That’s one of the reasons why I just think that you are amazing. I do think that is an amazing thing that you have done because you have started something that is really tricky. It’s a really tricky thing and you’ve started it. That’s where we start making changes just to start but I see all of your other posts too. I see all of your beautiful, amazing posts. I mean, I’m pretty sure you just shared a home birth after a Cesarean video. Dr. Natalie: The HBAC, right?Meagan: Yes, the HBAC. A lot of providers even in a hospital setting would be like, “Nope. Big no-no. That is terrible,” and you’re still out there sharing it. You’re still out there educating. Is there anything else you’d like to share for VBAC?Dr. Natalie: Yeah. I think that’s right. I definitely am still very, very much in support of basically every woman being able to be empowered and informed to make the best possible choices for her in the situation that she’s facing because whilst yes, aiming for a VBAC is a really lofty goal, sometimes that isn’t going to be the best possible choice for her in whatever situation for whatever reason that might be. So yeah, number one is always having enough information being given to you or that you’re finding out yourself that you are equipped to make a decision and probably multiple decisions that feel right for you. That’s difficult sometimes, I think, to know where to go for that information, so thank goodness for places like The VBAC Link that can actually give you appropriate medical advice, research, and the studies and the actual, accurate information so that it’s not just fear-based information that’s getting thrown your way. Meagan: Yes. Dr. Natalie: And then it’s about always advocating for yourself which is unfortunate that it has to become that way, but the hospital system, in particular, is a fear-driven,  litigation, consent place so you’re often not necessarily going to get that unbiased opinion on what your choices are. You probably are going to have to go to external places to get that information, but then you just have to be really careful about where you’re going for that information. Trust your sources. Also, my other tip is always going to be about looking at that whole birth mapping thing. So, okay yes. We are going to aim for a VBAC. For example, that might be your choice, but what if X happens? Then what’s going to be my choice in that situation? If Y happens, then where am I going to diverge now and what’s going to be my choice in that situation? We know that a lot of birth trauma comes from a situation that wasn’t prepared for. The woman comes back at the other side and says, “Well, I just didn’t consider that that could have happened to me,” so the unexpected or unplanned thing that happened is perhaps where a lot of birth trauma can come from. Having that fine line between considering all possibilities but not needing to dwell on those scary ones. There are fear-based ones, but knowing what if you then need a hospital transfer? What if you need a Cesarean? What are your choices going to be in that situation? So that you can continue to make it the best possible version of that now that you can possibly make it. Meagan: Yeah. I love that. It’s something that a lot of our followers will say when they had their initial Cesarean. “It was traumatic because it wasn’t even in my mind. It wasn’t even a thought that that was a possibility” or “I was so focused on this birth plan, this one route that I wanted to go and then it did diverge and it diverged completely over here and it threw me for a loop and now I’m processing.” I love that just in general for anyone going in to have a baby. Even with a planned Cesarean, we want to have an open mind because birth takes weird turns sometimes. Having an open mind and having all of your ducks in a row and having the education because you may not ever get there, but if it’s there, it’s going to help you if it comes. So I love that. I love that tip. Thank you. Dr. Natalie: Yeah. Meagan: Okay, well thank you so much for sharing how you have got this implemented and how it started, and how we as people can try to implement it in our lives and in our cities, states, and countries because we have people listening from all over the world. I love hearing that it is slowly creeping out there and having it put in place. Thank you for all that you do, for your hard work, and for your support in all types of birth that you support. I really do. I just appreciate your time so much. Dr. Natalie: You are very, very welcome. I am always keen and passionate to of course continue to advocate for change wherever we can. I’ll always give a little shoutout and say if you are a pregnant woman or a provider considering this as a change and you need a place to start, you can very much reach out to me via Instagram. You can send me a DM and I can email you information like the policy and some information that I’ve generated that may be able to help you along in your journey as well. I’m very open to that. Meagan: Awesome. Thank you so much. Dr. Natalie: You’re welcome. Thanks, guys. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Ashley joins us today from Australia sharing her three birth stories and how she learned to truly trust herself. Driven out of the hospital due to discrimination and not being able to find support from home birth midwives, Ashley decided to go for a free birth. With a special scar, two previous Cesarean surgeries, a big baby, a high BMI, and a history of gestational diabetes, Ashley accepted all of the risks and was able to reap the beautiful benefits of undisturbed home delivery. Ashley shares with us her journey to acceptance when things didn’t go the way she planned, but also how to persevere through to fight for the story she wanted. She now hosts The VBAC Homebirth Stories podcast and is a Homebirth/Freebirth Mindset Coach inspiring other women to have the courage to take back control of their birth stories!Additional LinksAshley’s InstagramThe VBAC Homebirth Stories podcastHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Hello, hello. Welcome to The VBAC Link. This is Meagan Heaton and we have Ashley here with you. Can I just tell you? She is amazing and you’re going to want to listen to this episode 5 million times and then when you’re done listening to it 5 million times, you’re going to want to check out her Instagram and watch her videos 5 million more times because she is amazing and such a wealth of knowledge. We reached out and said, “Hey, we want to share your story on the podcast. We think it’s going to be an amazing episode.” I don’t think. I know it’s going to be an amazing episode. Review of the WeekBefore we do that, I’m going to get a review per usual and remind you that if you would like to leave a review, we are on Google and Apple Podcasts. You can email us. Shoot us a message on Instagram. We love to add your reviews to the queue and read them on the podcast. This specific review is from Ana Neves and it says, “I’ve been preparing for my VBAC ever since my C-section, and listening to the stories in this podcast has not only taught and informed me all about the different options, but also inspired me. I know that when the time comes, I will be prepared and feel the power of the great and courageous people who shared their stories here.” Oh, I love that. “The great and courageous people.” Oh, I love that. I love that so much. Thank you so much for sharing your review and like I said, if you have a review to share and you want us to know how you feel about the podcast and all of these great and courageous people, please leave us a review. Ashley’s StoriesMeagan: Okay, Ashley. I am so excited that you are here. It’s been interesting from now in recording, we’ve had Australian people on the podcast a lot. It warms my heart and makes me so happy and makes me feel like I probably need to go to Australia now because one, I am obsessed with all of the knowledge you guys have on birth and I actually really like the way that birth is in Australia in a lot of ways. But I am just so honored to have you here with us. Ashley: Thank you. I am so excited to be here. That was such a beautiful, warm welcome so thank you very much for having me. Meagan: Yes, oh my gosh. I’m serious. I just love listening to you too. I just love your guys’ accents. My Utah accent is pretty lame, but yeah. So let’s turn the time over to you. I am so excited because I feel like I’ve heard little things, but I’m excited to just hear it right now with you. Go ahead. Ashley: Okay. So let’s start from the first babe then. Basically, I went into that one expecting that I was going to have a vaginal birth because my mum had vaginal births, and all of the women before me did too. My mum had me in 7 hours. I was the first baby. My sister is two, so mum said, “If you have medication, you’re weak. You’ve just got to suck it up.” So I had this, “If she could do it, I can do it.” I had this, “I’ll have the epidural if I need it” sort of vibe. A lot of my friends had babies before me. They had children when they were 17-18. By the time I had mine, I was 28. I was newly married and I had watched all of my friends. They told me all of their birth stories and things. They had all had vaginal births. I thought that Cesarean birth was really for celebrities basically because when I was in high school, it was Posh Spice who was having this C-section and things like that. It was a trendy thing to do. It wasn’t something that normal people did. It was an expensive thing that rich people did. Meagan: Like in Brazil. That’s how it’s viewed in Brazil. You are high-class if you have Cesareans. Ashley: Yeah. I mean, I went to the GP before I got pregnant and checked on my levels to make sure. I have always had a high BMI, so the doctor said to me, “The only thing I recommend is that you lose some weight because you might struggle to conceive,” so I went in knowing that there may be a hardship there. Some of the women in my workplace at the time had multiple miscarriages. My mother-in-law had 7 before my husband, so I went in with that kind of, “We’ll see what happens, but it could take a while.” So I conceived within the first month of trying so that was a shock, but also so exciting. Super exciting. It was a month before my wedding, so I got sick just after my wedding for my honeymoon and all of the fun games and after that, I was just like a sloth dying because I got HG. I got HG and it was just 20 weeks of basically a challenge. Meagan: Yeah, miserable. Ashley: It was hard. I was so excited to be a mom. I couldn’t wait from the time I conceived to birth the baby and have the baby in my arms. That’s all I wanted. I went to the hospital and there was a bit of a mix-up between when I went to the GP and had the GTT, the test for gestational diabetes. The doctor told me that I didn’t have it. I went to a hospital because that’s what they do. You go to a GP and they just send you to the local public hospital and that’s the one that you are allowed to go to, but they didn’t really discuss any of the other avenues like private, or midwives, or homebirths or anything like that. So I went excitedly to my first appointment. I waited for over an hour and I saw some random gyno-obstetrician and they said to me, “You’ve got gestational diabetes so you’ll be seeing us.” I was like, “No I don’t. I don’t have gestational diabetes.” “Yes you do,” she said and I burst out crying. It was this big thing. Basically, the difference was if I had birthed or if I had gone to the hospital in Brisbane which is the next suburb over, I wouldn’t have had gestational diabetes but in the hospital that I went to, they were up with the times with the lower numbers because that was cycling at the moment. It was 2014. I had gestational diabetes and that meant that I had so many more appointments. It meant that I was only with obstetricians. It meant that I had to go to nutrition or a dietician. It was just so many appointments. It was out of control. From a very early stage, I was told, “You’re going to be induced and you’re going to be on insulin.” As soon as I was diagnosed, I was told, “You’re going to be on medication.” Meagan: No talking about it. Ashley: “Yeah, let’s see how this unravels and we’re not going to start you on the pill, we’re just going to go straight to insulin for you,” so it was kind of like they had already decided my fate. I was really excited to have an induction. It meant that I got a date for my baby and I was going to have my baby early. When I spoke to the other ladies in the GD who were getting induced, the lady said to me, “It’s all good. I was induced and I had my baby in 5 hours.” I was like, “Awesome. Awesome.” I don’t know what number baby that was for her because when it comes to induction, I know now that it really matters whether it’s your second or if you’ve had a vaginal birth before, then an induction probably isn’t going to land you with a C-section. I ended up getting my date, coming into hospital, and having no discussion. I kept asking, “Can we have a birth discussion?” It was always, “Next week. Next week. Next week.” There was no discussion about what happens at birth or really what to expect or any niceties or anything. It always felt quite cold. It was like the people didn’t even want to be there, the junior obstetricians, it was like they were doing their time so to speak. It just wasn’t a pleasant experience. I was expecting my first baby and I just felt like another number. Meagan: Yeah. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy at all. That’s for sure. Ashley: No. I just felt like it didn’t feel right. It just felt really not nice. Meagan: Yeah, impersonal. Ashley: Yeah, exactly. I basically went in for my induction and my husband came in with me. That was a couple of days of having gels and people putting their fingers up and continued monitoring and just very uncomfortable. I found after they had done all of that process that my cervix was right shut up. It wouldn’t open up. They said, “Okay. We are going to try and put the balloon in there.” That was the most excruciating pain. Meagan: Especially when you’re not dilated. Ashley: It was excruciating and I was in so much pain. The doctor and midwife made out that I was making a big fuss because I was responding that it was painful, so they gave me a lot of gas and I was pretty much tripping out. It was really trippy. Meagan: Like nitrous oxide?Ashley: Yeah. I just felt like if this is how painful it is to put this thing in, how painful is labor going to be? How am I going to handle that if I’ve just been through two days of this? I think that I had a cannula in my hand as well because I couldn’t really go to the bathroom without assistance from my husband. It was really getting uncomfortable. I had something up inside me. Meagan: Or poking you or something all of the time. Ashley: Yeah, exactly. So another night in the hospital we slept and then they said, “If it doesn’t open and it doesn’t drop out by the morning, then we’ll talk about it.” I wasn’t allowed to eat. I had to fast. Meagan: That’s going to serve your body well. Ashley: I know. It’s really cool. It’s like they give you so much amazing care in the hospital to set you up for this amazing birth, and I woke up and it was still in there and nothing had changed. I felt really defeated and I felt like my body was broken like there was something wrong with me. Nobody had ever discussed or told me that there is a high failure rate to this or that this procedure can fail or that you may not be a great candidate for this procedure. Meagan: Or more time. More time can make you a different candidate statistically and raise your BISHOP score. Ashley: Yeah, they obviously did the BISHOP score and they would have seen that I wasn’t a good candidate for this. They would have known that when they did all of these things to me. Now I see that as my body is so amazing that you tried to do all of this stuff to my body and my body was like, “Hell no.” Meagan: Nope. I’m keeping this baby in. Ashley: Clam shut, yeah. The junior doctor came in and she said, “Look. We recommend that you come in tomorrow for more monitoring. Go home and come back on Monday and we’ll start the process again.” I was like, “What do you mean you’re going to start the process again? This was really torturous.” I said, “What’s the difference between a day or two? My body’s not going to respond any differently. Can I just come back in two weeks?” I’m 38 weeks at this point and I’m like, “I’m not even 40 weeks. Can I come back in 2 weeks when I’m in labor?” Meagan: And a first-time mom.Ashley: Yeah, because my mom had me and my sisters right on 40 weeks, so I’m just expecting the same. She said, “No. You can’t.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” She said, “No, you can’t do that.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “You know what? We’re just about to have an obstetrician meeting, so I’ll go in there and I’ll ask the consultants what they think and I’ll come back with a plan.” “Okay,” I said because she also did talk about my option of being a Cesarean on the Monday and I said to her, “Look. I’m going to be honest with you. There’s no way in hell that you’re going to get me to come in for elective surgery. It’s just not going to happen. I never wanted to birth like that and I don’t want to.” She came back and she said– they obviously spoke about what I had said and they made for me later a plan to push me in the way they thought that I was going to bend the most, so they said, “Look. We’ve bumped all of the surgeries for the day and we’re going to book you in as priority because we feel like you should be having this baby now.” I was kind of like, “Okay.” So they were bumping all of these surgeries. There were people sitting out in the waiting room waiting to have their babies, but they were going to bump me to have my baby first. I had my sister in the room who was a surgery nurse who had been pushing me to have surgery the whole time because she was traumatized. I’d been fighting her the way through like, “No. I don’t want to do that. I want to have a vaginal birth.” I was so exhausted and my husband only had 5 days off of work, so he had to return in a couple of days. I had my in-laws at my house babysitting my dog and I was promised a baby. I feel like at that point, I was just like, “Okay, well if that’s what you think, then okay. I’ll do it.” I signed this 3-page waiver form by the way, which I was really scared of. I was like–Meagan: What am I doing? What am I signing?Ashley: My sister is getting me prepared. She just finished a shift from working upstairs in nursing and she organized for herself to get in there, so it was going to be my husband and her. They never allowed a third person, but because she worked there and knew people, she was able to weasel in. She’s getting me ready like a good nurse. She’s so excited. She gets to be a part of it and I’m just recording a video of, “If I die, tell my baby I love my baby.” I am so petrified. I’ve got video and photos and I just look at the photo and it’s like me trying to look excited, but actually, I’m like, “Holy crap. This is really scary and I don’t want to do this.” Meagan: Why is everybody so excited and I’m terrified? And why is no one talking to me about this? Ashley: Because I’m giving up control. They’re not getting the knife, but I am. It’s really scary if you’ve never had surgery. It’s not something that we do every day and it’s not something that I had ever gone through before. So off I go into surgery and it’s really good that my sister was there because she got to take a lot of photos and she got to be a part of it. Meagan: That would bring some comfort maybe. Ashley: Yeah, I felt like they would step up a bit as well because they knew that it was one of their own in there and I was one of their own. She took a lot of photos and things like that, but when they were doing the spinal, no one can be in the room. I just remember feeling so petrified and shaking and looking into this big man’s eyes who was holding me and thinking, “You look like a nice man. Keep me safe.” This midwife came around and she was like, “You look like a deer in headlights” because it was like all of these lights shining down at me. I’m in this crazy room with surgery stuff. I’m really scared. I’m petrified, but I went through the whole process and the obstetrician and everyone, it was Christmastime. It was early Christmas. It was December 5th and they were all having their Christmas party that night, so they were all very happy talking about the Christmas party. “You’re going to the Christmas party? I’m going to the Christmas party.” I thought, “Well, they’re not fast. They’re not stressed. They’re very happy. They’re starting their day. I’m the first one. They’re excited about the Christmas party.” It didn’t feel very personal. I definitely didn’t feel included in the process. They were just talking among colleagues. Meagan: I can so relate. So relate. Ashley: It’s horrible. Meagan: Yeah. They were talking about the snow outside and how depressing it was because the one just gotten back from Hawaii. He was like, “Oh, I came back to snow.” I was like, “I’m right here. Can we talk about my baby? Can we talk about me?” Ashley: Yeah, it’s very impersonal. I mean, it’s one thing at the dentist to be chatting it up. I don’t mind it at the dentist if they’re chatting or something, or the orthodontist or something, but yes. I thought, “At least they’re calm.” The baby was born in no time and then announced, “It’s a baby girl.” I just thought, “Oh, can I go to sleep now? I’m not really interested in this. I’m very time. I’m shaking. This is not a great experience.” I just turned around and said, “Can I go to sleep? I don’t want to hold the baby.” It’s uncomfortable anyways, but I can’t really hold the baby. I’m shaking. I’ve never really had that many drugs in my system before and off to recovery we go basically. That’s a new experience as well. Yeah, it wasn’t a great postpartum experience in the hospital. It was quite a negative experience with the night midwives, so I was really excited to get out. I left a day early because I just did not want to have to put up with the night staff. My husband wasn’t allowed to stay. Meagan: Oh, why? Ashley: So in our hospital in the public system, some of them have got 4 or 5 to a room, so I was in a 4 or 5 to a room. They don’t allow husbands to stay. I couldn’t get out of bed. Meagan: I didn’t know that. That’s like old school.Ashley: It is old school. A lot of them are getting upgraded now because obviously, it’s better to have your own room and stuff, but that’s where I was lumped. No one wants to birth there because no one wants to share a room, but if you’re in the catchment, that’s where you get stuck unless you go private. So he got booted out at 10:00 at night, and then I was left with this witch of a midwife who every time my baby cried, she was like, “Oh, look. You’re just going to have to sleep with the baby on your belly because I can’t be coming back here to get the baby all of the time.” I was like, “But it’s not guidelines. I’m not allowed to sleep with my baby with my chest. I can’t sleep and it’s stressing me out.” In my head, I’m saying those things, but yeah. It was horrific. The next morning, my husband came and I was letting loose at him. I was like, “Why weren’t you here? The baby and I haven’t slept.” I was so stressed. I mean, think about it. Being awake for 3 days, having been in the hospital for a long time, and then having gone and had major surgery, you’re left on your own with this baby with barely any support. No one telling you what to do, trying to breastfeed with your nipples getting ripped by the way. Meagan: Pretty much abandoning you. Pretty much. Ashley: Basically. So the second night, I stayed and sorted that out, then I went home the next day. I did have a bit of a thing with the midwife. She was on again, so I ran down to the bathing room and I hid from her because– okay. One thing you should know about me is that I am a highly sensitive person, so something that someone might say to someone may not affect them as much as it would affect me. Meagan: It triggers you. Ashley: It really upsets me and being in a vulnerable position, I need someone who’s gentle, nurturing, and loving. So I ran away and I hid in the bathing room with my baby. I was trying to work out why she was crying. I had fed her. I swaddled her. I changed her. I was really trying to work it out. She could hear the baby screaming and obviously thought that I was not looking after my baby. I said, “Look, I’m just trying to figure out what’s happening here.” She’s like, “You just need to hold her.” I was like, “No, I just need to figure out what’s happening because I’ve got to go home with this baby and work this out.” She’s like, “Why don’t I take the baby and I’ll look after the baby so you can get some sleep?” I’m like, “No. That’s not happening.” I was so against this woman. She was like, “Here’s your medication. Take your medication. I’ve been looking for you,” and then she sent another colleague down to come and check on me and try to convince me to give the baby up. But what I discovered by sticking to my guns and doing what I felt was intuitively right for me was that my baby was pulling her arms out of the swaddle and that was waking her up. So I put her in a little zip-up and from then on, she slept through the night. My husband came the next morning right on the dot. I had a shower. Baby was sleeping. He’s like, “Where’s the baby?” I’m like, “She’s sleeping,” feeling like a million dollars. “I’ve got this. I’ve got this and we’re checking out today.”Meagan: Yep. Get me out of here. Ashley: I went home and we struggled with breastfeeding. I got some really bad advice from one of the nurses that came to my house so I felt like a double failure. By 6 months time, I was mixed feeding to just formula feeding and I felt like a real failure. I let her down. I hadn’t birthed her the way– I didn’t feel like I birthed with, “When I had my baby,” or “When my baby was born.” I didn’t say “When I birthed,” because I didn’t feel a part of the experience. It happened to me. It wasn’t inclusive to me. I just felt completely excluded. So I knew when I was going to have my second, I was having a VBAC for sure because I knew there was a thing possible. I knew about VBACs and I said to my GP, “What’s the timeframe between babies?” She said, “24 months between birth and birth.” That was the thing then or whatever. I said, “Fine. I’m having 24 months.” I literally started trying within 24 months, whatever it was, 15, or whatever. I fell pregnant the second time. I was having a VBAC and I think I joined the VBAC group in Australia. I started learning all of the stuff, becoming informed and advocating. I knew that this time I wasn’t having an induction because that’s what caused me a C-section. I knew that I wanted to try to avoid GDM because that’s what I thought was the lead-up for the induction rush. I didn’t realize that my weight was obviously pushing against me so much. I didn’t understand the reasons why or some of the discrimination that happened in the hospital at that point. I did the early GTT test and I passed that. I was like, “Yes. Maybe this is going to be different.” I’m going to show them. I’m educated. I know what I want. I’m informed. I’m also a people pleaser so I’m trying to get them on board with me. I’m trying to get them to agree with my decision. I’m trying to get them to be a part of my team and cheer me on and get excited.I’m just kind of getting met with obstetricians who were like, “VBAC is great and it’s the best way to birth your baby.” I’m like, “Yes. This is amazing.” Meagan: You’re like, “Thank you. This is what I want to hear.” Ashley: “But not for you.” I’m like, “What? Not for me?” “Well, for you, we recommend a planned Cesarean.” “Okay.” They never really spoke in plain language or explained it to me. It was only through digging and digging and digging and asking and asking and asking that I was finally able to get some answers. I essentially ended up getting gestational diabetes at 20 weeks, so then I wasn’t allowed to see midwives because I had asked to see midwives and they said, “If you get GD, we won’t release you.”Meagan: It disqualified you. Ashley: It disqualified me from seeing midwives. I said, “Look, you’re a surgeon. Can I just see you if I need surgery?” The thing with GD is that there is a GD counselor and somebody that you report to outside of them, so why do I need to see you because you’re not a GD expert or specialist? I actually see somebody. Why is a midwife not capable of looking after me? It doesn’t make any sense. They’re just trying to pull in all of the patients to keep their bellies full and make sure they’ve got jobs. I was gutted. I was absolutely gutted. I only failed by .1 on one of the tests and I wish I had known back then that I could have redone it and I probably would have passed it. It was really disappointing and I was like, “Oh, goodness me.” So I was diet-controlled through that time. I say diet-controlled because that’s the readings that I gave them. I wasn’t really diet-controlled but I was being a bit of a rebel because I was getting the same numbers as I was with my first baby and I was on insulin with her and insulin didn’t do much. I thought, “Well, what’s the difference going to be if they’re the same numbers? She came out healthy and had no sugar problems or anything.” I kind of started to think, “Is this GD thing a bit overrated? If I was in a different hospital or a different country—”Meagan: I was going to say if you went somewhere else like last time, would it have been different or would it actually have been GD as well? Ashley: If I had gone somewhere different and I knew this because I was part of the GD community and I had friends that were birthing in Brisbane who were even having to keep below higher numbers than me. They had much higher numbers than me, so I thought, “You’re with a private obstetrician and you’re getting different information than me,” so I started to clue on that. And then also, when I was doing my readings on my fingers, I would get a different reading on this one to this one, so I started questioning, “If this one’s .5 difference to this one, how accurate is this measuring?”Meagan: Yeah, interesting. Very interesting. Ashley: So it was very scary for me to do that because nobody’s doing that and every time you’re going there, they’re like, “Dead baby. There was a woman who had gestational diabetes and her baby died.” And I was like–Meagan: You hear these and you’re like, “What?” Ashley: I was like, “How did she die? How did the baby die?” They said, “Oh, we can’t disclose that information. You’re telling a room full of women with gestational diabetes that a baby died and the mum had gestational diabetes. She could have been hit by a car for all we know and you’re using it to fearmonger us, but you’re not willing to tell us how the baby died. It could have been negligence on the hospital’s part. It may not have been GD related at all.” Meagan: Yeah, she just had it. Ashley: She just had it, so I found that quite disgusting and all of those things started to really add up. The more that I saw in the VBAC community, the more that I saw this was happening around Australia, the more I was determined to advocate and fight which is really hard for a highly sensitive person, but I got a student-midwife. I got the head midwife to come to my appointments. I had a student-doula who was a dear friend of mine and I started to grow a team around me. I refused to see one of the doctors at one point and wanted to speak to the best, most amazing doctor in the hospital, so the midwives set me up with the nicest obstetrician who still didn’t support me to have a vaginal birth, but he was nicer to deal with. I mean, I had some crazy conversations with some of the obstetricians during that time. One of them was a junior and she said to me because I didn’t want to have continuous monitoring. I just wanted to have the doppler. She said, “You know what my boss says? He says that if you don’t have continuous monitoring, then you’re basically free birthing in the hospital.” I looked at her and I was like, “You’re crazy.” At this point, free birth to me was crazy and she was telling me that because I’m in a hospital and if I’m not doing that, then I’m free birthing. And I thought, “But I’m getting checked with a doppler by a midwife. I’m with obstetricians.” That is absolutely insane, but it goes to show the kind of mentality and the thought process that goes through the fact that they don’t know how to be with women. They don’t know how to observe and watch a woman. Now, my mindset is the complete opposite way. I see things in a different light than how they would see. They rely on machines whereas they don’t rely on that connection. I’m the type of person that relies on human-to-human connection and I’ve listened to people and I love stories. That’s how we learn. We don’t learn about humans by watching machines. I started to learn about the inaccuracies of their machines and some of the equipment that they were using. It made no sense to me to have continuous monitoring when I knew that one obstetrician would send me to surgery for the reading whereas another one with maybe more experience who may be older and more chilled would be like, “Yeah, that’s nothing.” If the results are at that rate, then that’s not beneficial to me because then I’m putting my fate on whether I get a choppy-choppy obstetrician or a chilled, relaxed one on the day. So that was kind of my thinking. I didn’t do growth scans this time. I didn’t see the point in me having a growth scan to tell me that I was having a big baby. My first was 3.7 at 39 weeks. I knew this one was going to be 4 kilos and I said, “Look, I’m happy to birth a 4.5-kilo baby out of my vagina,” which is almost 10 pounds for your listeners and they just wanted to do Cesareans on 4-kilo babies as well as inductions. It was always about induction and I found out the reason why they wanted to do induction. They wanted to manage me. They weren’t a tertiary hospital, one of the bigger ones, and so I found out that the junior obstetricians wouldn’t be comfortable doing or maybe confident or capable of doing an emergency Cesarean on someone of my size, so I said, “That’s fine. Just send me to that hospital or that hospital. Let’s just do this. If it’s a staffing issue, I don’t want to stretch it out.” They just laughed at me. It can’t be a big deal then, can it? If they’re not willing to send me to a different hospital. We had so many conversations and it was anxiety-inducing. I would cry on the way to the hospital. I would cry on the way home. I’d have to get my fight on and I even had a conversation with an obstetrician that said to me, “We’ll fight about that later.” I said, “That’s exactly right though isn’t it? It’s a fight, the fight.” Meagan: Yeah, we’ll fight about that later. That right there. Ashley: He goes, “Oh, I didn’t mean fight. I don’t mean fight.” I go, “Yeah, but no. You do.” Meagan: But you just said that. Ashley: But you do. Meagan: You’re like, “Yeah, I can tell that you’re not agreeing with me and you’re telling me that if I want something else, I’m going to have to fight with you.” Ashley: And so I’m hearing about this informed consent and I’m like, “Informed consent.” I’m fixated on what would get them to be on my side. I’ve learned about informed consent. They legally have to support me, right? But that is just the fast in my opinion, in my experience, they wouldn’t know what informed consent or working with a woman, it just blows my mind. I didn’t realize that at the time, but there were a lot of conversations that were happening about my weight. “You’re not going to be able to. It’s harder for bigger women like you.” I would leave conversations thinking, “I’m not going to be able to birth my baby out of my vagina because I’m big.” Meagan: They were shaming you. Ashley: Yeah, basically I was told by an obstetrician that, “She’s not a fatist, but—.” I was like, “I’ve never heard someone say ‘I’m not a fatist.’” I don’t even know what that means. I had some really interesting conversations because I was asking questions and I was asking questions because I was asking so many questions. Every time I went to an appointment, the obstetrician would say to me, “Ah, I see you’re having a repeat Cesarean,” and that would spike adrenaline. Read my book. Read my book. You would know that I’m having a VBAC and then, “Oh, well do you know the risks of VBAC?” Yes, I do. “Oh, you really do know the risks, but we still recommend that you have a repeat Cesarean,” and I would have to go through that every single time. Meagan: So discouraging. Ashley: It was a nightmare. By 36-37 weeks, I had received a phone call and they said, I could feel the smugness and a smile through the phone, “Oh, we’re not willing to take the risk. You’re going to have to go to a different hospital.” I was just horrified. I was so scared. I’ve just been kicked out of hospital because nothing has changed with me.”Meagan: But because I won’t do what they want me to do and I’m being stern in following my heart. Ashley: Yeah, because I won’t submit. I’ve told you from day one what I’m going to do, but I suppose the rate of success with that tactic is probably 99%, I’m probably the 1% of women who actually says, “No. I actually will not fall for your trickery.”Meagan: Yeah, okay fine. I’ll leave. Ashley: I was so determined, so then I went to a different hospital and it was a newer hospital. They had birthing pools. I was hopeful that I might get in a birthing pool. You get your own room in the postpartum. I was excited. They had informed consent signs. The receptionists weren’t fighting each other. This first one that I went to was pretty rough down there. They were lovely and polite. I thought, “Oh, this feels nice. Maybe I’m going to have a different response,” and I did. I saw an amazing midwife on entry. She was like, “If they’re not going to allow you to do this, you advocate and you can make a complaint. That’s disgusting how you were treated.” I thought, “Oh, wow. This is the best thing.” I saw an obstetrician. They were supportive. They wanted to do some of the same things, but they respected me. I felt like I was seen as a human. They would ask me questions and they would go and ask a consultant and the consultant would agree with me. I was like, “Wow, I am ticking boxes here.” I made some compromises because I was vulnerable. I did a growth scan and they found out that baby was about 4 kilos. Meagan: Like you already guessed. Ashley: I knew that at 39 weeks. I said, “That’s fine.” “Oh, we recommend induction.” I said, “Yeah, I know you do. I’m not doing it.” That’s what caused me the C-section last time. I’m not doing it. We went through the study at 39 weeks. I said, “That doesn’t apply to me. It doesn’t apply to me. I’m not in that study. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” I don’t know how you can have a study saying that it’s going to work better on someone at 39-41 because you’re not doing the same people. You’re not doing induction on someone at 39 weeks and then going, “Hey, let’s try it again at 41 or whatever it is.” You’re doing different people. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t care about it. They said, “Okay, well I’ll talk to the consultant. We’ll look at the scan,” and then she came back and said, “Yep, you’re fine. There’s no fat on the shoulders, so yep. That’s fine.” But if I hadn’t said that, I would have been booked in for an induction, right? I would have just said, “Let’s go, yep.” I sat there on the weekend with my husband shaking like a leaf again having to advocate for myself. It isn’t an easy thing to do. Every time I have to raise my voice, I’m putting adrenaline into my body. I’m not raising like screaming, but I’m having to raise my voice. My baby would have been under attack the whole pregnancy essentially. I eventually get to the due date. A week before my due date– it was a couple of days before my due date– my midwife turns to me at the last appointment. She was training in the hospital last time, so I was really grateful that she was willing to come with me and support me even though she wasn’t going to get her book signed off for this birth. And on that appointment, she said to me, “Look, my daughter’s booked a holiday for me, so I’m going away on your due date. Are you going to have this baby soon now?” I was like, “Oh my goodness. You’ve just fought with me the whole time and now you’ve turned into them trying to get me to have my baby before my due date because it suits you.” Yes. I was heartbroken and I was so angry. I decided then and there I was not going to invite her into my birth space even if it was sooner because she had betrayed me on every level. I went into that appointment and the obstetrician didn’t recommend it, she said, “Do you want to do a cervical stretch?” A sweep and I said, “No, I don’t.” I turned to the midwife and said, “What do you think?” She was like, “Yeah, why not?” Of course, she said that because it gets the baby out quicker. So again, you’ve got to be careful about who you’re with because if you’re relying on people who’ve got a different agenda, you’ve got to take their advice or their opinion with a grain of salt. But I was a little bit interested myself. I’d never had a stretch or a sweep like that before. I was a bit interested. I was worried that I was going to go over due dates and I was willing to wait for 40+10 and I was getting a bit stressed like, “Oh, what if it goes longer?” You start to freak out at that point. There’s a bit of pressure and with what I’d been through, I had the stretch and sweep. She said, “You’re 3 centimeters and you’re stretchy.” I was like, “Wow. Wow. Last time, they couldn’t even– I was closed up.” Meagan: Get a Foley in. Ashley: Yeah. So I was so excited. I started to get some niggles and lose some mucus and a bit of blood and things like that. Two days later, I went into labor. She said to me, “If it does nothing in the next couple of days, then the baby wasn’t ready to come. If it happens, then the baby was always going to come,” sort of thing. Now, obviously, what’s the point in doing them if the baby is going to come and it does nothing but disturb? I mean, my complete mindset changed and flipped. But yeah, I went into straight labor. I was so excited and so proud of myself. I’m in labor this time. I never knew if my body was broken after all of the fearmongering and talk. I was just so proud of myself. It was exciting. I had adrenaline pumping through me. I was shaking with fear and excitement. I was going to wait the whole day to go in. I was going to essentially go to hospital when my baby’s head was coming out. As soon as I went into labor, I was like, “Yeah. I think I should go to the hospital.” I was adamant the whole time I wasn’t going in until I was ready to push and as soon as I was in labor, I was like, “Yep. Okay, it’s time.” Meagan: Let’s go. It’s exciting. You’re like, “Okay, let’s go have this baby.” Ashley: Yeah, and it was fast and hard. When I go into labor, it’s not any prelabor, it’s just that this is on. I dilate pretty quickly. When I got to the hospital, I was 5 centimeters. They were really surprised at how I was doing because I was quite calm and quiet. They were like, “Oh.” I got eventually into the birthing suite. My doula came and set up the room really pretty. I went into the shower and had a midwife assigned to us. She just sat down and read my birth plan and was happy with everything. She wouldn’t let me in the birthing pool of course because I was over 100 kilos even though they’ve got a hoist for bigger people if they need to. They’re just not comfortable with bigger people in the birthing pool. I just did my thing and I said, “I don’t any doctors to come in. I don’t want anyone annoying me or harassing me.” And I just labored for a few hours until I felt like there were some waters or something I could smell and feel. The midwife said, “Do you want me to check you?” I said, “Yeah. Yeah, we’ll see if the waters have gone.” She said, “Yeah, the waters have gone and yeah, this is a little fore bag so would you like me to break that?” I said, “Well, if you think so, okay.” At this point, my education had gone to the point of getting past the induction. If I had gotten into spontaneous labor and I saw a midwife because everything was raving about midwives, I’m going to be fine. This baby’s going to come out of my vagina okay. I didn’t know anything about birth really. I just knew what not to do. I’m probably not going to have an epidural, but I’m open to it. You shouldn’t break the waters, but I don’t really understand why. But I wasn’t having my waters broken. I was just having a little bit of my waters broken. And then came the tsunami and it was my entire waters. It was all over the bed and it was all warm. I was like, “What is happening?” She had either–Meagan: So your bag never really did break until then. Ashley: No, yeah. Yeah. Yes. And there’s some other information. She’s like, “Oh, we’ll put the screw on the baby’s head.Meagan: The FSC, fetal scalp electrode? Ashley: We call it the clip. Meagan: A clip. Ashley: Yeah, some call it the screw. I call it the screw. It’s a little clip and it barely hurts. That was one of my compromises from not having continuous monitoring. I said, “If I have that, then I can be mobile.” That was the compromise and negotiation. Then, I found myself locked to a machine by the way because it wasn’t mobile at this point. Then as soon as I got off the bed, there was a decel, so I was back on the bed. I was in excruciating pain at this point. I come out of my nest in the shower where I was able to breathe through everything and I was standing upright. Now there was a bit of fear happening because there was a decel that she didn’t recover from quickly enough, so then the obstetricians and everyone had to come in. They were kind of like, “Oh, C-section,” talking about it already. I said, “No. I don’t want to talk about it. The baby’s fine. Just let me do my thing.” “Okay, okay,” and then they hounded me to get a catheter in my arm even though I didn’t want one. I said, “No, I don’t want one.” It’s really painful and I don’t want it. She said, “Oh, come on. We’ll just get one in.” I said, “Okay, fine. Just do it then. Just leave me alone.” So she put it in and I’m walking around with this thing coming out of my vagina, this thing in my hand and I’m out of the zone and really finding it hard to get back into how I was feeling. Meagan: Your space. Ashley: Yeah, my space. I must have been in there for an hour or two, maybe a bit longer. By this point, they’ve told me that I’m 10 centimeters on one side, 8 centimeters on the other and there were a couple more decels and maybe one more and they were saying things to me that I don’t understand. They were like, “You’ve got an anterior lip. It’s swollen. You’re 10 centimeters on this side and 8 centimeters on that side. Your baby’s asynclitic. Your baby’s up high.” They’re looking at me and I’m like, “I don’t know.” Meagan: You don’t know what any of that means. Ashley: I’m 10 centimeters. The baby is going to come out right any minute. I’m just like, “Is the baby’s going to come out soon?” I was starting to feel some pushy pains as well, so my body was pushing a little bit too and then I think I went back into the shower and I called in my husband because he was a weak link and I knew he would do what I said. I was like, “I want an epidural.” And the epidural was there within 10 minutes. I knew that would happen. They wanted me to have an epidural on arrival because of my said. I went to the anesthesiologist appointment and they looked at my back and said, “No, you’ve got a fine back.” What they’re worried about with bigger people is that there can be fat over the spine. I said, “Okay, well I’ve got a fine back,” which I thought would be fine because I never had any problems with the C-section. They said, “But we still recommend an epidural on arrival.” I was like, “Okay. Well, at least I understand why.” The thing is that I’m trying to get information from them so I can make informed choices, so if it’s in my best interest, then I will say yes and I will do it. But if it’s in the best interest of you to make your life easier, then I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to put myself or my baby at risk to make your life easier. I understood that an emergency C-section was a higher risk than a planned C-section. I understood that induction was a higher risk. I knew all of the before things and the choices. What I got stuck with is I didn’t understand physiological birth. I hadn’t done any research on that. So they were talking to me gobbledygook, all of these things were happening. I just never thought that this could happen. I never ever thought this would happen to me. My mom had me in 7 hours. What is happening? What are these things that are happening? Now I’m on the bed. I’m stuck on the bed because I’ve chosen to have an epidural and now I’ve negotiated because we have had a couple of decels. I’ve negotiated for myself what I think is a pretty sweet deal which I realize is actually a really bad deal of vaginal examinations every hour. The normal standard practice is about every 4 hours and I’m like, “Okay. How about if we just check every hour and see if there is any progress?” They’re like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” Every hour, they come into me and they’re saying, “No change. Baby’s up high. No change. We recommend C-section. These are the risks if you wait.” They were talking to me about the risks that would happen in a Cesarean, not about the risks that would happen in a vaginal birth if I wait. So it was very biased. I was like, “Okay, so what happens if I wait to have a vaginal birth?” They were like, “Well, we just recommend a Cesarean.” I feel like I’m in a room stuck with the enemy. I said to my doula, “I don’t trust them. I feel like they know what they’re talking about, but I don’t know any different either.” My doula was a student doula and it’s not like I came in there with a midwife who is on my team. I’m looking at the midwife and I’m like, “Are you going to help me?” I’m realizing that she’s team obstetrician. I mean, I’ve never met her before. She was just working there. I’m thinking, “This is not what was sold to me in the VBAC group if I see a midwife. Midwives are amazing, blah blah blah blah.” What I actually missed was that independent midwives that are not working in hospital have more free reign are the midwives that everyone’s raving about. I’m thinking it’s just random midwives, any midwives are awesome. And not every midwife’s awesome because you’ve got different personalities. You’ve got different experiences. You’ve got different passions and every person is different just like you can find an amazing obstetrician. You can find an amazing personal trainer, but they’re not going to suit everybody or everyone’s needs. And they have a bias against different people based on color, based on gender, based on size, based on the way that you look. If they can identify with you, they are going to be more attached to the story and fight and advocate a bit more. If they’re not really into you, they’re going to be like, “Oh well. I’m not going to lose my job over this,” sort of thing. I’ve learned all of these things since. Eventually, after about 6 hours, I had another decel. I think I had about 3 in total. It wasn’t a huge amount. Meagan: Yeah, and how low were they? Do you remember? Ashley: I don’t remember. The problem was that she wasn’t coming back as quickly as they would have liked. Meagan: Prolonged. Ashley: Yeah, it was prolonged. I also didn’t know at the time that the epidural also slowed down my contractions too. I only know this from getting the hospital notes which is quite common with epidurals as well. Eventually, I just said, “Okay, fine. I’m fine. I’ll go.” After the last one, it felt like my baby was at risk. If someone is coming to you every hour saying, “This is the risk. We recommend that,” eventually, you just give up. I think I had been in labor for a total of 12 hours at that point. The first labor I had ever had and off I went. As I was going out, the midwife said to me, “It’s okay. I had a home birth planned, but I ended up in a Cesarean. You’ll be okay.” I was like, “See? You never would have been on my team because you hadn’t even had a vaginal birth yourself.” I looked at her and I was like, “That was the worst thing you could have ever said to me at that point.” I was like, “Just because you had one and you’re okay with it doesn’t mean that I’m okay with it.” It was the worst thing. She obviously thought it was really supportive, but I felt so betrayed. So off I went and I had my surgery. Everything started to go downhill. My husband got rushed out of the surgery with my baby and you could just feel that it was intense. I said to my husband, “I love you. Look after the baby. I think I’m either going to lose my uterus or I’m going to die.” Meagan: Were you hemorrhaging? Ashley: Basically, the story that they tell me, I’m not sure if I believe it, but even if it is true, it is what it is at the end of the day. One of the risks that they were worried about is when a baby descends too much, there’s a– you know this yourself– there’s always a risk of a special scar happening because there’s more risk of a tear or them having to cut more. So that’s what they were informing me about the whole time. They knew about the risk and they were trying to stop– Meagan: But they kept saying that baby was high, right? Ashley: They told me that baby was high. They said that when the baby came out, she flung her arm up and ripped it down to my cervix. Meagan: Oh, okay. Ashley: Now, how does that happen when a baby is up high? If she’s up high, how is she ripping down to my cervix? Now I think about that. How does that happen? Because my cervix was fully dilated. Meagan: Yeah, except on that one side. Did it ever finish? That swelling, that edema, did it go down? Ashley: Not that I know of. What they told me was nothing had changed positioning in that. Then when I looked at the notes when I got the notes, he laid out, “I saw that the positioning had changed.” She had come down a station, but they never communicated that to me. I have a feeling that she was probably down a bit further than they had put because, on the paperwork, they also said I was only 7 centimeters. There was no mention of an anterior lip, so they fudged the papers a little bit and weren’t honest. I mean, if you’re going to make a few little changes, then obviously, there’s a reason for that. It obviously looks better on paper. Meagan: That’s what happens all of the time. The patient will hear one thing, then on the op reports, it’s a little different. So we always encourage you to get your op reports. It’s sometimes hard to read but get your op reports. Ashley: It is hard to read. You know, they put it on the board too here in Australia what you are and at what time, so the information is there for me to look at the whole time while I’m in labor, so it’s not that one person just said it, it’s literally on the board for you to see. I was quite upset when I saw some of the notes. I went through the notes. I’ve been through them multiple times now and I was just trying to learn. I was Googling, “What does this mean and what does that mean?” because I don’t know the medical jargon. I’m learning all of the things and I’m looking at Spinning Babies. I’m looking at everything and trying to learn after the fact, but essentially what had happened was apparently, she had flung around there, tore my uterus down to the cervix and then they needed to call in a specialized team to come in and resolve that problem that they had created. The surgery went on for a number of hours and it was a very challenging surgery. I wanted to crawl out of my body essentially because I had been laying there for so long. It was just a horrible experience. I was reunited with my baby. She was born at 6:30. I was reunited with them at about 12:00 at night, so I had been in labor from 4:00 in the morning and then I was breastfeeding her because my husband advocated for her to be breastfed. So that meant that she had her sugars checked. They were fine, so they were happy for her to wait for me. I was really, really glad that my husband advocated for me. I was so tired when I got out of surgery and I was back in this hot room. I was sweating profusely. There was no aircon. Some of the rooms, even though it was new, didn’t have aircon. I ended up in a room with no aircon and it was so hot. I had to have a midwife stay with me and do observations every 15 minutes to check me. I didn’t end up in the ICU, but I lost 3.1 liters of blood. I had blood transfusions in the surgery, all of the stuff in the surgery to keep me awake, and all of that. I really wanted to go under, but they wouldn’t put me under because I had been eating. It wasn’t a great experience and I came out very traumatized from that experience. I ended up having PTSD with flashbacks. I was crying for months. I felt broken. They told me to never have a vaginal birth again, and that I could have two more babies so that was amazing. I was like, “Well, you must have done a good job if you think I could have two more,” but they must be born Cesarean. I was like, “Okay, no problems.” I was so grateful to be alive after that experience. I was trying to make sense of what had happened. The next few years, that was my mission to try to make sense because I’ve gone from a space of you’re not allowed to have a vaginal birth to what happened, trying to understand what happened, and then planning our future because we wanted four children total. So I almost never had any more children. For 6-12 months, I was done. I was never going to go through that again. I was a broken person. I was really struggling, but I trained as a postpartum doula and I started to want to help women in breastfeeding and the things that I knew that I could support because I ended up breastfeeding that baby for 12 months and I felt like a success at that regard. I learned a lot about breastfeeding. I wanted to share my voice and help women, but I wasn’t well enough to help women in the birth space because I felt like a failure. I was trying to learn and I wanted to be in a space where I felt safe. This was trauma and challenges were happening and this was me being able to help people and make a positive out of a negative essentially. And then I found you guys. I found your podcast and I was like, “This is amazing,” because you were the first place that was promoting VBAC after two Cesareans. Back then, nobody was having VBAC after two Cesareans let alone multiple now that we see happening. I think a lot of it has to do with your podcast because when you hear women’s stories and you hear the statistics and you can actually hear other women doing it, that was the start of me getting hope and realizing that there was another way. Meagan: Oh, that just gave me the chills. Ashley: Thank you so much for your podcast. Meagan: I have a sweater on right now, but literally it just went up my arm. Ashley: Awesome. It is really nice to know that if I didn’t come across your podcast, I probably wouldn’t have taken that next step, so it is life-changing to hear other women’s stories and have that resource. The fact that you guys had the stats and everything, I was very much in the stats trying to move through special scars. I eventually had gone onto Special Scars, Special Hope. Meagan: Such a good group. Ashley: Yeah, so amazing and started to connect with other women who were having worse scars than me. They were birthing on classical scars. I was like, holy moly. I think it was ACOG or maybe RANZ of New Zealand and Australia. They said it was okay to labor on a scar like mine because I had a vertical scar down to my cervix. That’s the low-risk special scar. I was like, “If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.” Look at these people saying that. All of the obstetricians that I had spoken to because I had a meeting with an obstetrician. I had met with so many midwives who knew about the system. They said to me, “Look. They are going to be petrified of you coming to the system.” It was really good to get that feedback and from my own experience, they wouldn’t allow me to have a VBAC let alone a VBAC after two Cesareans with a special scar and high BMI. I started to really try to uncover, so I met with an obstetrician from that hospital and she basically said to me, “Look, you’re a square peg trying to fit in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole.” I looked at her. I didn’t understand that. I had never that and I have never been referred to as that kind of person. I quite like doing what normal people do. I was looking at her. I’m like, “What are you talking about?” She just said to me, “Basically, I ended up with this surgery because the surgery who was working had decided that because of my weight, that that was all that I was capable of or that was the path that I was going through.” That was really the first time that I’ve felt like my weight has actually held me back or I’ve been discriminated against. When I look back at the fact of how I was treated and the conversations I was having, it was obvious that it was happening the whole way through, I just was so naive to it that it was happening in my face and I didn’t even realize it because the thing is that I understand that being of high weight can put you at risk for all of these things. I’m looking at it from their point of view, but I’m not actually sometimes looking at it from Ashley’s point of view. I understand their concern and I understood all of the medical stuff because I had listened to them. I had asked questions. I had read their policies for obese people. I understood that it was discrimination. I didn’t understand it at the time. I didn’t understand that they probably weren’t seeing me as a human as maybe they would have if I was a skinny version of myself. We probably would have had a different conversation. They probably would have been cheering me on and holding my hand and saying, “You’re an amazing VBAC candidate. We support you. We probably still want to do all of these things to you, but we’re not going to kick you out of hospital.” That’s the difference when I hear women’s stories. Oh, she’s allowed to get in the water bath and she’s allowed to have a beautiful birth. She doesn’t have to bend over backward and do a cartwheel and it’s because she looks a certain way or she was really lucky because she got an obstetrician that was amazing. There are all of these things that have to line up. That’s what has propelled me on my journey to find home birth as an option. Meagan: Home birth, home birth. So you talked about stats. You were on this mission of stats, so you went out and you found the stats about VBAC after multiple Cesareans, two Cesareans, special scars, found some stuff, said, “Okay, this seems acceptable,” and then you started a home birth. Based off of your own research, for you, you felt completely comfortable starting this journey. Ashley: No, I didn’t. Meagan: Okay. Ashley: I didn’t. I mean, I had to work through the fears with the stats and I was comfortable with home birth and the idea of home birth. I understood that home birth was as safe as birthing in a hospital and I understood that if I was birthing with a midwife I would have a medical person with me. Now, the next challenge that came for me was that I couldn’t find a home birth midwife who would support me. I feel like I leveled up. I was leveling up the whole time. It was like, now you’ve got a VBA2C. Now you’ve got a special scar. Let’s work through this. What do I feel comfortable with? What am I willing to take on? Okay, okay. That’s doable. That’s doable. I can work through that. What’s the next thing? Oh yeah, the next thing is this. Okay, what am I going to do with that? A home birth. Okay, a home birth feels like a safe option. I can do this. I can do that. I can do that. Okay, that’s going to be the best thing for me. I’m not going to go back to hospital. Meagan: I love that you said that. I can do this. I’m comfortable with this. You kind of have to go through that with anything. In life in general, but especially with this birth, you went through it and you were like, “Okay, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Now, here I am.” Ashley: Yeah and I was seeing a psychologist at the time for all of the things to help me lose weight actually. My GP, I wanted to lose weight. I’ve been overweight my whole life. I wanted to lose weight. I went to a nutritionist and she was like, “You know everything. I think it’s emotional.” I’ve got childhood stuff going on. I worked with him and I said, “The way that I feel about the hospital system, is this right?” He’s normalizing my experience for me and saying, “You’re perfectly normal.” I’m trying to say, “Am I having a trauma response here? I don’t want to go into a home birth because I’m having a trauma response,” because the obstetrician said to me, one of them, she’s like– she wasn’t the best obstetrician for the debrief. She said to me, “You’ve got a risk of special scar, a 7% rupture rate.” I said, “That’s a little bit different from what I found in Special Scars, Special Hope where they are looking at women.” I said, “Have you got any statistics?” She’s like, “No.” I’m like, “So how can I trust that what you’re saying is correct then?”Meagan: Well then, where’d you get 7%?Ashley: Exactly. She’s like, “Look, if you find any doctor who’s willing to support you, then they’re not the doctor for you. I’m telling you what is the safest thing for you.” I was challenging her because at this point, I’m angry. I’m so done. I’m so done. I’ve just been through hell because of you people and I want to get information. I don’t want to hear your judgments. She said to me, “If you find a doctor, then basically they’re not right. They’re doing the wrong thing.” I said, “So you’re the best doctor in the whole world? You know everything right? You’re the best and you know the best then? So if I find another doctor who says yes then they’re wrong and you’re right, that’s what you’re saying?” She was just looking at me. She was like, “I just feel like what you’re going to do is you’re going to keep looking until you’re going to find someone and then you’re going to put yourself at risk.”I’m like, “That is exactly what I’m going to do.” Meagan: You’re like, “Well, I’m glad you feel that way.” Ashley: I should have sent her a postcard after my free birth and said, “I freebirthed. Thank you for driving me to this.” It is amazing the conversations you have when you really do have conversations. You can see where they’re coming from and how very different their views are. Some of the fears and worries that they have are not about you and your baby. They are about themselves and their career, but the information I didn’t know about her was that she was actually the head of obstetrics and she just lost her title and her job. She’d been bumped down. The reason why I went to her was because she supported breech birth in hospital and she was very vaginal friendly. She did support me. She was the consultant I saw on the paperwork that supported me to have a vaginal birth, but in the timeframe of me organizing to meet up with her, the information that I didn’t know that I found out later was that she lost her job because she had supported somebody to have a breech and there was a poor outcome that the parents accepted, but somebody else had basically complained about. The only thing is that breech is so risky they say even though it’s not. She’s one of the radical obstetricians so she had been punished and so she was coming from a space of where she was. It’s really important to know that information. You never know where they are in their career or how they are feeling, so she might have been really bitter at the time and negative and feeling like there was doom and gloom in the world. It was really shameful when I was speaking to my doula friends and they were like, “Oh really? She was so amazing.” I’m like, “Yeah, well maybe she is amazing but not for people like me. Maybe she supports this person because they’ve got a thin body and because of me, she’s like, ‘No. I wouldn’t touch you with a 10-foot pole,’” because it’s too risky for her and for her job also. They are up against it as well in the system and that’s something I have learned. My next mission was that I needed to find a midwife who was going to bat for me, not somebody who was going to be worried about losing their career because they come after the midwives too that are home birthing. So I had gone to the free birth podcast as well and I was listening to their stories. I was like, “They’re a bit out there for me. I’m not brave enough to do that. That’s a bit radical.” Eventually, my husband was the one that talked me into a free birth when we couldn’t have a midwife to support me. It took me a long time to feel okay with that choice because that is a very different choice than what a lot of people were making at the time. Now I feel like home birth is very popular because everyone was flocking to it in COVID times and because of that, so many women are free birthing at least where I lived. And because I work in the space now, I see so many but there were only a handful of free birth doulas at the time. Now, everybody’s doing it. It’s like it’s no skin off anyone’s nose. It’s like, “Oh, just another free birth. Just another free birth.” It’s so normalized and it was very scary because I was the only one that was doing this, but also, the only one doing this that had a special scar and a high BMI. I was looking for somebody like me who had made this same choice and there wasn’t really any. So I was kind of connecting with the VBACs and hearing their stories as I went along. That gave me faith and trust. I had to learn about physiological birth and I had to take on a lot of responsibility. If it was a poor outcome, it was on me. If it was a poor outcome in the hospital, it was on me anyways. I had to live with the consequence of that choice. And so that was a hard thing to work through that no matter what, it was on me. It was just who did I want to place blame on. To the rest of society, if I birthed in a hospital and I lost my baby, society would be loving me and supporting me. If I lost my baby in a home birth, I’d be demonized and burned at the stake. As somebody who likes to fit in and not be– I’m not a Maverick-type personality I don’t think– it was quite challenging for me, but I eventually worked through it and I asked those questions to myself. I did this and I did that. I did healing and I did all of these things and I started my own podcast when I was 6 months, 5 months pregnant as well. It’s one thing to choose free birth, but then when you are pregnant, it’s like oh, there’s a baby now and all of these new fears come up. I got a doula straight away because I knew that I wanted emotional support. I wasn’t really sure that I needed physical support on the day. I felt really comfortable and capable of doing the birthing. I had gotten up to 10 centimeters whilst pushing out the baby. I thought that maybe having her there for the placenta would be really helpful because I don’t know. I was worried about postpartum hemorrhaging and also the placenta. I really knew that as a highly sensitive person, I needed that extra emotional support and I knew that that’s what doulas did. It’s what I did for my postpartum clients and at this time, I had been working with clients for a few years and supporting clients for a couple of years through our program. I really realized how important this work was. I was looking for somebody like me basically to support me through that experience. I went for somebody and this is why it’s important to choose the right people. I went for a free birth doula, but I went for a really tough person who was confident and strong. I didn’t go for a nurturing person because that to me wasn’t a strength and that you’re confident in this situation. Even though I said, “This is the support I want and need. Can you do this?” She didn’t have the personality to be able to deliver the kind of emotional support that I wanted. She had a very busy practice going on so she wasn’t able to support me the way I needed. And also, she didn’t know what a highly sensitive– I find that some people are okay with minimal support that maybe you check in once a month or maybe you check-in every couple of months or just really checking in at the end of the pregnancy, some of the doulas do. For me, I needed that every week, “Hey, how are you going? Are you alive? What’s going on for you? What kind of fears are you having?” I felt, as somebody that was free birthing for the first time who had PTSD and trauma, there was so much stuff that I needed support with, but I felt that I was really left to myself to kind of doula myself which is why now I work with women in this space doing the emotional support, but it was so easy that I didn’t have to go to the hospital, but I felt really alone through that period because I didn’t have the checks anymore. I didn’t have anyone checking in with me in that capacity. I didn’t have. It was COVID time, so I called a GP and got some scans and things that I wanted to get done which was really cool, but I was feeling really alone and that sort of thing. I was lucky to call in some of my village of doulas and my postpartum doula really stepped in from about 30 weeks for me. She would come and visit me. She’s a very dear friend of mine. We were friends before. We were business friends, so I had a lot of friends through my work. They became really good friends. I really relied on them and they were more than happy and honored to be part of my journey. I learned the skill of support because I was teaching my clients, “You’ve got to have a circle of support. You’ve got to have people to support you. Let’s talk about this fear.” I was doing all of the things that I was teaching my clients. I thought, “I’d better do these things, otherwise I’m a bit of a hypocrite, right?” Yeah. I was like, “I can’t ask my clients to do hard things if I’m not willing to do them, right?” Have hard conversations, put myself out there, and make myself vulnerable, so I was doing all of these things. Meagan: But it’s hard to do. It’s easier to preach. It’s easier to preach.Ashley: Oh yeah, it is easier. But then when it’s you, you’re like, “Oh, what if they say no? What if they don’t want to help me? What if I’m a nuisance?” and I just had to have faith. I’ve learned about boundaries this time and healthy mindsets, so it was a completely different experience. My friends didn’t understand free birth, but they supported me. They were hospital doulas, so I couldn’t sit down and say to them, “I’m really worried. What if my baby does die?” They would be like, “Maybe you should just go to hospital.” I couldn’t really have truthful, honest conversations because that would be quite scary. Meagan: Yeah, man. You know, I just think what you just said is so powerful. “I couldn’t have truthful conversations because that would be scary.” Ashley: Yeah, it would be because they would be scared. Meagan: That is just so powerful to me because, in this world, we need to have that. We need to have those truthful conversations because they are going to be hard and they’re going to be scary, but you couldn’t. Ashley: No. And that’s why because it was such a small percentage of people doing it, it was hard. In the free birth communities, there were varying people. Meagan: I was going to say, was it quiet? Was it tight or did people talk about it? Ashley: In the free birth community, it was full of people who were free birthing because they wanted to and that was their choice. They had access and were able to get midwives, but there’s a difference. There are people in the community who live and breathe it because it’s a Christian upbringing or their mother did it, or intuitively, they are intuitive and they are connected with it. They are naturalists. They are very crunchy whereas I’m more mainstream and I couldn’t get a midwife, so I’m like, “Boo-hoo me.” I couldn’t get what I wanted in the hospital.Boo-hoo me, I can’t get support. I can’t even get the prenatal care that I really want because no midwives will support me because they were worried about their insurance. So while I’m in the free birth community, I didn’t feel like I fit in. I’m half in the mainstream space, half in the free birth because I’m not making this choice from, “Oh, I love the idea of free birth.” I was, “I want to have a home birth, but I can’t get a midwife, so what’s the next best thing?”Meagan: You feel stuck too maybe a little bit where you’re like, “If I want this birth, this is what I have to do.” Ashley: Yeah, exactly. It was the safest and best choice for me and my baby at the time, but I wasn’t making it from, “I’m so excited that this is my option.” Now, I’ve had the lived experience and confidence and I find that a lot of people, especially VBAC women or people who have had trauma in the hospital system if they choose to have a free birth, it’s usually from a space of so much baggage and so many emotional things that are coming with that. A lot of the time, they’re doing it because they want to protect their birth space from being interfered with by a medical person and they can’t trust even a midwife because even midwives can interfere in physiological birth, so they learn about free birth. This is where I was at. I wanted a midwife, but I didn’t want a midwife. I don’t want somebody who’s going to judge me because of my size or because I’m a VBAC, they’re going to be like, “Oh, you’d better go to hospital now. You’ve been in labor for 12 hours.” That would crush my soul to have to go to a hospital, so I was worried about that because I had been listening to free birth stuff. But I was also interviewing Dr. Rachel Reed who lives here in Australia and Dr. Sarah Buckley. I don’t know if you know these ladies. Ashley: Yes, Sarah Buckley. She’s got an amazing book. It’s on my desk here. I think it’s called Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering, and Dr. Rachel Reid. Sarah’s on undisturbed birth and she’s had a free birth herself. Rachel talks about physiological birth and instinctive birth, so if you grasp the concept of how we birth outside of the system without medicine and that our body instinctively does what it needs to do without any involvement from midwives, she shares her story of being an attending midwife and not interfering in births and allowing them to unfold which meant she had to really look at how she practiced and how much she was really disturbing births by, “Oh, it looks like a woman needs to get in this position. By telling the woman to get in this position, I’m going to disallow and see what happens.” She would share stories of this woman is getting in this crazy position, but she’s a second-time mom. She’s had a vaginal birth. I’m just going to see what happens. Finding out the reason why the woman’s pointing her bum up to the sky is because the baby’s got its arm bent up and if she was standing up, gravity would have ripped her a new one whereas this is a slow birth. But nobody knows what’s going on except for her beautiful body and the nerves and everything that’s happening. I thought, “She’s a home birth midwife who’s attended hundreds of births in her career. She’s got a Ph.D. on this stuff. She knows what she’s talking about.” And then there’s this other doctor, Sarah, who’s talking about the hormones and she’s talking about undisturbed birth and how important it is, so you can’t really have an undisturbed birth in a hospital setting. You could, but you would be putting everyone’s nerves and wits on end.Meagan: You would be free birthing. You would be free-birthing in the hospital. Ashley: You’d be free birthing in the hospital and everyone would be shaking out the door like, “Ohhhh.” You can have one at home, but what if I get someone who judges me because of my size or because they are worried about a VBAC? I also interviewed Melanie Jackson who did a study on free birth and why women of high-risk free birth. I asked her, “How would you feel attending a VBAC?” She said to me, “Generally, they do look for things with VBAC women.” They’re looking for the uterine rupture things, prolonged labor, surges between, infrequent surges and bleeding, and things like that. If you go over a certain time, they’re much more likely to transfer you to hospital. So I’m like, “Okay, well that’s good to know. Do I really want somebody who’s going to possibly be trigger-happy at my birth and end up in hospital again and goodness knows what happens?” So I’m stuck between having to go with these midwives because I know that they do physicological birth and I don’t know about them. They are a risk for me. That’s where I was. And then when I got rejected by the midwives that I knew were physiological and stood back and watched, I was like, “That’s it for me. I guess I’m free birthing and I’m going to muster the strength.”Meagan: Here we go. Ashley: It was a very hard pregnancy with the HG again. It was a very different pregnancy. It was COVID times. I was lucky enough to get some of the appointments and scans and things without seeing a GP. I just kept saying I was seeing a midwife and I need you to do these scans or whatever and write the scripts for the scans. Actually, what had happened was I got to 38 weeks and my waters broke. It was the first time, so every experience is different. I was in my bed and I moved. I was like, “Did I just do that? Did I just make this happen?” I got up and I said to my husband, “Royce, Royce!” He’s running down the hallway. All of this water is coming out and he’s got a towel and he’s going behind me. I’m excited. It was 4:00 again, so my last one was at 4:00 and this one was at 4:00. I called my doula. She said, “Okay. Just go back to bed.” I’m already putting myself on a clock because I’ve got the things that I’m willing to wait for too. 48 hours. 48 hours. I’ve got to have this baby in 48 hours, otherwise, I’m transferring in. I’m stressing myself out. I’m like, “Okay. I’ll get into bed and see what happens.” Within a half hour, I was already contracting. I said, “Call her and tell her to come back down,” because I really wanted that womanly support and I wanted somebody with me. I always felt like both of my labors were going to be really quick because of my mum. Meagan: Yeah, you hear, “Oh, how’d your mom birth? Oh, you’ll probably birth like that.” Ashley: I went straightaway into labor and it was painful. I’m talking like very, very painful. My second one was fine. I could handle it. I was moving for hours before I asked for the epidural. This time, I went straight into it. I really think for me, it’s the fact that the waters went. Meagan: Yeah. It does make a difference. Ashley: It really did make a difference because I was in excruciating pain when the waters went and the same with this one. I thought, “Oh, what am I going to do? I’m going to sit on the toilet. No, that doesn’t work. I’m going to sit on the birthing ball. No, that doesn’t work. I’m going to lay on the bed. Okay, that’s okay. That’s okay, but I’m still stressing.” Music goes on. Hubby’s got the music on. I’ve got my birthing [inaudible], deep breathing. I’m moaning. I’ve got me on video. I’m just looking at my video now like, “You were in so much pain. I feel for you.” My kids are getting up. They are so excited. They’ve been trained. They’re little doulas. They’re like, “You’re so good, mom.” I can feel their high energy and I’m looking at them like, “I just hate everyone right now. I hate your soul.” On the video, they’re all like, “What’s mummy doing? She’s in labor. It’s so exciting.” They’re little faces. My husband was so excited and I’m in hell. And then eventually, I got into the birthing pool and I was still in hell. I was breathing through it and I was looking through my affirmations. My husband had scrambled to get the birthing pool and put everything out because we weren’t expecting me to go into labor until 40 weeks. I said to my doula, “Is this normal? Is this normal? Is this normal?” “Yeah, yeah. It’s fine.” I’m like, “Can you hold my hand because I really need to hold your hand right now?” I’m doing the cone and I’m breathing and she’s giving me some water and she’s doing a little homeopathic thing. I’m moaning. Nobody really knew the pain that I was in because it was all inside and internalized. I look at videos and it’s very peaceful and calm. I don’t look like I’m in much pain. I’m dealing with it really well. I’m very quiet. And then eventually, maybe after about 4 hours of that really challenging pain, I flipped a switch. There was nothing. It was just bliss. Peaceful, calm, no real pain. I mean, I was having surges and then I started pushing. I started to have pushing urges. Every third or fourth contraction, I was pushing. I was pushing out poop, so I was like, “Okay. This is great.” My husband’s having to clean it up. Meagan: It’s a good start. Ashley: It felt so satisfying and my body was taking over. I had no control. It was so satisfying and I would get on my knees and lean over the pool. I was bearing down, and then I would have a few contractions and I would just be laying back in the water relaxed. In between them, I was laughing. My leg went numb and I was like, “Oh god. My leg really hurts. I wish I could chop it off. It’s so painful.” I was leaning on the other side. I thought, “Is it because I’m laying on it?” But it wasn’t. It was the baby. I didn’t know that at the time. The baby made my leg go numb and I didn’t realize it. I had another posterior baby. I had a bit of pain in my back, but not too much. My theory is and I believe this to be true considering that I was 10 centimeters in 7 hours. I think the real pain for me was dilation. I think I got fully dilated and then knowing what I know about the pushing stage– I know the different stages and I know the different variations of normal now through Dr. Rachel Reed. I realized that what I had been taught about early labor, active labor, transition, and pushing stage isn’t true for every woman. Every woman is different. I had posterior babies, so I pushed every third or fourth contraction because I had fully dilated, but my baby now had to come down and I knew that because of my last one. So the whole rest of labor was my body pushing and my baby rotating. My husband said to me, “Look, you can see the baby is moving,” because you can actually see my stomach moving. I was like, “Oh wow, yeah.” It was literally just allowing that process to unfold the way that it needed to, listening to my body and getting into the positions that felt right for me. I had instructed my doulas to not tell me, coach me, or put me into any positions because I believed in undisturbed, instinctive birth and I wanted to allow it to unfold the way that it needed to unfold. I felt that was the safest way for me to birth my baby outside of the hospital setting. If I was birthing in a hospital setting, I would want to get that baby out as quickly as possible because there are a whole set of rules that happened in the hospital, but when you’re at home, you can do whatever you like and that’s what I really love about the birth that I had. Eventually, we were just going through that process. My husband was in the pool, he was out of the pool, and he was supporting me. People were laughing. The doulas went outside to give my husband and me a bit of privacy. There was a bit of a fuss about, “Have you done a wee? I can’t do a [wee]. I’m trying to do a wee. I’m trying to get a wee.” I watched a bit of orgasmic birth, so I said, “Why don’t we just get a little bit frisky for a bit and see if I can get wee?” So my husband was touching me and I was touching him. I still couldn’t wee. I was really fixated on that and I really wish I hadn’t. It was every now and then. I’m like, “Oh maybe it’s the water.” The wee is stopping the baby from coming out and getting me ahead a little bit which is why I don’t like people asking things, but I understand why people do ask things because they’re checking if you’re okay.Eventually, I said to my husband, “Oh, can you put your hands in there and see if you can feel anything?” Before, I had felt this huge push, this humungous poop the size of a head was coming out. I was like, “Oh my god. I’m going to do the biggest poop,” but of course, it was the baby’s head coming right down. I didn’t know at the time and it was baby’s head coming down. I said, “Can you put your fingers in?” He said, “It feels like a kiwi fruit.” Do you know what a kiwi fruit is? Meagan: Mhmm, yeah. Ashley: Like a little soft, hairy–Meagan: Yep. Ashley: He’s like, “Well, maybe it’s a muscle though.” I’m like, “Oh, well maybe I’ve prolapsed.” This is what we’re thinking. I’m like, “Oh well, what will be what will be.” Of course, a kiwi fruit is a baby’s head. Meagan: A squished, fuzzy baby head. Ashley: We were so clueless. Meagan: I love that he said that it felt like a kiwi fruit. Ashley: He has no idea, like absolutely no idea but it’s so funny looking back at it now. Eventually, I knew. I started pushing and the doulas came running in. Everyone was excited and eventually, she was coming in and out and in and out, and then eventually, she came out. The doula said to my husband, “Don’t touch the baby. Move away from the baby. Don’t touch her.” I was like, “Why is she saying that? I’ve watched so many videos of babies being born and the mum’s encouraged to touch the baby’s head. What’s happening?” I’m thinking, “In breech birth, you’re not supposed to touch the baby.” I’m in my head again now. Meagan: Because people are talking. Ashley: People are talking. I’m feeling scared and I had no more contractions. I’ve completely talked myself out of contractions. I’m like, “There are no contractions.” And then her shoulders are out and her head was out. I’m like, “Okay, what do I do?” Because once that happens, the baby always comes out. I’m like, “Okay, well can you pull the baby out?” to my husband. He’s trying, but he doesn’t want to hurt the baby. He’s really soft. I’m like to my doulas, “Can you pull him?” “No, we don’t do that.” “Okay.” I’m just going to purple-push here because I don’t know what to do. I’m pushing, pushing, pushing and eventually, I’m going black in my visuals. Meagan: Pushing so hard in your head. Ashley: Yeah. Eventually, she pops out. It must have only been a minute or two, but in that time, they were yelling at me, “Push! Push!” I’m getting all of the things I didn’t want. Coached pushing and I could feel their energies because I’m empathic and one of the things I pick up the most are people’s feelings and energies. I know that everyone’s freaking out. Nobody knows any answers and I’m just like, “Oh my god.” She was born. She was happy and she came to me. I felt and I’m like, “Oh, it’s a girl. I thought it was a girl,” and then my doula comes racing around. She was like, “I think there’s a bit of labored breathing. I think you should call the ambulance.” I was like, “Okay. Well, just call the ambulance then.” The ambulance was called and they were there within a few minutes and then my doula said, “We think you should–” At this point, you have to understand from the birthing point of view, I’ve handed all of my power over to somebody else to make those choices for me because there were a few suggestions on birthing on positions throughout and I rolled my eyes and I was like, “I’ve got this. No one’s telling me what to do.” But because I handed over that power, and I think there is a place to have some collaboration, but I think that for me, I would have preferred if I had taken the full responsibility on, but for whatever reason, I had it in my head that that’s how it was going to go or that. It is the way it is and I accept that path, but I’ve certainly learned a lot of, “Ashley needs to take full responsibility next time,” but I don’t think that’s for everyone and I don’t think that women need to birth like that either. If we look at thousands of years before us, we’ve been birthing with wise women and that’s the whole reason I had the experienced person in my room with me, so I could rely on her experience and wisdom. It’s just a shame that some of those things unfolded the way they did, but she suggested that we cut the cord and my husband pick her up. As soon as that happened, she let out the biggest cry. I knew she was totally fine. Yeah, I was really happy that she was fine. I didn’t get to have the things that I really wanted to have like the golden hour and the crawl to the breast and things like that that is really sold in the home birth community of why you have a home birth. I was just so grateful to have my vaginal birth, but I know that other people like some of my clients– it is a little bit disappointing when you don’t get the thing that you want at the end. Meagan: Totally. Ashley: But then baby was cleaned and she was fine, but then what had happened was it was all attention on me. My doula was like, “Has the placenta come out? Can you stand up? Can you get the placenta out?” and things like that. There was a lot of blood in the pool. Meagan: Sometimes when it’s in the pool, it looks like a lot. Ashley: It does look like a lot and the other reason why I hired her was because she had experience with that whereas I didn’t have the experience. I know that a lot of free birth is transferred in from blood loss because they don’t have the experience of knowing what is normal or in water, it looks like a lot but it really is nothing. That’s a unique experience and that’s why it’s really important to have wise people with you if that’s what you want or feeling confident. Personally, I think it’s probably better to tap into yourself and listen to how you feel rather than sometimes what you are seeing because I know from experience, I can handle a lot more than some other people can, so what might be okay and acceptable for that birth– I’m a heavy bleeder for periods for example. Maybe my body works a little bit differently so I think tapping into that intuition and knowing how you feel. People know if they feel like crap or if they feel pretty good. But yes, then another ambulance was called and another ambulance and another ambulance. Yeah. I had this protocol that if I had lost a certain amount, they had to give me a bag of bloods before I came into hospital even though I live 5 or 7 minutes from the hospital. They were just waiting for this one ambulance to come that had my blood type on board. Then they had to give it to me and eventually, 2 hours later, we got to the hospital. By this point, I’m pretty much passing out. Meagan: So you were bleeding. Ashley: I was bleeding, but they called my doula to ask her how much blood loss there was. They didn’t ask the ambulance which, they were there and they saw, so I don’t really know how much blood I lost. I feel like I lost probably the same as I did with my second baby because that’s what they said that she said. My doula said, “I think she’s lost about 3 liters or 2 liters.” When I got into hospital, they were waiting for me. They were ready and straightaway, they tried to do the removal without any medication, just putting their hand up my vagina and trying to manually remove it which was very, very painful. It felt like a shovel going in and coming out. After three attempts, I said, “Stop. I do not consent to this.” She said, “Okay, fine.” I was screaming before that, but that doesn’t matter because all they listen to is the actual legal words, “I do not consent. I want to be put under. I want surgery. I want to do under.” I did not want to be awake for this. I knew after my last experience, I was just out. The anesthesiologist was like, “I can do that. I am more than happy to do that.” I was like, “Yes. That is amazing.” I was so happy that this one was willing to put me under and agreed that it was safe for me to do. I signed the waiver of what could happen. I could lose my uterus. I could have this or that. I woke up in the ICU. They said that because my blood pressure dropped so low, I think, because of the blood loss, I went into ICU. I think it’s standard practice to stay there for 12 hours and then if you do fine in that period of time, they then move you on to that room with a midwife for an hour, and then if you– I call it graduation– graduate that room, then I graduated that one and then I was just in maternity and I was treated like everyone else.But this time, I was back at the first hospital sharing a room. This time, I was the hot gossip of the hospital because I’m the free birther who came in and had a vaginal birth on my own after how many surgeries. Meagan: All the things. Ashley: All the things. Big baby, high BMI, 99% of them were pretty supportive and then there were a few that were midwives who were like, “You were so lucky that you didn’t tear. You were so lucky this didn’t happen.” One went up to my husband and said, “Promise me. You tell me you will never do something silly like that again.” He was so shocked that this weird old lady came up to him and was telling us what we should be doing. He just looked at her and he said in his mind, “No, I’m not going to say anything back to her. I’m just going to let it go.” She had been spending the whole time bitching about her daughter so she was just one of those people about her future birth choices and mothering choices, so she wasn’t a lovely lady anyways.But they went above and beyond to really support me and listen to me. I went along with some of their crazy things. They wanted to do all of these tests on me and stuff. The thing is, they’re very fearful. I said, “Can I just have another bag of blood? I’m really tired. I know from experience that this is going to happen again.” They said, “We’d better do all of these tests on you just to make sure because you could die tonight.” You could have a clot in your lungs, so I had a heart test and a lung test, and the fluids come through my body. I had all of the things done. It must have all come back good because they eventually said, “Okay, look. We’ll give you an iron transfusion.” I said as again, “Ashley knows what’s right for her body, right? But I’ll go along with your crazy tests,” which at the time was in the middle of the night. So at the time when I was supposed to be getting sleep, I’m getting wheeled across the hospital getting all of these tests to satisfy them. But I understand. They think that I am a crazy free birther so they were really worried about me because I didn’t get prenatal care even though I had two scans and blood tests throughout. I had all of the things that you pretty much do. Maybe I just didn’t have the blood pressure readings which is really interesting that they view that in such a way, and then my baby was in special care because my husband came in and it’s very common practice for them to take the baby for a home birther or a free birther. They always try and take that baby into special care because they don’t know what prenatal care the baby had. I didn’t know it at the time, but now that I’ve interviewed so many people on my podcast and I have spoken to people in the community, I realize it’s quite normal practice and they are legitimately very fearful for that baby. They are on the opposite side of the fence. They think that prenatal care is like, if you don’t have it, your baby is going to be deformed, but prenatal care is nothing. If anything, prenatal care for me was anxiety-driven, negative, and horrible. It’s just having a couple of scans and some bloodwork which is what I had during the time. She ended up going on CPAP because she had that labored breathing even though the ambulance said it was okay which led to eventually, she had mild jaundice which we consented to. She had antibiotics. Meagan: A lot of babies have jaundice. Ashley: Yeah. So I consented to her going under the lights. I regret some of the stuff. I didn’t know and so they don’t practice informed consent a lot of the time. They just are doing what they are doing with the babies. It was like, “Can I breastfeed my baby?” and I had to get myself to the special care unit and breastfeed my baby. I was running myself ragged trying to breastfeed. It was an interesting experience. I feel like this is the positive takeaway. It’s like, so you’ve done all of these things now. Now you can help so many more people because you’ve lived through all of these experiences and you understand how challenging it can be. Also, you can inform people. Now you know how to prepare yourself. My audience can prepare themselves for birth planning and special care planning. Also, how do you advocate if you end up in this situation? You can say no or yes. These are the things that they are probably going to recommend and that sort of thing. That’s the positive takeaway I take from that experience. I also feel like I really healed myself with the hospital itself on the second birth because they treated me with respect and they really wanted to– I felt like they actually cared about me. Some of them had a few tears and I thought, “Well, you are a human. That’s all I ever wanted. I just wanted you to listen to me and respect me. If you did that, I would come back and birth in this space.” Not now, but I would want to get in the birthing pool. If you respected me to do some of the things, then it would be a safe space for me, but if you’re going to be the opposite and you’re not going to be on my side, then I can’t feel safe with you. I understand their fear. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it from their point of view, but I think they need to spend some time thinking about it and seeing it from ours. So if they heard our stories and they really understood that it’s not just a baby’s life that matters, it’s the fact that this woman is going to carry this for the rest of her life and it’s going to shape her motherhood journey and it’s going to dictate the kind of person that she’s going to be in 10-20 years because some women can end up depressed. They could not look after their child. They can have bonding issues for years. Meagan: Even deeper. Ashley: Yeah. They don’t understand that when I say to them, “Healthy baby is not acceptable. I was always going to have a healthy baby, but you’ve done this to me.” They do not understand trauma and they do not understand the human-to-human connection. That’s not their field. That’s not what they signed up for and it’s not how they treat each other and it’s not how they’re treated. They’re run ragged in the hospital system and their culture is, “I’ve worked for 50 hours this week and I’m doing another two days.” It’s who is the biggest, strongest, and badass, who’s done the most surgeries on the most complicated people. That is their culture for a lot of them. It’s two competing things. I work with people and I care about hearts, humans, and stories. I care about how people feel and they are more masculine. They don’t care about how people feel. They care about people living and an outcome that they know that they are not going to get in trouble with their insurance. It’s really a shame on the insurance companies as well for supporting and encouraging that because they are the driving force. These people can’t practice without insurance and the only way they can feel safe is by doing surgeries on people which is more dangerous than vaginal birth. I don’t understand it, but that’s the driving force. It’s a pretty insidious culture to start with. Meagan: I just made a post the other day about a safe and healthy baby and mom. That’s all that matters, right? It’s so not right. It’s so wrong. Of course, everybody wants a healthy baby and a healthy mom. Of course, but there is so much more to it. I love that. I wish that we could somehow get in front of providers and say, “Listen to these people’s stories. Listen to how this experience affected them or what this did for them,” because like you said, they are driven in other ways. Yeah. They love and care for the patient the best they can and they want them to have a good, healthy baby and mom but they do. They have these blinders on and they sometimes look past the experience and what trauma. Sometimes it’s not even things being done, but things said or things not being done and being left alone. There’s so much. So much. Ashley: The thing that I’ve been grappling with lately is I did listen to an obstetrician who did start listening to Dr. Rachel Reed and she started to realize that some of the stuff she had been doing is actually traumatizing and hurting people and babies. Dr. Reed talks about this because she teaches midwives. It’s like, “This is how we were trained in hospital. This is how we were trained in university, but this is all wrong and this is why it’s all wrong because it’s based on this kind of birth. I have to take responsibility that I’ve caused harm when I thought I was helping.”How do you take responsibility for that knowing that potentially hundreds of poor outcomes have happened that you’re responsible for? That alone is so heavy and in our society, people can’t deal with the smallest of things let alone that mammoth responsibility. We don’t even know how to deal with things. We’re not even allowed to feel things. Who are they going to turn to do even debrief without being dismissed or told, “No. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re a doctor,” in our society? There are so many steps that need to happen. Even a few of them, this obstetrician is training other obstetricians and talking about it. They are going to listen to and respect her much more than a midwife. It’s just a stinky old midwife. When they say a witch, I see it in the newspapers. Hypnobirthing is all witchcraft or hocus pocus. The degrading things to try to bring it down as if it’s a mockery and nothing. “We’re doing medical science.” There are so many steps and so many things, but if you can get past that and work through that, then you’ve got to completely change how you practice and then you need to, at that point, change everything you do and how you practice. Then, you’re the black sheep in your establishment. You might go from the top surgeon to maybe you’re doing VBACs or you’re doing vaginal birth now and that’s weird. You’ve got to transform yourself. There are a lot of steps. It doesn’t mean that people can’t make small changes and people can’t make a positive impact because even just having a conversation and saying, “Look, you know what? I think you should go see this midwife.” You might be losing clients, but even in America for example with private people, you go, “I’m not really happy to take you on in my career, but I know a midwife,” and then that midwife sends their surgery people to you. I think you’d be better with a surgeon. This surgeon prefers doing this. They will do more medical. I will help you have a vaginal birth. There are some of those things that are small steps to start rather than, “I don’t agree with home birth. I don’t agree with midwife birth.” Explore and open your eyes. Obviously, those people aren’t listening to this podcast now, so that’s not really beneficial for them, but it’s just some thoughts that I’ve been having when I’m trying to think about the bigger picture, how can we make a change? I think of podcasts like this. You changed my life. It was the planting of a seed to opportunity and I know just from listening to a podcast, women say to me, “Oh, because of your podcast, I had my free birth.” I had this amazing birth and I’m healed. It was a positive thing and I didn’t have anyone calling CPS on me or telling me that this was going to happen. I’m so happy for you. It’s a labor-intensive thing to do a podcast. You know yourself. It is a labor-intensive thing, but if it’s a little piece of how we can help, I think your podcast paved the way for VBACs and really opened that space up. Now there are so many more resources out there and people supporting and doulas supporting in that space and knowing, so it really does make a difference. I know that we were discussing before that what the next level is and what we can do further which is exciting. Meagan: Oh my gosh. I’m obsessed with this podcast and can’t wait to relisten to it. You’re just a delight. I am so grateful for you being here and sharing your stories. You’ve been through a lot. You’ve been through a lot. You’ve learned a lot and you’ve come a long way. Here you are inspiring people, educating people, and helping people process and learn. If you wouldn’t mind, first of all, tell people where to find your podcast and your Instagram, and then share more of what you do and where they can find you. Ashley: Sure. I created my podcast when I was about 5 or 6 months pregnant. The reason I created it is because I wanted to listen to home birth stories. I was like, “I had a VBAC.” I listened to all of the stories and I was like, “No. Now I need home birth and free birth VBAC stories,” so it was a very selfish mission and then I was able to connect with people who I considered birth experts and I could ask more questions for my podcast but really for me. It’s called the VBAC Homebirth Stories Podcast and you can listen to it on all of the podcast players. My Instagram handle is @ashleylwinning and I’m sure you will link it anyways. I work with women virtually all over the world who are having home births and free births, usually women who are having second and third babies who have had traumatic experiences or Cesareans previously. Usually, the women connect with something about my story. They’ve got a special scar or have had a Cesarean before or something. Maybe they are a bigger woman or highly sensitive. My field is really working in high touch with my clients because, after my experience, I was like, “I really want other people to have the same support as me.” I hid behind the fact that I was weak. I wasn’t really embracing that about me. I am really starting to embrace that, you know what? Just because I value emotional support and connection doesn’t mean that I’m the only person in the world who needs that. Now I am connecting with so many highly emotional, highly sensitive women and empathic women who get really anxious in the mind. They overthink things so what we can do a lot of the time is overthink our choices. We are overthinking the things that are happening. We are overanalyzing and we’re overplanning and we’re procrastinating. We’re living in fear and sometimes that can spiral out of control where it completely consumes your life. You need to have someone that you know is safe to talk to about all of your fears deeply and that isn’t going to make you feel like an inconvenience is available for you all the time because a lot of doulas lack 24/7 support. Meagan: But don’t really call me. Ashley: Yeah and then you message them and it’s a week before they get back to you. You feel so unloved and unsupported. I really set boundaries with my clients and let them know that every Monday I’m going to message you so that they know every Monday. If you don’t get back to me, that’s cool. I know you’re a pregnant person. Don’t ever feel– my clients are also worried, “Oh, I didn’t get back to Ashley,” because they are highly sensitive. I say, “Don’t stress. I’m here to support you. Don’t worry about me. I’m looking out for myself. I’m here to look after you.” It’s having that high-touch support and connection. We do virtual sessions like we are talking here every fortnight and that’s a space to unload everything, all of your fears, all of your worries. We go through mindset stuff but also, I find that women talk about their partners getting on their nerves or their kids or motherhood stuff or work stuff, so we work on boundaries and mindset things and fear things. We going into the evidence. We go into physiological birth. It’s a whole mixture of motherhood. It’s a full circle of things and then we get them prepared for their postpartum too because I trained as a postpartum doula. I find that my clients, even though they’ve had a postpartum, they often lack the ability to reach out to their network because they are highly sensitive and say, “Can you please help me with this? Can you please help me with that? Can you look after my child?” I basically am supporting them as they grow the strength the way I was supported to really put myself out there and be vulnerable and create the life that I wanted. That’s what I see as the starting foundations of a woman truly being herself, loving herself, and advocating for the things that she wants. Eventually, I hope that she takes those skills and nurtures them to be the person that she wants to be and find some bliss and everything. Meagan: I love that. Such amazing things that you are doing. You are such an amazing resource. Thank you. Thank you so much. Ashley: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Here at The VBAC Link, we often talk about how to VBAC with a big baby, but what about the tiny ones? When Eve received an IUGR diagnosis with her first baby, she was no longer able to birth at her desired birth center. A medically necessary induction occurred soon after which then led to one unwanted intervention after another. Finally, her baby boy was born via an emergency C-section and was admitted to the NICU.Nothing about her first birth experience went as planned. Eve’s second baby was also measuring very small, but she was able to avoid an IUGR diagnosis. Everything about her second birth experience was different than the first…in all of the best ways!Additional LinksEve’s WebsiteEve’s Instagram: @get.creative.wellnessHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Good morning, everybody. This is Meagan with The VBAC Link and we are here today with our friend, Eve. She is amazing. All of you guys are amazing. We love you all and are excited to hear her story and a little bit more about what she does. I’m kind of excited to pick her brain a little bit about what she does as a profession. She is an art therapist and a mental health counselor. As you know, in the VBAC world, there is a lot of– well in the whole world, there is a lot of mental health. Mental health is a crisis. Eve, I don’t know if you would agree, but I feel like we are in a mental health crisis right now, and sometimes right after birth whether it be the birth that you wanted or not even that you wanted, with both, we can have struggles and we also know that through birth and postpartum and all of the things that mental health is a big, important factor. So I’m excited to talk more with her about that and of course to hear her share her story. Review of the WeekMeagan: We have a Review of the Week first and this is from Anne. She says, “These ladies are an absolute joy to listen to on their podcast. I feel so fortunate to have found them on my journey to what will hopefully be 2VBAC” which means a second VBAC “with twins.” That’s awesome.“When I had my first VBAC, I felt educated as I had read through books and websites. Now, I feel empowered thanks to Julie and Meagan. I feel more confident advocating for myself and asking the right questions. I recommend you to all of the mamas I come across in the VBAC groups and often refer to specific episodes I’ve listened to. Thank you for all that you do, you women of strength you!”I love that. I love that. That is something that we totally encourage. This podcast, although it’s VBAC-specific, can really benefit anybody listening to it. So a first-time mom can learn how to avoid the C-section, learn how to advocate for herself, learn how to find a supportive provider, all of these things for first, second, third time, and fourth-time moms. Whether you are a C-section mom or not, it’s going to benefit you. Eve’s stories Meagan: Okay, Eve. First off, I wanted to just say thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be here with us and I also really want to dive into a little bit of what you do before we get into your story. Can you tell us a little bit more about art therapy? What is an art therapist? What do you do because you wrote a little bit in the form that you sent us and I was like, “Okay, this is awesome.” So share more with us. Eve: Sure. Thank you so much for having me first of all. This is such a privilege and I feel like this is the icing on the cake to my whole experience so just thank you. So as an art therapist and a counselor, I provide traditional talk therapy, but there is an extra spin on it because I invite the creative process into the work I do with my clients. So sometimes we have traumatic experiences as a lot of listeners have had and I myself have had, and sometimes that trauma makes it really difficult to speak about the things that happened to us to be able to move forward. That’s just one example of a reason why doing some of the creative could really help you to draw out some of those emotions and make it a little easier to speak about it or just to get some of that off of your chest by putting it out onto paper or making something out of clay or even through movement. There are a lot of different ways that creativity can be expressed, but for the things that are really challenging to speak on, the creative process can be really wonderful to help benefit clients. So what I do, my specialty is using the creative process one-on-one with clients, but I also have recently launched a new part of my program which is doing professional development with companies and also community groups who believe that they want to bring more self-care into their worlds. What I would do is I would come in, I’d do a mental health wellness piece, whatever feels relevant to that group, and then we will do a related art project and talk about how that went so that they can deepen the experience and learn a bit more about themselves and hopefully bring some of those tools into their lives for their own self-care on a regular basis.Meagan: Wow, I love that. So you have a course. Did you create the course or is this a collaborative thing?Eve: Yeah, it’s all me. This is something new that I’m just launching. I’m really excited to share it. I have done professional development in other ways and I wanted to bring my creativity and my passion for art therapy to the general population, so this is for people who are not just interested in therapy, but people who want to deepen their self-care and gain some more self-awareness and hopefully find some better ways to relax. Meagan: Gosh, I love that. That is so awesome. Do you mind plugging in your website? Will you tell everybody about your website? And then we’re going to have that in the show notes for you as well, listeners.Eve: Sure. Absolutely, yep. It’s getcreativewellness.com and I will drop it into the chat right now so you can see it. Meagan: Awesome, awesome. And you are on Instagram as well, right? Eve: Yes, yes. Meagan: It’s @get.creative.wellness so definitely check her out. Awesome. Is there anything else you’d like to share about mental health?Eve: No, just that it’s something that applies to everybody and not to let it go if you sense that something is off with you. Definitely follow your instinct and don’t let it go because the longer you let it go, the more it will take over your life and be harder to come out of. So it’s really important not to keep pushing through some of these mental health challenges that we have because sometimes it’s a lot more than just day-to-day stress and we really don’t want to let these things build up inside of us. It really affects all of the things that we do. I mean overall, I think that moms tend to put themselves last a lot and self-care is really not selfish. It’s really something that is necessary in order to be the best mothers and partners and daughters and all of the other roles.Meagan: Person, the best person that you can be. You’ve got to be well-balanced. It’s okay if you’re unbalanced. That’s okay too. It happens. Eve: Exactly, yeah. Meagan: It’s okay to take charge of your care. So I love that message. Eve: Thank you. Meagan: Okay, well let’s dive into your story because you have a lot of things in your story as far as an induction that didn’t go as planned, IUGR (intrauterine growth restrictions), baby in the NICU, so you’ve got all of these little things that are unique, so I would love for you to share. Eve: Thanks. I was really excited to share my story because I’ve listened to so many episodes and I know I hear a lot of stories about big babies, so I’ve always listened and been like, “Are there any episodes on small babies?” because that has been my experience with both of my babies. They both were a little bit different, so I’m excited to share and hopefully, it will help some other people who might be experiencing something similar. All right, so I will start with my first pregnancy. My husband and I were married for about a year and we figured if we were going to start a family, we should probably get on that because I was 35 and we didn’t know what that journey might look like for us. So we figured we would give it a shot. We were fortunate to be pregnant very quickly. We said, “Okay. We’re really doing this now.” So we had planned for a natural birth at a birth center. I tend to be very natural and holistic-minded in everything I do in life, so that was a no-brainer for me that I really wanted an out-of-hospital birth if possible. I really never gave much consideration to other possibilities because I didn’t realize how often interventions are pushed and the frequency of other outcomes. I thought a C-section of a hospital transfer would only happen if I was in labor and something went wrong and we would have to go that route. I really didn’t think about any other ways that you might end up with a C-section. I thought that we were going to have this birth at the birth center. My pregnancy was fairly easy and comfortable. I took very good care of myself. I was eating well. I gained the right amount of weight that was recommended. I was doing chiropractic my entire pregnancy and also before that, I had been in chiropractic care for many years so I just continued with that through my pregnancy. I was exercising a lot, a lot of walking and doing some light weights and yoga. I was drinking red raspberry leaf tea. Just in general, I felt really great throughout, so I had no inkling of, “Oh, this is not going to happen for me.” We went for our anatomy scan at 19 weeks and there were some concerns with the size. I believe at the time, my son was measuring at about the 12th percentile. They also saw that I had complete placenta preva, so I was recommended to come back again to check in the 3rd trimester to make sure the previa had cleared and do another growth scan. I came back at 28 weeks and the previa had cleared, so I was good to go with that, and then I was also very thankful that the weight was now measuring around the 23rd percentile I believe, so I said, “Okay. We’re in the clear.” I didn’t have any more scans. At 40 weeks, I got to my 40-week appointment. I should mention that I still continued to feel great throughout. In fact, now looking back, maybe I felt a little too comfortable towards the end of my pregnancy but at 40 weeks, I was still pregnant, so I went to my appointment and I had a cervical check. I was hard and closed and the midwife there said, “There’s a strong chance that you’ll still be pregnant next week.” She said that I should go get my amniotic fluid levels checked. So I did that at 41 weeks. My fluid levels were fine and the blood flow to and from the placenta looked good. Everything was looking pretty good. However, the baby was measuring small. I had to go to a hospital to get these scans done since I was having my care at a birth center and they didn’t do these tests there. So the doctor at the hospital who read my scan recommended that I induce that day. They said, “Your baby is estimated at weighing 6 pounds, 13 ounces and that would be considered IUGR for a 41-week pregnancy.” But to me, I felt like, “Well, 6 pounds 13 ounces. I’m only 5’3”. My husband’s not that tall.” That probably sounded like a decent-sized baby for us to have. So I declined the induction and I called the midwives and they had me come in that day to the birth center. I remember being very awkward because the office was closing soon, so the lights were out in a lot of the office and they sort of took me into this one room that was still open. So already, it was kind of an eerie feeling just being there at that time of day. I think it was maybe 6:00 or so. They had me come in and do a non-stress test and a membrane sweep. They had three different people try to put in a Foley balloon, but they couldn’t get it in so that was really probably the first time that I started feeling like I was being experimented on because it was like all of these people trying to do this thing which was really vulnerable because I also never had that done to me before. But I was willing to try anything because I really didn’t want to be induced and I was still hoping at this point that I could deliver at the birth center. However, while I was getting my non-stress test and they were telling me, “Oh, everything is good,” they also dropped the ball on me that I was now considered high-risk with my pregnancy and I couldn’t deliver at the birth center because now my baby had this IUGR diagnosis. That was really difficult to accept because I was really pumped about having these natural childbirth classes and I was reading all of the books. Meagan: You were ready, yeah. Eve: I was ready. I was ready and I really believed wholeheartedly that this was the type of birth that I wanted and that this was going to be possible for me. I really had no thought in my mind that this was not going to happen to me. I felt like if I willed it, it would be so which I obviously realize now is foolish or maybe just naive, but I think that that’s a big part of my story is feeling like a failure because I didn’t get the things that I hoped for. I know that there were people along the way who questioned my choice to deliver at a birth center and the fact that I wanted everything to be natural and I had this feeling that people would say, “See? See? You can’t just go in and do that.” So I already was sort of feeling a bit like I failed because now I was going to have to deliver in a hospital. Part of me was also angry because I didn’t even know that they were going to be measuring the baby at that time. I thought I was just getting my amniotic fluid levels checked and I didn’t give consent to do any other testing and then they just came in and they were like, “The baby is measuring small.” So I was angry because I said, “Well, what if it’s wrong? What if the baby is really 7 pounds, 13 ounces?” With that being said, at this point, I was 41 weeks and I finally decided to stop working. I was working all throughout and I was showing up to work every day and people were saying, “Why are you still here? You’re still pregnant? Why are you still here?” That was also getting frustrating because I knew that the baby should be coming soon, but I was frustrated too, and to have people just point it out to me wasn’t really that helpful. So I decided to stop working and at that point, I was being pressured to be induced not in a harsh way, but I was getting a lot of phone calls daily from the midwives at the birth center saying, “Are you feeling anything? Do you think that anything’s happening?” I had to go for daily non-stress tests and I had all of them passed, but I felt very pressured to go into labor on my own to avoid the induction, so I told myself, “Well, at least if I have to have a hospital birth, if I could somehow get something going without an induction, maybe I could still have somewhat of a natural birth experience.” I had no education on this at all. This was not anything I had even considered, so now in the last week of my pregnancy, I was trying all of these natural induction methods so I was doing evening primrose oil and eating pineapple and walking a bunch even though I was already walking. I was just increasing that. I did acupuncture a couple of times. I had a couple of membrane sweeps and then the last thing that I tried was castor oil. That was very intense. I did have some mild contractions after taking the castor oil, but I think it was just because it was such a violent cleanse coming out both ways because then it sort of just tapered all off and didn’t turn into anything. I was getting frustrated about being encouraged to induce from my providers and even one of my family members was starting to turn in that direction. I was starting to question if I really was putting my baby at risk by staying pregnant. I agreed to induce at 41+6 and I just remember so clearly the feeling of walking into the hospital already clutching my pillow and feeling really defeated. Each step in the process felt like it was against what I wanted. I was in the hospital and every time there was an intervention proposed, I was asked if I wanted it, but I really didn’t know of any other choices and I didn’t feel good about any of the interventions that were proposed to me. I was just like, “I guess I have to go along. I don’t really think I have any other choice.” So I was very closed to the process overall and I do think that that really affected my recovery emotionally because I was so against it. I think being close-minded and wanting this really natural childbirth experience hindered me in a way because I was not open to anything else. There were a couple of things that were on my hopes and dreams list that I was able to do while at the hospital during this induction. They let me take a shower and I brought music and I brought some aromatherapy and some visual aids, but I didn’t use most of those things. The first thing that they did was they inserted Cervadil and two hours later, I remember I was talking with my husband and I started laughing and my water broke. I was like, “Oh, maybe something’s going to happen now.” I asked to wait an hour or so to see if anything would pick up because I had heard of people who once their water broke didn’t really need any other interventions and contractions just picked up on their own. That did not happen for me. After a couple of hours, they started me on a low dose of Pitocin. I remember at this point, I needed to be hooked up. Since I was now on Pitocin, I needed to be continually monitored. That was the first time where I really started to feel that I was being experimented on because I was hooked up and they didn’t have mobile monitoring at this hospital, so I had to stay tethered to the bed. I could only move about 5 feet from the bed. Meagan: That’s so hard when you’re already feeling like you’re an experiment and now you’re feeling stuck. Eve: Yeah, and also, until the very end of my pregnancy, I had a very comfortable pregnancy. I didn’t have any issues with high blood pressure or sugar issues. I felt really good, so I felt like I really didn’t want to be hooked up to things. I wanted to go to the bathroom, so I got up and I went to the bathroom. I unhooked myself and I remember one of the nurses came in and yelled at me and said, “What are you doing? You’re on Pitocin.” I was like, “I have legs and I want to use the bathroom. I don’t want to sit on this toilet right next to the bed.” So clearly, that was not allowed. I basically stayed in the bed the whole rest of the time. After about 18 hours of my water being broken and really no changes happening, I was barely dilating, I started leaking meconium. I think I might have had a mild fever. I’m a little fuzzy on it, but I think I was starting to have a fever too so when I was checked, I was only at about 3 centimeters, so the midwife who was there with me from the birth center recommended that we increase the Pitocin to try to deliver vaginally because we were really up against the clock. Those were her words. That made me feel very pressured and I was just like, “Okay. Well, I guess that’s my only choice, so okay. Let’s try it.” I agreed to get an epidural even though I was really scared and I really didn’t want it. The anesthesiologist came in and I remember she was very, very impatient. She had no empathy for the fact that I was unsure about wanting this and she said to me, “I have other people waiting, so I need you to make a decision.” So I was just like, “Okay. I guess I’ll do it.” I got the epidural. There were no issues actually placing it, but as soon as I laid back down and I started to go numb, I had a severe panic attack. I’m not really prone to panic attacks. I’ve definitely had some general anxiety and I have had some more mild panic attacks, but this was really, really bad. My teeth were chattering. I felt totally out of control and I had no feeling in my legs at all. There was one spot that didn’t take on the right side of my pelvis, so they were telling me, “Oh, you have to turn your body.” I’m like, “Well, I can’t move.” So they had to turn me. I just felt totally out of control and like I had no choices and I felt like everything just had gone from bad to worse by this point. Now they were like, “Okay, well we can’t start the Pitocin again because your heart rate is totally too high right now.” It took me about 45 minutes to finally get my heart rate to a normal level. I remember the midwife who was there came in and she started doing needlepoint right next to the bed. I remember at first being very annoyed by that, but then I was like, “Oh, I think I know what she’s doing,” because as an art therapist, I’m thinking, “Maybe she’s doing this to distract me because she wants me to be able to try to focus on something else.” So that’s what I did. I just sort of watched her. I watched her fingers as she was doing the needlepoint and that was what helped me to calm down. Finally, I said, “Okay. I’m ready. I feel calm. Let’s try putting the Pitocin back on.” So the nurses came in. They put it back on and then literally less than a minute afterward, the baby’s heart rate was not responding well. I don’t remember if it was going up or down, but it was not even a minute and they were like, “You’re coming in to have a C-section.” I will admit that in some ways because I knew the C-section was the last stop in the road, I felt relieved that there would not be any more interventions to try and fail or be coerced into without having enough information, but I also did not understand what would happen in a C-section besides that they cut you open and they take the baby out. I really had no idea what really happens in a C-section. So the same anesthesiologist comes into the room and it was just like a movie. She comes in and she goes, “I’m back.” I was like, “Are you kidding me? As if I already didn’t have ill feelings towards you from the first time.”Meagan: Thank you for announcing. Eve: Yeah. And honestly, I have no idea if this is true, but I had this feeling that she made it so heavy because I felt so drugged, I could barely hold my eyes open or form sentences after that and while having the surgery, I felt that she was kind of like, “Oh, she’s a live one. Give her a high dose.” But who knows? So I also remember at the time before we went into the OR, someone came in from the NICU who I had never met. I don’t remember if it was a physician. I don’t know who it was, but somebody from the NICU who was on the team that would be working on the baby if it was necessary came in. I remember she was holding my hand and being really syrupy sweet and saying, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of your baby.” I found it to be very inauthentic and annoying because I didn’t want to talk to her. I really just wanted peace for a few minutes and I wasn’t very welcoming of her support. I later did apologize to her for that, but the timing was not the best. I also felt like I could see through it. I felt like she was putting something on because I had never met this woman and she didn’t know me and here she was holding my hand really tight. I was like, “I didn’t really show you any signs that I needed my hand held right now.” So anyway, right before surgery, I’m laying on the table and my husband came in with me and the midwife was there next to me on the other side, so I did have their support. I remember not being able to form sentences and she said to me, “Don’t worry because sometimes people feel like they can’t breathe from the anesthesia.” I’m thinking, “I just had this massive panic attack and now you’re telling me that I might not be able to feel that I could breathe?” I tried to not let it get to me because I was like, “Well, here I am. I’m not going anywhere.” But what I did like is throughout each part of the C-section, the doctor explained what was happening. They said, “You might feel this here. You might feel a little tugging.” Every single thing that was happening they did tell me, so I felt that I was included a big in the process. But one thing I do remember was once they actually got to my son, the doctor said, “You made the right decision. This baby wasn’t coming out.” I didn’t know what that meant. That was the first time where I felt really the mom guilt like, “Did I keep him in too long? Should I have induced sooner?” type of thing. After he came out, he wasn’t crying yet and I was very drugged, so I really didn’t know what was going on. The midwife brought him around for a brief second before taking him off to the side where people were working on him. I’m assuming because they were pumping out all of the meconium. It felt like a very long time before we heard him cry. I remember thinking, “Oh, his cry sounds really cute,” even though I always hated the sound of babies crying before. I asked my husband, Mike, and I said, “Is he beautiful?” because like I said, I was really drugged. He didn’t really say anything because he wasn’t really sure what was happening. I could tell he was worried. Finally, the midwife brought him over to me and he was all wrapped up. I tried to hold him to my chest as best as I could and she said, “He’s doing well. We’re going to take him to the regular nursery” which meant to bring him to our room. I felt some relief that he was okay. He was born on the small side. He was 6 pounds, 7 ounces which might not sound super tiny, but he was also 21 inches long so he was very thin. After talking with other people after the fact, it sounds like his presentation was very typical for an IUGR baby because he had a very large head and his body was very skinny, so it’s like all of the weight and energy was going toward the brain and the areas that most needed it, so his body had lost all of that round fat, so he was very thin. I remember in his newborn pictures, you could see his ribs and that was another time when I felt some guilt like, “Did I cause this somehow?” That sort of thing. My mom and stepfather met us in recovery. My husband was the first one to spend time holding him because I really didn’t feel stable enough to hold him while being wheeled on a bed and then he was really only in the room with us for half a day because his temperature kept going down. So at one point, it had gone down to 92 degrees. He went to the nursery under the warmer a couple of times, but at the hospital where we were, apparently the third time that happens, they get sent to the NICU. After they had done the warmer a couple of times and it wasn’t working for very long, he went down to the NICU and we had so many tests run. Everything was coming back to normal. It seems like getting him to gain weight was really what was needed to get his temperature to stay in a healthy range. They were giving him a lot of formula and this was also not my plan because I wanted to exclusively breastfeed in the beginning and now he was being pumped full of all of this extra calorie formula, but I felt fine with that because I was like, “He needs to gain weight.” I didn’t really have milk coming in yet, so I just went with it. Shortly before he was discharged, I remember a NICU nurse who was there telling us that she was in the surgery. She said, “I thought for sure he would be going right to the NICU because he was covered in poop when he came out.” He was there for a week and during that time, it was really difficult to process because I was recovering from a C-section and we were in the hospital for most of that week as well, but I had a lot of disappointment and shock. I just felt very disconnected from my body. It was really hard to move and walk. I felt a lot of times like my body was just ripping in half where I had the incision if I moved the wrong way. It was just really challenging and frustrating. I also felt exhausted and very sad. I felt like I had no time to process what had happened at all. I just really felt like I got robbed of the birth experience in general. I felt like I really didn’t have the chance to experience any part of labor and that the birth experience I had hoped for was taken from me. I don’t feel that way now necessarily. I feel that certain parts could have been different, but I know that my son definitely needed some help and some extra support when he was born, so I’m accepting of that now. So the feeding schedule in the NICU was every 3 hours. We would go down. We would do a diaper change. We’d take his temperature. We’d feed him whatever breastmilk I had, then give him some formula, then we’d go back to our room. I would pump for 20 minutes to try to get some supply going and I would have a snack and then I would have people coming in and out of the room constantly all reminding me to eat and rest, but there was really no opportunity to be alone to do that, so it was very challenging to be on this really rigorous schedule after having surgery and trying to be there for my son but also not having a chance to emotionally process everything that had happened. The nurses really weren’t communicating well during changes of shifts about my medications and I was really just taking Motrin and Tylenol so it would wear off and I would be in a lot of pain because I wasn’t taking anything stronger than that, so I kept reminding them when I needed my medication and it was just very frustrating. So we spent 5 days in the hospital including Thanksgiving which was really sad because I was thankful that my son was there and that he was okay, but we also really didn’t know if he was going to be okay yet and so we had a lot of mixed feelings and it was hard to be alone in the hospital during that time. I should mention that this is before COVID by a few months, so it wasn’t that we were alone because of COVID. We were just alone because with him being in the NICU, a lot of visitors were not allowed. The nurses and doctors gave him great care. We learned a lot in that experience. We had a lot of help with breastfeeding. We learned how to change a diaper the right way and how to take his temperature. We got him on a sleep schedule right from the beginning so we did get some benefits from the NICU experience. But shortly before he was discharged, one of the nurses said, “He makes his needs known.” I remember he was one of the only full-time babies that were there and he had the loudest cry in there so I think they were ready to discharge him too because it was pretty quiet except for our son screaming, but I realized that comment that she made how fortunate we were to have a generally healthy, full-term baby who just needed to put on some weight to be able to take him home because I know a lot of families who experience the NICU have much greater challenges than what we went through, so I just want to mention that. He was long and skinny when he was born, but eventually, his growth did catch up after a few months and I worked really hard to build up my milk supply. Now, he is almost 3 and he’s smart and energetic and he just amazes me every day. I had a lot of guilt about my son’s beginning even though there was really nothing I could think of that I had done to cause it and that was hard to accept because I really wanted to have an answer. I knew I wanted some support around my recovery and I was really having trouble relating to the birth experiences of the people in my inner circle even though they were trying to be supportive because nobody really had an experience like mine. I Googled “C-section support group” and that was how I found The VBAC Link. Meagan: Oh, that’s awesome. Eve: Yeah, and I remember I was just back to work. I was about 3 months postpartum and I found the podcast. On one of my breaks, I started listening. I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is exactly what I need. I need to hear people who have stories that I can relate to and get some inspiration from that,” because I knew that I didn’t want to have a similar experience if we had another child. I also started seeing a postpartum therapist in addition to listening to the VBAC Link. I was having some past trauma come up, so I knew that I needed some more formal therapy, so I was doing that as well. And then a little over a year later, our son was 14 months and we got pregnant again but we had an early pregnancy loss. We believe I was only about 7 weeks pregnant, so we decided to wait a while to try again and process that experience. We were working on some other goals at the time, so we figured, “Let’s put having another baby on hold for a little while,” because I felt like I really needed to process that and I didn’t want to rush into it. During that pregnancy that we lost, I had started care with a midwife in our area who people have called “The VBAC Whisperer” and I thought, “Oh, she’s going to be a great fit for me,” but when I had my pregnancy loss, she had no compassion and I remember when I called because I was bleeding and I said, “Should I be alarmed?” Because she sounded a little annoyed that I called and she goes, “I don’t know. Do you want me to tell you to be alarmed?” just like that. I was like, “Um.” I was thinking that I would like some education about what I could do or some possibilities. There was nothing constructive for me to try anything. So I swore that I would never work with her again and I ended up getting much more support around that loss from the midwives at the birth center where we had gone for our prenatal care with our son. Luckily, I still had other providers that I trusted that I could reach out to. That baby’s due date was estimated to be October 8th of 2021 and we found out we were pregnant again on October 6th, 2021 a couple of days before the baby we lost would have been born. It was very meaningful to me because it made me feel like somehow the loss made way for a new life. I just held that with me. It helped me to remember the loss in a more positive and meaningful way. So I started my care at the birth center even though I knew that I couldn’t continue there because they don’t accept VBAC clients, so I ended up moving on to care with a different midwife who I had never met or worked with previously and this midwife was VBAC supportive and very trauma-informed and was able to deliver my baby at a different hospital which I had heard was more VBAC supportive. I really liked this midwife because they kept it real with me about possibilities about what to expect in a hospital setting to help me prepare to go into this birth expecting to be in a hospital because I think like I said, I was thinking all along with my first pregnancy, “I’m going to be in a birth center. It’s going to be all-natural. It’s going to be like being in a bedroom.” I hadn’t even considered, “Well, what if I end up in a hospital?” so it was helpful for me to consider some other possibilities this time around. I was trying to be more realistic this time. I also hired a doula who was very comforting and nonjudgmental. She had two children with a similar age gap to what my children would have and so I felt that she could relate to some of my experiences and that was really nice. This pregnancy was very similar to the first one. Again, I did chiropractic throughout. I had minimal discomfort throughout the pregnancy until the third trimester for a couple of weeks, I did have some sharp pelvic pain which made walking and moving, and even lying down comfortably very difficult. I also had some digestive pain for a few days, so I was wearing a support band and I went to the chiropractor a little bit more during that time. I went to a pelvic floor specialist. Eventually, it did get better, so I was thankful that it got better because I was 37-38 weeks at that time, but luckily, it improved before I was at the very end of my pregnancy. So at one point, I thought, “Maybe I’ll deliver before my due date this time,” because I was having that discomfort, but then my due date came and went and I started asking my midwife more questions about what an induction might look like because that was really what I most feared and I wanted to have more information this time so that I could prepare. I feel much more comforted when I have more information. I was really worried about the cascade of interventions happening again and going into the process in a similar way as I did with my first birth. This midwife that I was working with said that they would be comfortable with me going to 41+5 or 6 before inducing as long as everything was looking good, so I might have to go in for a non-stress test again or something like that. Because my son was an IUGR pregnancy, my third trimester, I was being monitored more closely this time and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss anything because we didn’t have the IUGR diagnosis until 41 weeks and that really, I think, made it difficult to prepare. I had more ultrasounds at the hospital where I was going to deliver and at 32 weeks, we had a scan that looked like we might have another IUGR diagnosis. Her abdominal circumference was between 10-11% and once you get below 10%, that’s considered IUGR. So now, I had to keep going for more scans because of that. The doctor who read my scan at the hospital came in and warned me that with IUGR, they recommended delivering by 39 weeks which, of course, made me nervous because I had gone to 42 weeks without labor the first time. I wondered whether I’d be able to have the experience of labor at all since this would likely be my last child and I was 38 years old. I wasn’t really planning to have more than two children. I really just wanted to have some experience in labor. When I told her of my hopes for a VBAC and my preference not to induce, the doctor said to me, “Look, as someone who has done it three times, it’s not all that.” I remember being like, “Oh my gosh, lady. That’s great for you to say, but you’ve had three vaginal births so you obviously don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to not experience it.” She had no sense of how that could be a loss. She didn’t know that could also be a loss. The birth experience can be mourned as well. I actually considered not having another scan because I wanted to avoid everything that had happened with my first pregnancy and I still had it in my mind, “The numbers could be wrong.” It was causing me so much stress. Ultimately, I did decide that I wanted more information so that if we did end up with an IUGR diagnosis, I would have more data to decide on the next steps and have time to accept a change of plans this time if I needed to. Luckily, we went back at 36 weeks and her growth had improved and now the abdominal circumference was about 23%. So now, we just were going to wait and she was just considered constitutionally small, so I did not have the IUGR diagnosis with her. I started taking red raspberry leaf. Meagan: That’s so awesome. Eve: Yeah. So I started taking red raspberry leaf tea again. I decided to stop working at 38 weeks this time, so I already had some time on my hands to just be pregnant and relax and do things that I needed to do. So as I was getting to 41 weeks, I started to feel like I was on the clock and I was pressured to make something happen to avoid another induction. That was my own pressure. Nobody was putting pressure on me, but it was in my own mind. So at 41 weeks, I went for acupuncture and I felt a lot of movement. My midwife never pushed cervical checks, but when I was there, I asked, “Is there anything that we can do to get this moving?” My midwife said, “Well, we can do a cervical check and a sweep,” so I decided to do that. I was 2 centimeters and 80% effaced at 41+1. I was shocked and very excited because I hadn’t had anything. Meagan: That’s awesome. Eve: Yeah, something’s happening. So I had this membrane sweep and then that night around 8:00, I started having sharp cramps. They were about 10 seconds long and they were coming every 3-5 minutes. My doula advised me to rest and hydrate, so I tried to do that. I was lying on the floor with the lights dim and my birth ball, but I asked my husband to stay up with me because I was starting to need some support with the contractions. I wasn’t sure if I was in labor, but I asked my mom to come anyway because she lives about an hour and a half away and our plan was for her to stay with our son while we went to the hospital. She got there at 1:30 in the morning and I had these contractions that were not really following a pattern yet. The next morning, our son got up around 6 and my mom and my husband were taking turns watching him and then giving me counterpressure. They were sort of going back and forth. Since I hadn’t been in labor before, I didn’t call the doula to come because I was expecting that I still had a while to go. I was coping fairly well just with them, so I said, “Why don’t we just ride it out a little longer?” And then my contractions started spacing out, so I asked my husband who had gone to the park with my son to come home. This was around close to 10 in the morning. At 9:30 or 10 in the morning, I asked him to come back because my contractions started picking up again once they had left. I think my body was having trouble focusing when my son was there and wanting me and needing me, and then once they left the house, everything picked up and started to get much stronger. So of course, our bags weren’t packed and it took us a while to get out of the house. We get in the car and now my contractions are 3 minutes apart in the car. I was putting my left fist behind my low back and gripping the handle above the window with my right hand and doing horsey layups and moaning really loudly. I don’t know how my husband was even able to drive throughout all of that, but luckily, there was no traffic and it was 25 minutes to get there. We got to the hospital. It was 12:40 PM. We left the car on with the hazard lights in front of the hospital and of course, my husband’s bag dropped with everything in it in front of the hospital. We get in there and immediately, they obviously realized I needed help so they put me in a wheelchair and we rushed to triage. Our midwife met us there and I couldn’t even lie down to be checked because my contractions were so close together. I really felt like I needed to bend over and get counterpressure. My midwife was like, “You’re obviously staying. Let’s get you in a room.” I got in there and they were trying to put the monitor on me. The nurse in there, as they were having trouble getting the monitor on, says to me, “I really need you to get this monitor on because of the great risk you’re taking of uterine rupture.” I was, at this point, so in the zone getting through the contractions that I was like, “I can’t let this get to me.” I was just too busy trying to cope, so I just silently rolled my eyes. My husband and the midwife were both like, “Okay. Lay off.”At this point, I still hadn’t gotten a gown on or anything. I basically just stripped everything off to get on the monitor and I just stayed naked the entire time because I had no modesty at this point. Eventually, we got the monitor going and I started feeling pushy almost immediately after that.I realized we never told the doula to meet us, so my husband texted her to come. She got there as I was pushing. We tried a few different positions and at some point, it started to be clear that it wasn’t effective. I wasn’t really, I guess, pushing effectively. I remember the midwife saying, “I’m going to give you some help so that this baby doesn’t need any NICU time. I’m going to put my fingers inside you and I want you to push to where you feel them.” I did that a couple of times and I was able to feel my daughter’s head which was really awesome. Then I pushed again one more time the same way and she was out. It was just so awesome and shocking that it actually happened. I pulled her to my chest and it was just amazing. Like I said, she did not have IUGR. Meagan: I was going to say, how big was she? I was just curious. Eve: She ended up being actually smaller than my son. She was 6 pounds, 4 ounces and she was almost 20 inches long. She was in the 5th percentile for weight, but overall she was healthy and so I will say that the difference was when she was born, she was considered SGA which is small for gestational age, but her presentation was different. She was more proportionate. It was just interesting how you could have a baby weighing less and be almost the same length, but very different. Meagan: But not have that diagnosis, yeah. My baby was 6,2. Eve: Oh wow. Meagan: Yeah, but she was 18 inches. Eve: Yeah, so it puts it in perspective, right? Meagan: Yeah. Eve: I will have to say, my husband was so amazing the entire time. He stayed calm. He advocated for me. He believed in me. There were times during my pregnancy that I got annoyed because I felt like he didn’t understand how difficult this could be to actually have a vaginal delivery after having a C-section because he sort of was of the mindset, “Well, this is how it’s supposed to happen.” I was like, “Well, that’s what I thought the first time.”So I felt like I wasn’t getting through to him, but I do feel like that mindset that he had really helped to normalize the process in that he could stay positive when I was doubtful. And during the contractions, we basically labored at home the entire time. She was born two hours after we got to the hospital. When they finally checked me after I started pushing, I was like, “Maybe this isn’t working because I’m not really fully dilated,” and the midwife was like, “Well, I never really got to check you.” But I was complete. I was complete so it was time to push. But one thing that I think helped me cope for as long as we did while we were home was my husband kept reminding me, “You really only have to get through the first 30 seconds and then it starts to ease.” So each contraction, we would have the build-up, and then once we were halfway through, it was like, “Okay. Now you’re downhill.” I think having that mentality really helped me to stay with it and be able to cope for so long at home without going to the hospital or even having the doula present. But like I said, since I was never in labor, I was thinking, “Well, we might get to the hospital and I’ll be 7 centimeters and I’ll still have a little ways to go,” or even 5 or 4. Who knows? So it was really a shock that we got in. The last thing that I want to share about this experience is that during this whole time, I wasn’t even thinking about how long it would take me to push her out. I was just trying to push. I had never done this before. The midwife did share with me because I asked about the urgency, “Why did we need to get the baby out so soon once she was coming out when you needed to help me?” The midwife said, “Well, they were getting ready to use a vacuum because the baby’s heart rate was starting to not recover as well after each contraction.” I guess since I was complete and pushing for about an hour, for some reason, I guess they thought the baby maybe had been in the canal far down enough where she should have been out sooner or they thought I would be able to push her out sooner and because it was taking so long, her heart was having trouble recovering. I’m glad that nobody told that to me in the actual experience. It was scary. It was scary and I told my midwife I was scared before I started pushing and they said, “You’re safe.” I remember feeling, “You’re right. I have these people around me. I have you. I have my husband. I have my doula,” and I had people around me to support that process and I’m grateful that this birth experience and that this hospital was very different than the first experience because after my daughter was born, I just remember feeling, “We did this. We did this together.” Me, my baby, and my husband, this was a team effort. The nurses really just let us be. We had all of this time alone in the room with her and it was just so special. Even though we were in a hospital, it really was as good as it could have been. We got to go home the very next day, so it was a night and day experience hospital-wise, birth-wise, recovery-wise, and now after having this birth experience, it’s really helped me to make peace with my first birth experience and I don’t really see that as a failure anymore. I just see it as a different birth story. Meagan: Yeah. I love that. There is no failing at birth. We often times label ourselves as that failure, but it’s because of the way the world creates that word failure. They place it into our minds and they say that word and it’s like, “Oh, well if this doesn’t happen, then you failed.” It’s just not true, so I love that you have come around to say, “Okay. I didn’t fail. That was just a different birth experience.”Eve: Right. Right, and I’m grateful that I’ve had both experiences now because I do have two beautiful, healthy children and they arrived in two very unique ways even though I had similar pregnancies and similar questions throughout both pregnancies, the way they arrived was very different and I feel like I learned so much from them. I hope that my story can help other people who might have experienced something similar. Meagan: I love it so much. Thank you so much for being with us today. Like you said, being on the opposite end of a big baby with a small baby. A small baby can be a quote-on-quote “concern” or problem if you want to say from a provider’s standpoint. They can view things differently, so yeah. It’s fun and unique to have the opposite end of things. Thank you so much again and congratulations to your cute two babies, to both of your babies. Thank you again. Eve: Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It’s really been a true pleasure. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

*Trigger Warning: This episode contains sensitive discussion topics including infant loss, miscarriage, preterm delivery, and hemorrhaging.*Lizzy has a passion for all things birth and babies as reflected in her amazing 10 kiddos! Her birth stories in order are as follows: an emergency C-section, VBAC, RCS, VBAC, HBAC, VBAC, HBAC, RCS, and a twin RCS. Though Lizzy has chosen to birth differently than most, she has always made sure to do what her intuition has felt is best and what she and her husband felt was right for their family. Through the highs and lows, every decision was made from a place of peace, not fear. We want all women to feel confident in the birth decisions they make. The VBAC Link is here to provide you with the education and resources to do just that!Additional LinksHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Hello, hello. This is still 2023. I cannot believe it. I am sitting here right now recording and we’re just getting into the holiday season thinking that this is going to be airing in 2023 and it’s just crazy to me. I cannot believe that 2023 is here. Today, we have quite the stories for you. And guess what? We have a special cohost and it’s Paige, our transcriber, and a dear VBAC Link family member. So excited to have you with us, Paige. This story is even close to your heart because this is your family. Paige: Yes, this is my sister-in-law, Lizzy. Meagan: Yes, so exciting. You guys, I can’t even tell you. I’m sitting here looking at her notes right here and she has so many stories and they’re all different like, crazy, crazy different. But Paige is going to do the review and then we’ll get started.Review of the WeekPaige: Yes, I am. So my review comes from an email sent to us just a few days ago which is so exciting. It’s from molly and she says, “Hi there. My name is Molly Marshall and I just wanted to reach out and send a review of the pod. I’ve been listening for quite some time now since I had my first baby in August of 2020 via C-section. It was absolutely the opposite experience that I was expecting to have mixed with a scary pandemic. “After that, I began listening to your podcast just to hear other women’s stories who had gone through similar experiences. This made me feel a lot less alone. Once we decided to try for a second baby, I began listening to the pod even more frequently on top of lots of other research and such. Just last week, on Wednesday, I welcomed my second baby boy via successful VBAC. I give so much credit to your podcast and what you’re doing because it was the driving force and motivator for me to push for my VBAC and I’m so, so glad I did. It was truly a redemption story and I’m so thankful for the work you’re doing. I told so many people about the podcast and I hope to be able to help any friends of mine explore VBAC too if they desire. Please don’t stop sharing these stories. It means the absolute world to those of us listening. After my second birth, I just want to scream it from the rooftops that VBAC is totally possible even if feels overwhelming and out of reach. Needless to say, I love your podcast and you’ve changed my life. Thank you so much. -Molly” Meagan: Oh. When I saw this review come in, I got teary-eyed. I really got teary-eyed. It meant so much and I’m so happy for her and so happy for everyone who’s listening. Even if it doesn’t end in a VBAC or even if that decision through listening to the podcast isn’t to go for a VBAC, if there’s any just even slight, one tiny little thing that The VBAC Link can bring to you whether it’s empowerment, education, whether it’s processing something through learning, whatever it is, that just warms my heart so to hear that review, I love it. Thank you so much, Molly. As always, we’re always accepting more reviews to read on the podcast. You can really submit it anyway. She submitted it through an email. You can send it to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or you can go to Google or you can go to Facebook or just send us a message on Instagram. Whatever it may be, we love your reviews. I seriously, I’m not kidding. I wish I could have had– you know the Taylor Swift TikTok thing where the mom is dancing and the kid is recording but it’s really recording them? I wish I could have had that because I wish I could really portray the emotion that I was feeling reading this review. Paige: So sweet. Meagan: Oh, it was amazing. So thank you so much. Lizzy’s StoriesMeagan: Hello, hello VBAC listeners. This is Meagan here. I just wanted to drop a quick trigger warning in today’s episode. It does contain some details and verbiage that may be triggering or alarming to the listening ear. Okay, Lizzy. Lizzy: Hi. Meagan: Hi. Thank you so much for being with us today. I cannot wait to hear about all of your incredible births. And you guys, when I say all, I want to say that she has 10 kids. 10 kiddos. Isn’t that amazing? I love it so much. I love being a mom. I don’t know if I could do it with 10 kids. It takes a special person, Lizzy. You are incredible and I can’t wait to hear about all of these births. Lizzy: Thank you. Perfect. Well, I guess I’ll just start from the beginning. I had my first baby in December 2011 and I was horribly uneducated. I didn’t even know what the birth process looked like or anything really. My husband is the oldest of 9 kids and his mom is very pro-natural birth. She had her last two babies at home with only her and her husband there and so my husband was very pro-natural birth, but we were still newly married and trying to figure out how to talk to each other. You know, have communication. So I was about 10 days overdue with my first baby. I went into a doctor’s appointment and they were like, “Yeah, everything looks good but do you want to be induced? Usually, by now, women are begging me to get the baby out of them.” I was content and pretty happy, but I was like, “Oh. I guess meeting my baby might be a really cool thing,” so I was like, “Sure, let’s do this.” I wanted it to be a little less invasive, but like I said, I wasn’t super educated. My husband was like, “Maybe we should try to do as little as possible.” I was like, “Okay.” So we checked into the hospital the next day and they broke my water which, I remember it’s like a legitimate crochet hook. They came in and opened the package and I was like, “That’s a crochet hook.” They’re like, “Um, it’s a medical instrument.” I was like, “No, it’s not. That is just a crochet hook from JoAnn’s.” But anyways, so they broke my water, and then I just chilled for lots of hours and didn’t have any labor. Nothing happened. So then they came in and they were like, “We’re going to put you on some Pitocin to see if we can get things moving.” So they put me on Pitocin and every time I had a contraction, his heart rate started to drop. So then they got really nervous understandably and it had been lots of hours since they had broken my water and they were worried about infection. It was just the classic cascade of interventions, so we ended up doing an emergency C-section. It turns out, well, this is what we assume. I wasn’t actually in the womb to know what was happening, but he had this huge dent on his forehead like he wasn’t lined up in the birth canal right like his forehead just kept getting caught on my pelvis. But he was 10 pounds, 11 ounces and he was just this big baby. Then that was his birth. I had been told that nursing counted as birth control which is not true. Anyone listening, that is such a lie. Meagan: But so many people think that though. Just FYI, they really do. You’re not alone out there. Lizzy: Right? So 3 months later, I was pregnant again. I remember it had been 3 months. I turned to my husband and I was like, “Did I have a period this month?” He was like, “I don’t know.” And then I took a pregnancy test and I was pregnant. I was like, “Oh, there we go.” That’s when I really started getting into VBACs and birthing and getting educated. I gained a lot of weight with my first pregnancy like 40-50 pounds. So with my second pregnancy, I followed the gestational diabetes diet because when I tested, I wasn’t officially gestational diabetic, but I was right on the border, so I was like, “Maybe there’s a margin of error and I probably am.” So I followed the diet and I maybe moderately exercised, but probably not. Mostly just dieted. And then I went into labor on my– oh no, that’s right. Sorry, I have to remember. There are a lot of stories. Meagan: There are so many, yeah. Lizzy: I also did HypnoBabies last minute because I was like, “Wait a minute. I want to do this VBAC, but I have no education really.” And so I started listening to HypnoBabies and going through that whole program. Then one day, I decided to walk home from church because I was so sick and tired of having this baby in me. I was, I think, a few days overdue. For some reason, we had expected him to come early, but he just wasn’t. So I powerwalked as fast as I possibly could for half a mile, three-quarters of a mile until I was so sore, I almost couldn’t walk anymore. I got home and I contracted a little bit, and then it all petered out and I went to bed. I woke up the next morning and just was contracting throughout the day, just gradually building. It was the perfect labor story kind of and then that night, I was like, “Okay. It’s time to go to the hospital.” We actually called my mother-in-law to come down because we wanted her to help us labor because she was so pro-birth and we just wanted an extra person in our court. My husband was so supportive. We were laboring and it just was going. Every time, I was like, “This is awful. Give me an epidural,” my husband was like, “No. It’s okay. We can do this. Just keep breathing. One more contraction and then just face the next contraction.” We really worked through it together and it was a really beautiful experience. My mother-in-law was really awesome. My husband was sitting on a rolling stool while I contracted and every time I contracted, I basically just headbutted him on that rolling stool. He was trying really hard to give me counterpressure, but that’s really hard on a rolling stool, so my mother-in-law just stood behind him and braced him the whole time. She didn’t say anything. She just was there making sure the process could continue and it was so wonderful for my husband and I to do this really hard thing together. It was so bonding and beautiful for us that that’s part of what we love most about vaginal birthing is just the relationship builder it is to be able to go through something so hard and painful together and do that. And then he came out. It was a VBAC and he was 8 pounds, 2 ounces. His was just the classic, what you read about in a textbook how a baby is born vaginally. That was awesome and we were so excited about that. We had done it and there was all of this joy and it was so happy. I healed faster and I felt better. And then I had a miscarriage pretty early on, I think 6-8 weeks. Right after the miscarriage, I got pregnant. I did not watch my diet. I did not exercise. I gained a lot of weight and finally, I was two weeks overdue. Actually, I was a week overdue and they were like, “Hey, maybe we should think about doing something.” I was like, “No.” I was seeing midwives and I was like, “I need to give it the whole two weeks. I have to know that if I wouldn’t have waited a little bit longer, if it wouldn’t have just happened.” I really pushed them all the way to the two weeks and then I just never went into labor.Actually, that’s not true. A few days before, I had hard labor for 3-4 hours and then stopped and nothing else. Except for those couple of hours, nothing had happened. I felt nothing. Finally, I went in and we did a planned C-section. She was 10 pounds, 14 ounces. I think my body was just like, “Um, friend? I’m not sure I can do this. This is a really big baby.”There was that and then on my fourth baby, I learned my lesson and I went back to my diet and my exercising. I went into labor on my own and went to the hospital. I’m a very vocal laborer. I yell and I moan and I say mean things about the baby when I’m in transition. My midwife was getting really nervous because she had never seen me labor. She had been there for my C-section baby, but she had never seen me in active labor. She kept turning to my husband and saying, “Is this normal? Is she having a uterine rupture? How do I know what this pain level is?” My husband was like, “No, no. She’s okay. This is just how she does it.” But she was super nervous. She kept pushing me to try different positions and it wasn’t my favorite birth. She ended up having me lie on my side with one knee pulled up high to deliver the baby and I just didn’t love that position. It wasn’t terribly comfortable, but the baby came out and we had a VBAC and everything was happy. That was awesome. And then my next pregnancy was a set of twins. I had a subchorionic hemorrhage and I bled a lot. I would wake up regularly in the morning with blood stains the size of cereal boxes on my bed. Meagan: Oh my gosh. Lizzy: I would call my provider and be like, “Hey, I’m bleeding,” and they were like, “Well, as long as you don’t have any cramping, you’re fine. Bleeding’s okay. Cramping is bad so when the two of them happen together, call us.” But I just was bleeding so much and it was so weird. I remember just feeling like these babies were going to come early. I just had this feeling. I remember counting down to viability because I was like, “Oh good. At least now, I know they can make it if I deliver.”A few days before they were born, I started passing really big clots, and then a few days later– oh, and I had gone into labor and so I went into the hospital, and by the time I got checked in and lay down and had all the cords hooked up, they were like, “You’re not in labor anymore.” I felt like an idiot because I was like, “I’ve already had four kids. I know what labor is,” but they were like, “Make sure you’ve labored for at least an hour with strong contractions before you come back in.”I felt very patronized and patted on the head and sent back to bed. I just felt humiliated. I went home and I was like, “That’s it. I’m not going back unless it happens for two hours because I’m not doing that again.” Getting sent home from the hospital is the worst thing ever. It’s happened to me a couple of times and I just hate it. So then a few days later, I started going into labor again. I was like, “Okay.” So I drank lots of water. I lay down on my left side. I took a shower. My husband was trying to get our kids in bed because we had four other kids and they must have known something was up because they were being awful and super rowdy. So finally, we just locked them in their rooms. My husband came to check on me and I was still laboring. I was like, “You know what? It’s been two hours. I think we should go.” It was actually funny. I remember going to him after about an hour of labor and being like, “Ugh, I just don’t like this baby anymore. This hurts so bad. I don’t want to do this anymore.” He chuckled and said, “Haha, it sounds like you’re in transition.” We both laughed and then I went back to my room and kept laboring because, in my mind, there was no way you could have a baby in two hours. It just wasn’t possible. I went back to my room and he finished up with the kids and then I was like, “Okay. It’s time to go to the hospital.” So we called our babysitters which were these three little girls that lived across the street, these sisters that were 9, 8, and 7. They came over and they were sitting in the front room. I was like, “Okay. I need to go to the bathroom. I think I’m having some gas cramps. I’m going to see if I can work something out.” My husband knew because the same thing had happened to his mom when she felt like she needed to go to the bathroom and had a baby. He was like, “Wait. I know what this means,” so he followed me, and all of a sudden, I was like, “This is not right.” I started pushing and I was like, “Oh my goodness, something is coming out of me. Honey, what is happening?”I stood up and the baby fell out. My husband just caught him right before he hit the water.Meagan: Oh my gosh. Lizzy: But I was 23 weeks and 6 days. So he was a pound and a half. His entire body fit in my husband’s hand. His head was the size of a clementine. He was just so little. I remember my husband laid down– Meagan: Way preterm. Way preterm. Lizzy: Way too early. I remember he laid me down in the shower and put the baby on my lap. We just all of a sudden were like, “Okay. What do we do now?” He was moving and it looked like he was grunting, but we couldn’t really tell if he was breathing or not so we called 911. The amazing thing was as we were figuring out what to do, we just felt so peaceful. We’re very religious and we just felt like God was like, “It’s okay. It’s okay. Now you should call an ambulance.” Meagan: Wow, I’d be like, “Ahh!”Lizzy: I know and that’s what I expected, but we both took a deep breath and were like, “Okay, now let’s call 911. We can do this.” So we called them and the paramedics get here. We’ve totally forgotten about our babysitters so these paramedics just come in through the front door. These little girls are like, “Um, what’s going on?” They come back to our bedroom and it seemed like it took them forever for me to get on the stretcher and out to the ambulance. I think they were waiting to see if I was going to deliver my other baby because twins usually come pretty fast in succession. I remember laying there being like, “Why aren’t you taking me? Why are we just sitting here? My baby is maybe not breathing. Can we get a move-on here?” But as soon as I got my first twin out, twin A out, my body just stopped. I don’t know. It just didn’t need to contract anymore. It was like it just turned off. They got me in the ambulance. There was a hospital just a couple of blocks from our house, but it was a very small hospital. I think they had a NICU, but it was for 37-week babies who needed help with breathing. It was not well-equipped for this situation. They took me to the OR. They cut the cord and whisked twin A off and tried to get him breathing. It ended up taking about an hour to get him oxygen because they didn’t have any neonatologists there. They just had pediatricians. So he was on the phone with the neonatologist trying to figure out how to intubate this pound-and-a-half baby. Meagan: Holy cow. So baby was breathing, but not well, not enough.Lizzy: Yes, that’s my memory. Meagan: So they had to really help this baby’s undeveloped lungs to breathe and give baby oxygen. Lizzy: Yeah. He was not going to survive on his own. He was not going to make it without intubation. But then I never delivered the placenta so they just sanitized the part of the cord that was hanging out and shoved it back in.Meagan: What! Lizzy: They wanted to keep the other baby in as long as possible, so they didn’t want to induce labor to get the placenta out. They were like, “You know what? We’re just going to put this back in and see what happens,” because everyone figured that probably within 24 hours, I was having my other baby. They gave me all of the shots. The magnesium, the steroids, and everything. Magnesium is awful. My whole body felt like I was on fire, from the inside out burning. I don’t like magnesium, but I understand its purpose. Meagan: Yeah, it has a purpose, but it definitely makes you feel crummy. Lizzy: Yeah. So then they transferred me to a different hospital and they just watched me. They were like, “Okay.” It had been 24 hours and I hadn’t had the baby and they were like, “Well, I guess we’re just going to check you into–” I think it was labor and delivery and they were like, “You’re just going to chill here until you have a baby.” Meagan: Just curious, so they didn’t transfer you, right? Lizzy: They did after. Meagan: For baby number two, they transferred you to a better hospital. Lizzy: Yes. Once they had me stabilized and realized that I wasn’t having another baby in the time it took to get to the hospital, they sent me. They transferred me. Meagan: Let’s get you to a place that can handle a 23-week birth. Lizzy: A micro-preemie, yeah. And as soon as they had Cayden, twin A, stabilized and had him intubated, they transferred him too by life flight because they couldn’t help him there. Meagan: Okay, gotcha. Lizzy: So then, I was in the hospital for 11 days before I delivered my second twin. Paige: With four kids at home. Lizzy: Yeah. My husband was working and trying to play mom to four kids. He definitely had the hard job. I mean, I was sitting in that hospital room for 11 days making homemade thank-you cards and making jewelry and I was like, “This is amazing. This is like a mom-cation. This is awesome.” I’d go sit and look at my baby. I mean, it was a little scary, but it honestly was really relaxing. I felt so bad for my husband because he was doing everything and was holding it together really well considering everything he had to do. Paige: And it was over Thanksgiving so we all came and visited you. Lizzy: That’s right. It was Thanksgiving. Paige: I remember visiting Cayden and his body was just so translucent, so tiny. But yeah, that waiting place. Meagan: Wow, wow. Lizzy: Yeah. And so then 11 days later, I just went into labor on my own. Well, the other thing they kept trying to decide was which is better? The baby does better in the womb, but if he gets an infection, that’s worse. So they kept balancing the, “Do we induce you or let it go?” So they monitored me really closely for infection, but I didn’t show any signs and then 11 days later, I just went into labor on my own. I remember my doctor– oh, Dr. Dabling. I’ve been trying to remember her name for the past three days. I finally remembered it. She was super awesome. We loved her and she came in. She was like, “Okay. I really think we should give you an epidural.” I was like, “This baby’s going to be itty-bitty. It’s just going to literally fall out of me. That’s not going to be painful.” She was like, “Yes, but I’m really worried the placentas aren’t going to deliver well and that I’m going to have to go in and scrape them out of you and that will be very painful. I really suggest you get the epidural.”So I did because the idea of people scraping things out of me was sufficient to push me to an epidural. They gave me the epidural and my husband got there. Twin B was born and they immediately whisked him off and got him to oxygen. He was set and stable within a matter of minutes. I delivered my placentas just fine and it was a great delivery. That was that. That was awesome and we were excited that both babies were here, but then four days later, twin B got an infection and died. Meagan: *Gasp* Just a random infection? Lizzy: My understanding, there were a lot of medical terms that I don’t understand, but they automatically put babies that young on antibiotics as soon as they’re born because they know that infection risks are high. He had been on them for about three days and wasn’t showing any signs of anything. It’s not good to be on medications you don’t need. So they took him off the medication and then within about 12 hours, he was looking really gross. He wasn’t looking good and then 12 hours later, he was gone. He was so little. He was 2 pounds. I’m not angry at anyone. I don’t feel like it was anyone’s fault. I feel like this was God’s plan. The fact that Cayden was born at home, twin A, and didn’t have any oxygen for an hour and didn’t have any of the drugs and is still alive today and his twin brother who was born in a hospital with everything and everything he needed and then died, it just seems so clear to me that God has a plan and that this is what was supposed to happen and so it did. You can try and control things and do the best you can and that’s great. God wants you to do that, but in the end, what needs to happen happens. So I came away with a lot of peace and not very much anger. I was really fortunate in that. I mean, it was so painful. It was so unbelievably painful and it was really interesting because we learn that my husband and I grieve in different ways. When my husband grieves, he wants to be around family and be supported and be around people and I just want to hide and be alone. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want anyone to tell me it’s going to be okay. I just want people to say, “You’re right. This sucks. This is so painful. I’m so sorry.” That was hard moving through that, but we figured it out and we’re doing a lot better now. Then, we got pregnant again. I was so nervous. I was so nervous that something was going to go wrong and something was going to break or the baby was going to die. I just couldn’t. I didn’t know what was going to happen and it was very stressful for me. The pregnancy went really well. It was a very smooth pregnancy, but I still had all of these lingering fears that something horrible was going to go wrong. I went into labor and we checked into the hospital. The room they put us in to be evaluated was two doors down from the room that we said goodbye to our little boy. It totally shut off all of my labor. We tried walking the halls to get things working, but we kept running into people we knew from the NICU and his respiratory therapist and it just brought back all of the memories and all of the fears. We just couldn’t do it. My labor totally shut off, so they sent us home and I remember as we drove home, I said, “I can’t do it. I can’t go back to that hospital. There are too many hard memories there.” My husband felt the same way. He said, “What if we do a home birth?” I was like, “Are you nuts? I’m 39 weeks pregnant, 40 weeks pregnant. This baby is coming. We can’t do a home birth.” He was like, “Yeah, we can. Let’s do it. We’ll call my mom. She’s delivered babies. We could totally do it.” We were like, “Okay. I guess we’re going to do a home birth because we know we can’t deliver in the hospital, so I guess that’s the only other option.” So we called his mom and we were like, “Hey, we need you to come to help us deliver this baby.” She was like, “I’m sorry, what?” But she was wonderful. Meagan: “Are you serious?”Lizzy: No, I know. She was like, “Okay, well when do you want me to come down?” We were like, “Now. If you could get in the car now, that would be great.” She was like, “Okay.” Meagan: Oh my gosh. Lizzy: Because we had just been to the hospital for labor, so we assumed it was imminent. We were like, “No, really. I think you should head down here because, at any moment, I could go into labor again.” She came down and then it was a whole week. She just hung out at our house. I remember finally one day, I was like, “I need you to leave my house for the day. I can’t see you. It reminds me that I haven’t had my baby yet. I need to stop ultra-focusing on this and I need you to just– you have a daughter that lives here. Go visit her. Go away for the day and come back. It’s not that I’m angry at you. It’s all that I’m thinking about.” I finally just went into labor on my own and it was a really hard labor. I was in transition for two hours. It was much harder and much more difficult than my previous labors had been, but then she came. It’s actually really funny because it was kind of early in the morning like 6:00 or 7:00 and she came out. Like I said, I’m a really vocal laborer so there was lots of yelling and lots of screaming. My kids were awake. They were watching a movie in a different room while we were trying to have this baby and so she comes out and 15 seconds later, my son walks in the door. He’s– gosh, I don’t know– probably three or four. I think four is about right and he walks in the door. He goes, “Is that the baby?” I mean, there’s blood. There’s fluid. We’re trying to make sure this baby is breathing. She has just come out. We’re like, “Yep, it is. Can you go away, please? Give us a few minutes.” He’s like, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh, okay.” So he leaves and 30 seconds later, he comes back with all of our kids and is like, “Look! Mom’s had the baby!” And we’re like, “Yep, we did. Can you please give us just a few more minutes?” But it was so beautiful and so wonderful. I laid down in my own bed. It felt so healing after our traumatic twin birth and not being able to face the hospital and everything associated with that. To be able to have this successful home birth where we were all together and my kids climbed in bed with me, it just was wonderful and beautiful and everything that we needed. And then we got pregnant again. Meagan: I love it. And then another baby. After a really healing birth, though. That had to have been just so special. Lizzy: It was so special and all of my kids are about 12-18 months apart. I have 10 kids and my oldest turns 11 next month so they are all really, really close which is something else that was really interesting is that a lot of times you hear with the VBACs and with getting pregnant after a C-section, you need to wait 9 months. You need to wait a year. You need to wait 18 months before you even get pregnant or whatever and we just did what we wanted. I mean, you definitely should consult medical professionals with your specific instances, but we felt really good every time we got pregnant like, “Yep. We’re ready to get pregnant. Let’s do this again. We feel good about this,” so we went ahead and did it even though I don’t think any doctor in the world would advocate doing what we’ve done. But we got pregnant again and my water broke the very first night of our family reunion. This was a week early or so and everyone was coming up for the weekend to our house for a family reunion. That night, my water broke. I was like, “Oh my goodness. Everyone is at our house and we were planning to do another home birth.” So I told all of the moms that as they were putting their kids down to bed, I was like, “I don’t think you want your kids upstairs. I’m probably going to be in labor all night screaming, so find someplace farther away so your children will sleep through the night.” So everyone was kind of like, “Why aren’t you going to the hospital? Your water has broken. What are you doing here? Why are you having a home birth?” But we were good with it. We were just like, “You know what? This is what we are doing.” I went to bed that night trying to sleep knowing what was coming and then woke up the next morning and I was like, “Wait a minute. I was supposed to have a baby. What happened?” I was hanging out waiting for labor to happen and we hiked a small mountain to have a bridal shower for my sister-in-law, all the while I’m like, “Okay. Maybe this will get it started. Maybe not.” Finally, it had been 18 hours or something, and nothing. Not even really any contractions and I was like, “I think maybe we need to call someone now.” Infections are real as we know, so let’s get on the phone with someone. They were like, “Your water broke when?” We were like, “18 hours ago.” They were like, “Will you please come into the hospital now?” I was like, “Yeah. I’ll come in.” So we checked in and actually, the doctor I met there was not my normal doctor. My normal doctor was on vacation and getting back the next day. So we had the guy that was just on call and he was actually really supportive. He was like, “You know what? Let’s try giving you a little Pitocin, just a little something to maybe get things going and see what happens.” He was totally on board with, “Let’s go for a vaginal birth.” But I was feeling a lot of fear. Something about having a vaginal delivery did not feel right to me. I was scared and scared of the pain, to be honest. Part of me was like, “I don’t want to. That’s so owie. I don’t want to do that. If I just do a C-section, they’ll drug me up and I’ll have a baby.” Which, I knew wasn’t true in my brain, but I wasn’t really thinking clearly because I knew that the delivery wouldn’t be painful, but the recovery would be so much worse. But at that moment, I was like, “I just really don’t feel good about this.” I was really torn and my husband was like, “You want to pick a C-section?” I was like, “I think so. Something doesn’t feel right about this.”So I finally did. I said, “Can I just choose to have a C-section?” And they were like, “Yeah. Yeah. You can do that if you want to. We’ll go prep the OR.” They started the C-section and I could feel everything. It was awful. I kept telling them. I was like, “You guys, this really hurts. I can feel you cutting me.” They were like, “Oh, it’s okay. The pain meds are kicking in.” The anesthesiologist kept pushing more drugs. He didn’t understand why I was feeling this, why the pain meds weren’t working. It turned out that because I was feeling so much pain, I kinked my wrists. I was flexing my wrists because I was in so much pain and it kinked my IV so none of the drugs were getting to me. So when they finally realized that, they were like, “You need to relax your hands.” I did and all of the drugs hit me at once. I remember watching myself floating away from my body while Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds played in the background. I’ve never been stoned before, but I’m pretty sure this is exactly what it feels like. But yeah, I remember I was like, “Bye Lizzy,” as I floated away from my body and it was all psychedelic. It was really intense and I remember them asking me and then the rest of the C-section was pretty much a blur. They got the baby out and I remember them saying, “Do you want to hold your baby?” I was like, “Nope. I don’t even know where my arms are, so please don’t put that baby on me because it’s just going to fall off of me.” I was so out of it and it was just weird. It took me a long time to come back to even afterward. I didn’t hold my baby, I don’t think, for a couple of hours because I just didn’t feel enough in control of my body that I could do it safely. But he came and that was happy, so that was his birth. And then we got pregnant again with twins. I was so excited. I had prayed for so long. After Levi, our twin, died, I prayed for so long that we would get another chance at twins. I had always wanted twins and I thought that was so cool. I said, “Please, please, please give us another chance except it’s got to be a different outcome. I can’t do this dying thing. Please send us twins and make them healthy and happy and it’s going to be great.” So we got pregnant with twins and I was so excited except I was bleeding again and it was just like the first time. I was so scared. There were huge blood stains, but the bleeding seemed to heal itself a lot faster. It totally went away so I was like, “Oh, great. This looks awesome. This looks like we’re in a good spot.” And the rest of the pregnancy went really well. It got time to deliver. Now, I currently live in a very rural town where they have a hospital, but they were like, “We don’t have enough blood on sight that if you hemorrhaged, we could save you. We really think you should deliver somewhere else. We like you. We love taking care of you. We’d really love to deliver your babies. You should go someplace else for your safety just because you’re a high hemorrhage risk with the number of kids you’ve had. You’re having twins. They’re high risk because you’ve been bleeding. Please go somewhere else.” So we did. We went to a hospital two hours away. We scheduled it and we showed up and got all ready and went into the C-section and everything. I actually asked, “Can I record the C-section on my phone? Is there an extra nurse that can take a video of my C-section?” Because I’ve always wanted to see myself birth a baby but I always forget to tell people that I want to do that. So we’re in the middle of birthing and my husband is like, “Oh, do you want a mirror?” and I’m like, “Just get this thing out of me!” I’m not in the mood to deal with it at that point. I don’t know. I’ve never even watched birth videos of other people having babies because I just want to watch myself. The first time I see it, I want it to be me. So I asked them, “Can some nurse record this?” He was like, “Um, yeah. Sure.” So I totally have a video of my C-section on my phone which is a little disarming to watch actually. Meagan: Oh, I wish I had mine. Lizzy: My kids have watched it and they think it’s very cool. I remember as they were doing the C-section, I got so nauseous. I really thought I was going to throw up everywhere. I don’t know why or what caused that, but the babies came out and everything was beautiful. I had these two beautiful girls that look totally different and were a pound and a half different in size. I was in the recovery room and all of a sudden, I noticed that all of the nurses were starting to get really agitated. My husband was there with me too and they were like, “We’re going to take the babies to the recovery place. We need to help mom. Are you okay with that?” My husband was like, “Yeah. Take the babies away. I’m going to stay here with mom.” They were like, “Okay, good.”I started hemorrhaging really bad. I wasn’t sure really at first what was going on, but I could just tell that something was wrong. Everyone was starting to panic. The doctor came back, so they finally told me, “You’re hemorrhaging. We’re trying to get it to stop. We’re going to try some stuff.” I was like, “Okay.” Then they proceeded to punch down on my most recently cut open belly and that was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt. Oh my goodness. It was awful. They just kept pushing and pushing trying to get my uterus to start clamping down again and it just wasn’t happening. They told me. They were like, “Okay. We previously discussed that you don’t know if you’re done having babies or not, so we don’t want to do a hysterectomy if we don’t have to. We have one more thing we can try, but if not, we’re going to have to do that. We’ve got to stop this bleeding.” So we were like, “Do what you can. But we understand that emergencies happen.” So they took me in and did this crazy– I was so out of it. I was in so much pain and said, “Whatever you do, if you have to take my uterus, will you please just put me under? I’m so done. I can’t feel this anymore. I need to be put out.” They were like, “Yes. I promise I will put you under if I have to put you in surgery again.” It’s called a uterine artery embolism. They took a picture of my uterus and all of the arteries from above, and they shot contrast fluid into all of the arteries. This doctor had to take a probe, a really long cord, and he went into the femoral artery in my leg. It had to go up around my heart and back down into my uterus. I don’t know medicine does these things, but it was so crazy. They take a still picture of where all of my arteries were and he would guide the probe by feeling through my body. They’d take another picture, see what it would look like, and he would push it through until it got to the artery and filled it with the medical equivalent of minimal expanding foam and just totally clogged up that whole artery so that it couldn’t bleed anymore. Meagan: Very fascinating. Lizzy: I know. It was a total miracle. Our doctor told us afterward that I think it took him a total of 20 minutes to do it and he said, “I’ve never done it faster than 45.” This was unbelievably fast and wildly successful. It stopped the bleeding and I was able to keep my uterus, but it was a hard recovery after having the C-section and then getting pounded on after that and then all of the procedures afterward, it was a really rough recovery. And I was older. I had lots of kids. It kind of all compounded and that was the recovery, but the twin girls were here and they were beautiful and so happy. I was able to tandem nurse which was something I hoped I would be able to do and now I have these 10 beautiful children that are just adorable. Meagan: Oh my gosh. I love it. Yeah. I mean, wow. What a journey you have been through. Holy smokes. I am sorry about your loss. That is hard. Lizzy: Thank you. Meagan: I definitely felt the emotion in your story after, but thank you so much for sharing all of these beautiful stories and this journey that you have been on. It has definitely been quite the journey. So many unique things. You mentioned it yourself talking about waiting until you’re 18 months after to get pregnant or give birth and things like that. Between your C-section and your first VBAC, you said 3 months. Lizzy: Yeah. Meagan: 3 months. So we know that it’s possible. I think the biggest thing is yeah, there are all of these studies and I think that everyone needs to read the studies, educate themselves, and then make the decision that is best for them, but it’s really just that. Make the decision that is best for you and for you, your kids are closer and it sounds like you have such a happy crew for sure. But yeah. Are there any tips that you would give to our listeners especially going through such high and low emotions from each birth? Do you have any tips that you would give our listeners? Lizzy: I think I would say that each birth is its own birth. You need to be able to let it unfold the way it needs to without worrying about what has happened previously. Every birth can be so different. I felt a lot of fear after we lost our boy that it was going to happen every single time after and once I realized that this is a new baby. This is a new experience. I just need to have faith that it’s going to work out, I think that helped a lot, and just saying, “You know what? Yes. That happened. I hated that. It was awful. I don’t want to ever do it again. I’m going to try heading forward believing that this is going to be different.”Not to the point where you ignore bad signs or bad feelings, but just where you say, “You know what? I’m going to let this baby be it's own and not be controlled by the fear of my previous pregnancies.” That was a big help for me to let each baby be their own. Meagan: Oh, I love that because especially with VBAC, we have this past and sometimes they are traumatic. Sometimes they are not. We all have experienced different Cesareans and things, but we still have this past birth and for me, I mean, even with my third, I was triggered because I had similarities to the way the labor started. I had to truly be like, “This is a different baby. This is a different birth. This is years later.” I had to try to stay present in this space and not flash back to three years ago or two years ago. It’s really hard to do. Lizzy: It is very hard. Meagan: Yeah, but I love that you said that. Each baby and each birth is individual. Lizzy: And I think the other thing I tell myself a lot is a healthy baby is most important. The end goal is a living baby at the end. As long as I get a baby at the end that’s healthy, it’s going to be okay. The experience might not have been what I wanted, but the thing I really cared about was the baby. That was the end goal. The end goal was getting the precious, perfect, beautiful baby and every time, I got that. So every time was a win because that was my expectation. Now, I had other expectations too, but would I have rather gotten the perfect VBAC to have my baby die? No. My goal was to have the baby and so you try as hard as you can, do everything you can, and if it doesn’t go the way you want it, you still get this beautiful baby and that’s what’s really the happiest about this. You got the baby. Paige: I think what I look up to the most about Lizzy and her stories is that no, it’s not conventional. I don’t think there is anybody in the world who has had similar stories quite like Lizzy’s with kids that close together. I mean, typically in families that have a lot of kids, it’s kind of all vaginal– I mean, I don’t know. Right? Lizzy: Yeah. I think it’s mostly vaginal births that are very successful. Paige: I think Lizzy’s stories are very unique because there are C-section stories sprinkled in there and then a VBAC. We can all relate to that feeling deep within us of being drawn to VBAC and it’s like, “I know this is a little riskier. I know this isn’t maybe what a doctor would recommend initially.” I mean, hopefully, your practice is supportive. But that calling is in your heart and you go for it because your intuition is telling you that your body can do it. And that’s what Lizzy has refined. She has refined her intuition to be able to listen to that, follow it, and recognize that there is this calling to have these babies and bring them to the world in lots of different ways but also to move forward not in fear, but how she feels is appropriate. It’s probably not what’s going to work for you or for me. I’m not going to have 10 kids, but I can still look up to Lizzy and I’ve taken so much inspiration from her as I prepared for each of my births because she understands and has such a heart for birth and unconventional ways of birthing in the way that’s right for you. Meagan: I love that. Yes. Lizzy: I mean, I’ve now had four C-sections and I knew after my third C-section that no provider would let me vaginally birth again. Even after two, most of them say no but because I had accidentally had those twins vaginally, it kind of opened that door back up for me, but I knew that once I had another C-section, I was done. I’d never vaginally birth again and there’s part of me that still really mourns that. As I think about having more kids, I’m like, “Maybe I should just go off the reservation and have another home birth.”Paige: We talk about that all the time because I’ve had three now. Lizzy has had four and we’re like, “We can do it.”Lizzy: Right? Let’s just be each other’s midwives and deliver our babies at home in secret. Paige: So TBD what is in the future. We don’t know. Lizzy: So part of me does mourn that I’m not going to get that experience again because I think I know that it’s not good for my body with the history I’ve had that it’s probably not medically very smart for me to try and do that. But that’s okay. You know, because I’ve been through a lot and I got the baby and that’s what matters. I got the baby. Meagan: Yeah. Oh, well thank you so much for sharing all of your stories today and being here with us, taking the time out of your day. I know time is so precious and I just feel that in so many ways you’re going to touch someone out there listening just like Molly said in the beginning. In this podcast, every story is going to connect with someone differently, and with all of your stories, I guarantee there is someone out there who is going to connect or has maybe had a similar situation or was told something similar or something. So it’s going to be amazing. Thank you so much. Lizzy: Well, thank you for having me on. I love talking babies. Meagan: So do we, obviously. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Happy New Year! We are kicking off 2023 with a podcast filled with doulas. Meagan is joined by one of our VBAC Link-trained doulas, Sarah, to welcome our guest, Holly. Holly is a wife, mama, RN, doula, and placenta encapsulator. Holly’s first birth was a planned Cesarean due to breech presentation. Her second birth was a hospital VBAC with a long labor. Her most recent birth was a redemptive, quick, and dreamy HBAC (almost in her toilet)!Holly shares her tips on keeping a positive mindset through weeks of prodromal labor and how she was able to fight doubts and fears to achieve her beautiful HBAC. Additional LinksHolly’s Doula WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Hello and happy 2023. I cannot believe we are starting a new year off, but I can’t wait to see where this year takes us. Today, we have Sarah. She is back today. She actually was on a little bit ago, but we had some time craziness so we are having her back on for a full episode. So welcome, Sarah. Sarah: Hello, glad to be back. Meagan: So happy to have you back. So fun to be cohosting with our VBAC doulas. If you guys did not know, we have a VBAC doula certification for VBAC and we are going to start hearing from some of our VBAC doulas because I’m going to have them on here and there as cohosts. I’m so excited to have them on, share where they’re at, and of course, have them be a part of this amazing community too. Sharing these stories and hearing these stories on the podcast seriously lights my day up. So on those days where I’m like, “Okay, we’ve got 4 hours of podcasts.” A lot of people might dread 4 hours of work, but I don’t see it as 4 hours of work. I see it as 4 hours of inspiration and motivation for me to keep going on The VBAC Link and to share these stories with you. Review of the WeekWe have our friend Holly today and she’s going to share her VBAC story but I’m going to have Sarah read a Review of the Week before we do. Sarah: Okay. This review is from Apple Podcasts and I hope I’m saying this username correctly, but it’s Kyeiwaaglover. Meagan: Yeah. When I saw that I was like, “Kyoa?”Sarah: Kyeiwaaglover, I believe, and it says, “As a doula, I’m grateful for platforms like this to refer to clients and for me to learn as well. “Meagan: I love that. It’s kind of fun. Today, we’ve got me, Sarah, Holly, and then Kyeiwaaglover– I don’t even know how to say it. Sarah: Kyeiwaaglover. That’s what I’m going with. Meagan: Yes. We are all doulas. A fun background story about Holly is she is actually a registered nurse by trade but after her VBAC, she found the passion like a lot of us and has since become a doula and a placenta encapsulator. I think it’s fun how we’re sharing a VBAC story, but together, even with the review, I didn’t even make that connection until you just said that, but we’re all doulas today so yay for doulas. I’m so excited to get into Holly’s story. Holly’s StoriesMeagan: Okay everybody. Holly, thank you so much for taking the time today to share your story. I know you’ve got your little one in a wrap strapped to your chest. So stinking adorable. How old is your baby? Holly: He is 7 weeks today. Meagan: 7 weeks!Holly: So we’re going on 2 months. Meagan: Just really little and he was trying to turn into the camera. Holly: I know. Meagan: Well, we would love to turn the time over to you to share your VBAC story. And of course, your C-section story too if you would like. Holly: Absolutely. I have a bit of a journey with my birth stories. My first daughter is 4.5 now, so I was pregnant a little over 5 years ago with her. I was finishing up nursing school. I was really into the medical model of care at that point just being in nursing school and getting all of that information. During my pregnancy, it was my last semester, and I was with a midwife at a clinic. I overall had a great pregnancy and great care. I finished nursing school, took my MCLETS, finished everything, and so we were in the last few weeks of pregnancy and I got to about 41 weeks with her and we had those tests at the end so you can check to see their growth. Meagan: It’s like a third-trimester ultrasound where they go through everything. Holly: You go overdue and they’re like, “Let’s make sure everything’s okay.” Blah blah blah. A bunch of time went by and they can’t tell you anything in the ultrasounds, and then my midwife had called me later that evening and she’s like, “You know, your baby is actually breech and these are my recommendations,” and so on. At that point, I still had prepared myself for a natural birth. I didn’t want to do an epidural. I wanted as few interventions as possible. I didn’t even think of that as a thing that could happen, so it just tore my heart out. At 41 weeks, you’re so emotional and so full of hormones so it took a long time for me to process it. I went and had a consult with an OB at the local hospital and they were like, “Well, we could try turning the baby, but at this point, you’re 41 weeks. There’s a lot of risk to it.” They’re like, “Basically, your only option is a C-section.” I’m like, “Okay.”I didn’t have all of the education and resources that I have now, so at that point, I had to put a lot of trust into the medical system and took their word for it and we had a planned C-section with her. But I was 41.5 weeks by the time we actually scheduled it, so it wasn’t an emergency. They were like, “If you go into labor, it’s an emergency, but we’ll still schedule it for 3 or 4 days from now.”Overall, my C-section went really well. I was able to have my baby skin-to-skin right away. She never left me. We stayed together which was awesome. I had a really good recovery from that, thank God. There weren’t huge traumas with it but once I got pregnant with my second, I realized how actually traumatic emotionally it was for me, so it took a lot of healing and processing to be able to give myself that second chance and to go for my first VBAC. About a year and a half later, I got pregnant with my second daughter. She is now 2.5 years old. At that point, I really had gotten into more– I was still working as a nurse and I had really gotten into more of natural living and natural solutions and just a holistic view of health. I had hired a doula. At that point, I was interviewing providers at the hospital and I hired a doula who was going through midwifery school. She was just a wealth of knowledge. I had a doula with my first baby, but it wasn’t what I had expected out of a doula, unfortunately. But, my doula with my second baby was absolutely incredible. She just provided me with so much information and was there for me to support me, to help me through all of my emotions with my first birth. So talking with her about the providers I had interviewed and told her, “I still don’t feel comfortable choosing one.” She was like, “Well, have you given home birth a thought or hiring a midwife?” I’m like, “Well, there are no midwives at the hospital that will take me because they can’t take VBACs at the hospital.”And in Minnesota, home midwives are allowed to take on VBACs at home. They don’t have huge restrictions there on the home birth midwives so I’m like, “Okay, well maybe. I don’t know. There are these risks that I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that right now.” She’s like, “Well, either way, you can always just interview one and get the information so you have both sides so you know which way you want to choose and you are fully informed.” I said, “Yeah. You’re right.” So my husband and I interviewed a couple of midwives. One of them was a little iffy with taking us on. She didn’t seem very comfortable with VBAC which was fine and another one was pretty good. She was more medically minded and then I interviewed a third midwife. She had a lot of experience with VBACs and was just overall matched really well with us. We ended up choosing to home birth with my second baby. That whole prenatal care with our home birth midwife was incredible. The prenatal care alone was just so different from a clinical setting. I was about 40 weeks at that point and we were going for our home birth. You get to that 40-week mark and you’re just like, “Okay. When is this going to happen? I’m so ready to have this baby,” but also trying to trust your body and knowing when that time is right. So I was a couple of days away from 42 weeks and labor happened spontaneously. I labored at home with my doula and then my midwife came later on. My husband was there and my mom was there. I labored for a total of 24 hours and we ended up suspecting after checking my cervix and checking baby’s position that she was stuck. Her head was flexed, so her chin was up instead of tucked down to her chest, so she was stuck on my pelvic bone for quite a while. After assessing the risks and everything, we ultimately decided to transfer to the hospital. The hospital was 5 minutes from us so it was one of those things where it was comforting knowing that it was so close, but also, in this pregnancy and in this experience with my second, I really had a hard time letting go of control and really trusting my body fully 100%. I think that also kind of affected the way I labored and my thought process. We transferred to the hospital and had a really great resident doctor. She was incredible. She was like, “You know, do your thing. Do what you need to do. Just let us know what you need.” The OB that was there was a different story, but I ended up laboring there for about 8 more hours and that included about an hour and a half of pushing. I had my first VBAC at the hospital and she came out just screaming and crying, eyes wide open. I just remember crying and saying, “We did it. We did it.” I couldn’t believe it. I was just in shock and it was very healing. But later on, I found that there were still parts of it that were a little traumatic for me and I had things to heal from with that birth too even though I had successfully had a VBAC, it was different and not fully what I expected. So that leads me to my third and final baby here. We again decided to plan for a home birth. My daughter was a little less than 2 and my other daughter a little less than 4 when we got pregnant with him. Again, we decided to home-birth and my husband was like, “Are you sure? Last time we ended up going to the hospital. Do you think that’s just going to be easier if we just plan for that this time?”I said, “No. Absolutely not. We’re having this baby at home.” My mindset was so different. I started as a doula after my second daughter was born and I had really gotten into that natural birth and trusting your body and just knowing that our bodies were designed for this. Our bodies were perfectly designed for birth. Yes, there are times when medical intervention is needed, but really, I just was so in this mindset of, “I can do this. This is it. This is my redemption. I know I can do this.” I didn’t even have to interview any midwives. I actually hired my doula from my second birth. She had become a midwife and was practicing and I just instantly knew her philosophy and her beliefs surrounding birth were exactly what I needed in my prenatal care and my birth, everything. We started seeing her from about 16 weeks onward and so we had all of our prenatal care at home. It was incredible. She really put everything into my hands which was what I wanted. I wanted control of the tests that we did and that we didn’t do, everything. We weren’t going to have an ultrasound to find out the sex but ultimately, my husband and I agreed to have a 20-week ultrasound at 23 weeks. We found out the sex and we were just so surprised and so happy because we were having a boy and if we were having a girl too, of course, we would have been just as happy, but at that point, I could get rid of all my girl clothes and start organizing and getting ready. It was just one of those things that my heart needed. So with my midwife that we had, like I said, she really put the control in my hands. I felt so much respect from her and I felt like in every decision I made, I was fully informed. I understood everything. I made the decisions that were best for me and my baby and our family. Leading up to my birth, those few weeks before, we talked about fears and if there was anything I needed to process before my labor. This time I was like, “No. Really, I feel good. I don’t have any fears.” There was a part of me that was like, “What if we do transfer to the hospital?” but the other part of me was like, “Don’t worry about that. Put that out. You’ve done it before. You know what to do,” so I put that part out of my head too. I was like, “Nope. We’re having this baby at home.” We actually were planning to move cross country down to South Carolina in September so my midwife was like, “Do you feel okay about this timeline you’re on?” I’m like, “Oh yeah. I’ll go to 42 weeks and I’ll still have 3 weeks before we have to move. It’ll be fine.” She was just like, “I can’t believe you’re fine with that.” I’m like, “Yeah. I feel totally good about it. I have so much support.” My husband’s family was coming right after the baby was born. The amount of support we had was exactly what we needed and I’m so thankful for that. Near the end of my pregnancy with our son, there were a couple of points where we actually thought he was breech, and those brought back a lot of feelings. I kept telling my midwife throughout my pregnancy, “This pregnancy feels a lot like my first just my cravings and everything.” She was like, “Okay.” We ended up thinking he was breech and I’m like, “Oh great. Here we go.” But at that point, I was like, “It doesn’t matter what position he’s in, I’m still letting myself go into labor. If he was breech, I was still going to birth him vaginally and everything.” It didn’t matter to me but it was also like, “Okay, I have to prepare for this if this is a change of plans.” Another midwife locally has a little ultrasound that you can plug into your phone, so we checked quickly to see where his head was just so we could confirm and prepare if needed and she was like, “Yeah, I think he is breech. I think this is his head up here.” She was like, “Let me check a little bit lower,” so we checked a little bit lower, but it turns out that his head was super, super deep in my pelvis. I’m sure I probably was dilated too to maybe 2 or 3 with him because he was just so low in my pelvis that they were feeling his shoulders when they would palpate. I threw that out of the window. He was head down. We were good to go. The next few weeks, I was about 39 weeks, maybe a little before that, and I started having prodromal labor. I kept referring to it as that and I’d have contractions all day long, all day long, and then I’d go to sleep at night and they’d go away. Nothing would happen. They were fine. They weren’t contractions where I’m like, “Oh man,” trying to breathe through or anything, but they were uncomfortable and they had changed from Braxton Hicks because I had Braxton Hicks throughout my pregnancy too. So they had changed. They were stronger and lower. It was just one of those things which messes with your head. You’re like, “Okay. Could this be it? No, probably not. I’m just going to go to sleep,” and when you wake up in the morning, it’s like, “Okay. No baby.” Weeks of that and it was just physically exhausting, mentally exhausting and then you get family who are like, “When’s the baby coming?” You’re like, “I don’t know.” You want to tune everyone out, but at the same time, you can still hear them and you get in your own head. That’s why now, with my own clients, I’m like, “Don’t tell anyone your due date. Just don’t. Tell them your birth month. Sometime in August. That is it,” because people mean well and they don’t necessarily mean to be pushy with it, but–Meagan: I know. Holly: –-it’s just one of those things where it doesn’t help. It really doesn’t. And then there was one weekend, I got up and I was 41 and 2 or 3 days. That weekend, I just told my husband, “We just need to go. I need to get out of the house. I need to go out and do things all day long. I don’t want to be here contracting.” He’s like, “Okay. All right. That’s fine.” So we took the girls and we went to my sister’s camper and we were there all day swimming and hanging out. I started having contractions like, “Oh man,” like twinging pains in my cervix. I’m like, “Okay. This is different. Maybe something’s happening. I’m going to be patient and keep myself busy.” I went to the bathroom later on around dinnertime. I had actually brought my daughter to the bathroom and I’m like, “Okay, I’ll go too.” I wiped and I’m like, “Oh my god, there’s some mucus plug on my toilet paper. Yes. Things are happening. Okay. Back to trusting my body and knowing that everything is happening at the right time.” I went out, of course, and told my husband. He was like, “Okay. Do we need to go?” I’m like, “No. We’re fine. We’re going to stay here. We’re going to finish our day then go home.” We went home and there were more contractions. It felt like there were more. Actually, a week before this– I forgot to mention this– my midwife was like, “Stop referring to it as prodromal labor. Think of it as early labor.” I’m like, “Okay. I’ve been in early labor for 2 weeks now. That’s not helping, but okay.” Meagan: Well, I will say this though. Sometimes when we tell our clients, “Oh, it looks like it’s prodromal labor,” they’re like, “So you’re telling me that I’m not laboring?” So maybe if we change it to early labor, it’s just– I don’t know. Like you said, it’s just a really long early labor. Holly: Yeah. I know. And it kind of helps. It’s all a process. It’s all doing something. It’s not for nothing. My body was doing– I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t in the right position where my body wanted to birth him, but he wasn’t finding the right position. Meagan: That’s a lot of the time the reason why prodromal labor happens because our uterus is brilliant and it’s trying to work and get our baby into the right spot before labor begins. Holly: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So much yes. So the next morning came around, I’m like, “Okay. I slept all night. That’s great, but nothing happened. Okay. What are we going to do today?” So we drove 45 minutes north to my dad’s house and my husband was like, “Do you think this is too far?” I’m like, “No, this is fine.” I thought this was going to be our last time at my dad’s house before we had a baby and then move. I’m like, “This is what I need.” So we spent the day on the lake swimming and just hanging out. I still had those contractions and twinging. I’m like, “Okay. This is good. We’re just having a nice time,” and then we went home and had dinner and went on a walk with our girls. I think it was that night, we had a couple of friends over. They were fixing something in my husband’s car. I went back inside and got my girls to sleep. I went to the bathroom and I noticed even more mucus plug that night. I was like, “Okay. Awesome. We’re on the right path still.” I went to sleep that night. Actually, early, early Monday– because that was a Sunday night– so early Monday morning at 3:00 AM, I was waking up to these stronger contractions and I was sleeping, but I was breathing through them. I could tell that it was more than what it was before. That morning comes and I told my husband. He actually had an interview for a new job that day virtually. He was like, “Well, I have to be at this interview.” I’m like, “Okay. It’s fine. We’re not going to have a baby yet.” I went throughout that day and I had these contractions where I was breathing through them. I was stopping what I was doing and shushing my girls and being like, “I need this moment to get through this, and then we’re good.” My midwives came over to check on me and my contractions stopped. They went away. I was like, “Okay. This is obviously my body telling me that I need alone time.” They left and my contractions started coming back again. My girls were around. They are 4 and 2. They were just nuts at this point. It’s kind of like my body knew to pull back for a while and then I actually went to Target with my mom Monday afternoon. We bought a rocking chair. I’m like, “I need a chair. This is going to happen soon. “ I wasn’t going to get one because we were moving and then I’m like, “Nope. We’re just going to do it.” We were walking around Target and I’m just having these contractions and stopping and she goes, “Are you sure we’re okay to be here?” I’m like, “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s not happening yet.” I’m just in denial. We get home and we do our nightly walks with the girls and I’m curb walking and just trying to get things to keep going and get stronger. I texted my midwife. I’m like, “Yeah, they’re like 10 minutes apart. Definitely stronger and lower and more painful, so yeah. We’ll see what happens later.” She’s like, “Okay. Whatever.”That night, we were outside and my daughter Hannah is my two-year-old. She’s like, “I’m ready to go to bed.” I’m like, “Okay. Let’s go.” We get her inside and my husband and my other daughter were outside playing still. I got her to bed and we just cuddled in her bed and got all of that oxytocin flowing. Then after that, my contractions were really starting to pick up and started to get a little closer together. They were about 8 minutes at this point. I started texting my husband. I’m like, “Where are you? Where’s Callie? You need to get her to bed.” I called my husband’s parents and I’m like, “Can you pray for me? I want you to pray over me now. I feel like something’s going to happen here soon and maybe tonight’s the night.” So just having that prayer really helped me calm down and really settle down. Then after that, my husband comes in with my daughter. She’s not wanting to go to sleep and keeps coming out of her room. I told him, I’m like, “Okay.” I don’t know what came over me, but I’m like, “You need to get her to bed right now. She cannot be out here anymore. I can’t do this.” He goes, “Okay, all right.” Finally, she goes to sleep and stays in her room. He’s in there with her until she falls asleep. So I’m like, “Okay. I’m going to make myself some toast and a snack and some tea and relax a little bit. Maybe just go to sleep.” So I’m in my kitchen and all of a sudden, this contraction just comes over my whole entire body. I’m like, “Oh man. This is it. This is the one. This is the start of it.” Finally, I took myself out of denial. I’m like, “Okay. Things are going to happen.” At the top of this contraction, I’m standing at the kitchen sink, and my water breaks. My husband is in my daughter’s room. I don’t have my phone on me and I’m just like, “Oh my god. Oh my god.”Meagan: Like, “Okay. This isn’t going to stop. I don’t think this is going to stop.” Holly: I know. I’m like, “This is real now. My water broke. This is actually happening.” It took my water breaking for me to actually believe it at this point. Thankfully, I was actually standing over a rug by my kitchen sink. I’m like, “Okay. This is great. I’m on a rug, but I want to move. I don’t want to walk down to my room.” I stand there for a minute and I’m like, “Oh my god. Oh my god. Jason!” My husband’s name is Jason. He doesn’t hear me of course because he’s in my daughter’s room and so then I finally waddle all down the hallway down to our room. I get my phone and I text him. I said, “My water broke.” He texts back, “Great!”I don’t know what he was thinking. I called my midwife and I was really calm. I was like, “Hey, my water broke and things are happening.” She goes, “Okay, great. How far apart are your contractions?” I’m like, “They’re probably 6-8 minutes, 8ish minutes I guess.” She goes, “Okay, well why don’t you time them for the next half hour and then text me and let me know how they are?” So I’m like, “Okay, I have some time.” Little did I know, she was actually texting my husband, “I’m on my way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She’s like, “I don’t want to miss your birth.” My husband finally comes out of the room. I wasn’t panicking but moreso excited and being like, “Okay. It’s happening. This is it. This is what we’ve been preparing for and waiting for.” At this point, I was just emotional every day about wanting to have my baby and not be pregnant anymore. He was like, “Okay, great. What do you need from me?” At this point, I’m already cleaning up our room, and not because we were having our midwives but mostly because I wanted our room to be prepared. I had everything set up like my twinkle lights and my affirmations, everything. So at that point, my contractions were 3-4 minutes apart. So as soon as my water broke, they really got going. I was really starting to labor through them now and breathing and moaning and doing all of the labor things. I found my ideal position of laboring. I was on my knees hunched over my bed because my bed was just on the floor at that point.My husband was telling me, “What can I do? How can I help?” With my first VBAC, I had this weird, sharp, dull pain. It was so hard to describe. It was on my right leg from my butt all the way down to my heel. It was awful. It never went away. I couldn’t find anything that made it comfortable, so I’m like, “Can you just massage my legs? I have that same pain this time through every contraction.” I think that was the only fearful thing. I didn’t want to have that this time and of course, I did. So I’m like, “Just massage my legs,” so he grabbed some [towels] and he was massaging my leg through every contraction in between and then he was doing counterpressure on my back. At this point, things were really picking up very fast. So my water broke at about 8:40ish and then my midwife and her assistant midwife and then another student got there at about 9:40 because she lived about 45 minutes away. So then they got there and I was really in labor land and just really in the thick of it and I just remember thinking, “Why am I not getting a break? These contractions just keep coming quicker and quicker and I’m not having as much time in between. Why am I not getting a break?”She goes, “Well, things are happening fast.” I’m like, “Okay, all right,” and still not thinking anything of it. I was in the on-my-knees position laboring which felt super great and my husband was doing counterpressure perfectly through every single contraction, bless his heart. At one point, I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got to get up. I’ve got to go pee. It’s been a while.” They’re like, “Okay, you’ve got to get up. Let’s go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet for a little bit. That’ll be good for labor, for dilating, for everything.”I’m like, “Okay. I can do that.” It took all my might to stand up because his head was in my pelvis and– I don’t know. Some women labor standing up and push and everything. I just cannot even imagine because I stood up and I just waddled. I’m like, “This is the weirdest feeling and so uncomfortable.” I got to the bathroom which is attached to our room thankfully. I got on the toilet and I remember being like, “I can’t pee.” In my previous labor, that same thing happened and they actually gave me a catheter and took out a ton of pee which eventually actually helped my baby come down. So this time that happened, I’m like, “Oh no, we’re going to have to put a catheter in.” She goes, “I don’t know. Just give it some time.” We were on the toilet for maybe 10 minutes and I had a couple of contractions that felt good this time. They didn’t hurt. They just felt like my body was– it’s so hard to describe and now, looking back, I’m like, “Okay. That was my body pushing.” So this time I really got to experience that my body was actually doing it. I wasn’t pushing. I wasn’t doing anything. These contractions were just pushing my baby out. She was like, “Why don’t you just put your hand down there and just see if you can feel baby?” To my surprise, I’m like, “Oh my god. His head was maybe a knuckle deep.” I’m sorry if that’s too much information. But he was so close. He was right there. I’m like, “Oh my god. I’m doing it. My body is doing it. He’s doing it. We’re so close.” I had another very light contraction that didn’t feel like it did anything at all. I’m like, “I don’t know what that was, but I’m sure it was my body just getting a little bit of a break.” Still, at that point, I didn’t think I was about to birth him, but another contraction came and I put my hand down. This contraction came on so suddenly and my body just was pushing. All of a sudden, I felt my baby’s head emerge. My hand was over the top of his head. I was still on the toilet and I was like, “Oh my god. He’s coming right now. I need to get off of this toilet. He cannot be born into the toilet. That cannot happen.” My midwife was in front of me beside the toilet and my husband was behind me. He was doing the counterpressure, so I told him, “You have to lift me up.” He was like, “Okay. Here’s a stool back here.” I’m like, “No, I can’t sit on a stool right now. You just need to hold me. He’s coming. He’s coming right now.” I told my midwife, “You have to catch him.” Our bathroom is tile. I’m like, “He can’t hit the floor.” I mean, this is all coming out super quickly at this point. Things were just happening fast. So then his head was born and then my body stopped, and then it started contracting again and his whole body just came out. My midwife swooped him up and it was very quick. She brought him right up to my chest and he was right there with me. It was just like, “Oh my god.” I couldn’t believe how quickly he came out and how my body had done so much work at that point. At first, he wasn’t crying. He was actually very pale and floppy. It gives you a little bit of a panic. I’m calling out to him. I’m saying his name like, “Your mom’s here. We’re here. We love you.” Yeah. And then I saw one of the midwives give the Ambu bag to my midwife because it had been about a minute at that point and he hadn’t quite pinked up and cried yet. We were just kind of giving him the time he needed. In my heart, I knew that he would be okay. I knew that he just needed some time and that he just came out so quickly. He was stunned. So just over a minute came and he started crying. They come and they’re born and you’re like, “Oh my god,” like, yes but then that first cry, and when they make that face and you’re like, “Oh my god. Okay. He’s here. We did it. Everything’s okay.” It was just amazing how most of the time at a hospital if that were to happen– I say most of the time, but not always– they want to help them breathe. They want to suction them. They want to bag them. They want to do all of these things to help them breathe and we really just gave him that time that he needed to come into his body and be there with us. It wasn’t traumatic for us at all. I think if someone would have put a bag on him or suctioned him, that would have been more traumatic than this experience. So he came to and he got pink and started crying. We were just holding him and oh my gosh. It was a different feeling than my first VBAC. I truly believed in my body’s ability and my baby. We prayed so much about having our baby at home and we just felt so safe. My husband was there behind me. He was crying and I was crying. Everyone was crying at this point. My midwife and I were just so close. She is one of my really good friends too so it just made it that much more special. Meagan: Such an intimate time and everyone was probably feeling all of the things. That’s how it was at my birth too. Everyone’s watched you work so hard and go through all of this. Now you’re here. You just did it so the emotions are high. Holly: Oh yeah. I just remember, they were like, “Do you want to sit down on the floor and get comfortable?” I’m like, “No. I just want to go to my bed.” “Are you sure? You just had a baby.” “I know. I just want to go to my bed. That’s where I want to be.” That was a big reason why I wanted to birth at home. I just wanted to be in my bed. So I got in my bed. Another thing that we had actually thought near the end of my pregnancy was that there could have been a hiding twin where you hear with babies that are either really big or maybe there is a twin in there or something. I had a lot of fluid and he took up the space that he really wanted, so I started having these cramps again and she goes, “Do you mind if I actually listen?” No, I don’t think she actually listened, but then when she felt it was like, “No, it’s the placenta.” The clot behind the placenta was the hard spot we were feeling because my placenta was anterior. She goes, “Okay. I don’t think there’s another baby.” I’m like, “Oh god. I hope not. I’m not having another baby.” But no. Meagan: That would be a surprise. Holly: I know. I’m like, “No. That’s not going to happen.” I don’t know if that was intuitively or I just didn’t want it to happen, but I’m like, “No.” And so about a half hour went by and then I was able to birth my placenta. I had my midwife assist me with it a little bit just because I hadn’t done that with my second and because at the hospital, they managed it which actually wasn’t what I wanted either so I didn’t have that experience of naturally birthing my placenta yet, so I was just like, “Can I just have your assistance?” and she helped me with that. It came out perfectly and it was really cool because being a placenta encapsulator, I’m like, “I really want to assess and look at my own placenta,” and so I was able to do that. It was perfect. It looked great. My amniotic sac was just huge. I mean, you could just tell I had lots of water in there. He was actually only 7 pounds, 12 ounces so he was my smallest baby. But yeah. My first was 7 pounds, 15 ounces and then my second with my VBAC was 8 pounds, 9 ounces. So not a huge difference, super small, but I’m like, “Wow.” My husband and I had a bet that he would name him if he was under 7 pounds and I would name him if he was over 8 pounds. I’m like, “He’s for sure going to be over 8 pounds. I’ve got this.” No, he won that one but I actually still named him. Sarah: That’s an interesting way to choose who gets to pick the name. Holly: I know. And really, I knew that either way it goes, I still want the name that I want and he loved the name that I picked too. I’m like, “Okay, fine.” Since we couldn’t agree on it, we made a bet. Meagan: I love that. That’s so fun. Holly: Yeah. It was just such a good experience and it healed my first birth. It healed my second birth and it was just the most redemptive, healing birth I could ask for. It was the cherry on top of my birth experiences really. It was just amazing how I went from my C-section and then I went to my home birth transfer to the hospital but still had my VBAC and then had my VBAC at home on my terms and in my own space with the people that I chose to be there. Meagan: Yeah. You’ve kind of experienced a whole slew of outcomes which is fun and I’m assuming it will help you in your doula career too if you do have a home birth transfer client, you can say, “I get it. I’ve been here. This is what we’re going to do when we get there,” and help them along the way. Holly: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s really shaped me into the person that I am today with my birth work. Meagan: Yes. Well, huge congrats. Holly: Thank you. Sarah: I think the most beautiful part of your story is your ability to really trust your body and I think a lot of moms underestimate that mindset concept. You worked on it. Meagan: It does. Holly: Yeah. It makes a huge difference. With my second, I tried, but there was still a part of me that was holding onto the what-ifs and I think that’s partly due to when you have a C-section, you get that doubt put into you and I didn’t even labor with my first. We went straight to a C-section, so it was like a first baby all over again and not even knowing what to expect at all even though I had a baby already. Sarah: Yeah. I think that’s one of the harder things to really try to separate our births and especially as people that have had Cesareans to really dislocate that experience from our VBACs moving forward. Holly: Yes. Every birth is so different. Even within the same woman, your births can be so, so different. Babies are so different. It’s amazing. It can be so much of the same, but so, so different. I went from a 36-hour labor and birth to 2 hours and 10 minutes from start to finish. Well, early labor was weeks, but I don’t count that. My water broke and then 2 hours and 10 minutes later, he was born. It was just so fast. It wasn’t too fast where I couldn’t process it because I’m like, “As long as it’s under 12 hours, I’ll be happy.” It was just so fast. Meagan: I would love to know if there are any suggestions you would give for our listeners on getting to that place with your mindset. What tips would you suggest for getting into that mindset because it can be really, really hard? Holly: Yes. One aspect of it is you look at social media and if you are following accounts that aren’t giving you positive, good information, I think that can be really hard. For me in the beginning, I started unfollowing all of these accounts that were not good for me and just started following accounts that were sharing positive birth stories and videos and all of the good things that I needed to fill my mind with. It made a really big difference for me. I watched birth videos with my daughters every day because at first, I really wanted them there, but they were both sleeping and that’s what I needed in the end. But yeah. I think following accounts that give you good information that is positive, watching birth videos that have positive outcomes, and watching things and listening to the things about the birth that you want. I think that just makes a huge difference and helps your mindset. Meagan: I love that. Just jumping right into that space and not allowing any of the other things into that space, yeah. Love it. Holly: Just connecting with other women and that can be huge too. I’m a very faithful person and we prayed a lot during this pregnancy and through our birth. That’s something that really helped me and just surrendering that I wanted to be in control of everything but surrendering that control too was huge. Meagan: That’s awesome. I love it.  I love it so much. I love your picture. I can’t wait for everyone to see it. If you’re listening to it today, head over to our Instagram or Facebook and look at this incredible picture of her holding this sweet, little baby. Oh, it’s beautiful. It is so beautiful. So thank you so much for sharing. Holly: Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I listen to your guys’ podcasts all through my second pregnancy and it made such a big difference to me to hear other women’s stories and different stories. It was so helpful to me, so thank you. Meagan: Yes. That’s one of my favorite things. We were talking about it in the beginning. We love having people on that have listened through their whole pregnancy. They’re like, “All of these stories have changed my life. Now I’m going to share my story to help someone change theirs.” I love it so much. Thank you again. Congrats. Sarah, thank you so much for being with us again. So fun and Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year. It’s kind of weird to say that right now because it’s October as we are recording. Holly: It’ll be here sooner than we know. Meagan: It will be here so soon. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.   Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

It’s so hard to believe that 2022 is coming to a close. Today is our last episode of the year! We have had so many inspiring guests on the podcast in 2022 and are so thankful to all of our listeners. No topic is off-limits in today’s Q&A episode. Dr. Christine Sterling is a board-certified OBGYN and founder of Sterling Parents. Meagan is here today asking Dr. Sterling questions sent in by our listeners. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of interviewing multiple providers, researching evidence-based information, and paying attention to how YOU feel about their responses! Additional LinksDr. Sterling’s Instagram: @drsterlingobgynSterling ParentsBebo Mia’s WebinarHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull Transcript Meagan: Turn your love of babies and bellies into cash. If you love babies and bellies and want to provide care and support to families, then Bebo Mia’s webinar is the right place for you. Get answers to those burning questions like how to be the voice you wish you had at your birth and how babies and families can be supported by doulas. Learn all about the different kinds of doulas. You can work in fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, or just enjoy working with those squishy babies. Supporting families by becoming a birth worker, aka doula, is perhaps an option that hasn’t even crossed your mind. That’s why we want you to join this webinar. You can have great earning potential while doing something you love. Bebo Mia is the one-stop shop for education, community, and mentorship. Reserve your spot today at bebomia.com/freewebinar. Meagan: Hello, hello. You guys, this is our last episode of the year. 2022 has come and gone and I cannot believe it. So many things have changed this year as you know. Julie has left the company and I’ve been solo for a little bit. That was a big, big change for us, but I am doing one of our first, I should say one of my first, episodes with a birth professional Dr. Christine Sterling. I cannot wait for this episode to be aired because it’s going to be amazing. Dr. Sterling is a board-certified OBGYN and a founder of Sterling Parents which is a membership that provides the heart-felt support, expert advice, and timeless wisdom people deserve as they grow their families. After becoming a mother herself, she discovered first-hand how little support Western medicine offers to women moving through the life-altering transition into motherhood. Amen to that. It makes me sad. It breaks my heart how little support there is. So now as a mom, she is on a mission and dedicated to ensuring women get the maternal care and support they deserve. Dr. Sterling has developed a signature body, mind, and heart model of care combining cutting-edge science and ancient wisdom with her years of patient care, thousands of births, and long-standing meditation practice. So, Dr. Sterling, we are so happy that you’re here. I am so happy. I still say we. We as in The VBAC Link. I don’t know if you know, but I used to have a partner named Julie. We had been together for years and years and she has just recently left, so I just can’t get out of the ‘I’ and the ‘we’. I’m always going to be a ‘we’. Dr. Sterling: You know what? In medicine, we always talk about the ‘we’ when you are part of a team, so I will oftentimes always use the ‘we’. Meagan: Yes, yes. Thank you so much. Is there anything else that you would like to share that I did not cover, all of the amazing things that you do? Dr. Sterling: I think we will get all into it, but that is the long and short of it. Meagan: The long and short of it. There’s so much because you are so amazing. Okay well then, we will just dive right in. Dr. Sterling: Let’s do it. Meagan: As we were getting questions, a lot of people asked very similar questions. One of the number one questions that people are asking is how do you truly advocate for yourself? What is the best way to advocate for yourself? As a VBAC mom, you can feel very much against the world when you are entering a birth space, and sometimes when you are entering a birth space where there’s an on-call provider like you said, when you work in a team and you don’t know that person and you haven’t really established the relationship of them knowing what you want, it can be hard and with different nurses and all the things. So what would you say is one of the best ways to advocate for yourself as a patient? Dr. Sterling: Yeah, so I think that sometimes the word ‘advocate’ can sometimes put a lot of pressure onto the individual that, “I need to advocate.” Meagan: “I need to be strong.” Dr. Sterling: Yes, exactly and it feels like this really heavy weight. There’s a mental weight to this, “I have to advocate to get what I need.” I completely understand where that comes from especially when you are wanting a VBAC. It can feel like there are policies going against you and that people aren’t working with you, so I think that the first thing is to hopefully get into a therapeutic relationship with a midwife, a doctor, or a practice of doctors in which there is a collaborative relationship in which advocating isn’t so heavy. It’s a conversation. It is a discussion that you are having with each other. For me, I think that oftentimes physicians and patients are communicating to each other on different levels. We are not really understanding where the other party is coming from and we don’t understand what’s the tape that’s playing in their mind. As a patient, you may be playing this tape of, “They’re trying to get me to have a C-section and the odds are against me and I’ve got to fight my way through it.” And as a physician, you have a whole other tape playing. One of the things I encourage with my members is really, I share the behind the scenes and the thought process that is going on for their OBGYN when they’re having that conversation so that the patient can show up with a perspective and in the space that creates that really strong, collaborative environment. I can go through some of the things that I typically talk to my members about with that, but I like to tell my members, “This is not about you having to advocate so hard for yourself, but rather to invite your provider into a collaborative relationship with you and there are ways that individuals can do that.” I want to caveat that with I wish that it wasn’t something that patients had to do so much. I wish it was something that as physicians, we showed up in that space. A lot of physicians do, but not everybody does. I like to think of it as it’s not the problem of each healthcare provider being, “Oh, you’re bad and you should be showing up and collaborating with patients better.” It is a system problem very much. We have burnt-out physicians. We have hospitals that are coming down on them so we have a system that does not foster a collaborative relationship between patients and there are things that individual patients can do to invite their providers to have a more collaborative relationship. I wish patients didn’t have to do that, but I do think that it can be beneficial. Meagan: For sure. I think sometimes too as a patient coming in, we do know that our providers are burning out a lot of the time. They don’t have a ton of time, so you have a lot that you want to bring to the table, but at the same time, you hold back and restrict that because you don’t want to drill your provider with a million questions. Sometimes the provider, although they really want to answer, they don’t have time to have that conversation. Dr. Sterling: 100% yes. Meagan: It’s not even that they don’t want to, it’s that they can’t because they are seeing 60 patients that day. Dr. Sterling: Oh trust me, we would much rather, much rather—when physicians leave and stop taking insurance and go and do a private practice that is just cash-based, which that’s how some physicians solve the burnout issue is, “You know what? I’m exiting the insurance realm,” because what do they do? They have longer appointments with their patients. They take fewer appointments. That’s what we want. You only want to see 10 patients a day and give each patient 45 minutes. 100%. But you can’t if you take insurance. We are locked into this system that makes us not able to have the type of therapeutic relationship with our patients that all of us at our core want. Some of us have awakened to the fact that the patients aren’t the problem, the system is the problem. Some physicians will say, “Oh, the patient Is asking too many questions and I’m annoyed at the appointment.” But they’re not saying, “You’re not annoyed at the patient,” but that patient was paying whatever amount of money for that appointment and if you had a whole hour with them, you would be so happy to show up and educate. Meagan: Yes, yes. Well then and sometimes too on the patient side of things, we can see it as, “Oh, well my doctor is not supportive. My provider is not supportive because they don’t even want to listen to me or they are very quick to answer.” From a VBAC standpoint, a lot of the time when we’re coming into these providers to ask them these questions, we really want a heartfelt answer. Dr. Sterling: Of course you do. Meagan: We don’t just want to hear ‘yes’ or ‘no’,  so that’s another one of the questions that a lot of people have asked is what are some of the signs or red flags I should be watching out for that maybe my provider although probably wonderful, may not be the best provider for me or for that patient, right? How can someone decipher through that and try to understand that that provider doesn’t have a lot of time as well? There’s this happy medium. What are some red flags or signs that you would say, “That might not be a good provider for you”? Dr. Sterling: Perfect, so there are two main issues here. One, how do we have a conversation about VBAC when we have so little time? I want to address that. The first question though is, what are the red flags? How do you know if you have the right provider to support you in having a VBAC? This is actually really, really simple and very easy to do. What you’re going to do is you’re going to go to your provider and you’re going to say, “What do you think about VBAC?” You’re going to be quiet. You’re not going to lead them to that you want a VBAC. Nothing. And just let them talk. If you have a provider who is like, “You know, VBACs makes me really nervous. I’ll do them but they make me really nervous and I’ve been burned. I’ve had some bad experiences.” Or if you have someone who’s like, “I love VBAC. When I get a pregnant person who has a quote-on-quote ‘successful VBAC’, it makes me happy. It makes my day.” Those are very different people, right? It’s not that somebody who has that more negative view of VBAC can’t provide you with appropriate medical care, but it’s that whole extra level of your experience. Do you know what I mean? If you are going for a VBAC and you feel like your provider already has the scalpel in your hand, it puts extra stress and extra pressure on you to advocate for yourself whereas the person who is in a relationship with someone who loves a VBAC is like, “We’re doing it together. We’re collaborating.” Also, when that provider who loves VBAC and who is gungho with you says, “You know what? We’ve got to call it. Let’s do it.” You come to that from a place of, “You know what? I trust this person. I know she wanted this for me and I trust that what she’s telling me right now that I really do need—” Meagan: It is best. Dr. Sterling: It is best. That’s why I think you just ask a question. Stay very quiet. Don’t let them know how you feel about VBAC or that you want a VBAC and you just let them tell you their perspective. Both providers can provide excellent medical care, but you want to be in an environment with someone who’s into it and who’s excited about VBAC. Meagan: Yeah, who’s just going to create that extra level of experience because like you said, this provider over here may be more hesitant and is quote-on-quote going to let you ‘try’ but may not have that extra oomph, energy, and positivity in your experience but you still might get your VBAC with that provider. That doesn’t mean that they’re not totally unsupportive. We talk about tolerance and stuff like that, but yeah. This other provider over here may be the perfect provider for your experience. Dr. Sterling: Exactly. There are really great physicians who have attempted VBACs themselves and had bad experiences. The reality is that physicians are human beings and we bring our experiences to the table. Too, ideally, we would maybe do a little less than that but that’s just the reality of human beings. We are bringing our experiences to the table. If we’ve been burned, it can be hard to work past that. Meagan: Well and just like you were saying at the beginning, that provider might be playing a different tape in their head and that was based on their experience, right? Okay, I love that. Anything else you want to touch on with that? Dr. Sterling: Oh, so in terms of the VBAC, how do you have this conversation with your provider about VBAC? I want us to look at having the conversation about VBAC over an entire pregnancy. Please do not try to fit it in—it is okay to start talking about VBAC at maybe not your first appointment because there’s so much going on with all of that, but it’s okay to start talking about it in the first trimester. I’m a big proponent of that. I’m a big proponent of and I believe that a lot of pregnant people are carrying around this mental weight of uncertainty and unanswered questions and concerns and worries. For me, part of having the VBAC discussion early is let’s start relieving some of that weight. So that’s really important is if it’s on your mind and if your provider is saying, “You know, we’ll talk about that closer,” just say, “You know what? I get it. I’m so far away from my VBAC. I totally get it but it’s on my mind and I think that it would really help with my stress levels and with my quality of life if I can start having some of these questions answered now so I don’t have to carry them around for my whole pregnancy.” Meagan: Right, yeah. Something that one of our followers asked was about—I’m sure you’ve heard of it—bait and switch where they seem supportive and then at that last minute where you really start talking about it, they kind of shift their gears. Sometimes I feel like if we can do what you said and start talking about it in the first trimester then we may recognize earlier on whether that provider and you are a good match or not because the bait and switch a lot of times feels like it comes at the end where they’re like, “Yeah. Yeah, we’re supportive,” but they’re never having that full conversation. There are so many questions but like you said, there’s a whole pregnancy so we can keep asking these questions at each visit taking a little time that a provider does have and having that to avoid that final trimester, the last few weeks, feeling like your provider just switched on you. So I don’t know if there’s anything that you want to talk about with bait and switch. It seems very negative to talk about people doing a bait and switch but it does happen where providers shift their gears and it sucks to be in that spot at the end. Dr. Sterling: Yeah, so the parting line of the OBGYNS—if you’re in the United States and you’re an OBGYN, ACOG encourages VBAC. We want people to VBAC. We want people to VBAC. So what it often is is that you’re kind of getting the parting line at the beginning of pregnancy because it’s far off and it’s like, “Yeah, yeah. We support VBAC. You can do a VBAC,” whatever. And then push comes to shove and you do understand that “Oh, this provider has some more nuance to their support for VBAC.” You know? I think it’s again, it is about talking to them about and asking very—sometimes you want to hear what you want to hear. Sometimes we have to ask the hard questions and ask in a non-leading way because human beings and all of us to some degree are people pleasers. It’s just a natural human behavior thing. So if you can just say, if you can ask more-detailed questions like, “Is there anything about me and what happened to me last time and my personal, medical, and obstetric history that makes you more nervous or reticent to recommending a VBAC?”Understanding that what you’re getting at there is yes, you’re getting at their medical assessment of what kind of candidate you are for a trial of labor after a C-section, but also, you’re getting an idea of what are they going to bring up at the end of pregnancy? Is there anything that I can address now? And really, it is okay to evaluate your provider as you move through and make sure that you are on the same page. Meagan: Yeah, for sure. I love that. I love that question. Write that down, listeners. Write that down. Okay, so one of the questions is, of the VBACs that you have seen, what are some of the things that have stood out to you about TOLAC and about people who go for a VBAC? Is there anything good and bad that you’re like, “Okay, this is something that stood out to me in a positive way or this is something that I never knew about and then I saw this and now I’m watching for this for the future births”? Dr. Sterling: Yeah, so I talk about this thing with my members all of the time. The thing that I have found to be most important when we’re thinking about the mode of birth is to understand that the most important thing is that regardless if you end up with a repeat C-section or you end up with a successful vaginal birth after a C-section, what we want is somebody who had as empowering of an experience as possible. Hopefully, it was also a beautiful, empowering experience. You can have a beautiful birth experience by having a C-section and have it with a vaginal birth. What I have my members do is have them come up with their birth values. We usually stick to three or five. What are your birth values? And understand the why behind it. “I want a vaginal birth because—” what’s my why? And underneath that, there’s oftentimes some really good stuff, and if you can bring that to the surface, those values. “I want to feel present in my birth. I want to feel that I have autonomy over my body.” It's different for everybody, but these values come up and what’s important is that we talk about how you can honor those values and those deep desires regardless of the mode of birth so that if we set up, “I want a vaginal birth and that is the success for me and if I don’t get that, I have failed. The birth has failed” if you can fail at giving birth. What we want to do is to work towards a vaginal birth while also acknowledging that at the core, even if the vaginal birth doesn’t happen, we want these values to be honored. Let’s talk through how we can honor these values in a C-section. What can we do to prepare you for a C-section that is beautiful and I will tell you, some of the births that really stick out in my mind from experiences I’ve had with patients were the most beautiful belly births. I mean, really beautiful experiences and experiences that still bring tears to my eyes. I think a lot of times we act like the only time birth can be beautiful is if it’s vaginal. Meagan: Is if it’s vaginal, yeah. It’s not true. Dr. Sterling: It’s not true. Oh my gosh. The births actually that I think about the most in terms of a beautiful birth experience was a belly birth. That was me as a provider. That’s not me as my personal birth experiences but they can be really, really beautiful birth experiences. Meagan: Yeah, with my second it was undesired. I didn’t want a second Cesarean, but it was a beautiful experience and I will cherish it forever. It helped me grow and it helped me heal from my first one too. Okay, I love that. The next question is about induction and VBAC. At what weeks would you suggest induction for VBAC in general and I know further down in the questions there is when would you suggest induction for VBAC with gestational diabetes? Maybe they’re the same. Maybe they differ, but yeah. That’s one of the questions. Induction and VBAC are also controversial depending on the provider. Dr. Sterling: So the issue with induction with VBAC is that two things are true. This is the part that really trips people up. We have some data that an induction at 39-40 weeks with a VBAC may increase your chances of a vaginal delivery. We also have data that people who go into labor on their own have a higher chance of having a VBAC with a trial of labor so both things are true. If we had a crystal ball and knew that you were going into labor on your due date with a VBAC, we would not induce you before that because that would be best for you to go into labor on your own. However, if we had a crystal ball and we knew that you were not going to go into labor and you would need to be induced at 41 weeks and 5 days, we would have wished that we had induced you at 39 weeks. There is no right answer here. I’m a huge believer in membrane sweeps for people who really want a vaginal birth. Ideally, around 39 weeks, I’ve had many membrane sweeps myself. They are not necessarily the most pleasant experience. Meagan: And sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. Dr. Sterling: Sometimes they don’t. So membrane sweeps reduce the chance that you will need a formal induction of labor. They are kind of considered a method of induction so we usually don’t do them too early. They reduce the chance that you will need a formal induction of labor. On average, they are going to shorten your pregnancy by about four days. They don’t always work to put you into labor, but with a VBAC, we also want to think about how much medication we have to give you if we do need to induce you. We would like to reduce the amount of medication we give you so that may help your cervix just be a little bit more ripe, ready, and primed for labor. We don’t have data to support this so that’s why I’m saying this. It may be helpful to reduce the amount of Pitocin we need to use for your induction. That’s why I’m a big proponent of membrane sweeps in the right patient and with informed consent. That is very, very critical because unfortunately, that does not always happen and that’s absolutely not acceptable for someone to undergo a membrane sweep without informed consent. Meagan: Right, going over anything. Yeah, I love that. Like you said, it’s so hard because there’s no crystal ball. You have to go through and look at where you’re at and what’s best for you and your situation. Another question about induction is, are there any methods you will or will not use? We do know through the history of Cesarean, there are certain things like Cytotec that we really don’t use but then there are random providers out there who you will hear give Cytotec and things like that. Dr. Sterling: And your other question about gestational diabetes, when you are induced for gestational diabetes depends on how well your glucose is being controlled, if it’s requiring medications, and oftentimes, your provider is going to prioritize the recommendations for your gestational diabetes induction especially if you are on insulin or say your fasting glucose is not where we want it because with some types of gestational diabetes and with certain levels of control, there is that increased risk of stillbirth, that is typically where they will put the priority. So if your glucose is poorly controlled, even if it might be the best thing for your potential VBAC to be induced at 38 weeks, if you have poorly controlled glucose and we are looking at an increased risk of stillbirth because gestational diabetes is mostly a risk when the glucose isn’t well-controlled, then your provider is going to say, “Yeah. It might not be the best thing for a VBAC situation,” but for the health of the pregnancy, this is going to be our recommendation. I just wanted to answer the gestational diabetes question. Meagan: Yes, so let’s go back into induction methods and what you’ve seen. We talked a little bit about membrane sweeping and I am going to quickly run. My daughter is sick and screaming for me so keep talking. I’m going to block my screen out for a second and I’ll be right back, but if you want to talk about induction methods. And maybe too, what you’ve seen work better and maybe also where the cervix is or not. Does that make sense? If you’re not dilated at all, how can you induce and all of those things? Dr. Sterling: There is a bit of a question mark when it comes to induction with a trial of labor after a C-section. There are medications that most OBGYNS are not going to use. Cytotec is one of those medications that when we are inducing labor at term, we don’t like to use because there is some data that it has a higher risk of uterine rupture which is when the scar of the uterus breaks open. We really, really want to do everything we can to avoid that. That’s the complication that we are most concerned about with  We really, really want to do everything we can to avoid that. That’s the complication that we are most concerned about with a TOLAC. Some providers won’t do any kind of medication for an induction. They’ll only do mechanical, so membrane sweeping, the Foley balloon or a Cook balloon. They’ll do ruptured membranes, but once it comes to any medication, that will be a hard stop for them. The reason why some providers don’t use Pitocin is that we don’t have enough data to say that this level of Pitocin is a-okay but once you get to this level, that’s where we see the increased risk. We know that using Pitocin can increase the risk of rupture, but we don’t know where the line is. So some providers are like, “Okay. In that setting with that doubt, I’m just going to say no to Pitocin altogether,” whereas other providers will say, “You know what? We will use a lower dose protocol for our people who are undergoing a trial of labor and inform the that we are going to use Pitocin.” It does slightly increase the risk of rupture, but it’s not unreasonable to use Pitocin. It isn’t, but the person has to be informed that this may increase the risk of rupture. We’re going to use a lower-risk protocol to try to mitigate that risk, but we don’t actually have the data to say, “This amount is okay. This amount isn’t okay.” And so this is where it comes to how different providers land when there’s nuance and when there’s gray. Some providers are going land in the, “No. I don’t want to do anything that could increase your risk of rupture,” and other providers are saying, “Hey, if you’re aware of this risk and you’re okay with it, I’m okay doing Pitocin.” It just depends. Meagan: Yeah. I know it’s such a hard one because there are different providers. With my second, I was begging for Pitocin. First of all, who begs for Pitocin? Not normal, not a lot of people, but I was begging for it. He was like, “No, no, no, no,” but then I was a doula and I started working and I was like, “Wait. There are all of these providers doing Pitocin, but then there are also providers that won’t.” It’s like you said, “Okay, I’ll a Foley or a Cook, or I’ll break your water. And sometimes I’ll use Pitocin if we have an IUPC and we can monitor the strength.” So it’s just so hard. Again, it’s one of those questions where there are two answers. Dr. Sterling: That’s the thing is that there are some things in medicine and some things in obstetrics where you will get clear answers. That’s always really comforting as a patient to be like, “Oh. Everybody agrees on this. Okay. I feel comfortable.” But then when you get to the situations where there is a gray zone and there is nuance and you see some providers doing something this way. Where I trained, they gave Pitocin for vaginal births. That was my standard practice. I left residency and I joined a practice and they were like, “No. We as a group do not do Pitocin for TOLAC.” And so it was like, “Oh, okay. This is different.” Patients would ask me what my perspective is and I’m like, “My perspective is that I’m used to doing this and I think that it can be done safely, but I’m part of a practice where that is a no-go.” Meagan: That is restricted. Dr. Sterling: We’re restricted. So you know, one physician could feel a certain way about what they do but then be in a setting where this is not how it’s done. Meagan: And that’s hard too because a lot of time, they would be viewed as unsupportive, but it’s actually not that they're unsupportive but that they're restricted. From a patient’s point of view, we have to remember that sometimes it’s not that the provider doesn’t want to, it’s that they can’t within the practice that they’re in. And again, that’s where it’s like, “Okay, well maybe that practice isn’t the right practice for you.” Dr. Sterling: Exactly. Even if you were with me and you loved me, you’re like, “I love Dr. Sterling. We get along so well,” but her practice and some physicians are their own bosses. A lot of physicians are employed and they are dealing with an employed physician that has a group that says, “We don’t do this and you are an employee and not an owner of the practice.” Then you’re like, “I love her, but she can’t offer me Pitocin so I may have to go with someone else, and maybe I don’t have the rapport that I had.” So it’s unfortunately with physicians, oftentimes you’re compromising on something. The question is what do I need? What are my non-negotiables within the practice? Stay firm on those. Your non-negotiables are your non-negotiables. Be clear. Some people may say, “You know what? I don’t like that they don’t offer Pitocin but the rapport is more important to me.” Other people may say, “You know what? I need to go somewhere that’s willing to induce me if that’s what I need with Pitocin.” Meagan: Yeah, with my third, I really wanted a VBAC again and I had a super supportive provider. He was top-notch supportive and known in Utah as one of the most supportive providers, but in the end and at the end of things, I was just feeling like I shouldn’t be there. Everyone was like, “Why? You have the most supportive provider,” and I’m like, “Because I know that he’s going to be restricted. I don’t want to have that restriction although there are other providers who just don’t have restrictions but not as many,” so I changed. I had a VBAC after two Cesareans and it was beautiful and amazing. Maybe I would have with that provider but I don’t know knowing my birth story. I think he would have been cut off. He wouldn’t have wanted to but he would have been cut off. Okay, so one of the questions was is a C-section always safer than a vacuum or a forceps delivery? So if you’re coming to the point where you’re pushing and you’re about to get this VBAC and you’re so close, but you might need an extra little bit of assistance, do you feel like a Cesarean is quote-on-quote “safer” or a better route than those other assisted delivery methods? Again, everybody has a different perspective and their history of using these things might come into play. But just share some of your thoughts. Dr: Sterling: You can’t make a blanket statement that a Cesarean is always safer than a vacuum delivery or a vacuum is always better than a Cesarean. It really is each individual situation. What I can tell you is that if the vacuum is successful, if the forceps are successful and you have a vaginal birth and baby is okay and you’re okay, then yeah. That was a better decision than going for a C-section in the second stage of labor. C-sections in the second stage of labor are not risk-free. As we know, there are a lot of risks to that too. The thing that becomes the more unsafe situation is when you have a failed vacuum or a failed forceps and then you go to a C-section. Meagan: That’s what I was going to ask. Dr. Sterling: That situation, we want to avoid because that’s the highest risk situation. Failed vacuum, failed forceps, then go to a C-section. If we knew that was going to happen, it would have been way better to go straight to a C-section than to attempt a vacuum. So I think that what I would want if I was in that situation, I was going through a trial of labor and my provider offered me a forceps or a vacuum. I would want to know their confidence level with that.  I would not want to be the one pushing, “Can we try a vacuum? Can we try a forceps?” I would want the other person on the end of the table saying, “I think we’ve got this. I think if I just put a vacuum on real quick, we’re going to pop that baby out and we’re going to be good. We’re going to have a baby.” I want that level of confidence. I want somebody who’s like, “Let’s do this. I have no problem. I think we’ve got it.” I do not want somebody who’s like, “Mmm, we could.” Meagan: We could, we could. Dr. Sterling: If it was me at the other end of the table, somebody saying, “We could,” is like are you feeling good about this? Meagan: Are you confident? Dr. Sterling: Yeah, when you’re about to do a vacuum, I’ve never done forceps. On the West coast, very few people do forceps. On the East coast, a lot more people are still doing forceps. West coast, we have them on labor and delivery, but not something that we did. It was some reasons for that and some of it is medically legal, just the lawsuits from forceps, departments are like, “We don’t do forceps anymore. We’re not doing that.” There are patients where I’ve been like, “Let’s do a vacuum. I think with a few pulls, this baby’s going to come out,” and then there are vacuums where it’s like, “Listen, I could do this. There’s a shot,” but I didn’t feel really good about it and in that setting, I was always super honest with patients that if they were highly, highly motivated for that vaginal birth, they might be willing to take that risk of, “I’m thinking there’s a 50/50 shot here,” but me personally, I would want a provider to feel really good that it’s going to work. Meagan: It’s going to be [inaudible]. Yeah. That makes sense. Another question, we’re just drilling out the questions here. This person had felt during her VBAC, and she did have a VBAC, but she felt burning sensations around her previous incision. She wants to know what that could have been. Could it have been scar tissue? Could it have just been that baby was passing through and stretching out that weakened uterine spot? I will admit, I had that a couple of times with my VBAC where it felt like a muscle being strained. Dr. Sterling: That’s how my first labor felt was burning— Meagan: In your abdominal cavity. Dr. Sterling: Yep and I’ve had other patients where that’s how they described contractions was this burning, stretching pain. My thought is that I can’t answer that question specifically, but that could have nothing to do with the fact that you had a scar in you because that was my first labor experience. It felt like that, but then with my other labor experiences, the contraction pain felt different. People experience contraction pain differently and depending on the baby. My contractions when I had a baby who was sunny-side up when he was occiput posterior, they felt different than the contractions that I had with my other kids. It could have something to do with the scar, but also, it could just have been how your contractions felt. Meagan: Yeah, yeah. Mine seemed like it was a variant. Right before I started pushing. Maybe baby was just descending and the wider part was stretching. I don’t even know. I don’t know the details as far as her labor. She just said that she had it. Could it have been scar tissue or what could it have been? Dr. Sterling: It’s always so difficult to point out what the cause is of a bodily sensation, but I think that there are a lot of different possibilities of what it could be. Some of them are related to a scar and some of them have nothing to do with a scar. Meagan: Yeah. There was another one in regard to talking uterine scar and VBAC. She said that after her first C-section, she was told that the lower uterine segment was thinner, so she was saying, “Could I still VBAC? Is this a total hard no, I absolutely shouldn’t VBAC?” What are your thoughts on that? Dr. Sterling: It’s an area of active research. It’s an area of active research looking at, can we on ultrasound or even MRI measure the lower uterine segment and thus determine the risk of rupture and successful VBAC? It’s still a question mark here, but if you do have an extremely thin lower uterine segment, sometimes we open people up after they’ve had a C-section and there’s a window, right? Meagan: Yeah, that’s another one of the questions. They said they had a window. I’ve actually had a window as well. Dr. Sterling: Yeah. So the window depends. Some of the research didn’t really define what is a uterine rupture. Is a uterine rupture only when you get in and you open up the belly and the tissue is bleeding and it’s clear that it’s just ruptured and this was previously tissue that was together? Or what if you open up the abdomen and you look and there’s this separation but it looks like it had been there for a while? Is that a uterine rupture or a uterine window? Not all of the research and the data have clearly said, “This is what we consider a uterine rupture. This is what we consider a uterine window.” Meagan: Or dehiscence. Dr. Sterling: Or a dehiscence, exactly. There are all of these different terms. There’s a window, dehiscence, and rupture. Meagan: But sometimes it goes to rupture. Dr. Sterling: Yeah, so I think that personally in this gray zone of where the cut-off is for how many millimeters we want to see the lower uterine segment, it’s hard for me to separate that from my own personal experiences having patients have uterine ruptures and have them go through these long labors and then open them up and they’ve got a window. I think that I would lean more towards if my physician was telling me, “Hey, you have a really thin lower uterine segment,” I personally would probably lean more towards a repeat C-section in that setting because to me, if I’m thinking about being in labor and also having the weight of, “What if my uterus ruptures?” If that weight is too heavy, I feel like that’s not what I want to feel and that fear. Meagan: That constant questioning. Dr. Sterling: That constant questioning, and “Oh, they said it was thin. Am I making the wrong choice?” That to me would be very heavy. That isn’t necessarily how another person would feel. What I think is important to think through for you as an individual is, “Is that fact that you have been told that you have this thin lower uterine segment? Is that going to be really prominent and heavy for you when you are in labor or do you still feel light? Does your body still feel light and you still feel like that’s the right choice moving forward, that’s the right path?” With my members, when I take them through—we have our confidence in VBAC path—when I take them through that, I have them ask their body. Ask your body, “Is this a yes and a no?” You have to figure out, “What does a yes feel like in your body? What does a no feel like in your body?” Ask your body, “Does this feel good or does this not feel good?” And then that’s part of making a confident decision about whether you go forward with a repeat C-section or a trial of labor. That doesn’t make the decision for you because you still get to ask your mind and you still get to ask your emotions and you still get to have a collaborative relationship with your provider, but you need to know how your body feels about the decision. Meagan: Yeah, we talk about intuition all of the time and digging deep into what is that saying. What is that intuition saying? A lot of times, that’s the first thing where it’s like, “I shouldn’t have a C-section,” or “I want a C-section”, but then it’s like, “Oh, there’s this VBAC thing. Maybe.” But our initial gut was saying, “I think I should have a C-section,” or vice versa, “I want a VBAC.” Dr. Sterling: 100%. Meagan: I think that’s such a good thing, talking to your body, asking your body. I love that. Okay. I know we don’t have a ton of time left over, but a few more questions we have. Would you suggest an ECV for frank breech wanting to VBAC or would you just say C-section or would you say maybe find a provider if there is one in your area that could support that? Dr. Sterling: Yeah, okay. Meagan: Breech is a whole other podcast. Dr. Sterling: Breech is a whole other thing and it’s so funny. For me, when people talk about breech vaginal delivery, all OBGYNs have birth trauma themselves. It’s called the second victim. We all carry. I don’t know a single OBGYN out in the world who doesn’t have their own trauma from birth. One of my traumas is breech. Of course, this is an unplanned breech so it’s different. I have to always calm myself when breech vaginal birth is brought up because I want to talk about it in an impartial way. An ECV, an external cephalic version, when we do a procedure to turn baby from a non-cephalic, non-head presenting position down into the head presenting position is going to increase your chances of having a vaginal birth. We know that. It also has some risks to it. Some of the risk is that your water breaks. We cause a placental abruption. We cause the placenta to separate. We injure the fetus. That would be super rare, but it’s always something that we educate people about. I’ve never seen it but it could certainly happen. One of the things is that we typically do an external cephalic version before 39 weeks because we know it’s more successful. We typically do them around 37 weeks. If your water does break at 37 weeks because you had an ECV, then we’ve got to do a C-section at 37 weeks and that’s a higher-risk situation for your baby. We want babies to get to 39 weeks if we can. There is that risk of an earlier delivery or an emergency C-section because something happened, but it does increase your chances of vaginal birth. To me, it’s how confident is your provider that they can turn the baby? It depends. There are different characteristics of a person and of how good of a candidate they are for ECV. If you have a provider who’s like, “I’m super confident.” Sometimes I’d be ultrasounding patients and I’m like, “I feel like I could in the office, I’m not going to do it, but I feel like I could push this baby down. There’s a lot of laxity to the uterus. Baby seems to be letting me move them.” So sometimes, it’s like this is a very clear yes. Sometimes it’s a very clear no. Meagan: Then there’s all of the gray. Dr. Sterling: Yeah and then there’s everything in the middle. So what risk do you feel comfortable with? If you want to be able at the end of the day to say, “I did absolutely everything to get that vaginal birth,” then yeah. ECV may be the way to go for you. Most of the time, even if it doesn’t work, everybody’s fine. But there’s that 1% of the time where we’re running back to the OR because baby is having a heart rate deceleration and not recovering. I have certainly been in that situation more than once so it happens. It’s not common, but I don’t classify it as rare. Meagan: But also not that it doesn’t happen. Yeah. It’s just less common. Dr. Sterling: Yeah. To me, rare things are things that I may never see but if I see them every year I’m doing it, to me, that is not rare. Meagan: Right. Right. Someone asked if you’ve ever seen VBAC after multiple Cesareans. ACOG says VBAC after two Cesareans is reasonable for VBAC, but it really kind of falls of the ledge after that. VBAC after three, four, all of the things and we know they happen. They’re out there, but there is very little research. So someone just said, “What about a VBAC after three C-sections?” What would you say and again, I think it’s important to note that it depends on every certain person that you’re with and it also depends on your whole history and the reasons and all of those things, but anything that you would like to bring to the table for VBAC after 3+ Cesareans? Dr. Sterling: After more than two C-sections, yeah. At the end of the day, you have to consent to a Cesarean. You have to consent to a Cesarean. A Cesarean cannot be performed on you without your consent unless you were unconscious and you were brought into the ER and we needed to perform a Cesarean to save your life or you are not medically capable of making your own medical decisions. Meagan: Usually then, they have someone else too. Dr. Sterling: Sometimes. I trained at the place where we got most of the data on VBAC. I trained at LA County Hospital, USC. That’s where back in the heyday of 1% of the US population was born there. It was such a maternity ward that we got the data on VBAC because we couldn’t get those patients back to the OR. They were giving birth in the halls. So a lot of the VBAC data, the initial VBAC data comes from where I trained. Where I trained, we had a lot of people who would come in and give birth and they were very unfortunate stories and circumstances with drug abuse, homelessness, and mental illness. They would not know how many C-sections they had had. They would be coming in and they would give birth and sometimes after they gave birth, we would dig in through the charts looking for who this person could be and we found out that person had had four Cesareans before. Meagan: Wow. Dr. Sterling: I have been part of that. I have never had a patient who had three C-sections where we did that intentionally. I want to be upfront about that, but I think that it’s all about what had happened. Let’s say your first birth was a C-section for breech and then you go on to have a vaginal birth and then you had another C-section for breech and then you had another vaginal. If you’ve had multiple vaginal births, then you’ve had three C-sections, then I’m like, yeah. You are at increased risk of rupture. You’ve got three scars on your uterus for sure, but that’s a very different situation than somebody who’s had three C-sections in a row for failure to progress and then you’re like, “You haven’t had a vaginal birth. We are just putting you at a lot of risk with very little prospective of it being successful.” I have never been in a situation where somebody has had three C-sections and we’ve made the decision to proceed despite the risk with vaginal birth, but I have been part of deliveries where they had had multiple C-sections and we didn’t know because they were actively giving birth and were not able to communicate how many C-sections they had to us. Meagan: That’s an interesting thing to me in my mind. In so many ways, I wonder. Like you said, you didn’t know. But if you would have known, would care have changed? Dr. Sterling: Yeah, it probably would have. We would have made a different recommendation because-- Meagan: Because of what you knew. Dr. Sterling: To us, getting up to a 2% risk of rupture or higher, it’s a difference of perspective on percentages in a risk. As a physician, 2% is a lot of freaking people. That’s 2 out of every 100 and when you’re doing hundreds of deliveries a year, that 2% with a potentially very dire outcome, that 2% weighs much more heavily than somebody who’s like, “Well, 2% is so small.” There’s a whole different weight to that 2%. Meagan: Well, and we talk about that. We talk about how you have to decide what percentage is enough for you. If 2% is fine, then go find that provider that is supportive in that because it might not be like you said, a 2% from your standpoint is a lot but then to someone else, it might not be a lot. Dr. Sterling: Exactly, exactly. Meagan: It’s interesting, yeah. Okay well, that’s good to know. That’s just so interesting. I wouldn’t have even thought of that. You don’t even know the history and you have to go find out who that person is. Wow, I’m sure that was an experience. Dr. Sterling: Unfortunately, I had that experience quite a bit. Meagan: Oh my goodness, yeah. Crazy. Okay well, last question. This one is what can cause a swollen cervix and what would you suggest if anything to help get that unswollen? Is there anything from an OB standpoint that you can do to help the swelling? This is something that a lot of people are like, “Oh, well I went in and I was 8 centimeters dilated and then all of a sudden, I was a 5.” It’s not that you are literally going backward, but swelling can happen based on a lot of things like disruptions of checks and heads and babies’ heads and all of these things, but yeah. Anything you would like to speak to about swollen cervix? Dr. Sterling: Yeah, we don’t necessarily know why sometimes the cervix swells. It’s a really unfortunate situation. What I have seen anecdotally in my experience is oftentimes when a cervix swells and then I have ended up doing a C-section not just for cervical swelling because that’s not an indication for a C-section, but if that person did not progress after that is oftentimes, we have found that baby is not in the optimal position to move down the birth canal. That is something I have experienced personally and it’s very frustrating because when you’re in labor and when you’re giving birth, you feel like it’s all you and your body. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves. I want to remind people that you are only half of the equation at birth and babies can be cooperative and they can be very uncooperative. I have had an uncooperative baby and it was really, really hard. We can try things like Benadryl. We can try. Sometimes, it’s like, if everything is safe, if you’re on Pitocin, maybe we turn it down. We just give it a little break. We can try some Benadryl. We can try some Tylenol. These are things that are aimed at anti-inflammatory. Meagan: Do you take that orally, I assume? Dr. Sterling: You can, or you can give it intravenously if somebody is not tolerating oral. There are some mixed data out there about Tylenol and about Benadryl and their use in labor. But fixing the swelling once it’s occurred doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you can dilate past it. You certainly can dilate past it and I have seen that many times, but I think that the important thing to keep in mind is that it’s not something that you have done wrong. We don’t necessarily know why sometimes that happens. It may be that baby’s just not in the ideal position because really, baby is dilating your cervix. It’s this nice feedback loop whereas baby descends into the birth canal, it sends signals into your brain to release oxytocin. It’s a collaborative process between you and baby. I have had three births and in my first birth, I pushed four contractions and baby was out, phenomenal. Then all of a sudden, my third birth, I was pushing for an hour and nothing. Not a budge. Not a budge. We thought that maybe he was sunny-side up, but we also knew that he was big. He was essentially 11 pounds when he was born, so he was big. I was so down on myself. I was like, “I shouldn’t have pushed the epidural button the last time. Why did I forget how to push?” Meagan: You blamed yourself. Dr. Sterling: Oh my gosh and I know better, but I did. I was blaming myself like, “Why can’t I do this? How did I forget to push?” OB comes in and she’s like, “Yeah, I agree with you. I think he’s OP. I can try a manual rotation.” I looked at her and I was like, “Girl, just do it.” Meagan: That’s another one of the questions by the way. Dr. Sterling: So she goes in and she does. Listen, she was better at manual rotation than I am. I have not had as much success. The fact that this manual rotation worked was a little bit of a surprise to me because in my experience it has always been really hard to do. She went in. She pushed him up. She turned him down and he came out. I didn’t even have to push. The whole time, I’m thinking, “I’m not pushing correctly. How did I forget how to push?” putting all of the pressure on myself. There we go. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. Meagan: I love that. That just gave me the chills. Dr. Sterling: I didn’t even have to push. I had to push past my perineum but he came all the way to crowning once he was in the proper position and that was a huge eye-opening moment for me. I instantly felt bad for all of the patients who I had coached and tried to get to push correctly. I was like, “What?” Meagan: Yeah. Dr. Sterling: Yeah, yeah. Meagan: We really do as a society. We need to stop not just in birth but in all things. Motherhood, so many things like, “I’m a bad mom because I did this” or “Oh, this happened.” We put so much pressure and going right back to the very beginning of this whole conversation is being an advocate saying that we have to advocate for ourselves, it puts all of this extra pressure because not only are we saying that you have to go into labor. You have to dilate. You have to efface. You have to bring your baby down in the right position. Then you have to push the baby out. Then you have to nurse the baby. All of these things, right? So it’s like, why are we adding all of this extra pressure onto ourselves where you were doing all of the right things? You were doing everything but it was just this little factor that you needed to change and it was out of your control. You were trying to do everything you possibly could. Dr. Sterling: Exactly. Meagan: I love it. And going back, I said the last question but that was one of the questions. Can you as an OB help if I have a posterior baby? I’ve seen it as a doula. I’ve seen the same thing. This provider who I think is amazing goes in. He did the same thing. Goes up and I could just see him. He closes his eyes and he does this whole thing with the head and he’s like, “Okay, we’re good.” It’s like okay! That is a thing. The very, very last question is how as a patient if you’re like, “I think my baby is OP” or your doula, or your nurse, or your doctor is saying, “I think this baby is OP,” how can you as a patient ask? If we say, “Can you help me rotate this baby? I’m having a hard time doing it with pushing.” Dr. Sterling: Yeah. You do have to be completely dilated. You have to be completely dilated and I find that it can be really difficult to perform, but in the right patient, it is a wonderful tool to have in your toolkit. But there are some providers who are so good at it and there are some providers who haven’t done it as much. I was really impressed by this OB. She was a newer graduate. She had just graduated that year from residency and I actually have some friends in common. She had trained where I had friends do their fellowship, so I texted them after and I was like, “She was so good at that manual rotation.” They were like, “Yeah. That program really pushed manual rotation. They do a ton of it so they come out really well trained in that.” I was like, “That’s so awesome,” because I feel like in our training, that wasn’t something that we did a ton of but I always was like, “Yeah, I can do it” and I would try and once in a while, I would have succeeded but I didn’t feel super confident in that skill. That’s the thing. Where you train really depends on the skills that you pick up. But anyway, so yeah. I think that if you think that your baby is OP and your provider really does have to feel like they’re OP because they don’t want to turn a baby that is OA. You don’t want to turn it the opposite way. But you can say, “Hey, if we think this baby is OP, can we do a manual rotation and try to get him head down?” I think it’s important to ask what the risks are and communicate to your provider if that is something you want. You have to say, “Yeah, I’m okay with those risks,” and then you put your provider in a place of comfort. We get uncomfortable when patients, for me, when a patient is signaling to me that they don’t understand the risk or they don’t believe the risk is possible, that’s when you put your provider into a nervous situation. Meagan: Right, yes. I love that when your patient is confident, it helps you. Yeah. That makes so much sense. Dr. Sterling: If they’re like, “Well, I don’t think that would happen,” then you’re like, “I need you to understand that this very much could happen.” Meagan: Yes, it could happen. This one provider that I was talking to about how there was one time where he was going the way that you would normally go and he was like, “Nope. This baby has to go the other way.” I was like, “What?” And seriously, just rotated it and was like, “All right, now it’s good.” Sometimes too, talk to your provider and say, “Can we try one more time?” or “I understand that it’s not working. Can we take a little break and try again?” Or whatever, assessing. Dr. Sterling: And asking questions. I think it’s really good to just ask questions. If somebody is saying no, it’s okay to say, “Can you walk me through your reasoning?” Meagan: Yeah, I love that. Can you tell me why? Dr. Sterling: It’s totally okay. It’s totally okay to ask that and sometimes when they walk you through your reasoning, you may say, “You know what? I’m actually okay with that risk” or when they walk you through your reasoning, you might be like, “Yeah. I feel you there. I feel much more confident about this decision. It’s not the outcome that I wanted, but I am resonating with your thought process and thus I feel more comfortable with this decision,” so that a month later after this birth, I’m not thinking back on that situation and wondering, “Should I have pushed just a little bit harder?” Even if you’re not getting the birth outcome that you had envisioned, it’s important for you to understand the why-- for many people, I should say, it’s important to understand the why so that your birth story becomes part of your story. I don’t want people to always be questioning, “Should I have done this? Should I have done that?” I think a lot of the time because we feel uncomfortable asking for more explanation and we’re not necessarily always given the explanation then we have all of these questions that we carry with us for literally years. Women who gave birth 20 years ago will comment in my DM’s and be asking questions about that and it breaks my heart that they’ve been carrying that weight for so many years. Meagan: Yeah. I think that is such a great spot to end on is ask questions. It’s okay. It’s okay to ask those questions. It’s okay to have that doubt too. It’s okay to have that doubt and have that question because sometimes it’s like, “Oh, well it’s a stupid question,” but it’s not a stupid question because it’s a question that you want to know. Dr. Sterling: It’s a question you have and there really is no such thing as stupid questions. There really is no such thing. Meagan: Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I know that so many people are going to be just waiting so patiently for this episode to air because we had so many questions we didn’t even get to. Again, thank you so much. Dr. Sterling: Oh, you’re welcome. It was an honor. Meagan: Can you tell everyone where to find you on social media and maybe talk a little bit more about your program? Dr. Sterling: Yeah, yes. I’m @drsterlingobgyn on TikTok and on Instagram and then I have a membership where I support people through trying to conceive, pregnancy, postpartum, and the whole journey and that’s sterlingparents.com. We have a beautiful curriculum that we put people through to help support them through the physical and emotional challenges of the whole journey. We have a really lovely database that I’m really proud of that really can replace all of the internet searches and Google. That database all has three E verifications so all of our information is evidence-based, expert-based, and experience-based so we like to talk about things and with people who have had that experience themselves. Meagan: Yeah, I love it. Awesome. We’ll make sure to drop all of those links in the show notes, so listeners, check out the show notes. We’ll also have you on our social media today and we’ll have everything tagged as well. If you’re not knowing how to do it in the show notes, go to our Instagram. Thank you again, so much. Dr. Sterling: Oh you’re so welcome. Thanks for having me.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

For our final holiday special podcast episode, we want to help you feel as physically prepared as possible when going for your VBAC!Stephanie of My Essential Birth joins Meagan to share her wisdom from her own two VBAC births as well as what she has helped women learn through her many years as a birth worker. You will hear tips on how to choose and vet providers, three free exercises that might just make all the difference during your labor, and the secret lesson Stephanie has learned that she wants all of our listeners to know. Additional LinksStephanie's Website and CoursePregnancy and Birth Made Easy PodcastBebo Mia’s WebinarHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Turn your love of babies and bellies into cash. If you love babies and bellies and want to provide care and support to families, then Bebo Mia’s webinar is the right place for you. Get answers to those burning questions like how to be the voice you wish you had at your birth and how babies and families can be supported by doulas. Learn all about the different kinds of doulas. You can work in fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, or just enjoy working with those squishy babies. Supporting families by becoming a birth worker, aka doula, is perhaps an option that hasn’t even crossed your mind. That’s why we want you to join this webinar. You can have great earning potential while doing something you love. Bebo Mia is the one-stop shop for education, community, and mentorship. Reserve your spot today at bebomia.com/freewebinar.Meagan: Hello, hello you guys. It is the end of the year. This is Meagan with The VBAC Link and I have another holiday edition for you. Today is one that I am so excited about because this is someone that I know personally. She’s a dear friend of mine and we have taken similar journeys through our doula careers, so it’s really fun to be with someone that I already know and that we have the same mindset and goals for all of you out there. This is Stephanie and she is amazing. So amazing. She is a mom and a doula. She’s had a VBAC and she actually has an amazing course through My Essential Birth. That’s correct, right? My Essential Birth? Stephanie: Yep. Meagan: It’s a course on how to prepare and get ready for birth. She has the same drive, I feel like, and passion as I do to get the information out to all of you and to help you know what is best for you whether it be, again, scheduling a repeat Cesarean or having a VBAC or maybe you’re a first-time mom and you just want to know how to go along the way, seriously, Stephanie is going to be that person for you. So I’m so excited today to have her on. Welcome, Steph. Stephanie: Thank you. That’s quite an introduction. I love it. Come to my podcast. Do the same thing. Meagan: No, no seriously. I was going to say, she has a full-on introduction here too. But you are amazing. You are so amazing and I love what you have done with My Essential Birth. You’re busy. You’ve got three kids. You’ve got three kids and something too that is really fun is every single birth has been so different which I think just broadens your knowledge and passion, even more, to do what you do because for me, my births were all so different and I don’t know, I really don’t know if I would be here today if I didn’t have all of those births. Stephanie: Yeah, 100%. Yes. Meagan: Don’t you feel like these experiences in our lives have brought us here today and have brought passion to our hearts? But yeah. On top of that, you homeschool. You do so many things. You wear so many hats, so I’m so grateful for you taking the time today to talk to us about all of the amazing things that you do. But I think one of the really cool things right off the bat is, let’s talk about your VBACs and how you really got started in all of this. Stephanie: Yeah, I think you really hit the nail on the head because 100%, if I hadn’t had the experiences with the births that I have had, I wouldn’t have not only the passion but the knowledge from seeing things go wrong. It makes me think of when I was 16 and I got my first car and it was a piece of crap and everything broke down on it so I had to learn about things [inaudible]. Meagan: Yes. Stephanie: No, I’m not comparing my body to a car, but I will say that those experiences totally shaped the way that I do what I do today and the passion behind it. My first baby– now, mind you, in my head, this was my goal. I wanted to go unmedicated. It was what I wanted to do. I just wanted to have that experience for myself for no particular reason. That’s just what I wanted to do. We got around 34-35 weeks and I was reading a birth story online. Mind you, this was 13, 14 years ago, so it was a little bit ago not like what we see today with birth stories and stuff, but I’m at work and bawling because I’m super pregnant. I’m like, “That’s what I want my birth to be like,” so I researched the classes that kind of went along with this book and I reached out to some local birth educators. It was this 12-week series and I had four or five weeks left to go. There was this one lady that was like, “Okay, I’ll do these intensive courses on the weekend if you could make it.” I’m over like, “My husband works every weekend. We’re super broke.” She was going to do it for this bigger prize. I’m like, “It’s fine. I’ll wing it. It’s going to be fine.”Fast forward to that birth and missing some red flags, things like my provider telling me when first of all, he didn’t want to have the conversation until 36 weeks about what the birth was going to be like, so I told him early on, “I don’t want to have an epidural. I want to go unmedicated.” He was like, “We don’t talk about that until 36 weeks.” That was a red flag, but I didn’t know any better. Meagan: Interesting, yeah. Because that’s what they do. Stephanie: Uh-huh and I was like, “Okay. Sure.” Totally. He was super old school. There were a couple of things and just the way that he talked to me that I should have caught on, but when 36 weeks came and I said, “I really want to go unmedicated,” and whatever and he was talking about, “Well, I actually let my patients get their epidurals much earlier than others. Why be in pain?” And I’m like, “No, it’s really important to me.” And then he continued with, “Well, women with size 5.5 shoes and smaller tend to have Cesarean births.” Now, mind you, I’m a small person. I’m 5’0”. My shoe size is 5.5 and I’m sitting there just, “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” because my grandmother who was 4’10”, and her grandmother. I’m just going down the line like, “Nobody would be here. What are we talking about?” But at the same time, I’m a new mom. It’s my first birth. I’m scared, so I stayed with him, and anyways, the cascade of intervention that happened was my water broke with just a trickle. I didn’t have contractions. The provider ended up telling me once I was at the hospital that I needed to have Pitocin and I say that because I remember asking the nurse, “Did he say that word need?”She was like, “I’ll come back.” But she was like, “He said need.” So I said, “Okay, well then I must need Pitocin.” So we took Pitocin. That baby did not do well with it. He couldn’t crank up the Pitocin enough to make the contraction strong enough to actually make labor progress because my baby’s heart rate would drop. That was, in my opinion, a medically-caused Cesarean because yes, when I have a baby in distress, then there we are. So that was my first experience with birth. I didn’t connect with my baby right away. On top of being a new mom and figuring out life, I had just had abdominal surgery. I was a mess of emotions and then the next two births are where I found some redemption and healing and passion and power for women’s bodies and what we can do. During my second birth, we had moved overseas to Germany and I was meeting with a doctor. I’d met with an OB but it was actually midwives who you give birth with. I had taken a really good birth course and I had been practicing a lot of stuff. I did not understand a ton about positioning though for my baby and so I had two days of prodromal labor which is not that big of a deal. Two days of prodromal labor, then finally things kicked in and I was in full active labor, but then I had pushing contractions at 4 centimeters, so now, my doula brain goes, “Oh, it’s a positional thing. I have all of these ideas,” but then, I was like, “Oh my gosh. I’m not going to make it.” And then too, the wonderful German nurse there– there was a little bit of a language barrier for sure, but I was like, “I really want to get into the water.” She was like, “Oh, later. And also, I have something, honey, that will take all of that away. You just let me know if you want a little bit. We’ll just stick it in the bum. A little bit of pain meds.” At the time, I was like, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s try that.” But I had the pain meds. That ended up being like, I was comfortable before two contractions before my water broke. It took the edge off enough that my body was like, “Let’s get things started,” but then the contractions were right back on. I did end up with an epidural for that birth. My baby did fine with the Pitocin. I pushed that baby out vaginally. I wasn’t forced into another Cesarean or anything and that birth was amazing. I was very, very pleased with the way that that birth went. And then we were moving from Germany back to the United States, particularly to North Dakota. If you know anything about North Dakota, they don’t even have– my midwife was not a licensed midwife on purpose. You cannot be a licensed midwife and deliver babies outside of a hospital setting. They can get arrested. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah. It’s illegal. Stephanie: It’s not the black market, but she’s not licensed. She was a direct-entry midwife. So we were moving back from overseas to North Dakota and I called the hospital first before I met with a home birth midwife. They told me, “Well, we don’t really care that you’ve had a vaginal birth after Cesarean. You had a Cesarean before, so you need to plan for another scheduled Cesarean birth,” so talk about my red flags now. Meagan: You’re like, “Nope. Nope.” Stephanie: No way. I’m going to do whatever I have to do. So I did. I reached out to a home birth midwife. I found a doula and all of those things that I probably should have done with baby #1. We planned for me to have an unmedicated experience at home. I was really excited about that up until 35, 36 weeks. I had a breech baby for one and that breech baby, we were able to get him turned, so that part went away, but then it was the mental game of, “Can I actually do this? You’ve never not had an epidural.” All of that self-talk starts happening and it’s not good. My doula was like, “Here’s a list of affirmations. Take what you like. Leave the rest and start saying them out loud several times a day every day.” And so I did that and within a week or so, I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I went from being scared and nervous to confident and excited. I was like, “I can do this.” So that baby had a week of prodromal labor. It was about 5 or 6 days of prodromal labor and then things get moving and I have some active labor that hit, but my contractions never really got closer than about 6 minutes apart. They would last a minute to two minutes long, but they were never those super crazy close, consistent. Things kept going off in my head like, “If I was in the hospital, I definitely would have been offered a Cesarean birth.” It wouldn’t have been a question, especially in that hospital. These contractions were coming. My midwife, we finally call her and I’m like, “Look. I’ve been in prodromal labor and now it’s active labor, but they’re not closer than 6 minutes.” She checks me and I’m 6 centimeters. I was like, “My labor is progressing on my own.” It was so cool. And then it was another 12 hours from that point and I had my baby. But it was incredible. Those contractions and just knowing that my body was doing what it was meant to do. There was a point where I was like, “Oh my gosh. I’m so tired. I need to sleep.” For sure, we went upstairs. I slept for 45 minutes. I had two contractions. It was another moment where I was like, “Yeah.” If I was at the hospital, somebody would say, “Oh, she’s stalling. We’ve got to do something.” Whatever. But those two contractions and the second one, I woke up and I was like, “Oh my gosh, what is happening? I can’t do this anymore.” Sure enough, I’m thinking, this better be transition. My midwife comes in. She had heard me. She was sleeping downstairs. She comes to the door. She’s like, “Do you want me to check you?” I’m like, “Yes, please. Let’s see where I’m at.” She’s like, “You’re 9.5 with a bouncy lip of cervix. You’re good to go. Let’s get you to go to the bathroom. You can get in the birth tub now.” So we did that and i can laugh about it now, but I went downstairs. I went to the bathroom and after I was done peeing, I had my first pushing contraction. I remember telling my husband, “I don’t want to give birth on the toilet. I have to get out of here.” 4.5 hours later because of the mental blocks that I had– we can laugh about that now, but at the time, it was very serious. Like, “I’d better get to the birth tub.” Meagan: Yeah. I’d better get out of here. Stephanie: Yeah, but it was wonderful. I will tell you the differences. The major differences for me in the spaces that I was in for being able to give birth unmedicated and as a VBAC, my birth team made the biggest difference. When I was at home and feeling like, “Oh my gosh. I can’t do this anymore. Oh my goodness. I’ve been pushing so long. I’m so tired,” everyone was like, “But you are doing it. You’re doing great. Keep it up.” I’m like, “Oh. I can take that in and chill and feel supported.” So I did. We kind of joke about, first of all, I was making noises that my husband the next day told me, “You sound like the screaming goats.” I was like, “Oh my gosh. I do.”Meagan: I was called a cow. My husband was like, “You’re a mooing cow in there.” I’m like, “Thank you so much.”Stephanie: Well, the best part of this story, I actually love this story, the next day, my husband is sitting at the table and showing our little boys the screaming goat video. His mom’s walking down the stairs and goes, “You recorded her?!” Meagan: Uh-uh!Stephanie: So I’m like, “Okay, yeah. I get it. I get it. I really did sound like that.” Meagan: You really did sound like that. That is so funny. Stephanie: But anyways, I’m pushing all this time and I do remember hitting a point even during pushing, I’m like, “Oh my gosh. I can’t do this.” I was scared. I had never pushed a baby out before. Instead of holding my breath and bearing down, I was purposely breathing through my nose and not leaning into that pushing. My husband was finally like or I told him, “You need to make the bed. I need to get out of the tub,” because in my head, all I’m thinking about was, “If I can’t do this, then I’m going to have to go to the hospital. We’re going to have to call an ambulance. The lights are going to be on. There’s going to be people I don’t know.” I had to walk myself through all of those things. Meagan: You were really deep in that space. Yeah. Stephanie: Yeah. I was like, “No. This has to happen here because I can’t deal with all of that.” So I told my husband, “Go upstairs. Make the bed.” I was like, “Make sure you get the lining down so we don’t mess up the mattress and all of that.” When he went upstairs, it was the first time that I paused and tuned into myself. I just said a quick prayer and for me, I call God Heavenly Father. “Heavenly Father, please. I can’t do this alone. I’m scared.” My husband comes down the stairs. I’m just finishing that prayer. He’s ready to lift me out of the water. He was like, “Come on. Let’s go. Let’s go now.” He went to lift me and I’m like, “No. It’s happening.” Two pushes later, that baby was out. Meagan: Oh, that just gave me major chills. Stephanie: It was the most spiritual experience of my life. I love everything about it. Yes, it was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done physically. Mentally, how it pushes you to your limits, and then you feel like you are the strongest woman alive. You can do anything. You’re a good mother. You’re all of the things. It was that feeling and looking at what I had done through having good support that I was like, “No. We’re lying to women. You know what? If I could do this, anyone can. So now I’m going to become a birth educator and now I”m going to work with women one-on-one. I know that you can do this.” So that’s where the passion came from. Those were my birth stories. Meagan: I love it. I love it. Oh, that just gave me such chills. You know what’s interesting is I don’t think I’ve ever even heard all of your birth stories like that. Stephanie: Oh really? Meagan: I don’t think I have. We have some similarities. We have some similarities. Stephanie: I know. I’ve read through some of yours too. I love it. Yeah. Meagan: Even more. I don’t think I realized. Yeah, maybe I have and it was a long time ago and I forgot, but there are a lot of similarities. I love it. You’ve had these VBACs. You found this passion and here you are today. So in past episodes, we’ve talked about mentally preparing and mentally getting into that space. You just did that. You just talked about that which is so important. It is so crucial to be in that space because when we’re out here, we can’t dive into birth. I feel like I did the same thing. I wish that it was recorded so I could really show people how big of a tantrum I was throwing, but I was legitimately throwing a tantrum in my driveway pacing back and forth saying, “If my water wouldn’t have just broken, this would be totally different. This is happening all over again.” I was really spiraling and everyone just sat there. My neighbor was seeing me. She was like, “Oh!” I’m like, “I’m in labor.” She stopped and was like, “Is she okay?” Rick was like, “She’s just gonked or something right now.” I had her watching me. My mom was watching me. The kids were like, “Mom!” I’m throwing my hands and voicing everything that was in my head out loud getting it out there but I needed to do that. I needed to do that but as soon as I could get that out, I remember the drive. We were getting in the car to go to the birth center and meet my midwife. I had my baby later that night, but it was the morning before I had my baby and he was just like, “So, how did that feel?” I was like, “So good.” I just remember labor coming on so much stronger. You have to get in that head space. We know there is the headspace, but what about the physical? I feel like there is so much goodness that you talk about. The physical aspect of preparing for birth and not even just preparing to actually give birth, but preparing and creating that team and creating that environment. One of the first things is knowing your stuff. How can our listeners know their stuff? Right now, they are listening to this, so this is what you can do to know your stuff. But yeah. When you say ‘know your stuff’, what would that all entail? What would you suggest?Stephanie: Yeah, this is kind of the tricky thing that I’m always weighing one thing against the other where it’s knowing what you want for your birth and how to get there and then making sure that you’re vetting your provider. They really do go hand in hand but it’s really tricky because just depending on what order you take, you may have to change up one or the other. But when it comes to understanding what you need in order to have the birth that you desire, one of the things that I tell moms to do is, “Take a meditative moment. Close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Picture yourself from that very first contraction through to when you give birth. What does that look like? Where are you? Who is around you? What are the lights like? What do you smell? What do you see?”That will help you decide. It gives you some idea of how to get there or what you’re going to need in order to get there. I’ll do this exercise with moms and moms that were planning to give birth at a hospital but never make it there in their minds. They’re at home. They don’t ever get in the car to go to the hospital. They’ve had their baby at home. So I think really understanding what you are looking for. And even for a mom that has that experience, she’s planning to give birth at a hospital, but she has this really calm, relaxing thing at home, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she needs to be giving birth at home although it could, maybe it’s more of, “So I need to have control over my body, control over the situation. I need to be in my own clothes,” and those sorts of things. Meagan: Oh, I love that you just said that. Stephanie: And really understanding what is creating that image in your mind. But of course, I’m going to talk about taking a good birth course because not only is that what I did that was so life-changing for me but that is what I help moms do today just like you have a birth course where you talk about preparing for VBAC. A good birth course is going to include all of those things like how to stay healthy and low-risk with nutrition, and good exercise that you can do not just moving your body and keeping your heart rate, but what are things positionally that you can do for yourself and your baby? How are you going to stretch the perineal area or use the specific muscles that are going to be used for birthing and labor time? That’s going to be all the way through understanding each phase of labor, how to work with your birth partner, how they can support you, how relaxation can be so important and meditation, all the way through to birth and postpartum. That includes every situation that can happen on the way. When you walk into your birth space, are you going to have an IV or wear your own clothes? Do you want to have intermittent fetal monitoring or do you want to be on the monitor the whole time? If you’re talking induction, what are your options? So I think really understanding what your options are, and some of that changes as your birth changes or as other options are provided whether or not you have gestational diabetes or if you’re GBS positive. Those are different decisions you have to play with and make, but if you like listening to podcasts, taking a good birth course, watching birth videos, if you’re gathering all of that information and coming together for yourself deciding what you want for yourself, then you can move into asking the right questions to help that provider because that really is the next step. You can have this wonderful birth that you have thought of and dreamed of in your mind and if your provider is not on the same page, if they are not supportive, you might not get it at all and it’s not even your fault. Meagan: I know. That is so hard because sometimes we don’t know what it looks like to have that supportive provider. We don’t know what it looks like because for me, with my first birth, I went to my OB and he was really nice and welcoming, and charming. I was like, “Cool. He’s rad. He’s great,” and then there were the red flags but I didn’t see those red flags. It's so hard to know how to find that provider and you say to vet your provider. What do you mean by vetting your provider and what tips would you give to start that process and know right away what you really want to look for? Stephanie: Yeah. I’m glad you asked that. I think probably one of the best things you can do is meet with more than one and different practices. Meagan: Yes. Yes. Different practices are such a big thing because even the one provider in the same practice, they’re going to have similarities so it is so important to branch out. When I was going that with my VBAC baby, I did. I went to multiple people and I could physically feel the difference without even speaking to anybody. Stephanie: Yes. 100%. I always said that I didn’t believe I was intuitive at all just as a person, I don’t feel like I am in touch with myself. If that’s you, you’re wrong. Just like you explained right there, we do. You know when you have conversations with other people or you walk into a room. There’s a feeling there and how you’re treated matters. The problem is, I think and I mean, I’m guilty of it too. I think we put providers on this pedestal and they’re kind of untouchable. They’re above us in some way because they’re gone to school and they’ve got knowledge about things that we don’t. In some ways, maybe that’s true. That’s why we hire them because they have skills that we need that we can’t meet while we are in our vulnerable state. The other side of that is that they are also a person and how they treat us matters. And so when you are asking questions and meeting with providers, how are you feeling? Were you respected? Were you rushed when you bring up something? Providers will actually eye roll or laugh at some of the things that you say. That’s a red flag. Meagan: It’s so true. Yes. Stephanie: I say too, you know what? Go meet with a birth center out-of-hospital provider. You don’t have to plan on giving birth there at all. Pay attention to how you are treated. How does that feel for you? For people that are maybe interested in that and they are like, “Oh, that’s so scary and my husband doesn’t want to or my birth partner really doesn’t want me out of the hospital,” great. Go take him and have a free interview with an out-of-hospital care provider and just see how you feel. If you hate it or it’s not for you, then that’s great but I think that you need to have the contrast. I think you deserve to have the contrast. It’s the same with doulas. I’m like, “You don’t know if you want a doula? Great. Go meet with one anyways. It’s a free consult and then you can decide.” But vetting a provider, like I said, you have to have some questions going in. VBAC-specific moms, they’re going to want to know things like, “Okay. For a mom like me, I’m healthy and low-risk. It’s my second baby and I’ve only had one Cesarean birth. What does it look like for someone like me in your practice having a vaginal birth after a Cesarean? What are your percentage rates? Do you use the VBAC calculator or how do you decide? Do you induce? What are your reasons for induction and can I say no?” You always can but it’s always fun to ask a provider, “Can I say no?” The answer should always be yes but it might not be. “We’ll talk about it when we get there.” So you have to have some specific questions that you’re bringing in to decide if this is somebody that you can handle and you are probably maybe not going to match up on every single thing. That’s okay too, but are those big things being met? I think that’s what helps you decide, “Is this going to be a good match for me or not?” Meagan: Yeah. I love that. And just tuning into your overall feeling. Like you said, providers can eye roll and they can be subtle. They can be subtle, really subtle, right? Even midwives can do that too. Stephanie: Oh totally, yes. Meagan: OBs, midwives, it’s so important to really tune into that. I think it’s so important to do that even before becoming pregnant too. Sometimes to find an OB—if you are thinking that you want to become pregnant soon and you have an OB or a midwife, start there. That’s totally fine, but it’s okay to branch out and say, “I’m not expecting yet. I’m preparing. I want to find that provider right from the beginning.” Sometimes that doesn’t happen, but I think it’s good to do if you can. I mean, I wasn’t pregnant and I went to 12 providers. Stephanie: I love it. Meagan: 12 providers which were maybe excessive. Maybe, but that’s what I needed. I needed to go and I needed to hear all of their things and feel all of that in those environments. I chose the provider that I thought was totally amazing. He still is. I’m not saying he’s not, but for me, I thought he was perfect. He was exactly what I needed out of everybody and then I still changed at 24 weeks, right? And so a lot of people are like, “Why would you change? He’s so supportive.” I’m like, “He is so supportive and I still feel all the good, but something is not resonating.” That’s okay too. Even if you do find your provider. Say at your appointment, you find your provider and you’re not feeling it or you’re getting things like Stephanie where it’s like, “Hey, this is what I want to do.” “We don’t talk about that yet.” Those types of things, if they are not willing to hear you and they don’t want to know how they can help you in this birth experience, are red flags. Don’t feel like you have to stay like both Stephanie and I did because I felt like I had to stay too. I felt like I was cheating on my provider if I left him. He had gone this far with me. He had supported me this far, but at the same time, I truly believe I probably wouldn’t have had that second Cesarean. I really don’t believe that if I would have changed, but it’s okay because it’s my birth story and that’s why I’m here, but it’s okay. It’s okay if you’re feeling off and you want to change. It’s okay to do that. Stephanie: Yeah. I think you can’t shout that from the rooftops enough because it’s true. You do feel like, “Oh, I’m going to hurt their feelings or something.” No, you’re not and if you do, who cares? You’re never going to see them again. Let it go. Meagan: Exactly. Stephanie: It’s so important for you and your future. It’s such an important moment for you. It doesn’t matter. It should trump that. Meagan: It should trump that. Someone else’s feelings. That’s the hardest thing. We have so many people out there. If you are a people pleaser, you’re not alone and it’s easy to please your provider. You want to please your provider, but remember, they are working for you. They are there for you. If they’re not pleasing you, it’s okay to leave. It is okay to leave and so yeah. It’s a hard thing to do, but I do encourage people to tune in, follow their hearts, tune into that and do what’s best for them because if they don’t truly vet their provider, it can make or break an experience. Stephanie: Yeah, it can. A good provider is going to help make it just like you said. My midwife and my doula who were in that third birth, oh my gosh. They are a part of my life forever whether they like it or not. You are bonded with those people forever and you need that kind of support in your life. Meagan: Right, yes. Yes. Okay, so we’re talking about knowing your stuff and vetting your provider. Now, let’s talk about putting in the work. We’ve got these things. Now, going for it. What things would you suggest? Stephanie: Yeah as far as putting in the work, I really recommend– and I have it on my website as well and you can tell me if you like these ideas or not, but I recommend these three exercises that you can do every day. First is the forward-leaning inversion. You’re literally—you get up on a low-lying chair or couch probably with support. Put a pillow down in front of you. Get your elbows on the ground with your bum in the air and you hold that for three breaths. You do that once a day. If you’re somebody who has heartburn or something, obviously, you’re maybe going to want to not do that depending on how the heartburn is or there are a couple of people who shouldn’t do that. Basically, that is really good because it releases certain ligaments. It allows more room for baby. It allows for really good positioning. That’s something that you can do to make sure baby is in a good position. Meagan: Every day. Stephanie: Every day. An easier, more comfortable labor. The other thing you’re going to do is pelvic tilts. You can choose to do how many you want, but I like to do them at least when I get up in the morning and before I go to bed. That’s 20-40 tilts. That’s in the hands-and-knees position. You’re tilting your pelvis forward and into a flat back, forward and into a flat back. Again, that’s strengthening certain areas. It’s helping baby’s position. Those are really, really good for you to be doing. The third one is the squat. This is a deep-seated squat. It’s not like we are going to grab weights and do a weighted squat or anything like that. This is like how you see people in third-world countries who don’t have chairs or new babies, toddlers when they go down to squat and play with something, look at that squat because that’s the one that you are going for. The reason for that is because it stretches the perineal area. It strengthens the muscles in your legs. Chances are when it was pushing time, you’re going to be in some kind of squat. Now maybe not, but chances are the majority of us are going to end up there. The other thing about squatting is that it shortens the birth canal, it makes it easier to be able to push baby out and that’s why we end up in that position but if you’re practicing that squat specifically, and this is where my husband was so good. “I’ll tell you what, for every minute you squat for the day, I will give you a minute of massage at the end of the night.” I was like-- Meagan: Oh my gosh. Done. Done, done, done. Stephanie: An hour a night, I am not joking. So he was so good supporting me that way, but I’ll tell you what, when I started squatting and it was probably later in my pregnancy like 34-35 weeks. When I started squatting, it was 1-2, maybe 3 minutes before my legs were numb, my feet hurt and I had to stand up. Everything was tingling, but a couple of weeks in, I could hold it for 15 minutes comfortably. So when I was telling you before that I was pushing for 4.5 hours, I was in a birth tub in a squatted position for that amount of time— Meagan: Wow. Stephanie: --and I remember thinking, “I’m so glad I practiced these squats because I wouldn’t have had the stamina.” As far as physical prep, those are things that you can do every single day. Meagan: I love that. Stephanie: Thank you. I know and I’m like, you and I have taken some similar training and stuff. It’s valid. It’s real. Meagan: It really is. Stephanie: The other things that you can do are, let’s stay healthy and low-risk. That means you’re eating a high-protein diet. You’re drinking a lot of water. You’re taking your prenatals, well-balanced. That matters because it can keep things like preeclampsia at bay. It’s also going to make you feel better and give you more energy, so there are a lot of benefits to that. But my favorite part of staying healthy and low-risk is that you remain in charge of your birth decisions. That’s why it matters to me so much. It’s not even just for the health of myself and my baby. It also comes down to, “I want to have a say as to how all of this goes.” So those are some of the physical things. Then we move into the, once I understand how birth works, what are the signs that I’m in labor? What are the signs I’m in active labor? How do I work with my body? Learning things like relaxation and I do that through relaxation practice. Even just a simple one, and you can do this with your birth partner or by yourself, but you set up this stage. So use your senses. You should be leaning back in a chair or in your bed lights dimmed with essential oil or a consistent smell that your body gets used to smell. You just practice breathing deep into your belly. Imagine how you breathe when you wake up in the morning. First thing, pay attention to how you breathe when your eyes first open. It’s really deep belly breaths so try to aim for that. Do that for 10 minutes. Just go from your head to your toe and be like, “Okay. I’m going to feel the hairs on my head relax, and then my eyebrows, and then my jaw.” All the way down. The thing is, it’s not easy to do when you’re not used to relaxing but when you utilize all of those senses, then it becomes something called muscle memory. So if I know my body knows because I’ve been doing this for the last several months that every time the lights are dimmed and I smell lavender essential oil and I’m breathing into my belly, then when you do those things during labor, it’s like, “Oh, lights are dimmed and lavender,” then you don’t really have to think about it. Meagan: It’s intuitive. Stephanie: Yes. “I’m supposed to relax now.” And then obviously you need to practice relaxation. Once you get good at that, you can practice it with the lights on, with the TV on, with your husband or kids walking through the room because that’s the reality of birth and especially if you’re in a hospital. Meagan: Yes, yes. Stephanie: But learning relaxation is really important. And then you move into—there’s a lot more to do with that like meditation and the mental stuff and all of that. Labor rehearsal where you practice with ice and other things. There is plenty that you can do, but I would say relaxation, your three exercises, and staying healthy and low-risk are probably just top of the list things that you can do on a daily basis. Meagan: Oh my gosh. I love it. So good, so good. I love that you talked about preparing and then it becomes muscle memory. It’s so true. It’s so, so true. I encourage if you’re ever in a moment where you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed to dive into that because there are going to be moments in labor and birth when you might feel stressed and overwhelmed. If you can practice doing that in those moments, oh my gosh. It’s going to be so beneficial. So I know we’re almost out of time, but I wanted to ask you what is a secret lesson or something no one really talks about that you wish you would have known ahead of time when preparing for time? Stephanie: That would be that you can say ‘no’ to anything. I feel like I teach this all day long and I talk about it a lot. I don’t know how often moms let that register because they will know that and then you’ll get with their provider and they’re doing non-stress tests or whatever and it’s like, all of a sudden, oh crap. I need this and this and this. No. You can actually say ‘no’ to literally anything. Meagan: Anything, yeah. Stephanie: Anything, yeah. They can’t do anything. The best that they can do is make you sign, what is it? Meagan: An AMA. Stephanie: A medical release, yeah. AMA, against medical advice. Meagan: Against medical advice. Stephanie: Sign it. Sign it. It’s your body. You get to choose. And then kind of like I talked about, when I talk about health and nutrition, I think a lot of times, moms don’t register. “Okay, yeah. I get it. I’m supposed to be healthy.” But it’s so you can be low-risk and in charge of your birth. I think that’s a really important part of that. Meagan: Yes. I think so too. It’s so hard. It’s so hard to be in that moment and be like, “Uh, okay.” When you’re like, “I really wanted to say no. I had a prenatal last night with a client and they were like, “One of the biggest things that we don’t want to do is go in and just say yes to everything. That’s one of their biggest goals is not to just say yes to everything. They’re not saying, “We want to refuse everything,” they’re just saying, “We want to be educated and we want to know what we’re saying yes to.” It's so important to know. If you are saying yes, know why you are saying yes. And if not, it’s okay to say no or “One moment. Let me think about it.” It’s okay because there are times where things are going to be thrown at you and it is hard to say, “No” or actually, “I want more time” or “I’m not sure about that right now” but you can. You can. You have the right to say no. You have the right. So it’s so important to know. I love that. Any last final tips for someone preparing for VBAC that you would like to give to our listeners? Stephanie: I think we’ve kind of touched on this before. It just really matters who you pick for your provider. I know we kind of talked about some things that warrant a red flag or time to interview somebody else or something, but really, if you’ve got that education and you’ve got that provider piece, you’re setting yourself up for success. It should be somebody that supports you, not tolerates the opportunity to try for a VBAC, but somebody who believes in the natural process of birth and that having a vaginal birth after a Cesarean is more healthy and safer for mom and baby than having another abdominal surgery. I think that matters that you’ve got somebody that believes that way. Meagan: Totally. I love that. Oh, well thank you so much for being here with us today. I want you listeners to know that she has the three free, that’s what you say, right? Stephanie: Yes, three free exercises. Meagan: Three free exercises. I’m having a hard time lately with tongue twisters. Three free exercises, so we are going to be providing that in our email. If you’re not subscribed to our email, please check it out because we are going to be providing so many new things and some really exciting upcoming things with The VBAC Link are going to be happening. We are going to be providing that and then will you tell everybody where they can find you? Because everyone needs to know where you’re at and follow you. Stephanie: Thank you, yes. So I too have a podcast. It is called Pregnancy and Birth Made Easy. Pregnancy and Birth Made Easy is the podcast so anywhere you listen to podcasts, you can take that in. I’m also on Instagram @myessentialbirth, Facebook, TikTok, all the things, and then if you are looking for information on the birth course or anything else in regards to where some of the podcast show notes and some of that live, it’s myessentialbirth.com. Meagan: Yes and all of these will be listed in our show notes today so if you want to go follow her which I promise you that you do, go click that and give her a follow because her content is amazing. Her podcast is amazing and it’s been such an honor to have you here today. Stephanie: Thank you, Meagan. I love what you do too and I love that we get to do this together. Meagan: Me too. Yeah, so before we let everyone go, I didn’t really give a full, “Hey, we know each other,” but we actually were in the same doula course. We became doulas together which seems like forever ago, but it was so fun to be there and to learn. You had already had your VBACs, hadn’t you? Stephanie: I did. Meagan: Yes and I hadn’t yet. I had only had my two Cesareans and so I just remember you being so inspirational to me and motivating me. I was like, “Okay. She could do it. She’s here. She is doing this too. We have the same interests,” and I just connected to you so much. Stephanie: Same, yeah. Well then, and now look at you with The VBAC Link. You just took off. I love it. Meagan: I love being here and I love being here with all of our listeners, so again, listeners, thank you so much for being here with us today, and thanks again, Steph. Stephanie: Thank you.ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Megan joins us today all the way from England! Megan planned for a home birth after a Cesarean with a wonderful team of midwives. She was well-prepared for any potential outcomes and made sure to secure continuity of care in the case of a hospital transfer. 27 hours after her waters broke with intense contractions and no sleep, Megan was devastated to learn that she wasn’t even dilated at all. She was thankful for the supportive midwife team she had in place at the hospital. As her birth experience presented the unexpected, Megan embraced flexibility. Interventions she didn’t initially plan for brought pain relief, rest, progression, and her VBAC! Our guest cohost and certified VBAC Link doula, Madison, shares her love and wisdom throughout this episode as well. Additional LinksMadison's Doula WebsiteBebo Mia’s WebinarHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Turn your love of babies and bellies into cash. If you love babies and bellies and want to provide care and support to families, then Bebo Mia’s webinar is the right place for you. Get answers to those burning questions like how to be the voice you wish you had at your birth and how babies and families can be supported by doulas. Learn all about the different kinds of doulas. You can work in fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, or just enjoy working with those squishy babies. Supporting families by becoming a birth worker, aka doula, is perhaps an option that hasn’t even crossed your mind. That’s why we want you to join this webinar. You can have great earning potential while doing something you love. Bebo Mia is the one-stop shop for education, community, and mentorship. Reserve your spot today at bebomia.com/freewebinar.Hello, hello. I cannot believe 2022 is almost over. We only have one episode left of the year, but this episode is going to be amazing. We are so happy that you are still with us for 2022 and we can’t wait until 2023 because we’re going to have really fun things coming. I want to share with you, you’ve probably heard it a little bit in the past, that I’ve been having some co-hosts on the show and it’s so fun to have different voices and people from all over the world sharing reviews and being involved in these stories. These are all of our certified birth doulas who are really fun birth workers. Today, our special guest is Madison and it is so fun to have you, Madison. Thank you so much for being with us. Madison: I’m so excited to be here, Meagan. I am a Cesarean mom myself and I haven’t had my VBAC yet, but taking your class and being able to support VBAC moms better through your class was just amazing, so thank you. Review of the WeekMeagan: Yes. Thank you, thank you. Well, I would love to turn the time over to you to read a review. Madison: Yes, so this review, the title is “Confidence Boost” and it is from a user named musicfeedsthesoul. I love that. The review says, “Meagan and Julie, thank you, thank you, thank you for what you have built here. Story after story, my confidence in myself and my plans for a successful VBAC were lifted. I learned so much from you” and then she put in parentheses “(cervix nerd over here) and your experience with them watching Women of Strength birth the way they desire. I hired a doula for my VBAC baby boy’s birth born on 8/20/22” so not that long ago.Meagan: Oh my goodness, not long at all. Congratulations. Madison: Yes, congratulations. That’s so exciting. She says, “And I felt so in control. So confident in my body and my ability to advocate for myself in the hospital room all thanks to you. Got my VBAC!!!” Love it. “Feeling him come out of my and having him onto my chest was the greatest single moment of relief and joy I’ve ever felt. Thank you for being there along this journey. Big hugs to both of you. Meagan: Oh, that seriously just gave me chills. It gives me chills to hear that. Madison: Same. Meagan: That makes me so happy for her and thank you so much for leaving a review. We really do love these reviews. We like to share them on the podcast. We love hearing them. Some of them even make us cry. They give us chills and they keep us going. They keep me going. I love them. When I see a review come in, I’m like, “Okay. Yes. There is a reason why I’m here” and the reason why I’m here is that I’m doing this and it is helping. I make a difference and I love it. I know that kind of sounds silly because I’m like, “I make a difference,” but that’s what I want to do. I want to try and make a difference in people’s lives and let them figure out how they want to have birth and educate them and empower them no matter if that’s a Cesarean or a VBAC. So I love it. Please leave your reviews. Google, email, Facebook, you can Instagram us. Apple Podcasts. I think even Google Play or whatever the one is for Android. I think you can leave a review there as well. They really are so appreciated. Megan’s StoryMeagan: Okay. We are going to get into Megan’s story. I just want to share a little bit about her. Her VBAC baby actually is- how old is she, Megan?- did you say 12 weeks old? Megan: Yeah. She’ll be 12 weeks this Sunday. Meagan: Yeah, 12 weeks! Just little. Just little. She’s here recording with us which is so awesome. She is living in England and some of the highlights of her birth are a long labor, following intuition, and then you know that term that we are all labeled “failure to progress”, she also had that label which I don’t love. I’ve also had that label personally. And then she actually is a mental therapist by trade. So Megan, I feel like I’d love to know more about that at the end too. But let’s turn the time over to you to get this amazing story out here with the world. Megan: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Thank you for that introduction. I’m really happy to be able to share my story because I’ve listened to so many birth stories during my pregnancy and it was really, really helpful for me to feel confident and prepared as much as I could be to have a VBAC. So I have two baby girls. Like Meagan said, one that just turned 12 weeks and that’s is my VBAC, or is about to turn 12 weeks, and is my VBAC and then my first baby girl is now a toddler. She’s two and a quarter, so the babies are just over two years. Two years and one month apart. That baby was born by Cesarean because she was breech. She was born in June 2020 a couple of months right after the start of the pandemic. She was breech throughout the entire pregnancy. Actually, my husband was born breech so I just kind of had a hunch throughout the pregnancy towards the end especially when it started to be more of a concern to the OB that I was seeing that she was going to stay breech. I did, like so many women, try everything to get her to flip but she didn’t. Meagan: Did your provider offer to– I’m always curious. Did your provider offer any help on their end?Megan: Yeah, they offered the ECV, so the external cephalic version I think is what it stands for, but they said that the success rate, I think, is only 1 in 3 for first-time moms. So, fortunately, it wasn’t, I had heard a lot of stories about that being really horrendous. It wasn’t a bad experience for me and it just didn’t work. I think my provider was pretty gentle about it which was why it didn’t actually hurt that bad for me. But he gave a couple of pushes to try to turn her around and just could really tell that because of her position, I think, her little bum was right underneath my hip. He was like, “Nope. She’s not budging at all.” I tried everything on my own and we did try the ECV too. And I actually was okay with having the scheduled Cesarean. I might have tried to find another provider, but from my research– I was living in Colorado at the time. Madison: That’s where I’m from. That’s where I’m living right now. Megan: Oh cool, cool. Yeah. We are a military family so we were in Colorado Springs. Madison: Gotcha. Megan: But from my research, there wasn’t a provider in Colorado. Dr. Stu in California which is my home state, I would have, but it was the start of the pandemic and I was like, “I’m not going to travel states. I don’t even know about getting on a plane right now.” It just wasn’t going to happen and I was okay. I was okay. I am a planner. I liked the idea of having it planned. We could get kennels arranged for our dogs and I just kind of found the silver lining in it and was okay with it. But the morning of my firstborn’s birth, I asked my OB, “How long do I have to wait to get pregnant” because we knew we wanted at least another baby “in order to get a VBAC?” So I had on my mind before even the Cesarean that I would want to have a VBAC. His answer, interestingly, was only six months so I was surprised to hear that. My babies are much further apart than that, but I know that a big question that a lot of women do ask is, “How long do I have to wait in order to have a VBAC?” And he said, “Just six months.”Meagan: There are different studies out there, so that’s the crazy thing is some of them say, “After six months, there’s no difference” and some people say, “If it’s before 18 months, it’s a really high risk.” It’s interesting how provider to provider, you’ll find that different number. Megan: Yeah, yeah. I thought that it was interesting. He seemed like he was a pretty conservative– he wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of a vaginal breech birth. He seemed pretty traditional. He was kind of an older provider. So yeah. Six months and he seemed like he was conservative too. But the Cesarean was a good experience for me. It really wasn’t bad. There was nothing about it. Even the recovery went well. It is kind of a strange thing to one minute– it’s so fast. And now, here’s your baby. They just kind of produce this baby from you. So that part was a little bit strange and I didn’t feel super connected with the birthing experience. I thought that maybe had something to do with it, but it wasn’t bad. There was nothing about it that was bad. Like I said, even the healing was fine. It took me maybe about three weeks to kind of start to feel more myself and like I could move without pain. I did have hypertension during that pregnancy, gestational hypertension and it came back postpartum so that was a little complication, but that wasn’t related, I don’t think, to the Cesarean at all. So yeah. Moving on to the VBAC, the birth that I’m most interested in talking about today. I got pregnant when my firstborn was about 15 months and the pregnancy was super, super smooth sailing. I didn’t even have hypertension and knew that I wanted a VBAC like I said, before I even got pregnant. That was always the plan. The way the care works here is that you are seen by midwives in England. So we moved as a family to England in August of 2020 when my toddler was only 9 weeks old because like I said, we are a military family. We got assigned here. The care does look quite different here in the UK, but it’s midwifery-led. You’re seen by a doctor if you have any risk factors and having a previous Cesarean is considered one of the ones where I would need to be seen by a consultant is what they call them. I don’t think they are considered obstetricians but by a doctor. I was talking about my birth plan at 12 weeks during that first ultrasound that they offered and they said that they would be supportive of a VBAC, so that felt really good then around the middle of the pregnancy, my husband and I started to talk a little bit more about the birth plan. I started to have some anxiety about who was going to watch our toddler while we had the baby since we are here and don’t have any family here in England. My husband suggested and kind of started to almost push the idea of a home birth which really surprised me from him. I didn’t even think it would be something that he’d be comfortable with, so for it to be his idea came as a surprise. Meagan: I love that. Megan: Yeah, yeah. My husband surprises me all the time in really cool ways. So yeah. I started to look more into that as an option and to talk to the midwife that I was working with. She explained to me that it was considered against medical advice since I had the Cesarean, but I think in the UK they are actually required, I might be wrong by that, to offer a home birth so I could continue to explore it even though it wasn’t necessarily encouraged. Around, I would say, 28 weeks, maybe 30 weeks, I told them that I was interested in planning that. I met with a consultant who was that same doctor who I think was basically trying to talk me out of the idea at 34 weeks. My husband came to that appointment and we both felt like, “No, let’s continue to move forward with the plan.” So one of the things that I think is really beautiful about the way that they do birth here in the UK is that while there’s no continuity of care necessarily in terms of seeing the same doctor and the same midwife every time I had an appointment, there is continuity of care in terms of if I had planned home birth and at any point, even if I decided– so if I woke up the morning that I went into labor and said, “No, I want to go to the hospital,” I could easily just go to the hospital. So I liked the idea of planning a home birth because it gave me the option of having a home birth and I could change my mind at any point versus if I hadn’t planned a home birth, I couldn’t wake up and decide, “I just want to have this baby at home today,” and have the support of the midwives if that makes sense. I wasn’t necessarily dead-set. Like I said, it was more my husband’s idea of having a home birth, but some of the things that did appeal to me about it was one, I knew that I would have some more flexibility of staying home longer with my toddler and if I felt like her being around me when I was in labor wasn’t scary for her or a distraction for me, then she could even stay. I heard a lot of beautiful stories of women having their babies in the middle of the night and then their toddler wakes up to a baby and never has to even go anywhere. So that appeals to me. And then also, I really wanted a VBAC. I was really set on the idea of a VBAC even though a Cesarean wasn’t a bad experience for me. It was just an experience that I wanted. From the research I had done, you were much more likely to be able to have a successful VBAC if you stayed at home. If you originally planned a home birth, even if you didn’t end up giving birth at home. I knew that it would help me to avoid that cascade of interventions earlier on so that was another reason why I wanted to plan the home birth. So yeah. I moved forward with the home birth even though it was against medical advice even though it felt– there were a lot of decisions that I made throughout this pregnancy that felt pretty gutsy for me because I’m pretty compliant, a rule follower, I don’t like to ruffle feathers. I kind of go with the flow so it felt courageous for me to be taking a stand against these different recommendations. Meagan: It feels off, right? Megan: It can especially toward the very end when providers– so I’ll just share two. It was against medical advice for the home birth because of the Cesarean and then also towards the end of the pregnancy, I started to have some growth scans actually because I was measuring big. My fundal height was measuring big so they sent me for a growth scan and then the baby was actually small. So the baby was measuring small for gestational age and I wasn’t actually concerned about the risk of uterine rupture for me. I just wasn’t. That just wasn’t a concern for me. I had this feeling, you never know for sure, but I just didn’t feel like that would happen. But once they started to tell me that my baby was small and I had a provider tell me that sometimes small babies are more fragile and have a hard time tolerating that was when I really started to question my decision because I can feel, I just turned 35. I had 34 years on this planet to build confidence in my body’s capabilities, but my baby is just brand new. Anyways, even at that, I had this feeling that my baby was fine and continued to move forward with the planned home birth because she was continuing to grow but also, it’s just this balance where you don’t want to be reckless and you don’t want to be overly confident. I at least wanted to be cautious and wise. I didn’t want to just be stubborn and like I said, reckless, but I also knew deep down that everything was fine and didn’t want to be scared into making a decision that didn’t fit for me. So yeah. It kind of went against my character a little bit and I’m glad that I planned things the way that I did. But yeah, it definitely did take digging deep in terms of that courage piece. Okay. So kind of starting with, I think I covered everything about the pregnancy that I wanted to share. It was really the baby being small for gestational age and then the Cesarean that were the two complicating things in the pregnancy. Madison: Quick question really quick. Megan: Sure, yeah, please. Madison: What was the percentage of growth restriction? Did they say?Megan: Yes, yes. So I had the first scan at 34 weeks and because of the position of the baby– so the sonographer did the measurements and I went back into the waiting room and came back and grabbed me and wanted to remeasure her head. She said because of her position, because she was head down, which was wonderful to hear, she couldn’t get a great measurement of the head. The head was measuring several weeks behind, so at that point, she was at the 3rd percentile which is when they start to consider it a growth restriction. They had me come back every two weeks and then from 36 weeks onward, she was hovering and maintaining right around the 10th percentile. It was the 8th percentile, 9th percentile, and then the last one was right at the 10th percentile so she was just barely considered small for gestational age. There is a difference between being growth restricted and being small for gestational age. She was continuing to grow, so when I talked to– because I did talk to the home birth midwife team about these different concerns and they said, “One, we are not concerned about your Cesarean scar at all. That doesn’t worry us.” And then two, they said that they don’t necessarily worry about baby’s size because ultrasounds can be pretty inaccurate unless the baby is not growing or there is because they also did a placenta doppler. I don’t know if they do this in the US because I didn’t have that experience when I was pregnant with my first. If there are any kind of concerns with blood flow to or from the placenta, then it wouldn’t make sense to have a home birth, but if the placenta looks fine and if the baby is growing on their own curve, they don’t worry so much about its size. Madison: Yes, totally. Megan: I actually did feel like having a smaller baby, in the end, set me up, I think, for more success with having a VBAC because she was smaller and she came out very cone headed which I was grateful for, so I think she did her part to make sure that she would be able to be born vaginally. But yeah. One provider did tell me that sometimes smaller babies can have a more difficult time tolerating labor and that was probably the one thing that I heard that made me feel most nervous about planning the home birth, but I knew if I at any point didn’t feel comfortable with it, I could go straight into the hospital. I was not dead set at all on staying home. Madison: Can I just say that I see that a lot, the difference between how midwives explain risk and how OBs explain risk? I feel like OBs sometimes try to pull on your heartstrings a little bit to get you to sway one way or another where it sounds like your midwives were like, “This is the reality and you get to make your own decision.” Megan: Yes. Yes, and I appreciated that. I felt very supported by the midwives, very supported. And if there is a risk, I want to know about it, but yeah. Exactly like you said, I felt like the midwives gave me the information and let me make a decision about it on my own whereas at least one of the doctors that I spoke to was pretty shaming and told me– so in the end, I did agree. I had this hunch throughout this whole pregnancy. I wanted a Fourth of July baby. My baby was born on July 3rd, but the baby was going to come on that specific weekend. So I initially did agree to an induction. They recommended induction at 39 weeks for small gestational age, so I kind of felt pressured honestly to schedule this induction at my last appointment and I knew that I would just reschedule it if I needed to. I did schedule an induction, I think it was for Friday, and then called to push it back just by a few days because I had this hunch that the baby was going to come that weekend. It was scheduled for Friday and I talked to a doctor about pushing, just a random doctor that I hadn’t met before because anyways that’s who had called me for the appointment, on Monday and he was very shaming. He told me I was putting my baby at serious risk and told me that the placenta was going to stop working. I got off the phone with him. I rescheduled the induction still for Monday, but got off the phone and cried and cried and cried, so I was definitely impacted by some of the things that were said to me, but I also trusted the decision that I was making and didn’t think that I was doing anything really risky by pushing the induction back by just a few days. Something that does bother me is that there’s a lot of conversation about the risks of not acting, but there’s not a lot of discussion about the risks of acting. And so in my mind, if small babies do have a hard time tolerating labor, then what’s it going to be like for her if I get induced? To me, that seems a lot more aggressive if I’m deciding when she’s going to come and maybe she’s not ready yet. Maybe she wants a little more time to grow and then also, just the different methods of induction can be more aggressive and more difficult for a baby. There was a lot of, like I said, information thrown at me on how it’s risky and not smart to not act, but no information about the risk of induction really was given to me, at least verbally. I was given some pamphlets that I could look through, but I think that’s a big piece that’s missing. I get that that’s from a place probably of providers protecting themselves from a liability perspective, but I just wish that I hadn’t been shamed because I spent a lot of during my pregnancy educating myself and I just really do feel for women who maybe haven’t done that and I did feel as confident as I could about the decisions that I was making. For someone else in a different position where maybe they hadn’t educated themselves or didn’t feel as confident in their decision or their knowledge, I think it would have been an even more vulnerable position and I just think it breaks my heart that doctors do talk to women in such a vulnerable time in their lives the way that I was spoken to. Meagan: Absolutely. Megan: So anyways, that was my biggest complaint towards the end of the pregnancy. Otherwise, I felt like I was empowered even from– so the consultant that I was working with throughout the pregnancy was the same provider, it just happened to be a random doctor that called me on this one day. And even he, I didn’t really like his style, but even he, I felt like, was like, “Okay. You’re going to do what you’re going to do and at the end of the day, we’re here to support you.” So I did appreciate that doctor for that fact. The recommendation is for induction at 39 weeks for babies that are small for gestation age, but by the time I had gone to the doctor for that final growth scan, I think I was one day shy of 39 weeks, so that doctor and I decided to schedule an induction for when I was 40+1 because I was already at 39 weeks and I was like, “My baby is growing fine. You want me to come in for an induction tomorrow? That doesn’t make any sense.” He agreed. “Let’s schedule it for 40+1. Let’s do a lot of” they call them stretch and sweeps here. I think maybe they are called membrane sweeps in the US. I don’t know if there’s a different term, but stretch and sweep. “Let’s do as many as possible between now and then and then have you come in at 40+1.” So I went in for my first stretch and sweep when I was 39+1 and the midwife told me, “You’re not dilated at all. We can’t even do a stretch and sweep.” She tried and it was actually really uncomfortable because my body wasn’t ready for it at all. I started bleeding right after that and I continued to bleed actually until my baby was born, so I just continued to kind of spot. Madison: Did hearing that you were not dilated at all, did that mess with your mental state at all, or did you know that this doesn’t necessarily mean anything?Megan: Both. It definitely messed with me and the cervical checks– my whole labor turned into this mental game for me and the cervical checks did not help at all. But I also did know that cervical checks aren’t a crystal ball and that it didn’t necessarily mean anything about how things would look in the future, but it still was discouraging. But yeah. I started spotting. I started cramping. I started having menstrual cramping throughout the weeks. That’s why going back and having the induction one week from them felt too rushed because I was like, “Look, my body isn’t even ready for a stretch and sweep.” He wanted me to have 2-3. “How am I going to fit these in?” It was really uncomfortable for me and the fact that I bled didn’t feel good for me either. So I was like, “I’m not going to schedule one for Monday. I don’t feel ready.” So I scheduled another one for the following week and that’s one of the reasons why I pushed the induction back to Monday to what I was 40+4 I think is what it was. Anyways, so yeah. I went back on Friday. Thursday night, when I was on my due date, I started to have contractions. I was cramping all week, but I started to have contractions that felt rhythmic. From 1:00 AM to 6:00 AM on Thursday, so I guess it was Friday morning, I was up having contractions every ten minutes that were lasting about a minute. They weren’t painful. They got my attention and they kept me up. I was awake through that whole time, but I just put a heating pad on my pack. It was kind of intense menstrual cramps, really. But they were rhythmic. I woke my husband up that morning and was like, “Look, we’re having our baby today. Are you ready to have a baby?” I was really excited and then they fizzled out. Basically, as soon I announced that the baby was coming that day they stopped completely. So I went back in, that was the day I had scheduled that second stretch and sweep. I went back in in the early afternoon for that and this is when it was even more discouraging. The midwife said, “In this last week that you’ve been having all this cramping and you’ve been having these consistent contractions last night, you’re still a 0. I still can’t even do a stretch and sweep for you.”The method of induction that I had talked to my consultant a bit about that I was the most comfortable with was the Foley bulb. I asked the midwife at the time because Friday was my original date of having the induction scheduled, I said, “Could you even place a Foley bulb right now with me not being dilated at all?” She said, “No. If you were to have come today, no. We wouldn’t have even been able to place a Foley bulb.”So that was kind of validating. It was discouraging to hear that but also validating of my decision not to have the induction scheduled for that day because I think I would have just had everything packed and then just turned around and gone back home because I don’t think I would have agreed to another method of induction at that point. Okay. So that was Friday. Still not dilated at all and I was confused because I had had all of these what I thought were these contractions. The midwife asked me, “Were you feeling the contractions mostly in your back?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Because it looks like your baby is sunny-side up, so OP I think is what it is.” Posterior, anyways, faced the wrong way. That was really discouraging to hear because my first baby was breech and now it was just like, “What’s with me and these babies that aren’t in the right positions?” So it kind of sounded like I was having back labor and it wasn’t productive at all because my baby wasn’t in the right position. I went home and had a normal evening except for the fact that I was exhausted because I had been up for five hours the night before and hadn’t really slept since 1:00 AM.I told my husband and I knew that I was going to be having a baby in the next week, so I told my husband, “I need to go to sleep at 7:00 PM.” He put my toddler down for bed and I did. I went to sleep at 7:00 and woke up at midnight with, very similar to the night before, these contractions that weren’t super intense but were rhythmic and coming in a pattern. I had talked to– oh, I hired a doula. I hadn’t mentioned that, but I talked to her about the fact that the baby was in a bad position and she suggested some things to get her into the right position. One of the things that she suggested was curb walking. So this is going to make me sound like a crazy person, but when I had insomnia during the pregnancy, I live in a very safe neighborhood. I would sometimes get up in the middle of the night and go on walks. I had the urge to do that this night too, so at midnight, I got up and went and walked around my little village and did curb walking while listening to The VBAC Link. Actually, in hindsight, because my labor was so long, maybe wasn’t the wisest choice to be exercising essentially before this marathon that I was about to do, but I also don’t regret it because it was actually a really nice memory of just me alone. I was talking to God, talking to my baby, and telling my baby, “I’m ready for you to come.” I was listening to The VBAC Link like I said. My mom even called me because there is this time difference. I talked on the phone with her for a little bit and it was kind of sweet. I did a bunch of curb walking and got home at 2:00 AM and tried to go back to sleep. I laid back down and was still having the contractions rhythmically but similar to the night before where it was one every 10 minutes. And then, I heard a little pop sound which I would not have heard if it was during the day, but since it was at night and I happened to be awake, I heard a little pop sound. This was at 3:30 and then went to the bathroom. I couldn’t tell if I was peeing or if I was leaking fluid, but then went again and it was becoming more obvious that I was leaking fluid, but it was just a trickle. I was getting excited so I went downstairs. I’m not sure what I did for a half hour, but I did call the hospital and let them know, “I think my water broke.” And at this point, as soon as my water broke, I think I had this surge of adrenaline because my contractions were really intensified and I just kind of got into this state. But I did want to wait because the morning before, I had woken my husband up really early and told him, “We’re having a baby today.” I wanted to wait. I decided that 5:00 AM was a reasonable time to wake him up. I don’t know why, but that was morning because I had been up all night. Meagan: That was long enough. You waited long enough. Megan: I did. I waited an hour and a half. I called the midwife and they were going to come by to see if it was in fact my fluid. So yeah. I woke him up at 5:00 and then the midwife I think arrived at 5:30 and came to my home which I was so, so grateful that I had planned this home birth because I had midwives come to my home three different times. I would have at least for the first two times, at least the first time, at 5:30 in the morning, I would have had to go by myself. I don’t know what I would have done with just my toddler and my husband and how we would have worked that out, but having someone come to my home was really, really nice. I declined a cervical check at that time. She had offered one, but because my waters had broken and I know the risk of infection goes up ever so slightly once it has, so I didn’t know if there had been any progress, but at that time, she told me, “You’re clearly not in labor to where we would stay” so she left and said that she was ending her shift at 5:00 PM. She said, “Maybe I’ll see you before I end my work day.” I was like, “Maybe? Won’t you definitely? Aren’t I going to have this baby in the next few hours?” I was confused that she wasn’t sure if it would be her that would come back even though it was 12 hours from now. I did. I did feel like my contractions went from feeling noticeable to feeling uncomfortable and I was trying to do some things to keep them going because I knew that at this point, once your waters had broken, there is a little bit of this time clock that they want you to be on. And so I was trying to do things. I took a bath. I was trying to do things that were relaxing. I was doing things with my toddler that I thought would give me an oxytocin boost, trying to do things to keep things moving and I did. My contractions did continue. I asked my doula to come. I think she came around 12:30 in the afternoon. As soon as she arrived, I don’t think it had anything to do with her because she was wonderful and I felt supported by her, I think it was just something about maybe having someone new come into my home or something, I started to talk with her and my contractions slowed down. I was still having them but they weren’t as consistent, so things kind of did start to stall there and my daughter’s daycare provider, fortunately, ended up being available. So I had her come pick her up at 3:00 and my thought was, “As soon as my daughter is in good hands and I know she is being taken care of, then maybe my contractions will pick up and I’ll be able to settle into them.”But they didn’t really. They didn’t really start to intensify again until early evening and then I think it was at 7:00 PM. So now, we’re over 12 hours since my water had broken, maybe 17 hours. Somewhere around there. I had a midwife come back to check me and she checked me again. Actually, yeah. Anyways, I don’t know if I necessarily would have wanted to be checked, but what she said was– they had told me I had a birth pool that I needed to wait until a midwife was there to get into the pool, so I asked about getting into the pool because I was wanting other options for coping with the contractions. They said, “Well, we usually recommended checking you first because we don’t want it to stall you. We want to make sure you’re far enough along.” I don’t know. I think they just wanted to check on me to see if they needed to stay and that was kind of a reason for it. They checked me and I still was not dilated at all. I was so discouraged! I was like, “What is my body doing if this isn’t moving forward?” I was tired at this point and starting to feel more of that pressure of this 3:30 AM deadline that was starting to feel close to needing to go into the hospital. So she suggested that I rest and that I take Tylenol and try to rest. I did take Tylenol and I did try to rest, but the only position that I was comfortable in during the contractions was on my hands and knees, so this whole time, I would be talking with my doula, talking with my husband, and they would know that my contraction was coming because I would collapse on my hands and knees. This whole time, that’s what I was doing to cope with the contractions. Meagan: That’s making me think about the position.Megan: Yeah. Meagan: Asynclitic or something. Megan: Yeah. Yeah. I think that my body knew that that’s what I needed to do in order to get her into the right position, but it was the only way that I could cope with contractions. So I couldn’t sleep because every few minutes, the contractions were coming frequently at this point too. My doula, we decided to call the midwife back out because they wanted you to have three in 10 minutes that lasted a minute long each and I was having those, so I felt like it was a good time to have them come back. And then to hear that even though I was meeting that threshold of calling them back out, I still wasn’t dilated at all was really, really discouraging. But that midwife said, “Feel free. Try to get some rest. Feel free to go into your pool and call us back if things change. Otherwise, go into the hospital at 3:30 AM.” So I tried to rest, wasn’t able to rest. But I did get into the pool. I think I tried to rest from 9:00 PM to 11:00. I think I ended up getting into the pool at 11 and was in the pool for 3 hours. This is the part of my birth story that feels kind of dark. I was really loud. As soon as my water broke, I started vocalizing through all of the contractions. That’s just what my body wanted to do. By the time I got into the pool, I was thrashing around in the pool making crazy animal noises and I felt like a killer whale in this pool. I was alone because the doula and my husband were there, but I was in the pool by myself and I was in a lot of discomforts. I was just really discouraged. I think before I even got into the pool when I was with my husband and I went into the bed to try to rest, I told my husband, “Look. I think I just need to go to the hospital and tell them that I want another Cesarean not because I want another Cesarean and not because I am in so much discomfort that I can’t tolerate this anymore, but because my body’s not making any progress right now. I don’t know what it’s doing. I don’t think that it’s going to make any progress. I have never had this experience before of it working, so maybe my body just doesn’t work. I don’t want to continue this and exhaust myself even further just to have surgery, just to need to take care of a newborn. I don’t think I can do all of that. So why don’t we just go in for a Cesarean–” Madison: That’s a lot to be processing while you’re in labor. How long had it been at this point? How many hours from when you first noticed a contraction? Megan: It was about the 24-hour mark. Madison: Okay. Megan: And I think that if there is something about me, I think labors are just long and that can be normal and I was really grateful for my doula. That’s the biggest way that she supported me is telling me that this is normal because it did not feel normal to me at all. But I think yes. This is what I was going to say. I think that if there is something about me that isn’t so well-lined up with the birthing process, it’s that I kind of do overthink and I think I had a really hard time getting out of my thinking brain and just letting my body do what it needed to do. I was. These were all of the thoughts that were racing. Especially, I think it all started with that 24-hour deadline because they had even scheduled the induction at the 24-hour mark. I felt this time pressure from the very beginning and I think being in my head in that way was not helpful for my progression. So if there is something about me that made the process more difficult, I think it’s that. But yeah. I was definitely really discouraged before getting in the pool and then being in the pool, while it did feel good to be weightless, it did just feel like a darker– and it was the middle of the night– time when my birth felt the darkest. Getting closer to 3:30 AM, they had scheduled me for an induction. My doula, I think this was at 3:00 AM, suggested that I call the midwives because she could tell that things had intensified for me while I was in the pool. But I called the midwives yet again another time and asked them to come out to my home again and check me again to see if I had made any progress maybe they could stay and I could avoid having to go into the hospital because she knew that my preference was to be able to stay at home. The midwives came back out and the same midwife that had checked me at 7:00 PM or whatever time it was checked me again and said that I still was not dilated at all and that I looked the same as I had looked before. I was so, so, so discouraged. At that point, I kind of wanted, honestly, to go to the hospital because I wanted some support. I wanted some extra support with pain and I knew that I needed to rest. Yeah. I was at my limit. So we did. We got some things ready and headed to the hospital. I think we got there at 5:30 AM. Everybody talks about the car ride being horrible. The car ride was horrible. It really was because I was only comfortable on my hands and knees and I couldn’t be on my hands and knees. I did have a TENS machine that I used throughout those first 27 hours before I went to the hospital and that was actually really helpful. I recommend a TENS machine to anyone. That really helped me cope for those first 27 hours. So we got to the hospital and actually getting to the hospital felt like a big relief because we just had extra support. At that point, I had been up since midnight, my husband had been up since 5:00 AM. The doula, I think, had got up pretty early as well but came over to my home at 12:30-1:00 PM, so we had all been up and at it for a while. But getting to the hospital and having some fresh, energized people supported us. It turns out that we actually were the only people there which is really unusual because usually, the hospitals are pretty overloaded, but it happened to be a night when I was the only patient there. All the midwives brought a special energy to them which I think is because they weren’t taking care of anyone else and they were truly energized and fresh. So that felt good. They had the room set up for me with some pretty lighting. The town I live in in England is known for having a pretty cathedral and it had a view of the cathedral. I felt really welcomed and supported upon arrival at the hospital. I was never against the idea of going to the hospital, but it felt like a turning point in the labor arriving there and having such a sweet welcome. So I got there and they talked to me about some different options for some pain relief. They offered me an injection of diamorphine which they said could cause some problems for the baby. It could make them a little sleepy so they don’t recommend it if you’re about to give birth, but it can be great for these earlier stages of labor when you’re not dilated. And then the doctor that was there came in who was wonderful. She suggested that I get on IV antibiotics. I wasn’t hugely concerned. In fact, The VBAC Link episode that I was listening to right before my water broke actually was an interview with Dr. Stu and he had mentioned that the risk of infection only goes from .5% to 1% once your water is broken, so I didn’t think there was a huge risk of infection, but at this point at the 24-hour mark, I was happy to go into the hospital because I didn’t feel like I was coping well with labor and I just needed more support with pain management and to rest. But also, I was like, “Okay. I’m already against medical advice because of the Cesarean. I’m already against medical advice for home birth for this home birth.” I really didn’t want there to be this third risk factor that I was fighting up against. I was happy to go into the hospital at this point even though I wasn’t really concerned about the increased risk of infection at the 24-hour mark. I felt like it was this artificial timeline, but again, didn’t want to be pushing back against a third reason to not have a home birth. So she suggested IV antibiotics which I agreed to and then suggested that I be started on Pitocin so the Foley bulb, I guess, wasn’t an option anymore because my water had broken is what she said. She also suggested another cervical check which I didn’t really want, but she said it could be helpful for her to take a look at my waters and make sure that they are fully broken because I guess sometimes if they are not fully broken, then there can be a cushion of the water bag that maybe prevents there being that full pressure against the cervix which can prevent dilation. She did. She said there was a little bit of fluid in between my baby’s head and my cervix. She broke that. They started me on IV antibiotics. I did get this diamorphine injection and was able to rest. I was started on Pitocin. I was able to rest. The diamorphine that they gave me did really allow me to rest in between contractions. I could still feel them and then they started the Pitocin at 8:30 AM. I think around a few hours into that, the medication started to wear off. The injection that I got was only supposed to last about 4 hours and the Pitocin really started to intensify my contractions. They were just on top of each other, so before I had been getting a break in between them, but these were back to back which was kind of the point– and I did ask them to do the Pitocin slow and to tell me before they increased the dose. Those were my requests because I know that they can sometimes up the Pitocin maybe without telling you once you have the IV placed and then also they can maybe increase the dose pretty quickly. They did give me a smaller amount and increased it slowly, but I could feel the contractions intensify where I eventually asked, I think around 11:00 AM, to turn it back down because I wasn’t coping well with the pain from the Pitocin especially with having such a long labor already. At that point, the midwife was like, “Look, this is going to work or this isn’t going to work. We really need to give the Pitocin an opportunity to work,” so she wanted me to keep the higher dose of Pitocin. I said, “Okay, but I need more pain relief,” so I did get the epidural which was kind of hard for me because I didn’t originally want that and also really because in my mind, any intervention that I did decrease my ability to have a VBAC. But also, in my mind, I still wasn’t dilated at all and so I’m like, “Look, I’m needing an epidural when I still haven’t dilated at all.” I just felt a little bit pathetic about that. But I did. I got the epidural and that worked really well. I didn’t have any pain hardly at all. I could hardly even feel those contractions and then at the 6-hour mark from when they had started the Pitocin. They started it at 8:30. They checked me again at 2:30 and I should say, an hour before this, I started to feel a lot of pressure on my behind. I just started to feel a lot, a lot of pressure. I told the midwife that and she said that it was a good sign. When she checked me at 2:30 PM, she said, “The baby’s head is right there.” That was just the sweetest moment for me. I felt so much relief. Meagan: After all of it too, it’s like, “Yes.”Megan: I was in disbelief in all of the right ways. I was just so, so, so happy and so relieved. It was not what I was expecting to hear. Honestly, I was kind of expecting to hear the same thing I had heard so far like, “Oh, still not dilated at all.” I knew at that point that the recommendation would be for a Cesarean, so I was really, really happy. I was overjoyed. What they suggested was that we wait an hour from then. They give you an hour to relax and rest and then you start pushing. That hour was the sweetest time in my whole labor experience because my husband and I talked about what position I wanted to push in. My husband and I finally decided. We had the hardest time naming this baby and decided on a name for our baby. I was just overjoyed. So yeah. Then an hour came and it was time to push. I decided that I wanted to push in a squatting position because the hands and knees position, even though that was the position I wanted to be in the whole time, felt a little bit vulnerable for me. With all of these people behind me, I wanted to see what was going on so I wanted to be facing forward and I wanted to be squatting. The pushing phase didn’t– so I did have the epidural although I had a really low dose. You can do clicks of it and I had done the first two clicks but hadn’t done it in a while, so I was able to feel the pushing, but it didn’t feel painful for me. It could have been because of the anesthesia. It could be because I am someone who actually felt relief because I know that’s the case for some women, but they started to– this was the frustrating part. One of the frustrating things about being in the hospital was that they had these CTG monitors here. It’s like the non-stress test bands on your tummy that they wanted me to have the whole time. But because I was on my hands and knees throughout the birth, they kept shifting around, and then they’d be concerned about losing the tracing on the baby. Anyways, so when I was pushing in the squatting position, I was leaning forward and the monitor shifted. So while I was pushing, they started to have some concerns about the baby’s heartbeat even though I think it was just that it shifted and it started to pick up my heartbeat instead because after the baby was born, that’s what they told me may have happened. But there was this drama around the pushing phase of, “We need to get this baby out right now.” They were suggesting episiotomy. They were suggesting forceps and it just felt like this huge sense of urgency. They called the doctor in and all of these people were rushing in. I wasn’t super concerned about my baby’s well-being at that moment, but I also was like, “I know that I need to get this baby out.” So I did. I pushed her out in 20 minutes I think it was. She came pretty quickly and that was exhausting after everything I had been doing. I was so grateful that I had the rest that I had both from the pain relief that was injected and also from the epidural because even though there are parts of you that don’t like the fact that I needed the pain relief, I think in the end, I needed that rest in order to be able to effectively push her out as quickly as I was able to because it was such hard physical work to push her out. I felt like I needed to do it really quickly. But yeah. She came. She was born at 4:14 PM. She came out. She was 6.5 pounds. A little, super skinny thing and she’s the sweetest baby. She’s the very, very sweetest baby. I felt so grateful to be able to have a VBAC and so much relief that she was okay after everything. The doctor who came into the room when they called him in I think also knew that the monitoring was just kind of funky because he told me at the moment, even before he got fully involved, that my baby was fine and winked at me and gave my husband a thumbs up. I was just grateful for him even within some of the panic of the pushing phase and of really the whole pregnancy and the whole birthing experience, I was grateful for the calm and the peace that I did experience throughout it all. And yeah. She was perfectly healthy. They, I guess, test the blood of the placenta to make sure that she wasn’t oxygen deprived more than they would expect a baby to be and she wasn’t, so they didn’t have any concerns with her after she was born. They didn’t have any concerns about infection. The cord was wrapped around her neck multiple times and her whole body. I had the longest cord the midwife had ever seen and she said she had been practicing for a while, but I wouldn’t have even known had they not told me. She was absolutely fine.The midwife gave me a tour of the placenta. I told them that I was interested in seeing the placenta and she was like, “Oh, that’s my favorite,” and gave me a whole tour of it. She showed me everything and was really enthusiastic about it. They brought me toast and tea for me and my doula and my husband afterward which is a cultural thing here to have and that was also a really sweet moment. I tried to get the baby to latch right away. She just was with me the whole time. We didn’t have to be separated at all. And yeah. It was a good experience in the end. There are some things looking back that maybe I would have liked to do differently or I might do differently next time, but in the end, I was processing some of this with my husband last week in preparation for knowing that I had this interview and my husband was like, “But look, we got what we wanted,” and that’s true. Even if maybe, I needed more pain relief that I wanted or there are different things that were a little bit more chaotic or dramatic in the end, we got what we wanted and there are more things about my birth experience that I’m happy with than maybe parts of it that I wish maybe were a little bit different. So in the end, it was good. Meagan: I love it. Sometimes those ends when it’s like, “I’ve got to do this right now,” it can be really intense. Really intense, but I think it’s pretty incredible how we are just capable of dialing in 150,000% and just getting the job done. Megan: I felt like my eyes were going to come out of their sockets, I was pushing so hard. Meagan: You were pushing so hard. Megan: I really didn’t want an episiotomy or the forceps so that was also a motivator for me. Because I wasn’t actually that concerned about my baby. There was this peace that kind of transcended the whole experience, a peace that was incongruent with what was going on in the room that almost felt like, “Okay, I’ll get this baby out as quickly as possible to keep you all happy, but my baby’s fine and I’m fine.” And then to have the doctor come into the room and kind of reflect back to me what I was already experiencing that my baby’s fine, I’m fine and everything is going to be fine. But providers see things. They see bad outcomes probably more often than they would like to, so they are geared up, especially in a hospital setting for being prepared for something going south. So I don’t necessarily fault them for that. Meagan: Yeah. For sure. Awesome. Awesome. Well, huge congrats. Love on that little one. Thank you for sharing and taking the time today to be with us. Madison, is there anything that you wanted to share today as well? I want to make sure we hear your voice before we end. Madison: Yeah. I just wanted to say, Megan, the difference in your birth stories and how you really emphasized that you made sure that you got educated the second time around, I’m a birth educator at a birth center here in the area and that’s my whole thing. Education is the way that you can, first off, minimize birth trauma and second, have your best chance at not only a vaginal birth but a positive birth experience. Education is so, so important so I’m just really happy that you did that for yourself. An amazing birth story. I’m so proud of you as a doula. Megan: Thank you, yeah. The education piece is so important. I don’t think you can educate yourself enough. I really don’t because I had educated myself and there were still a lot of things that came up. I wasn’t expecting my waters to break before. There were still things that come up that you might not know a ton about. I think it’s also okay to ask for education at the moment which I didn’t do enough of but to ask for the information if you’re in a state to do so at the moment because you can’t educate yourself enough and there are going to be things that will come up that maybe you don’t know everything about. Information is power. Madison: Yes. Hiring a well-educated doula is a great way to be able to get that information at the moment too if you are not comfortable asking questions to your provider at the moment. Megan: Yes. I agree. I’m very grateful for my doula.Meagan: Awesome. Well, thank you ladies for being with us today. It was such a pleasure. Megan: Thank you. Madison: Thank you, Meagan. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Meagan is joined today by the amazing Eyla Cuenca! Eyla’s many years of experience as a birth worker have led her to specialize in holistic birth guidance. She helps women process past birth experiences and prepare for the most optimal future birth experiences. Eyla has so much wisdom and such a beautiful way with words. You will definitely want to take notes and save her advice!“There is no right way to do things. It’s simply what is in alignment with you. That’s what matters at the end of the day.”Additional LinksEyla's WebsiteBebo Mia’s WebinarHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode DetailsFull TranscriptMeagan: Turn your love of babies and bellies into cash. If you love babies and bellies and want to provide care and support to families, then Bebo Mia’s webinar is the right place for you. Get answers to those burning questions like how to be the voice you wish you had at your birth and how babies and families can be supported by doulas. Learn all about the different kinds of doulas. You can work in fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, or just enjoy working with those squishy babies. Supporting families by becoming a birth worker, aka doula, is perhaps an option that hasn’t even crossed your mind. That’s why we want you to join this webinar. You can have great earning potential while doing something you love. Bebo Mia is the one-stop shop for education, community, and mentorship. Reserve your spot today at bebomia.com/freewebinar.Meagan: Hello, hello. This is Meagan with The VBAC Link and we have an episode today to bring to you all about preparing, processing, and so many other things. This is something that a lot of people will write us about on our Instagram, our email box, “How do I process my previous births? How do I process what I’m going into and how do I prepare for birth when I’ve never even given birth?”Now, I want to just note on that right there that just because you’ve had a Cesarean does not mean you haven’t given birth. That is just simply not true, so if that is in your headspace, I want you to crinkle it all up and throw it away. You have given birth. You just haven’t maybe labored because I know for me, I hadn’t labored. I hadn’t progressed. I hadn’t dilated, but that left me questioning, “Could I dilate?” especially when I had a provider telling me that I couldn’t. So I’m excited today to bring Eyla on. She is going to talk all about the wonderful things that she does. Eyla is a holistic birth guide doula, trainer, childbirth educator, lactation counselor, health freedom advocate, and mother. That is a lot just right there. Her work is dedicated to offering guidance that supports women and men in the process that is a return to the deepest knowing about birth, individual sovereignty, and the body’s innate intelligence. Wow. A conscious birth building a conscious world.Does that just give you chills? Because that just gave me chills. Eyla, thank you so much for being here with all of us today and taking the time out of your very busy life where you do a whole bunch of things. In fact, you even mentioned in the beginning that you homeschool. What do you not do? What do you not do? Seriously, thank you so much. Normally, we read a review, but we are actually just going to get right into it. I want to know more about what led you into doing what you do today, all of the many things. Eyla: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here. So what led me to this? I actually was a birth photographer for many years before I started holding space as a birth doula and before I became a childbirth educator. I’ve been in the birth space for quite a long time. What I started noticing as a photographer, kind of a fly on the wall, was how different births were unfolding for women in different environments and how her birth team would also influence the energy feel of the birth. I started taking note of all of these factors. I was a part of a few transfers meaning from a birth center to a hospital. I was a part of a woman’s journey when she would decide not to go to a hospital and just work with a midwife and do a home birth. I started noticing all of these nuances and I really wanted to get more involved and offer guidance. So I’ve done various trainings for myself and carved out what is now this path that I am on of offering support as a holistic birth guide. Holistic really means all-encompassing. Whatever journey you’re on, whatever part of your journey you’re on, I’m going to meet you there. There is no right way to do things and that’s really what I’ve learned over the last decade is that there is no right or wrong. It’s simply what is in alignment with you. That’s what matters at the end of the day. Meagan: I love that. I love that. It’s so important to touch on that because I feel like in today’s society, we put so much emphasis on right, wrong, failure, and success. Eyla: Right. Meagan: It’s so hard to feel that you failed. It’s so hard to even be labeled, even labeled on a medical record that you failed. Eyla: Yeah. Meagan: Or that you didn’t do this. I know that for me, when I was reviewing my previous Cesarean op reports, it triggered me and I knew. I knew. I was a doula at that point. I knew I didn’t fail, but seeing the word fail was so hard. So I love that you’re like, “I meet you wherever you are. You didn’t fail.” Yeah. I just love that. I love that so much. Eyla: Yeah, the litmus test for a successful birth if we want to look at it, if we want to use the word successful is how you feel postpartum. Even if a woman has had an “ideal birth” and there is a lot of sludge that she is working through postpartum, that’s indicative to me that there was something about the birth that was not resonant. Meagan: Right. Elya: You know? That, for me, is like I said, the litmus test. What is happening to you postpartum? Are you having triggers when you are looking at your report? Are you feeling like you are still ruminating about something that occurred or something that someone said? There is always something to process. Even for women who have had an epidural, everything went smoothly, and no bumps in the road, no obvious bumps in the road, she might be having a lot of anxiety postpartum and she’s not really sure why because everything went fine. Baby is alive and healthy. She is alive and healthy.When you start to dig in, you realize that she maybe didn’t do things a certain way that she thought she wanted to. Maybe there was someone in the room who was not treating her well, but she just ignored it and betrayed herself, and told herself that it went fine. Meagan: Yes. Right there. Eyla: Our postpartum state is really indicative of how things shook out during the birth. At face value, it might not seem like anything was wrong, but when we start to dig, there might be things that we just need to unbraid. It’s not right or wrong, but there is an unbraiding process that is an opportunity.Meagan: Yeah, for sure. I love that you pointed that out because sometimes I will have clients tell me their past birth experience and I’m like, “Oh, it sounds so amazing.” Your “ideal” birth and they are like, “Yeah, but this.” Right? And I’m like, “Okay.” It might not have even been something that happened, but it was something someone said. It’s so crazy how we look back like yeah. That totally did happen every what that you would want it to happen, but like you said, there may be something that didn’t happen the exact way they wanted or someone said something. We hold onto those things. I know for me, I held onto something. No, my second birth didn’t go the way I wanted it. It didn’t, but at the same time, I was getting some things in that birth that I did desire. But something that was said to me held on for a long time. Sometimes, it’s those little things and it’s hard to recognize them. How can we go, especially if we had this “birth”, but how can we go back and realize what it may be that is triggering us or bringing us into this space of confusion of why we are feeling this way?Eyla: I think it’s first important to recognize that we really can’t do this in a vacuum. If a woman is trying to process her birth on her own, it’s difficult. It’s helpful to have someone that can reflect back on what you are saying, that can just reflect back to you what they are hearing. And also being witnessed by someone is really helpful to express. It helps us in expressing. We feel safe in expressing ourselves, so you want to find someone that you feel safe talking to whether it’s a good friend. Maybe they don’t know anything about birth or it’s someone who assists with birth processing. That’s something that I do. I do one on one sessions. Even if it’s a birth from 15 years ago, I have clients who birthed 15 years ago and they are like, “I’m just now realizing that things didn’t go down in a way that felt good for me.” So what that can look like is just walking through, “How did the labor begin?” talking about the labor and pregnancy, reflecting on the dynamic between the woman and her partner at the time, and then looking at, “When did we arrive at our birthplace? What happened? Who was there? What were the faces that you were experiencing? What were the things that were being said? What did you plan for? What went differently?”After looking at the big picture, going back and saying, “Well, let’s look at what purpose and role each of those things played in our growth.” It’s an alchemy process that we go through. It’s like your wounds become your gifts. How do we look at everything that shook out and how do we spin that into gold? It’s not negating that things were painful or that things were deeply wounding on an emotional level. We want to acknowledge that, but we want to say, “How do we alchemize that?” Otherwise, you’re just circling the drain for years and years. I know women in their 60s who still talk about how horrible their birth was and how they would never do it again. It’s like, “Wow. Do you really want to feel that way for the rest of your life?” That’s why I tell people in preparation for birth, “Really educate yourself. It’s never going to look exactly how you want it to, but you can get pretty close based on how well you prepare and how flexible you become.” Right? Because making a birth plan is not all of it. It’s how flexible are you with change. Meagan: Yes. Eyla: So if you have those components, your birth is going to unfold the way that it should and you are going to be in deep acceptance. But if you just walk into it and say, “Well, I’m just going to show up at my birthplace. The midwife is going to take care of it because midwives are into natural things. They’ll just do all of the natural things and I don’t need to think about it,” so we kind of dig our heads in the sand. That’s often when things don’t go as planned and they don’t turn out how you want them to. I would say that getting into space with someone who can reflect back to you what you experienced and sometimes just speaking it out loud is all you need to do. It’s helpful if you know someone who understands physiological birth, so they can say, “Oh yeah. Sometimes when you get an epidural, it can slow down the baby’s heart rate and that’s probably why you heard a deceleration in the heart rate and that’s often what can lead to a C-section.” Then for the woman, it clicks for her as, “Oh. That’s what it was. There wasn’t something wrong with me or the baby.” Meagan: Yes. Eyla: It was the epidural and it’s okay. Now I know. And then that unlocks and she can move on. Meagan: Yeah. I think sometimes that can be hard because I’ve heard so many people say, “Epidural doesn’t cause C-sections.” I don’t want to say that is true. Epidurals don’t necessarily cause C-sections, but there are things that happen sometimes after an epidural takes place. Eyla: Yeah. There are symptoms of the epidural that can cause a C-section. It’s not that A + B = C, but sometimes A and B together can go to C. They can go to D. They can go into different things and you have to understand that it’s a possibility always, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will cause the C-section, but it is possible. Meagan: It is possible. Yeah. Another thing that stood out to me just now is a lot of things, but another thing that you just said– we were talking about birth plans. So many of my clients and maybe you have seen this through your experience through birth, but so many of my clients want these birth plans. I’m not going to tell you that a birth plan is bad, but sometimes I feel like when we have a birth plan in place, we hold ourselves to these high expectations and we have to check this birth plan off. But when you were saying, “How flexible are you with change?” I was to encourage all of you listening whether you have had one, two, three, or however many Cesareans or maybe you are a first-time mom listening and you are wanting to learn how to avoid Cesarean and how things can pan out. If we can’t be flexible in childbirth, that can be really hard on us. It can impact us because childbirth doesn’t happen exactly the same way every time. Even my third kid was totally different. I love that you said, “How flexible are you with change?” Is there anything that you would suggest or any tips that you could give for learning how to be flexible? Because we want what we want. We desire what we desire. We have this vision and we want this vision to pan out exactly how we want it to. That is no shame. We are human beings, right? I go to Target. I see that shirt. I want that shirt. I’m going to do what I want to get that shirt. We go into birth and we have this birth plan and it’s this path. This is what we want. We are here to get what we want. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, so is there any way that you could give us any ideas of how to learn how to be flexible while also not getting all of your desires and shoving them to the side saying, “Oh, I have to be flexible because birth doesn’t pan out.” does that make sense?Eyla: Totally. I think the latter like you said, “Oh, I just have to do whatever comes comes.” For me, there’s a level of self-betrayal there because you’re not asserting your needs which you should be. Meagan: Yes. Eyla: I don’t necessarily think that polarization is helpful to go to that end of the spectrum, however, I want to say that when we want to look at how to become more flexible, there are two main components for me. One is having faith, which a lot of people don’t. It’s having a lot of trust and faith in this process. Meagan: It’s hard. Eyla: It’s really hard, but that is something that is deeply personal when it comes to having faith in every area of our lives that what is laid out is meant for us. Meagan: Mhmm. Eyla: Seeing what we call curses and blessings and gifts. That’s how we have to look at things. Meagan: It’s a change of mind. Eyla: It’s a perspective shift. Meagan: Uh-huh. That’s what I was going to say. It’s a whole perspective of, “Let’s look at it this way.” Elya: And it’s a level of spirituality that a lot of people are resistant to for whatever reason. You know? So there’s that if you’re asking me which you are. The other piece of that for flexibility is looking at where our desire to control comes from. That’s going to require a level of inquiry that a lot of people are uncomfortable with accessing because that does require us to look at our history. I’m not one to be stuck living in the past, however, it is helpful to look at certain experiences that we’ve had throughout childhood and growing up that cause us to really need control in order to feel safe. That comes from being in an unstable environment in childhood, right? Did you have a parent that required caretaking and did you have a parent who was emotionally volatile that required you as a child to be like, “Okay. I can’t control how my parents are responding to me. I can’t control the yelling. I can’t control the physical abuse. I can’t control the up and down, and schedule changes all of the time, but what I can control is this tiny little world in front of me. Maybe I organize my toys and my clothes a certain way. Maybe I eat certain foods because this is what I have control over.” That compounds and becomes a patterning in our adult life of, “Well, if I don’t control the time and the place, who my OB is, the nurse that’s going to be there, and the birth plan, and the this, my hair, my clothes–” we become hyper-controlling of everything because that’s how we feel safe because as a child—Meagan: That was our safe space. Eyla: We could access safety. That’s just one example because, for me, holding onto that birth plan so rigidly is that there is a fear that if we lose control, we’re not going to be safe. Meagan: Yeah. Totally. Sometimes that’s really hard to process. I have to let go of this and I’m going to be safe and create this safe space. This is not necessarily for VBAC in general. This is just preparation. You do a lot. Obviously, I just read off 10,000 caps that you wear and there are caps that you wear that we don’t even know about, right? You have all of these caps, I swear, that you wear, but in addition to processing and stuff like that, preparing. Physiological birth– we talked about it. How can you prepare for that specifically? What tips would you give to really prepare for that and hone in on that? Eyla: So, yeah on the physiological level, what I invite people to do is return to what I would call indigenous ways of moving. How we’ve moved before, how we moved as human beings before modern society and modern design. What does that mean? It does not mean doing a specialized pregnancy yoga or pregnancy pilates program. Meagan: Dance. Eyla: It means, how did we move before we had these specific things? We were squatting often. We were bending down to garden. We were resting in a squat. We were sitting in tailor pose. We were weaving, sitting in tailor pose for two hours. Meagan: Hands and knees. Eyla: We were walking, hands and knees. We were climbing things. So if we integrate all of those natural movements which are very second nature for our body, that’s the best physiological preparation for birth. There is no $5,000 program that is going to make your body. It’s nothing like that. It’s daily movement and resting actively. I could sit in a chair. I could slump into the couch and rest or I could rest in a squat against a wall. I could check my emails and rest. I could scroll through my phone while I’m in a squat. Resting should be active and that’s going to open the pelvis. It’s going to add elasticity to the perineum. It’s going to make the woman’s legs stronger and ready for being in what is the marathon of labor. Meagan: Yes. Eyla: So that’s what I would say. We just don’t move enough as a society. You don’t need to be doing high-level cardio either. You don’t need to go to the gym. You need to walk at least an hour every day and rest actively. That’s what I would say. The other part of the preparation is a lot of the more psycho/spiritual work that I talk about. It’s owning where we feel fear and say, “Okay. Well, I want to feel safe. This is my birth plan. I need it to feel safe.” Well, if you feel the need for that safety, it’s because there is something about your birth environment or your birth team that doesn’t feel good. So let’s address that because you shouldn’t have to rely on a birth plan to feel safe. You shouldn’t have to rely on a birth plan. You should be able to communicate the things that you want and if you’re trusting that your birth team is hearing you, then you are not going to feel so attached to that plan like, “Follow it.” Right? You’re not going to be controlling. You’re going to be able to surrender. So we have to look also at who is supporting us and if is this the right environment for us.Meagan: You know, that just resonated with me so much because, with my second, I wanted this VBAC. I didn’t have a doula and my husband wasn’t on board. I had this feeling at 36 weeks that I should change providers but then I didn’t because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or I felt bad that I was leaving his care. Eyla: Oh, you were caretaking your doctor. Meagan: Yes. Yeah. I really did. I was like, “I don’t want to leave him. He’s been with me for two babies,” and all of these things. I went to the same place that I knew deep down, but I didn’t want to accept it that it triggered me even just walking into my prenatal visits. Eyla: You went back to the scene of the crime. Meagan: Yes. I went back there and I kept going back there. I would feel it when I was there and I would feel angst. I would get more annoyed as I was waiting longer in the waiting room and I never felt like that. I am actually very calm and chill, very lax, probably too lax of a person. So all of these things were signs and things happening and then obviously, I had a repeat Cesarean and I wasn’t necessarily supported during that birth. It happened and I have worked through it and processed it, but with my third, I had a provider who was super supportive. Super supportive and everyone was like, “Yeah, you are totally going to have this VBAC. Oh my gosh.” And something didn’t sit right. Something did not sit right. Every time I would go in, I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” I ended up leaving his care, a supportive provider at 24 weeks and I changed care. Exactly like what you just explained. I knew I wanted a VBAC. I knew I wanted that. Other than that, there was nothing set in my way during my labor with my third that I was like, “I have to do this. I have to do this.” It was like I was just there and I was in full trust of my entire team in that space. I felt that that space held me and it held me tight. It held me warm and I felt all of the love and all of the support and all of the tingles along the way because truly, I mean, I don’t want to give myself a cookie, but I nailed it with my birth team. Eyla: Give yourself the cookie. Meagan: It took a long time for me to find it, but having that in that space, even when it was taking longer and there was a question of, “What do we do? We’ve been doing this for a really long time.” Even then, it was okay. It was okay. Eyla: That’s so beautiful. Meagan: And I loved that. I loved that space and I will cherish it forever. I will say that there were some things postpartum that happened that I was kind of not super loving. That’s more what I hold onto interestingly enough. I hold onto that and I still talk about this. I probably still haven’t processed this and I probably might be that 60-year-old in my sixties talking about–Eyla: Yeah, we’ll process it one day. Just call me.Meagan: Yeah, my postpartum. I think that processing is going to come to know more, just answering the questions that I have, right? It wasn’t bad. There were just some things that I was like, “What happened? What was that?” But yeah. I think what you were saying is getting that team, feeling that space where you might still have those desires of those birth preferences, but it’s not even something you’re focused on. You don’t even question it. Eyla: No, if there is any part of you that is like, “This doesn’t feel good.” If you are sitting in that waiting room and you’re like, “I don’t even like being in this waiting room.” It’s not just because waiting rooms suck. There are some waiting rooms I’ve sat in where I didn’t even notice I was waiting. I felt good. I felt safe. I felt at ease. I want to invite women to stop gaslighting themselves and trust their intuition. Meagan: That just gave me the chills, literally. Eyla: And just because all of your friends birthed with that doctor or that midwife and they have great Yelp reviews, it does not mean that it works for you. There is nothing wrong with you if you switch providers four times in your pregnancy until you find the right one. People spend more time shopping around for cars and test-driving cars than they do the person who is going to hold space for their birth. Meagan: Yes. Eyla: It’s kind of wild, right? So I really want to invite women to do that. Spend more time noticing how your body feels when you are in certain environments and with certain people who are going to be there for your birth. It might be the most amazing doula that everyone loves and you meet her and you’re like, “I am not vibing. Is there something wrong with me that I am not vibing with the best doula that everyone recommends?” No. You just don’t vibe and that’s fine. Meagan: Yes. Eyla: You might vibe with the doula who’s only done one birth and doesn’t have any reviews, but you just feel really safe with her. That’s where you need to walk toward. So yeah. The birth plan is helpful only because it’s an exercise in learning about what goes down at birth, but it’s not because it’s going to keep you safe from the unknowns, right? You need to feel safe with your team. Meagan: Absolutely. Eyla: The birth plan is not a contract. Just because you have one does not mean that everyone has to abide by the contract. It’s just an opportunity for you and your partner to be like, “Oh, what’s PKU? What’s an epidural? What’s Pitocin?” That’s where you can learn about this process. But I would just invite everyone to shop around with who’s going to be at your birth. Do not caretake like, “Oh, my mom really wants to be there.” It’s like, “That’s okay that she wants to be there, but if you have a really charged relationship with your mother and it would actually stress you out for her to be there because she’s an anxious woman, she’s not supposed to be there because the woman birthing is supposed to surrender and how can we surrender to birth when we are taking care of everyone’s feelings?Meagan: Yes. I mean, I can relate to that so much. My mom, to this day, I don’t know if she will ever forgive me. Seriously, she holds this grudge against me that I didn’t love her unconditionally enough to invite her into that space, but right there just goes to show right? My mom, I love her. I love my mom. I do. She’s not the person I want in my birth space. I would have been that person. I would have been that person worrying about what she would have been thinking and her worries along the way and hosting my mom. So yeah. Sometimes those things are really, really hard. Those choices are really hard to make, but creating that birth space is going to be so powerful and like you said, you can change many times. You can change. You can change during your labor. If someone comes in and they are not resonating with you and you are not feeling it and you are feeling contention, excuse them from the birth space. Ask your husband or your partner or your doula, or someone else to play the bad guy and let them go. That is okay. When I went in to go get my op reports for my second, he looked at me, laughed, and he said, “Good luck. No one’s going to want you out there.” Right there. Why did I stay with a provider that treated me that way? Why didn’t I follow my heart? Why didn’t I follow that heart? I was feeling good about my provider with my third. I was, but something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put a pointer on it, but it was. It was more like, “I think my provider is going to be restrictive in the end,” and he would have. He would have been restrictive in the end. Eyla: Wow, yeah. Isn’t it amazing? That’s what the classic narcissist says when you try to leave them. It’s like, “Good luck out there. No one else is going to want you.” It’s literally what a narcissist says to their– I don’t want to say victim because no one is a victim. No one is a victim. Everyone has a choice. Even in a narcissistic relationship, the one who is “being abused” is choosing to be there. They are the ones who are choosing not to leave. It’s interesting that we get into these dynamics with our medical providers. It’s not just OBs. It’s midwives as well. I want everyone to get very clear on the reality that just because you are working with a midwife does not mean that it’s not going to be a highly controlled, potentially conventional relationship and birth. Meagan: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there are providers out there that are going to be right for you and not right for you. I do too. I encourage you to follow your heart. Like you said, check into it. If you’re in that waiting room and your heart is racing and you’re feeling anxious, I don’t know. You’ve got to tune into it. This is where I speak a lot about intuition and when Julie was with me, I swear, we preach intuition. It is hard sometimes to really dive in and figure that out, but it’s important. It’s really important. It’s going to tell you something. It’s going to tell you something. Same thing with processing birth. Tune into what’s hanging there. What is hanging there and what are you talking about? For some, that’s probably something. That’s probably something that’s triggering you. Eyla: Of course. Of course. Yeah. This is also something that I do. I lead doula training and mentorships. This is a lot of what we talk about in this mentorship is how to hold that space. It’s not necessarily– some of the women that do this training, it’s not even to become a birth doula, it’s just learning how to hold space for a woman and offer reflection when they are going through their process or if they want to process something postpartum. In this training, I also require that the trainees do their own amount of share of processing because we can’t really be holding space for a woman unless we are also in a self-actualization process. So yeah. It’s just learning to tune into the body and again, not gaslight yourself, right? Meagan: Yeah. I love that. Oh, so many things. You have so many amazing things. Tell everybody where– let’s see. We’ve talked about the course and your training. Tell everybody where they can find you and find more information about everything that you offer. Eyla: Yeah, so my website is obviously the best place to get in touch with me. It’s eylacuenca.com. There’s also uncoveringbirth.com and that’s where you could go through the master class even if you’re not pregnant, if you’re a practitioner of any kind, you’re a chiropractor, or a friend of yours is giving birth and you just want to understand the arc of birth. How were we birthing? How have we arrived here? I really feel that everyone should understand their own birth even if they don’t plan to have kids. Understand how you came in because the way that we are born and what we experienced in our mother’s womb when she was pregnant with us influences and creates the blueprint for our life. So a lot of unanswered questions that you might have about your health, about your mental/spiritual state, those are things that you can uncover in understanding birth more clearly. I also have an Instagram, so I do a lot of interaction there. I like to answer questions on Instagram. I do a lot of health advocacy on Instagram. I provide different types of forms for people who are going into hospital settings and want to make sure that they can keep their placenta, for example, and want to understand their rights to the placenta. So yeah. I offer a lot of those resources through Instagram and through my website. Meagan: I love it. Awesome and we’ll make sure to have all of your information in the show notes in case you don’t know how to spell Eyla Cuenca. Don’t worry. It’s right down there and it is not Ayla, it’s Eyla if you’re looking on Instagram as well. So thank you so much Eyla. It’s been a pleasure. You are amazing. I can just feel, I can feel the passion coming through this Zoom. I really can. I feel like I need to come be your friend.Eyla: Please, please. Meagan: You are amazing and I’m so grateful for you and I know so many people will take so many nuggets out of this episode and they are going to apply it in their journey. Eyla: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan’s bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands